Blood Falchion: Blood Blade, #1

By J.M. Ney-Grimm

Once protected. Once beloved. Until a blood blade brutalizes his sire...

 

Young Caelan relishes the carefree days and friendships of boyhood despite his palsied limbs. He loves his aunt, the Lady Agace, who mothered him from infancy, and trusts his father, Lord Jekis, ruler of Castle Balazoron and proud to name Caelan as his heir.

 

But when a cursed sword enters his father's possession, eroding Lord Jekis' sanity and prompting him to evil, Caelan's world falls apart.

 

Caelan plots to get the weapon away from his father, hoping that might restore him to reason and kindness. But...what will Caelan do with the blade, if he succeeds? Hide it? Send it elsewhere? Break it somehow?

 

As Lord Jekis' madness escalates, he grows ever more angry, clashing with his sister until a complete breach divides the two.

 

When Lord Jekis decrees a horrific punishment for Lady Agace, Caelan must learn what it really means to leave childhood behind. If he fails, the only mother he's ever known will die.

 

Blood Falchion is the riveting first tale in the Blood Blade fantasy series. If you enjoy high stakes, intensity, and the dark influence a cursed sword exerts over its wielder, you'll love J.M. Ney-Grimm's story of a once-beloved son rising to heroism in the shadow of his father's eclipse.

 

Buy Blood Falchion to wrest trust from betrayal today!

 

 

About the Author

 

J.M. Ney-Grimm lives with her husband and children in Virginia, just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She's learning about zero-carb eating, container gardening, and the discounted benefits of getting vitamin D from exposure to sunlight. The rest of the time she reads Robin McKinley, Diana Wynne Jones, and Lois McMaster Bujold, plays boardgames like Settlers of Catan, rears her twins, and writes stories set in her troll-infested North-lands. Look for her novels and novellas at your favorite bookstore—online or on Main Street.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wild Unicorn Books
• Release date: Jul 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201385729

J.M. Ney-Grimm

J.M. Ney-Grimm lives with her husband and children in Virginia, just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She's learning about permaculture gardening and debunking popular myths about food. The rest of the time she reads Robin McKinley, Diana Wynne Jones, and Lois McMaster Bujold, plays boardgames like Settlers of Catan, rears her twins, and writes stories set in her troll-infested North-lands. Look for her novels and novellas at your favorite bookstore—online or on Main Street.

Book preview

Blood Falchion

~BLOOD BLADE~

TALE ONE

by J.M. Ney-Grimm

Copyright © 2012 J.M. Ney-Grimm

Cover design by James, GoOnWrite.com

Blood Falchion

is also included in the collection titled

Tales of Old Giralliya

Table of Contents

Blood Falchion

Bonus Tidbits

Author Bio

More Titles by J.M. Ney-Grimm

For Miles,

who responded so enthusiastically

to a late revision of this story,

and

who instructed me on the intricacies

of the pommel, grip, and crossguard

which together comprise the whole of a sword hilt

Blood Falchion

The lord’s young heir, Caelan, was the second to see the blade.

It arrived amidst a pile of carpets from far Bethpaarean, and the carpet merchant’s son Sathon discovered it when he unpacked the bale to arrange the carpets in his father’s stall in the bailey.

Caelan sought his friend the instant he received word the carpet merchant was passing through Castellum Balazoron’s gates. It was a hike from his high chambers in the donjon down to its courtyard and out the barbican to the sunny bailey, and Caelan suffered palsied limbs, the result of a fever in his infancy. He could not move fast, but he was just fast enough to see the sword—a falchion—a moment after Sathon uncovered it.

Catching his breath and his balance at the gap in the curtains flanking the stall doorway, Caelan inhaled the exotic perfume lingering on the carpets from the incense so pervasive at their point of origin. He suppressed a sneeze. The aroma conjured visions of wonder, strangeness, and adventure, but it did tickle the nose!

The patterned rugs made glowing banks of color all around the stall. Near the back stood Sathon, still short—like Caelan—but wiry, where Caelan was gangly, and black hair curly, where Caelan’s was straight.

Sathon bent over the carpet mound before him, astonishment and shock evident in the strain of his back muscles through the thin linen of his tunic. Caelan could