They came from Walker Basin, a speck of a community at the edge of the Sequoia National Forest. From the farm town of Reedley, where a barber gives boys joining the military free haircuts before they ship out.
They came from San Francisco. Los Angeles. San Diego.
When they died, photos went up on post office walls in their hometowns. On Veterans Day, there are parades and charity golf tournaments. Buddies gather at graves to drink to the ones who are gone.
In the 11 years since the wars began in Iraq and Afghanistan, 725 service members from California have been killed.
As all veterans are honored, the fallen are remembered
Many died young — 41% were not yet 22. Sixty-three were still teenagers.
They were fun-loving singles. Forty-seven were engaged. They were married, leaving behind 307 wives and husbands. They had children — 432 sons and daughters.
Forty of their obituaries noted that the Sept. 11 attacks spurred them to join up. Some were in elementary school when they watched the Twin Towers fall.
The scope of their loss can't be measured at one point in time. Life moves on, the wars are winding down. But towns, families and individual lives continue to be shaped by their absence.
Lately, 9-year-old Naomi Izabella Johnson has been asking a lot of questions about her father, Allen Johnson, a Special Forces medical sergeant from Los Molinos who was killed on foot-combat patrol in Khanaqin, Afghanistan, in 2005.
What was his favorite color? School subject? Animal? Book? Did he like mashed potatoes?
"It helps me for when I try to imagine him," she said.
Two months ago, her 10-year-old brother, Joshua, started crying inconsolably.
"What's wrong?" his mother, Eunice Johnson, recalled asking.
"I'm starting to forget — sometimes I can't see Daddy's face."
In Yuba City, Taylor Silva, 21, has been spending some time alone. Last week marked six months since her fiance, Chase Marta, 24, was killed by a roadside bomb in the Ghazni province of Afghanistan. He was one of more than 40 California service members to have died in the line of duty since last Veterans Day.
"I know his family and best friend have it just as hard. But we're all being a little quiet to each other because we're all a reminder to each other. His mom can't see me without crying," Silva said.
Seventeen women from California have been killed in the wars.
Hannah Gunterman McKinney of Redlands had told her father that the Army wouldn't send a new mother to Iraq. But she was deployed when her son, Todd Avery Gunterman, was just 1. Ten months later, in 2006, she was run over by a Humvee in Taji, north of Baghdad. She was 20.
She had joined the military as a way to earn money to go to fashion school. She reenlisted because she was a single mother and wanted to give her son financial stability. Now her parents are raising Todd Avery.
Epic fantasy has become the literature of more. We equate it with more pages than the average book, more books than the average series. There are more characters, more maps, more names and more dates. The stories and the worlds are bigger to contain all of this more. And when all the books have been devoured, the fans want more.
For my just-released anthology, Epic: Legends of Fantasy, I compiled a collection of stories that demonstrate the heights the subgenre is capable of attaining; including works by George R. R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Robin Hobb, Tad Williams, Ursula K. Le Guin and other legends of the field, the anthology attempts to survey all that is epic in the short form and bring the best of it to you in a single volume.
In this exclusive excerpt from the anthology, Mary Robinette Kowal presents a tale that exemplifies what epic fantasy is all about.
By Mary Robinette Kowal
Light dappled through the trees in the family courtyard, painting shadows on the paving stones. Li Reiko knelt by her son to look at his scraped knee.
“I just scratched it.” Nawi squirmed under her hands.
Her daughter, Aya, leaned over her shoulder studying the healing. “Maybe Mama will show you her armor after she heals you.”
Nawi stopped wiggling. “Really?”
Reiko shot Aya a warning look, but her little boy’s dark eyes shone with excitement. Reiko smiled. “Really.” What did tradition matter? “Now let me heal your knee.” She laid her hand on the shallow wound.
“Ow.”
“Shush.” Reiko closed her eyes and rose in the dark space behind them.
In her mind’s eye, Reiko took her time with the ritual, knowing it took less time than it appeared. In a heartbeat, green fire flared out to the walls of her mind. She dissolved into it as she focused on healing her son.
When the wound closed beneath her hand, she sank to the surface of her mind.
“There.” She tousled Nawi’s hair. “That wasn’t bad, was it?”
“It tickled.” He wrinkled his nose. “Will you show me your armor now?”
She sighed. She should not encourage his interest in the martial arts. His work would be with the histories that men kept, and yet…”Watch.”
Pulling the smooth black surface out of the ether, she manifested her armor. It sheathed her like silence in the night. Aya watched with obvious anticipation for the day when she earned her own armor. Nawi’s face, full of sharp yearning for something he would never have, cut Reiko’s heart like a new blade.
“Can I see your sword?”
She let her armor vanish into thought. “No.” Reiko brushed his hair from his eyes. “It’s my turn to hide, right?”
- - -
Halldór twisted in his saddle, trying to ease the kink in his back. When the questing party reached the Parliament, he could remove the weight hanging between his shoulders.
With each step his horse took across the moss-covered lava field, the strange blade bumped against his spine, reminding him that he carried a legend. None of the runes or sheep entrails he read before their quest had foretold the ease with which they fulfilled the first part of the prophecy. They had found the Chooser of the Slain’s narrow blade wrapped in linen, buried beneath an abandoned elf-house. In that dark room, the sword’s hard silvery metal — longer than any of their bronze swords — had seemed lit by the moon.
Lárus pulled his horse alongside Halldór. “Will the ladies be waiting for us, do you think?”
“Maybe for you, my lord, but not for me.”
“Nonsense. Women love the warrior-priest. ‘Strong and sensitive.’” He snorted through his mustache. “Just comb your hair so you don’t look like a straw man.”
A horse screamed behind them. Halldór turned, expecting to see its leg caught in one of the thousands of holes between the rocks. Instead, armed men swarmed from the gullies between the rocks, hacking at the riders. Bandits.
Halldór spun his horse to help Lárus and the others fight them off.
Lárus shouted, “Protect the Sword.”
At the Duke’s command, Halldór cursed and turned his horse from the fight, galloping across the rocks. Behind him, men cried out as they protected his escape. His horse twisted along the narrow paths between stones. It stopped abruptly, avoiding a chasm. Halldór looked back.
Scant lengths ahead of the bandits, Lárus rode, slumped in his saddle. Blood stained his cloak. The other men hung behind Lárus, protecting the Duke as long as possible.
Behind them, the bandits closed the remaining distance across the lava fields.
Halldór kicked his horse’s side, driving it around the chasm. His horse stumbled sickeningly beneath him. Its leg snapped, caught between rocks. Halldór kicked free of the saddle as the horse screamed. He rolled clear. The rocky ground slammed the sword into his back. His face passed over the edge of the chasm. Breathless, he recoiled from the drop.
As he scrambled to his feet, Lárus thundered up. Without wasting a beat, Lárus flung himself from the saddle and tossed Halldór the reins. “Get the Sword to Parliament!”
Halldór grabbed the reins, swinging into the saddle. If they died returning to Parliament, did it matter that they had found the Sword? “We must invoke the Sword!”
Lárus’s right arm hung, blood-drenched, by his side, but he faced the bandits with his left. “Go!”
Halldór yanked the Sword free of its wrappings. For the first time in six thousand years, the light of the sun fell on the silvery blade bringing fire to its length. It vibrated in his hands.
The first bandit reached Lárus and forced him back.
Halldór chanted the runes of power, petitioning the Chooser of the Slain.
Time stopped.
- - -
Reiko hid from her children, blending into the shadows of the courtyard with more urgency than she felt in combat. To do less would insult them.
“Ready or not, here I come!” Nawi spun from the tree and sprinted past her hiding place. Aya turned more slowly and studied the courtyard. Reiko smiled as her daughter sniffed the air, looking for tracks. Her son crashed through the bushes, kicking leaves with each footstep.
As another branch cracked under Nawi’s foot, Reiko stifled the urge to correct his appalling technique. She would speak with his tutor about what the woman was teaching him. He was a boy, but that was no reason to neglect his education.
Watching Aya find Reiko’s initial footprints and track them away from where she hid, Reiko slid from her hiding place. She walked across the courtyard to the fountain. This was a rule with her children; to make up for the size difference, she could not run.
She paced closer to the sparkling water, masking her sounds with its babble. From her right, Nawi shouted, “Have you found her?”
“No, silly!” Aya shook her head and stopped. She put her tiny hands on her hips, staring at the ground. “Her tracks stop here.”
Reiko and her daughter were the same distance from the fountain, but on opposite sides. If Aya were paying attention, she would realize her mother had retraced her tracks and jumped from the fountain to the paving stones circling the grassy center of the courtyard. Reiko took three more steps before Aya turned.
As her daughter turned, Reiko felt, more than heard, her son on her left, reaching for her. Clever. He had misdirected her attention with his noise in the shrubbery. She fell forward, using gravity to drop beneath his hands. Rolling on her shoulder, she somersaulted, then launched to her feet as Aya ran toward her.
Nawi grabbed for her again. With a child on each side, Reiko danced and dodged closer to the fountain. She twisted from their grasp, laughing with them each time they missed her. Their giggles echoed through the courtyard.
The world tipped sideways and vibrated. Reiko stumbled as pain ripped through her spine.
Nawi’s hand clapped against her side. “I got her!”
Fire engulfed Reiko.
The courtyard vanished.
- - -
Time began again.
The sword in Halldór’s hands thrummed with life. Fire from the sunset engulfed the sword and split the air. With a keening cry, the air opened and a form dropped through, silhouetted against a haze of fire. Horses and men screamed in terror.
When the fire died away, a woman stood between Halldór and the bandits.
Halldór’s heart sank. Where was the Chooser of the Slain? Where was the warrior the sword had petitioned?
A bandit snarled a laughing oath and rushed toward them. The others followed him with their weapons raised.
The woman snatched the sword from Halldór’s hands. In that brief moment, when he stared at her wild face, he realized that he had succeeded in calling Li Reiko, the Chooser of the Slain.
Then she turned. The air around her rippled with a heat haze as armor, dark as night, materialized around her body. He watched her dance with deadly grace, bending and twisting away from the bandits’ blows. Without seeming thought, with movement as precise as ritual, she danced with death as her partner. Her sword slid through the bodies of the bandits.
Halldór dropped to his knees, thanking the gods for sending her. He watched the point of her sword trace a line, like the path of entrails on the church floor. The line of blood led to the next moment, the next and the next, as if each man’s death was predestined.
Then she turned her sword on him.
Her blade descended, burning with the fire of the setting sun. She stopped as if she had run into a wall, with the point touching Halldór’s chest.
Why had she stopped? If his blood was the price for saving Lárus, so be it. Her arm trembled. She grimaced, but did not move the sword closer.
Her face, half-hidden by her helm, was dark with rage. “Where am I?” Her words were crisp, more like a chant than common speech.
Holding still, Halldór said, “We are on the border of the Parliament lands, Li Reiko.”
Her dark eyes, slanted beneath angry lids, widened. She pulled back and her armor rippled, vanishing into thought. Skin, tanned like the smoothest leather stretched over her wide cheekbones. Her hair hung in a heavy, black braid down her back. Halldór’s pulse sang in his veins.
Only the gods in sagas had hair the color of the Allmother’s night. Had he needed proof he had called the Chooser of the Slain, the inhuman black hair would have convinced him of that.
He bowed his head. “All praise to you, Great One. Grant us your blessings.”
- - -
Reiko’s breath hissed from her. He knew her name. She had dropped through a flaming portal into hell and this demon with bulging eyes knew her name.
She had tried to slay him as she had the others, but could not press her sword forward, as if a wall had protected him.
And now he asked for blessings.
“What blessings do you ask of me?” Reiko said. She controlled a shudder. What human had hair as pale as straw?
Straw lowered his bulging eyes to the demon lying in front of him. “Grant us, O Gracious One, the life of our Duke Lárus.”
This Lárus had a wound deep in his shoulder. His blood was as red as any human’s, but his face was pale as death.
She turned from Straw and wiped her sword on the thick moss, cleaning the blood from it. As soon as her attention seemed turned from them, Straw attended Lárus. She kept her awareness on the sounds of his movement as she sought balance in the familiar task of caring for her weapon. By the Gods! Why did he have her sword? It had been in her rooms not ten minutes before playing hide and seek with her children.
Panic almost took her. What had happened to her Aya and Nawi? She needed information, but displaying ignorance to an enemy was a weakness, which could kill surer than the sharpest blade. She considered.
Their weapons were bronze, not steel, and none of her opponents had manifested armor. They dressed in leather and felted wool, but no woven goods. So, then. That was their technology.
Straw had not healed Lárus, so perhaps they could not. He wanted her aid. Her thoughts checked. Could demons be bound by blood debt?
She turned to Straw.
“What price do you offer for this life?”
Straw raised his eyes; they were the color of the sky. “I offer my life unto you, O Great One.”
She set her lips. What good would vengeance do? Unless… “Do you offer blood or service?”
He lowered his head again. “I submit to your will.”
“You will serve me then. Do you agree to be my bound man?”
“I do.”
“Good.” She sheathed her sword. “What is your name?”
“Halldór Arnarsson.”
“I accept your pledge.” She dropped to her knees and pushed the leather from the wound on Lárus’s shoulder. She pulled upon her reserves and, rising into the healing ritual, touched his mind.
He was human.
She pushed the shock aside; she could not spare the attention.
- - -
Halldór gasped as fire glowed around Li Reiko’s hands. He had read of gods healing in the sagas, but bearing witness was beyond his dreams.
The glow faded. She lifted her hands from Lárus’s shoulder. The wound was gone. A narrow red line and the blood-soaked clothing remained. Lárus opened his eyes as if he had been sleeping.
But her face was drawn. “I have paid the price for your service, bound man.” She lifted a hand to her temple. “The wound was deeper…” Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped to the ground.
Lárus sat up and grabbed Halldór by the shoulder. “What did you do?”
Shaking Lárus off, Halldór crouched next to her. She was breathing. “I saved your life.”
“By binding yourself to a woman? Are you mad?”
“She healed you. Healed! Look.” Halldór pointed at her hair. “Look at her. This is Li Reiko.”
“Li Reiko was a Warrior.”
“You saw her. How long did it take her to kill six men?” He pointed at the carnage behind them. “Name one man who could do that.”
Would moving her be a sacrilege? He grimaced. He would beg forgiveness if that were the case. “We should move before the sun sets and the trolls come out.”
Lárus nodded slowly, his eyes still on the bodies around them. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“What?”
“How many other sagas are true?”
Halldór frowned. “They’re all true.”
- - -
The smell of mutton invaded her dreamless sleep. Reiko lay under sheepskin, on a bed of straw ticking. The straw poked through the wool fabric, pricking her bare skin. Straw. Her memory tickled her with an image of hair the color of straw. Halldór.
Long practice kept her breath even. She lay with her eyes closed, listening. A small room. An open fire. Women murmuring. She needed to learn as much as possible, before changing the balance by letting them know she was awake.
A hand placed a damp rag on her brow. The touch was light, a woman or a child.
The sheepskin’s weight would telegraph her movement if she tried grabbing the hand. Better to open her eyes and feign weakness than to create an impression of threat. There was time for that later.
Reiko let her eyes flutter open. A girl bent over her, cast from the same demonic mold as Halldór. Her hair was the color of honey, and her wide blue eyes started from her head. She stilled when Reiko awoke, but did not pull away.
Reiko forced a smile, and let worry appear on her brow. “Where am I?”
“In the women’s quarters at the Parliament grounds.”
Reiko sat up. The sheepskin fell away, letting the cool air caress her body. The girl averted her eyes. Conversation in the room stopped.
Interesting. They had a nudity taboo. She reached for the sheepskin and pulled it over her torso. “What is your name?”
“Mara Halldórsdottir.”
Her bound man had a daughter. And his people had a patronymic system — how far from home was she? “Where are my clothes, Mara?”
The girl lifted a folded bundle of cloth from a low bench next to the bed. “I washed them for you.”
“Thank you.” If Mara had washed and dried her clothes, Reiko must have been unconscious for several hours. Lárus’s wound had been deeper than she thought. “Where is my sword?”
“My father has it.”
Rage filled Reiko’s veins like the fire that had brought her here. She waited for the heat to dwindle, then began dressing. As Reiko pulled her boots on, she asked, “Where is he?”
Behind Mara, the other women shifted as if Reiko were crossing a line. Mara ignored them. “He’s with Parliament.”
“Which is where?” The eyes of the other women felt like heat on her skin. Ah. Parliament contained the line she should not cross, and they clearly would not answer her. Her mind teased her with memories of folk in other lands. She had never paid much heed to these stories, since history had been men’s work. She smiled at Mara. “Thank you for your kindness.”
As she strode from the room she kept her senses fanned out, waiting for resistance from them, but they hung back as if they were afraid.
The women’s quarters fronted on a narrow twisting path lined with low turf and stone houses. The end of the street opened on a large raised circle surrounded by stone benches.
Men sat on the benches, but women stayed below. Lárus spoke in the middle of the circle. By his side, Halldór stood with her sword in his hands. Sheltering in the shadow by a house, Reiko studied them. They towered above her, but their movements were clumsy and oafish like a trained bear. Nawi had better training than any here.
Her son. Sudden anxiety and rage filled her lungs, but rage invited rash decisions. She forced the anger away.
With effort, she returned her focus to the men. They had no awareness of their mass, only of their size and an imperfect grasp of that.
Halldór lifted his head. As if guided by strings his eyes found her in the shadows.
He dropped to his knees and held out her sword. In mid-sentence, Lárus looked at Halldór, and then turned to Reiko. Surprise crossed his face, but he bowed his head.
“Li Reiko, you honor us with your presence.”
Reiko climbed onto the stone circle. As she crossed to retrieve her sword, an ox of a man rose to his feet. “I will not sit here, while a woman is in the Parliament’s circle.”
Lárus scowled. “Ingolfur, this is no mortal woman.”
Reiko’s attention sprang forward. What did they think she was, if not mortal?
“You darkened a trollop’s hair with soot.” Ingolfur crossed his arms. “You expect me to believe she’s a god?”
Her pulse quickened. What were they saying? Lárus flung his cloak back, showing the torn and blood-soaked leather at his shoulder. “We were set upon by bandits. My arm was cut half off and she healed it.” His pale face flushed red. “I tell you this is Li Reiko, returned to the world.”
She understood the words, but they had no meaning. Each sentence out of their mouths raised a thousand questions in her mind.
“Ha.” Ingolfur spat on the ground. “Your quest sought a warrior to defeat the Troll King.”
This she understood. “And if I do, what price do you offer?”
Lárus opened his mouth but Ingolfur crossed the circle.
“You pretend to be the Chooser of the Slain?” Ingolfur reached for her, as if she were a doll he could pick up. Before his hand touched her shoulder, she took his wrist, pulling on it as she twisted. She drove her shoulder into his belly and used his mass to flip him as she stood.
She had thought these were demons, but by their actions they were men, full of swagger and rash judgment. She waited. He would attack her again.
Ingolfur raged behind her. Reiko focused on his sounds and the small changes in the air. As he reached for her, she twisted away from his hands and with his force, sent him stumbling from the circle. The men broke into laughter.
She waited again.
It might take time but Ingolfur would learn his place. A man courted death, touching a woman unasked.
Halldór stepped in front of Reiko and faced Ingolfur. “Great Ingolfur, surely you can see no mortal woman could face our champion.”
Reiko cocked her head slightly. Her bound man showed wit by appeasing the oaf’s vanity.
Lárus pointed to her sword in Halldór’s hands. “Who here still doubts we have completed our quest?” The men shifted on their benches uneasily. “We fulfilled the first part of the prophecy by returning Li Reiko to the world.”
What prophecy had her name in it? There might be a bargaining chip here.
“You promised us a mighty warrior, the Chooser of the Slain,” Ingolfur snarled, “not a woman.”
It was time for action. If they wanted a god, they should have one. “Have no doubt. I can defeat the Troll King.” She let her armor flourish around her. Ingolfur drew back involuntarily. Around the circle, she heard gasps and sharp cries.
She drew her sword from Halldór’s hands. “Who here will test me?”
Halldór dropped to his knees in front of her. “The Chooser of the Slain!”
In the same breath, Lárus knelt and cried, “Li Reiko!”
Around the circle, men followed suit. On the ground below, women and children knelt in the dirt. They cried her name. In the safety of her helm, Reiko scowled. Playing at godhood was a dangerous lie.
She lowered her sword. “But there is a price. You must return me to the heavens.”
Halldór’s eyes grew wider than she thought possible. “How, my lady?”
She shook her head. “You know the gods grant nothing easily. They say you must return me. You must learn how. Who here accepts that price for your freedom from the trolls?”
She sheathed her sword and let her armor vanish into thought. Turning on her heel, she strode off the Parliament’s circle.
- - -
Halldór clambered to his feet as Li Reiko left the Parliament circle. His head reeled. She hinted at things beyond his training. Lárus grabbed him by the arm. “What does she mean, return her?”
Ingolfur tossed his hands. “If that is the price, I will pay it gladly. Ridding the world of the Troll King and her at the same time would be a joy.”
“Is it possible?”
Men crowded around Halldór, asking him theological questions of the sagas. The answers eluded him. He had not cast a rune-stone or read an entrail since they started for the elf-house a week ago. “She would not ask if it were impossible.” He swallowed. “I will study the problem with my brothers and return to you.”
Lárus clapped him on the back. “Good man.” When Lárus turned to the throng surrounding them, Halldór slipped away.
He found Li Reiko surrounded by children. The women hung back, too shy to come near, but the children crowded close. Halldór could hardly believe she had killed six men as easily as carding wool. For the space of a breath, he watched her play peek-a-boo with a small child, her face open with delight and pain.
She saw him and shutters closed over her soul. Standing, her eyes impassive, she said. “I want to read the prophecy.”
He blinked, surprised. Then his heart lifted; maybe she would show him how to pay her price. “It is stored in the church.”
Reiko brushed the child’s hair from its eyes, then fell into step beside Halldór. He could barely keep a sedate pace to the church.
Inside, he led her through the nave to the library beside the sanctuary. The other priests, studying, stared at the Chooser of the Slain. Halldór felt as if he were outside himself with the strangeness of this. He was leading Li Reiko, a Warrior out of the oldest sagas, past shelves containing her history.
Since the gods had arrived from across the sea, his brothers had recorded their history. For six-thousand unbroken years, the records of prophecy and the sagas kept their history whole.
When they reached the collections desk, the acolyte on duty looked as if he would wet himself. Halldór stood between the boy and the Chooser of the Slain, but the boy still stared with an open mouth.
“Bring me the Troll King prophecy, and the Sagas of Li Nawi, Volume I. We will be in the side chapel.”
Still gaping, the boy nodded and ran down the aisles.
“We can study in here.” He led the Chooser of the Slain to the side chapel. Halldór was shocked again at how small she was, not much taller than the acolyte. He had thought the gods would be larger than life.
He had hundreds of questions, but none of the words.
When the acolyte came back, Halldór sent a silent prayer of thanks. Here was something they could discuss. He took the vellum roll and the massive volume of sagas the acolyte carried and shooed him out of the room.
Halldór’s palms were damp with sweat as he pulled on wool gloves to protect the manuscripts. He hesitated over another pair of gloves, then set them aside. Her hands could heal; she would not damage the manuscripts.
Carefully, Halldór unrolled the prophecy scroll on the table. He did not look at the rendering of entrails. He watched her.
She gave no hint of her thoughts. “I want to hear your explanation of this.”
A cold current ran up his spine, as if he were eleven again, explaining scripture to an elder. Halldór licked his lips and pointed at the arc of sclera. “This represents the heavens, and the overlap here,” he pointed at the bulge of the lower intestine, “means time of conflict. I interpreted the opening in the bulge to mean specifically the Troll King. This pattern of blood means — ”
She crossed her arms. “You clearly understand your discipline. Tell me the prophecy in plain language.”
“Oh.” He looked at the drawing of the entrails again. What did she see that he did not? “Well, in a time of conflict — which is now — the Chooser of the Slain overcomes the Troll King.” He pointed at the shining knot around the lower intestine. “See how this chokes off the Troll King. That means you win the battle.”
“And how did you know the legendary warrior was — is me?”
“I cross-referenced with our histories and you were the one that fit the criteria.”
She shivered. “Show me the history. I want to understand how you deciphered this.”
Halldór thanked the gods that he had asked for Li Nawi’s saga as well. He placed the heavy volume of history in front of Li Reiko and opened to the Book of Fire, Chapter I.
- - -
In the autumn of the Fire, Li Reiko, greatest of the warriors, trained Li Nawi and his sister Aya in the ways of Death. In the midst of the training, a curtain of fire split Nawi from Aya and when they came together again, Li Reiko was gone. Though they were frightened, they understood that the Chooser of the Slain had taken a rightful place in heaven.
Reiko trembled, her control gone. “What is this?”
“It is the Saga of Li Nawi.”
She tried phrasing casual questions, but her mind spun in circles. “How do you come to have this?”
Halldór traced the letters with his gloved hand. “After the Collapse, when waves of fire had rolled across our land, Li Nawi came across the oceans with the other gods. He was our conqueror and our salvation.”
The ranks of stone shelves filled with thick leather bindings crowded her. Her heart kicked wildly.
Halldór’s voice seemed drowned out by the drumming of her pulse. “The Sagas are our heritage and charge. The gods have left the Earth, but we keep records of histories as they taught us.”
Reiko turned her eyes blindly from the page. “Your heritage?”
“I have been dedicated to the service of the gods since my birth.” He paused. “Your sagas were the most inspiring. Forgive my trespasses, may I beg for your indulgence with a question?”
“What?” Hot and cold washed over her in sickening waves.
“I have read your son Li Nawi’s accounts of your triumphs in battle.”
Reiko could not breathe. Halldór flipped the pages forward. “This is how I knew where to look for your sword.” He paused with his hand over the letters. “I deciphered the clues to invoke it and call you here, but there are many — ”
Reiko pushed away from the table. “You caused the curtain of fire?” She wanted to vomit her fear at his feet.
“I — I do not understand.”
“I dropped through fire this morning.” And when they came together again, Li Reiko was no more. What had it been like for Aya and Nawi to watch their mother ripped out of time?
Halldór said, “In answer to my petition.”
“I was playing hide and seek with my children and you took me.”
“You were in the heavens with the gods.”
“That’s something you tell a grieving child!”
“I — I didn’t, I — ” His face turned gray. “Forgive me, Great One.”
“I am not a god!” She pushed him, all control gone. He tripped over a bench and dropped to the floor. “Send me back.”
“I cannot.”
Her sword flew from its sheath before she realized she held it. “Send me back!” She held it to his neck. Her arms trembled with the desire to run it through him. But it would not move.
She leaned on the blade, digging her feet into the floor. “You ripped me out of time and took me from my children.”
He shook his head. “It had already happened.”
“Because of you.” Her sword crept closer, pricking a drop of blood from his neck. What protected him?
Halldór lay on his back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know…I was following the prophecy.”
Reiko staggered. Prophecy. A wall of predestination. Empty, she dropped to the bench and cradled her sword. “How long ago…?”
“Six thousand years.”
She closed her eyes. This was why he could not return her. He had not simply brought her from across the sea like the other “gods.” He had brought her through time. If she were trapped here, if she could never see her children again, it did not matter if these were human or demons. She was banished in Hell.
“What do the sagas say about my children?”
Halldór rolled to his knees. “I can show you.” His voice shook.
“No.” She ran her hand down the blade of her sword. Its edge whispered against her skin. She touched her wrist to the blade. It would be easy. “Read it to me.”
She heard him get to his feet. The pages of the heavy book shuffled.
- - -
Halldór swallowed and read, “This is from the Saga of Li Nawi, the Book of the Sword, Chapter Two. ‘And it came to pass that Li Aya and Li Nawi were raised unto adulthood by their tutor.’”
A tutor raised them, because he, Halldór, had pulled their mother away. He shook his head. It had happened six thousand years ago.
“‘But when they reached adulthood, each claimed the right of Li Reiko’s sword.’”
They fought over the sword, with which he had called her, not out of the heavens, but from across time. Halldór shivered and focused on the page.
“‘Li Aya challenged Li Nawi, saying Death was her birthright. But Nawi, on hearing this, scoffed and said he was a Child of Death. And saying so, he took Li Reiko’s sword and the gods smote Li Aya with their fiery hand, thus granting Li Nawi the victory.’”
Halldór’s entrails twisted as if the gods were reading them. He had read these sagas since he was a boy. He believed them, but he had not thought they were real. He looked at Li Reiko. She held her head in her lap and rocked back and forth.
For all his talk of prophecies, he was the one who had found the sword and invoked it. “‘Then all men knew he was the true Child of Death. He raised an army of men, the First of the Nine Armies, and thus began the Collapse — ‘”
“Stop.”
“I’m sorry.” He would slaughter a thousand sheep if one would tell him how to undo his crime. In the Saga of Li Nawi, Li Reiko never appeared after the wall of fire. He closed the book and took a step toward her. “The price you asked…I can’t send you back.”
Li Reiko drew a shuddering breath and looked up. “I have already paid the price for you.” Her eyes reflected his guilt. “Another hero can kill the Troll King.”
His pulse rattled forward like a panicked horse. “No one else can. The prophecy points to you.”
“Gut a new sheep, bound man. I won’t help you.” She stood. “I release you from your debt.”
“But, it’s unpaid. I owe you a life.”
“You cannot pay the price I ask.” She turned and touched her sword to his neck again. He flinched. “I couldn’t kill you when I wanted to.” She cocked her head, and traced the point of the blade around his neck, not quite touching him. “What destiny waits for you?”
“Nothing.” He was no one.
She snorted. “How nice to be without a fate.” Sheathing her sword, she walked toward the door.
He followed her. Nothing made sense. “Where are you going?” She spun and drove her fist into his midriff. He grunted and folded over the pain. Panting, Reiko pulled her sword out and hit his side with the flat of her blade. Halldór held his cry in.
She swung again, with the edge, but the wall of force stopped her; Halldór held still. She turned the blade and slammed the flat against his ribs again. The breath hissed out of him, but he did not move. He knelt in front of her, waiting for the next blow. He deserved this. He deserved more than this.
Li Reiko’s lip curled in disgust. “Do not follow me.”
He scrabbled forward on his knees. “Then tell me where you’re going, so I will not meet you by chance.”
“Maybe that is your destiny.” She left him.
Halldór did not follow her.
- - -
Li Reiko chased her shadow out of the parliament lands. It stretched before her in the golden light of sunrise, racing her across the moss-covered lava. The wind, whipping across the treeless plain, pushed her like a child late for dinner.
Surrounded by the people in the Parliament lands, Reiko’s anger had overwhelmed her and buried her grief. Whatever Halldór thought her destiny was, she saw only two paths in front of her — make a life here or join her children in the only way left. Neither were paths to choose rashly.
Small shrubs and grasses broke the green with patches of red and gold, as if someone had unrolled a carpet on the ground. Heavy undulations creased the land with crevices. Some held water reflecting the sky, others dropped to a lower level of moss and soft grasses, and some were as dark as the inside of a cave.
When the sun crossed the sky and painted the land with long shadows, Reiko sought shelter from the wind in one of the crevices. The moss cradled her with the warmth of the earth.
She pulled thoughts of Aya and Nawi close. In her memory, they laughed as they reached for her. Sobs pushed past Reiko’s reserves. She wrapped her arms around her chest. Each cry shattered her. Her children were dead because Halldór had decided a disemboweled sheep meant he should rip her out of time. It did not matter if they had grown up; she had not been there. They were six‑thousand years dead. Inside her head, Reiko battled grief. Her fists pounded against the walls of her mind. No. Her brain filled with that silent syllable.
She pressed her face against the velvet moss wanting the earth to absorb her.
She heard a sound.
Training quieted her breath in a moment. Reiko lifted her head from the moss and listened. Footsteps crossed the earth above her. She manifested her armor and rolled silently to her feet. If Halldór had followed her, she would play the part of a man and seek revenge.
In the light of the moon, a figure, larger than a man, crept toward her. A troll. Behind him, a gang of trolls watched. Reiko counted them and considered the terrain. It was safer to hide, but anger still throbbed in her bones. She left her sword sheathed and slunk out of the crevice in the ground. Her argument was not with them.
Flowing across the moss, she let the uneven shadows mask her until she reached a standing mound of stones. The wind carried the trolls’ stink to her.
The lone troll reached the crevice she had sheltered in. His arm darted down like a bear fishing and he roared with astonishment.
The other trolls laughed. “Got away, did she?”
One of them said, “Mucker was smelling his own crotch is all.”
“Yah, sure. He didn’t get enough in the Hall and goes around thinking he smells more.”
They had taken human women. Reiko felt a stabbing pain in her loins; she could not let that stand.
Mucker whirled. “Shut up! I know I smelled a woman.”
“Then where’d she go?” The troll snorted the air. “Don’t smell one now.”
The other lumbered away. “Let’s go, while some of ‘em are still fresh.”
Mucker slumped and followed the other trolls. Reiko eased out of the shadows. She was a fool, but would not hide while women were raped.
She hung back, letting the wind bring their sounds and scents as she tracked the trolls to their Hall.
The moon had sunk to a handspan above the horizon as they reached the Troll Hall. Trolls stood on either side of the great stone doors.
Reiko crouched in the shadows. The night was silent except for the sounds of revelry. Even with alcohol slowing their movement, there were too many of them.
If she could goad the sentries into taking her on one at a time she could get inside, but only if no other trolls came. The sound of swordplay would draw a crowd faster than crows to carrion.
A harness jingled.
Reiko’s head snapped in the direction of the sound.
She shielded her eyes from the light coming out of the Troll Hall. As her vision adjusted, a man on horseback resolved out of the dark. He sat twenty or thirty horselengths away, invisible to the trolls outside the Hall. Reiko eased toward him, senses wide.
The horse shifted its weight when it smelled her. The man put his hand on its neck, calming it. Light from the Troll Hall hinted at the planes on his face. Halldór. Her lips tightened. He had followed her. Reiko warred with an irrational desire to call the trolls down on them.
She needed him. Halldór, with his drawings and histories, might know what the inside of the Troll Hall looked like.
Praying he would have sense enough to be quiet, she stepped out of the shadows. He jumped as she appeared, but stayed silent.
He swung off his horse and leaned close. His whisper was hot in her ear. “Forgive me. I did not follow you.”
He turned his head, letting her breathe an answer in return. “Understood. They have women inside.”
“I know.” Halldór looked toward the Troll Hall. Dried blood covered the left side of his face.
“We should move away to talk,” she said.
He took his horse by the reins and followed her. His horse’s hooves were bound with sheepskin so they made no sound on the rocks. Something had happened since she left the Parliament lands.
Halldór limped on his left side. Reiko’s heart beat as if she were running. The trolls had women prisoners. Halldór bore signs of battle. Trolls must have attacked the Parliament. They walked in silence until the sounds of the Troll Hall dwindled to nothing.
Halldór stopped. “There was a raid.” He stared at nothing, his jaw clenched. “While I was gone…they just let the trolls — ” His voice broke like a boy’s. “They have my girl.”
Mara. Anger slipped from Reiko. “Halldór, I’m sorry.” She looked for other riders. “Who came with you?”
He shook his head. “No one. They’re guarding the walls in case the trolls come back.” He touched the side of his face. “I tried persuading them.”
“Why did you come?”
“To get Mara back.”
“There are too many of them, bound man.” She scowled. “Even if you could get inside, what do you plan to do? Challenge the Troll King to single combat?” Her words resonated in her skull. Reiko closed her eyes, dizzy with the turns the gods spun her in. When she opened them, Halldór’s lips were parted in prayer. Reiko swallowed. “When does the sun rise?”
“In another hour.”
She turned to the Hall. In an hour, the trolls could not give chase; the sun would turn them to stone. She unbraided her hair.
Halldór stared as her long hair began flirting with the wind. She smiled at the question in his eyes. “I have a prophecy to fulfill.”
- - -
Reiko stumbled into the torchlight, her hair loose and wild. She clutched Halldór’s cloak around her shoulders.
One of the troll sentries saw her. “Hey. A dolly.”
Reiko contorted her face with fear and whimpered. The other troll laughed. “She don’t seem taken with you, do she?”
The first troll came closer. “She don’t have to.”
“Don’t hurt me. Please, please…” Reiko retreated from him. When she was between the two, she whipped Halldór’s cloak off, tangling it around the first troll’s head. With her sword, she gutted the other. He dropped to his knees, fumbling with his entrails as she turned to the first. She slid her sword under the cloak, slicing along the base of the first troll’s jaw.
Leaving them to die, Reiko entered the Hall. Women’s cries mingled with the sounds of debauchery.
She kept her focus on the battle ahead. She would be out-matched in size and strength, but hoped her wit and weapon would prevail. Her mouth twisted. She knew she would prevail. It was predestined.
A troll saw her. He lumbered closer. Reiko showed her sword, bright with blood. “I have met your sentries. Shall we dance as well?”
The troll checked his movement and squinted his beady eyes at her. Reiko walked past him. She kept her awareness on him, but another troll, Mucker, loomed in front of her.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I am the one you sought. I am Chooser of the Slain. I have come for your King.”
Mucker laughed and reached for her, heedless of her sword. She dodged under his grasp and held the point to his jugular. “I have come for your King. Not for you. Show me to him.”
She leapt back. His hand went to his throat and came away with blood.
A bellow rose from the entry. Someone had found the sentries. Reiko kept her gaze on Mucker, but her peripheral vision filled with trolls running. Footsteps behind her. She spun and planted her sword in a troll’s arm. The troll howled, drawing back. Reiko shook her head. “I have come for your King.”
They herded her to the Hall. She had no chance of defeating them, but if the Troll King granted her single combat, she might escape the Hall with the prisoners. When she entered the great Hall, whispers flew; the number of slain trolls mounted with each rumor.
The Troll King lolled on his throne. Mara, her face red with shame, serviced him.
Anger buzzed in Reiko’s ears. She let it pass through her. “Troll King, I have come to challenge you.”
The Troll King laughed like an avalanche of stone tearing down his Hall. “You! A dolly wants to fight?”
Reiko paid no attention to his words.
He was nearly twice her height. Leather armor, crusted with crude bronze scales, covered his body. The weight of feast hung about his middle, but his shoulders bulged with muscle. If he connected a blow, she would die. But he would be fighting gravity as well as her. Once he began a movement, it would take time for him to stop and begin another.
Reiko raised her head, waiting until his laughter faded. “I am the Chooser of the Slain. Will you accept my challenge?” She forced a smile to her lips. “Or are you afraid to dance with me?”
“I will grind you to paste, dolly. I will sweep over your lands and eat your children for my breakfast.”
“If you win, you may. Here are my terms. If I win, the prisoners go free.”
He came down from his throne and leaned close. “If you win, we will never show a shadow in human lands.”
“Will your people hold that pledge when you are dead?”
He laughed. The stink of his breath boiled around her. He turned to the trolls packed in the Hall. “Will you?”
The room rocked with the roar of their voices. “Aye.”
The Troll King leered. “And when you lose, I won’t kill you till I’ve bedded you.”
“Agreed. May the gods hear our pledge.” Reiko manifested her armor.
As the night-black plates materialized around her, the Troll King bellowed, “What is this?”
“This?” She taunted him. “This is but a toy the gods have sent to play with you.”
She smiled in her helm as he swung his heavy iron sword over his head and charged her. Stupid. Reiko stepped to the side, already turning as she let him pass.
She brought her sword hard against the gap in his armor above his boot. The blade jarred against bone. She yanked her sword free; blood coated it like a sheath.
The Troll King dropped to one knee, hamstrung. Without waiting, she vaulted up his back and wrapped her arms around his neck. Like Aya riding piggyback. He flailed his sword through the air, reaching for her. She slit his throat. His bellow changed to a gurgle as blood fountained in an arc, soaking the ground.
A heavy ache filled her breast. She whispered in his ear. “I have killed you without honor. I am a machine of the gods.”
Reiko let gravity pull the Troll King down, as trolls shrieked. She leapt off his body as it fell forward.
Before the dust settled around him, Reiko pointed her sword at the nearest troll. “Release the prisoners.”
- - -
Reiko led the women into the dawn. As they left the Troll Hall, Halldór dropped to his knees with his arms lifted in prayer. Mara wrapped her arms around his neck, sobbing.
Reiko felt nothing. Why should she, when the victory was not hers? She withdrew from the group of women weeping and singing her praises.
Halldór chased her. “Lady, my life is already yours but my debt has doubled.”
He reminded her of a suitor in one of Aya’s bedtime stories, accepting gifts without asking what the witchyman’s price would be. She knelt to clean her sword on the moss. “Then give me your firstborn child.”
She could hear his breath hitch in his throat. “If that is your price.”
Reiko raised her eyes. “No. That is a price I will not ask.”
He knelt beside her. “I know why you can not kill me.”
“Good.” She turned to her sword. “When you fulfill your fate let me know, so I can.”
His blue eyes shone with fervor. “I am destined to return your daughter to you.”
Reiko’s heart flooded with pain and hope. She fought for breath. “Do not toy with me, bound man.”
“I would not. I reviewed the sagas after you went into the Hall. It says ‘and the gods smote Li Aya with their fiery hand.’ I can bring Li Aya here.”
Reiko sunk her fingers into the moss, clutching the earth. Oh gods, to have her little girl here — she trembled. Aya would not be a child. There would be no games of hide and seek. When they reached adulthood, each claimed the right of Li Reiko’s sword…how old would Aya be?
Reiko shook her head. She could not do that to her daughter. “You want to rip Aya out of time as well. If Nawi had not won, the Collapse would not have happened.”
Halldór brow furrowed. “But it already did.”
Reiko stared at the women, and the barren landscape beyond them. Everything she saw was a result of her son’s actions. Or were her son’s actions the result of choices made here? She did not know if it mattered. The cogs in the gods’ machine clicked forward.
“Are there any prophecies about Aya?”
Halldór nodded. “She’s destined to — ”
Reiko put her hand on his mouth as if she could stop fate. “Don’t.” She closed her eyes, fingers still resting on his lips. “If you bring her, promise me you won’t let her know she’s bound to the will of the gods.”
He nodded.
Reiko withdrew her hand and pressed it to her temple. Her skull throbbed with potential decisions. Aya had already vanished into fire; if Reiko did not decide to bring her here, where would Aya go?
Her bound man knelt next to her, waiting for her decision. Aya would not forgive Reiko for yanking her out of time, anymore than Reiko had forgiven Halldór.
His eyes flicked over her shoulder and then back. Reiko turned to follow his gaze. Mara comforted another girl. What did the future hold for Halldór’s daughter? In this time, women seemed to have no role.
But times could change. Watching Mara, Reiko knew which path to choose if she were granted free will.
“Bring Aya to me.” Reiko looked at the sword in her hand. “My daughter’s birthright waits for her.”
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Cinedigm has acquired domestic distribution rights to “Arthur Newman,” starring Colin Firth and Emily Blunt, the studio announced on Friday.
“Arthur Newman,” the directorial debut of Dante Ariola, chronicles Wallace Avery (Firth), a depressed man loathed by his ex-wife. He stages his own death and heads out on the road where he meets Mike (Blunt), who also wants a fresh start.
Cinedigm will release the film in theaters mid-2013, with on-demand, premium digital, DVD and TV distribution to follow.
“‘Arthur Newman’ is perfect for today’s audiences… A deeply entertaining film highlighted by touching performances from Colin and Emily that bring real heart and soul to a powerful story of displacement, longing and ultimately, redemption. Moviegoers will leave the theatre moved and uplifted,” Vincent Scordino, vice president of acquisitions for Cinedigm Entertainment Group, said in a statement.
Becky Johnson penned the script for the film, which she also produced alongside Vertebra Films’s Mac Cappuccino, Cross Creek Pictures’ Brian Oliver and Alisa Tager.
Three days before his death last week at 88, Darrell Royal told his wife, Edith: “We need to go back to Hollis” — in Oklahoma. “Uncle Otis died.”
“Oh, Darrell,” she said, “Uncle Otis didn’t die.”
Royal, a former University of Texas football coach, chuckled and said, “Well, Uncle Otis will be glad to hear that.”
The Royal humor never faded, even as he sank deeper into Alzheimer’s disease. The last three years, I came to understand this as well as anyone. We had known each other for more than 40 years. In the 1970s, Royal was a virile, driven, demanding man with a chip on his shoulder bigger than Bevo, the Longhorns mascot. He rarely raised his voice to players. “But we were scared to death of him,” the former quarterback Bill Bradley said.
Royal won 3 national championships and 167 games before retiring at 52. He was a giant in college football, having stood shoulder to shoulder with the Alabama coach Bear Bryant. Royal’s Longhorns defeated one of Bryant’s greatest teams, with Joe Namath at quarterback, in the 1965 Orange Bowl. Royal went 3-0-1 in games against Bryant.
Royal and I were reunited in the spring of 2010. I barely recognized him. The swagger was gone. His mind had faded. Often he stared aimlessly across the room. I scheduled an interview with him for my book “Courage Beyond the Game: The Freddie Steinmark Story.” Still, I worried that his withering mind could no longer conjure up images of Steinmark, the undersize safety who started 21 straight winning games for the Longhorns in the late 1960s. Steinmark later developed bone cancer that robbed him of his left leg.
When I met with Royal and his wife, I quickly learned that his long-term memory was as clear as a church bell. For two hours, Royal took me back to Steinmark’s recruiting trip to Austin in 1967, through the Big Shootout against Arkansas in 1969, to the moment President Richard M. Nixon handed him the national championship trophy in the cramped locker room in Fayetteville. He recalled the day at M. D. Anderson Hospital in Houston the next week when doctors informed Steinmark that his leg would be amputated if a biopsy revealed cancer. Royal never forgot the determined expression on Steinmark’s face, nor the bravery in his heart.
The next morning, Royal paced the crowded waiting room floor and said: “This just can’t be happening to a good kid like Freddie Steinmark. This just can’t be happening.”
With the love of his coach, Steinmark rose to meet the misfortune. Nineteen days after the amputation, he stood with crutches on the sideline at the Cotton Bowl for the Notre Dame game. After the Longhorns defeated the Fighting Irish, Royal tearfully presented the game ball to Steinmark.
Four decades later, while researching the Steinmark book, I became close to Royal again. As I was leaving his condominium the day of the interview, I said, “Coach, do you still remember me?” He smiled and said, “Now, Jim Dent, how could I ever forget you?” My sense of self-importance lasted about three seconds. Royal chuckled. He pointed across the room to the message board next to the front door that read, “Jim Dent appt. at 10 a.m.”
Edith and his assistant, Colleen Kieke, read parts of my book to him. One day, Royal told me, “It’s really a great book.” But I can’t be certain how much he knew of the story.
Like others, I was troubled to see Royal’s memory loss. He didn’t speak for long stretches. He smiled and posed for photographs. He seemed the happiest around his former players. He would call his longtime friend Tom Campbell, an all-Southwest Conference defensive back from the 1960s, and say, “What are you up to?” That always meant, “Let’s go drink a beer.”
As her husband’s memory wore thin, Edith did not hide him. Instead, she organized his 85th birthday party and invited all of his former players. Quarterback James Street, who engineered the famous 15-14 comeback against Arkansas in 1969, sat by Royal’s side and helped him remember faces and names. The players hugged their coach, then turned away to hide the tears.
In the spring of 2010, I was invited to the annual Mexican lunch for Royal attended by about 75 of his former players. A handful of them were designated to stand up and tell Royal what he meant to them. Royal smiled through each speech as his eyes twinkled. I was mesmerized by a story the former defensive tackle Jerrel Bolton told. He recalled that Royal had supported him after the murder of his wife some 30 year earlier.
“Coach, you told me it was like a big cut on my arm, that the scab would heal, but that the wound would always come back,” Bolton said. “It always did.”
Royal seemed to drink it all in. But everyone knew his mind would soon dim.
The last time I saw him was June 20 at the County Line, a barbecue restaurant next to Bull Creek in Austin. Because Royal hated wheelchairs and walkers, the former Longhorn Mike Campbell, Tom’s twin, and I helped him down the stairs by wrapping our arms around his waist and gripping the back of his belt. I ordered his lunch, fed him his sandwich and cleaned his face with a napkin. He looked at me and said, “Was I a college player in the 1960s?”
“No, Coach,” I said. “But you were a great player for the Oklahoma Sooners in the late 1940s. You quarterbacked Oklahoma to an 11-0 record and the Sooners’ first national championship in 1949.”
He smiled and said, “Well, I’ll be doggone.”
After lunch, Mike Campbell and I carried him up the stairs. We sat him on a bench outside as Tom Campbell fetched the car. In that moment, the lunch crowd began to spill out of the restaurant. About 20 customers recognized Royal. They took his photograph with camera phones. Royal smiled and welcomed the hugs.
“He didn’t remember a thing about it,” Tom Campbell said later. “But it did his heart a whole lot of good.”
Jim Dent is the author of “The Junction Boys” and eight other books.
Bargains on bank-owned homes are quickly vanishing in the country's most competitive markets.
Since the start of the mortgage meltdown, repossessed homes have been considered the discount aisles of real estate. Now competition among investors and first-time home buyers for affordable digs is making those distressed properties less affordable, a new analysis by Zillow.com shows.
"They will get somewhat of a deal, depending on the market," Zillow chief economist Stan Humphries said. "But, just generally, you are going to get less of a deal today than you would have gotten in late 2009 or early 2010."
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The shrinking discounts underscore how real estate has recovered this year as low interest rates and high affordability have sucked buyers back into the market. The number of for-sale homes has also fallen to levels not seen since the housing boom as foreclosures ease and homeowners — many who still owe more on their properties than they are worth — hold off on listing their houses for sale.
Zillow looked at sale prices of bank-owned homes and used a model to determine what that property would have brought if it had not been sold by a bank. In Las Vegas and Phoenix, for instance, a foreclosed home in September sold for the same price as a regular property.
Discounts were also marginal on bank-owned homes in the Inland Empire and the Sacramento region, 1.8% and 0.7%, respectively, according to the analysis. Both of these areas have grown increasingly competitive after being savaged by the housing bust. In the Los Angeles area, the foreclosure discount was 4.2% in September, Zillow said.
Certain Midwest and East Coast cities appeared to have the biggest foreclosure discounts. The Pittsburgh area had a discount of 27.4%, with Cleveland at 25.8%, Cincinnati 20.2% and Baltimore 20%.
Analysts figured the national foreclosure discount at just 7.7%. That's a big difference from the dog days of the housing bust, when people snapping up foreclosures could expect a discount of 23.7%, Zillow said.
Home shoppers looking for dime-store values now face a frustrating hunt. Gary K. Kruger, a real estate agent in Hemet, has seen buyers consistently bid on homes above the asking price and still struggle to make deals. One of his clients, a first-time buyer looking for a home in Vista, has bid on three properties — one a regular sale, one a bank-owned home and one a short sale — and lost each time.
Properties that are good for rentals or first-time buyers, along with properties priced in the lower-end of the move-up market, are "very, very hot," Kruger said.
"I have not had a successful person purchase a foreclosed home that was not an investor for months," he said. "Things are selling so quickly."
The story is similar in the Las Vegas region, said Keith Lynam, a real estate agent and chairman of the Nevada Assn. of Realtors' legislative committee. The number of foreclosed homes on the market in the Las Vegas area has dwindled to less than 300, compared with about 7,000 at its peak, Lynam said.
One of his clients, a potential buyer with a sizable down payment, has made half a dozen unsuccessful offers in the last six months.
"There is just zero inventory," Lynam said.
Experts are also revisiting the notion that foreclosed homes really drag down property values. A working paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta published in August found that although the homes of troubled borrowers did drag down values of surrounding homes, the effects were small.
That paper also found that the worst declines occurred before the home was repossessed, indicating that the declines stemmed from people abandoning their homes or letting them fall into disrepair.
Sean O'Toole, a real estate investor and founder of the website ForeclosureRadar.com, agreed with the Zillow analysis. Previous studies failed to take into account the nature of most foreclosures and their geography, he said. Typically, and particularly during the last five years, foreclosures have been concentrated in more traditionally affordable areas. So comparing the median home price of all foreclosed homes during the bust with the median home price of non-foreclosed homes results in an apple-to-oranges comparison, he said.
"The results that Zillow got make perfect sense to me, because there is actually more demand for REO and foreclosures, because people believe they are a deal," O'Toole said, using shorthand for the term "real estate owned," which is how banks refer to the properties on their books. "There is more demand for those."
Michael Novak-Smith, a real estate agent in the Riverside area who specializes in listing foreclosures for banks, said the market has reached a frenzy few would have expected so soon after the bust. One bank-owned home he listed about two weeks ago in Fontana for $145,000 attracted 157 offers. The seller took an all-cash offer.
"That is really telling, because a lot of these buyers think they'll just go out and get a repo," Novak-Smith said. "But buyers need to come in strong with their best offers, because you will get beat right out. An entry-level house with 157 offers? That's just mind-boggling to me."
An Ohio lawyer who serves as an expert witness in child pornography cases is on the hook for $300,000 in civil damages for Photoshopping courtroom exhibits of children having sex, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
Attorney Dean Boland purchased innocent pictures of two juvenile girls from a Canadian stock-image website, then digitally modified them to make it appear as if the children were engaged in sexual conduct.
Boland was an expert witness for the defense in a half-dozen child porn cases and made the mock-ups to punctuate his argument that child pornography laws are unconstitutionally overbroad because they could apply to faked photos.
As a result, in 2007 he found himself the defendant in a deferred federal child-porn prosecution in Ohio, even though his exhibits helped clear at least one client of child-porn-related allegations. Now, a federal appeals court is upholding a $300,000 verdict in a lawsuit brought by the parents of two of the girls whose images Boland doctored.
“This $300,000 award undoubtedly amounts to tough medicine for Boland,” the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (.pdf) Friday. “When he created morphed images, he intended to help criminal defendants, not harm innocent children. Yet his actions did harm children, and Congress has shown that it ‘means business’ in addressing this problem by creating sizeable damages awards for victims of this conduct.”
Boland, a former state prosecutor, transformed a picture of a 5-year-old girl eating a doughnut into one of her having oral sex. Another photo was of a 6-year-old girl’s face placed on the body of an adult woman having sex with two men. He purchased the pictures from iStockPhoto, according to court records, and morphed them to help child porn defendants make a nuanced legal defense.
The parents of the children, who were not named in the case, lodged the complaint (.pdf) against him in 2007 after learning of the photo morphing from the FBI. Under the 1986 Child Abuse Victims Rights Act, each victim is entitled to a minimum $150,000 in damages.
Boland argued that he was immune from such a lawsuit because, among other reasons, he’d created the images for use in court, never distributed them, and that the First Amendment protected him.
But the court ruled that it was immaterial that Boland never displayed the images outside of court and never transmitted them electronically.
“The creation and initial publication of the images itself harmed Jane Doe and Jane Roe, and that is enough to remove Boland’s actions from the protections of the First Amendment,” the appeals court ruled.
The law under which the parents sued demands proof that the girls suffered “personal injury.” But Boland argued that the children didn’t know about the pictures, a point the appeals court said was immaterial.
“Even if Doe and Roe never see the images, the specter of pornographic images will cause them ‘continuing harm by haunting [them] in years to come,” the appeals court said.
Boland’s morphing was to help those caught possessing child pornography make a nuanced legal defense. Child-porn laws prohibit “knowingly” accessing child pornography. The morphed images were a bid to demonstrate that the law violated the First Amendment on “vagueness and over-breadth grounds,” because a defendant could not know whether what he was viewing was an actual or virtual image of a child having sex.
NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – The 1980s-set “Sex and the City” prequel “The Carrie Diaries” will debut on the CW on Monday, January 14, the network announced.
“90210,” meanwhile, will move to its new 9 p.m. timeslot. And most CW shows will return from holiday break during that week.
“The Carrie Diaries,” one of the CW’s most-anticipated shows, stars AnnaSophia Robb as 16-year-old Carrie Bradshaw, who discovers the flashing lights of Manhattan as she copes with the death of her mother. She quickly discovers a vibrant and thrilling club scene.
Based on the novels by Candace Bushnell, “The Carrie Diaries” is from Warner Bros. Television and CBS Television Studios, in association with Fake Empire, with executive producers Josh Schwartz (“Hart of Dixie,” “Gossip Girl“), Stephanie Savage (“Hart of Dixie,” “Gossip Girl”), Len Goldstein (“Hart of Dixie”) Amy B. Harris (“Gossip Girl”) and Bushnell.
The federal government’s emergency management chief trudged through darkened subterranean hallways covered with silt and muddy water Friday, as he toured one of New York City’s top academic medical centers in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. The basement of the complex, NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, smelled like the hold of a ship — a mixture of diesel oil and water.
“You’re going to deal with the FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt,” W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told NYU Langone officials afterward, as they retreated to a conference room to catalog the losses. “Don’t look at this. Think about what’s next.”
NYU Langone, with its combination of clinical, research and academic facilities, may have been the New York City hospital that was most devastated by Hurricane Sandy. What’s next is a spectacularly expensive cleanup.
Dr. Robert I. Grossman, dean and chief executive of NYU Langone, looking pale and weary — as if he were, indeed, struggling to hold back the FUD — estimated that the storm could cost the hospital $700 million to $1 billion. His estimate included cleanup, rebuilding, lost revenue, interrupted research projects and the cost of paying employees not to work.
As the hurricane raged, the East River filled the basement of the medical center, at 32nd Street and First Avenue, knocked out emergency power and necessitated the evacuation of more than 300 patients over 13 hours in raging wind, rain and darkness. It disrupted medical school classes and shut down high-level research projects operating with federal grants.
Mr. Fugate arrived to inspect the damage and help plot the institution’s recovery, the advance guard of what aides said would be a hospital task force. He was brought in by Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who kept saying that there was nothing like seeing the damage firsthand to understand how profound it really was.
“What was that movie — ‘Contagion?’ ” Mr. Schumer said, marveling at the hellish scene.
NYU Langone’s patients, a major source of revenue, have been scattered to other hospitals, creating a risk that they may never return. Dr. Grossman said he was counting on those patients’ loyalty.
John Sexton, president of New York University, which includes NYU Langone, and who also met with Mr. Fugate, raised fears that researchers might be lured away to other institutions because their grants were ticking away on deadline or because they must publish or perish. Outside the hospital, tanks of liquid nitrogen testified to the efforts to keep research materials from spoiling.
In inky blackness, the group stood at the brink of the animal section of the Smilow Research Center, where rodents for experiments had been kept, but they did not go inside. On Nov. 3, a memo sent to NYU Langone researchers said the animal section, or vivarium, was “completely unrecoverable.”
Dr. Grossman said that scientists had managed to save some rodents by raising their cages to higher ground.
A modernized lecture hall with raked seats used by medical students had been filled “like a bathtub,” he said, though it was dry on Friday. The library, he said, “is basically gone.”
Four magnetic resonance scanners, a linear accelerator and gamma knife surgery equipment, kept in the basement, were now worthless. Dr. Grossman said that in the future, he wanted to move such equipment, which is very heavy, to higher floors.
Electronic medical records were protected by a server in New Jersey, he said.
Richard Cohen, vice president for facilities operations, took the group past piles of sandbags and a welded steel door that had been blown out by the force of the flood. “That door was put in around 1959 to 1960, when doors were really doors,” Mr. Cohen said. “And this thing is completely torsionally twisted. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Walking to the back of the hospital, Mr. Cohen used a loading dock as a measuring stick to estimate that the surge had risen to 14 ½ feet. “We were prepared for 12 feet, no problem,” Dr. Grossman said.
Dr. Grossman said it would take a couple of more weeks of assessing the damage to determine when the hospital could reopen. Outpatient business is already returning. Research and some inpatient services will come next.
Mr. Fugate said his agency would help cover the uninsured losses, and urged NYU Langone officials to move ahead.
At this point, Dr. Grossman said, he could only theorize as to why the generators had shut down. All but one generator is on a high floor, but the fuel tanks are in the basement. The flood, he said, was registered by the liquid sensors on the tanks, which then did what they were supposed to do in the event, for instance, of an oil leak. They shut down the fuel to the generators.
There was an outcry last year when some retailers opened at midnight on Thanksgiving, with workers and shoppers saying the holiday should be reserved for family, not spent lining up for the start of the Christmas shopping season.
This year, retailers are responding to the criticism by opening even earlier on Thanksgiving evening — and a handful are even planning to be open all day.
The lesson of 2011 was clear: earlier shopping hours were good for the top line. Retailers said their midnight openings drew a younger crowd who wanted to party — and shop — late rather than get up early. At Macy’s Herald Square store in Manhattan, for instance, about 9,000 people were in line as it opened, compared with 7,000 for an early Friday opening the previous year.
“We got customer feedback that says, ‘I like to shop earlier so I can go to bed earlier,’ so as we looked at the balance of being competitive in the marketplace and being customer-centric,” said Duncan Mac Naughton, chief merchandising and marketing officer for Wal-Mart, which will put its first doorbuster items on sale at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving.
Just a few years ago, most major stores opened about 5 a.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving, usually the busiest shopping day of the year. This year, not only are the openings scattered across two days, but several retailers are offering staggered deals — some items at a certain time, other items a few hours later, still others over the weekend.
“We had Black Friday pretty cleanly teed up, with, here are the ads, here are the stores opening Friday morning, pick a retailer and go,” said Brad Wilson, who lists Black Friday ads at BradsDeals. “Now you have this multiday affair, and you can go at different times.”
Kmart has perhaps the most confusing hours. Like last year, it will open at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving. It will then stay open until 4 p.m., close from 4 to 8 p.m., reopen at 8, stay open until 3 a.m. on Friday, close from 3 to 5 a.m., reopen at 5, and then stay open until 11 p.m. on Friday.
Sears, which was closed on Thanksgiving last year, will open at 8 p.m. on Thursday night.
Sears Holdings, which owns both Sears and Kmart, said in a news release that customers wanted “more flexible Black Friday in-store shopping times.”
Lord & Taylor was closed last year on Thanksgiving, but this year it will be open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Walmart, which is generally open 24 hours anyway, is offering the first deals on Thanksgiving two hours earlier than last year. Mr. Mac Naughton said customer feedback and competitiveness with other retailers were factors.
Target, which last year got angry feedback from employees when it opened at midnight on Thanksgiving, this year moved it up three hours to 9 p.m., according to a holiday circular posted online on Friday.
Some workers object to Thanksgiving Day holiday openings, saying it cuts into family time. It shows “disregard for all of our families,” said Mary Pat Tifft, a Walmart employee in Kenosha, Wis., who is part of the union-backed OUR Walmart group, in a statement. But in many cases, it can also mean a higher hourly pay rate for holiday duty.
Now, the handful of retailers who are holding off until midnight on Thanksgiving suddenly look like the respectful ones.
“We believe that Thanksgiving Day is a time to spend and celebrate with family, and we want our associates to do so,” said Jim Sluzewski, a spokesman for Macy’s, which will open at midnight. Kohl’s will also open at midnight Thanksgiving, as will Best Buy, according to a circular posted online Friday.
Companies are also sprinkling sales throughout the weekend in an effort to keep traffic coming.
After its initial 8 p.m. sale, Walmart will put another set of items on sale at 10, and a third group at 5 a.m. Friday. “Whether they like to start early, stay up late, or go to bed early and get up early, we’re going to have three different events that will meet their needs,” Mr. Mac Naughton said. Then, Walmart will “kick off a weekend full of savings with more specialty offers” on items like jewelry, sewing machines and tools.
Target, after its 9 p.m. doorbuster special, will offer a free gift card for purchases made between 4 a.m. and noon on Friday, according to the circular posted on Mr. Wilson’s site and elsewhere. (Target declined to confirm the authenticity of the circular, saying it had not yet publicly announced holiday details.)
Sears will do a second wave of promotions at 4 a.m. on Friday, eight hours after it opens. Sports Authority will do some doorbusters at its midnight opening, then put numerous others on sale over the weekend. And Ace Hardware is offering different percentages or dollars off, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Mr. Wilson of BradsDeals says the retailers may be intentionally trying to confuse shoppers. “They’re trying to introduce more variables,” he said, to make it harder to figure out exactly which is the best deal.
All of the twists and turns, though, may just end up frustrating consumers.
Only 6 percent of shoppers plan to hit stores on Thanksgiving night, and just under one-fifth will go to stores on Black Friday, according to a new survey from Ipsos and Offers.com, accurate within three percentage points.
At least one major retailer is going against the grain. Sam’s Club, which last year opened at 5 a.m. on Black Friday, this year is opening two hours later, at 7 a.m., and offering coffee and pastries to shoppers.
“If they want to chill out on Thanksgiving day and not go out and get into the rat race of everything, they can do that,” said Todd Harbaugh, executive vice president for operations at Sam’s Club. “Our members said they want hassle-free shopping.”
Los Angeles' housing authority, which runs on about $1 billion a year in taxpayer funds, is plagued by bad financial management that causes "questionable practices and poor decisions," according to an audit released Thursday by City Controller Wendy Greuel.
Greuel launched the audit last year amid an outcry over hefty taxpayer-funded restaurant tabs for agency officials and a $1-million-plus payout for the authority's fired executive director. The agency is responsible for sheltering about 75,000 of the city's neediest households.
A previous audit found instances of questionable spending by some agency officials, including double and triple billing for some travel and meal expenses. This audit, which looked at the agency's fiscal operations, did not uncover wrongdoing. But it did find that despite the authority's hefty budget and history of scandal going back decades, agency officials have done little to make sure money is properly managed.
Financial oversight was so lax, the audit found, that the agency's board of commissioners did not receive any financial statements or budget status reports during much of 2011 or the early part of 2012, except for one oral report last spring and one annual financial report that was presented nine months after the year had ended. A proposed budget presented to the board for 2012 was not balanced and contained contradictory statements.
"All of this suggests an agency that is out of control," said Greuel, a candidate for mayor. "The city cannot afford to continue spending its housing dollars irresponsibly."
One tenant advocate, Larry Gross, executive director of the L.A. Coalition for Economic Survival, said the lack of financial information given to the board and public was baffling.
"Whoever was on that board was clearly asleep at the wheel," he said. Many of the board members have been replaced in recent years.
Housing authority officials said they agreed with many of the audit's conclusions and will use the findings to guide reforms. Under recently hired Chief Executive Doug Guthrie, officials said they have already instituted a number of new practices, including financial training for all board members, stepped up financial reporting to the board and public, and the arrival of a new chief financial officer with expanded powers.
"We asked for this audit, we paid for the audit and we worked closely with the city controller's office" as the audit was underway, Guthrie said. "There's a lot of good stuff in the audit that helps us."
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa released a statement expressing support for Guthrie, who was hired last spring after the previous executive director, Rudolf Montiel, was fired and then paid $1.2 million to settle allegations that he was let go in retaliation for reporting improper spending by board members. Montiel had earlier drawn the ire of city leaders when his agency tried to evict nine tenants who protested the agency's policies outside his home.
"The housing authority has worked diligently to win back the trust of the people," Villaraigosa said.
But some City Council members expressed anger at the latest audit findings.
"There's a lot of problems over there, and obviously, the problems haven't gone away," said Councilman Dennis Zine, a candidate for controller. "Maybe it's time for the grand jury to investigate."
Zine also said he would like the City Council to have more authority over the agency. Under a hybrid governing structure, the mayor appoints the authority's seven board members, but the council lacks the ability to review spending decisions, a power it has over many other city departments.
The audit also found that the agency's list of assets contained at least $100 million worth of property that had been disposed of or no longer had much value, such as refrigerators and stoves that had been purchased in the 1970s. No inventory of its fixed assets had been performed in at least seven years.
In addition, the agency did not always follow its own rules when it came to awarding contracts to vendors, in one case allowing someone to sit on a bid selection panel after he had declared a conflict of interest.
