Full Details
Added By: Ziesings
Last Updated: Administrator
Audition for the Fox
| Author: | Martin Cahill |
| Publisher: |
Tachyon Publications, 2025 |
| Series: | |
|
This book does not appear to be part of a series. If this is incorrect, and you know the name of the series to which it belongs, please let us know. |
|
| Book Type: | Novella |
| Genre: | Fantasy |
| Sub-Genre Tags: | |
| Awards: | |
| Lists: | |
| Links: |
|
| Avg Member Rating: |
|
|
|
|
Synopsis
Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T'sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.
In folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T'sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.
Now, Nesi must learn a trickster's guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.
Excerpt
An hour ago, Nesi had crept through the red and gold trees that were the Woods of the World, invited to prove herself. She knew to be sly in her audition for the Fox, remembering as many clay and cloud tales of their schemes as she could. T'sidaan, she knew, was a trickster, the first and only trickster of the Pillars, and any slip-up before them could certainly result in eyeteeth meeting eye.
She'd expected riddles, a test of wills. An ancient, unnecessarily complicated game of Grasshopper's Gambit with, yes, the extra pieces. Even a staring contest, with clear but unspoken cheating involved on both sides.
What she hadn't expected was coming to consciousness bound in chains, already in motion, walking with hundreds of others through a field of yellowing grass, the clouds above her gray and rumbling with thunder.
Marching in silence, not trusting herself to speak, it was a full hour before it came back to her: what she'd gotten herself into, how she'd gotten here, in the past, and the trickster who'd done it.
It came to her in fits and starts, the memories that were a moment ago and still yet to come. Nesi had made her appeal, spilling her heart to a deity she knew for a fact she should not trust and had to try anyway, in that little, homey cabin in the Woods where the Fox had made a den for themself.
And after having done so, she'd been met with an utter silence and stillness reminiscent of the moment before the hunter's pounce, the flash of teeth.
Until.
The Fox of Tricks had taken a sip from a chipped and paisley porcelain teacup with an annoying slurp, put it down amidst a riot of cheap, well-loved paperbacks on a cluttered side table in their otherwise spare den and finally said, "I think I'm going to send you back in time. See what happens."
Copyright © 2025 by Martin Cahill
Reviews
There are currently no reviews for this novel. Be the first to submit one! You must be logged in to submit a review in the BookTrackr section above.
Images
No alternate cover images currently exist for this novel.
