Blurb:
Darna wasn't supposed to
be born – priestesses aren't supposed to have babies – and she most certainly
shouldn't see dragons. After all, no one else does. Darna gets teased for her
limp already without people thinking she's loony, but she hears that in Anamat,
some still see the dragons.
She sets off for the
city, just another scrappling trying to find a place in Anamat's guilds. There
are temples, too, but Darna doesn't want anything to do with the corrupt
priestesses and their sweaty lovers. On her journey, she meets an older
scrappling girl with an eerie sense of hearing. They join up with another pair,
a charming boy and a girl who actually wants to be a priestess.
Apart from these four,
the city seems to be nearly as dragon-blind as the provinces. Darna scavenges
valuable scraps from the city dump, but trade is slow. When she's offered a
sack full of gold beads for a small bit of thieving, she takes her chances...
and ends up angering the dragon herself.
Scrapplings
is the first book in a five part series. Book Two, Priestess, is due out
in April 2015.
Author Bio:
Amelia Smith takes an
odd-jobs-and-adventures approach to writing. She has written volumes of
unpublishable journals, magazine articles, and a variety of fiction, most of it
with historical and/or fantasy elements. For more, see her website,
www.ameliasmith.net.
Excerpt:
Meeting Myril
Darna came down out of the mountains into a
farmland bounded by low hills. High and craggy mountains loomed to the west. A
crossroads lay ahead, with a signpost and a small figure standing still at its
center, looking toward Darna. At one corner of the
crossroads, a spring burbled. There was a carved stone bench and a shrine
beside it. In the shrine sat a plump dragon carved of malachite: Getera. The
small figure there – a girl – poured out the last drops of water from her
waterskin into the bowl under the dragon’s statue. She re-filled it with water
from the spring and drank as she watched Darna approach.
Darna considered hiding, but the girl had already
seen her. Millet and wheat sprouted in the fields all around. Smoke blew in
from a village a little way to the east, and a bit of roof poked out of the
trees in the wooded area off to the north. A farmer rolled his cart down one of
the roads, which ran alongside a stream. The cart creaked away into the
distance and the roads were silent apart from the tap of Darna’s stick and the
shuffle of her feet.
The crossroads signpost was made of cedar from
the mountains, tall and dark red-brown, clean and carved at its top with
designs of flowers, and writing, and an arrow pointing to the north, another to
the east. The girl peered at it.
“What’s that sign say?” Darna asked, her
voice cracking a little from disuse.
The girl looked over her shoulder. “Me?”
she squeaked.
“Of course you,” Darna said. “There’s no one
else here, is there?”
“You mean I’m not invisible?” the girl
asked.
Darna wished she hadn’t said anything.
“Where
are you going?” the girl asked Darna. She had straight, dark hair which fell
over her face, curling a little at the end. It didn’t even reach her shoulders.
That meant she was a servant or a peasant, not a chieftain’s daughter or one of
the princes’ kin. She was taller than Darna and looked like she had been
well-fed, though. She was older, too, maybe even old enough to be a priestess
already – but she wasn’t one. Darna smoothed her gnarled reddish hair and tried
to edge past her.
“I’m just going where everyone goes,” Darna
mumbled. “To Anamat.”
“But which way is it? I don’t know what the sign says
either, but I heard that Anamat was over three ranges of mountains.”
“Like that one?” Darna asked, pointing
toward the craggy peaks.
The girl shook her head. “No, that’s way I
came, from Helanum. I…”
Down the road from Tiadun came a sound like
muted, distant thunder.
“Shush!” Darna said.
The girl was listening too. “What is it?” she
asked.
“Horses,” Darna said. Obviously. The girl
was a fool. “I gotta go. Hide. Don’t tell them!”
Darna dove into the bush, flattening herself on
the prickly twig-covered ground. The girl followed her.
“What are you doing here?” Darna said. “You
don’t have to hide from them.”
“But why do you?” the girl asked.
“I just do, just in case. Who are you
anyway?” Darna demanded. “Are you going to Anamat?”
“Myril is my name. I came from Helanum. I’m
going to Anamat.” As the horses walked slowly toward them, she told Darna her
story, or at least some of it.
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