Zaria was a princess-not by blood but by capture. She was abducted in her teens from the western Slavic tribes and kept as a virgin by the powerful warring king, Sharvur. Cruel and strategically gifted, his Scythian armies controlled all the territories in the shadows of the Atai Mountains to the east, some twenty-six hundred years before our time.
Told by the oldest shaman in his land, that as long as Zaria remained pure of body and did not succumb to the lust which permeated Sharvur's court, his kingdom would remain invincible. But like the fanciful tattoos which the Slavic girl added each year to her supple body, her curiosity and desires increased, threatening to bring down the Pazyryk tribe.
In "Book Two," following Sharvur's incarceration by two competing generals, Zaria, along with her lover Tsudros the tattoo artist, perform a bold escape. In the company of her fellow slave Branka, and her teacher-lover Moshtok, they attempt to return to the girls' homeland in the West. Many adventures await and confront them on this daring trek across the Eurasian plains. But how will they be accepted back in the Slavic tribe with their new foreign lovers? Will they ever return to the land of the Scythian nomads?
In 1993 a team of Russian archaeologists discovered a rich burial tomb on the bleak steppes bordering Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Frozen and remarkably preserved in the permafrost, they uncovered the mysterious body of a woman they would call the "Siberian Princess." Her body was yet that of a young female, but she had the most compelling tattoos ever discovered from ancient history.
This is her story. How she loved and how she died.
[Find both "The Tattooed Princess" and The Tattooed Princess: Book Two--Escape to the West" newly formatted as e-books, available on Amazon's Kindle Books here:
https://www.amazon.com/author/califia.montalvo
In the end, was it really just an illusion or was it something more than that?
Wang Yibo , a college student, with his classmates and teachers , was on his way to the ancient kunlun town for a trip. There are many fantasies and legends regarding this mysterious place, it was hard to make the teachers agree to let them pay this town a group visit.
Then all of a sudden, their bus shook and fell off a tall mountain due to landslides. When Yibo opened his eyes again, he saw himself facing a dark castle. How could he possibly know that he and a few of his classmates entered the forbidden land of ancient kunlun?
The Lord of the Kunlun calmly touched the rose petals and asked him with a smile, that kind of smile that makes your soul tremble,"Do you want one?"
Yibo couldn't help wondering again and again, who are you? What's your name?
After a long period of time, he closed his eyes again and when he opened his eyes he found himself inside the hospital. That person disappeared, kunlun disappeared too.
And what left was a person waiting years after years for a certain someone to show up and smile at him again.