Rusted Memory: The Wanderer's Tale, #1

By Jennifer Melzer

Herein lie the journal pages of a bard cursed for his crimes against an angry god when the world was still new. He’s wandered these lands lifetime after lifetime, singing for his bed and supper, winning companionship with his songs and sharing tales with all who will listen of the things he’s witnessed on his endless travels. 

He is called Wanderer by the gods, for it is his punishment to walk until the end of days, never knowing the bond of friendship, the strength of family or the comfort of coming home. 

The people of Vennakrand know him as Morovio, and these are his tales 

In Rusted Memory, Morovio discovers he is not alone in his curse, for there is another, an impossible relation who's come to exact vengeance for the very blood that flows in his veins. 

Contains an exclusive first look at the upcoming second tale in the series, Worse Things Than Death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dragon's Gold
• Release date: Jun 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513059709

Book preview

RUSTED

MEMORY

A

WANDERER’S TALE

Jennifer Melzer

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue therein are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

RUSTED MEMORY: A WANDERER’S TALE

Copyright © 2014 Jennifer Melzer

All rights reserved.

By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, compiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced to any information storage and retrieval system, in any form of by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express permission of Jennifer Melzer.

Cover Design by Dragon’s Gold

ONE

Illavia

The masters of this world all say that every great story is composed of the same three elements: a beginning, a middle and an ending.

Of course they are, in fact, correct, but most stories are so much more than those simplest of elements.

Stories are people. The lives and moments in need of remembering. These tales are time and essence, blood and tears, life and death and so much more.

My own story has a beginning. The middle stretches on forever and there is no end in sight.

Call me memory catcher, storyteller, skald, bard. The Great Wanderer. Most who’ve heard me tell my tales simply call me Morovio.

Because none who’ve had the pleasure to hear me sing my memories of this world ever forget that name.

Morovio.

In their minds they know it cannot possibly be the same man who told stories to their grandfathers, and the grandfathers of those grandfathers long before they were a spark of thought in the mind of the gods who made us all.

Morovio.

Joyous on their lips when they raise their cups to me in celebration.

Morovio.

It is the first thing they remember when they wake the morning after a particularly drunken endeavor during which I dazzled and bewitched with one of my tales, the details of my face fading from memory. Lingering on their lips, the curse that is my name. Morovio… Would that I could change it. The All-Creator knows I’ve tried, while casting my prayers to the wind and begging Him to help me, but it seems the cursed hold no favor with the gods, not even the great father of them all.

It was so long ago that name first became my own. Another lifetime so distant even I can barely remember it. I was a simple farm boy then, the ninth and hungriest son of my father. I don’t remember what my father called me anymore, only that my life truly began when he apprenticed me, his only son, to a traveling bard after a night of drink and song at the local tavern. I barely remember my mother’s tears, the trembling of her lips and the keening of her agony as the old man wrenched me from her clutches.

His name was Morovio too, but that’s a story for another time.

On the subject of my own naming, it took place far longer ago than it should have, another life, nay, another age, as I’ve written in these pages oh so many times.

I’ve watched dynasties fall, empires rise from the ashes of despair as races merge or wink entirely out of existence to be remembered only in my tales.