John Dalmas:
excerpts from Book Three, The Lion Returns

In the final novel of a trilogy, to find suitable excerpts is tricky. You risk spoiling the earlier stories for those who haven't read them. However, The Lion Returns is organized into named parts, each with a lead-in, an introduction that tells something about the Part from a different point of view. So mostly I’ll use those lead-ins here, to give you a sense of the story.

Incidentally, Vulkan is a bodhisattva in the form of a half-ton wild boar.
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Lead-Ins

Part 1—The Plans of Men

The physical universes are not designed for the convenience or pleasure of humans or other incarnate souls. Intelligence, diligence, and good intentions do not necessarily produce security, comfort and pleasure. There are no guarantees.

One can try and one can hope, but one’s expectations are often disappointed. On the other hand, today’s victories sometimes lead to tomorrow’s woes, while out of today’s woes may grow tomorrow’s blessings. The roots of joys and grief can be distant in both time and place. So it is well to be light on your feet, and not too fixed in your desires.

Vulkan to Macurdy,
on the highway to Teklapori
in the spring of 1950

Part 2—The Lion Returns

Kurqôsz stared down from his seven-foot-eight-inch height. His eyes seemed greener, his bristly crest more red, his skin more ivory than Macurdy remembered. His easy laugh was amiable and chilling.

"What then, you ask? Why, we will conquer, as our distant ancestors did in Hithmearc. And do what we please. First of all it will please us to punish the ylver for escaping. Then we will domesticate the other peoples who dwell here, culling the intransigent. Cattle are invariably more profitable than their wild progenitors.

Crown Prince Kurqôsz
in a dream by Curtis Macurdy
while at Wolf Springs

Part 3—A Murmur of Trumpets,
a Mutter of Drums

Looking aft, the old man spoke more to himself than to his grandson. "What the devil is he doing?"

Within his field of vision, more than a score of ships lay to seaward, ships unlike any he’d seen before, tall, with square sails. A light schooner-rigged vessel had separated from them and was closing astern, bearing down on him. In an effort to get out of the way, he steered too closely into the wind, and his small sail luffed, flapping.

His thirteen-year-old grandson sat numb, as if he knew, hands motionless on the sheet. The schooner swerved past, missing them by perhaps two fathoms. At the foredeck rail, a man had a crossbow pointed at them. The boy heard a snap, then a thuck! His grandfather grunted, pitched forward across a coiled trawl line and lay unmoving.

The schooner sent a work boat to pick the boy up. Leaning, one of its men took an ax to the fishing boat, and it settled to the gunnels.

The boy was taken to one of the large ships, where he was questioned by the tallest, most frightening man he’d ever seen. The giant’s accented Yuultal and his own scrublands dialect were not entirely compatible, but the lad did his best. When his interrogator had the information he wanted, the boy was sent to join his grandfather.

Part 4—War: Bloody Beginnings

Among the Voitusotar, succession to the throne is not subject to dispute. A crown prince is selected by what they term the "Soul of the Voitusotar," most often from the family of the existing Crystal Lord.

The nature of the Soul of the Voitusotar is not clear. It appears to be an aspect of the Voitik hive mind, acting upon the total knowledge of the species, but having its own volition....