Kerry Truelove, writer

The Thief at Deceus

The hunting party on her heels had doubled in the past half hour.  Their hoarse shouts now reverberated among the narrow streets, bouncing in vicious echoes against the walls only to be swallowed in the tumult of another outcry.  Senra knew she should leave the town immediately – cut her losses and bolt into the rolling hills around Deceus – but she couldn’t do that without being certain of Tafria.  Perhaps her swordsister had not been killed, but captured to be subjected to the unholy will of the local Zardprest as she herself had been so long ago.  She could scarcely abandon Tafria to that.  It would be better to be dead.

Doubling back through the narrow streets, she finally found the wide square that faced the temple.  Scarcely an hour ago she and Tafria had been wandering along the now-abandoned stalls, browsing with no real intent to buy, barely tempted by any of the offerings.  Now all that remained were the half empty stalls and an untidy huddle near the water trough.  She darted over to it, nerves screaming, and rolled Tafria onto her back;  at least death had eased away the look of incredulous dismay with which her swordsister had registered her panic-stricken retreat.

“Forgive me, sister,” she closed the glazed eyes, feeling sick and disoriented, her own eyes beginning to swim with shame.  It was one thing to lose a friend, even a swordsister, in battle;  another thing entirely to abandon them just because a Zardprest – not even her personal fiend – had appeared.  This was not the way of the zora.

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Trapped by a mob in the town of Deceus, Senra, one of the elite zora of Honar, seeks sanctuary in the local stables.  She is not alone;  her companion is a brown thief called Farr.  Together they escape and then part ways, leaving Senra to report to her company about the gathering unrest in Honar that threatens the zora themselves.

Gradually the zora of Honar are drawn into endless war in defence of their country.  Together with the armies of Honar they fight on, while their queen flees to seek sanctuary in the land of another traditional enemy.  Life contracts to one battle after another, yet time and again the thief named Farr appears, riding into the chaos of war laughing and with no apparent care for her own safety.  Every time, once the crisis is past, she slips away without explanation.  To Senra’s frustration, no attempt to recruit Farr’s considerable talents into the zora of Honar succeeds.

As the zora are drawn deeper into the turmoil of a nation invaded on two fronts, Senra finds herself at war not only with their enemies but with herself.  Her own past conspires to work against her, drawing her back into the hell from which she had escaped as a child.  Once again she finds that Farr is there, and the strange, unexpected knowledge and understanding shown by her thief companion begins to intrigue her as much as it intrigues their captor.  

As their friendship deepens, Senra begins to wonder how much of the thief is real, and how much is a façade;  and if it is a façade, what does it hide?

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As I recall, this book started with me getting annoyed at some other book I had read during the earlier part of my Public Service career.  I decided that I wanted to do something on a similar vein, but which aligned more with my concept of ‘rightness’.  So I started writing a short story, seizing opportunities such as waiting for aircraft, evenings of boredom and probably one or two meetings in which I should have been taking notes of the discussion rather than furthering my imagination.  

Short story writing is a skill which apparently is beyond me.  The story grew.  In fact it grew to such an extent that it would be impossible – for me, anyway – to confine it to a single volume.  And so The Heart of Elroi trilogy came into being, of which The Thief at Deceus is the first volume.

Whatever the gestation, I believe The Heart of Elroi has very little in common with the original book that I read.  

I would like to acknowledge the cover artwork by Adam Lockier. For the second time, he took one of my vague sketches and a rambling explanation of my ‘vision’, and converted it into an image which captured precisely what I wanted.

A heartfelt apology

It was only until a couple of years after I had written the trilogy that I discovered that the name “El Roi” is one of the names of God in the Hebrew Bible.  I sincerely and abjectly apologise for abducting the name into my work of fiction, and hope that no offence has been taken at the unintentional liberty.  I simply had no idea. The name popped into my skull from wherever the names in my books come from, and stuck like glue.

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Interested in exploring more? Copies of The Thief at Deceus can be obtained from the following book stores:

Print on demand: ISBN   978-0-6489892-1-9

e-book: ISBN   978-0-6489892-4-0