The Arm of the Stone

Long ago, when the worlds were one…

So begins the Tale, the ancestral legend Bron’s family has guarded for a thousand years. Once, they were the keepers of the Stone, an object of vast and mysterious power from which, it is believed, all the gifts of Mind are drawn. But when the conflict between Mind and Hand split the worlds apart, the Stone was seized by an ambitious sorcerer. To keep the new world from contamination, he created the Order of Guardians to oversee draconian Limits circumscribing tools, technology, and knowledge—laws brutally enforced by a group of Guardians known as the Arm of the Stone.

For centuries, Bron’s family has concealed the secret of its heritage. But when Bron’s brother violates the Limits—an unpardonable heresy in the world of the Guardians—the Arm of the Stone reaches in to tear them apart. Fleeing for his life, Bron vows vengeance. To bring the Guardians down, he will become a Guardian himself, and strike them from within. But Bron cannot know how much that choice will change him. Nor does he anticipate the hatred of a powerful enemy, or the love of a beautiful Guardian named Liliane…whose mission is to destroy him.

Scroll down for an excerpt, or download Chapter 1

Check out Book 2 of the Stone duology: The Garden of the Stone

---

PRAISE

This book was so compelling that I put everything else aside and read it. It is a really brilliant novel…a most unusual and fascinating novel, exceedingly well done.
– Anne McCaffrey –

Involving fantasy…treated with unusual depth.
– Locus –

The Arm of the Stone is an intelligent, fascinating novel…the complicated politics and social structure of this world give it a depth most fantasy novels lack.
– SF Site –

A rich story about human nature, this fantasy is a thought-provoking page-turner. The characters are deeply etched, and the plot turns are credible yet arresting…A thoroughly enjoyable read.
– Kliatt –

Excellently crafted…Strauss has created a world rich in detail, fascinating characters whom you instantly like or dislike and who never lose your interest…I look forward to seeing more of her intriguing work.
– Vector (Journal of the British SF Association) –

Neatly avoiding many of the cliches that seem to permeate the epic fantasy genre, Strauss creates a world from a fascinating premise. An exciting and unusual novel which lovers of epic fantasy will not want to miss.
– The Internet Writing Journal-

Once I started reading this book, I couldn’t put it down.
– Paul Goat Allen, B&N Explorations –

Highly recommended…I’m not above begging for another intelligent, well-crafted work by this excellent author.
– Under the Covers Book Reviews –

This intricately wrought fantasy is built layer upon carefully crafted layer to create a well thought out and beautifully constructed world…an outstanding fantasy novel.
– Diana Tixier Herald for Genreflecting –

The Arm of the Stone delivers both an engrossing trip through the story and one of the most impressive climaxes seen in the genre of late.
– Sharon Schultz-Elsing for Curled Up With a Good Book –

I was mesmerized by the dialogue, the characterization, the way all the people in this rich tale came together…This book will leave you breathless and wanting more.
– Titan Magazine –

---

EXCERPT

The Roundhead leader lowered the scroll. No one moved or spoke. On the dais, Serle stared straight ahead. He gave no sign of having heard the harsh phrases of his sentence.

Bron gazed up at his brother’s blank, bruised face. He was numb, the kind of numbness that precedes agonizing pain. The physical reality of punishment—the lashing, the House of Re-education, the harsh Watch that was the price of the family’s survival—seemed somehow less terrible than the excision of Serle’s name. With a few words he had been transformed into a ghost, his existence canceled, as if he had never lived at all.

Next to Bron, Annis was sobbing into her hands. Elene and Olesin wept into their mother’s skirts. Alse’s fists were clenched, her fingers white.

“It’s not death, Alse.” Jevon placed shaking hands on her shoulders.

“I prayed for death.” Her voice was dry and hard. “Death would be kinder.”

The Roundhead leader made a summoning gesture. One of the burly villagers came forward. He unlocked the manacles on Serle’s hands and removed Serle’s shirt, then tied a strip of cloth around Serle’s eyes and thrust a piece of wood between his teeth. Turning Serle roughly about, he bound him to the stake by the wrists, stretching his arms above his head.

The second villager raised a whip. It had a short handle, and six flexible braided-leather thongs. It would cut the skin on the first lash, and with the twentieth lay bare the bone.

The Roundhead leader held up her hand. The lashman drew back his arm. The sun, beating down from a cloudless sky, flooded the faces of the villagers, spilled across the dais, lit to unbearable brightness the officials and the Roundheads and Serle’s straining arms and broad white back. Bron’s senses swam. He had dreamed this, exactly, the night before.

“One,” the Roundhead leader said.

The whip whistled as it traveled through the air. There was a sharp crack as it made contact with flesh. Six thin red lines sprang up on Serle’s back. He made no sound.

“Two,” the Roundhead leader said. The lash fell again, a second set of welts neatly crossing the first.

A simmering pressure had begun to grow inside Bron’s head. Distantly, he could hear weeping—Annis, Elene, Olesin—and strange muffled noises from Alse. He saw Serle’s arms jerk with each blow, his hands clenched on the rope that tethered them to the stake. He saw the passionless faces of the Roundheads, their duty done, the smug gravity of the town officials, secure in the delivery of a justice that did not fall on them. Behind him he felt the crowd, drinking up his brother’s anguish, their own virtue affirmed by each snap of the whip.

With the sixth lash Serle cried out, an awful ragged sound. Bron knew what the loss of control must cost his brother. The lash fell again; again, Serle cried out.

With that second cry, the pressure in Bron’s head broke. Deep inside him, in the darkest spaces of his secret self, something arrowed toward the light. His barriers yielded like shredding cloth. The thing tore through the layers of his consciousness, flooding his mind and body as if he were no more than a vessel to be filled. Still it swelled, until he could no longer hold it and it exploded out of him, a cataclysmic burst that almost took his consciousness with it, a tidal wave sweeping irresistibly over the crowd, the square, the whole of the village.

Time stopped.

Beside Bron, Annis was as still as stone. On the dais, the lash hung in midair and the counting Roundhead stood immobile, her mouth open on a number yet unspoken. The crowd was motionless, suspended between one breath and another; in the sky, frozen birds stretched unmoving wings. Every living thing was caught and held.

All but Bron. He was the center of this vast silence, the fulcrum of a delicate balance. Power spread from him, effortless, a great web of it, so great he could not feel its boundary. He did not know why the power was there or where it had come from—yet he understood that whatever he wished, he had only to think of it and it would be so.

He thought of Serle’s bonds, broken; and they were. He thought of Serle, released from stillness; and he was.

It took Serle a moment to realize that he was no longer bound. Slowly he lowered his hands. He turned, his face bewildered, like someone in a dream. He looked at the broken ropes about his wrists, at the hanging lash and the arrested crowd. There was a pause that seemed to last forever. Then, quick as a cat, he turned and leaped across the dais. He hurled himself into the crowd, toppling bodies like trees, and was gone.

The power was no longer effortless. Sparks danced at the edges of Bron’s vision. His mind and body strained. Grimly he held on, but determination was not enough. His strength gave out all at once. The power vanished like the collapse of mountains. Darkness rushed in to fill the void where it had been.

Want more? Download the first chapter

---