Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [0]
THE TALERA CYCLE,
BOOK TWO
ALSO BY CHARLES ALLEN GRAMLICH
Bitter Steel: Tales and Poems of Epic Fantasy
Midnight in Rosary: Tales of Vampires and Werewolves in Crimson and Black
Swords of Talera (The Talera Cycle, Book One)
Wings Over Talera (The Talera Cycle, Book Two)
Witch of Talera (The Talera Cycle, Book Three)
Write with Fire: Thoughts on the Craft of Writing
Writing in Psychology: A Guidebook (with Elliott Hammer and Y. Du Bois Irvin)
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2007 by Charles Allen Gramlich
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
To My Father,
J. V. Gramlich
And to My Son,
Joshua Gramlich
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE
In 1914, on a sea voyage to Japan, Ruenn Maclang and his brother Bryce stumbled on a gate to another world—a world named Talera. They were following the trail of some of the vessel’s crew—including their cousin Eric Ryall—who had shipped with them but disappeared. The gate exploded, sucking Ruenn and Bryce through it, but separating them. The first book in this trilogy, Swords of Talera, was Ruenn’s story of what happened to him on the other side of that gate.
Ruenn was cast into the Taleran Sea and rescued by a dwarfish race of humans named the Koro. It wasn’t long, however, before the Koro met the Klar—who were reptiles, pirates, and slavers. Captured by the Klar, Ruenn met a lovely human woman named Rannon Jystral. He found himself attracted to her, but they, too, were separated.
Ruenn learned the discipline of the sword. He learned how to kill. He fought his way free of slavery and in time gathered a band of warriors around him and ventured to the Klar homeland in search of Rannon, and in hopes of discovering his brother, his cousin, and his shipmates. There, he led a slave revolt and overthrew a nation, but he could not locate any of those he sought from earth. He did find Rannon, and discovered that she was a princess in the distant island kingdom of Nyshphal. But he already loved her, and he told her that. She told him the same.
At the end of Swords of Talera, Ruenn returned to Earth to see about the rest of his family. Though not revealed in that book, Ruenn found his immediate family—parents and two sisters—dead, for decades had passed on our world during his one year absence on Talera. He enlisted the aid of a distant relative to see that money was provided for his sisters’ descendents, and he gave that relative the manuscript for Swords of Talera.
But Talera called. Rannon called. And there was the need in him to find Bryce and Eric, still lost somewhere on that violent yet beautiful new world. This book, Wings Over Talera, is the story of what happens when Ruenn goes back.
INTRODUCTION
BY ONE WHO HAS MET RUENN MACLANG
October is a month of cold rains and of autumn leaves piled high and burning. It is a month of corpse-gray fogs that twine in low places, and of shadows that do not flee the rising moon. It was in October that I first met a man known as Ruenn Maclang, and it was amid the early frosts of that month, in another year, when he returned. I was standing at my cabin window, watching pale Luna hanging over the wind-tossed trees, when a dark figure came from the forest. I knew at once who it must be.
I met him at the door and held out my hand. “Ruenn,” I said. “It’s good to see you again.”
“As it is you, Charles,” he said.
“I’ve been expecting you,” I told him.
He looked at me strangely.
“Or at least I’ve been expecting something odd to happen today.”
He nodded in agreement. “I too have had that feeling this day.”
“Come in,” I invited.
He did so, a tall, lean man, with dark brown hair hanging long. He was dressed in black jeans and a t-shirt. A white scar twisting along the left side of his jaw, coupled with eyes that glittered green, made his face seem cold. Yet, his smile was warm when it came.
I motioned him to an old recliner and sat on the worn couch facing him. I had thought often of seeing this man again. There were many things I wanted to ask him. At our first meeting he had handed