Praise for Seraphim by Michele Hauf
A rich medieval tapestry woven of fantastic tales of revenge, women warriors, faeries and demon fire. Michele Hauf captures your attention with vivid, powerful, sexy characters. What I wouldnt do for a man like Dominique San Juste!
Award-winning author Lyda Morehouse
From her first word to her last, Hauf weaves a magic spell. Youll root for Seraphim and sigh over Dominique as they risk heaven and hell in this heart-stopping adventure.
Emma Holly, author of Hunting Midnight
This book kicks buttin a lush and lyrical way.
Susan Sizemore, author of the Laws of the Blood series
Michele Hauf has taken the Fallen Angels myth and embellished it with many a dark and inventive twist, and created Seraphim, a riveting story of a young womans quest for revenge and a destiny chosen for her long before her birth. Seraphim is also brimming with intriguing and very strong characters, along with a rich and satisfying blend of medieval history and fantasy. Fine writing only adds more elegance to the story and I look forward to book two of Michele Haufs Changeling series, due out in 2005.
Bookloons
Seraphim is stunning, an utterly gripping, compelling read that plunged me into fantasies of long ago and far away. Michele Hauf is a consummate pro at the top of her game. If this is any indication, LUNA Books is off to an industry-rocking start!
Maggie Shayne, author of Edge of Twilight
Gossamyr
Michele Hauf
For all who Believe
Enchantment is Faerys raison dêtre.
Many moons agoduring a blue moons reigna rift was
cleaved between Faery and the Otherside.
No one-man, beast, or féecan say how or why,
Only, the act decimated a great source of Enchantment.
The curtain between Faery and the Otherside has become transparent;
fée travel back and forth with ease;
mortals, once banned from Faery after one visit, find return less difficult.
It is a challenge to keep that which should not be in Faery out. And vice versa.
Time wends forward, widdershins, and thus.
Such conditions shall remain until a champion
can restore the Enchantment complete.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
PROLOGUE
Faerybetwixt and between
The revenant swooped down from out of nowhere. Wide gaping maws, fanged and stretched to maul, loosed a shrill cry, shaking Gossamyr de Wintershinn from her petrified stance. She stumbled backward and landed atop the blue marble floor of the circular castle tower. Eyes fixed to the danger, Gossamyr groped blindly at her side, slapping the stone, in seek of her fighting staff.
The very flesh had been stripped from her attackers bones. Swathes of tattered muscle clung to the skeleton. Red glowed within the skulls eyes, molten and dripping, as if blood. The pellicle wings, void of lustrous color, were but a ghostly mesh of flight flapping madly between the shoulder bones. It looked like a winged onea féebut it could not possibly be. Never before had she seen the like.
Be this one of the relentless creatures that had been tormenting Faery for a summer of moons?
Tattered wings siphoned the air in foul hisses. The wraithlike thing lunged. A skeletal arm slashed out. Claws cut the airand flesh.
Gossamyr stroked a finger across her cheek; slippery blood flowed from the cut.
Whence came this creature? Twas full sun. She had been tending her own pleasures, looking over the muster of peacocks trampling the wild rose garden below that hugged the inner curtain wall. Why did it attack her?
Shuffling backward, her hand slapped upon somethingher fighting staff.
With a hue and cry to strip the senses, the creature again struck. Gossamyr dived to the right. Gripping the applewood staff and, facing down, she kicked back and up. Her bare toes connected with bone. The creature shrieked as it spun into the crystal-white sky.
Pushing up and landing a ready stance, Gossamyr swung the longstaff to mark her peripherythe applewood sang a battle crythen prepared for a return attack. Keenly, she marked her surroundings for additional threat.
Skeletal arms slashed the air. Bone fingers curled into claws as the creature rushed her. She swung hard, using the force of the staff and counterweighting her body into the defense. The end of her weapon cracked skull. Bits of the creatures head scattered like a harvest gourd cleaved by elf-shot.
Landing the swing, she steadied her bearing. No time to think, only react. Deft twists of her fingers spun the weapon in a hissing figure of eight as she turned to challenge the opponent. Now headless, the creature hung before her, arms spreadyet the wings flapped. Still alive. If bones could harbor life.
Remarkable. Gossamyr stepped back. How to defeat the thing? Can I kill it?
Either that or be killed! came the unbidden answer.
The stiff barbs of a feathered cape stroked her cheek. The shing of an obsidian blade drawn from a hip sheath sliced the air. One slash of the fire-forged sabre sectioned the creature at the waist, dropping the leg bones to the tower floor in a clatter.
Shinn
Stand back! Shinn swung and hacked through the rib cage of the creature. These things dont know how to die!
Frayed wingssevered from the skeletal bodyfuriously beat the air above Shinn, her father. The dauntless fée lifted his blade up under the left wing, cleaving it asunder, and brought the blade down through the right wing. He spun toward Gossamyr and shouted, There!
Pulled from her awestruck stare, Gossamyr jumped as a foot trimmed with muscle shreds stamped her toes. Together, the legs of the creature attacked. Sweeping her staff low, she dashed it across the anklebones, sending them crashing against the marble embrasures. Reduced to dust on impact, the shattered bone glinted as it floated to the tower floor.
What in all of Faery is it? Gossamyr called as she swung and caught a disembodied arm with the tip. Fingers clenched the end of her staff. Shake as she might, the evil fist clung. Shinn?
Residue from the crushed creature glimmered in a mist about Shinn as his sabre obliterated the wings. A revenant! the implacable fée called.
Ill clad for battle, Shinns everyday vestments of flowing arachnagoss tunic and elaborately stitched hosen would not protect him from injury. But he did not waver, instead standing proud and defying the thing with a swing of his sabre. He dived to avoid the other arm as it sailed toward him, fingers fisted.
Let me to it! Gossamyr cried. An audacious smile crooked her mouth. She had trained for this sort of challenge. Opportunity had finally fallen to her. Ive been craving some fight.
She rushed the attacking arm and connected wood to bone in a hollow crack. Yes!
The return swing of her staff proved the attack had not jarred the creepy passenger. Gossamyr slammed the carved applewood upon the tower floor. Finger bones gave loose, but as quickly, scrambled across her toes and gripped her ankle, shaking her off balance. She landed the marble floor with a jaw-loosening dumpf. A skeletal hand scurried up her leg and over her hip moving farther.
Wheezing breaths gasped from her mouth. Dropping her staff, Gossamyr clutched the hand that squeezed about her throat. Probing fingertips threatened to pierce her flesh. She struggled to wrestle the thing off, but it possessed strength immeasurable. It was futile to fight, to kick at the air and pray she connected with some part of an attacker that just wasnt there.
A murky blackness muddied her thoughts. Shinnwhere was he? Needles of numbness loosened her grip on the hand. Her shoulders dropped. She could see nothing, smell not the scent of fresh morning dew and lush rose oil, nor sense the smooth polish of the marble beneath her fingers. An angry peacock mewl echoed Gossamyrs longing to cry out.
As death crept closer one final sound summoned her audacious smile. The shrill of finely honed obsidian cutting through bone.
ONE
High above the lush cypress and laburnum treetops that encircled the curtain wall Gossamyr followed her father through the carved marble loggia. The castle she had lived in all her life nested at the peak of the Spiral forest as if a bloom upon a verdant bouquet. Pendulous yellow flowers hung heavily on the laburnum that grew only at the top of the forest, contrasting marvelously with the castle. The blue marble was deeply veined with streaks of midnight and palest sky; it mimicked both day and night and shimmered with a fée dust of the ages.
The village of Glamoursiège fit like a twist about the marble screw of the Spiral. Blue marble segued to granite and finally to sand at its lowest where it met the grounds in a mire of marsh and reticulated tree roots. For the entirety was laced with the roots of cypress, ash and hornbeam. The Edgevery few places where the trees did not growwas ever to be avoided, at least by the un-winged ones.
I can do this, Shinn! You cannot deny I am the only one able.
Shinn moved swiftly toward the south tower, speaking his impatience with his strides. Many are capable, he called back to Gossamyr.
Capable, yes, Gossamyr had to agree.
Faery worked counter to the Otherside, and a war of almost one hundred mortal years had been keeping the mortals to blood and wrath, while Faery enjoyed fellowship and peace. Tribe Glamoursiège had been formed of trooping warriors before the great Peace, a Peace that had existed since long before Gossamyrs birth.
How long? Time indeterminable, Shinn often answered when Gossamyr would question, for Time was of no concern to the fée.
Though Faery claimed Peace there were still the occasional rises amongst the various tribes. Shinns troops were indeed capable and, with the recent arrival of the revenants, increasingly vigilant.
Gossamyr picked up her pace, as well her confidence. If not for this very challenge, what then has all my training been for? Naught? I am as skilled as any in your troop, male or female.
Child of mine, you know well you have been groomed to sit the Glamoursiège throne, Shinn said over his shoulder. It is not an idle, benevolent woman who can rule in my absence, but one who possesses all the martial skills I have taught you, and the mind for diplomacy, honor and valor.
I will not neglect my duties to Glamoursiège, butI want this, Shinn. It is such an opportunity! She hurried up beside him. Where did he go in such a hurry?
Convince me it wise to send my daughter on such a singular and dangerous quest.
Ah, there, he had not given an unequivocal no. This gave Gossamyr hope.
Your fée warriors will not survive the Red Ladys seductive allure. As youve told me, she seduces Disenchanted fée into her clutches. They have not the fortitude to resist!
Any fée who left Faery for the Otherside risked Disenchantment. Necessary trips to the mortal realm were swift, coached in the knowledge that glamour dissipates quickly and Time could not be trusted. A risky venture for a fée warrior.
A risk chosen by some.
There were those rogue fée, who, seduced by the lure of the mortal, and that intricate city called Paris, chose to remain on the Otherside. To stay meant sure Disenchantment; a condition that saw the fée completely drained of glamour, and often they lost their wings to a shriveling malady attributed to the baneful touch from a mortal. Enchantment gone, they became nothing more than a shell that survived as any mortal. Return to Faery was difficult but not impossible. But never again could the Disenchanted regain Enchantment whole.
Of course, one did not have to be fée to fall under the seductive spell of the Otherside. Gossamyr had lost her mother to the mortal passion ten midsummers earlier. The lure of the unknown was ever beguiling, but Veridienne de Wintershinn had always known the Otherside, for she had been mortal complete.
Shinn stopped abruptly, causing his daughter to collide against his back. Savoring the faintest scent of hyacinth that marked her father, Gossamyr stepped back.
The south tower overlooked a riot of white roses and speckled foxglove in the gardens below. Overhead, the carved marble openwork cast a lattice of shadows across Shinns tightened jaw. His blazon, an iridescent tribal marking, curled down his chin and neck and across his upper chest, and shimmered in the blocked patches of sunlight. Glamoursiège blazons showed on neck and upper extremities; placement varied from tribe to tribe.
For all his stern posture and commanding demeanoreven the recent announcement that his marshal at arms should marry GossamyrShinn would ever occupy a soft place in Gossamyrs heart. All planes and hard slopes his face, only in his eyes could she ever find compassion. And such a find was a rarity to be hoarded. Shinns manner switched from cool to disinterested, and then suddenly to genuine concern with such ease. One moment he was gentle and attentive, the next, the battle commander wore a fierce mien. Gossamyr had not known him to be any other way. Attribute to his trying history, she could only assume. They had both loved and lost. Love being one of those mutable words the fée toyed with in exchange for lust, hunger or envy.
I listened last night to the councils discussion, she said. Shinn required she sit as a silent member at council, for her future demanded she take an active role in Glamoursiège matters. The revenants presence in Faery increases. But I was surprised to learn about the rift. She bent to meet Shinns straying gaze. It has never before been discussed by council. Why did you not tell me of it sooner?
It is just something that isknown. The rift has existed since before your birth.
That long? And all this time you havent once thought to
It has never been in my mind, Gossamyr. Until recently. There are none who can name the reason for the rift cleaved between Faery and the Otherside; only we know it exists. Such a tear in the fabric that separates our worlds allows the revenants to return with ease. I am sure I mentioned it when I explained the revenants to you.