Librarynth of the Lost: Never Lore, #2

By Bookerlunds

Whoever described sciamachy as a false fight with one's shadow, lied!

 

While exploring a forbidden labyrinth containing the most powerful magical texts in all Fairy, Princess Gloria of the Gossamer Court confronts an imp with flaming hair who separates her from her dark side-her shadow. Gloria launches in pursuit of her shady-self, who is bent upon assassinating her brother to "correct" the order of succession in Gloria's favor. 

 

Desperate to protect the Gossamer Court from-ahem-herself, Gloria will have to make some risky deals and unlikely alliances. It's a race against time as she strikes out on a journey to assemble a death-cheating list of spell ingredients to create the magic to repossess her dark side. In the process, she'll discover what she's truly made of.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookerlunds
• Release date: Aug 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223870081

Book preview

Beneath the Gossamer Court

Whoever described sciamachy as a false fight with one’s shadow, lied!

While exploring a forbidden labyrinth containing the most powerful magical texts in all Fairy, Princess Gloria of the Gossamer Court confronts an imp with flaming hair who separates her from her dark side—her shadow. She launches in pursuit of her shady-self, who is bent upon assassinating her brother to correct the order of succession in Gloria’s favor.

Desperate to protect the Gossamer Court from—ahem—herself, Gloria will have to make some risky deals and unlikely alliances. It's a race against time as she strikes out on a journey to assemble a death-cheating list of spell ingredients to create the magic powerful enough to repossess her dark side. In the process, she'll discover what she's truly made of.

Princess Gloria of the Gossamer Court

My brother Peter was the first born, though I can hardly call him my elder brother now; he’s such a child. Some blame me for that, and it would be fair. His perpetual childhood is my fault, but not mine alone.

I was the second born, and it was a mistake that I had to fix to ensure a rightful outcome within our family line. I did things—sometimes dark things—necessary to gain something greater for myself. The problem was, something greater did come, and after many years, it still ranges abroad, casting its ashen shadow over the entire kingdom.

Father ate

with us in the breakfast room of the Great White Hall, beneath the noses of our fae ancestors’ portrait paintings, an audience who stared, unblinking, at our fruit with the disdainful expression of those who wouldn’t eat anything even if we did offer them a nibble.

Even Mother had risen from her bed to breakfast downstairs with us. My brother’s poor performance in school worried both parents, and they hovered, more or less literally, around him, trying to urge him to pursue something practical, if not magical. He resisted all of their efforts with a rebellious streak I almost had to respect, it was so stubborn.

"Peter, pay attention. Now tell me, what is the antidote to the Fantasmagoric Itch?"

Peter glanced at the portrait of our great-grandfather Melvin, as though the image might mouth him the answer, or at least give him a good hint—but that old trick worked only twice before my father got wise to it and now Grandpa Melvin turned a peevish glance to the ceiling.

Wormwood and psyllium husks? Peter guessed.

It’s— I started to answer, but Father silenced me with a glance.

Son, you need to apply yourself, or you’ll never be ready for the responsibility coming to you. Do you or don’t you want to be king one day? Now, tell me how to curse a wyvern nest to prevent reproduction.

Peter frowned. Father, we don’t have a really serious problem with wyverns right now.

We had a narrow escape from one in my time, and do you remember the year that happened?

Wasn’t it 1430-something?

Father’s face turned crimson. How old do you think I am?

It was The Year of the Nymph, Peter. 1635, I put in. "Father averted a great famine in all Fairy because of that curse. He earned six laurel branches from each of the Five Kingdoms. Don’t you know anything about the family legacy?"

Peter’s emerald green eyes ignited, but he was helpless to shoot sparks, as I would have done, and we both knew it. You—swords! Noon, on the west lawn!

Done! I was no coward.

Absolutely not! Mother set down her cup so firmly it cracked down the center and her tea spilled out all over the table linen. Gloria, I forbid you to assassinate your brother!

"A duel is not assassination! Mother, why won’t you let him fight? You’re always coming unglued every time Peter gets the least bit dizzy from blood loss. It’s embarrassing."

Peter shook his fist. I’ll beat you this time, Gloria!

I sniffed. Peter could never back down from a fight. He was always tangling with opponents who were way over his head, and losing in fantastical style. I admired his spirit, and one day it might get him somewhere, but at the moment, by fae standards, he was quite hopeless.

Children. To the school room. And Gloria, the west lawn is out of bounds for you. Don’t you even dare!

Fine. Long live the heir!

Peter, defend your dignity by passing the exam today, Father said. That’s all the heroics we’re interested in right now. Gloria, wipe that gleam out of your eye. I know you are proficient in the destructive arts, but impress me by doing something—anything—well controlled. Both of you, finished or not with breakfast, away with you.

In an instant, our plates vanished along with the seats beneath us. Peter hit the floor and jumped to his feet. I didn’t need to. I had wings—not fae wings, but dragon wings, from my father’s side—yet another point of inequality between Peter and myself.

I had wings, but they almost dropped me when I turned around. There, on the threshold, stood Dr. Hoarfrost.

Dr. Hoarfrost presided

over the education of all of the children living within The Great White Hall. Besides Peter and myself, her students included six children from the nobles of my father’s court and one or two of the higher-level staff’s children. Three additional tutors assisted in lectures in Manipulation of Magic, and Advanced Immaterial Multiplication.

Hoarfrost stood up at the front of the school room. She glared hard at me and at Peter. She despised me for learning like a sponge, and Peter for learning like a rock. It was her job to hate us both—else Mother would dismiss her for being too soft. Fae princelings are not to be indulged by their tutors.

Hoarfrost’s wiry gray eyebrow hairs grew straight out from a severe, much-wrinkled brow. She wore nothing but ashes, and spiders with cobwebs and she spoke in a harsh, spirit-crushing voice like the sound of scraping glass. I suspected she faked the voice only to scare us. It worked marvelously. I had nightmares of her.

We formed a line of perfect regularity and marched into the classroom where each of us had a stone cold seat that pinched our bottoms when it got tired of our weight resting on it, or if we grew and gained any weight. It was worst for me, because I was tallest in the class. My seat tired early and pinched hard. It was everything I could do just to keep from yelping aloud during lessons.

At the front of the room, Hoarfrost lit two candles, wicks igniting with a startling crack! to begin the clock for our exam.

We opened our exam booklets and wrote furiously while the wax dripped and the wick burned slowly down into a pool of soft wax. Pages flipped and flew like leaves in storm, pencil leads eroded down to tiny nubs. Some of us stained our exam booklets with sweat, or tears, or both. One second-year got a nose bleed and blotted his essay with blue fae blood.

Not Peter. He didn’t sweat anything. He drew a picture of a sprite and a pixie in hand-to-hand combat on his otherwise blank exam booklet. He couldn’t even manage a good likeness of a sprite.

Soon the candlewick extinguished with another loud crack, making our spines straighten, and our pencils wither into useless noodles. The exam was over, and we handed our booklets forward to the head of each row of desks.

Dr. Hoarfrost collected them with the help of her assistant, which was no more no less than a disembodied, invisible Hand. We watched the exam books hover in the air until the Hand dropped them into a neat pile upon her hardwood desk. Dr. Hoarfrost’s voice cracked as she dismissed us. You may go. But remember this warning: you are forbidden to speak about your exams. Every one of the exams was enchanted, and you’ll be plagued with nightmares if you disclose even one detail.

With Dr. Hoarfrost as our headmistress, we were plagued with nightmares either way, but all of us took the warning seriously, and said nothing of the battles we had just fought between the pages of our exam booklets, though we were desperate to process everything, and thus, they remained our own secret volumes of private terror.

My classmates filed out of the room and off toward to the kitchen, trembling with fatigue and hunger. No one finished tests in Hoarfrost’s classroom feeling anything less than ill, but I caught a glance from Phineas Fisticuffs that told a different story. Phineas wasn’t a member of the Gossamer Court. He was only the chef’s son, but he seemed completely—well, fine.

I’d not cared one way or another for Phineas since we were toddlers, but ever since my Crowning Ceremony, I’d swapped indifference to outright hatred. He’d refused to take a knee with the rest of the Kingdom at my Crowning Ceremony. I’d spied him out of the corner of my eye—stubborn as a weed, on his feet in the stands like a member of the Royal Court. Even now, two years later, he didn’t step aside for me to pass, didn’t even avert his gaze, but met mine with the full force of his low-born fae self.

I glared at him, and would have shouldered past him out of the room, but Hoarfrost muttered something under her breath and in an instant, the invisible Hand pushed me back inside the classroom, and the door flew shut in my face with a slam!

That Hand! It might have broken my nose. Someday I was going to corner it with a bottle of permanent ink! Migraine pink, if possible, so I could always see it coming.

A word, Ms. Gloria, Hoarfrost never used my royal title. Come sit down. The Hand lifted up a chair and set it squarely in front of Hoarfrost’s desk.

I glanced wearily at the open seat, waiting to pinch my already much- chafed bottom. Can’t I stand?

Sit down!

I sighed and gathered my skirt thickly in back and sat opposite her. It was at least five or more minutes before she said anything, and while I waited, I twisted my fingers in my lap because I could almost feel Hoarfrost’s sticky tangle of web on my skin.

Ms. Gloria, you have acquired a certain quantity of knowledge in my classroom over the years. Easy knowledge, I should say. You are a natural student and magic-lectual.

This soft opening felt like a trap and I lowered my eyes and answered with a cautious, Thank you, Dr. Hoarfrost.

A certain quantity of knowledge—but not the kind of knowledge you want most. Listen to me and give yourself a chance, Ms. Gloria. You have potential, but a struggle is before you. How you choose will determine the quality and character of the fae you finally become. Are you listening to me?

Yes, mean—er—yes, ma’am. I was, in fact, mesmerized by an orb spider which had spun a thread from Hoarfrost’s grizzled ear lobe and while dangling from that thread, began swinging with subtle motion like a hypnotic pendulum.

Hoarfrost cleared her throat. You are your own worst enemy, Ms. Gloria—your own worst enemy. There are many voices inside of you. And it’s your job to find out which of them is worth listening to.

The spider’s body gathered momentum with each pendulum swing. What was it doing? It was almost as if—

My chair pinched my bottom hard and I squeaked, Yes, ma’am, all the while staring fixedly at the dangling arachnid, balled into a very leggy orb at the end of the web.

I urge you to reflect. To think about who you are and what you wish to become.

Did Hoarfrost really not notice the orb weaver? And if it did manage to swing from her ear-lobe across the desk toward me, would I be justified in defending myself?

Don’t even think about it, Gloria, Hoarfrost said just as I had raised my hand to strike.

Drop it!

I flinched as the spider released from her earlobe and sailed on its thread across the desktop, narrowly missing my face. An attack!

I swept up an exam book and let it fall with a whack on the desktop, but the spider raced across its surface in a mad dash of spindly legs.

I whacked again, and the sound of Hoarfrost’s livid shrieks filled the empty classroom. The Hand caught me from behind! I struggled against it, but the Hand gripped hard. I turned and kicked out and dropped the weight of my pinned arms down against Hoarfrost’s desk. Right on top of her letter opener. I caught the pointed edge on my free right hand, and the pressure of my weight thrown