BLURB:
Among
the close-kin clans of western rural Malfesian Murians, farming and gelf
ranches are long held traditions. Times
are good…full barns, fat gelf calves and large families thrive among the
sprawling grain fields and hamlets and the river from which they derive their
name—the Feldon. Word comes with the
trade caravans that times are not so good in the regions far to the east of the
Feldon River: tumultuous changes stir
among the remote province of Bleikovia.
Old timer Feldovats shrug it off as one more squabble between clans over
boundaries or water rights…too distant to affect the Feldovats.
The western clans
learn too late, however, it is no local squabble. Outnumbered and unprepared, Feldovats resist a
hoard bent on plunder and conquest. Days
of battle along the Feldon River stain the riverbanks in green Murian blood. In the finals days of exhausted fighting,
Judikar Klarvko Celo, leader of the Clan Klarvkon and the Feldovats, is fatally
stabbed with the slow-acting sevon poison.
The Judikar’s consort, Etikaa Klarvkaa, becomes Regentkaa, and with
Celovat Field Commander Korvo Celo serving as her advisor, she leads the
demoralized Feldovat survivors on a gruesome ill-prepared winter trek through
high mountain passes of ice and blizzard snow in an attempt to elude the Green
Dragon forces of the Bleikovats.
Etkaa’s only son,
Klarvko Celo II, helps spirit Feldovat young across a remote mountain exodus to
the west toward Eedov Province. The battered, starving Feldovats reach the
Malfesian coast at Eedov City only to be confronted with their implacable enemy
determined to destroy the remaining Klarvkon rabble. Taking passage on crowded lumbering
Maalonovion freighters, Feldovats and Malfesian refugees set sail. On arrival in Maalon City they are welcomed
among their Maalon hosts, and settle into a new life.
But famine and a
pandemic pestilence stir old hates and nurse former ambitions. The enraged Overseers of Bleikovia move
against the Klarvkons, this time bringing bloodshed to Maalonovia. The exiles from the Feldon must fight once
again, but starvation and plague across the Planete Myr make it a different war
from the battles along the Feldon…a na’ä blikovat…the Bleikovvat Phenomenon…an
event with unexpected consequences and outcomes none could have foreseen.
Before the vendetta
killing is exhausted, the Regentkaa Klarvkaa and her son are swept onto the
Maalon throne, setting the Klarvkon Dynasty and the Murians toward an
intergalactic golden age, and a star-flung destiny the once-agrarian Feldovats
could never have envisaged.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt
The catafalque of the old Dowager Queen rested on the high
rostrum of the Temple of the Goddess Myraa. There was little ceremony to the
cremation of dead. Yet, all that had passed made this requiem for the Dowager
Queen Klarvkaa Etkaa Bremanova Celovaa Bremanova a symbol of the changes which
had swept so many lives. Long annuals before the ascendancy of The Klarvkon
Dynasty, the massive wood and granite Temple to the Goddess Myraa had been
destroyed in the firestorm which laid waste Eedov City. After the close of the
Malfesian War the temple was rebuilt, but not the city. On the ashes of the old
temple, immense columns rose above the sanctuary and vaults. Iridescent
alabaster and polished marble greeted pilgrim supplicants who had come to the
shoreline plains washed by the Green Sea.
Dowager Etkaa Klarvkaa—wife, myäat, founding matriarch of
the Klarvkon Dynasty—gave hope from a time without hope. As was her wish, she
would be cremated on the soil of her birth, her ashes to mingle with those of
her consort, Klarvko Celo. Their son, His Imperial Majesty Klarvko Celo the
Second, decreed it would be done. At the enormous base of the great temple in a
spectacular vision never seen before and seldom since came an undulating ocean
of banners. Some of them clans which no longer existed, even the once-hated Green
Dragon of Bleikovia. Murians had taken her to their hearts and never
relinquished her. Even in death, her shadow would reach across the centuries,
and measure all who followed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
With
postgraduate degrees and faculty appointments in several medical universities,
Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and
Jerusalem. In addition to professional articles and texts on chordate
neuroembryology, Hawk has authored several works of fiction.
Hawk began
writing mysteries for his school newspaper. His works of fiction, historical
love stories, science fiction and mystery-thrillers are not genre-centered, but
plot-character driven, and reflect his southwest upbringing in Arkansas, Texas
and Oklahoma. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel nominated for the prestigious
Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes
Book Award, details the family bloodlines of his serial protagonist in the
Craige Ingram Mystery Series. Vault of Secrets, the first book in the Ingram
series, was followed by Nymrod Resurrection, Blood and Gold, and The Lady of
Corpsewood Manor. All have received national attention. Walking the Pet is Hawk’s latest release in
the Ingram series. The first book in another mystery-thriller series is
scheduled for release in 2015. The Bleikovat Event, the first volume in The
Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series, was released in 2012. Its sequel,
The Missing Planets, has just been released.
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