Daughters of Kestar

Prologue

She felt them before she saw them.

Raewyn raised her eyes and trembled as a group of black, celestial shadows passed high overhead, staining the sky with black fire. Explosions thudded in the distance, sending tremors for miles in every direction.

Her mother shifted beside her. She placed a hand on Rae’s arm and squeezed gently.

“Aranor will come for us. They will come,” Rowena whispered to her daughter and stroked her hair.

Raewyn was not so certain. Aranor lay deep to the south, and the mountain pass between them was treacherous and unreliable. It was only spring now, and heavy storms were still raging across the sharp, white peaks of said mountains. Even if the pass were crossable, there was another possibility. A hateful thought. What if Aranor was under siege too?

Raewyn clung to her mother, who had fallen back asleep more swiftly than dawn breaking over the hills. She is so tired.

Despite her own fatigue, the stone floors were too hard and too cold for Raewyn to join her mother in sleep. This corridor was adjacent to the upper ramparts, with great open windows through which the cold air blew in gusts, carrying the bitter smell of smoke. As the youngest woke within the hall, their sobs and moans echoed despairingly. Too many of them were newly orphaned.

Her eyes burned with tears. It was all so unjust.

She inched closer to her mother, watching as Saihe men and women wandered about, comforting, bandaging and administering whatever healing tinctures were left. The injured lined every wall, gasping for air, as if they could sense the tendrils of fire encroaching on their stronghold.

Hundreds more people gathered in the lower levels of the keep, taking refuge within the thick walls of Baladrin, a fortress hidden in plain sight for hundreds of years. Now, it was their only hope.

As morning crept onward, the cold eased from her bones and limbs, and she rose to her feet, careful not to wake her mother. Across the corridor, a large window opened toward the eastern end of the valley. She hurried across the hall.

Standing at the windowsill, she searched toward the far end of the valley for any sign that the village was still standing, and her beloved Inn, the Blue Bard.

Not just any Inn, but a temporary home to thousands of travellers, singers, and peoples from all over the Celasian territories, and hers too. Now just a pile of burning rubble, along with the only image she’d kept of her father and her most precious belongings. All gone. All ash.

Except these. She grasped the hilts of both short swords at her sides, cold and familiar to the touch. Twin Kestari blades, heirlooms of her father’s ancestors, and a longstanding symbol of peace between men and mages. The Magess Elariel was the last to wield them before she disappeared long ago.

Now they belonged to Raewyn, but she was hardly big enough to wield them. She was all limbs, and had spent most of her childhood running through the valley, talking to the old trees and swimming with the woodland nymphs, rather than attending her lessons with the sword-master. The belt and sheaths sat awkwardly on her thin frame and bony hips, and she couldn’t help but think they would be of better use to someone else.

Raewyn dropped the hilts of her inheritance, and placed her palms on the wall of the corridor, to each side of the arched window. The stone was cool to the touch, almost damp, like dewy grass before the warm light of sunrise dries the blades.

There would be no sunrise today, as the valley smoldered and plumes of smoke grew into an impenetrable gloom. Raewyn yearned for a golden horizon, and the sight of the blue river Laenul curling away into distant hills. She wished strongly for the familiar baying of the village sheep, grazing lazily in lush green fields. Those same sprawling pastures that eventually met the foothills of Ethelweren, forest of the White Hawk.

Raewyn knew every inch of this valley by heart. Every tree, every bird song and wildflower. She knew the druids dwelling deep in the wooded vale, and she knew each stream that fed into the sun touched Laenul. The magic inside of her was like the river...strong, steady, and free. It allowed her to connect deeply to the land around her, so that she could feel its pulse like she could feel her own heartbeat.

Right now, the vibrations echoing in the earth below were erratic, strained, and overly excited. It was as if they beckoned to her, questioning, pleading, like a child in need of comfort. What is happening? What can we do?

Raewyn cringed. She was only a child herself, and her power was just a spark, not a flame.

For now, those who made it within the walls of Baladrin were safe. She hoped.

An eerie quiet crept over the castle, and hardly anyone, including the Saihe, roamed the halls. The vibrations which had become commonplace in such a short span of time, now softened to a dull hum. Raewyn listened for the thud of explosions or the distant screaming of dragons, but the symphony of the attack faded. In its place grew a sense of unease, and a chorus of muffled coughs echoing through the corridors.

Raewyn stepped back slowly from the windowsill and looked over her shoulder. She squinted in the gloom, afraid to make any sudden movements, and yet stilling the urge to run.

Her mother was nowhere in sight.

Where?! Raewyn spun frantically in all directions. She resisted the urge to shout at the top of her lungs, but the cry sat like a lump in her throat, choking her. The rest of the villagers and their families sat paralyzed in the shadows, making themselves as small as possible and huddling close with their children. Why didn't someone do something?!

Raewyn crept along the hall, whispering to those she passed. "Have you seen my mother?"

"Have you seen her?"

Two parents guarding their own children nodded at her curtly, dismissing her before she even had a chance to ask her question. Raewyn went on, growing more anxious by the moment. Why was it so quiet?

"Have you seen a woman like me, with brown hair and blue eyes? She looks like me."

No one would answer her. Their eyes remained squeezed shut or downcast, trying to pretend she wasn't there at all. She had begun to wonder if she was.

Reawyn spun to face the way she'd come, eyes searching desperately for the older woman. The sound of her feet moving across the stone floors was shockingly loud. She opened her mouth to cry out, but she bit her lip angrily instead.

Without her whispers to break the silence, the quiet grew deeper still, hanging over the castle like a ghostly fear. Thick, yet intangible. Suffocating.

Everyone held their breath as shadows swept low over the fortress, one after the other, followed by the tenuous sound of wings slicing through wind.

Whoosh. Whoosh.

CRACK.

An explosion of light and fire erupted in the treetops outside the castle walls, and flames billowed up toward the sky. The screams in the hall were deafening.

“They’re HERE!"

"They've found us!” the shrieks rose up all around her.

Raewyn covered her ears instinctually, praying the dragons would pass them by, unheard. Maybe...

To her right, the sunlight was extinguished like a candle reaching the end of its wick. Raewyn glanced back at the window where she’d stood just minutes ago and froze. The pallid scales of a great underbelly covered the opening entirely, sliding upward as it climbed the side of the fortress.

In the same breath, another beast smashed into the fortress, hurtling down onto the castle from above. Stones were shaken from their ancient resting place, and the floor rattled underfoot. The sinister sound of lumbering footsteps drummed through the upper walkways. They stopped directly overhead.

No one dared to move, or speak, or breathe.

Seconds stretched on for an eternity. Then a roar shattered the silence. The sound was primal, rippling and deep at first, and then crescendoing into a high-pitched wail that shook her to the bone.

More of the sky serpents joined the cry, screaming into the void. The symphony of death echoed in her ears. How many were there?

Fresh explosions rocked the forest, shaking the foundations of the keep. Raewyn felt the pressure on the fortress as if it were on her own shoulders. The ground groaned beneath it all.

“How did they find us?!” a woman wailed miserably.

The same question plagued Raewyn.

She was hardly aware of the bodies shoving past her, mindlessly knocking her this way and that. It seemed to Raewyn that they moved in slow motion, desperately trying to escape to the lower levels of the keep. She swayed dizzily, and when she tried to breathe, the air burnt her throat.

Another pulsing wave of heat poured down from above, and a ball of flames bathed the castle in hot light, crashing onto the parapet with a loud BOOM. Far ahead of her, a section of the corridor exploded, flinging stones through the air with terrible momentum. Raewyn lurched to her knees.

The sharp pain snapped her out of her reverie. They were running out of time.

“Mother! MOTHER!” Raewyn screamed. “Rowena!”

Raewyn scrambled to her feet, pushing her way to the end of the hall and leaping across a gaping hole in the floor. The tower ahead led up onto the battlements. Raewyn didn’t know what she’d find there, but her instincts led her forward.

She gagged at the sight of blood and the bodies strewn across her path. Nauseous grew in her belly, then up into her throat, but she could not stop. She leapt faster up the stairs.

The narrow stairwell ended just above. Raewyn staggered, staring dumbstruck at the wall of grey before her. A blizzard of ash, smoke and sparks flurried violently outside the castle. It made the nightmare of death confronting her inside the stairwell seem like a sanctuary.

She glanced backward. It wasn’t too late to turn around. Maybe her mother was below, with the others. Maybe she was safe. But Raewyn couldn't be sure, and she just had a feeling. She could almost hear her mother telling her she must listen to those, even in times like these.

Breathe. Just keep breathing.

The thought of her mother gave Raewyn courage. She inhaled deeply and opened herself to the chaos of the woods and the countryside, and all the creatures who lived there. She could feel the trees burning, and the river choking with ash. Nature was stupefied in the sudden darkness.

There was so much to protect.

Eyes closed, she took another step toward the opening, and then another, in sync with her breaths. If she stopped breathing, she would stop moving. She would succumb to her terror.

A scratching sound on the stone outside let Raewyn know she was not alone. Something was waiting, just beyond the arch at the top of the staircase. She cracked one eye open and caught a glimpse of a thick tail recoiling into smoky shadows.

Two eyes flash like embers in the smog, stalking her. The sky snake was only a few paces away. Her hands slid slowly toward the short swords on her belt. One quick breath. Two.

Then Raewyn lunged forward to meet the gloom.