BVC Announces The Snows Behind The World by Sylvia Kelso
The Snows Behind The World
Sylvia Kelso
Book Two of Rihannar Chronicles: Second Generation
When everything is not enough …
Thannis is a mage, a daughter and sister of mages, cousin of kings, chatelaine of half a continent.
Thannis is so beautiful half the men she meets fall slave to her.
Thannis is in a cage.
Thannis breaks the bars to seek a dream, a time, a place unexplored, as yet unknown.
The reality will crack her heart, shake her world, and transform her life.
Rihannar Chronicles: Second Generation #2
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Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia. She has worked on a cattle station, in offices, as a waitress, and as a lecturer and academic at James Cook University.
Sylvia mostly writes fantasy and SF set in analogue Australian settings Her most recent fiction publication was the high fantasy novel The Seagull, from Book View Cafe in July 2024.
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Chapter I
It was on a balmy night of early Dry, in the moon-drenched garden of Shemmeringmer, by the marble pool which daylight fills with legions of blue-violet water-flowers, and night with the twinkling shoals of golden ossilys, that men became wearisome to me.
The fact that Nimran, governor of Kemrestan and builder of Shemmeringmer, was attempting to kiss a foot which had been too long in and was too recently out of a riding boot, may have had a bearing on the matter. I do wish to record that, as becomes our family’s allegiance to Math, nothing crude or cruel accompanied Nimran’s dislodgement. Far less did any misuse of Ruanbrarx, the mind Arts: though I did sincerely wish to Command that he spend the rest of the night on his knees, and in the morning, forget why.
I also wish to record that by “men,” I do not mean the entire human race, nor, indeed, the male half of that race, except in relation to myself. In truth, it was not men, but my effect on them, that had become wearisome.
At the time I was thirty, a maiden in my kind’s terms. Whether using the Arts tempers us, or it is something in flesh and bone, an aedr at fifty is in the prime of life. I was also the youngest of three children, viceroy of a few thousand square miles of desert in northern Hethria, and a raving beauty. That is, if you credit a quarter of the songs delirious over my sapphire eyes, gazelle grace, peerless features, more peerless form, and sun-paling, moon-shadowing, man-killing golden hair. Be that as it may, all Hethria, most of the Confederacy westward, and a good part of imperial Assharral to the east, had a tendency to fling itself without the slightest encouragement on any available part of my anatomy.
Until then I had regarded it as an ineradicable if wearying human flaw, a basic part of That-which-is. I had felt no attraction to any of the “Enslaved,” as they called themselves, nor any urge to sink into evil by exploiting or tormenting them. Why, after fifteen years of human importuning, Nimran’s advances should have tipped the balance, there is no saying. But at that moment I found myself thinking, Enough.
Other grains may have lain on the scale. I had just spent a week at the family stronghold with my sister Perrithar, who was swoonfully happy with her new, particularly human and for me too close akin husband, my cousin Prince Ravar of Everran, so an unvaried diet of someone else’s milk and honey may have soured my palate. Second, I was bound for the capital of Assharral, for a reunion in the flesh with my brother Ber’az. It was five years since he abandoned the sea and settled down to play emperors, giving my parents a full-time job to oversmooth his blunders, but so far our separate charges had allowed me only farsight and mindspeech through which to envy his wanderings.
Beside seeing Phaz, I was to give my father a first-hand account of my stewardship in his beloved Hethria, and doubtless spar another round with my mother, with whom I share an enduring love that will not let us share the same house for one peaceful week. Small things in themselves. Yet, as the Velandyrx, the seers say, you must tally the raindrops if you want to explain the flood.
Having been dislodged with all due care and kindness, Nimran enquired, “And whither is the Lady Thannis bound, that she must leave so soon? Back to Hethria? On east to fortunate Everran? Or are we to be graced by a longer space of her presence in Assharral?” And whatever the causes, I found myself answering with bland if secret relish, “None of them, my dear governor. I am bound for Stiriandax. Yes, the unknown north.”
To be candid, the idea had never entered my head. But with Perrithar making Hethria uninhabitable, Ravar barring the Confederacy, Phaz not only squatted in Assharral but having left his tracks eastward over the archipelago, if I lacked the wish or the art to walk on empty southern waters, Stiriandax was the one place left unexplored.
“Ah,” said Nimran, gazing soulfully at my profile, with which, since aedryx can observe the bursting of their bombshells without the naked eye, I had decided to favor him. “How can such beauty be so mercile―ˮ his brains caught up with his clichés. “Stiriand-ax!”
However gratifying his response, it was nothing to the family’s. Before my gray mare cleared the excessively fretted white marble arches of Shemmeringmer’s main gate, I was in serious fear that my father would take preventive action, possibly even use a direct Command. Past the last houses and wattle levées of the Assharran border post and out into the stony red levels of eastern Hethria, I had to bear a running fire of orders, pleas and expostulations from all my overly affectionate kin. Perrithar was in evident tears at having “driven me from my ancestral home,” Phaz growing positively autocratic about “one of my sisters traipsing the wilds alone,” and passing a fusillade of messages from my mother whose content I will omit here.
Defense was more difficult because I could find no parries except, “No, I’m not unhappy. No, no-one’s offended me. I just want to do something by myself.”
It would have been too ignominious, and I knew would lead to merciless teasing, if I admitted that my numerous admirers―known in the family as the Mooncalves―had become too much. In the end I was reduced to the polite announcement, “I’m going for private reasons, I have no intention of explaining. I hereby appoint Perrithar my deputy in northern Hethria, and I intend to use a Ruanbraxe.”
The Mind-shield is a high art, which foils all the aedric Sights, and hence, unless you are in eyeshot, the Commands as well. Phaz himself had used one when he tore off in a childish tantrum to the archipelago, so I considered his outburst this time to be most unreasonable.
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