Faery Worlds - Six Complete Novels

FAERY WORLDS – Six Complete Novels

Faery Worlds bundle copyright 2013 Fiddlehead Press. Individual books are fully copyrighted by their respective authors, and used with permission. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, copied, emailed or uploaded to or downloaded from a file sharing site. Help keep indie authors writing!

Faery Worlds Cover – Tara Maya

3-D book images – Lawson Dumbeck

FAERY WORLDS - Six Complete Novels

A stunning collection of the first books in six fan-favorite series by bestselling, award-winning fantasy authors! Discover the many worlds of Faerie in these novels filled with adventure, love, and – of course – Fae Magic.

(Best for readers 14 and up)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE UNFINISHED SONG (Book One): INITIATE—TARA MAYA

Dindi longs to become a Tavaedi, one of the powerful warrior-dancers who secret magics are revealed only to those who pass a mysterious Initiation. The problem? No-one in Dindi's clan has ever passed the Test. But Dindi has a plan.

WAR OF THE FAE: BOOK 1 (THE CHANGELINGS) – ELLE CASEY

Jayne Sparks, a potty-mouthed, rebellious seventeen-year-old, and her best friend, shy and bookish Tony Green, have a typical high school existence – until, along with a group of runaway teens, they are hijacked and sent into a forest where nothing is as it seems. Who will emerge triumphant? And what will they be when they do?

FAIRY METAL THUNDER – JL BRYAN

A teenage garage band steals instruments from the fairy world and begins enchanting crowds, but their shortcut to success soon turns them into enemies of the treacherous Queen Mab.

FEYLAND: THE DARK REALM – ANTHEA SHARP

Faeries. Computer games. When realms collide, a hero from the wrong side of the tracks and the rich girl he's afraid to love must risk everything to defeat the dangerous fey.

What if a high-tech computer game was a gateway to the perilous Realm of Faerie
...

FAELOREHN – JENNA ELIZABETH JOHNSON

Meghan has been strange her entire life: her eyes change color and she sees and hears things no one else can. When the visions get worse, she is convinced she has finally gone crazy. That is, until the mysterious Cade shows up with an explanation of his own.

EVER SHADE (A DARK FAERIE TALE #1) – ALEXIA PURDY

A dark twist on faeries
. For Shade, a chance meeting with a powerful Teleen Faery warrior who wields electrical currents and blue fires along his skin, has her joining him on a treacherous mission for the good Seelie Faerie Court across the land of Faerie. Magic and malice abound and nothing is what it appears to be.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

INITIATE

The Unfinished Song, Book One

Tara Maya

copyright Misque Press, 2011

Chapter One

Dance

Dindi

Dindi scanned the crowd, hoping to slip into the plaza unnoticed. Barter Hill swarmed with people because aunties from the three clans met here to trade every half-moon. A kraal at the bottom of the hill held aurochsen and horses. Interconnected rectangular adobe buildings created a square around the top of the rise. The old uncles, to suit their dignity, leaned against the wall on a log bench, under the shade of the eaves of the buildings, drinking corn beer, chatting amiably. They hid their thighs with waist blankets and caped themselves in shoulder blankets that reached the ground. Dindi slithered by them.

Unfortunately, the first person Dindi locked eyes with was Great Aunt Sullana. Though the whole plaza separated them, Great Aunt Sullana tore across the market like a tornado on the Purple Plains. She would demand to examine Dindi’s basket, and finding nothing in it except a kitten, pinch her cheek until Dindi stuttered some explanation. The natural and obvious defense would be to lie, but frankly, Dindi had always been a terrible liar. Her whole face ripened like a tomato, her eyes slid this way and that, she couldn’t convince a child honey was sweet never mind fool Great Aunt Sullana, who ate secrets for morning meal.

Evasion her only option, Dindi darted past a couple of elder women haggling over an exchange of vegetables for pottery. Married women, with their salt-and-pepper hair coiled in stacked rings atop their heads, sat with their wares on blankets arranged all around the dancing platform. Dindi wove a path around multifarious piles of tubers and bone awls, behind bunches of water gourds hung like grapes over racks of smoked venison. Aunties shouted and tried to call her attention to bargains by slapping her calves with horse-hair whisks.

Great Aunt Sullana changed course to track her. Dindi hopped behind a group of bare-chested warriors who mock-fought one another, to the annoyance of an auntie whose tower of baskets they upset. A gaggle of girls giggled at their antics. Great Aunt Sullana kept walking in the wrong direction. Dindi sighed in relief.

A slow drumbeat reverberated throughout the market square. The Tavaedies! No one could see the drum, but each beat shook the ground like earth tremors. Heads jerked up and eyes began to sparkle. Rattles and flutes supplemented the drumbeat. From a hole in the ground in a clear space just in front of the dancing platform, a line of masked dancers emerged. Each costume was slightly different, determined by the dancer’s color of magic and the dance the troop performed that day. A large headdress and a matching mask of either cloth or paint disguised each face. Each Tavaedi wore a costume entirely dyed and painted in shades of one of the primordial six colors.

Dindi had never told anyone she aspired to become a Tavaedi. She wasn’t interested in reaping snickers or commiseration. Besides, what did she care what the others thought of her? She knew how hard it was, but she had a plan.

Every head in the square was riveted on the Tavaedies. Drum, rattle, and flute flared into dramatic music. The masked men and women leaped into motion. Occasionally, to emphasize the moves, the dancers chanted or shouted as well.

Dancing wove magic. Some ritual dances, or
tama
, ensured bounty, others averted drought. This
tama
, Massacre of the Aelfae, recalled history. The Tavaedies only performed it once a year, and as a child, it had been her favorite—until she understood what it was really about.

Half the Tavaedies wore wings. “We are the Aelfae, we are the Aelfae,” they chanted.

The other half of the dancers carried spears. “We are the humans, we are the humans.”

The dance showed a clan of Aelfae, the high faery folk who had lived in the Corn Hills before humans came. High fae were not like low fae, pixies and brownies and sprites and such, but possessed grace and grandeur beyond anything human. In form they were as tall, or taller, than humans, although more beautiful, a strange, glowing people, with wings like swans. There had once been seven races of high fae, and of them all, the Aelfae had been the most beautiful and powerful and wise.

The fake Aelfae took the stage first. They flapped imitation wings. To pretend they were flying, they engaged in numerous acrobatic flips, handsprings, handless cartwheels, and somersaults over each others’ backs. The fake Aelfae flitted about the platform until the “human” dancers with spears arrived.

She had to focus. She had to get this right, every move, every detail. She intended to teach herself everything she could from watching them, so when the time came they would invite her to join their secret society. She wasn’t supposed to know, but she had eavesdropped on enough conversations to learn one secret about the Initiation. Each Initiate would be asked to dance a tama, and only those with magic would perform it correctly.