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Cowboys and gunslingers meet wizards in this high fantasy series inspired by the American Wild West. Silas Vendine is a mage and bounty hunter, on the hunt for renegade mages. He’s also a freedom fighter, sworn to protect the non-magical people of the Wildings from ambitious mages both lawless and lawful. Between the desperate renegade mages he hunts, the hatred of the Wildings settlers for wizards like him, and the risk he’s taking in fighting for the ordinary people against his own kind, it’s a dangerous life, and Silas knows it. Still, when he comes to the town of Bitterbush Springs, he finds far more trouble and excitement than he bargained for…
In Bitterbush Springs on the trail of a dangerous rogue mage, Silas meets Lainie Banfrey, a young woman both drawn to and terrified of her own developing magical powers. Though Lainie has been taught all her life to hate and fear wizards, she and Silas team up to stop the renegade who has brought her hometown to the brink of open warfare. The hunt takes them deep beneath forbidden lands held by the hostile A’ayimat people, where only Silas’s skills and Lainie’s untamed, untrained power can save them from the rogue mage and the dark magic he has loosed into the world.
Excerpt:
[Silas Vendine has just arrived in Bitterbush Springs to see a gunfight going on.]
Silas couldn’t make out what the men were saying, but their argument wasn’t what interested him the most at the moment. Taking care to avoid attracting the attention of the angry men, he walked up the street in the direction the burst of magic had come from. On the other side of the street, in front of a shop that advertised saddlery, harnessing, and leather goods, a youth was hunkered down behind a barrel, arms wrapped around his knees.
Silas crossed the street and approached the barrel. When he got close enough, he realized that what he had taken for a young teenage boy was actually a small, slender young woman wearing men’s clothing – brown canvas pants, a green plaid shirt, boots, and a straw hat with a curved brim like those favored by cowhands. A long braid of light reddish-brown hair trailed down her back from under the hat. When Silas first came to the Wildings, it had taken him a while to get used to the sight of women wearing men’s clothes. In Granadaia, not even the lowliest Plain peasant woman would be caught dead in pants and a man’s shirt, but in the Wildings, practicality ruled all. There was men’s work and there was women’s work, but mostly there was just work that needed to be done by whoever was ready, willing, and able to do it, and for a lot of that work, skirts would only get in the way.
The young woman had her face buried against her knees and she was shaking badly. Silas said, “I think they’re done for the day.” With a startled movement, she raised her head and looked up at him out of wide hazel eyes, set in a delicate face with a dusting of freckles across her nose. He guessed she was maybe nineteen or twenty. “You okay?” he asked.
Slowly, she took a deep breath and seemed to relax. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m okay. I just hate it when they start shooting like that.”
“Does this happen often?”
“About once a nineday or more, lately. My brother got caught in it a few months ago. Shot dead, right through the heart. He was just minding his own business when the damned fools come out an’ start shooting.”
“I’m sorry,” Silas said, though the words seemed completely inadequate. The Wildings was dangerous country; in a lot of places, every man was a law unto himself. But in a reasonably well-established town, it was unusual to have full-blown shootouts erupting every nineday. “What about the sheriff?” He jerked his head in the direction of the man with the silver badge, who was still standing silently by the arguing men.
“Huh. He just says ‘Yes, Mr. Carden’ and ‘No, Mr. Carden’ and ‘Whatever you say, Mr. Carden.’ It’s Carden running this town and his miners causing all the trouble. Damned sheriff’s no use at all.”
Interesting. It sounded like the typical sort of trouble that might be stirred up by a rogue mage. Was a rogue trying to interfere with Carden’s mining operation? Silas generally didn’t expect to find renegade mages doing honest work; they were more likely to be robbing banks, selling fake medicines, cheating respectable widows out of their inheritances and their virtue, or stealing some honest man’s business out from under him, all with the illicit aid of magic. Silas let down the shield on his power just a bit and did a quick, discreet scan with his mage senses, but found no signs of any power in the area except for the girl’s. Then he did a more careful survey, looking for the subtle signs of shielded power, the nearly invisible seams and slight flaws in the camouflage, and still found nothing.
Well, there were plenty of non-magical troublemakers in the Wildings, too. “You need any help?” he asked the girl.
“No, thanks.” She got to her feet, brushing dust off her pants. She also wore a gunbelt with a holstered revolver that was small enough to fit her hand. Silas was sure she knew how to use the gun, but couldn’t blame her for not wanting to get involved in the shootout. “I better get on with my errands before they start shooting again,” she said. She turned to look at the group of arguing men in the street. “Hey, Gobby!” she shouted. The bearded man looked over at her. “The same thing from my Pa! He ever catches you on his land again, he’ll shoot you so full of holes you can piss from ten places at once!”
The dark, bushy beard broke into a leering smile. “Miss Lainie, you tell your Pa for me that this land ain’t owned by no one an’ I’ll drill wherever, whenever, an’ –” he leered more broadly “– whoever I want.”
Miss Lainie responded with a rude gesture. Gobby went red above his beard, and the men from the Bootjack laughed. One corner of Silas’s mouth quirked up. She had spirit; he liked that. He offered an arm to the young woman. “I’d be happy to escort you while you do your business, in case there’s any more trouble.”
She eyed him head to toe, her gaze lingering on the large revolver holstered at his left hip. Though firearms were considered anti-magical and therefore forbidden in Granadaia, no mage hunter would last a nineday in the Wildings without one. Silas had specially modified this piece himself; mundane bullets alone couldn’t be depended on to take down a highly skilled mage. “My Pa don’t like me going around with strange men,” she said.
“Well, then. I’m Silas Vendine.” He added the usual name-slip charm as he spoke his name, to make it harder to remember, though it didn’t always work very well with other mages. Then he grinned at her. “I may be strange, but at least now you know my name.”
To celebrate the upcoming release of City of Mages (Daughter of the Wildings, book 5), Beneath the Canyons is only 99 cents October 16-26 at the following retailers:
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About the Author:
Beginning with the Prydain books by Lloyd Alexander and the Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. Leguin, Kyra Halland has always loved fantasy. She has also always loved a good love story. In 1990, as a new stay-at-home mom with a young baby, she finally decided to combine those two loves – like chocolate and peanut butter! – by writing the kinds of romantic fantasy novels she wanted to read.
Complicated, honorable heroes; heroines who are strong, smart, and all woman; magic, romance, and adventure; and excursions into the dark corners of life and human nature mixed with a dash of offbeat humor – all of these make up Kyra Halland’s worlds. She is excited to welcome readers to her worlds and hopes they will enjoy her stories and characters as much as she does.
Kyra Halland lives in southern Arizona. She has a very patient husband, two less-patient cats, two young adult sons, a lovely daughter-in-law, and the world’s most adorable granddaughter. Besides writing, she enjoys scrapbooking and anime, and she wants to be a crazy cat lady when she grows up.
Stay tuned tomorrow for Kyra’s interview with me! In the meantime, if you’d like to contact her or learn more about her works, visit these links!
https://www.facebook.com/KyraHalland
https://plus.google.com/+KyraHalland
Appreciate you sharing. My pappy used to say “The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering” 🙂