"The Fallen Man"

By Deborah J. Ross

In magical Renaissance Italy, art not only captures reality but remakes it. Shadows gather within the duke's palazzo, threats that only the gifted young artist Rodiana can visualize through her painting. Danger lurks even closer, as a lecherous noble guest is bent on taking Rodiana for himself. Her best defense against the attack and its aftermath lies in the power of her art to both reveal and conceal the truth.

This story was based on a historical personage, the Renaissance fresco painter, Onorate Rodiana, who escaped an assault by a wealthy courtier to become a notorious bandit queen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deborah J. Ross
• Release date: Jul 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201302818

Deborah J. Ross

Deborah J. Ross is an award-nominated author of fantasy and science fiction. She’s written a dozen traditionally published novels and somewhere around six dozen pieces of short fiction. After her first sale in 1983 to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress, her short fiction has appeared in F & SF, Asimov’s, Star Wars: Tales from Jabba’s Palace, Realms of Fantasy, Sisters of the Night, MZB’s Fantasy Magazine, and many other anthologies and magazines. Her recent books include Darkover novels Thunderlord and The Children of Kings (with Marion Zimmer Bradley); Collaborators, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist/James Tiptree, Jr. Award recommended list (as Deborah Wheeler); and The Seven-Petaled Shield, an epic fantasy trilogy based on her “Azkhantian Tales” in the Sword and Sorceress series. Deborah made her editorial debut in 2008 with Lace and Blade, followed by Lace and Blade 2, Stars of Darkover (with Elisabeth Waters), Gifts of Darkover, Realms of Darkover, and a number of other anthologies.

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Thirsty Redwoods Press

Boulder Creek California

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

Copyright © 2018, 2021 by Deborah J. Ross

First published in Sword & Sorceress 33, ed. E. Waters, MZB Literary Works Trust

All rights reserved.

Cover image: Detail from A Careless Word, A Needless Loss US World War II propaganda poster, Anton Otto Fischer / Office of War Information, 1943, Public domain

The Fallen Man

The light was almost perfect. In a few minutes, a quarter of an hour perhaps, the sun would pass behind the gossamer clouds, just barely substantial enough to scatter the slanting morning sun. Radiance would fill the valley, touching the pale leaves of the olive groves with silver fire. And there, beyond the expanse of orchard and the narrow, tilled fields, past the village with its tiled roofs the color of dried blood, there on its promontory of rock, defiant of prince and Heaven, rose the citadel of Castellione.

Rodiana Onorato squinted at the sun, judging the infinitesimal shift in its spectrum. She’d arrived with ample time to ready her board and easel, and set out her willow-stick charcoal and chalk of red ochre, but the cloud cover was not yet right for the effect she desired. There was no help for it; the skies would do as they willed, and certainly not in obedience to a journeyman painter such as herself, no matter how noble her first patronage. With a deft, quick touch, she began to sketch the scene before her. She would add detail and more color later, and if she were fortunate or perhaps imaginative, she’d be able to capture that subtle intimation of shapes in cloud and light, the figures as much suggested as depicted. The master painter with whom she’d studied until last year had described how such half-glimpsed elements might play on the mind of the beholder. Some evoked a sense of peace, others a formless dread.

The air cooled slightly; she glanced up. Haze, so thin as to be almost invisible, diffused the sun’s harshness. The glare of the day softened; colors muted and yet glowed subtly as if their inner hues were slowly being revealed. The tip of her charcoal  flew across the paper, tracing the gathering clouds.

A wind sprang up. Tendrils of her hair pulled free from her headkerchief and stirred against her cheek. The outlines of the scene before her were almost complete—village, trees, knob of angry, fractured rock. The