(excerpt from The Elder, the soon-to-be-released second book in The Martuk Series)

The Seer sat motionless behind the ripped and tattered woolen.

I waited.

Her head forced back, she gasped, The Child, the throat swollen and round, the skin cracked and bleeding as it stretched.

The wolves paused, eyes narrow and rumbles in their chests as they backed away.

The Seer cocked its head, listened.

The Child’s head dropped with a crack. She swallowed, licked her lips, her chin lifted, and then her bloody eyes found mine.

She spoke.

“Man from the mountains …” she began, The Seer mouthing the words, “He will come, will gain what you seek, will lose all in an end that never ends.

“Stone stained red … a darkness … a hunger …”

She stopped.

Her mouth suddenly opened in a cry, the power of The Seer ebbing as reality returned, the girl convulsed by sobs as the tears briefly ran.

And then, quiet once more, powerless and trapped in the shadows near the crumbled grey of the ceiling, her tiny, bloodstained body turned.

First her head, the neck rotating with cracks and snaps and pops. And then the slender shoulders, the chest, the arms and torso and waist, the little legs dangling as they followed.

The Seer swayed, the bent and broken body listing to and fro as The Child’s turns quickened, her pretty mouth held slack as the blood ran and the shadows danced and the wolves growled from the dark, their eyes aglow in the firelight.

Faster and faster she spun in the air, faster and faster The Seer swayed, lower and lower the wolves growled. My head spun as sweat stained my brow and bile rose in my throat, the dark now too dark, the rank air stealing my breath.

I closed my eyes, my palm to my forehead, the chill replaced by a sudden heat as I laid low, taken by a sudden illness. An odd sensation of warmth and cold and sickness and fear. The unfamiliar feeling of being trapped. Powerless.

The Child turned, The Seer bobbed behind the tattered woolen, the wolves now howled, and the cool of the ground soothed my cheek as I fell to my knees and then lay flat, my fingers threaded through the soil as I clutched the earth while my head spun and my stomach turned and I fought for breath.

Priest …

Liar …

King …

Yes.

Wounded King …

Yes.

He is coming …