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Chapter Eight
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2024-10-29 19:42:56“What was going on tonight?” I asked him.
“Ah,” he blew out a breath and rolled onto his back again. “Rivyn’s been in my father’s ear, and my father is on the verge of sending an army to aid Aurien’s princess. I’ve been trying to get him to see sense.”
I grimaced. He was avoiding answering by offering partial truths. He knew I meant about the manner of him invoking the rule of three, but he did not want to answer.
“He knew I was planning on invoking the rule of three,” he said suddenly, rolling onto his side to face me and taking a lock of my hair between his fingers, letting it run free and fall. “Because we argued, he demanded I do it in a way that was unfair to you, and I am sorry for that, Ecaeris.” Then he laughed. “- I’m probably lucky that I did do it that way, or you might have made it impossible to get through the rites. That had to be one of the hardest proposals in Fae history.”
I lifted my mouth to his and tasted his laughter as I slid my
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I rolled my eyes. “I am the War Mage, Ecaeris,” I told her. “Queen Diandeliera.”“You’re Fae,” she considered me, undaunted by my old war titles. An unusual woman, I thought. She had the delicate prettiness one thought of when one thought of mankind princesses at all, the fair skin that spoke of being sheltered from the sunlight, but there was a determination in her eyes that defied her birth and species. This was a princess who would lead her army from the front. I decided that I liked her.“Yes.”“Bane of Nerith,” she repeated what Daerton had said. “You fought with Aurien in the war against Phimion.”“Yes.”Her eyes went to Aurien who, dragon-like, had lost interest in the conversation, and stood caught in his own thoughts, his gaze fixed distantly. He would remember every word said in his presence, for all his appearance of inattention. She looked back at
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We moved to the section of the camp where the camp followers were situated. Women held babes on their hips whilst they stirred pots over the fire, and small, grubby children wove in between the basic A frame tents. Prostitutes and wives of the poorer soldiers intermingled with servants and the various trades that supported all armies. A blacksmith worked a sword over an anvil, his sweat running black down his face and his muscles standing out impressively against skin scarred with the burn marks of his trade. “Let me guess,” Daerton said. “Mummy and daddy found out about the half-Fae bit on the side, and demanded the little princeling marry the pure-blood as per plan, but no one thought to let you know in advance of the invocation. So now the War Mage is mad and gone stomping off to the camp where the half-Fae bit is to have her revenge, but Aurien put a stop to it?” “Mostly,” I gathered some ash from a fire into a pouch. “I mean Ashara no harm. Akyran has always bee
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I wiped my sword clean on the cloak of the corpse of an enemy soldier and reviewed the skeleton army I had amassed. I checked my pouch. I had enough components for another casting. “Inmithus mancitem!” I saw the soldiers that picked through the dead for armour and weaponry dance back as the corpses of their enemies expelled their flesh and rose as skeletons. “Tell Ruelke she can add two hundred odd skeletons to her tally,” I said to Leongrad. “She’ll be happy about that,” he agreed. “They probably don’t eat much.” I laughed - my laughter sharp edged. I saw Aurien land, and the soldiers called Diandreliera’s name in triumph, as she again raised Intuin Desparen in salute of the victory. We left the strongholds sieging, not interested in taking them, and instead occupied the next large town along the road. The residents welcomed us, greeting Diandreliera as the True Queen. Narayan managed to arrange a bath for me in one of the private hou
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I sent the skeletons onto patrol between us and the river that framed the city and castle as the camp set up. “The bridges are set to collapse,” Daerton told me. We both looked to the sky as the golden dragon winged down to land. Aurien shifted into man-form as soon as Diandreliera had dismounted. He walked alongside her to the tent that had been set up for them as if his golden hair were not the only thing he was wearing. “Take a good look, Ecaeris,” Daerton muttered to me. I grinned at him. “As if you wouldn’t look if it were a female dragon walking naked through the camp. I’ve never met a dragon that’s hard on the eyes.” “The same could be said for the Fae,” he replied. “Which is why I am so pretty, it’s the Fae blood in me. Back to the bridges, however.” “It’s not unexpected,” I pointed out. “No. There are any number of solutions. The question is which one?” “Hmmm,” my hand closed around the locket. “I think it depends on w
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“Looks like you’ve already done the fun part,” Akyran sat next to me. I tossed the first rock back into the river before taking up the second rock. “Cloth soaked in children’s tears,” Daerton watched with interest. “That’s some serious spell casting.” I threw the next rock into the river. “It needs to be.” “So, we’re creating a dam,” Daerton observed. “The bank is going to be slippery.” “I will dry it.” “You will need… ah,” he glanced at Akyran under his eyelashes. “I guess you have that in ready supply.” “Yes,” I murmured. “What?” Akyran looked between us. “I need some of your blood,” I held out my hand. “My blood?” he repeated but placed his hand in mine. I stabbed his finger with my dagger point, and he exclaimed. “- Ecaeris,” he protested. I squeezed his finger, to get the blood to bead, and then let it fall onto a cloth I held ready. When I released his hand, he put his finger in his mouth and sucked it. “T
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“Shit, Ecaeris,” Leongrad defended my injured side. “Fall back and seek a healer.” “I can still fight with one arm, and spell cast,” I dismissed the suggestion. “I am fine.” “You have a -ing arrow through your shoulder!” he replied. I saw the flash of dragon scale overhead as Aurien cut through the night sky, and the screams of the enemy soldiers beneath his fire. We were at the castle walls, the chemin de ronde thick with soldiers, arrows falling swift and fast. I threw up a ward, and the arrows suspended just above Leongrad’s head. He looked at me, wide eyed. I heard my name yelled behind me and recognised the voice as Akyran’s - he was fighting his way through to me. I turned, instinctually, centuries of training responding, and plunged back through our soldiers, to come to his side. He caught me and hunched over me as a volley of arrows struck into the shields of the soldiers that guarded his person. “Ecaeris,” his face was shadowed by his
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The water was bluer thank Akyran’s eyes and sparkled like it was scattered with diamonds. I watched another ship move into the bay. The port and city were busy with traders moving in and out. A strange place, this, I thought, watching the movement from my perch in the open tower window. Isolated and surrounded by a deadly desert, the people who had colonized this spot had been foolhardy and determined. They had come from further inland, following the fertile land off the riverbanks until it disappeared into the ocean. The people were brilliant and deadly, like the environment. Their clothing was brightly coloured, finely woven, and designed for the heat of this land. They wore their wealth in gold heavily around wrist and throat, and their weapons in plain sight to deter thieves. Life came and went quickly. The Fae Courts intrigues did not hold the brutality of these beautiful and charming people, who would take a hand for a theft, and an eye for a trespass.
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The forest had been planted by the Fae although it was no longer held by them, and the trees were thickly trunked and gnarled of roots, though thinly dispersed, the humans having taken the smaller trees and bushes to burn in their fires or build their ugly little houses with. The undergrowth was deep and spongey underfoot, fetid with rotting leaf matter and bat guano. More strongly, the smell of the creature seemed to steam in the night. The smell was difficult to place, a little like citronella, but more acidic, singeing the hairs in my nostrils and itching the back of my throat with its wrongness. Phantom caught my eye. His white hair and skin glowed in the night as if the man were a fire-fly, lit with an inner luminescence. He tugged the hood up over his hair, seeking to disguise himself, but the man had never been meant for the shadows – before the curse he would have glowed amongst others of mankind for his beauty, and now he glowed for its corruption. H
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The wind blew a ball of spindle weed across the baked-dry land before us, and the heat of the sun caused sweat to prick between my shoulder blades and gather between my breasts, sticking the cloth of my tunic to my skin. I blew a stubborn fly from my face and slid a look at Akyran. The sun had reddened his cheeks and the tip of his nose where his helmet exposed them, and a drop of sweat tracked its way through the stubble-roughened surface of his neck to be absorbed into the collar of his tunic top.A stillness settled over the land as if every creature waited with us for the moment of battle. We stood back from the well opening weapons in hand, each man and woman intently listening, anticipating attack.There was a dull “whomp” that seemed to shudder the ground, and for a moment, the air seemed to draw into the well like a breath as the fire cast by Daerton and Rivyn into their well location several miles away consumed the oxyge
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In the morning bright light, in between stolen mouthfuls of fruit-ladened bread and herbal tea, we prepared for the day our own way, by preparing our armour and weapons. My armour had not seen active use for over a decade and I tsked over the stiffness of the leather.“I need new armour,” I complained. “And new weapons.”“That can be arranged, but not on short notice,” he replied as he helped me with the buckles of my armour.“I also need to take on some new pages and squires,” I sighed. “Not that you aren’t doing a great job…” I sent him a grin and he chuckled.“I’ve had some practise with armour. I think you will have your pick of Aurien’s dragonets if you are looking for pages,” he pointed out and dropped a kiss onto my forehead. “Done.”“I can hardly make princes
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Between the craftsmen manufacturing new nets and Akyran’s people searching the city for every net that they could find; they were prepared for our return. Akyran rolled out the map whilst we ate around the great table with the leaders of his army, and he divided them into teams. As we finished the meal, the terrible call of the creatures echoed overhead and we all looked up instinctually, although all that we could see was the arch of slate overhead.“We must endure another night of this,” Akyran said. “As the plan relies on them being in the underground caverns. In the morning, we will begin netting, and by afternoon, between Rivyn, Daerton and Ecaeris, we will burn the monsters to ash.”“I’ll be back in the morning then,” Rivyn declared and cast a portal, the wind whipping the edges of the map so that Akyran had to use his hands to pin it to the tabletop until the portal closed again behind h
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“Our daughters are children,” Aurien turning to address Leamoira. “Dragons mature at the same rate as humans. I find it difficult to believe that the prophecy intends for our children to fight monsters before they are fully grown.” “It would be difficult for a child to wield a sword,” Leamoira agreed. “There is no measure of time to the prophesy, but I think it’s safe to assume that it will be a number of years until the heroine is ready to fulfil her future. Which leaves us with what to do in the interim?” “It seems to me,” King Sterin looked at me. “That we have someone experienced in hunting these monsters already in our midst.” The murmuring amongst the assembly rose, courtiers and royalty alike whispering behind raised fans and the palms of their hands. “You’ll recall that the last one I fought, almost killed me,” I reminded him. “A team is needed,” Sterin replied. “Obviously, to support
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As the day aged into afternoon, we gathered on the terraces overlooking the town below as the arrival of the dignitaries from all over our world formed a parade winding its way up into the castle, serenaded by bards and showered with the petals of flowers. “I see Aurien,” I spotted him by his golden hair which had been left free like a magnificent coat. “As if he is hard to spot,” Akyran replied with a hint of jealousy. “He stands a head over most others.” “He’s just jealous,” Rivyn grinned enjoying his twin’s reaction. “Ecaeris hasn’t exactly been secretive over her admiration for our golden friend.” “I just whole-heartedly believe it is unnatural for dragons to wear clothing,” I replied innocently. “It must be so inconvenient for him.” “I’m just glad he’s married, and being dragon, entirely faithful,” Akyran spoke over my head to Rivyn. “Or I’d be chaining her to the bed.” “You could do that anyway,” I suggested, and Akyran’s eyes lit fiercely. “I could,” he agreed putting his
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It was odd being back at the Court of the Light without Fiena, Tillie, or Ithyles to serve us. We had been assigned new servants, and they did not know our ways or habits, something which irritated Akyran, causing him to be short and curt with them.“We should have stopped by Nerith and brought your servants with us,” I commented to him as we settled into the bath and the servants retreated to lick their wounds. “You are too harsh. It is not their fault that we have been absent from court for a decade.”“Over a decade,” he reminded me passing me a wine goblet.“My point precisely.”“I am in a foul mood,” he admitted leaning his head back against the lip of the bath, his dark hair spreading out in the water around him like ink.“Your mother?” I guessed.“A bit, but the realisation is
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Due to the nature of magic around the Court of Light, the portal opened at the gates into the town. We both looked up automatically, the winding stone roads guiding the eye to the gleaming white walls of the castle in the center of the township, the terraces spilling greenery over the edges, and the open windows billowing the sheer curtains out.We could see the brightly colour courtiers strolling the walkways. From the gathering of minstrels, and the number of courtiers on the terrace from the main hall, Queen Leamoira was entertaining outside.We approached the gates, and the guards saluted us. “Prince Akyran, Princess Ecaeris!”I grumbled under my breath as we began the slow climb through the tidy houses with their white-washed walls and dark wood.“Oh, shush,” Akyran smirked. “When you marry a prince, it makes you a princess.”“Siorin
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“To end the slaughter,Not dragon son, but daughter,In the right hand,Rivyn’s sword will save the land,If the lamb chosen is wrong,Love’s sacrifice will not be strong.”The Seer’s words echoed hollowly around the room, and the vines behind her seemed to shake and tremble. There was a heaviness to the sound of them, a weightiness that implied meaning, and a ring to the tone so that it seemed she spoke from a great distance, and the sound carried to us from where-ever she was.The delivery seemed to exhaust her, her chin dropping to her chest, the points of her headdress stringing out vine behind her like spiderweb. She became so still that I found myself studying her chest for the rise and fall of breath. If she breathed, it was so lightly it did not disturb the cloth she wore.“Hmm,” Akyran hummed his sigh out through his nose, trying to sup
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Armoured and armed, we returned to the courtyard and I cast a portal. “Aperianu.”The Temples of Seigradh were buried deep within the forest on the border of Nerith and Uyan Taesil. Even the irreverence of mankind had not dared to touch this forest. It was one of the oldest in the world, the trunks of its trees wide and its branches and roots tangled. It was said that its roots systems had become so enmeshed that it no longer existed as a forest of many trees, but all were part of one.There had once been a path to the temples, but the root system had long tossed the stones aside, or curled over them, so that the way was often lost beneath greenery. Pilgrims determined the way, instead, by the stone monoliths that marked the path, though even these were often swallowed by the forest.Water gathered in puddles on the ground, though the greenery was so thick, if there was mud from a recent rainfall, we were kept from it. Fairies with eyes like black be
