Storm furies earc, p.1
Storm Furies - eARC, page 1
Table of Contents
1: AFTERMATH
2: LOST IN THE WOODS
3: PLEASE STAND BY
4: THE EYES HAVE IT
5: MURDER HOUSE
6: THE TIME HAS COME TO TALK OF MANY THINGS
7: EVEN MONEY
8: A GRAVE MISTAKE
9: FLYING THE NEST
10: LOST YOUR MITTENS, YOU NAUGHTY KITTENS! THEN YOU SHALL HAVE NO PIE.
11: STORM FURY SIX
12: BURNING BRIDGES
13: ENTER THE GODDESS OF WAR
14: CRY “HAVOC!” AND LET SLIP THE GODDESS OF WAR
15: WOLF WHO RULES WIND
16: A BIRD IN HAND
17: GATHERING FORCES
18: TEARS IN THE RAIN
19: HIDE AND SEEK
20: BETWEEN A STONE AND A HARD PLACE
21: WHIZBANGS AND WHATNOTS
22: THE MONSTER MASH
23: IT WAS A GRAVEYARD SMASH
24: FLYING THE COOP
25: THIS TRAIN IS BOUND FOR GLORY
26: ONE SHOT TO RULE THEM ALL
27: FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE WILLIAM PENN HOTEL
28: FORGING NEW TIES
29: THE BATTLE BUT NOT THE WAR
30: A HARD DAY’S NIGHT
31: STANDING DOWN
32: BLUE MOON, YOU SAW ME STANDING ALONE
33: MERCY
34: PANTY RAID TAKE TWO
35: BIRD IN HAND
36: FORCE OF NATURE
37: I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER
38: FORTRESS OF FURNITURE
39: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
40: DISTANT VOICES
41: WHEN A CHICKEN IS NOT A CHICKEN
42: A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME
43: THE JENGA TOWER OF DOOM
44: WHEN A BOX IS NOT A BOX
45: LEMON-LIME JEL-LO
46: STORM FURIES
STORM FURIES - eARC
WEN SPENCER
Look for the final version on August 6, 2024
Advanced Reader Copy
Unproofed
Baen
Storm Furies
Wen Spencer
THE GODDESS OF WAR RIDES, HERALDED BY STORM FURIES
The oni have invaded Pittsburgh on Elfhome. And, so far, it looks like they are winning. All this is according to prophecy. But the prophecy is big on symbols and light on specifics. Tinker and her allies are doing the best they can to defend the city and the civilians caught in the crossfire of a war between elves that’s been brewing for centuries. But the enemy has no hesitation whatsoever in involving innocents. All the pieces in this deadly game are in place—and everyone trusts Tinker will save them. All she needs is a plan. And then the lights go out, and the storm begins to rage. . . .
BAEN BOOKS by WEN SPENCER
THE ELFHOME SERIES
Tinker
Wolf Who Rules
Elfhome
Wood Sprites
Project Elfhome
Harbinger
Storm Furies
ALSO BY WEN SPENCER
Endless Blue
Eight Million Gods
The Black Wolves of Boston
To purchase any of these titles in e-book form,
please go to www.baen.com.
Storm Furies
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Wen Spencer
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 978-1-9821-9354-6
Cover art by Dominic Harman
First printing, August 2024
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Spencer, Wen, author.
Title: Storm furies / Wen Spencer.
Description: Riverdale, NY : Baen Books, 2024. | Series: Elfhome ; 7
Identifiers: LCCN 2024011070 (print) | LCCN 2024011071 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982193546 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781625799715 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Elves—Fiction. | LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3619.P4665 S76 2024 (print) | LCC PS3619.P4665 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20240318
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024011070
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024011071
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Electronic version by Baen Books
www.baen.com
This book is dedicated to my wonderful patrons on Patreon.
It is through their support that I am able to do what I do.
Special thanks to
Marti Garner
Roger A. Josephson
Andrew Riley Prest
Mary Sithe
Torsten Steinert
Elisabeth Waters
And
Alisha
Kathy Brann
Andrew Hart
Jacquelyn L. Jacobs
Richard Jamison
Anders Ljungquist
Alice Ma
Albert McCann
Clemens Ladisch
William Wagner
Robert Williamson
And an Extra-Special Thank-You to
Dr. Hope Ring
Dr. Nan Nueslle
Ellen McMicking
1: AFTERMATH
“Right.” Tinker bounced in place, thinking frantically. “Change of plans.”
She’d been woken up in the middle of the night with the news that she had somehow acquired six siblings, four of which hadn’t been born yet. Nevertheless, said unborn babies were terrorizing the neighborhood as talking mice. How? She hadn’t a clue although a certain pocket-sized dragon was certainly involved. The day had gone downhill from there. Currently an unknown number of oni warriors were attacking Oakland and all the domana elves might all be dead.
She was at the Tinker Domi Computer and Research Center with all five of the sekasha warriors who made up her Hand. Rainlily had left in the morning to take a message to Windwolf but had caught back up with her on Stormsong’s Delta. It meant for vehicles that they had a Rolls-Royce, a hoverbike, and whatever Tinker could commandeer from the EIA. The research center sat at the edge of the North Side, meaning that they would need to cross the Allegheny River to reach Oakland. There were seven bridges that they could take—more if they made a wide enough circle—but that would eat up time. The Veterans Bridge was the most logical place to cross—but the oni had ambushed her on it once this summer already. Dusk was falling; they only had another hour or so of daylight left, but it also meant that they would soon have the cover of darkness. A storm was blowing in. The white canvas tent over the casting circle billowed, threatening to be torn from its stakes. The towering line of windmills hummed loudly, changing the pitch of their blades to keep them from spinning too fast. Judging by the strength of the wind, Pittsburgh was in for a fierce thunderstorm. She might be able to work the storm to her advantage but it meant that using the hoverbike would be risky.
“We had a plan?” Only Stormsong dared to ask.
The other four sekasha warriors looked confused but they weren’t questioning Tinker. Bless them: she really didn’t have any good answers at the moment.
“Yes, I had a plan.” Tinker had learned when fighting against people who could see the future, it was best not to talk about what she was doing. She hadn’t told her Hand what she planned just in case someone was “listening in.” “I was going to hide away and be clever.” Said aloud, it wasn’t much of a plan. “There was a little more than that. I was going to make some…things.” If the EIA came through, she still might make something unexpected, so she’d better not talk about it. “I thought I would have more time.”
Tooloo had said that it could be a matter of minutes before the spell would go off, but at first, Tinker hadn’t believed her. Why did the crazy old elf have to talk in riddles? What did the chicken and weird mismatched chess pieces have to do with the mess Pittsburgh was in now? How bad of a mess was it?
Up to a minute ago, Tinker had felt rapid-fire calls to all three Spell Stones that she could tap. Windwolf, Prince True Blood, and the Stone Clan had been fighting deep in the forest to the east. Forge and Jewel Tear had been scoping out the oni forces attacking Oakland. Everything had stopped so abruptly that she was afraid that the oni’s attack spell had killed the others. She, Oilcan, and the twins had been safe within a shield when the spell hit. All the other elves in Pittsburgh had been unprotected.
“I’m not sure what the oni’s spell did but the other domana seem…incapacitated,” Tinker said as she waited for the other domana to act; to prove that they were still alive. “What did the oni do? Did they kill all the other elves?”
“They could not, not without great risk to themselves,” Pony said. “The ‘greater blood oni’ are in truth nothing but Skin Clan elves hiding behind a façade. In ancient times, before we were immortal, the Skin Clan would test their spell working on their slaves and then interbreed with the successes to bring the desired result into their bloodlines. They are largely as we are. Any spell aimed at the masses will strike t
Tinker nodded, clinging tight to the logic of it. The fear that Windwolf and the others were dead lurked deep within her chest. It was a dark, painful thing and she was desperate to ignore it. “So the oni could have just…broken the domana’s link to the Spell Stones? It would explain why the others stopped casting. The domana use a genetic key to create a link. But each clan has a different genetic key. How could the oni have taken out the Fire Clan and the Stone Clan in one shot?”
“It has always been a closely guarded secret as to how the wood sprites created the domana link to the various Spell Stones.” Pony glanced at Stormsong. “You were trained by the Wyverns. Did they know anything about the genetic key?”
Stormsong clicked her tongue in the equivalent of an elven shrug. “Only that the clans insisted that they alone would be able to access their Spell Stones. Even before the end of the Rebellion, the seeds of the Clan War were growing. Whatever the wood sprites used as their key, it is very dominant. I have never heard of any domana who could not access their clan’s esva.”
She paused a moment, tilting her head in confusion. “Although, now that I think of it, Wolf has been the only one that ever had access to two esva. Not even his siblings could tap both sets of Spell Stones. It was so singular that there was no precedence for how he would be trained. There was a great debate over whether he would be trained on both esva; there were many who said that he only should be given access to the Spell Stones of the clan that he chose to join. My mother—”
“Your mother what?” Tinker asked when Stormsong stopped abruptly, mouth open, her eyes scanning quickly as if reading ancient text a second time.
“My mother…my mother is Pure Radiance, head of the intanyai seyosa caste, greatest ever born after the legendary Vision—”
“Yes, I know who your mother is,” Tinker said, cutting her off impatiently.
“My mother was the author of the marriages between the head of the Clans and King Ashfall’s children. She insisted that Wolf be trained on both esva and martial arts.” Stormsong swore softly in English before falling back to Elvish. “She was the one who encouraged Flame Heart to bear ten children until one was born being able to use both esva.”
In other words, Pure Radiance arranged to have a specific child born, trained in war, and then shipped across the ocean to fight the oni because she foresaw the need of someone like Windwolf.
“Shit,” Tinker whispered. “If she set Windwolf up for this, then he might have been immune to the spell. But if that’s true, why isn’t he tapping the Spell Stones?”
“He could still be in shock,” Pony said. “Remember that you slept for days after your transformation. Even if he was not changed, he could be unconscious.”
Unconscious in the middle of a battle. Tinker swore softly. She wanted to race to Windwolf’s side but she didn’t even know where to find him. The troops had left by train the day before and planned to march into the virgin forest after disembarking at some vague spot alongside the track. Rainlily could get her to the spot where the troops camped. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard to find Windwolf’s trail as the army cut through the woods. Prince True Flame had emptied Pittsburgh of royal marines. They had taken thousands of the red coated soldiers with them.
“Your responsibility lies with the enclaves,” Pony said as if guessing her thoughts. “Wolf has sworn to protect his Beholden. As his domi, it falls to you to protect them when he cannot. You cannot abandon them.”
“Right.” Tinker grabbed hold of her hair, resisting the urge to pull it out in frustration. “How long can the shields on the enclaves stand against the oni?”
“The shields were designed to be effective against the dangers which are common to our world: spell arrows, force strike, black willows and the like,” Pony said. “Sparrow was to oversee improving the enclave shields to work against human weapons but there were always delays in the effort.”
Sparrow had been a Skin Clan mole. Of course she would have kept the shields from being improved. It stood to reason that the oni had a means to breach the shields. It meant that no matter what, she needed to go to Oakland and defend the enclaves.
“We have a new plan?” Stormsong prodded.
Tinker held up a hand to hold off questions. She was still thinking furiously. The six of them couldn’t take on an army. What could they do? What should she do? Tooloo seemed to think Tinker could fix everything if she just…just…just what?
“I know you’re clever,” Tooloo had said. “You can figure this out without me showing you how the pieces are arrayed in this deadly game and reminding you how they move.”
Tinker took out her datapad and looked at the pictures of Tooloo’s chessboard. Tooloo had set up a Queen’s Gambit with Tinker as the black player. It would suggest that, in terms of a game, the oni had moved first. What was Tooloo considering the first move? The start of Vision’s ancient feud with her creator? The Skin Clan’s invasion of Pittsburgh after the first Shutdown? Or was it the attack on Windwolf that Tinker blocked by saving him?
The white pawn had been a small plastic monkey figurine with both hands clapped over its mouth. Lain and Esme Shenske had nicknamed their younger half brothers “Flying Monkey Four and Five.” Tinker wasn’t sure who One, Two, and Three were—their stepbrother Yves Desmarais and themselves? Chloe Polanski could be considered “Flying Monkey Number Six” since she was Lain and Esme’s younger half sister. It felt right to say that the little plastic monkey statue represented Chloe.
It suggested that when Tinker killed Chloe, she accepted the Queen’s Gambit. The tactic in chess meant that she had traded the ability to control the center of the board for greater mobility of her pieces. But what did that mean in the real world? What did Tooloo expect her to do? Should Tinker even be considering doing anything that Tooloo wanted her to do? Who knew if Tooloo’s desired outcome was even morally correct? Did Tooloo want all the domana dead? She certainly acted like they were evil incarnate. Tooloo had tried to keep Tinker from interacting with Windwolf, lying to her about the possible outcome.
Sort of lied.
Tooloo was correct that the human child she helped raise no longer existed; Tinker had been transformed into an elf with all the domana bells and whistles. Tooloo said by becoming Windwolf’s domi, Tinker had allowed Pure Radiance to get the upper hand. Her daughter used Tinker as poisoned bait in a trap for the oni. Most of the summer had gone—not as Tooloo wanted, but as she had foreseen.
Vision and her daughter had some kind of running war that had spanned thousands of years. Which one did Tinker want to win? How could Tinker know when both weren’t telling her the stakes?
Tinker started to walk fast toward the computer lab while thinking furiously. She didn’t have time for chessboard riddles. If the oni had broken the domanas’ link to the Spell Stones, then she and Oilcan were the only heavy hitters left. She didn’t want Oilcan fighting a horde of oni—Iron Mace’s death already weighed heavily on him. Nor did she want to wade into battle alone. The chances of her messing up and getting everyone killed were too high. She needed more people.
She pulled out her phone and swore. It had no signal. “Oh, no, not now!”
“What is it, domi?” Pony asked.
“I need Jin Wong to call the Flock. I need the tengu in Oakland en masse. He’s probably still in the city—someplace.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pony and Stormsong flash through blade talk and then Stormsong dashed off, toward her hoverbike. Tinker nodded in agreement with her Hand’s decision. It wouldn’t take Stormsong long to find a tengu scout; she was Pure Radiance’s daughter. It might take longer to path her way to Jin but he could use his “calling all tengu” ability to marshal them in the city.
