Sword and Sorceress 29: Sword and Sorceress, #29 by Elisabeth Waters

Author:Elisabeth Waters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magic, fantasy, sorcery, warriors, women
Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust
Published: 2018-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Mendacity

by Michael H. Payne

Because she is a squirrel, Cluny is expected—and generally believed—to be a familiar. In fact, she is a mage and has two familiars, one of them human. Making everyone around her believe that he is the mage is an everyday challenge. Having people try to kill her is only an occasional one.

When asked for a current bio, Michael replied:

All previous conditions continue to apply—my library clerking, my church singing and guitar playing, my radio show hosting—but I've also reached the third-of-a-million-words mark with the My Little Pony fan fiction I write under the name of AugieDog while keeping up my daily webcomic, Daily Grind, and my weekly webcomic, Terebinth. I'm hoping to have the first Cluny, Crocker, and Shtasith novel finished this fall. It willl detail what brought them all to Huxley College in the first place, then cover their entire first year there. As always, hyniof.livejournal.com will have all the relevant ups ’n’ downs.

Whiskers tingling, Cluny watched Crocker twiddle his fingers at the little chunk of soap Shtasith had fetched from the bathroom. Steeling herself for anything, she was instead pleasantly surprised when his spell did what it was supposed to, a pile of bubbles sprouting, quickly spreading across Crocker’s desk and stacking higher than the tufts of Cluny’s ears.

Because, yes, Crocker had always been good at doubling magic—that was what had saved their lives and gotten them into so much trouble during their first trip to the Realm of Fire, after all. But seeing him apply the spell so well and so easily made Cluny quietly proud.

The desk shook, the mounded bubbles quivering with little rainbow reflections from the October afternoon sun shining through the window of their dorm room. Cluny glanced over to see Crocker settling into his chair, Shtasith stretched all black and gold and scaly from one shoulder to the other along the back of his neck, the little dragon’s snaky head peering out from beneath Crocker’s left ear. “So go ahead,” Crocker said, folding his arms.

Refusing to let her tail jitter, Cluny took a breath and poked a claw into the damp, slippery wall ahead of her.

With a pinging tap like a pebble bouncing off a window, her claw went straight through, the surface barely jiggling, and Cluny’s pride puffed up even further. If Crocker had tried this same spell last year, Cluny knew, she’d be covered in soapy slime right now. She turned a smile at him. “Works just fine.”

The human and the firedrake both had their eyes half closed. “Now try pulling it out,” Crocker said.

“What?” Facing the bubbles again, she gave the tiniest tug and had to wince at the magical stresses and strains that ricocheted between her whiskers. “Oh. I see. The spell only increases the tensile strength of the material on the outside. No wonder it’s giving you so much trouble!” Possible solutions to the problem started dancing their schematics through her head, but, well, first things first. She gestured with the paw not wrapped in bubbles.

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