A.J. Hartley - Will Power

WILL POWER

BOOKS BY A. J. HARTLEY

The Mask of Atreus

On the Fifth Day

What Time Devours

Act of Will

Will Power

A. J. HARTLEY

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
New York

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

WILL POWER

Copyright 2010 by A. J. Hartley

All rights reserved.

Edited by Liz Gorinsky

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hartley, A. J. (Andrew James)

Will power / A. J. Hartley.1st ed.

p. cm.

A Tom Doherty Associates Book.

ISBN 978-0-7653-2125-1

1. OutlawsFiction. 2. GoblinsFiction. 3. Space and timeFiction. 4. Adventure and adventurersFiction. I. Title.

PR6108.A787W56 2010

823'.92dc22 2009040643

First Edition: September 2010

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my parents, who, unexpectedly, liked the first one

AJH

Id like to thank my agent, Stacey Glick; my editor, Liz Gorinsky; and my wife (always my first reader), who helped make this book a reality.

Please visit my website, www.ajhartley.net, to pass along comments and see details of other projects, completed or in the works.

Thanks for reading.

A. J. Hartley

WILL POWER

BY
WILLIAM HAWTHORNE

Translated from the Thrusian by

A. J. HARTLEY

It is with some trepidation that I present to the world this second installment of the Hawthorne saga. Like the first volume, Act of Will, it has been translated from the original Thrusianas preserved in the now famous Fossington House paperswith the aid of notes left by the Elizabethan translator Sir Thomas Henby. As readers of the first manuscript will quickly see, the second volume is different in key respects from the first, and raises still more vexing questions of provenance, locale, and issues of how much of the narrativeif anyis derived from fact. My initial assumptionfor reasons that will become apparent as the story unfoldsis that the work is pure fantasy, though other manuscripts from the Fossington House collection have since emerged that seem to root elements of the narrative in fact. The details of those materials will be published in a series of academic papers in forthcoming issues of Philological Quarterly, though I doubt they will hold much interest for the general reader.

Since the history of the manuscript collection is now well known, I will say only that I remain in the debt of Sir Thomas Henby, whose notes from the 1580s and 90s remain the core of my own translation. The tone, however, is the result of my own efforts to maintain some of the precocious energy of the Thrusian original, as I did with Volume One. Due to the rushed nature of the publishing schedule, I write this before beginning even preliminary work on the other pages seemingly penned in the same language, so I am not in a position to say whether there is more of the Hawthorne Saga to come or whether these two self-contained narratives are the entirety of Mr. Hawthornes labors. If more come to light, I will, of course, endeavor to make them available to the public in English so that they may become more than curiosities for ethnographers and linguists.

A. J. Hartley, 2010

Far be it from me to blow my own trumpet, but I was about to become a bit of a legend. We had been lying around Stavis mulling over our triumphs in Shale three weeks ago like a family of pythons that had recently gorged on a rather less fortunate family of gazelles, or whatever the hell pythons eat. Now we were going to see a little excitement. I had, I must say, been quite happy doing the python thing, but sleeping late and producing no more than bodily excretions for a whole month had started to wear a bit thin even for me. The others had, of course, tired of it rather earlier.

Garnet and Renthrette, our straight-from-the-shoulder brother and sister warriors, had been spoiling for a fight with anyone who made eye contact for a couple of weeks now. Even the generally placid, if surly, Mithos, the famed rebel and adventurer who had tormented the Empire for close to twenty years, had recently started pacing the Hides underground library like the proverbial caged cat. Orgos, our overly noble weapon master, had begun polishing his swords again, barely concealing a mood as black as his skin. I saw little of Lisha, our girlish but revered leader, because she was usually busy poring over maps or gathering news on Empire patrols. Yours trulyWill Hawthorne, former dramatist, actor, and con man, current apprentice adventurer, and damn-near-professional gorged pythoncouldnt really see what all the fuss was about. We had solved the riddles of Shale and environs, or most of them, and had come away feeling virtuous, and, more importantly, rich.

With me so far? I hope so, becauseas is now graven in theater lorenothing kills a story like exposition. I once had to be in this play when nothing happened for twenty minutes because all this backstory had to be wheeled out for anything later to make sense. Not surprisingly, we got booed offstage a quarter of an hour in. So Ill be moving on. Thats who we were and what wed been doing. But by this point, even I had become conscious thatif I might milk the python metaphor one last timethe flavor of warm gazelle meat was becoming a rather distant memory.

Thanks to my investigative brilliance, this was about to change, but before we got to the adventure bit there was food to be eaten. We were dining in the Waterman, one of Staviss many traders inns, in the northwestern part of the city. It was eight oclock, and, perhaps for the first time this season, the landlady was lighting a fire in the main halls grate to ward off the chill that came with early autumn. To our left was a party of wool merchants who ate nothing but baked potatoes straight from the oven: no butter, no salt, no herbs. Yet they were munching with an enthusiasm which meant they either came from somewhere that had little or no food of any kind or that they were seriously delusional. To our right was a family of ebony-skinned Trellenians swathed from head to foot in lustrous silk and eating a curry that would strip varnish. At the bar was an elderly man in dignified black, sipping Venarian claret. And on the table in front of us was a large game bird known locally as a rossel, roasted and carved to perfection, surrounded by tiny links of smoked sausage and a moat of thick, hot sauce made from tart red berries, the whole sumptuous display sitting among spinach leaves and wedges of lime, steaming invitingly. Even the wool traders mouths were watering.

Where was I? I said as the serving boy left us. Oh yes. So then Venario is on stage by himself, lying in wait for Carizo and Bianca. His sword is drawn and hes ready to attack Carizo and have his way with Bianca. He has a few smug words with the audience and takes his position behind one of the front pillars. Then, hearing a noise, he leaps out. But its not Carizo. Its the ghost of Benario, rising out of a trapdoor and wailing: See here, O cursed wretch, the gaping wounds/Which thou didst carve into my living flesh...