The Sacrifice of Pawns

When Julie asked me to submit a story to her anthology set in the universe of her Clan Chronicles series, I was delighted.

I went to work rereading the first three books immediately, looking for an under-explored character to expand on. I found one in Kurr di Sarc, a character who appears only by name in the first book of the series but is of great importance to one of the book’s main characters.

Sitting on the cafe’s patio, Kurr could watch the steady flow of beings past its railings. He relaxed and let his mind drift outward. After a short time, he sensed the barest whisper in his mind against his shields, like a question. Raising his head, Kurr’s met the intense stare of a stranger’s face through a gap in the crowd for just a mo- ment before it was hidden from view.

How odd.

Reaching out through the M’hir to try and sense that other mind again revealed nothing. Its feel had been M’hiray, but not a sense of familiar power. Nor was the face one he knew. Who, then? If he’d been weaker, he might not have sensed it. Now it was gone or shielded. Or, more likely, he’d just imagined it after three days of too little rest. What Human had Power to concern him? As he ate, he continued observing the beings around him, but there was no sense again of the earlier presence. He put it out of his mind.

“The Sacrifice of Pawns” is available in the the anthology The Clan Chronicles: Tales from Plexis, edited by Julie E. Czerneda and published by DAW books and available by order from local bookstores or from Amazon, Indigo and others.