The Living Sword 2: The Road Ahead (The Living Sword, Book 2) by Pemry Janes

 Release date: January 9, 2020

Subgenre: Epic fantasy

About The Living Sword 2: The Road Ahead:

 

Eurik & Leraine have escaped the land of the necromancers, but still face a long journey. Eurik is looking for answers about who his parents were and how they ended up adrift at sea. Leraine must carry the news of her teacher’s death back home, yet also has a debt to Eurik for helping her to avenge Irelith.

Together, they’ll have to traverse the Neisham Hills, where lone travelers are snatched in the night and even numbers don’t guarantee safety. And beyond the hills, all along the long Inza Road, the drums of war beat louder and louder.

But the greatest threat may not be goblins, elves, or bandits. It may be the people they’ve chosen to travel with.

Excerpt:

 

Silver Fang turned her back to the mechanical goats in favor of looking at him. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head, not in denial, but to get his thoughts going again. “Nothing, just surprised. I sensed something alive in there. At least I think I did. It’s hard to tell with how odd that crystalline material is. It’s solid, yet not. It moves without leaving its place.” Eurik knew he wasn’t making much sense, but that was because it didn’t really make sense in his own head.

“Something alive,” the Mochedan said. She looked over at one of the constructs, scrutinizing it. “There would not be much room in it, not with all the other things you say are in there. Perhaps a rat or a mouse snuck into one.”

“I suppose that could be what I felt.” But he knew that was not it. The life he’d sensed had been inside the crystal and it had no gaps or openings. Not even a crack wide enough to let a gnat in, let alone an entire mouse.

“Felt what?” Ghajir’s voice came from close by, startling him when he was about to examine one of the other constructs.

“I felt something alive in those metal goats,” Eurik said.

Ghajir looked up at him, his eyes hidden behind those dark disks of glass again. “You can sense the goat’s brain?”

“Goat’s brain?” Silver Fang sputtered. “You put a part of an animal in there? Why?”

Ghajir tipped the brim of his hat up and looked up at her. “Because it doesn’t work otherwise,” he replied. “Why else would you put a part in? Though I’m skeptical about the manufacturer’s assurances that they’ve got the problem licked. I’ll be waiting until the second generation of goatematons comes out before I replace mine. Let my impatient colleagues work out the bugs, I say.”

“What sort of insects could plague a metal animal?” Misthell sounded curious, but his voice grew more concerned with every question that followed. “Do they eat metal? What do they look like? Where are they?” The blade rattled in his sheath. “Eurik, there’s a bug behind me. Kill it, kill it now before it multiplies and eats me alive!”

“Do not worry, I made a mistake in translating,” the dwarf said. “It is an idiom, it means . . . mistakes in manufacturing or design. There are no metal-eating insects—that I am aware of.”

“Never read about them either,” Eurik said.

Misthell was not so easily reassured. “You’re sure? Couldn’t you squash it just in case? I don’t like the way it is eying me.”

“I am not killing harmless insects for you, Misthell.”

“Fine. But if you wake up one morning and find me covered in metal-eating moths I reserve the right to say I told you so.”

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About Pemry Janes:

 I've had a love for history for as long as I can remember, I even studied it at university. Fantasy I discovered a few years later and now I try to combine the two in my writing

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