The Spirited Mistress and Other Stories

House politics in Pwyll, one of the many subterranean cities of the dark elf race, is life or death. This is true both between houses and within. Dark elf culture is matriarchal. The competition between mother and daughter leaves no room for affection or love.

Ufa has risen to the leadership of her house. She is the new Matron Mother. But one of her sisters is slow to see her as such. She behaves as if their mother's death--murder by poison--had freed them all to behave with reckless abandon.

There are two problems with this. Reckless abandon gets you killed in Pwyll and disrespecting your Matron Mother, especially publicly, can get your entire house killed. The other houses are quick to sense weakness.

When such recklessness threatens to humiliate Matron Mother Ufa in front of her peers she must decide how to react. Will she increase her power of diminish her house? Her fellow Matron Mothers look on.

This is the first of four exciting stories in this collection. Also included is Trog in which Esar-Haden must solve his enemy's problem in order to save his own life, Hashishin in which Esar-Haden must see through the illusion of Heaven in order to avoid Hell, and Two Daggers and a Dying Man, Esar-Haden's origin story.

Fans of Esar-Haden won't want to miss this exciting collection.