conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about London, Michael, School with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Tournament of Shadows'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Tournament of Shadows
  With hands that were not hands the man that was not a man made a machine that was not a machine. All the while he muttered words that were not words with his mouth that was no mouth: "Keep me clean. Keep me clean. Keep me clean."
  But he knew it was too late. He was stained with memories, with hopes, with life. He would never be clean again. He said "me" and meant it. He was infected with the idea of self.
  There was a way out of this hell that was not hell. If he could cleanse this world of life and make the way clear for the ever-strangers who waited beyond the Soul Bridge, beyond the end of the world, if he could do that he could also be cleansed of life and return to the selfless being he was meant to be, that he should have remained forever.
  He made his machine that was not a machine and laughed. He would sweep them all away, everything that lived. He would make them pay for making him care about them, about himself, about everything.
  Merlin Ambrosius was in his basement workshop when he heard the god breaking into his attic. The event was far away, and the house well-proofed against sounds, but Merlin had no doubt what he was hearing. There is something about the footfall of a god that, once heard, is not easily forgotten.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They turned together and ran away back up the canyon. Morlock drew his glassy sword as he ran, and Aloê spun her glass staff like a baton, gathering impulse energy as she ran alongside.
  The thing is, most people don't run at the same speed. As they all ran down the canyon, the goaty troop began to thin out—some running slower, some stumbling over rocks (or bones! Aloê thought), some running a little less enthusiastically.
  They turned back together to face their foes.
  Aloê spun her crystal staff one last time, then gripped it firmly below the center and struck at the nearest spearman. The staff passed through the spear, shattering it to splinters, and proceeded to do the same thing to the spearman's arm. He fell screaming to his knees, screaming out curses in the name of his goaty god. She jumped over him and began laying into the next goat-soldier in the long straggling line.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about realizing, caring.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They turned together and ran away back up the canyon. Morlock drew his glassy sword as he ran, and Aloê spun her glass staff like a baton, gathering impulse energy as she ran alongside. 
  The thing is, most people don't run at the same speed. As they all ran down the canyon, the goaty troop began to thin out—some running slower, some stumbling over rocks (or bones! Aloê thought), some running a little less enthusiastically. 
  They turned back together to face their foes. The three or four in front were joyous at the prospect of battle, not realizing or caring that their line was much less numerous than it had been. 
  Aloê spun her crystal staff one last time, then gripped it firmly below the center and struck at the nearest spearman. The staff passed through the spear, shattering it to splinters, and proceeded to do the same thing to the spearman's arm. He fell screaming to his knees, screaming out curses in the name of his goaty god. She jumped over him and began laying into the next goat-soldier in the long straggling line.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Graith had three ranks of Guardian: the lowest and most numerous were the thains, wearing a gray cape of office. They were hardly more than candidates to the Graith proper, and they undertook to obey their seniors in the Graith, even more senior thains.
  Vocates, in contrast, were full members of the Graith, privileged to stand and speak at the Graith's councils (known as Stations). Their only obligation was to defend the Guard, and the Guarded, as they saw fit. Their cloak of office was bloodred.
  There were probably always at least two versions of the story, Morlock's and Aloê's. I have tried to do them both justice here, piecing together a plot from stories which, candidly, are completely incompatible with each other.
  Some readers may be interested in consulting this work for Blÿdhwocax's groundbreaking theory that orthodoxy is the ultimate heresy in a society that values religious dissent. Others may prefer reading about the religious persecutions his theory enabled (though they have a bloody sameness about them, after the first two or three). My own interest was strictly in the backstory: frequently Blÿdhwocax's mission took him to cities that were still in turmoil from Morlock and Aloê's passage, and the local accounts provided some useful material for my plot.
  The dubious document known in the field as "Danadhar's credo of the unfaith" also yielded some key details. It's true that Dr. Gabriel McNally considers the work a forgery written (in McNally's acid phrase) "in entirely peccable Dwarvish." But I'm hoping that someone who knows enough about Laent to forge an entire document in Dwarvish (however peccably) might also know something about Morlock and his kith. And I confess I'm convinced by the argument of Danadhar (or pseudo-Danadhar) that the Gray Folk and the Ambrosians must have a common ancestry.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first four paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Tournament of Shadows
  Night begins the day, and in the darkness of night the first day of spring was being born. In the west, great Chariot was rising, bright with hope as it re-entered the world. No other moon was in the sky, but Chariot's light filled up the snow-covered plain of the Gap of Lone, and the gray-caped thain walking on it.
  The thain went his way toward the base of the cliff with slow deliberate steps, as if he had all the time in the world. His gray cape of office was charred with fire and stained dark with dried blood. Fresh blood, black in the moon's blue light, was running down his legs and squelching in his shoes, staining his footprints in the new snow like mud.
  Among the gray stones of the cliff face was a hollow. In the hollow hung a golden bell. The thain picked up the copper striker that lay below it. He didn't trust his trembling fingers to hold the slender stalk of metal so he gripped it with both hands, as if it were the handle of a sledgehammer. He struck the bell as hard as he could (which wasn't so very hard): three times. Then he waited there, although he could hear his pursuers loping toward him through the snow, voiceless though they were. He struck the bell three more times and fell dead in the shallow snowdrifts at the base of the cliff.
  The bell rang in the little hollow. It rang in the watchroom of the Gray Tower, the Graith's guardpost over the Gap of Lone. It rang in the thains' Northtower, on the border of Thrymhaiam in the far north. It rang in Anglecross Tower in the west of the Wardlands, in Islandkeep that guarded the Southhold, in the Graith's chamber in the city of A Thousand Towers. The same bell, or an image of it, swung in all those places. The same signal sounded in all those places.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is four more paragraphs? Start with the sentence 'She left Raudhfax at the Well and walked toward Tower Ambrose, sneaking through alleys when she could, sliding along in deep shadows when she must take a broader way'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She left Raudhfax at the Well and walked toward Tower Ambrose, sneaking through alleys when she could, sliding along in deep shadows when she must take a broader way.
  Her thinking was this: the would-be killer would try again. The place she was most likely to go was Tower Ambrose. The assassin would wait for her somewhere near there.
  Tower Ambrose was on a bluff, and it could not be approached from the south. The place she had been attacked was to the east. She stalked the person stalking her in the shadows of the River Road east of Ambrose.
  The wind was high that night, and its noise covered a multitude of sounds. That was good for her, so that she could move safely in the dark. But it was bad, also: it meant that her assassin could hide from her.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Vocates, in contrast, were full members of the Graith, privileged to stand and speak at the Graith's councils (known as Stations). Their only obligation was to defend the Guard, and the Guarded, as they saw fit. Their cloak of office was blood red.
  Readers of these collections of Ambrosian myth and legend are already aware that Morlock's exploits beyond the northern edge of the world were not the end of his career as a hero. It took centuries for that to be evident to his contemporaries, however—or even to Morlock himself, and in that time his path took a number of severe turns, some sinister, some comic, many disgraceful.
  I don't care about the overly solemn lost Dwarvish song cycles, and I don't care if there were any Mandragoric analogues or parallels, and I don't care about the lost epic of the Seventh Scribe, and I really have no interest in daydreaming about the papers that may or may not be filed in the distant and inaccessible archives of the Graith of Guardians.
  Other reasons include the fact that I have a contract and have already banked the advance. But, though satisfyingly cynical, that doesn't really account for my intermittent but persistent thirty-year quest to tell this particular story.
  This reminds me of something Reverend Handschuh says about the Ambrosian cycle. He's one of its most severe critics and considers it mere romance, not true epic. Like his hero W. P. Ker, and like many another gentle well-read scholar, he prefers the harsh, unforgiving world of classical or Germanic epic. In that tragic vision of life, heroes face their fate without hope of redemption or escape, and Reverend Handschuh rather scorns Ambrosian legend for its lack of tragic doom. "There is always hope," he writes. "There is always hope."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: ". Their only obligation was to defend the Guard, and the Guarded, as they saw fit. Their cloak of office was blood red.
  Readers of these collections of Ambrosian myth and legend are already aware that Morlock's exploits beyond the northern edge of the world were not the end of his career as a hero. It took centuries for that to be evident to his contemporaries, however—or even to Morlock himself, and in that time his path took a number of severe turns, some sinister, some comic, many disgraceful.
  I don't care about the overly solemn lost Dwarvish song cycles, and I don't care if there were any Mandragoric analogues or parallels, and I don't care about the lost epic of the Seventh Scribe, and I really have no interest in daydreaming about the papers that may or may not be filed in the distant and inaccessible archives of the Graith of Guardians.
  Other reasons include the fact that I have a contract and have already banked the advance. But, though satisfyingly cynical, that doesn't really account for my intermittent but persistent thirty-year quest to tell this particular story.
  This reminds me of something Reverend Handschuh says about the Ambrosian cycle. He's one of its most severe critics and considers it mere romance, not true epic. Like his hero W. P. Ker, and like many another gentle well-read scholar, he prefers the harsh, unforgiving world of classical or Germanic epic. In that tragic vision of life, heroes face their fate without hope of redemption or escape, and Reverend Handschuh rather scorns Ambrosian legend for its lack of tragic doom. "There is always hope," he writes. "There is always hope.Vocates, in contrast, were full members of the Graith, privileged to stand and speak at the Graith's councils (known as Stations).
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first three paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Tournament of Shadows
  The Two Powers hated everything, each other most of all. When Torlan said, "Yes," Zahkaar said, "No," and when Torlan said, "I meant no, ha ha ha," Zahkaar said, "I meant yes," and did not laugh. It made their conversations tedious, but they were not aware of it: tedium was not something they could experience.
  This is the history of the universe, according to the Anhikh religion of the Two Powers. In the beginning, there was nothing. Then one of the Two Powers came into being (some say it was Torlan, the power of Fate; some say it was Zahkaar, the power of Chaos—wars have been fought over this important issue). Its being naturally summoned its anti-being into existence, and they began to struggle. Time and the universe and everything in it is a consequence of that struggle. In the end, one of the Powers will vanquish the other, and time and the universe and everything in it will be swept away in that unending victory.
  Those-who-know do not generally believe this. But there was no denying the existence of the Two Powers, nor their dreadful if ill-defined abilities, and sorcerers of every stripe of opinion generally gave them a wide berth. "Being an atheist is no protection," as Guelph the Many-Minded remarked on his scaffold, "if a god decides to believe in you."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is another paragraph?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: When the light began to return to the sky, the snow ceased. Shortly after that he reached the crest of the long steep slope he had been climbing, which on the far side descended more gradually. The slope now angled down to his right, still more gradually. To his left, through a screen of white-etched black branches, he saw the peaks Gramer, Groja, Wyrtgeorn, Jess, and Fell: the mountains of Haukr. They stood almost mystically clear in the deep blue predawn air, snow lying far down along their shoulders. Ahead of him, he guessed, was the Ruined Mountain—the place where maijarra had collapsed part of the mountain ridge. The forest did not extend any farther than that into the mountains. Nevertheless Morlock felt he would find any cover he needed among the rocks and twisting passages of the Ruined Mountain, until he reached the Thains' Northtower. He did not suppose this would still be standing, but he hoped to find some provisions (and perhaps some clothing) amid the rubble.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs? End with the sentence ' His previous novels are Blood of Ambrose (Pyr, 2009), which was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 2010; This Crooked Way (Pyr, 2009); and The Wolf Age (Pyr, 2010).'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: According to Gabriel McNally's reconstruction (generally accepted by scholars of Ambrosian legend, always excepting Julian Emrys), the Wardlands were an anarchy with no formal government at all. According to legend, the Wardlands had not been a kingdom since the golden age at the beginning of time, when the King (usually identified with the divine aspect known as God Avenger) ruled in person in Laent and elsewhere. Since then it has been considered blasphemous, or at least irrationally presumptuous, for any person to assert a claim to rule the Wardlands. Those who try to do so are exiled or (in extreme cases) killed.
  What in other cultures would have been state functions (national defense, dispute resolution, even road building and repair, etc.) were carried on by voluntary cooperatives: the Arbiters of the Peace, the Guild of Silent Men, the League of Rhetors, etc. Most famous in the unguarded lands was the Graith of Guardians, sworn to maintain the Guard.
  The Graith had three ranks of Guardian: the lowest and most numerous were the thains, wearing a gray cape of office. They were hardly more than candidates to the Graith proper, and they undertook to obey their seniors in the Graith, even more senior thains.
  Vocates, in contrast, were full members of the Graith, privileged to stand and speak at the Graith's councils (known as Stations). Their only obligation was to defend the Guard, and the Guarded, as they saw fit. Their cloak of office was bloodred.
  JAMES ENGE lives in northwest Ohio, where he teaches classics at a medium-sized public university. His short fiction has appeared in Swords and Dark Magic (Eos, 2010), in the magazine Black Gate, and elsewhere. His previous novels are Blood of Ambrose (Pyr, 2009), which was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 2010; This Crooked Way (Pyr, 2009); and The Wolf Age (Pyr, 2010).