Sneak Peek

SWORN UPON FIRE

by J. A. Ferguson

"It is ready."

The old man raised his head and nodded. For fifty generations, while he brought peace to his ravaged world, he had known this hour would come. For fifty generations, while he watched its people blossom to savor the arts and each other, he had known what he must do when this hour dawned. For fifty generations, while he kept in check those who had once been leaders and would sacrifice anything to be again, he had known that when this hour arrived he would have regrets. So much left undone. So much done wrong. Something only he knew. Others venerated him, believing him to be all-powerful. And he was.

But he had failed, too.

The child was not here. This hour should not have come without the child at his side. The messenger he had sent to bring the child had not returned. The guardian he had arranged to watch over the child had neglected to understand the importance of this hour.

He stood.

Nothing, not even his hope that there was still a chance for success, could delay this hour. He looked up at the two moons inching closer and closer in the night sky. His final hour was when the moons appeared to be one, just as he and the child would have been if the child had been here. He would have touched the child’s face with the gentle hands of a teacher, and the child would have known its destiny and its duty.

Now his legacy would be a resurrection of ignorance and unnecessary destruction and death as the people were swept back into what they called the Other Time.

His servant fell into step behind him as he walked across his favorite room in the palace. Gilt on its walls welcomed the sun each morning, and the smooth, shining floors embraced the moons’ light. Everything he could possibly have wished for had been provided. Nothing had ever been denied him...until now. How ironic that his most compelling need would not be gratified.

He went out into the night. His servant did not speak, for no one spoke in his presence without permission. He wished that rule had never been set into place. But rules were what guided the world as they had since all life was created by Indazi and his wife Zadini, the primal gods who brought forth the ground, the sea, and the skies.

The night air was fragrant with blossoms, but the smoke diminished their scent. The moons were touching, but not yet one. He glanced toward the road leading through the mountains to the place where the child should be. Could the messenger have been waylaid and slain upon the sword of a warlord jealous of the emperor’s power? Could the child have been discovered and killed? No one would dare to bring him such horrible tidings at this hour.

A drumbeat was faint, but he could understand the meaning in its rhythm. He had taught the first drummers their language, just as he had found the first telists and taught them to communicate with their minds. With them, he had drawn the world together in a peace unlike any it had known...or any it might ever know again.

He sighed as he heard the drums sound the call to war. Somehow, someone beyond these walls had learned the exact hour of his death. Even before he breathed his last, the tearing apart of everything he had built and safeguarded was beginning.

"My child," he whispered as he walked toward the pyre waiting for him. The flames licked up at the moons, goading them closer. Did the fire hunger to feast upon his ancient bones? Or was it eager for younger flesh? Listening to the drums repeat their lethal message, he knew the fire would consume many.

"My child," he whispered again. He turned to his servant. Raising his voice, he said, "You are dismissed."

The servant bowed deeply then walked away.

The old man looked up at the sky. One moon had almost disappeared behind the other. He must delay no longer. But he did as he looked again toward the mountains and imagined the death about to flow down their sides and out into the valleys until it reached the sea. He wanted to stop it. He could have stopped it. A single word was all he needed, but the word was dissolving from his mind as the moons became one.

He went to the fire as he said, "My child, forgive me."

And, as one moon vanished behind the other, he gave himself to the flames.

It was a red night. The sky glowed with the blood-red light from the twin moons in eclipse. An eternal eclipse, for the moons were frozen in the sky. The sun didn’t rise. The rains didn’t come. Everything remained as it’d been at the moment the Emperor died.

Aymara Keeper stared up at the sky as she did each time she emerged from the tavern. Nothing changed. She kept hoping, but feared nothing would change ever again. By now, the moons should have completed several revs of Thoslon, growing thin and then fattening again, as they moved closer to each other before slipping apart once more. Their dim white fire when they faced each other across the night sky should be lighting the foam splashed up onto the cliff tops by the waves that frolicked at the moons’ command.

Now the waves danced alone, but their motion had become as wild as the great sea dragons living beneath them. Even the most ancient oldster in the village could not recall the waves ever rising so high or crashing so hard against the cliffs. No breeze blew off the water spraying into the air, since the moons had become still in the sky. Those in the fisher lineage no longer dared to sail upon the maddened sea. Even if they’d been willing to try, it was too late. Their boats had been smashed into kindling on the narrow, barren shore at the cliff’s base. Every day, the waves reached closer to the village. There were those who said the waves would subside before they topped the city’s wall.

She wished she could be so certain. From her earliest memories, she’d felt safe behind the wall surrounding the score of cottages at the top of the cliff. Courtyards and stairs connected groups of stone homes. Each cluster belonged to a lineage. Each cluster grew out from the wall as members were born and then took vow-mates, needing space of their own.

Her tavern was separate because the number of Keepers in the village had never been large. That was the way of Keepers. She had always closely followed the traditions of her lineage. Leaving the village was not the way of the Keepers. She did not want to go, but she knew soon she would have no choice.

Aymara leaned back against the tavern’s chilled stone walls. Since the sun had last set, the air had become colder and colder. They should now be in the warm season, but it hadn’t come. They had wood for fires, but for how long? No new trees would sprout when the sunlight was banished and rains never came. The herbs she’d planted were dying on the arid ground. Trees had lost their leaves, and even the always green trees were turning the same ruddy color as the sky.

And no one could guess when the moons might move again.

Or if.

Why had she been born into this accursed time? For a millennium, the seasons had followed each other in perfect order as the sun appeared and set, the moons glowed in their promenade in the sky, and the sea rose and fell in a pattern set forth by the Emperor. Now the Emperor was dead and Thoslon doomed.

A flash caught Aymara’s eye. She looked toward the mountains creating an arc from horizon to horizon, each end touching the sea. There were four mountains. On each mountain, a warlord plotted to take advantage of the others now that the Emperor no longer kept them from enslaving the rest of Thoslon. The flash had come from Fire Mountain where Lady Jacey and her firebirds waited for their chance to defeat the other warlords.

"And what will you win? A ruined world?" she asked as she pushed away from the wall. Until there was another emperor, nothing could change.

It was whispered there was an heir—the One to Follow—who would ascend the Emperor’s throne and guide the sky. Nobody knew where the One to Follow might be or when the One would come forward. But even the youngest child knew the warlords intended to prevent the One to Follow from claiming the title of Emperor, for that would dash their hopes of ruling the world themselves.

But the warlords weren’t the only ones who wanted to assure there’d never be another emperor. That unsettled her even more. Some people who should know better longed for the Other Time, the epoch before the Emperor came to Thoslon, bringing peace. Imposing his will upon them, those people averred. Nothing—not even peace—was worth having to submit to the Emperor.

She’d never thought the time would come when she envied the rest of her family’s deaths. An attack on the village by giant tortoises, sent by Lady Gimar in an effort to wrest the land from Lady Jacey, had left many dead, including her parents and her older siblings. With the help of the other two surviving Keepers, she’d kept the tavern open, as was the obligation of her lineage.

"Are you out here, Aymara?" called a beloved voice.

"Here I am, Hakken." She kneeled as the little boy came toward her. With a smile, she straightened his jacket. Like all males, Hakken’s jacket was made of a single piece of fabric, an accomplishment she’d taken more than a sun-rev to master. Only women wore quilted jackets. His simple trousers were of a heavier material than hers, and he wore low slippers. When he grew older, he’d don the knee-high boots men wore.

If he had the chance to grow older...

"It’s cold," Hakken announced, his shiver making black hair fall forward and into his dark eyes. In the moonslight, his face seemed pale, but she knew his cheeks were red with the chill. "Will it ever be warm again?"

"Yes." She smiled so he wouldn’t guess she was uncertain.

"When there’s a new emperor," he said with the assurance of his few sun-revs. She guessed about six had passed since his birth.

"Yes, when there’s a new emperor."

"Trellor says there won’t be another."

She hid her frown. Trellor Forge the smith should know better than to speak of such things in front of a child. Like everyone else in the village, she had known Trellor since she was Hakken’s age. He usually thought long before giving voice to his thoughts.

Struggling to keep her smile, she said, "I hope there will be one."

"There must be, or nothing will ever be the same again."

Aymara dampened her lips. She wanted to ask if he was repeating what he had heard others say in the tavern. He had abilities no other child possessed. She’d heard him speaking with beasts and birds since shortly after she found him abandoned at the tavern’s door. At first, when he told her what the beasts and birds said in return, she’d dismissed it as a childish game. Then she realized his foresight of weather and the sea always proved to be true.

But his gift was not limited to just wild creatures. He occasionally could detect another’s thoughts as if that person had spoken to him.

She’d learned to trust his impressions, after sifting out any childish fancy, but had cautioned him not to reveal his abilities to anyone else. She knew how such differences would be perceived in their small village. One should possess only the talents belonging to their lineage. The Keepers weren’t wizard-sages.

"Memshi wants you," Hakken said abruptly, showing he was unaware of her uneasiness.

"Why?"

"She didn’t say."

Aymara took his hand and led him to the door. She ran her fingers along the wind chimes that used to make music with the sea breezes. Could the tinkling song of the hollow, green gourds lure the wind to return?

Telling herself not to be ridiculous, she opened the door. The tavern was two-stories high and made of stone. Unlike other buildings in the village, it even had a stone roof rather than wood. She wasn’t sure why. She’d asked when she was younger, but nobody had an answer other than the tavern’s roof had always been stone.

She ducked beneath the low door, taking care not to catch her lineage band on it. The embroidered band identified her ancestors back through a dozen generations. She frowned. Hakken soon would be old enough to wear a lineage ring, as every man in the village did. She soon had to decide what to put on it.

What did one put on the lineage ring of an abandoned child? Nobody had seen who left him. He’d simply been waiting one morning when she opened the front door to welcome her patrons. She’d brought him in, cleaned him up, and given him a home. Even though he bore her late father’s name, because she had given him the name so it might live on, he wasn’t a Keeper. But what would a lineage ring matter if the moons remained motionless, the sun never rose, and the sea battered the shore to oblivion?

Familiar and comforting scents drew her through the narrow hallway toward the main public room and its two large stone hearths. One warmed the tables where the patrons ate. The other was set behind the counter where she served food. So many fires had been set on the hearths that the thick, raw odor of burnt peat permeated every stone and timber. Cooking herbs were becoming scarce, but the walls retained odors, both sweet and pungent. Beneath her slippers, the stones had been smoothed by many feet. Every inch of the tavern wore its history like a lineage band.

As soon as she entered the main room, she understood why Memshi had sent Hakken to get her. Voices were raised to the rafters on the low ceiling as more than a dozen people surrounded the counter where her two workers were trying to maintain order. The villagers were jostling in an effort to get closer to the counter. The stench of fear overwhelmed every other smell.

Pushing through the crowd, making certain she didn’t release Hakken’s hand as she squeezed past people determined not to be budged, she stepped up to the counter. She patted the blond serving-maid, Gretti, on the arm and gave a bolstering smile to Dester, who was vow-mated to Gretti. The two helped in so many ways, but they were intimidated by the villagers’ boiling rage. It wasn’t aimed at them but at the immobile sky and their hopeless future.

Or the rage had never been aimed at them before tonight, Aymara corrected herself. As she glanced at the people crowding the counter, she wondered if that had changed. How ironic. The one thing I thought would never alter may have, and yet the sky stays motionless.

Beneath the strident voices, Aymara asked, "Why is everyone upset? There’s enough food tonight."

"They want answers," Gretti said, her fingers lingering against her distended belly where her child awaited its birth. It should be soon.

"Answers? About what?" She winced as a heavy fist struck the wooden counter.

Turning, Aymara faced Borsley Fisher. That was no surprise. He’d been complaining loudly the past few nights, even when nobody but his vow-mate seemed to listen. His enormous fist, idle now that his fishing boat had been annihilated by the powerful waves, was on the counter.

"Where’s my food?" he snarled.

"We’re getting ready to serve it." She looked past him to the others. A frisson of fear ran icy fingers down her back. Desperation distorted every face, whether male or female, whether a child’s or an oldster’s. Food sources had become depleted since the Emperor’s death, and the marketplace had been abandoned. She still had some supplies, so most of the villagers depended on the tavern for their meals.

"No, I mean where’s my food?" he shouted as he rubbed his hand under his nose that had been on the losing side of too many fights.

"I don’t understand."

"You have food. You always have food." He glanced behind him, and the others nodded. "How’s that possible?"

Aymara folded one arm on the counter and leaned forward. She slipped her fingers under her jacket to touch the dagger she wore in the waistband of her trousers next to a pouch of herbs. She’d never thought she’d have to use a blade to defend the tavern.

"You know the answer," she said quietly. "We’ve got grain because of what we bought to make ale for the next sun-rev."

"But you’ve got more than grain. You’ve got vegetables and meat."

Her fingers tightened on the knife’s haft when she saw more people entering the tavern. She knew each one, for she had grown up with them. Every face was familiar from Trellor Forge the smith to Bija Riser the baker. For generations they’d lived peacefully, trading with one another. Then the Emperor had reached his end, and nothing was as it should be.

"There’s only a little left," she said, "and I’m sharing what I have with you."

"For a price."

"Only so we may get wood and candles to light the tavern. You don’t want to eat in the darkness."

"It’s always dark now. We’ve gotten used to it." He clamped his hand over hers, pinning it to the counter. "I smell meat cooking. Where did you get meat?"

"You know Memshi hunts for me." She tried to look past him. Where was the great cat that had sent Hakken to alert her?

"In our fields?"

Aymara yanked her arm from beneath his hand. "By Zadini’s first breath! You know I’ve always forbidden Memshi to hunt in your fields. Why do you think I’d send her now? She hunts in the forest."

"But there’s no more game in the forest!" a man yelled.

"Memshi is a better hunter than any of us."

"So you sent her to finish off the last of the wild beasts?" demanded Borsley. "Even though you knew the rest of us depend on what we can find in the forest, too?"

She stared at him. First, he accused her of letting her great cat hunt in the village fields. Now he was blaming her because he was unable to find game. She looked around the room again. Cold clamped over her shoulder blades, making it nearly impossible to draw a breath, for the others were nodding in agreement.

Had the darkness driven everyone mad? What had she heard someone call it? Moons-sickness? She’d laughed upon hearing that, because there was nothing in moonslight to make someone mad. But she often felt as if something crawled beneath her skin, keeping her awake at night and on edge during the day. Did everyone feel that sensation? Were they having a hard time drawing each breath, as if the unending night was crushing them?

"Memshi has hunted in the forest for as long as I’ve had her," Aymara said. "I haven’t asked her to hunt anywhere else."

"Why should you?" he bellowed. "You have plenty to eat."

She wanted to laugh and to cry. He was wrong. There wasn’t plenty in the larder and the cellars. The supplies were dwindling with each passing meal, but she was trying to stretch what remained. Not that it mattered because one night soon there’d be no more food.

"Here," she heard from behind her.

She took the bowl Dester gave her. In the bowl was stew from the big pot on the cooking hearth.

"Thank you," she murmured. She set the bowl on the counter. "Here’s your meal, Borsley. If you want ale, there’s an open keg in the corner. Usual price."

He lifted the bowl and sniffed. "It smells like rot."

"We don’t cook rotten meat. We could get sick."

"It smells like rot."

She shook her head. "That’s impossible!"

"Smell it for yourself."

Aymara ducked as he tried to shove the bowl into her face. Stew splattered on the wall behind her and sizzled on the cooking hearth. Dester wiped hot gravy off his arm as he pulled Gretti toward the storage room. Hakken looked from them to Aymara, uncertain what to do. She motioned for him to go into the storage room too. He’d be safe there, or so she hoped.

"Are you out of your mind, Borsley?" she cried. "We cannot waste food now. We don’t have that much left."

He grabbed her. "Where’s the rest of the food?"

"In the pot."

"No, I mean the rest of the food!"

She was not quick enough to avoid his fist. It hit her cheek, and she reeled backward. Her foot slipped on gravy. She fell onto the hearth. Pain thudded through her, then congealed where he’d struck her. The room receded into blackness. She longed to lean her head on her knees as nausea swirled through her.

Hakken rushed to her, crying in terror.

She put her arm around him. She had to make sure no one hurt him or the tavern. It was her tavern, a legacy from her family. She could not wallow in her pain. She bounced to her feet. Her eyes refused to focus, but she had to act.

Borsley vaulted over the counter, screaming about food. She stepped out of his way, and he struck the stone wall beside the hearth. He careened back, snorting like a wounded beast. Past him, others ran to get the food in the pot on the cooking hearth. She heard a scream and a crash as someone was knocked down. Nobody stopped to help. They just kept coming, trampling the person who had fallen.

A man shouted for them to stop. Dester? Someone else? She couldn’t tell. She heard a chair break, then a thump as a senseless body dropped onto a table. Pottery shattered, and people shrieked in terror. They weren’t, she realized, afraid of being hurt in the rush, but of being denied a meal.

"Give me my food!" Borsley tried to snatch Hakken from her.

Slashing upward with the knife, she sliced through his sleeve and into flesh. His howl of pain was lost beneath a savage roar.

Memshi!

The large cat leaped onto the wooden counter. It quivered beneath Memshi’s weight, for the cat’s head reached to Aymara’s shoulder when they stood side-by-side. Four yellow eyes fastened on Borsley, and the black stripes on her blue-gray fur bristled. Claws as long and wide as Aymara’s fingers dug into the wood. Memshi drew back her lips to reveal honed teeth. She surveyed the room slowly, and the people cowered. All four eyes converged again on Borsley, and the cat’s tongue swept along its teeth.

"No!" Borsley screamed, clutching his bleeding arm. "Call her off! Call her off!"

Aymara motioned to Memshi to stay where she was. The big cat turned her head again to affix each person with her fierce stare. The people backed away, now as eager to scatter as they had been to claim the food.

There were no other cats of Memshi’s size in the village. It was said such felines once lived in great numbers along the slopes of Wind Mountain, but Memshi was the only one of her kind Aymara had ever seen.

The smith Trellor Forge and his two assistants, who were no taller than Hakken, were the sole ones who didn’t cringe in terror. The smith jerked a man to his feet, sending him lurching toward a back corner. Beneath where the man had been were the remnants of a chair. Then Trellor walked toward the counter. He bent to assist an old woman up and sat her at a table. He pressed a cloth to her bloody forehead.

Aymara nodded her thanks to Trellor, then looked at Borsley. The man was trembling as the cat’s upper pair of eyes remained riveted on him while the lower set watched to make sure no one came closer.

"Go back around the counter." Aymara pointed with the bloodied blade. "Wait there until everyone else gets their share of food." As he started to obey, she added in the same snarling tone he’d used, "If you touch Hakken or me or anyone else in the tavern again, tonight will be your last meal here."

Borsley’s face became gray and the room silent. Her threat meant starvation. Shuffling around the counter, he sat at the longest table. His vow-mate glared at Aymara, then bent and tore a piece of fabric from her jacket to wrap around his arm.

Aymara whispered, "Thank you, Memshi."

The cat made a sound deep in her throat and bounded back to the floor with a surprisingly light thump. The people waiting for food gave her a wide berth as, with tail swishing in anger, she left the tavern’s main room.

"Are you all right, Aymara?" asked Hakken, his voice frantic. "That man hit you. He shouldn’t have hit you."

"It’s all right, and I’m all right." She tousled his hair, hoping he didn’t see how her fingers shook.

"You aren’t all right. You’re hurt, Aymara."

She should have known better than to try to lie to the boy. He always knew when she was being false. Trying to smile, and then wincing as the motion ached across her skull, she said, "I will be all right. Now I need to serve the meal."

Dester crept out of the storeroom when she called, but Gretti didn’t reappear. Sending Hakken to sit with Gretti on the excuse that the pregnant woman might need something, Aymara silently took the bowls Dester filled. Her fingers quivered as she handed them to her hungry neighbors, but no one seemed to notice. They were too eager to get their share of tonight’s food. The whispered panic faded into relief, then contentment as the people began to eat. Even Borsley and his vow-mate thanked her when she held out bowls to them.

"You’re generous to offer him another serving." Trellor the smith took two bowls and handed them to the short men who worked with him. Unlike their thick beards, which were singed by sparks off the forge, he was clean-shaven.

Taking their share to the warming hearth, the two short men walked one behind the other as they always did. Metal studs decorated their belts and the bands covering each wrist. The lineage rings they wore on the smallest fingers of their right hands were wider than Trellor’s.

"In spite of what some people believe, I don’t intend to let anyone starve as long as there’s food." She smiled sadly. "Even though I don’t think starving together is any better a future than starving one at a time."

He picked up another bowl in his broad hands which were rough from work at his smithy. They were stained as black as his hair, but his roughly sculptured face was clean. Like his assistants, beneath his jacket he wore a leather jerkin and trousers. His dark green eyes flashed with remnants of fury, reminding her of Memshi’s.

"That’s a grim thought," he said as he turned to join the others.

"It’s the truth."

He faced her again. "I’m not ready to lie down and die yet."

"Neither was Borsley."

"Unlike him, I know better than to waste my stew by throwing it in your face." He frowned. "You should put something cold on that cheek. It’s going to bruise."

She arched a brow, then wished she hadn’t when the motion tugged at her cheek. "Maybe I’ll bruise, but he’s going to scar."

Trellor chuckled and went to join his assistants.

When Dester handed her a bowl for Hakken, who skipped out of the storage room, she set the little boy on the edge of the hearth to eat.

"It becomes worse every night, Dester." She folded her arms, wishing her hands would stop shaking. She glanced at the open front door edged on either side by two narrow windows. "I’m surprised we even know when night is any longer."

"It’ll be better when the new emperor sets the sky in motion again." He’d worked in the tavern almost as long as Aymara had, and he always looked, even now, on the bright side. She wished she had his simple faith.

"But where will the new emperor come from?" demanded Gretti as she came to stand near the hearth. "The sky?"

"You know what the wizard-sages say. The new emperor will come on wings to watch over us."

"But how can anyone come through the sky when it’s frozen?"

Dester shrugged. "The Emperor wouldn’t leave us without someone to take his place."

"You’re listening to wishful thinking. If there’d been someone to become the new emperor, don’t you think the title would have been claimed by now?"

"Maybe he can’t."

"Or chooses not to."

"Can one choose not to become the emperor?" Dester’s brow furrowed.

Aymara, aware of Hakken eavesdropping, intruded to say, "Here come more villagers. We’ll need some more stew. Dester, will you get another handful of blue tubers?"

"There aren’t any more," he said, his smile wavering. Even his optimism was being tested now.

"Then get some red ones."

"Let me help," Hakken offered.

She bent and kissed the child’s pudgy cheek. "Thank you, Hakken." She lowered her voice. "Be careful when you walk up and down the stairs."

"I always am." He skipped away to follow Dester down into the cellars.

Straightening, Aymara released the sigh battering her lips. She’d learned how difficult it was for a child with wings to walk down a stairwell. He couldn’t fly back up, because his stunted wings weren’t strong enough.

She’d tried to ignore his wings since she’d discovered them that first morning in the tavern. The great being that had served as the Emperor was said to have had wings. She’d heard them described as majestic and awe-inspiring, wings even more powerful than those of Lady Jacey’s firebirds. Hakken’s wings were nothing like that, for his were as lacy and fragile as an insect’s, but no one else in the village had wings.

Dester’s and Gretti’s words echoed in her head. Hakken had wings and abilities no other child had. Could he be the one expected to claim the title? When she’d found him outside the tavern, he could have been on his way to the Emperor’s Celestial Palace at Nadux which lay beyond Fire Mountain. The high pass between Lord Zahe’s Wind Mountain and Lady Jacey’s Fire Mountain was visible from the village. The child had been disoriented and not known his name, so she’d often wondered if he’d seen something so horrible had stolen his memory. Could it be worse than when everyone in her family had died from their wounds within hours of each other? She wished she could leave the memory of that horrific time behind as she must everything else when she left the village. There was nothing left for her and Hakken here, and she wanted answers to the questions that had plagued her since Hakken’s arrival. No one in the village could help. Would someone at the Celestial Palace, where there were said to be many wizard-sages, know? She should go and find out. Yet, she had lingered, doing her duties, hoping the sky would move again and all would be as it had been before the emperor’s death.

"We need more ground meal for the stew," Gretti said.

Aymara shook off the thoughts she’d tried, without much luck, to push to the back of her mind since the moons had halted. "I’ll get it. How much?"

"This much." She took a tankard from the mantel. "If there’s still that much left."

"I think there is."

Gretti smiled. "That’s the best tidings I’ve heard in days."

With the tankard, Aymara went to the larder. She paused in the doorway to look back. The villagers were talking calmly beneath the smoke-stained rafters. They were so scared. She was too, and she was glad she could give them some comfort. She wished she could offer herself some of the same.

She looked toward the door, hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, the moons were moving, and the endless night was about to be expelled by the dawn.

But beyond the door, the moons were immobile.

It was another red night.

Text Copyright Jo Ann Ferguson  2007
Website Copyright ImaJinn Books 2007