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By Stephanie Barr

A bored wizard who can't seem to find his magic specialty stumbles into a different world in his pursuit for a good story, but he hadn't intended to become part of the story. He finds magical creatures and a cursed woman, but, can he do what he needs to find his way back home? Does he want to?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephanie Barr
• Release date: Feb 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463369470

Stephanie Barr

Although Stephanie Barr is a slave to three children and a slew of cats, she actually leads a double life as a part time novelist and full time rocket scientist. People everywhere have learned to watch out for fear of becoming part of her stories. Beware! You might be next!

Book preview

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Precursor tale for The Library at Castle Herriot

by Stephanie Barr

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2020 Stephanie Barr

Discover other titles by Stephanie Barr

Conjuring Dreams: Learning to Write by Writing

Tarot Queen

Beast Within (First of the Bete Novels)

Nine Lives (Second of the Bete Novels)

Twice the Man (Third of the Bete Novels)

Saving Tessa

Musings of a Nascent Poet

Curse of the Jenri

Legacy

Ideal Insurgent

The Taming of Dracul Morsus

Pussycats Galore

Catalyst

The Library at Castle Herriot

Dedicated to Stephanie, Roxy and Alex, always.

To Mirren Hogan, Chuck Larlham, Clarence Jennelle, Jen Ponce, and Elizabeth Graham, proof that good beta readers are worth their weight in gold

Cover by Brhi Peres

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

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About the Author

Preview of The Library at Castle Herriot

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Bale liked books.

Well, of course, he liked books. He was a wizard, one of those that had been training in the techno-wizardry capital of the entire Empire of Colmberra, Ricoh Major, a city that covered a planet under the magic-rich light of a blue star. And of all the magical elite in Ricoh Major, no university shone so bright as Bale the Magnificent's School of Wizardry where only one in three thousand magic masters were accepted each year.

Bale had been accepted nearly two hundred years ago, a strange child with an uncertain past, an esteemed name, and an incredible power which no one, to date, had quite figured out how to fully tap. In the decades since, he'd been shuffled from specialty to specialty and, though he'd been able to master each subcategory of magic, he hadn't shown exceptional power in any of them.

He'd be moved to transformation, for instance, and would soon be able to twist himself into any shape, real or imagined, copy the voice and intonation even of other people, but becoming something that massed a great deal more, like an elephant, or less, like a flea, was beyond him. Everything he became was, more or less, just his mass no matter how differently proportioned. Frustrated at his failure to do more than mastery, he'd been yanked from that curriculum and bundled into illusion where he indeed mastered illusions that affected each sense—but not all senses at once. One missed the scent of flowers to match the texture and appearance or the next smelled wonderfully of cheddar soup, warm and bubbling but still tasted of dishwater. And familiars! His face still burned from that one. It was not that the familiars didn't care for him but that they could all talk to him, when they should only have been able to converse with their masters. And yet, when he'd asked them—amongst the embarrassing litanies of their masters' individual inequities for familiars love to gossip—how he might find his own familiar, they were uniform in saying he fit no familiar they knew. Nor were the familiars not yet matched any more helpful. He spent rather less time in familiars, not just because he failed to find one but because those with familiars were deeply affronted that he could communicate with theirs.

After a decade or so trying to overcome those difficulties, Bale would be shuffled again. No one willing to admit that a student, one moreover who blew away every measure of magic and even bore the moniker of magic's founder, couldn't be taught to use those powers to the fullest by the greatest magic teachers in the galaxy in the most magic-rich spot known to human-kind. The overwhelming consensus was that Bale just wasn't applying himself.

Bale had given up arguing with them. He'd gone through marathon casting sessions where he'd been expected to switch from curriculum to curriculum while dodging physical attacks in hopes of waking his greatness, all to the disappointment of his teachers. As he stood there, wheezing, soaked with sweat but alive despite the myriad of attacks aimed at him, they'd shake their heads at his failure though there was no other student or teacher—nor had there ever been with the possible exception of the original Bale himself—who had half the repertoire of abilities, spells, incantations, talents, elemental control, and skills. But, as his mentors had sadly pointed out to him, there was always someone who did the spells of a particular subject better. No school of magic could claim him as their particular star. So, he was a failure.

Another side effect of his unique education was that Bale didn't think anyone had read as many of the wealth of books as he had over the years. Which wasn't a bad thing. He loved reading. He loved learning. He loved books.

But, when he thought, I love books, what he was really thinking was, I love stories! Somewhere in the mists of his unremembered past before he was tumbled onto the steps of this school, he had a sense of sitting raptly as someone told stories of different worlds and creatures and adventure. Where risks were common-place and any day could be your last.

But novels were frowned on in wizard society, considered only suitable for the untrained and untalented masses who could