One False Step: And Other Stories of Myrcia

By J.S. Mawdsley

Sorcerers, kings, and generals in the moments that changed their lives before their lives changed the world.

Prequel stories to The Queen's Tower.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.S. Mawdsley
• Release date: Mar 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393928867

J.S. Mawdsley

We’re a husband and wife novel writing team and have been since about a month after our marriage in 2007. He’s a teacher of education law. She’s a Librarian. Being able to write together so happily once made a friend remark that we are as mythical as unicorns. J.S. Mawdsley live in Ohio, where they share their house with half a dozen dying houseplants, and their yard with a neighborhood cat named Eugene, a mother deer and her fawn, affectionately known as the Countess and Cherubino, and a couple of blue jays, Henry and Eleanor. 

Book preview

Introduction

This collection is something that is more than a decade’s worth of work as equally as it is the jottings of the past few months. We began writing fiction in the Myrcia ‘verse back in 2007, and the first draft of The Queen’s Tower in 2014. But it was only last fall that we were inspired to begin writing short fiction to accompany our novels, and that is when these stories were born.

To read and appreciate the four short stories that follow, you do not have to have read The Queen’s Tower or anything else we have written. We simply hope you enjoy these stories, the last of which, Into Temptation, is being published for the first time. If they inspire you to check out The Queen’s Tower or its upcoming sequel, For Her Own Good, that would be lovely, but read these with the knowledge that they are each a treat unto themselves.

J.S. Mawdsley, March 2020

PS We also hope you enjoy the world’s first ever look at a floorplan for the Bocburg, the central setting for The Queen’s Tower.

One False Step

182 M.E.

The library was Daryna’s favorite place to spend a winter afternoon. Snow had started to cover the glass roof of the central atrium, casting dim shadows over the wide, jutting balconies and the catalog room far below. With the high ceilings and the cavernous vaults over the stacks, the library should have been frigid. But even on the coldest days, the air stayed warm and dry.

This had nothing to do with the big red flames roaring in the four open hearths around the reading room. Those weren’t real fires, after all. Just illusions. Instead, the temperature of the library was kept steady by hundreds upon hundreds of tiny spells—around the doors, on the endcaps of the shelves, on the leading of the glass ceiling. Even on the floorboards underneath that creaked and groaned as Daryna pushed the big iron book cart over them. The spells had been exquisitely balanced over the centuries. Terminating even the smallest of them could lead to a crashing, tumbling cascade of failures, until the whole library lay buried in blocks of ice or crackled to bits of dry tinder.

Don’t touch anything. Don’t cast any spells. Don’t use any magy at all. That’s what Earnwine had told Daryna on her first day working there.

He trusted her a bit more now, after forty years, though her training wasn’t nearly complete. On this particular frigid day, she was up on the third floor of the stacks, rearranging the theology texts according to Earnwine’s latest cataloging system. He came up with a new one every century or so, apparently, just to keep from getting bored.

Far below, she heard the front door bang open, and a hearty voice cry out, Earnwine! How are you, my dear fellow?

She knew that voice! She ran to the railing of the nearest balcony and looked down. Sure enough, it was Faustinus. Her Faustinus! Her Servius, in fact, because she was one of the few people who used his given name. She hadn’t known he was coming to Diernemynster. What a treat!

She whispered a transport spell under her breath, and after a moment of stretching, twisting discomfort, she was standing on the main floor of the reading room, right at his side. He feigned surprise, even though he must have known she worked there, and he would surely have felt her spell. She had only one quick moment to squeeze his hand in greeting, and then Earnwine joined them, arriving the conventional way in long strides from the reference desk.

Ah, Faustinus! Delighted to see you, said the Librarian. Faustinus was a divisive figure among hillichmagnars, but Earnwine stood decidedly in the camp of those who admired him. Didn’t know you were visiting. Did you just get in?

Yes, just this moment. Faustinus swept off his black, snow-covered cloak by way of proof. Underneath, he was sheltering a small package of wax paper in a pocket of his slim-fitting black leather tunic. He held it out—first to Earnwine, but then to Daryna, instead. I heard you were working with the theology section, and I happened to find this in an old bookshop in Presidium.

Earnwine raised