Martin Cahill‘s next novel is Audition for the Fox, a story of tricksters, acolytes, and found family. It is due to be published by Tachyon Publications next month. To celebrate the upcoming release, the publisher has provided CR with an excerpt to share with our readers! First, though, here’s the synopsis:
A trickster Fox god challenges a quick-witted (but underachieving) acolyte to save herself by saving her own ancestors. But are Nesi and her new friends from the past prepared to defeat the ferocious Wolfhounds of Zemin?
Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.
In folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.
Now, Nesi must learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.
*
Moments before and still three hundred years away, Nesi stood in the Temple of the Divine Embrace and, not for the first time, had a panic attack about her future.
“You don’t need to pick one right now, Nesi.”
Authoritative Ren stood behind her, implacable as the rising sun, mood as cool as a summer’s blue moon. Moments after her parents had unceremoniously left her on the temple stairs all those years ago, face tearstained and Granny gone less than a month, a young boy had approached. And even though he was no older than she, he had taken her hand with a kindness and confidence Nesi had not experienced in almost a month. Together, he had led her inside her new home. Later, she found out that he had dedicated himself to a life of teaching as an Authoritative when he was only eight years old.
For the last decade, he’d guided her within the halls of the Embrace, and one by one, he’d seen her fail ninety-six auditions with ninety-six Pillars.
Boar, Goat, and Bat.
Gecko, Hen, and Whale.
Jaguar, Spider, and Ocelot.
No Pillar of Heaven wanted Nesi as their acolyte.
Chewing on the aggravated skin around her fingernails, Nesi stood in the sprawling prayer den of the Embrace, where stood the ninety-nine idols of the Pillars Everlasting.
Her eyes darted between the dozens of Pillars she had auditioned for in her youth, sloppy and anxious, who had sent her out of their divine domains with nary a whisker twitch of thought or rumble of constructive criticism. Next were the dozens more who spoke with her after halting first auditions, after she’d winced through half-remembered prayers and hazy understandings of their domains, who’d put a kind paw or flipper or wing to her cheek with a “Don’t pray to us, we’ll pray to you, my child,” as kind a rejection as one could get from a god. And still, there were the twice baker’s dozen for whom she’d made it past the first round, and upon returning for a trial, she’d humiliated herself somehow, in front of not just the Pillar, but also their current acolytes, months and months of practice wasted, all thanks to nerves or fear.
Nesi knew she was a laughingstock. That no one discussed her dismal fortune in front of her only spoke to the rigorous training of the temple, not any sort of compassion. Ninety-six auditions, and all of them a failure? It was its own sort of training, being ridiculed, being lonely. It weathered her heart, digging deeper the well of her own compassion; that if she had the power, she’d make it so that no one ever had to feel the way she felt on those terrible nights of returning from yet another failed trial.
As the evening light began to wane, Authoritative Ren watched with trepidation as she glanced between three Pillars, the final three. There would be no more Pillars after them.
Ghu’Eujo, the Lion of War.
Qwi’linis, the Serpent of Assassination.
T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.
“You really don’t have to pick one tonight, Nesi,” he said, his voice soft, practically pleading. It was the tone taken whenever he was desperate for her to be patient. He kept his hands behind his back, she knew, to resist cleaning his glasses. He only did that when he was anxious, and she could tell it was all he wanted in this moment. But still, he stood, and waited. A good friend, Ren. She could stand to tell him that more often.
Nesi studied the wooden idols of the three Pillars left to audition for. The Lion of War’s was massive, an old ironwood stump that had been slashed and carved, painted red and gold, symbolic of the warblooded and pride-marks across the Lycanth plains; it made for a fierce mask of defiance and carnage. The Serpent of Assassination’s was a winding jet-black wood, glittering with hints of gold and silver along its night-dark, sinuous design; rumor was the original dedicant who carved it died from a sudden heart attack the night they finished it.
The orange and butter and cream mask of the Fox’s caught her eye, seeming to stare back at her, elegant and mysterious yet reeking of cunning and slyness. It was slight, so slight that you might almost miss it, but Nesi thought she caught the glimpse of a grin in the grain of the wood.
Gods, when had her hands started shaking?
“Ren,” she said, voice as small as Li’po the Mouse, “what happens if no Pillar accepts me as an acolyte?”
Ren, bless his hearth, did not sigh as he told her for what seemed the fiftieth time that year. It came up almost every week’s end dinner, it seemed.
“If you are found wanting in the eyes of all the Pillars, then you will stay here at the Temple of the Divine Embrace and you will pray, performing works of charity and labor. Then, you can try again for patronage after a few years. The wisdom you glean in your time of study and service will do you well, I promise.”
“And if it doesn’t? If I keep failing?”
Like all godsblooded kids, Nesi knew what she looked like through obsidian glass, knew that even when the power of her great-grandfather was nascent within her, she shined with the dawn light of the Pillars. And like all godsblooded kids, she knew: if she went into the world without patronage, training, or both, there were a lot of corners of the Foundation she would not survive long enough to enjoy.
Damn the power in her blood that tempted alchemist and addict alike, damn those hopeless little demi-gods of old, glutted on divinity and magic with no brain cells to split between them. Damn her great-grandmother for her loving and tender affair of two years with the Bison of Journeys before he did what he did and wandered afield, but not before leaving her with a little human calf.
Damn herself most of all. Years of auditioning and Nesi had failed out with almost every Pillar that existed, including her own great-fucking-grandfather. She’d never be so haunted as when she stared into the amber-thick-as-honey eyes of a god and truly saw herself in them for the first time. And then to feel the utter embarrassment as he shook his massive, shaggy head, flicked his long tail, and said, “Are you sure you’re Joni’s little one?”
There was something particularly heartrending about hearing a god speak of you in doubt, especially one you were related to.
“No,” she said, surprised at the iron in her voice. Turning from him, Nesi walked up to the Fox. She grabbed a stick of incense, lit it off the end of a ceremonial candle and put it in the sand at the foot of the wooden Pillar. “I don’t need to think. I don’t need more time when all I’ll use it for is panic and anxiety. I’m no soldier. And believe me, I’m no assassin. But you’ve always said that I’m a pain in the ass, so that leaves only one Pillar for me.”
She turned and saw a frown appear on his face. “Nesi . . . no, I don’t know if you understand the Fox. I don’t think even I understand them! What exactly they do. Who exactly they are. They’re not all fun and games, their stories are not always . . . kind. Often, they can be sad, even tragic!”
“What’s to know?” she said, her face growing hot as she got to her knees before the Pillar. “They’re a lovable fox that tromps through the Woods of the World and plays pranks on their siblings. They owe the Toad ten thousand golden flies, they laughed the Wolf out of the pantheon, and they love watercolor painting. I can get into that. I love making mischief. By the Pillars, I’m positively goofy!” She started moving her hands into prayer-motion, passing them in front of the burning stick of incense.
Ren broke form and took a step forward; Nesi didn’t enjoy the sudden scent of perspiration coming off him, but she didn’t hate it either. Good. Maybe he should be a little nervous. “Those are just . . . clay and cloud tales, Nesi. Stories we tell little kids to teach them morals. And the Fox isn’t always the hero in those, are they? Don’t forget that there are older tales and darker morals that the Fox deals in. Bittersweet stories, lessons given and lessons learned that each bruise in different ways. Are you ready for one of those to possibly be your story?”
“Right, right, they’re a trickster, through and through. I know of the Fox and the Turtle, the Peach Race with the Stallion, the Downfall of the Spider, all of them. I know to stay sharp!” She kept her eyes fixed to that glowing stick, whose burning light began to wobble and waver like a candle flame fighting a breeze. She had to admit, this part would never get old, her own little spark of divinity helping her pull apart reality like spun sugar.
“Nesi!” Ren’s voice was a crack of nervous thunder in the evening quiet of the temple. “You’re not thinking!”
The wavering light curved, became an orb, became an eye. The eye opened to look at Nesi with an unabashed level of glee and curiosity. A voice like smoking silk slid across her mind like a bow across a violin string.
Well, well, well. Who do we have here?
*
Martin Cahill’s Audition for the Fox is due to be published by Tachyon Publications in North America and in the UK, on September 16th.
Civilian Reader 