The Law of Man
5/5
()
About this ebook
A short story of 9.5k words, originally published in Elf Fantastic, edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Larry Segriff
An elderly woman walking the old ways comes to the Faerie circles to die—so that the child she carries, the last of her kin, might live.
With her life as the payment, the Fey take the newborn infant into the court of their Queen, to watch her grow, age, and die—for mortality fascinates those whom age does not change.
But the child is mortal and human, and what a child wants or needs is not what immortals do. The lands are changing; the old ways are dying. The time is coming when the Fey must reckon with the Law of Man.
Read more from Michelle West
The Black Ospreys Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warlord Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Weapon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Echoes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Huntbrother Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Memory of Stone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Choice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFlight Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Turn of the Card Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Law of Man
Related ebooks
When a Child Cries Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFlight Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Shadow of a Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChoice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Memory of Stone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Turn of the Card Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sword and Sorceress 31: Sword and Sorceress, #31 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5February Thaw: And Other Stories of Contemporary Fantasy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shattered City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Banshee Cries: The Walker Papers, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWar of the Marionettes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBanner of Souls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reign of Beasts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSword and Sorceress 30: Sword and Sorceress, #30 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rebel:: The Blades of the Rose Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Splintegrate Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For the Love of God Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jack in the Green Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Born to be Magic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCity of Broken Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gifted Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Four Attempts at a Letter Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaker Space Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Horns of Ruin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Engines of Oblivion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Songspinners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What She Won't Remember Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSacrifice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unseen Demons: An Andrea Cort Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Fantasy For You
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Empire of the Vampire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tress of the Emerald Sea: Secret Projects, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wizard's First Rule Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Galatea: A Short Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Neverwhere: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Sun Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daughter of the Forest: Book One of the Sevenwaters Trilogy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Phantom Tollbooth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Eyes of the Dragon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Golem and the Jinni: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mistborn: Secret History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Empire: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Assassin and the Pirate Lord: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don Quixote: [Complete & Illustrated] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Law of Man
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
The Law of Man - Michelle West
The Law of Man
Michelle Sagara
Rosdan Press
Copyright © 1997, 2003 by Michelle Sagara
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum
Contents
Introduction
The Law of Man
About the Author
Also by Michelle West
Also by Michelle Sagara
Other Short Stories
Introduction
This was one of the few short stories that started life without an anthology or an editor to give it a home—and when I say started, I mean that; I hadn’t finished it. Time to write was still a desperately prized thing, given small child, and I had novel deadlines. I had started it, set it aside, and when I was asked for a story for Elf Fantastic, I brought it out again.
I had meant it to be something other than it ended up being, because I was thinking — at the time — about the coming of new religions into an older world. But stories grow and change; they have an organic sense of life that one denies — or at least that I deny — at some peril to the story itself.
Without a specific editorial request, I really hadn’t considered market, or how to market, or where to send it, either. One of the things that the anthology invitations gave me was a clear home for the stories, a mandate to write them that also didn’t make me feel like garbage because I wasn’t using scant writing time on the novels for which I had contracts.
The Law of Man
It is twilight; the light of day is fading and the night’s fall is imminent. With the passing of the day, many things change; the shadows hide much from eyes that are not meant for the dark. Mortal eyes.
But our eyes see well the nuance and the subtlety.
There are circles beneath my feet, ill-travelled these many years, but there nonetheless for those with eyes to see them. In such circles, we once gathered our mortals, and took with them an evening’s pleasure, be they unwary enough to heed the strains of our music. In such a circle, we will gather again; my kin are waiting my return. But these circles, these circles we will not dance in again while I live.
And I will live, I fear, forever.
It is cool; the coming evening will rim the forest trees in frost, will curl the fallen leaves with a white, hoary edge that will sharpen and make crisp their tiny deaths.
Leaves, like mortals, die so quickly.
And what is death to one of our kind?
In the dawn of our time we gathered our mortals with impunity undreamed of now. Where in the spring and high summer we danced in glades such as these, we walk now in winter, for in winter, there are few indeed of the priests whose travels have almost destroyed these lands.
Ah.