Puppy Love: Sagecraft I Read online

  Sagecraft:

  PUPPY LOVE

  J.C. HENDEE

  T·N·D·S

  Tales from the world of

  the Noble Dead Saga

  COPYRIGHT

  Barb and J.C. Hendee / NobleDead.org

  Copyright 2013 by Barb and J.C. Hendee.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Design, layout, and cover illustration by J.C. Hendee.

  ASIN: B00DGZ7HAM

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior contractual or written permission of the copyright owner(s) of this work.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, living or deceased, businesses, establishments, events, or locales is entirely incidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Puppy Love

  Other Works

  The Noble Dead Saga

  T·N·D·S

  The Mist-Torn Witches Series

  The Vampire Memories Series

  FOREWORD

  No knowledge of other works set in the world of the Noble Dead Saga is necessary to read and enjoy any story in “T·N·D·S: Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga.” Readers new to this world can step right into it through any of these shorter works.

  Tales are organized into “collections” where all works therein share a theme and/or premise. Most are not sequential and can be read in any order. When one or more link together, subsequent stories mention “sequel to…” on their covers to guide you.

  Tales can be your first adventure into this world or something to tide you over in the wait for the next of our varied novels to be released.

  —Barb & J.C. Hendee

  PUPPY LOVE

  Kyne Erhtenwal, just shy of her thirteenth birthday, didn’t realize she was nodding off again. Dressed in a tan robe and cowl over her old skirt and muslin shirt, she perched on a musty hay bale, utterly unaware of leaning against the person next to her. If not for that support, she would have tumbled off to the dirt floor.

  In this south-side stable, in the king’s city of Calm Seatt, Malourné, Kyne didn’t quite hear the voice that hush other children at the end of another half-day in a makeshift public school.

  “That is all, my students. I will see you again after the post-planting holiday, but first…”

  A boney elbow rammed Kyne’s side.

  “Wake up!” growled that someone she leaned on.

  With a squeaky gasp, Kyne straightened too quickly and almost did topple off the hay bale. She blinked in trying to clear her drowsy eyes as Marten growled at her.

  “That’s the third time… and next time, I’ll let you dirt dive on that freckled nose of yours!”

  Still dazed, she stared as he rolled a shoulder in glaring sidelong at her with his nearer green eye. The wild mop of red-brown hair over his narrow face made him look all the more irritated. He roughly straightened his own tan robe over his daily clothes and, as if to add to his point, jerked down on the cowl rumpled around his neck.

  It was the same type of robe and cowl worn by all “initiates” in the Guild of Sagecraft, including Kyne. Only twelve in the crowded stable wore such.

  Kyne wrinkled her nose at Marten. Adding her own indignant huff, she flipped her dark blond braids back over her tiny shoulders. About to serve Marten a choice retort, she spotted the “teacher” watching her—only her.

  Across the stable before the bay doors left open for light, Emilia Ginjeriè stood poised in her deep sienna robe for the guild’s order of Naturology. At thirty-one years old, she was the youngest—at least in the guild’s Numan branch—to achieve the second highest and esteemed rank of “domin.”

  Serenely happy at most times, Domin Ginjeriè often wore a beautiful soft smile to match her sparkling, almost silvery, hazel eyes. The domin didn’t smile now. In fact, she appeared sadly disappointed with her gaze fixed on Kyne. After a deep breath, Domin Ginjeriè sighed out through her perfect nose and looked away.

  Kyne flushed, swallowed, and cringed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Kyne, in hanging her and hoping not to be noticed again, looked down on her other regular companion.

  Grimmé sat on the stable’s dirt floor with his back against the old hay bale. “What?” he whispered, not looking up at her. “Did you stay up all night again with your face in a book?”

  No, at least not last night, or on any recent night. Kyne had other reasons of late for a lack of sleep.

  With a fixed frown on Grimmé’s chubby-cheeked face, crowned by a mess of unruly dirt brown hair, he rubbed out a few numbers chalked on his slate with a chubby hand. Chalk dust ended up on his robe’s sleeve cuff, a bit of pale white amid other dingier smudges.

  Some initiates called him “Grimy” for obvious reasons.

  Kyne knew his given name meant “insightful” or “spiritually intuitive” in one pre-Numanese dialect, which was so unfortunate for someone like him. She and Marten just called him “Grim”—for other good reasons. As to Kyne’s slate and Marten’s, both lay behind them on the hay bale as blank as when the domin had handed them out.

  With a sigh, Kyne whispered back to Grim, “You know how to account a laborer’s wages… yes? What to put aside for living, savings, and so on, and what is left for discretionary wants.”

  Grim faltered in re-writing his numbers and looked up in a blank stare, though his big brown eyes still appeared small in his round face. Maybe the word “discretionary” confused him. Those eyes quickly narrowed, and his bottom lip pushed up over the top one.

  “Some of us have to practice,” he grumbled, turning back to his numbers. “We’re not like you… you sponge-head! We don’t soak up everything we read like water.”

  “Stop pestering him,” Marten whispered. “That’s all you do anymore, if you say anything. Even your usual yacking would be better than that.”

  Kyne folded her arms in a sulk, moping like she had over the last several moons. Even if she was pestering, at least it kept her mind off… other things. And another day in the stable listening to lessons she had learned long ago didn’t help.

  “Everyone, please,” Domin Ginjeriè called out with a quick triple clap of her hands. “Wipe your slates and return them to the carrying crate along with any leftover chalk.”

  Children of all types and sizes, in their shambles of clothes, clambered off hay bales, out of a stored wagon’s bed and off its bench, and even emerged from empty stalls. Two climbed down from halfway up the ladder to the empty loft. None of these wore initiates robes. The other nine who did, hung back from the clusters jostling toward the domin’s crate amid rising chatter and the clatter of returned slats.

  And Grim was still chalking, wiping, and fussing with his numbers.

  Marten sighed before Kyne could.

  The stable in which they sat, near its left line of empty stalls, was one of many makeshift places where the local guild branch held public schools. All children shy of sixteen with time for a little education—and whose parents could not afford formal tutelage—were welcome to attend.

  That was not why Kyne, Marten, and Grim were here.

  Four days per moon, Kyne and other initiates—usually Grim and Marten as well—attended one or another of these public school sessions. Most times they came to this stable. Well, actually all of those times for Kyne.
That was in addition to seminars, lectures, studies, and so on for all initiates at the guilds own grounds. She might not have minded if these public sessions were less tedious and rudimentary for someone like her.

  In other words, if they were less boring!

  She could remember the meaning and specifics of most everything she read and understood; that helped with anything else, since she understood most everything she could read. She already spoke passably in four languages, aside from being the youngest to ever become competent—more than competent—in the guild’s Begaine Syllabary. That was a marvelous system of complex, compressed, and adaptable glyphs and strokes for recording words in any language or dialect.

  It saved a lot of costly paper, too.

  All initiates were told that these public school sessions were a reminder of daily life and the community they would serve as adults. That is, if they successfully became an apprentice, then a journeyor, and finally a master “sage” in one of the guild’s five orders. But not everyone who became an initiate did so with that intention.

  Some parents simply wanted their children to get the best and broadest education. The guild was the place for that. Should a child fail the initiate’s entrance examination, though not too badly, parents who could paid for entrance. That was how Grim had been accepted in one of few fully paid openings available.

  Other children who did well but not well enough might be accepted on partial fees. That was how Marten had become an initiate. And as to Kyne…

  At ten years old, she had been two years too young for the examination. Just the same, her father had argued relentlessly with the guild’s domins, claiming she was smarter than those who were old enough. That had worked at first. Though she understood anything she could read, anything beyond what was specified in the examination—oral and written—left her baffled. She tested well enough for entrance, but because she was underage, her father had to argue even more to get her accepted on partial fees.

  Kyne had worked so hard after that. She didn’t want her parent’s meager coins to be wasted. In less than her first year, she proved a worthy exception in acceptance, and all of her fees had been waved.

  As to achieving official ranks like “domin”—let alone “premin” and a leader of one order in a guild branch—these were much harder and took many years.

  All of this was unlikely for poor plodding Grim. Marten might pass his first apprentice petition and examination still a couple of years away. That is, if he made a lasting decision as to which order to join and stuck to it. Over the last season, Kyne had this all figured out for herself.

  One day, she would join the order of Cathology, whose sage guardians and caretakers of knowledge itself wore robes of gray. And why?

  More than anything, Kyne now wanted to follow in the footsteps of Journeyor Wynn Hygeorht.

  Of all sages she had come to know in less than three years, Wynn inspired her the most. Not only in being a sage, though that part was a big part of it. But here and now, thought of Wynn and her two companions made Kyne slump into more moping.

  “Hey, Allen,” Marten called out. “What are you doing here?”

  Kyne looked up as Grim finally rose and failed at dusting off the seat of his robe. A lithe and overly tall boy for a mere fourteen years strolled casually toward the trio. He was also dressed far finer than anyone present.

  His dark cyan vestment shimmered like fine silk or satin over his stark-white linen shirt of billowing sleeves. Certainly his family had coin enough that he didn’t need public schooling. But what first caught most people’s eyes were his caramel skin, a narrow and nearly pointed jaw line, and those too large and slightly slanted eyes… with big amber irises.

  No one would mistake “Allen” as a Numan of the northern nations or any kind of human. If they didn’t notice his eyes at first, those delicately pointed ear tips occasionally peeking through wheat-blond hair down to his narrow shoulders would have made this plain to see.

  Alshenísh’ìn was a lhoin’na, or what humans—Numan or otherwise—lazily called an “elf.”

  Kyne knew there were more than one so-called “elven” people in a big world, for she had heard as much from Wynn Hygeorht. Either way, that didn’t carry any weight with Marten; quite the opposite.

  “Thought your parents wanted you to stick to private tutoring,” he went on, “and not lay-about with us commoners.”

  Alshenísh’ìn cast Marten a sharp-eyed glance, but that vanished when his gaze fixed on Kyne. He smiled faintly, maybe coyly. In being taller than Marten—who was taller than Kyne—she had to tilt her head back to look up into his face and those startling amber eyes.

  Kyne’s throat closed up. To say Alshenísh’ìn was beautiful was too obvious.

  “Präv túâgé agh’anamva?” he asked softly in his people’s lilting but guttural tongue.

  Kyne flushed with embarrassment. Marten glanced at her and smirked, obviously catching the question’s meaning or at least a word of it. Kyne understood every word.

  Was your nap refreshing?

  “Talk like a normal person!” Grim grumbled. “Enough with the… Elvish.”

  He snatched up both Kyne and Marten’s blank slats and stomped off to return those with his own. Considering Grim’s mood, Kyne resisted correcting him.

  Languages other than his own common Numanese were something else Grim failed at even more than other initiates. This included what too many called “Elvish” or, just as bad, “Lhoin’nese.” Eahrʼrá Cheanʼá, or “The Spring’s Tongue,” was the dialect of the Lhoin’na.

  Kyne kept to her own tongue, once she regained a little control over it.

  “Wh-what is it… Alshenísh’ìn?” she stuttered, and then fumbled out, “You-you do not need… pub-public coursework. Not for what your parents … what they can pay for private instruction.”

  Alshenísh’ìn’s head tilted slightly, causing his shimmering wheat-blond hair to sway across his smooth cheek.

  “Perhaps I need something more personal,” he crooned in perfect Numanese. “Some things concerning life among your people I will never understand… without assistance.”

  He blinked so slowly at Kyne that she felt suddenly warm and chill all at once.

  Alshenísh’ìn was not the first to come at her for what she knew and how well she did what she did for her age. Other initiates, a few apprentices, and even one journeyor had sought her out in deciphering Begaine symbols in guild copies of obscure texts. She was one of very few initiates with high enough marks to be allowed into the guild’s catacomb archives—always supervised, of course.

  That was what Alshenísh’ìn was after.

  He wanted access to the best texts of the Numan branch, especially originals and others not found in the main library. As to why, Kyne didn’t know, but he certainly didn’t want to bother with becoming an initiate. There was another guild branch among his people, but it was a long way off to the south.

  “Hey, Allen,” Marten chimed in, barely above whisper, “where’s that little sister of yours?”

  That wiped the smile off of Alshenísh’ìn’s face.

  “Wouldn’t mind her showing up for some schooling,” Marten added.

  Alshenísh’ìn shot Marten an even fierier glare, but in turning away, his gaze softened again as it passed one last time over Kyne. Another slow blink came and went below up-swept feathery eyebrows as bright as his hair.

  Kyne swallowed audibly.

  Why Alshenísh’ìn’s family lived in Calm Seatt was a big unanswered question. Some said his mother was a dignitary here from their people. That he knew he was pretty—no, exquisite—to most humans made it worse for the way he used that.

  Alshenísh’ìn followed the other children as Domin Ginjeriè led everyone else out the stable doors.

  Kyne released a shaky breath and whispered, “Thank you.”

  Marten huffed. “Forget it and him and all his charm. He’s just another arrogant… tree-born… bush-baby!”

  Kyne�
��s eyes widened in shock. “Do not use that vulgar term for any lhoin’na, even him.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here… before we’re in more trouble for falling behind.”

  They caught up to Grim, standing with arms folded as he glowered at “Allen” sauntering out the bay doors. Then they were all out the doors, as two other initiates stood waiting to close up the stable. Alshenísh’ìn drifted off to some better part of the city as the rest of the children scattered toward nearer homes.

  Kyne, Marten, and Grim stood politely waiting with nine other initiates as Domin Ginjeriè paused for a friendly word with Master Boulg.

  He was the kindly, very elderly, and very very scruffy stable owner, who many said was a “simple” man. In turn, he said little in gnawing the stem of a Cherry-wood pipe. Though he no longer ran the Hoof House as an actual stable, by the bales of hay left in the place it seemed someone sometimes used it as such. It was a good place for a public school four times per moon. Rents paid by the guild would never have covered all city taxes, yet he had not lost ownership of the place.

  Somehow Master Boulg was well-situated in his old age.

  Other sages said Domin Ginjeriè’s beauty and serene nature had made the place an easy arrangement with old stable master. Kyne didn’t care for gossip, but of course she listened anyway; there might have been something to this.

  Master Boulg smiled, his yellowed teeth exposed through wispy white whiskers. He did that every time Domin Ginjeriè paused for a greeting, which she always did. But the retired stable master then teetered in peeking around the domin. Master Boulg pulled the pipe stem out of his mouth and pointed it up the cobbled street.

  Domin Ginjeriè cocked her head, peering south between weathered buildings and shabby shops.

  “Leirin!” she called out suddenly. “Mind your way, young lady. Keep your sister and brother to the roadside. I do not want to hear of any of you ending up under a wagon’s wheels.”