Here's an excerpt from my soon to be released next novel, The Boyar's Curse. This is the opening to Chapter 10.

So here's the setup. A group of stone spirits, seven of them, have had been somewhat unfortunate in their choice of trail through the sun-lit world. They may be a little out of practice walking the earth's surface.

In fact, they've been more than unfortunate. They've stumbled across Baba Yaga, and she's named the spirits, forcing them into a set of obsequious forms she believes she can dominate...

Chapter 10: She's THE Crone

She didn't start out that way, of course. She chose that path, on purpose and with malice aforethought. The throwby of Woden had no illusions of what deciding to be the witch of witches, the progenitor of myth and story and the insults of the ignorant on countless generations of her daughters would mean.

And she did it anyway. The feelings of mortals had no meaning for her. The wound it tore in her father's heart to see his most beautiful of human daughters transform to her chosen form paid for all of the ill-times both of them foresaw.

She took his legacy, foresight and eternal beauty of youth, exchanged it for the wisdom of age and time's gift, experience, and walked away from the concerns of the gods.

Not that she could get away from her father's gifts so easily. The sight came to her in its own time. She could almost hear his laughter when mirrors flickered, or the winds shifted, and the future made itself known to her.

Then there were the days and weeks and years where she found the crone's face exchanged for the form of her youth. Staring into the mirror during those times tortured her.

Not for what she had given up; but for the fact that no choice was ever done and finished. The hangover of the gods, it seems, takes more than a few lifetimes to recover from.

She'd sought time and space of her own, here in the mountains. The humans were revolting, in presence and demeanor, and she wanted none of their petty squabbling. It interfered with her quests.

That her father's spirit had invested the valley below was something she really didn't want to contemplate. There were precious few places left in the world for spirits and those who followed them. She'd resigned herself to the fact that she was forced to share this one.

The stone-spirits were another matter, especially when they invaded her territory. "It would have been bad enough for the makers, the dwarves, to come here." The thieves, the kobolds, were too much altogether.

She pushed through the pine boughs into the false darkness of the hidden grove in evening. The sky above, what little the mountain allowed, was lit, but here in the stone pockets, the sun had taken its leave.

She moved through the shadow-time, a bent and warped huntress sniffing after her prey.

The kobolds were trapped by indecision. Long had it been, since they'd been forced into a form not of their choosing. "It's ignoble, is what it is," one of them muttered.

They crouched, just two turns of the stream from the meadow, whispering their complaints. And worrying about what was coming their way. They couldn't bring themselves to go back to the meadow, the man might have looked old, but he'd had no problem killing a troll. Seven of them should have been able to defeat him.

But no one of them could convince any of the others to risk the lives they would lose in the effort. "But full attack, and we'd win, right?"

"Maybe. But how many do we lose, three, four? Gonna volunteer for that, are you?"

"What about her, then? We'll lose all of us to her."

"Only if she gets angry," the one who'd become leader finished. "Now shut the hell up, she's coming."

They all felt her. They had been shadows, darkness amongst the stones, and they welcomed the false night. But a cold wind rose, just for them, trapping them further in their squat twisted horribly mortal bodies, three on one side of the stream and four on another. Her mind and her will reached them in their convocation, to impose her order over theirs.

"Stay, fools. You've made your way into my home. Now," and she entered from around the turn, "tell me what business brings you here." She stood there, cloaked and hooded and waiting for an answer.

The seven fell to squabbling. None of them wanted to be the one to accept responsibility in front of the witch. When the fighting settled, one of them, not the previous leader, was pushed out front to stand before the Crone.

"Ah, well, it's like this. There's this child, and she's picked up this troll's amulet, and she invested it..." He searched for a better way to explain. Or maybe a different tack, now that he realized what he'd just told Baba Yaga.

In spite of herself, the creature's story intrigued her. "And you bunch think you can steal a bit of new magic for yourselves. Interesting."

She walked through the sorry little convocation, until she was well past and could let her senses reach the outside. The child was there, just a few yards away, with something of almost-power quiet and nestled close to her heart. It didn't have true meaning, not as the witch understood such things, not yet.

And, she knew, the way of things meant the amulet would most likely never have any real power. But, then again, it might. Someday. And the child was a girl...

She was protected. The woman who accompanied her was mindful, with an intriguing story. The man was nobody, even carrying that false troll's curse didn't make him anything more than an appendix.

Even the mule had a more interesting story than that.

The smell of humans nauseated her, even more than the fresh-made kobolds behind her. "It'll take more than a single bath in a mountain stream to wash that stink from their ignorant hides." Baba Yaga turned back to the head of the kobolds.

"You're awfully confidant in your ability to keep the child alive. Humans aren't well known for their ability to survive the depths."

The kobold elected to face her twisted himself further to give his fellows the evil eye. Then, grudgingly, he turned back to the Crone. "Why would we want the child? It's the amulet that matters." He thought maybe he'd found an answer for the witch; he was proud of outwitting her.

For a second or two.

"You poor, stupid little thing. No wonder you're all thieves, and not makers, like your cousins." She shook her head while looking for a spot to sit down.

The kobold hesitated, then stepped, slowly, to join the witch where she rested. He didn't presume to sit with her, he just settled where he could be close enough to continue the conversation.

The others tried to follow, but they were still held trapped in their place by Baba Yaga's will. She didn't need that much of an audience.

"Now, listen," she began. "Do you want true power, from that amulet? Or do you just want the possibility of it?" She felt the hunger from the kobold, and its echo in the six behind him.

He grimaced, a mass of wrinkles coming together across his face in confusion. "The thing is magic, we can taste it." The others mumbled their agreement; their hunger swelled, to the point that Baba Yaga could almost share their taste. It was a metallic thing, a glimpse of the endless search for silver, gold, jewel stones, the earth's hidden treasure that drove the stone-spirits' jealousy.

She put her hands up until the chorus died away. "But it's not magic. Not yet."

Another chorus, of confusion, rang up. The six behind struggled against her will, managing to swat and punch each other as they tried to shift blame and deny having ever thought the amulet was worth anything to begin with.

The lone outcast kneeled down, defeated, in front of the Crone. "But I can feel it. What's wrong with me, then, that thing's real and just there waiting for the picking?"

She giggled. If the kobolds had had human instincts, the sound would have unnerved them, given how incongruous it was. "There's nothing wrong with you. You just haven't had to work in a very long time. You're out of practice."

Baba Yaga explained, as she would teach a child, the difference between possibility and actuality. "The power doesn't just exist in a thing like that amulet. It needs to be built, shaped, and imposed. If you took that necklace now, all you'd have was a metal trinket."

She stopped when the kobolds fell to babbling. White gold might have been a trinket to her, but to them it was still a taste to feed the long underground nights.

"Fine, you'd nibble on the thing, it would be gone in a minute, and then what?" She shook her head at the blank faces that met her. "No, no, no. Idiots. What do you eat tomorrow, if you have no food today?"

She felt the realization dawn on them, finally. For once, they didn't fight about it. The hunger rose up again to drown all other instincts.

"I guess I forgot, spirits mostly don't just think, do they?" she reminded herself. "You're a bundle of instincts tangled up and thrown up here for me to deal with. Ah, well, it's a living."

"But, ma'am," and the leader bowed his head to acknowledge her mastery. "What would be the difference, if we didn't just take the amulet? If you don't mind me asking, I mean?"

'Ah,' she thought. 'I have them.' Of all things, she enjoyed most of all negotiating with the spirit-folk. These few may not have been all that sophisticated.

But then, she did have to keep her hand in. A little practice was a good thing. And these were definitely beasts of little practice.

She reminded herself that the job was only half-done. "You've heard tell of things of power. Mjolnir. Gungnir. Perun's axe." With each name, the stones around them shimmered and returned whispers. The seven kobolds stiffened in response.

If they hungered after metal, this was something else altogether. It was one thing to be jealous of the Earth's creations. The works of their dwarven cousins were things beyond their ability to covet. The names of the mighty drove the kobolds past desire through to the ecstatic agony of the fallen.

She feasted on despair, rolling waves of it beating counterpoint as the echoes of the names faded away. When they were aware, again, she gave them that most deadly of things.

Hope.

"That amulet, that tiny little spear of white-gold dangling from the tangled fears of a troll? With a little luck, the seven of you could, perhaps..."

She stifled a laugh; they were leaning over like sunflowers to the dawn, hanging on the pause in her speech.

"You could be the ones to name it. You could well be the ones to name a new power in this world. One that may yet outlast us all."

She paused there, expecting them to fall completely into her hands.

Disappointment comes to all, though. She felt distrust move through them, starting with the leader and working one by one through the others.

He turned to look at his fellows, then back to her, eyes narrowed while he calculated the balance of equity. "You're not known for sharing such things as knowledge. Not with us, not with anyone."

Her reputation had its good points. But it had its bad points, too. She wondered then if she'd gone too far, pushed them too hard. These weren't wolverines fattening up for the winter.

Her mind racing, she tried to find another handle to lever her new friends to her bidding. "Well, so far I haven't told you anything you wouldn't have learned yourselves."

She didn't pause to let them remember the beginning of the conversation. "So, let's talk about the concept of fair exchange of services."

Try as she might, the witch had already lost her advantage over the kobolds. Once brought forward, the mistrust stayed with them. It didn't help at all that Baba Yaga never offered them anything in particular in exchange for working for her.

In the end, it came down to an impasse; the seven malformed spirits trapped by her will, but unwilling to aquiesce to her demands. The witch refusing to offer anything of importance in exchange for the girl.

They argued through the night. Not that the kobolds had any choice. In the end, when all heard the music of dawn thrumming across the rockface, it was the kobold's accidental leader who slipped through a minor fault in the web of logic she'd so patiently woven for their prison.

"The girl won't be doing many deeds, trapped in this valley. No deeds, no magic, and we starve for decades for nothing."

It hung there, the little realization. The flaw in the plan, at least as she'd presented it to the thieves. Without a suitable tale to tell, the amulet was nothing more than a pretty bauble.

"You're looking to take her from us," he said. It took him most of the night, but he'd worked out just what the witch was hiding. "We do the work, we take the risk, you leave us with a bit of metal and trapped here in the day-world while you've got the girl and the story that might have been."

He stepped back; the other six followed suit. She'd missed the first rule for negotiating with spirits.

Honesty.

Her control was broken. The lightening sky above told them all how little time there was left for her to recover some dignity, at least. "When you do steal the girl, where will you hide? There's nowhere in this valley, in this world, where I cannot find her." She stood full height and wreathed in fury, her hood thrown back to let them stare at the shock of white hair and madness revenant.

The leader bowed, one more time, mocking salute as flesh became shadow once more. Seven shadows left that place and Baba Yaga gnashing her teeth in fury. "We'll just have to try our hands at a little kidnapping, lady. I think there are more hiding places in this world than you admit to."

The Crone stood once more alone in the false dawn. Long had it been since she'd failed to bring a spirit to heel. She remembered how much she hated the feeling of defeat. Turning back to her pine-woven hut was almost more than she could bear.

But she did. There was time yet to prepare for the daytime visitors sure to come. If the humans were more amenable to manipulation, there might yet be a chance to recover the night's work.