Duane Simolke blends humor and romance with exciting fantasy action.Visit Theln, a planet of magic, dragons, nobility, and heroes. Sasha Varov was born into a noble home in the Thelni kingdom of Jaan, but Sasha's father dared to oppose the king's sorcerer, Wuhrlock. Sasha and her family became exiles on a desolate island. At sixteen, Sasha left her island home to buy seeds in Jaan. She stumbled into a series of misadventures that ended with the death of Wuhrlock and made Sasha a legend, known as "Innocence." Never mind that the legend barely resembled the truth, or that Sasha caught Wuhrlock in an unguarded moment.
When Sasha returned for more seeds, the people of Jaan expected her to defeat a much more ruthless and powerful sorcerer. Duane Simolke wrote the short story "The Return of Innocence" in 1983. With contributions by Toni Davis, he later developed it into a novel.
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Excerpt:
The relentless wind whipped the sails as the shroud of darkness that sometimes entombed them began to return. Darkness had descended and slowly disappeared in the same fashion, and at the same time, on each of their previous three days at sea, always around noon. As she gazed at the warship anchored beside theirs, Sasha absently toyed with one of the long, meticulously plaited braids of deep chestnut-colored hair that usually flowed down her back. She often pulled a braid over her shoulder when lost in thought.
Her attention became riveted on the massive claw marks on the ship’s hull. Deep gouges ran at some points from stem to stern, indicating that the ship and her undoubtedly unlucky crew had come across a dragon or sea serpent. By the looks of the nearly shredded topsail and hole-riddled mainsail, the crew barely survived; the tales they shared quickly spread unease among the men who rode with Sasha toward the kingdom of Jaan.
Usually, she didn’t pay much attention to the random vessels that came and went during her journey away from the islands. However, her curiosity rose after she heard some of the sailors talking about it with hushed voices in the galley during breakfast. Now she idly fingered the ornate dirk that was belted at her side along with the scarred broadsword that her father presented to her after she managed to best one of Jaan’s better, younger apprentice swordsmen in a practice session at her father’s small, makeshift soldiers-at-arms school.
Dressed in stout brown leather breeches, cropped black leather traveling boots, a tight-fitting cloth vest, and a short traveling cloak to ward off the sudden, chill sea breezes, Sasha decided she looked rather boyish this morning. Normally, she would prefer the free-flowing clothing she wore on her family’s homestead. However, this mode of dress allowed her more freedom for defending herself, if needed.
Her eyes narrowed as she surveyed the ailing vessel more carefully, and as the sky grew darker. Thoughts of what awaited her in Jaan flitted through her mind. Only yesterday, she had reached seventeen, but she had already experienced more adventure than most noble-born women could ever hope to see. Not that she had wanted any more high drama or swashbuckling mayhem. Truthfully, she really just wanted the peace and contentment that her family once knew in Jaan, the kingdom of her birth. Sasha sighed as a pang of loneliness and not a little bit of resentment at her circumstances stabbed at her insides. She shook her head, as if to dispel the cobwebs of longing that clung to her mind, and her braids fell back into place.
She looked up from her musings at the sound of the light, rolling gait that marks a man who has spent most of his life at sea. She smiled slyly as the young captain approached her and bowed. He was fairly good looking, with light tan-colored skin and almond-shaped, brown eyes that looked rather worldly for his apparent age. He smiled back at her, briefly revealing a perfect set of almost impossibly white teeth. His face was thankfully bereft of the coarse, bristly hair that attached to the faces of the other sailors like an affliction.
Now he’d be an interesting candidate for a spouse, if I were looking for one, thought Sasha, though she’d never heard of a Westerner marrying an Easterner. But she then told herself it must violate one of the cosmic laws, like the one that magic users can’t occupy the same territory as each other, or the one that no one should ever eat meat in a horse’s presence. She asked herself, Who could keep up with all those rules, and what bothersome idiot made them all up in the first place?
“Falon Shin, Captain Ferik,” she said, greeting him in the local Kael dialect. She knew very little Old Thelni, but people of all dialects knew the basic greetings and courtesies from the ancient tongue. Though they all shared the same written version of Thelni, their dialects often made it difficult for them to understand each other. Still, starting with Old Thelni, in a person’s dialect, showed respect for that person’s heritage, and a noble-born like Sasha paid attention to such matters. “Are you feeling as restless as everyone else?” She gestured about herself in reference to the swift yet silent motion of people going about their tasks around her.
Captain Ferik raised an eyebrow in silent observation. “Perhaps it would be better if you were below decks,” he said. “It’s getting too dark to see, and we don’t know what attacked that ship.” His eyes scanned the horizon and the ship sailing away from them.
Sasha chuckled lightly. “Are you worried about me? How touching! However, there’s nothing out here but them.” She pointed to the battle-scarred ship that disappeared into the approaching darkness.
“There’s more than wind at work here,” the captain remarked. “One eclipse is a bad omen, but four within a month can only mean one thing…sorcery.”
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