Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.
For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.
Overview
When Allaigna was seven she almost sang her baby brother to sleep — forever. She may be heir to neither her mother’s titles nor her secrets, but she has inherited her grandmother’s dangerous talent for singing music into magic. As her education proceeds from nursery to weapons ground to the rank of royal page, it becomes increasingly hard to keep her heritage and abilities hidden.
Secrets, it seems, are stock-in-trade for her family, and as Allaigna works to keep her own, she uncovers two that will affect both her life and the unstable peace of the Ilmar nations. One is the fate of her grandmother, who married a prince, turning the gift of the Sight into a double-edged weapon of state. The other is the truth behind her mother’s two-week disappearance following an ambush by outlaws en route to her wedding.
As she discovers who she is, Allaigna must decide what to become: the skilled courtier her mother wants her to be, the political chess piece her father bargained on, or the hero her grandmother foresaw.
Allaigna’s Song: Overture is a love story, a family saga, and a coming-of-age novel that braids together the stories of daughter, mother, and grandmother into a rich and deftly woven narrative.
Readers are saying
“Beautiful writing and gripping storytelling throughout.”
“Allaigna, Lauresa, and Irdaign are tough, flawed, and appealing heroines.”
“Great tension, big world, perfect pacing, intriguing politics and lovely magic.”
“Magically unputdownable!”
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781988865003 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pulp Literature Press |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2017 |
| Series: | Allaigna's Song , #1 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | NOOK Book |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Verse 1 Brothers, Sisters, and Lullabies
If you walk down the grand staircase of Castle Osthegn, you will see a family portrait. It is placed across the landing from the wide steps so that your eye is drawn helplessly into the picture as you descend. Such is the skill of the Leisanmira painter that you are almost convinced the little girl on the right will jump out of the frame and take off pell-mell into the courtyard. And you can tell that is what she wanted to be doing when the image was painted.
The little girl was me.
There are other, more formal, paintings of my family members, individual and grouped, spread throughout the fortress. But the one at the bottom of the stairs is the only one that tells me a story. In this painting I am shown in my favourite red tunic of soft flannel — the one my nurse turned into handkerchiefs when I grew too large for it — and loose-fitting trousers rolled to the calf above grubby bare feet. My mother's arm is around me, her fingers creasing the cloth beneath my arm. It is a half-hearted grip, as if holding me still takes more effort than she can afford. Her eyes are tired and her skin pale. Wisps of curly blonde hair escape a hastily pinned coif, and the bodice of her dress is askew, barely containing blue-veined and swollen breasts.
The head of the family, Lord Osthegn, Allenis Andreg, Duke of Teillai and Warden of the Clearwater Plains, stands behind and to her right. A possessive arm rests on her shoulders; the other is proudly akimbo. He beams with joy, and this is the only portrait that paints him so. In truth, it is the happiest my three-and-a-half-year-old self ever saw him. The subject of his joy rests in Mother's right arm, its bawling ruddy face showing a remarkable resemblance to the Duke already. I don't know why the artist didn't portray the baby content at the breast or with an idiosyncratic smile as most painters would, but I'm glad he didn't. This is how I remember my brother Allenry when he arrived to interrupt my life, and I appreciate the painting's candour.
I recall that day, or one of those days. After sitting for the painter, I ran outside into the bustling lower court, where chickens scratched in the warm sun of late spring, men-at-arms practised sword drills, and my nurse Angeley tended the herb garden. I didn't want to talk to her right then, so I slipped between the tight-packed limbs of the hedge maze, following my own small, secret trails to the centre. I sat down in the yellowish gravel and buried my feet in sun-warmed chippings. I had a tight, lumpy feeling in my chest and warmth behind my eyes, but I didn't want to cry. I was not going to cry over him.
There were footsteps on the gravel, trying not to be heard.
"Go away!" I threw a handful of pebbles at the place I knew she'd appear. "Leave me alone!"
My nurse bent down and examined the stones that had tumbled on the mossy verge of the path. She turned her head to look at me, her face crinkling into laugh lines.
"It's the Huntress, Allaigna." She held out a sun-browned hand to me. "Come and look."
Curiosity overcame my resistance, as she knew it would, and I crawled over to see. Her fingers picked out the constellation of stones.
"Here is her head, and shoulder. This grey-blue one is the tip of her sword and here" — she delineated an arc of pebbles — "is her bow."
With a child's obstinacy I replied, "She doesn't have any feet."
"Too true, Allaigna. Where do you think they are?"
I shrugged. "Over there?" I pointed to where I'd gathered the fistful of rocks.
Angeley nodded, her eyes clouding over as they did when she was deep in thought. I followed her gaze, wondering what she could see past the impenetrable green of the hedge.
"Mmm. I think you're right, dear. Now tell me: what's the matter?"
The storm came back over me and I hunched into myself. Angeley waited, her hand resting on my back. Even today, I can sometimes feel that warmth between my shoulder blades when I need resolve.
"I hate him," I mumbled into my knees.
"Allenry."
The lumpy feeling returned, and despite my best efforts, my eyes started watering.
"He ruined it!"
The tears began in earnest and Angeley lifted me into her arms, humming softly.
"I know, I know," she murmured. "He's taken over your Mama ... for the time being. That's what babies do, you know. Mama and Allenry need each other now. But you have me."
I wasn't mollified. "But you'll be his nurse, too!"
She shook her head. "No, darling. I came to this house to help birth and raise you. Your mama and papa will have to find someone else to help with Allenry and their other children."
Now I was appalled. "Other children?"
She laughed. "There will be more siblings for you, Allaigna. You may get that little sister after all. You might even grow to like Allenry."
I frowned, emphatic. "Uh-uh."
She kissed me on the head, silencing the protest. "Never say never, dear one. Whatever you may think of him, he's of your blood, and you will need each other one day."
Angeley was right. I did like Allenry on and off, as siblings do, and we even became allies when our sister Lauriana usurped Mama's body and attention once more. Not to say there wasn't fierce competition between us. He grew quickly, and it was clear he would have the bull-like physique of our father. By the time I was ten, and he six, he had the height and more than breadth of me, though I outstripped him for a while once more in adolescence. But I am getting ahead of myself.
During Allenry's infanthood I grew farther away from my mother and closer to my nurse. She was of the Leisanmira race, and she gave me much of her knowledge of plants and animals, healing, and midwifery. But what I loved most was her singing. All my early life I could hear Angeley singing. No matter what she was doing — gardening, sewing, reading — there was a tune percolating from her throat. It was Angeley who sang my siblings and me to bed every night. Her lullabies were devastating in their effect, and it seemed at first I was never able to hear the end of one before my eyes fell shut and locked me in sleep.
Eventually though, whether it was because I was older or simply more stubborn than my brother and sisters, I learned to keep myself awake to the end of the song. This allowed me to leave my bed once the lanterns were extinguished, and perch on the window seat, reading by moonlight. It also let me learn her songs to the end.
On a morning not long after my seventh birthday, I gained my first inkling of what those songs could do. I was in the grange loft, playing with a litter of kittens whose half-wild mother I had wooed for many weeks. I held a black bundle of fur in my arms and hummed a lullaby as it purred and nestled in. From behind me, I heard clumsy fumbling on the loft ladder.
It was Allenry. I could tell by his noisy breath and careless movements. He wasn't allowed into the hayloft, being too young to climb safely, but that didn't stop him.
Irritated, I wished him away, and kept my back turned. I did not want him here, interrupting my time with the kitten. With ever-louder huffing and thumping, he pulled his tiny body up through the hole in the loft floor. I sang louder, ignoring him, drowning out his presence. Gradually his stuffy-nosed breathing slowed and deepened. I could hear him yawn. I reached the final chorus of my song and at last turned a glaring eye on him. He stood, eyes closed, stubby toddler body swaying with sleep.
I watched in fascinated horror as he collapsed backward and fell down the trapdoor.
The next few moments were a frantic blur, and I have no idea whether I climbed or jumped down after him. He lay wailing, his face no more than a wrinkled red apple with a giant hole in its middle. I clapped a hand over his mouth, terrified someone would hear, and wrestled with the decisions every child makes at the scene of a sibling accident: whether to stay and console, run for help, or hide and pretend not to have seen what happened.
The decision was made as Allenry's nurse came running in, our two-year-old sister slung across her hip.
"What have ye done? Wicked girl!" She dumped Lauriana on the barn floor and rushed to Allenry.
Instead of answering, I ran.
Angeley found me, hours later, hidden beneath the cloth drapery that covered the table harpsichord. My tears had dried some time ago, and I was debating whether it was safe to sneak to the kitchens for some food. Angeley's head poked beneath the woven cloth.
"Are you ready to be found yet?"
I wiped my face with a dusty sleeve, no doubt making both even dirtier. "It wasn't my fault."
Her eyes were piercing, but not unsympathetic. "Come out from there and tell me about it."
We sat side by side on the harpsichord bench, my short legs swinging in time to my nervous heartbeats. I explained how Allenry had climbed into the forbidden loft — glossing over how long I'd known he was there — and tumbled backwards down the hole. The explanation seemed plausible, and was truthful as far as it went.
Angeley, as always, sensed the unsaid. "Why do you think he fell?"
I shrugged.
"Was he clumsy?"
I looked up, hopeful at the convenient excuse, but Angeley continued.
"Did something bump him?"
I frowned, knowing that explanation, aside from being untrue, could lead me into more trouble.
"No." I finally pushed the words out. "He ... fell asleep."
Angeley looked thoughtful. "And what were you doing?"
"Holding a kitten."
"And ...?"
"Singing."
"Singing what?"
I hesitated, then blushed, the extent of my guilt sinking in. "A lullaby."
"Again." Angeley's usually soft voice was sharpened with weariness.
"Do, fa, so, fa, do ... do, fa, so, fa, do fa so fa do do do dodo —" I broke off giggling.
"Enough! You have a marvellously instinctive voice, Allaigna, but you lack discipline."
I winced and reached for my cup of water.
Angeley continued, sighing. "It's not enough to sing from memory and play with your voice. You must know each note: its resonance, its flavour, its relationship to other notes —"
I interrupted with another giggle. "Which one's the annoying brother?"
As soon as the words were out, I wished them back. The vague tint of blame I felt sure had settled on me after Allenry's fall had not yet faded. Fortunately, of the adults in my life, Angeley was the least likely to chastise me. Her eyes narrowed and she continued as if the interruption hadn't happened.
"How can you expect to harness a sound's power if you release it willy-nilly into the aether without thought or guidance?"
I stayed quiet this time.
She sighed. "I push you so hard, my dear, because you have such potential."
I saw the opportunity for a change of topic. "What do you mean? Why do I have any more ... potential" — I disliked this new word, and the uncomfortable feeling of obligation that came with it — "than Allenry, or Lauriana?"
"Not more, dear. Different. Why does the oak grow taller than the ash? Why does the courser run faster than the carthorse, and why does the carthorse pull a heavier load? It's what makes you you."
Even at the age of seven, I knew there was more difference between a draught horse and a racehorse than between Allenry and me, but I let that point lie.
"Father can't sing. And Mama hardly ever does. So it's not in my blood."
"There's more to a person's blood than shows in either parent, Allaigna. And besides, your mother has the same potential. She's simply never developed it."
"Why?"
"Lost opportunity." Angeley paused, distracted for a moment. "Now: again." She rapped the harpsichord, beating out the rhythm. "One, four, five, four, one ... one, four, five, four, one ..." I began to repeat the pattern when, abruptly, she stopped me.
"Enough," she said, closing the harpsichord. "Your sisters will be born soon."
She bustled out of the room in a flurry of colourful skirts before I could ask her how she knew, and what in the world she meant by the extra s in sisters.
Irdaign's Chorus
The Second Sight, or simply the Sight as we know it, is both the gift and the curse of the Leisanmira. It shows itself sporadically, if at all, in our youth, and then, as we age possesses some of us with increasing frequency, till we live our final years in other times and places. Barely an hour passes of late when my inner eye does not drift to other scenes.
When I was six, I first saw my future in a dream. It was only once that future became past that I recognized myself as the woman I had seen. Now memory and vision have intermingled, and I can no longer tell which is which. The truth, I suppose, lies somewhere in between. This is what I saw:
I sit on a short three-legged stool, which in turn sits upon a low trestle table. It raises me above the shoulders of the heavy-drinking crowd, yet keeps me below the haze of smoke blanketing the rafters. My legs are curled beneath a saffron overskirt, cradling the lap-harp I play with casual strokes as I test the room's acoustics. My face is obscured by a heavy curtain of hair curling down toward the harp strings.
The strumming grows louder, and those nearest the improvised stage begin to quell their talk and take notice. I shift my foot, stirring the underskirts, releasing a burst of fragrance from the body oils I wear. Still more turn their heads. A note grows from my throat, reverberating with the strings. Not lifting my head, I start to sing.
The song begins quietly, in a minor key: a mournful, keening ballad that plucks at the heart and quivers in the marrow. It is one I wrote, and yet did not write. I heard it in a dream when I was six years old. As the notes tumble out of my throat, I still do not realize this is the night for which it was written.
On other nights, in other crowds, I might start with a rousing drinking song or well-known bawdy tune, loud and brash to jolt the crowd and sweep them along. But tonight requires a subtler touch. The music needs to wend slowly through their bodies before they know it is there. On other nights, others of my clan might place themselves among the crowd and use the distraction of my singing to lighten the pockets of unwary revellers, or else ease from them such secrets as can turn more gold than can the linings of their purses.
Tonight there will be no such game. This hall is not filled with drunken merchants and loudmouthed wags, but with knights of the realm. Some of Brandishear's finest warriors drink at these tables, fresh from the borders, nursing their wounds, retelling their triumphs, mourning their dead. It would be beneath the honour of the Leisanmira to rob those who daily trade their safety for ours.
I reach a caesura and change key. A glance through my hair reveals all eyes are now on me. In the pause, not a glass clinks nor voice murmurs. The next song is sweeter, lighter, recalling spring meadows, childhood days, first loves. I follow with a snippet of Brandis. No singer in Brandishear can escape performing at least part of the saga in these days, but I choose a joyful part, when his hall is filled with laughter and children. These soldiers do not need to hear of battles; they need to escape them.
Now come the obligatory drinking songs. I keep them short and restrained, using a clean, high voice that carries over those joining in, retaining my hold on the room. I give the audience enough rein to participate, but will not allow the atmosphere to devolve to carousing until I am done.
Finally, after another ballad and a short love song, I reprise my original composition. This time I switch to the major key sooner, and let my voice swell, stretching the walls of the room, thrumming with power in my ribs, my jaw, my skull. At the climax, I turn and look across the crowd for the first time.
There in the front row I see him: sandy brown hair, wisp of a beard, shoulders not quite broadened to their full width, grey-blue eyes still brimming with youthful vigour, honour, and ideals. It is now, in this moment, I remember the man I have waited since childhood to meet.
My voice nearly falters, but I hold the sailing note, then drop back to the minor key in a whisper that carries through the hall yet stops at the face before me. I sing one last bittersweet refrain of longing and desire.
Hair falls back over my face. There is a moment of silence, held breath, reverie. I take my curtsy to roaring applause and accept the hand that helps me down from the table. I know with certainty I have given the performance of my life.
CHAPTER 2Verse 2 A Stranger in the Garden
For this birth, I was present.
After waiting in the music room for an hour or so, I crept to the landing near my mother's chambers. I could hear her low groans punctuating Angeley's calm and constant voice. Part of me wanted to flee the sounds and smells of the birth room, but curiosity drew me in. I pushed on the door and slipped sideways into the chamber.
Mother was on her hands and knees, swaying back and forth. Her lady's maid was dipping cloths into a bucket of water and wiping Mother's brow, while Angeley repeatedly covered her with a blanket, only to whip it off with the start of each groan. Though I was at my most unobtrusive, Angeley spotted me anyway and beckoned me close. I sidled up reluctantly, uncomfortable at the sight of my mother's exposed behind, stretched and bulging.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Allaigna's Song: Overture"
by .
Copyright © 2017 JM Landels.
Excerpted by permission of Pulp Literature Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
vi. Map of the Ilmar
viii. Dramatis Personae
xi. A Note from the Author
Verse 1: Brothers, Sisters, and Lullabies
Verse 2: A Stranger in the Garden
Verse 3: Eavesdropping
Verse 4: Gifts
Verse 5: Magic
Verse 6: Duel
Verse 7: Enlightenment
Verse 8: Spring Escape
Verse 9: Conscripted to the Sickroom
Verse 10: New Friend, New Enemy
Verse 11: Politics Past and Present
Verse 12: Return to the Forest
Verse 13: Alone
Verse 14: Parting Gifts
Verse 15: Farewells
Verse 16: Pages
Verse 17: Gossip and Steel
Verse 18: Garæthiel
Verse 19: Steel & Silk
Verse 20: A Cousin and an Aunt
Verse 21: The Closet
Verse 22: Glaignen
Verse 23: Blood
Verse 24: Exile
Verse 25: Home
Verse 26: More Lies
Verse 27: The Road to Werrancross
398. Acknowledgements
399. About the Author
Customer Reviews
