Discord's Apple by Carrie Vaughn

Author:Carrie Vaughn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Fantasy - General, Epic, Magic, Fantasy fiction, Antiquities, Fiction - Fantasy, General, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction And Fantasy, Good and evil
ISBN: 9780765325549
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2010-09-15T21:24:48.319000+00:00

Marcus screamed and dropped the axe he’d been using to chop firewood. Terrible visions struck his mind all at once, like lightning. The sky was clear, the sun warm. No storms raged; no lightning flashed. All was peaceful, except for the throbbing in his mind. Stories. Hundreds of tales, voices telling them all at once, in languages he didn’t recognize, cadences that were foreign. Gods, beasts, golden fleece, enchanted swords, all stored inside a well-worn leather bag—

All stored in the cellar under the villa. He’d never gone down there, but somehow he knew. He could picture shelves of artifacts, racks of swords, golden apples and winged slippers, icons of the gods—all under his family’s small house?

He ran to the house, then to the stone steps that led down to the roughly carved-out cellar. His father didn’t permit any of the family to enter here. Even at their most mischievous, his children obeyed him. Somehow, the place repelled curiosity. Not anymore. He pushed back the sheepskin that hung from the lintel at the bottom of the stairs, marking the cellar entrance. Even in the dim light, he could see it was just as he had imagined, the wondrous objects of a thousand tales spread before him.

His heart and lungs raced, unwilling to accept the magnitude of what he saw. This was larger than him, and he wasn’t ready for what his being here meant. What is this?

This is the Storeroom, the vision that had struck him from within said. You are its heir.

“But my father—”

You are its heir.

Marcus’s knees gave way. He sat on the dirt floor and tried to catch his breath. He was sixteen. Only sixteen. Nearly a man, yes, but—he wasn’t ready. He’d inherited the knowledge all in a terrible flash, a burst like death. Even at the first, he’d understood what it meant. That was why he’d screamed.

He wanted to give it all back.

Part of him believed it was a mistake. The gods had visited a fit upon him, a false vision. He climbed the stairs slowly. He had to know. He’d see his father striding through the door, and Marcus would demand from him some explanation for what was happening to him, and what the cellar Storeroom really meant.

Pale, shaking, he reached the house’s main room just as someone rushed through the archway. Not his father, but his younger brother Tonius.

The boy was flushed and shouting. “Marcus, please, hurry. Father’s fallen, out in the field. He isn’t breathing, he won’t wake up, you must come help him—”

Marcus closed his eyes and wept. Bitterly, he wished his father had died slowly, of creeping old age, as fathers were supposed to. If Marcus had to carry this burden at all, he’d rather have taken it on in small parcels, so that he might not notice the growing weight of it.

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