Victoria Goddard
I walked across England in 2013, fulfilling a long-held dream. I'm currently the sexton of an Anglican church in Nova Scotia, which means I am keeper of the keys and opener of doors (and shutter-off of alarms). I have a PhD in medieval studies from the University of Toronto, looking at poetry and philosophy in the works of Dante and Boethius -- both the poetry and the philosophy come into my stories a great deal (and occasionally the Dante and the Boethius). I like writing about the ordinary lives of magical people on the other side of the looking glass ... and the extraordinary deeds of ordinary folk, too. Three of my favourite authors are Patricia McKillip (especially 'The Riddle-Master of Hed' trilogy and 'The Bell at Sealy Head'), Connie Willis ('Bellwether' and 'To Say Nothing of the Dog,' which latter would make my top-ten books on a desert island), and Lois McMaster Bujold ('The Curse of Chalion' and its sequels). I'm aiming somewhere between them and Neil Gaiman's 'Stardust' ...
Féonie and the Islander Regalia
Victoria Goddard
The Hands of the Emperor (Lays of the Hearth-Fire, #1)
Victoria Goddard
An impulsive word can start a war.
A timely word can stop one.
A simple act of friendship can change the course of history.
Cliopher Mdang is the personal secretary of the Last Emperor of Astandalas, the Lord of Rising Stars, the Lord Magus of Zunidh, the Sun-on-Earth, the god.
He has spent more time with the Emperor of Astandalas than any other person.
He has never once touched his lord.
He has never called him by name.
He has never initiated a conversation.
One day Cliopher invites the Sun-on-Earth home to the proverbially remote Vangavaye-ve for a holiday.
The mere invitation could have seen Cliopher executed for blasphemy.
The acceptance upends the world.
Those Who Hold the Fire (Lays of the Hearth-Fire, #0.4)
Victoria Goddard
The tanà holds the fire of the community. Thirteen-year-old Kip's always felt a bit of an outsider, but he knows he has what it takes to become the next tanà. He just needs to persuade his Buru Tovo that he's ready for the next step of his apprenticeship. And then take it--but that's easy, right?
A novelette set within the larger story of The Lays of the Hearth-Fire.
Petty Treasons (Lays of the Hearth-Fire #0.5)
Victoria Goddard
Artorin Damara, last Emperor of Astandalas, is in need of a new secretary.
It has been three years since he woke from a magical coma caused by the catastrophic collapse of his empire, and he can barely acknowledge his own day-to-day existence, let alone what he needs from someone else.
Enter Cliopher sayo Mdang, unassuming Fifth Degree Secretary of the Imperial Bureaucratic Service, and to everyone's surprise the apocalypse ... ends.
This novella is set on Zunidh in the universe of the Nine Worlds. It is best read after The Hands of the Emperor.
The Game of Courts (Lays of the Hearth-Fire #0.6)
Victoria Goddard
The Cavalier Conju enazo Argellian an Vilius—Conju to his friends, or he would be if any of them had survived the Fall of Astandalas—survived the cataclysmic destruction of the Empire of Astandalas in perfectly good health, thank you very much. If he spent the year (or hundred years) afterwards partying while the world burned ... well, he has always considered himself a man of fashion, and that was very definitely the fashion.
Until the Emperor woke up. At which point Conju wondered whether he might conceivably want to consider the other options. Even if cataloguing storerooms is a bit of a pain when you don't actually know what anything is. Sadly, neither perfumery nor fashion are particularly useful skills after a magical apocalypse. Unless you can finesse your way into attending said Emperor, that is...
The Game of Courts is a companion novella to The Hands of the Emperor. It is set concurrently to Petty Treasons.
Portrait of a Wide Seas Islander (Lays of the Hearth-Fire, #1.5)
Victoria Goddard
“Someone always leaves.”
That’s what Tovo has been saying to anyone who asks him why his great-nephew Kip Mdang isn’t at his side, isn’t fulfilling the tasks and obligations of the tanà, isn’t there to tend the fire, isn’t home.
“Someone always leaves,” Tovo reminds them. “Kip will return when it’s time.”
He wonders, though. He wonders if his errant grand-nephew was really as bright and as promising as they all thought he was. He wonders if Kip has forgotten the Lays, forgotten what it means to be an Islander, forgotten everything that Tovo taught him.
Of course, the simplest solution to Tovo’s doubts is to go and see for himself.
Someone always leaves, after all, even to the other side of the world.
A companion novella to The Hands of the Emperor.
In the Company of Gentlemen
Victoria Goddard
The greatest poet of the Empire of Astandalas was widely considered the infamous outlaw Fitzroy Angursell. Almost all of his poems and songs were banned, but that had the tendency merely to encourage everyone to read them. Hilarious, pointed, and scathingly topical, one of the games of all levels of society was to guess who they were truly about. After the Fall of the Empire, both the songs and the old stories are still sung, still illegal, and still a mixed blessing. It was not until his nephew tried to impress him that Zorey, formerly a soldier of the Emperor, finally told the story of how he got the scar on his face and earned the dubious gift of Fitzroy Angursell’s particular brand of immortality. His nephew certainly wasn’t expecting the story. Zorey wasn’t expecting the response.
The Return of Fitzroy Angursell (The Red Company Reformed, #1)
Victoria Goddard
Artorin Damara is the Last Emperor of Astandalas and present Lord Magus of Zunidh. He is respected as a great mage, revered as a living god, regarded as the embodiment of power and wealth and majesty. Few have seen him in anything but the most resplendent garments; fewer still have ever looked him in the eyes.
He is possibly the last person you would expect to find breaking into the tomb of the first Emperor of Astandalas. He could, after all, have entered it legitimately.
But Artorin Damara has a great secret, which he has kept hidden since before he ascended to the throne, and part of it is that he knows perfectly well how to set about on an adventure.
Another part of it is that his true name is not actually the one that everyone knows him by...
The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul (The Red Company Reformed, #2)
Victoria Goddard
Before the Fall of the Empire of Astandalas, the Red Company was legendary. A dozen or so years after that cataclysm, they have almost faded into myth.
Pali Avramapul may not have gone under her own name since the dissolution of the Red Company, but she is no myth, and has certainly not faded. She fights folly and injustice as fiercely as ever—although, as a respected scholar of history at one of the Circle Schools of Alinor, she now tends to use her tongue and pen more than her sword.
She still keeps the sword sharp, of course. You never know when adventure will come calling.
She expects her sabbatical to be a decorous, respectable sort of adventure, the kind with which she can regale her colleagues in the Senior Common Room upon her return.
She’s not very upset when she finds one or two of her old friends and it turns out the adventure is much more likely to involve a plot to kidnap the Last Emperor of Astandalas.
There’s respectable, after all, and then there’s respectable.
Stargazy Pie (Greenwing & Dart, #1)
Victoria Goddard
Magic is out of fashion.
Good manners never are.
Jemis Greenwing returned from university with a broken heart, a bad cold, and no prospects beyond a problematic inheritance and a job at the local bookstore.
Ragnor Bella is a placid little market town on the road to nowhere, where Jemis’ family affairs have always been the main source of gossip. Having missed his stepfather's funeral, he is determined to keep his head down.
Unfortunately for his reputation, though fortunately for several other people, he falls quickly under the temptation of resuming the friendship of Mr. Dart of Dartington, Squire-in-training and beloved local daredevil. Mr. Dart is delighted to have Jemis' company for what will be, he assures him, a very small adventure.
Jemis expected the cut direct. The secret societies, criminal gangs, and illegal cult to the old gods--to say nothing of the mermaid--come as a complete surprise.
Book One of Greenwing & Dart, fantasies of manners—and mischief.
Stone Speaks to Stone: A Tale of the Nine Worlds (Greenwing & Dart, #0.5)
Victoria Goddard
Jack Greenwing is good at scouting. He's renowned for being able to hold on in battle long past bravery. He was once given a trophy for his courage by the hand of the Emperor himself. At Loe, where the Stone Speakers can call down avalanches and landslides, he was sent out on a scouting mission as a siege closed in on his company. He returns to see it being lifted because of treachery, and is there to witness the five remaining members of the command staff be led off in chains into the mountains, far from the border of the Empire. He once held a border until the rest of his army joined him: nothing will stop him from attempting a rescue, though snow is falling in the mountains and he must fight those who can walk through stone. "Stone Speaks to Stone" is a standalone short story related to the Greenwing & Dart series. If you've read those, it is the true tale of what happened to Jemis' father at Loe; if you haven't, Greenwing & Dart tells the story of what happens to Jack's son Jemis ten years or so after this story takes place.
Bee Sting Cake (Greenwing & Dart, #2)
Victoria Goddard
Magic is out of fashion. Gambling is merely illegal. Neither law nor common sense has ever stopped anyone in Ragnor Bella from making—or breaking—their fortunes at the table, at the racetrack, and especially at the Dartington Harvest Fair. With Mad Jack Greenwing’s only son Jemis finally back from university, this year’s betting is bidding fair to be the stuff of legend. Jemis assumes the speculative glances are for his inherited notoriety (and, perhaps, his adventurous first weekend back in town), and is determined to do nothing more than a little light wagering at the Fair. Perhaps one footrace. The odds on his placing are remarkably high—but the real bets are whether he makes it to the starting line at all. Lost heirs. Botanizing dukes. Riddling dragons. High Gothic melodrama. And all that’s just to get his name in the race. Book Two of Greenwing & Dart, fantasies of manners—and mischief.
Whiskeyjack (Greenwing & Dart, #3)
Victoria Goddard
Magic is out of fashion.
Outlaws make their own.
Jemis Greenwing has slain a dragon, been acknowledged as the Viscount St-Noire, and not incidentally also been given a raise. After a chaotic first month back in Ragnor Bella, he’s finally feeling confident that he can make it to the Winterturn Assizes and the reading of his stepfather’s will without falling headlong into any more disaster.
Then he’s arrested on suspicion of murder.
By magic.
Of one of the greatest folk heroes of legend.
Trained to be a politically radical gentleman-of-leisure, Jemis thought he was doing fairly well as a bookstore clerk. That, of course, is before he ends up on the run in the Arguty Forest confronting highwaymen, illegal distillers, the odd relation, and the Wild Saint—not to mention the secrets a town truly committed to being infamously dull can hold.
Book Three of Greenwing & Dart, fantasies of manners—and mischief.
Blackcurrant Fool (Greenwing & Dart, #4)
Victoria Goddard
Magic is out of fashion.
Orio City is where that's decided.
When his best friend Mr. Dart unexpectedly needs to make an urgent trip to Orio City, Jemis Greenwing's immediate response to ask when. He's willing to make up to his grandmother so she will lend them her falarode, he's willing to offer to run the errands of half the barony, and he's certainly willing to spend a week or so away from the gossips of Ragnor Bella.
It's such a pity that Jemis and Mr. Dart are more than halfway to Orio City before Jemis remembers that his vindictive ex-lover Lark is a rising star in the criminal courts of Orio City. It's an even greater pity when they realize just what her new position is in the legally instituted court there.
What with the dragon Jemis slayed a month ago, his consequent ascension to the position of Viscount St-Noire, and his father's very recent second return from the dead, to say nothing of that still-famous play from the summer, Three Years the Tragicomedy of the Traitor of Loe, it's really too much to hope for that Jemis will be able to spend even three days in the old capital incognito.
University students. Bear baiting. Unexpected relations. Wild magic. Literary criticism. Kittens. And always that whisper from the highwaymen of the Arguty Forest that someone's death is on the line ...
Book Four of Greenwing & Dart, fantasies of manners--and mischief.
Love-in-a-Mist (Greenwing & Dart, #5)
Victoria Goddard
Magic is out of fashion.
Murder, like romance, is always a possibility.
The journey home from Orio City was supposed to be straightforward. Avoid being captured by brigands or agents of the criminal gangs; try not to cause any further spiritual or magical shocks; and make it over the mountains before winter closes in.
A sudden blizzard drives Jemis and his friends to seek refuge in an eccentric country gentleman's even more eccentric house. They only want to stay out the storm without revealing all their secrets: but the other guests have secrets of their own, and Mr. Dart's ability to hear the inanimate has some unforeseeable consequences ...
Blizzards. Unicorns. Ciphers. Noblesse oblige. A budding romance. And that's before the murder.
Book Five of Greenwing & Dart, fantasies of manners--and mischief.
Plum Duff (Greenwing & Dart, #6)
Victoria Goddard
Magic is out of fashion.
Except, obviously, at Winterturn.
Winterturn in Ragnor Bella is a holiday for family, feasting, and a few religious festivities.
Jemis Greenwing and Mr. Dart are both quite ready for a quiet week or two after their adventures going to and coming home from Orio City. Jemis in particular is looking forward to the first Winterturn spent with his father since he was a child.
Then the fairy fox shows up.
Wild magic. Family secrets. Gifts from unknown admirers. Sainthood. And that's before the pageant.
The Saint of the Bookstore
Victoria Goddard
A feel-good fantasy short story for the winter holidays!
Early in the new year, Sister Mirabelle of the Linder Church of the Lady is sent to Ragnor Bella to investigate rumours of a saint. Her job is to determine whether it's magic, trickery, or actual miracle. In the town's small bookstore, she encounters one Jemis Greenwing, who has a few mysteries to his name.
This story takes place after Plum Duff (Greenwing & Dart #6) and does contain references to certain major events from earlier books. However, if you don't mind a few spoilers it's a good introduction to the series!
Clary Sage (Greenwing & Dart)
Victoria Goddard
Northwest Oriole is a land of small countries and many universities, where scholarship is greatly regarded. Choosing a school is thus a matter of great weight, no matter your rank or wealth.
Hal has always known where he’s going, because he is the Imperial Duke of Fillering Pool, and the dukes have always gone to either Zabour or Tara. Since Zabour fell into the sea, it’ll have to be Tara.
Theoretically.
At some point he’ll have to write them.
Clary Sage is a novella loosely connected to the Grenwing & Dart series, taking place before those books commence.
The Bride of the Blue Wind (The Sisters Avramapul, #1)
Victoria Goddard
What the gods desire, they take.
When the gods take a person, there is not much one can do about it, even if there seems something strange and terrible about the god. Through the gates of the eastern mountains pass only the gods, the dead, and the heroes of legend. Mere mortals do not go farther than the tombs lining the roads of the Middle Desert.
Except for the daughters of the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh, that is. The lord of the Blue Wind took their youngest sister. When Pali and Arzu discover that there is something gravely wrong, they decide that the gods work through the hands of men, that justice binds everyone—god, man, djinn, or demon—and that they are not afraid of the road east.
The Warrior of the Third Veil (The Sisters Avramapul, #2)
Victoria Goddard
In the cities along the river Ihil, the nomad tribes of the Middle Desert are almost as legendary as the gods. Sardeet is the youngest daughter of the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh, but her father was a man of the city, and after her husband's death, he brings her to her uncle to recover from her grief.
She walks veiled and silent, as befits one who is rumoured to be the widow of a god, and the people of the city whisper about how beautiful she must be for those rumours to be abroad. They generally dismiss the other part of the story, that the reason her husband is dead is because her sister killed him.
Sardeet's sister Pali, however, knows that this is true--and that there are consequences.
The Warrior of the Third Veil is the second story of those about the Sisters Avramapul. It takes place after The Bride of the Blue Wind. While you do not need to have read The Bride of the Blue Wind, you will probably enjoy this one better having done so.
The Weaver of the Middle Desert (The Sisters Avramapul, #3)
Victoria Goddard
The three daughters of the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh are young, but already they walk amongst legends. This does not prevent them from occasionally meeting (or perhaps making) friction amongst their own family, and so it is that one day Arzu decides she and her second sister Pali ought perhaps go visit their youngest sister Sardeet, who has married and moved to a city far away from the tents of their clan.
They walked into the holy desert to rescue Sardeet from her first husband, the Blue Wind. They need not rescue Sardeet from her second husband—or at least not exactly—but they do think it quite right and proper that they ensure he give her the bride-price he promised her. At Pali’s sword point, if necessary, though Arzu has some other ideas …
Book three of the Sisters Avramapul.
The Tower at the Edge of the World
Victoria Goddard
An unnamed young man lives in a tower at the edge of the world, content with the orderly rituals and freedom to study that his lot--or he is content, until one day he discovers something in a bird's nest outside the tower window, and his efforts to reach it discover far more than he expects.
Derring-Do for Beginners (The Red Company, #1)
Victoria Goddard
Friends by chance--or is it fate? Damian Raske and Jullanar Thistlethwaite are about as different as can be. Damian is a young swordsman, dreaming of being the best in the world, hardly aware of what lies beyond the outskirts of his city, let alone that there is a great empire on the other side of the horizon.
Jullanar is a gently-raised young woman from deep inside the Empire of Astandalas, aware that there are worlds beyond its sway but hardly daring to dream she'd ever see outside of her own country, let alone beyond the empire's borders. And yet they both dream of friendship, of adventure, of what else there might be. And it's Jullanar whose exam results turn out to matter in a way no one could expect. The first book of The Red Company, because even the greatest of folk heroes have to start somewhere.
Till Human Voices Wake Us (Tales from Ysthar)
Victoria Goddard
Behind the corners of our world, there is magic.
As the Lord of Ysthar, Raphael is responsible for it.
An honest man, his lies are legion. An infamous recluse, his social circle includes Scheherezade, Shakespeare, and the Crown Prince of Faerie. He is a great mage to his enemies, a movie star to strangers, and a hundred pseudonymous half-lives to history. He is dutifully trying to prevent the end of the world when his long-lost twin brother Kasian gate-crashes his life.
Raphael is prepared to sacrifice his soul, his reputation, and his crown to save his beloved Ysthar. Saving himself is another matter entirely.
There is magic. It’s not enough.
In the Realms of Gold: Five Tales of Ysthar (Tales from Ysthar)
Victoria Goddard
Five stories set in a world not altogether dissimilar to our own, resonant with myth and magic and friendship. These are standalone tales associated with Till Human Voices Wake Us.
Contains:
"Scheherezade": On the thousand and first night of Scheherezade the Storyteller’s marriage, things do not go at all as she had hoped—nor do they end as she had expected.
"Rook": The Prince of the Fairies is just out looking for mischief. That's not what he finds.
"Inkebarrow": William Shakespeare takes a wrong turn going beyond the fields he knows—and in the Black Bull of Inkebarrow, he finds a turn from history to magic.
"Blue Moon Over Pincher Creek": Tyler's an ordinary high school student in Pincher Creek, Alberta. On the last weekend before school starts, the night of a blue moon in August, he finds something strange in the back acres behind the wind farm past his father's ranch.
"Not Far From the Tree": The world is full of unexpected stories. For Nora, hers is intricately tied with the old apple tree next to the village green. They say Eve fell to the temptation of an apple, but for Nora and her brother Charles, the apple just might be a vehicle for grace.
The Glassblower (Tales from Ysthar)
Victoria Goddard
A novelette set on Ysthar--in Venice, to be exact, on a foggy winter's night in the early 18th century, when Scheherezade the Storyteller finds herself looking for a warm place to spend the night. She's not particularly successful on that front. She does find herself a bit of an adventure--and a new story, which is generally worth a sleepless night ...
Part I of The Glassblower Diptych. (Part II, The Storyteller, will be available in late August 2024.)
Aurelius (to be called) Magnus
Victoria Goddard
Aurelius Magnus has not yet been stolen by the Sun and Moon.
He has not yet led the Empire of Astandalas into what will later be hailed as a golden age, nor met the man whose friendship and loyalty will be celebrated in legend for two thousand years.
He has not yet even earned the epithet “Magnus”.
He is only Aurelius, twenty-one years old and already six years an emperor. War is all he has ever known.
Terec and the Wild (Terec of Lund, #1)
Victoria Goddard
It's not actually illegal to be a wild mage.
Terec reminds himself of this, often.
Nor is it illegal to go north.
He reminds himself of that, too.
Terec was born with a wild talent for fire, and can no longer suppress it. Soon he will not be able to hide it, and he fears it will burn out of control, no longer singeing his bed-linens but hurting those he loves.
If you head south from his family's lands, you go to Astandalas of the emperors, heart of the empire, rich with magic. You go seeking fame and fortune and adventure.
If, on the other hand, you head north, towards the edge of the Empire, the edge of the known world, the edge of the Wild ... well. You might find adventure, but you won't be looking for it.
Terec and the Wall (Terec of Lund, #2)
Victoria Goddard
In the north of Ysthar, past the edge of the Empire of Astandalas, there is the tundra, and beyond the tundra, the great wall of ice. No one goes there, save for a few hunters after mammoth ivory or furs, unless it is to look upon the Ice and then, suitably impressed, turn back to be awed by the wall of magic that is the border of the Empire.
But there are those for whom the Wild is not only out there but a magic within their blood, and for them--or at least for Terec, once of Lund and now only of the wastelands--the Ice is a wall that might, perhaps, contain a door ...
Book 2 of Terec of Lund, to be read after Terec and the Wild.
At the Feet of the Sun (Lays of the Hearth-Fire, #2)
Victoria Goddard
Cliopher Mdang has been appointed Viceroy of Zunidh by his beloved Radiancy, the Last Emperor, who has now left him behind in the Palace to safeguard the world during his absence on a quest to find an appropriately magical heir. When he returns, he will abdicate, and Cliopher will at last retire, satisfied with having achieved most of his life's political goals--even if his long-suppressed personal dreams are starting to bubble up.
(Surely he used to have hobbies besides running the government?)
All he has to do is wait patiently for his lord's return... until adventure quite literally hits him from behind, and what was once safely hypothetical becomes intensely real.
Cliopher has always followed the stars of his chosen course: the epic oral histories of his people, the poetry of the rebel poet Fitzroy Angursell, decades of devotion and service to his Radiancy... They were enough to change the world. But are they enough to guide Cliopher home?
The Bone Harp
Victoria Goddard
Thrice-cursed bard and warrior-elf Tamsin wakes up in Elfland after what might or might not have been his death, healed and hale for the first time in millennia. Somewhat confused but not entirely unhappy with this turn of events, he sets off in the hopes of finding a way home ...
A standalone tale of friendship, family, and fair Elfland.
Stargazy Pie: Greenwing & Dart Book One
Victoria Goddard
Magic is out of fashion. Good manners never are. Jemis Greenwing returned from university with a broken heart, a bad cold, and no prospects beyond a problematic inheritance and a job at the local bookstore. Ragnor Bella is a placid little market town on the road to nowhere, where Jemis’ family affairs have always been the main source of gossip. Having missed his stepfather's funeral, he is determined to keep his head down. Unfortunately for his reputation, though fortunately for several other people, he falls quickly under the temptation of resuming the friendship of Mr. Dart of Dartington, Squire-in-training and beloved local daredevil. Mr. Dart is delighted to have Jemis' company for what will be, he assures him, a very small adventure. Jemis expected the cut direct. The secret societies, criminal gangs, and illegal cult to the old gods--to say nothing of the mermaid--come as a complete surprise. Book One of Greenwing & Dart, fantasies of manners—and mischief.
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