Tommy leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “How would you…how could you know this?” he asked.

  Taeva’s head turned so fast that her earrings jingled. “What? Do you think it impossible that the Taladrim would know something that the Elves do not?”

  Tommy blinked. “No, that’s not what I meant,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know enough about your people or your military to assess your scouting ability. But even if the Spider King did manage to stave off death in the wreckage of Vesper Crag long enough to bite some wandering Drefid, how could anyone have been there to see it?”

  Taeva voice fell to a menacing whisper. “Asp was there to see it. That Drefid miscreant explained in great detail as he threatened my family. And if you had seen Asp, as I have, then you would not doubt his word.”

  Tommy’s mouth snapped shut audibly. Jimmy slid slowly back into his chair. The fire hissed before them, flickering light dancing on the features of their sullen faces.

  “Perhaps, you should start over, Princess,” Grimwarden said. “Tell your story…” He sent withering glares at Tommy and Kat. “And we will not interrupt again.”

  The Princess of the Taladrim began, her voice taking on the ethereal quality of the old ones, elves too advanced in years to contribute with labor, so they told stories. Only, unlike the babes that sat around the elder’s feet consumed with childish wonder, the Lords listened to Taeva’s foreboding words as one might await the news of a close friend who had suddenly passed away.

  They stared into the hearth, watching the flames devour the logs, the white-hot, throbbing pulse of wood turning to embers. It spread up each log like a disease, chewing into the core and splitting the wood in a slow ache, until there was nothing left but ash—a scene not far off from how they imaged the land of Taladrim looked by the time Taeva’s haunting tale was through.

  Far north of Berinfell, just off the coast of Allyra’s Northern Shores and the famed Coral Bridge, lay the remote realm of the Taladrim, a geographical oddity as beautiful as it was dangerous. The massive island of Taladair was a perplexing feat of creation. Made of solid black granite, it appeared from the air as a great overturned shield forged of stone and resting low in the sea.

  No history records when or how the Taladrim came to dwell there, but they inhabited a near unassailable fortress ready-made for generations of defense. From above, the surrounding seas might seem a threat to cascade over the rim of the shield, swallowing the inner island completely. But no tempest-driven sea could ever dream of scaling those hundred-foot rims. Instead, the surrounding waters remained tame, becoming little more than a vast moat, and yet another layer of protection.

  Over the centuries, the Taladrim had delved a massive sea gate from the granite. It was the only point of egress at the waterline, and the entrance to Gahl Harbor and Taladair’s fleet of long-hulled ships.

  Jaco-Mirthel, Captain of the East Wall Sentry, stood watch at his high post and was the first to notice the peculiar storm building. He’d been on guard since just before midnight, and now that the sun was rising, he was eager for the comfort of his bed. Yet the sky seemed to take a long time in warming. Too long.

  “See that there?” he nudged his counterpart, a young cadet named Lynthnel, who’d lost his battle to sleep an hour ago.

  “What? Who?” Lynthnel sputtered to life.

  “The horizon, there.” From their lookout, Jaco pointed to the edge of the world where water met the heavens. Only the heavens were a tumult of flashing light harbored in billowing clouds, thick enough to blot out the sun.

  “What is it?” Lynthnel rubbed his eyes, thinking he might still be asleep.

  “A storm out of season,” Jaco replied, now squinting. “And unlike any I have seen before.”

  A flash. In a flickering moment, long spindly fingers of lightning shot down to the ocean and danced along the surface like an electric hand. It almost seemed to seek purchase, to grasp and pull itself forward before disappearing back into the roiling clouds.

  “It’s moving,” Jaco noted. “Toward us.” He fidgeted with his trident, fingering one of the points.

  “Should we call it in?” Lynthnel asked, unable to take his eyes off the apparition.

  The clouds took up more and more of the sky, rolling westward. They cast a dark purple hue to the water below, lighting up a sickly yellow wherever the bolts of lightning flashed.

  “Jaco?”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, sir. Shall I call it in?”

  “Aye, call it in,” Jaco said. He knew the entire signaling manual by heart. “Attention, warning, eastern front, prepare for storm.”

  Lynthnel strode to the far side of their lookout and pulled the signal horn from its cradle in the roof. He removed the leather sleeve from over the conch’s mouth piece and placed the shell to his lips.

  The first long blast cut into the morning air like a blade. The note sailed from the rim, down over the most steeply situated houses just beneath the lookout, and then out across the flattening bowl until it reached the spire-mount in the very middle.

  The palace mirrored the odd tension between the elegance of the sea and the harshness of the black granite. Long, smooth lines of stone swept skyward to form the towers and outer walls, only to be adorned with hard, angular summits that comprised the turrets, peaks, and dwellings of the royal family. At its highest point, the palace was far above sea level without, and below the rim within.

  The second cry from the horn—the double blast for warning—sent the gulls rising from their roosts, beating the air in an effort to rise above the city. The Taladrim stirred, and Jaco knew the King and Queen would be awake any second. If not already. As Lynthnel gave the third verse of the signal, Jaco looked back to the east. The storm had halved the distance from the horizon now.

  “What in heaven’s name can move that fast?” Jaco muttered to himself.

  Having dispensed the warning’s fourth verse, Lynthnel replaced the horn and turned back to see the storm. “So fast…” he said in wonder. “It will be upon us in—”

  “Retrieve the horn once more,” Jaco ordered, not turning from the sky.

  “Sir?”

  “I’m changing the order,” Jaco insisted. “Retrieve the horn.”

  “I don’t understand. It’s a fierce storm to be sure, a fast-moving weather front—”

  ‘Stand aside!” Jaco pushed his way past Lynthnel and reached up for the horn.

  “But, sir,” Lynthnel made to question again, but then he saw it, too. There, in the middle of the storm. “What—what is that?”

  Jaco took a deep breath and blew with all his might.

  “Your lordship,” came a muffled voice behind the door.

  The King sat upright in bed, checking to make sure his wife was covered. “Enter.”

  A face poked in, eyes averted. It was his chamberlain as expected. “A signal from the wall, your lordship.”

  “I hear it,” said the King. “What does it say?”

  “The guards are closing the Sea Gate. A storm comes from the east.”

  “The east?”

  “Aye, and quite bad at that.”

  “It has been many a fortnight since I’ve seen one from the east,” the King replied, rubbing one eye. He climbed from bed and made for the windows. The chamberlain beat him there, undid the latch, and opened the floor-to-ceiling glass-latticework panes. The gulls were flying to the west and the heavy winds brought the salt scent into the city afresh. The King examined the sky.

  “Your orders, sire?” asked the chamberlain.

  But the King did not respond at first. Merely puzzled. He sniffed the air again.

  “Sire?”

  Suddenly a fifth trilled horn blast came from the rim. The King did not need his chamberlain to interpret for him this time. “That is the call for Defenses.”

  “What would you have me do, your lordship?”

  “Ready the men to their stations. Take my wife and Taeva to the loft. We’re under attack.”

  “Attack, sire? From what?”

  “I don’t know,” the King replied. “But I trust my guards. That call is serious. An enemy lurks to our east…somehow cloaked by the storm front. There is something else. I smell it upon the wind. A reek of decay as if death comes in the clouds. Go now!”

  While children helped their mothers batten down every window and door that swung free, all the Taladrim men of fighting age poured through the garrison and donned the armor of their people: lightweight green plates of woven sea fibers able to stop a spearhead from penetrating the skin. Their streamlined helmets, fashioned from the same material, covered everything but the eyes, nose, and mouth, and permitted them to swim without becoming water logged. Archers were provided their bows and three quivers of arrows, while the spearmen were handed the symbol of Taladrim—the golden trident.

  The armed warriors of the city spread out to their stations, some bounding up to the ramparts along the rim, others filling the alcoves along the waterline where the ships were nestled in to harbor. Platoons readied massive harpoons mounted along the rim, while others manned large winches that strained against tawny ropes. The soldiers ground away as enormous green-plated panels of calcified sea coral ascended from inside the rim. The panels rose as one around the entire circumference of the city, gently arching inward as they climbed skyward. Eventually they met in the middle, forming a dome whose apex closed shut hundreds of feet above the spire-mount.

  Taeva bit her nails as the final rays of sun were shut out far above her.

  “There, my beauty,” said her mother, stroking Taeva’s hair from within the confines of the loft, a fortified sanctuary near the summit of the spire-mount. “Do as I say. Our safety is the utmost concern here.”

  “Mother, the city?” Taeva complained, leaning toward the exit.

  “The city has survived every storm and every attack for hundreds and hundreds of years,” she said. “We must keep you safe.”

  “I sicken of safety.”

  “Nonsense, Taeva. Enough.” She snapped her fingers.

  Three attendants appeared in the shadows behind their royalty, sworn to meet every need unto death. Since all of the Taladrim’s would-be assailants arrived by sea, and the greatest natural threat was a flooding, keeping the Queen and the Princess as high as possible was paramount. “All will be well. It will pass soon. We’re untouchable.”

  Taeva did not respond. As much as she wanted her mother’s hand to work its magic on her soul, just as it’d done on countless sleepless nights in her past, all she felt were cold fingertips caressing strands of hair behind her ear.

  “Honestly, mother,” Taeva said. “I am far too old to have my hair stroked like this.”

  “You are never too old,” the Queen replied.

  Taeva sighed. But it was more than the hair. Doubt lay heavily upon her. No matter how soothing the words, Taeva simply did not believe her mother this time. Something was very wrong about this particular morning. Her mother’s pride was clouding her judgement. Perhaps for the last time.

  The two of them sat on a deeply cushioned bench and stared out through a large picture window. The darkness within the city was combatted by fire light. Torches and braziers sputtered to life throughout the cavernous space until the whole thing looked like a massive candlelit funeral procession.

  “Perhaps it’s prophetic,” Taeva whispered to herself.

  “What’s that, my love?” the Queen asked.

  “Nothing, mother. Just mumbling.”

  And then the winds came. They howled, beating against the bowl, and sent shuddering spasms up through the domed plates. The spire-mount groaned. Taeva and her mother grasped the sides of the furniture as their turret swayed.

  “Great Ellos!” the Queen exclaimed as a crack of thunder reverberated through the city. The attendants fell to the floor behind them, one of them crying out as her head hit the granite floor.

  Taeva spun around. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s Louwin,” said one of the elder ladies. “She’ll be fine.”

  Then all at once the wind ceased.

  The Queen sat clutching Taeva, perhaps more for her own good than Taeva’s. The attendants sprawled on the floor, Louwin whimpering. Nothing else stirred.

  “A wind tempest?” Taeva asked her mother.

  “Must be. We’re in the eye now. Although…” The Queen stared out the picture window.

  “What is it mother?” asked Taeva.

  “I don’t ever remember an eye being so still. Listen.” She paused, exiting the room through a heavy door set beside the picture window. “Not even the sound of distant wind.” She and Taeva stood on the balcony.

  Suddenly a small shaft of morning light burst through a small opening near the top of the dome directly above them. Taeva and her mother shielded their eyes. “Can you see what it is?” Taeva asked her mother.

  “No,” replied the Queen, squinting painfully.

  Something whirred up high, like leather speeding cross rope.

  “I see something,” the Queen said. “Someone.”

  “They’re sliding down a line,” added Taeva. “And they’re descending onto the palace!”

  “Quick, back inside,” the Queen ushered her daughter through the door, slamming, then locking it shut.

  “An attack?” Taeva dared suggest. The attendants gasped.

  “The intruder is but one,” the Queen pointed out. “Possibly of our own, caught outside of the enclosure during the storm.” The attendants came closer, now all five women watching the single dark figure descend behind the palace walls. But the Queen noticed something peculiar about the stranger. She put a hand to her stomach.

  “He’s in the courtyard,” Taeva said. “We’ve got to see who it is.”

  “Taeva, wait!” But before her mother could stop her, Taeva was out the chamber door and bounding down the spiral stairs through the palace. “Taeva!” her mother yelled again, taking to the same stairs with the three attendants in tow.

  But the Princess did not pause or answer. She fled as fast as her legs would carry her.

  8: The Siege of Taladair

  WHEN TAEVA BURST OUT THE doors of the palace entrance, she was surprised to see so many centurions gathered in the courtyard. Each was poised in atack form. They brandished their tridents, surrounding a lone figure who stood in the middle of the chamber.

  “Father!” she cried out, seeing the King on the edge of the group.

  King Silnoc turned at her voice. So did the stranger. Heedless of the hedge of weapons and the guards’ efforts to hold her back, Taeva pushed her way through to her father.

  “Taeva, stand down,” he ordered her, his eyes weary, bloodshot, and sad. “You should not have come. It is not safe—”

  “Safe? But it is merely—” The Princess cut off her own words. She looked first at her feet, at the dark blood spreading in a pool. The blood of her people, soldiers, the elite Chamber Guard even. So many of them lay, dead.

  Then she looked up at the stranger. He seemed frozen in motion and somehow larger than life, like a bronze statue. But there was nothing heroic about this being. He was garbed all in black, and a dark, oil skinned coat hung on his skeletal form like a loose grave cloth eaten through by moths. It draped over his left arm that he held forward like a barricade, and fell from his aloft right arm like a serpent’s wing. Long, razor sharp blades of bone extended from his fists.

  A Drefid, Taeva realized. But different. Worse.

  He wore some kind of peculiar jutting armor. There were spikes and bulges, clefts and ridges—especially at his shoulders and back. And he wore a dark, conical helm with a curving horn protruding at each jawline like pincers. A narrow gap began at his chin, thinned to a black line at his nose, and then spread into scowling mask eyelets. Orbs of cold, white fire burned within and glared out, daring anyone to move against him.

  The ominous stranger retracted one set of claws, pointed a boney finger directly at Taeva, and said, “And her.”

  “No!” the King protested. He took a step forward and drew his sword.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” the intruder waved that same finger. “Remember what I said, Silnoc. Consider it a favor knowing your precious daughter will live long after you.”

  “Father?” Taeva said in surprise. “What…what is this thing saying?” She couldn’t bring herself to say man. But her father could not take his eyes off the stranger.

  “Dear Princess,” said the intruder, his voice deep, rough hewn, and yet still resonant. “I have come seeking the help of your father’s kingdom.”

  “Not another word, Asp,” commanded the King. “Your business is with Taladair, and I am its ruler.”

  “Help for what?” Taeva asked.

  “Taeva!” her father turned back toward her. “You speak out of turn. Go, find your mother!”

  “She will remain,” the being called Asp replied coldly. “She asks an appropriate question. Why have we come? The answer is simple: survival. I seek Taladair’s aid in defending my people.”

  “Father?”

  “Committing mass murder is more like it,” the Silnoc corrected.

  “War,” Asp said, clearly directing his words to Taeva. “Your nation is no stranger to war, to taking the initiative rather than waiting for an antagonistic foe to force the fight. And yet your father continues to refuse me.”

  “You ride the dark wings of a storm,” said the King. “You murder my guards. Of course, I refuse you. Be gone from here, accursed.” Silnoc leveled his sword at Asp’s chest.

  If Asp noticed the blade, he did not show it. “We are wasting precious time,” he said.

  “And what’s this about me?” Taeva asked.

  “A small matter,” Asp said.

  “I am never a small matter,” she quipped, lifting her hands. Her fingers began move, as if she played an invisible harp.

 

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