James Clemens - The Banned and the Banished 5

======================

Notes:

Scanned by JASC

If you correct any minor errors, please change the version number below (and in the file

name) to a slightly higher one e.g. from .9 to .95 or if major revisions, to v. 1.0/2.0

etc..

Current e-book version is .9 (most formatting errors have been corrected—but OCR

errors still occur in the text, especially the first word in every chapter.)

Comments, Questions, Requests (no promises): daytonascan4911@hotmail.com

DO NOT READ THIS BOOK OF YOU DO NOT OWN/POSSES THE PHYSICAL

COPY. THAT IS STEALING FROM THE AUTHOR.

--------------------------------------------

Book Information:

Genre: Epic Fantasy

Author: James Clemens

Name: Wit’ch Star

Series: Banned and the Banished 5 (conclusion of the Wit’ch War)

======================

Wit’ch Gate

Book 5 of the Banned and the Banished

-James Clemens

Seated on the Rosethorn Throne, Elena studied the riddle be-fore her. The small stranger, dressed in a

patchwork of silks and linens, appeared just a boy with his smooth and unlined face—but he was clearly

no youngster. His manner was too calm under the gazes of those gathered in the Great Hall. His eyes

glinted with sarcastic amusement, bitter and road-worn. And the set of his lips, shadowing a smile,

remained both hard and cold.

Elena felt a twinge of unease near the man, despite his illusion of innocence.

The stranger dropped to one knee before her, sweeping off his foppish hat. Scores of bells—tin, silver,

gold, and copper, sewn throughout his clothes—jangled brightly.

A taller figure stepped to the tiny man’s side—Prince Tylamon Royson, lord of Castle Mryl to the north.

The prince-turned-pirate had forgone his usual finery and wore scuffed boots and a salt-scarred black

cloak. His cheeks were ruddy, and his sandy hair was unkempt. He had arrived at the island’s docks

with the rising sun, requesting immediate audience with Elena and the war council.

The prince bowed to one knee, then motioned to the stranger. “May I present Harlequin Quail? He has

come far, with news you should hear.”

Elena motioned for them both to stand. “Rise, Lord Tyrus. Be welcome.” She studied the newcomer as

he rose to his feet amid another chorus of jingling. The man had indeed come from afar. His face was

oddly complexioned: a paleness that bordered on blue, as if he were forever suffocating. But it was the

hue of his eyes that was the most striking—a shining gold, full of a wry slyness.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you so early on this summer morning,” Lord Tyrus intoned formally,

straightening his disheveled cloak as if noticing for the first time his sorry state.

Er’ril, Elena’s liegeman and husband, spoke from his station beside the throne. “What is this urgency,

Lord Tyrus? We have no time for fools and jesters.”

Elena did not have to glance to the side to know the Standi plainsman wore his usual hard scowl. She

had seen it often enough over the last two moons as sour tidings had been flowing into Alasea: supply

chains to the island cut off by monsters and strange weather; townships struck by fires and plagues;

ill-shaped beasts roaming the countryside. But the worst tidings struck closer to home.

Elementals, those rare folk tuned to the Land’s energy, were succumbing to some dread malaise. The

mer’ai were losing their sea sense and their link to their dragons; the elv’in ships could not fly as high or

far; and now Nee’lahn reported that the voice of her lute was growing weaker as the tree spirit faded

inside. Clearly whatever damage had been inflicted upon the Land by the Weirgates was continuing its

onslaught. Elemental magicks waned as if from a bleeding wound.

As a consequence, the press of dwindling time weighed upon them all. If they were to act against the

Gul’gotha, it must be soon—before their own forces weakened further, before the gifts of the Land faded

completely away. But their armies were spread wide. As matters stood, the campaign against the Dark

Lord’s stronghold, the volcanic Blackhall, could begin no sooner than next spring. Er’ril said it would

take until midwinter to position all their armies; and an assault upon the island then, when the northern

seas were beset with savage storms, would give the advantage to Blackhall.

So spring at the earliest, when the winter storms died away. Elena had begun to doubt whether they’d be

ready even then. So much was still unknown. Tol’chuk had yet to return from his own lands; gone these

past two moons with Fardale and a handful of others, he sought to question his og’re elders about the

link between heartstone and ebon’stone. Many of the elv’in scoutships had not returned from

reconnaissance over Blackhall. The d’warf army, led by Wennar, had sent crows with news that their

forces yet gathered near Penryn. The d’warf captain wanted more time to rally his people. But time was

short for all of them. And now this urgent news from afar.

Lord Tyrus turned to his companion. “Harlequin, tell them what you’ve learned.”

The tiny figure nodded. “I come with tidings both bright and grim.” A coin appeared in his hand as if

conjured from nothing. With the flick of a wrist, he tossed it high into the air. Torchlight glinted off gold.

Elena’s gaze tracked the coin’s flight as it danced among the rafters, then fell. She startled back on her

throne upon finding the strange man now toe-to-toe before her, leaning in. He had crossed the distance in

a heartbeat, silent despite the hundred bells he wore.

Even Er’ril was caught by surprise. With a roar, he swept out his sword and bared it between queen and

jester. “What trick is this?”

As answer, the man caught the falling coin in an outstretched palm, winked salaciously at Elena, then

backed down the two steps, again jangling with a chorus of bells.

Lord Tyrus spoke up, a cold smile on his face. “Be not fooled by Harlequin’s motley appearance. For

these past ten winters, he has been my master spy, in service to the Pirate Guild of Port Rawl. There are

no better eyes and ears to sneak upon others unaware.”

Elena straightened in her seat. “So it would seem.”

Er’ril pulled back his sword but did not sheathe it. “Enough tricks. If he comes with information, let’s

hear it.”

“As the iron man asks, so it shall be.” Harlequin held up his gold coin to the flash of torchlight. “First the

bright news. You’ve cut the Black Heart a deeper wound than even you suspect by the destruction of his

black statues. He’s lost his precious d’warf army and is left with only men and monsters to defend his

volcanic lair.”

Tyrus interrupted. “Harlequin has spent the last half winter scouting the edges of Blackhall. He’s

prepared charts and logs of the Dark Lord’s forces and strengths.”

“How did he come by these?” Er’ril grumbled.

Harlequin stared brazenly back. “From under the nose of the Dark Lord’s own lieutenant. A brother of

yours, is he not?”

Elena glanced to Er’ril and saw the anger in his eye.

“He is not my brother,” her liegeman said coldly.

Elena spoke into the tension. “You were inside Blackhall itself?”

Harlequin’s mask of amusement cracked. Elena spotted a glimpse of something pained and darker

beyond. “Aye,” he whispered. “I’ve walked its monstrous halls and shadowed rooms—and pray I never

do so again.”

Elena leaned forward. “And you mentioned grim news, Master Quail?”

“Grim news indeed.” Harlequin lifted his arm and opened the fingers that had clenched around the gold

coin. Upon his palm now rested a lump i o of coal. “If you wish to defeat the Black Heart, it must be

done by Midsummer Eve.”

Elena frowned. “In one moon’s time?”

“Impossible,” Er’ril scoffed.

Harlequin fixed Elena with those strange gold eyes. “If you don’t stop the Black Beast by the next full

moon, you will all be dead.”

Meric ran the length of the Stormwing. His feet flew across the fa-miliar planks, hurdling balustrades and

leaping decks. His eyes remained fixed to the skies. Through the morning mists, a dark speck was visible

high overhead, plummeting gracelessly out of the sky. It was one of the elv’in scoutships, returning from

the lands and seas around the volcanic island of Blackhall.

Something was wrong.

Reaching the prow of his own ship, Meric lifted both arms and cast out his powers. A surge of energy

billowed through his form and into the sky, racing upward to flow into the empty well that was the other’s

boat’s iron keel. Meric fed his power, but the plummeting ship continued its dive toward the waters

around A’loa Glen.

As he fought the inevitable, Meric felt the weight of the other ship upon his own shoulders. He was driven

to one knee as the Stormwing, drained of its own magickal energies, began to drift lower toward the

docks.

Gasping in his exertions, Meric refused to relent. Mother above, help me!

He now saw with two sets of eyes: a pair looking up and a pair looking down. Linked between the two

ships, he felt the weak beat of the ship’s captain, Frelisha—a second cousin to his mother. She was

barely alive. She must have drained all her energies to bring the ship even this close to home.

Below, Meric whispered into the wind. “Do not give up, Cousin.”

He was heard. Through his magickal connection, the last words of the captain reached him. “We are

betrayed!”

With this final utterance, the heartbeat held between Meric’s upraised hands fluttered once more, then

stopped forever.

“No!” Meric fell to his other knee.

A moment later, a huge shadow shot past the starboard rail. The explosion of wood and blast of water

nearby were a distant echo. Meric slumped to his planks, head hanging. As alarm bells clanged along the

i i

docks and shouts rose in a chorus of panic, one word whispered from his lips: “Betrayed…”

Seated in the Grand Courtyard of the castle keep, Nee’lahn watched the children pause in their play as

bells rang along the docks beyond the stone walls. Her own fingers stopped in midstrum on the strings of

her lute.

Something had happened at the docks.

A few steps away, little Rodricko lowered his stick, a pretend sword, and glanced to his mother. His

opponent in this playful sparring match— the Dre’rendi child Sheeshon—cocked her head at the noise,

her own fake sword forgotten.

Nee’lahn rolled to her knees and swung her lute over a shoulder, bumping the thin trunk of the koa’kona

behind her. Leaves shook overhead. The fragile sapling was thin-limbed and top-heavy with summer

leaves—not unlike the male child that was its bonded twin.

“Rodricko, come away,” Nee’lahn said, reaching out to the boy. Rodricko was all limbs and

awkwardness. Than’t the Mother, his initial growth surge is about over. Both tree and boy would

grow into their forms more gradually from here.

“Sheeshon, you too,” Nee’lahn added. “Let’s see if the kitchens are ready with your porridge.”

As Nee’lahn straightened, she dug her bare toes into the rich loam at the base of the tree and took

strength from the energy in the soil. She readied herself to enter the stone halls of the castle. Reluctant to

leave, she drew the strength of root deep inside her.

Around them, the gardens of the Grand Courtyard were in the full bloom of summer. Tiny white flowers

garlanded the ivy-encrusted walls. The dogwoods stood amid cloaks of fallen petals. Red berries dotted

the trimmed bushes that lined the crushed white-gravel paths. Most glorious of all were the hundreds of

rosebushes, newly planted last fall. They had blossomed into a riot of colors: blushing pinks, dusky

purples, honeyed yellows. Even the sea breezes were given color and substance by their sweet

fragrances.

But it was more than beauty that held her here, for only in this courtyard were her past, present, and

future gathered in one place: the lute that held the heart of her own beloved, the sapling that sprang from

the seed of her bonded, and the boy who represented all the hopes of the nyphai people.

Sighing, Nee’lahn tousled the mop of sun-bleached curls atop Ro-dricko’s head and took the boy’s

hand. So much hope in such a little package.

Sheeshon reached to take Rodricko’s other hand, the webbed folds between the Dre’rendi girl’s fingers

marking her as a link between the seafaring Bloodriders and the ocean-dwelling mer’ai. Rodricko joined

hands with her. Over the past moons, the two children, alike in their uniqueness, had become all but

inseparable.

“Let’s see if the kitchens are ready,” Nee’lahn said, turning.

She stepped away, but Rodricko seemed to have taken root in the soil. “Mama, what about the bud

song? You promised I could try.”

Nee’lahn opened her mouth to object. She was anxious to learn what had arisen at the docks, but

already the alarm bells were echoing away.

“You promised,” Rodricko repeated.

Nee’lahn frowned, then glanced to the tree. She had promised. It was indeed time he learned his own

song, but she was hesitant, reluctant to let

Rodricko go.

“I’m old enough. And this night the moon is full!”

Nee’lahn found no way to object. Traditionally among the nyphai, the first full moon of summer was

when the young bonded with their new trees, when babe and seed became woman and tree.

“Are you sure you’re ready, Rodricko?”

“He’s ready,” Sheeshon answered, her small eyes surprisingly certain. Nee’lahn had heard the child was

rich in sea magicks, an ability to sense beyond the horizons to what’s to come. The rajor maga, it was

termed by the Dre’rendi.

“Please, Mama,” Rodricko begged.

The dock bells had gone silent.

“You may try the bud song; then it’s off to the kitchens before the cook gets angry.”

Rodricko’s face brightened like a sun coming through the clouds. He turned to Sheeshon. “Come on. I

have to get ready.”

Sheeshon, always the more sober child, frowned. “You must hurry, if we have to finish before the kitchen

closes.”

Nee’lahn nodded. “Go ahead, but don’t be disappointed if you fail.

Maybe next summer…“

Rodricko nodded, though clearly deaf to her words. He crossed to the tree and knelt on limbs nearly as

thin as the sapling’s branches. Now would be the moment when all the fates would either come together

or fall into disarray, for Rodricko was the first male nyphai. Both sapling and boy were unique, the result

of the union of Nee’lahn’s tree and the twisted Grim wraith Cecelia. Who knew if the ancient rites, songs,

and patterns of growth would hold true here?

Nee’lahn held her breath.

Rodricko touched the tree’s bark, drawing a fingernail down through the thin outer coating. A droplet of

sap flowed, and the sapling’s treesong rose up from its deep thrum and quested out for Rodricko.

Nee’lahn listened with both ears and heart. The boy was either attuned to the song, or he would be

rebuffed. She was not sure which she hoped. A part of her wanted him to fail. She had been given so

little time with him, less than a single winter…

Rodricko used a rose thorn to prick a finger, drawing blood. He reached his wounded finger toward the

flow of sap.

“Sing,” she whispered. “Let the tree hear your heart.”

He glanced over his shoulder toward her, his eyes shining with his fear. The boy sensed the weight of the

moment.

Sing, she willed to him silently.

And he did. His lips parted, and as he exhaled, the sweetest notes flowed forth. His voice was so bright

that the sun seemed to grow pale in comparison. The world grew dark around the edges, as if night had

come early, but around the sapling, a pool of luminescence grew brighter and brighter.

In response, the sapling’s own song swelled, like a flower drawn to the sun. At first tentatively, then more

fully, boy and sapling became transfixed in treesong.

At that moment, Nee’lahn knew the boy would succeed. Tears flowed down her cheeks with both relief

and loss. There was no turning back. Nee’lahn could feel the surge of elemental magick from boy and

tree, one feeding on the other, building until it was impossible to say where one began and the other

ended.

Two songs became one.

Nee’lahn found herself on her knees without realizing she had moved. Treesong filled the world. She had

never heard such a chorus before.

She craned up at the thin branches; she knew what would come next. Leaves began to shake as if from a

strong breeze. Each branch tip throbbed with treesong and elemental energy. And still tree and boy sang

in harmony, voices louder, strained, beautiful, expectant.

With nowhere else to go, the magick trapped in the tips of each branch had only one course left to

follow.

From the end of each tiny branch, buds pushed from stems, growing

i

from magick and blood: petaled expressions of the treesong brought to existence by the union of boy and

sapling.

He—they—had done it.

A gasp escaped from Rodricko, both joy and pain.

Slowly the treesong faded, as if draining down a well, exhausted. The summer sun returned to the

courtyard.

Rodricko turned, his small face shining with joy and pride. “I did it, Mama.” His voice was now deeper,

richer, almost a man’s voice. But he was no man. She heard the lilt of magick behind his voice. He was

nyphai. He turned back to his tree. “We are now one.”

Nee’lahn remained silent, her gaze fixed on the tree. What have we done? she thought silently. Sweet

Mother, what have we done?

Hanging from the tips of each branch were indeed the buds of new union. They would open for the first

time this evening with the rising of the summer’s first moon. But Rodricko’s flowers were not the bright

violet of the nyphai, jewels among the greenery. Instead, from each tip hung buds the color of clotted

blood, black and bruised—the same night shade as the Grim wraiths.

Nee’lahn covered her face and began to sob. “Mama,” Rodricko spoke at her side, “what’s wrong?”

Deep below the Grand Courtyard, Joach slouched along a narrow tunnel. It had taken him a full moon’s

time to find this hidden path. Much of the secret tunnel system under the Edifice had fallen to ruin,

destroyed during the awakening of Ragnar’k from his stony sleep. Joach remembered that day: his own

harrowing escape from Greshym’s enthrallment, his flight with Brother Moris, the battle at the heart of the

island. Though less than two winters had passed, it now seemed like ages. He was an old man, his youth

stolen from him.

Joach rested, leaning heavily upon his stone staff, a length of petrified gray wood impregnated with green

crystals. The end of the stave glowed with a sickly aether, lighting his way. It was the only bit of dark

magick left in the dread thing.

His fingers tightened on the staff, sensing the feeble trickle of power remaining. He had struck a bad

bargain with Greshym for this length of petrified wood. It had cost Joach his youth, leaving him a

wrinkled and brittle version of himself. Standing now deep underground, Joach felt the weight of rock

overhead press upon his thin shoulders. His heart pounded in his ears. It had taken him all morning to

climb the long-hidden stair to reach here.

“Only a little way more,” he promised himself.

Fueled by determination, he continued, praying the chamber he sought was still intact. As he reached the

tunnel’s end, he used the stump of his right wrist to shove aside a tangle of withered roots hanging across

the threshold. They crumbled away at his touch.

He lifted his staff forward.

Beyond, a cavernous chamber opened.

Joach wheezed with relief, and limped past the threshold. Overhead, roots and fibrous stragglers hung

like swamp moss, yellow and brittle. Rodricko’s thin sapling, above, had yet to send its young roots

down into this cavernous tomb. Here death still reigned.

Joach found a certain solace in that gloomy realization. Beyond the castle walls, the summer days were

too bright, too green, too full of rebirth. He preferred the shadows.

Exhausted, knees complaining, he advanced. The chamber floor was strewn with boulders and the

moldering corpses of the dead. Tiny furred and scaled creatures scurried from his staff’s sickly light.

Joach ignored the scavengers and lifted his staff. Old scars marked the walls, from the swaths of the

balefire wielded by Shorkan and Greshym during the battle. They looked like some ancient writing in

charcoal.

If only he could understand it…

Joach sighed. So much remained closed to him. He had spent the past two moons holed up in the

libraries and nooks, poring over texts, scrolls, and manuscripts. If he ever hoped to regain his youth, he

needed to understand the magick that had stolen it. But he was a mere apprentice to the Black Arts, far

from true understanding. He had only managed to glean one clue: Ragnar’t.

Before joining with Kast, the dragon had slumbered in stone at the heart of the island for untold ages,

growing rich with the elemental magick of the dream, imbuing the rocks and crystals here with its

energies. Any hope of regaining his own youth lay in the mystery of the dreaming magick. Joach had lost

his youth in the dream desert—his youth and one other thing.

He closed his eyes, again feeling the flow of blood across his hand, the slightest gasp in his ear. “Kesla,”

he whispered out to the cavern of the dead. She too had been like Ragnar’k, a creature of dream.

If all his pain arose out of dream landscape, perhaps his cure lay there, i

too. This frail hope had finally driven him down into the bowels of the island.

He had a plan.

Using his staff as a crutch, Joach limped over bones and around boulders. Though Ragnar’k was long

gone, the dragon had slept in this chamber for so long that every stone, every bit of broken crystal, had

been imbued with its magick. Joach planned to tap this elemental power.

Like Greshym, Joach was a dreamweaver. But unlike the darkmage, Joach was also a dream sculptor,

with the ability to craft substance out of dream. If Joach hoped to take on Greshym and steal back his

youth, he would need to hone his skill. But to do that, he first needed energy. He needed the power of

the dream.

Joach crossed to the center of the half-collapsed chamber and slowly turned in a circle, studying the

room. He sensed the abundance of energy here. Satisfied, he shifted his staff to the crook of his stumped

right arm and slipped out a dagger. Clenching the hilt between his teeth, he sliced his left palm. As the

blood welled, he spat out the dagger and lifted his wounded hand. Squeezing a fist, he dribbled blood

onto the stone floor. Drops splattered at his feet.

Ready, Joach let his eyes drift half closed, slipping into the dream state. The dark chamber grew fitfully

brighter, as swaths of rock and wall took on the soft luminescence of residual energies—echoes of the

dragon’s dream.

A smile formed on Joach’s thin lips.

Reaching out with the magick in his own blood, he tied the energies to himself, weaving it all together as

was his birthright. Once all was secure, Joach grabbed up his staff again with his bloodied left hand. He

lifted the weapon and again slowly turned in a circle, drawing the magick into the staff. He turned and

turned, dizzying himself, but did not stop until every dreg of magick was siphoned into the length of stony

wood, weaving stone and magick together.

As he worked, the staff grew cold to the touch, trembling with pent-up power. The crystals along the

staff’s length glowed with brilliance, flaring brighter, even as the cavern grew dimmer.

Soon there was nothing but darkness around Joach.

Satisfied, he lowered the staff and leaned upon it, his legs wobbling and weak. He stared at his crutch.

The green crystals there gleamed with a sharp radiance. Joach’s shoulders shook with relief. He had

done it! He had bound the energy to the staff.

All that was left was to bind the staff to him, to give him the skill to wield it to its fullest extent.

Dreamweaving alone could not do the binding that he needed. A deeper connection was necessary, and

he knew a way—an old spell, and one that came with a high cost, as did all things powerful. But what

were a few more winters lost, when so many more had already been stolen from him? Besides, he had

been involved in this same spell before, when it had been cast by Elena and forged upon Greshym’s old

staff. So why not once more? Why not cast by his own hand, and forged upon this new staff, now ripe

with dream energies?

To challenge Greshym, he needed a mighty weapon and the skill to use it. There was only one way to

quickly gain such skill.

He must forge the staff into a blood weapon.

Joach prepared himself, concentrating on the red dribble trailing down the staff’s surface. It was not a

particularly difficult spell, simpler really than calling forth balefire. It was the cost that gave him pause. He

remembered Elena’s sudden aging.

But it was too late to look back. Before he could balk, Joach released the spell in a flow of words and

will.

The effect was immediate. He felt something vital rip from him and pass through his blood into the staff.

Gasping, he fell to his knees. His vision blurred, but he refused to give himself over to the darkness. He

breathed deeply, sucking in air like a drowning man. Finally his vision cleared. The room slowed its spin.

Joach pulled the staff across his knees, and stared at the hand that gripped the wood. As with his sister

before him, the spell had aged him instantly. His fingernails had grown out and curled; his skin had

crumpled. Had his sacrifice of winters been worth it?

He lifted the staff. The gray wood was now as white as snow. The green crystals, aglow with dream

energies, stood out starkly, like the crimson streaks flowing from the withered hand that held it. With

each thud of his heart, the streaks flowed farther down the shaft, fusing staff and body, forging weapon to

wielder.

Joach hauled himself to his feet. When Elena had forged Greshym’s old staff, Joach had become a skilled

warrior with the weapon. Would the same hold true here? Had the fusion granted him, as he hoped, the

ability to wield the dream magicks now woven to the staff?

Shaking back the sleeve of his cloak, Joach exposed the stump of his right arm, his hand lost to the blood

lust of Greshym’s beast. If Joach could mend that injury, then perhaps there was hope—not only for

himself, but for them all. A mighty war was coming, and Joach did not want to remain behind with the

children and the feeble.

i

He reached out to the staff. As his severed wrist touched the petrified wood, Joach willed his

magick—not weaving this time, but sculpting.

From the stump of his wrist, a phantom hand bloomed out in wisps and tendrils. Ghostly fingers stretched

and gripped the staff. Joach’s legs shook, but he used his blood connection with the staff to draw upon

the dream energies. Slowly the spirit hand grew solid, gaining substance from his focus and attention.

Fingers that had once been ghostly became whole. Joach felt the grain of the staff’s wood, the sharp

edges of the crystalline stone.

He lifted the staff with his dream-sculpted hand and held it aloft. Blood continued to feed the staff through

his conjured hand.

Dream had indeed become substance!

Power thrilled through him. Dark magick and dream energies, now fused, were his to command! He

pictured a girl with eyes the color of twilight, and his lips moved in a silent vow of vengeance. He would

find Greshym and make him pay for his theft, make them all pay for what Joach had lost among the

sands.

Joach lowered the staff, then wrapped his sliced palm and took the staff back up in his gloved grip,

severing the connection between flesh and petrified wood. As the blood drained out of the white wood,

its length grew gray again. For now, he would keep his new blood weapon a secret.

Joach raised his right arm and stared at the sculpted hand, formed out of elemental energy. It would not

do to let this be seen yet, either. There would be too many questions… and besides, it drained his

precious energies. He waved the hand through the air and unbound the pattern, and like a snuffed candle,

the hand wisped out of existence, back to just dream.

Using his staff as a crutch, Joach headed out of the cavern.

There would come a time to reveal his secret. But for now he would keep the knowledge close to his

aching heart, next to the memory of a tawny-haired girl with the softest of lips.

In her chamber, Elena settled into a chair by the coals of the morn-ing’s fire. The others took seats or

stood by the hearth. A trio of servants passed mugs filled with kaffee and set out platters of warm oat

biscuits, sliced apples, cheeses, and cubes of spiced pork.

Er’ril took up position, close by her shoulder. If Elena turned her head, her cheek could touch the hand

that gripped the back of her chair. But now was not the time to lean into his strength. Elena sat with her

back i

straight, gloved hands folded in her lap. She kept the worry from her face. One moon’s time…

Harlequin Quail waited by the fire, staring into the coals as if reading some meaning in their last glow. He

fingered a silver bell on his doublet until the servants departed.

The uproar at the council after the stranger’s pronouncement had made it impossible to continue. From

the angered shouts and blusters of disbelief, the assembly would be deaf to reason until their shock wore

off.

Then alarm bells had distracted the assembly momentarily. Word quickly reached them that an elv’in

scoutship had crashed into the seas. Elena had called for a break in the war council.

Er’ril mumbled beside her. “Where is Meric?”

James Clemens - The Banned and the Banished 5 - Witch Star

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: