Divided against Yourselves (Spell Weaver) (51 page)

Life is just getting back to a rocky kind of normality when Dan gets into a big fight with Eva, his current girlfriend and Tal’s ex, ironically over what happened on Founder’s Day, which Dan can’t remember because of his interaction with the Voice. Eva is so angry with Dan that she pretends to seduce Stan and makes sure Dan finds out. Dan tries to beat up Stan, Tal tries to intervene, and his newly healed friendship with Dan is shattered. Eva and Dan are behaving so uncharacteristically that Tal suspects magic.

To complicate the situation further, Nurse Florence, the school nurse, who also suspects magic in the situation, reveals to Tal that she is the Voice. Tal is now faced with the problem of figuring out whether Carrie Winn or Nurse Florence is really the Voice, a puzzle charged with deadly urgency by the fact that whichever one of them is not the Voice must be the enemy who is clearly out to get Tal.

As if circumstances were not already difficult enough, Tal, who is annoyed with Stan’s role in the explosion with Dan, is at best noncommittal when Stan turns to Tal for comfort. Later that evening, Tal learns that Stan has run away. With help from both Carrie Winn and Nurse Florence, as well as a reluctant Dan and a contrite Eva, Tal rescues Stan, who is about to be attacked by a kelpie (another kind of shape-shifter) when Tal’s search party finally finds him.

Eva tries to tell the truth about what happened between her and Stan, but Dan refuses to listen. Tal finally agrees to a footballer ritual, in which he has to box with Shahriyar, the best boxer in the school, in order to get Stan forgiven. Tal gets badly beaten on purpose but is able to manipulate the situation to redeem Stan without destroying Dan’s position on campus, though Dan is still not reconciled to the situation.

At the pre-homecoming party at Carrie Winn’s mansion, Tal becomes convinced that she is the enemy—the worst one imaginable, given her vast fortune, large security force, and position of complete dominance in the community. Tal tells Nurse Florence about Carrie Winn, and Nurse Florence works on ways to strengthen their magical position, while Tal works on the problem of getting his magic to work on modern technology, so that at the inevitable showdown, he can neutralize Winn’s security system and the guns of her security men.

To get his magic to interact with technology, Tal needs to visualize scientific concepts the way Stan can. To do that, he needs to be able to read Stan’s mind, but modern telepathy is not part of his inherited magic, so he needs to train himself to use magic differently—in just a couple of weeks, when his band is scheduled to perform at Carrie Winn’s Halloween party. He is positive that is when she will make whatever move she has been planning.

At the homecoming dance, where his band is also playing, Tal begins to develop telepathic abilities, and he also engineers a reconciliation between Dan and Eva—a bitter victory, because secretly he wants her for himself, but he knows he can never have her honorably, and he needs to heal the breach with Dan, which he finally manages to do.

Prior to Halloween, Tal also masters techniques to get his magic to work on technology, and Nurse Florence recruits other student allies. With the help of Gywnn ap Nudd, the king of the Welsh faeries, she also obtains more magic swords from Govannon, the faerie smith. Gywnn agrees to Nurse Florence’s request in part because Tal and his friends prove their worth to him and partly because he fears the power Carrie Winn is gaining, power that may eventually threaten the security of Annwn itself. (Nurse Florence is in a position to broker this kind of deal because she is a lady of the lake.) Dan and Stan both end up with unique swords, as do new allies Shahriyar, Gordy, and Carlos.

When Halloween arrives, Tal and Nurse Florence discover that their plans are based on completely wrong assumptions. They had believed that Carrie Winn would have to attack stealthily to avoid creating a scene in front of all her guests and staff. Instead, they discover the guests are an illusion: the regular staff has the night off, and Winn’s security men are all shifters. Tal and his allies fight the shifters and win the battle, but they can still lose the war, and they discover that the civilians (other students like Eva and Tal’s band members) are trapped in the house, leaving Tal no way to retreat—the only possible way to save everyone is to beat Carrie Winn.

Exhausted, he and his allies head to the roof, where Winn is hiding. They think she will be as exhausted as they are. Wrong again, they discover she has the aid of Morgan Le Fay, who was supplying much of the magic early on, leaving Carrie Winn fresh to continue the fight. Even worse, Carrie Winn reveals herself as Ceridwen, a witch with an ancient grudge against Taliesin. Ceridwen has researched magic for hundreds of years and is the one who caused Tal to remember his past lives in the first place. Nothing but his grisly death and the imprisonment of his soul in her cauldron will satisfy her. In the final battle, Tal and his friends prevail, but at a cost. Stan comes face to face with his own previous lives. Carla Rinaldi, the first girl since Eva for whom Tal has feelings, take a double dose of the past-lives spell and ends up comatose. Vanora, a Welsh colleague of Nurse Florence’s, takes Carrie Winn’s place after Winn’s defeat and death, but Tal doesn’t want to deal with Vanora because he blames her for Carla’s condition—though not quite as much as he blames himself.

Tal helps Stan through his past-life memory crisis, but he can do nothing for Carla, though he visits her in the hospital every day. He pretends for his family and friends that he is coping. At the end of the book, Tal is superficially more popular and successful than ever, but inwardly he is miserable.

At least he no longer has an enemy to worry about. Or so he thinks…

THE ADVENTURE ISN’T OVER…

If you liked this novel, you might also like the other volumes in the Spell Weaver series, also available from Amazon. Follow the links below to check them out.

Echoes from My Past Lives,
a short prequel that tells the story of Tal’s original transformation.

http://viewbook.at/B00BZIROVE

Living with Your Past Selves,
the novel that started that Spell Weaver phenomenon, tells the story of Tal’s struggles against Ceridwen during the days immediately preceding the action in
Divided against Yourselves
.
Living with Your Past Selves
has received the following awards and recognitions to date:

Literary Classics International Book Awards, 2013: Gold Medal, Best First Novel

Literary Classics International Book Awards, 2013: Silver Medal, Best Young Adult Fantasy

Pinnacle Book Awards, Summer, 2013: Best Book, Young Adult

Best Indie Book Awards, 2013: Semifinalist, Fantasy

Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Awards, 2012: Finalist, Fantasy

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards, 2012: Quarterfinalist, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror

Readers’ Favorite: Five Star Book

Indie Reader: Approved Book

http://viewbook.at/B00987M4CI

Of course, there will also be other books in this series, so visit the author from time to time for the latest information on new projects. See
About the Author
 for contact information.

If you bought this book relatively early in its life cycle (before January 1, 2014), maybe the release party is still going on (or hasn’t even started yet—I can’t really set the date and start inviting people until the book actually goes live). Check out
https://www.facebook.com/events/1423325781220258/
for some fun and a chance to win prizes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill Hiatt has been teaching English at Beverly Hills High School since 1981. Although teaching has been and remains his first love, he has also been drawn to creative writing of various sorts. From high school on, he wrote short stories, a little poetry, and an earlier novel, finished in 1982. In September, 2012
Living with Your Past Selves
became his first published work. In March, 2013
Echoes from My Past Lives
, the prequel to
LWYPS
, was published, and you are now reading
Divided against Yourselves
, his third published work…but certainly not his last!

Bill’s ancestors came from a wide variety of European backgrounds, with Celtic groups (Irish, Scottish, Breton, and, as you might guess from this novel, Welsh) being the most well represented. His ancestors settled in America long ago, though, some of them as early as the colonial period. He is a third generation Californian who grew up and still currently lives in Culver City, California.

If you would like more information about Bill, this novel, and/or his other writing projects, you can visit him at
http://billhiatt.com/
, at his author page on Facebook (
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Bill-Hiatt/431724706902040/
), and on Twitter (
https://twitter.com/BillHiatt2
).