❧ Prologue ❧
“Your Eminence, they are ready to launch the attack; we await only your command.”
High Eccuret Drew took only a moment to consider his response and lifted both hands.
“We shall purge the tunnels of this pestilence calling itself the Resistance.” He threw as much power into his voice as he could. “In the name of Galador, we will have order!” All those around him nodded at his conviction, faith in their eyes.
The messenger nodded, before running off to tell the front lines to start the attack.
High Eccuret Drew looked around, wondering what he would do to the mountains once the Resistance was cleared out. It would be best to harvest the goods from the mountains; the ore, the gems…it might be difficult to convince the dwarves to help them, but they would learn to fear the power of the Fist of Galador, the Church’s righteous army, as it swept through the dwarven tunnels of Ballah like water through an anthill. He smiled at the thought. He was a man without scruples, if it meant bettering the empire of the Church.
High Eccuret Drew had become the youngest High Eccuret to direct the Church, at only twenty-six years old. His first act had been to declare war on the Resistance. A plague on the land, they were nothing but a rabble of rebels, trying to return Galaduin to the ways of the Old Empire.
He would die before he would allow that to happen. He was already eighty-one but was showing no signs of slowing in his quest for domination. The righteous power of Galador, the True God, propelled him.
“Your Eminence, should we not hasten back to Heilbrooke? It is not safe for your Holiness to be so close to the fighting.” One of the lower Eccurets hovered around Drew’s shoulder, voice tentative. In his youth, Drew had not been known for his patience or his compassion, and age had only soured his disposition. The younger Eccuret was lucky though; today, Drew was in a good mood. He turned and placed a weathered, age-spotted hand on the other man’s shoulder. Still, he did not smile.
“No, Brother. I wish to see the rabble flushed from Galaduin. Galador will protect me, should I need it, though I have no worries; he is with The Fist to see them through this righteous task.” His voice was passionate, willful.
As the army broke through the doors to the dwarven tunnels with a deafening, thundering boom that echoed through the valleys, a satisfied smile crept across the High Eccuret’s face.
This would be a day no one would soon forget; the day the last of the Old Empire was wiped out, crushed, sent from this land crippled and broken. The Resistance had no power left, and there would be no second chance. There would be no hope after he was done with them.
* * *
She came into the world a squalling, angry, splotchy creature.
“She’s a bit homely…” Her father stated in a pinched voice, staring at his newborn daughter’s crumpled, crying face. He was human, with striking blue eyes, and a shock of black hair that had started going grey at the temples, despite the fact he was only twenty-six.
His comment earned him a smack from the child’s mother, taking her eyes off her babe for only an instant to place her wallop.
“All children look like that at first. Don’t worry, your blood will show, and she’ll end up looking more human than feran after a couple years. Half-bloods always end up taking after their human parentage, at least as far as colouring goes.”
The mother, one could gather, was feran; greyish purple skin with tattooed gold markings on her face and shoulders to distinguish her from other clans. Her eyes were a bright red, and her deep auburn hair was braided back from her face in a hundred tiny braids. She was pretty, for a feran, something she always contributed to a distant grandmother who was elfish.
A tear came to her eye as she gazed at the babe, still bawling, waving tiny wrinkly fists in the air, her weak newborn lungs adding her complaints to the world.
“Declan…I don’t think I can do this.” Iyigrɧ’s voice was hoarse with emotion and many long hours spent in labour.
The Last King’s hand came down on her shoulder, and Iyigrɧ, the leader of Clan Yoroz, the greatest feran clan, was surprised to find it shaking. She brought her eyes to his face.
Tears were flowing freely down his cheeks, into the coarse hairs of his beard, the beard he’d been sporting since he became the leader of the Resistance.
“I know, Iyigrɧ. But she will not survive with us. And she must survive!” The passion in his voice, the ferocity, had Iyigrɧ beginning to shake, this time with fear for her child. She returned her look to her babe, her heart breaking visibly across her face.
“Bring them in. Now, before I can’t do this.” She sobbed, planting kisses all over the infant’s head, who had calmed sufficiently, her face taking on the look of an angry old man; wrinkly, and still splotchy.
The door to the dark room opened, and two new people entered the child’s life.
“Harrow Heilbrookeshield and Felicity Star-Seer.” The steward said, standing erect before being shooed out of the dank room. He was not about to let propriety and tradition go to waste just because war was upon them.
Ideally, no one would have to give birth in the dimly lit, musty, near-abandoned dwarf-tunnel but times were not so easy, and Iyigrɧ didn’t have a choice.
The newly introduced pair stood at the foot of the bed, dressed in travelling clothes. The man, Harrow, was broad through the shoulder, narrow at the waist and had a boyish youthfulness about him. His brown eyes held a certain seriousness which was offset by the almost constant smirk he wore. Today, however, he did not smile. Unlike his king, his hair remained its ruddy brown, but was streaked with reds and coppers, worn short so as not to be a nuisance. A scar ran the length of one burly arm. He was clearly a fighter, that much could be discerned from the way he held himself, the calluses on his hands that spoke of years holding a sword, and the thinly concealed muscles that rippled beneath his clothes as he moved.
The woman was his opposite. She was a waif of a woman, delicate and willowy. As a haffa, she had a dusting of fur over most of her face, her pointed cat ears tipped with a dark chestnut colour, a matching stripe running from the bridge of her nose to the tip of her tail. The rest of her fur, from her eyebrows back, was a creamy copper-orange. Her eyes were golden, with a narrow pupil that seemed bottomless, gazing into the very soul of whomever she looked upon.
They made quite the pair; him tall and built, a symbol of protection, she, small and lean, eyes showing a vast knowledge.
“Your Highnesses.” Felicity curtsied, ears flicking forward at the cooing burbling noises coming from the child.
“You two know what her birth means.” Declan said, without preamble, his voice full of gravity. Felicity bit the inside of her lip, a shiver running up her spine. It was time. Her eyes closed for a moment in sadness for her Queen, while Harrow simply nodded, a quick jerk of the head. Felicity opened her eyes, taking a few steps forward. Iyigrɧ’s eyes snapped to her, full of pain, fear, and grief. And pleading. Felicity hesitated.
“Iyigrɧ…” she began, but the feran leader shook her head, before murmuring something into the babe’s ear. When she was done, she handed the baby to the haffa woman with a stiff silence, broken at the last moment by a sob. Felicity bundled the child in her cloak, and, turning to Declan, handed an amulet to the Last King.
“If you ever need to find us, ask my mother. She knows how to work the amulet. Do not use it unless absolutely necessary, unless it is a matter of life or death.” She warned in a voice hardly above a whisper. “We will not send word to you until it is safe for us to do so. It may take a few weeks, or a few months.” With a nod, and a quick blessing to their health, she holds the child closer, as Harrow throws his own cloak over his shoulders. They left the way they came, and the door closed with finality behind them.
Declan went to the bedside of his daughter’s mother, clutching her hand, clammy and feverish, as she repeated the words she’d murmured to the child like an enchantment or a prayer; as if the more she said them, the better the child would remember, and come back.
Kɧylin Heilbrooke. The last descendant of the Old Empire….the greatest threat to the Church…and the only hope for the Resistance. Remember us, Kɧylin. Remember who you are.
Save us.