Avalyne Series 01: The Queen of Carleon (3 page)

The greatest weapons ever forged.

*****

‘
Master Builder to the Court of Carleon!’

Kyou looked up from the parchment
s laid out on the table before him. They were the plans of the work that needed to be conducted to the western wall of the city, the one that had been hit the worst during the siege of the city when Balfure had first taken Sandrine. Reconstructing these would allow him to conduct the rest of the improvements he had been asked to carry out on the city by Dare. Dismissing the city craftsman named Gwyn who had been his partner in misery for much of this, Kyou turned around and was unsurprised to see who was approaching him. 

Only the elf would be so bold to call him by the title. In truth, there was a whole set of rituals that required performance by his people before any
dwarf could assume the title of Master Builder and Kyou had done none of it. As a result, he did not feel himself worthy of the title, despite what Dare and this upstart elf might think.

‘
Must you persist in using that infernal title?’ Kyou glared at the elf with his hazel eyes.

‘
Yes
Master Builder
,’ Aeron replied, amused by the grimace that crossed the dwarf's face. ‘I bring you tidings from the king.’

Kyou
snorted in annoyance and turned back to his plans. ‘You may tell his Royal Highness that the wall must be rebuilt before I will add any weapons to it. If it cannot take the weight, it will be of little use to him. We are working as quickly as we can and if he persists in hounding me, I shall return home and he can finish it himself!’

‘
I will tell him that if you like,’ Aeron rolled his eyes sarcastically, ‘however, he did not send me here to request an update regarding the progress of the work. I offered to come here in place of one of his riders.’

‘
Oh?’ Kyou stared at him. ‘And what would he want of me if not to know how his fortifications fare?’

‘
To invite you to a
celebration
,’ the elf declared, always amused that Kyou's temper could make him jump to foolish conclusions. After all these years of friendship and camaraderie between them, Aeron wondered if 'disgruntled' was the dwarf's natural state. ‘It appears that there is an important announcement forthcoming. The Queen has summoned her mother and mine to attend. Meanwhile the King has sent riders to the Green and the Jagged Teeth.’

‘
I see,’ Kyou absorbed the news and scratched the stubble on his cheek at what the announcement could be. ‘Do you have any idea what this news might be?’

‘
Not really,’ Aeron confessed. ‘I know that Arianne required an audience alone with Dare while we were in discussion about the deployment of men to deal with the trouble in the Northern Province.’

‘
Ah!’ Kyou exclaimed with a note of triumph in his voice. ‘It’s a baby then.’

‘
A baby!’ Aeron exclaimed, wondering how the dwarf had made
that
leap. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘
Let us examine the evidence—a celebration involving the queen’s kin and the gathering of their friends, the closest that the King has to family, not to mention that we are speaking about the most serious man we have ever met, choosing to celebrate some grand news? What
else
could it be?’ He gave Aeron a look of amusement, wondering how an thousand year old elf could be so naïve at times.

‘
Well I suppose he did seem rather cheery after the fact,’ Aeron mused. ‘Grinning ear to ear as a matter of fact. It was rather unnerving.’

Kyou
rolled his eyes once again and muttered, ‘Aeron, you are in
sore
need of female company.’

*****

If an invitation was sent to the tower in the mountains of the Jagged Teeth, there would have been no one to receive it.

A week
before the first of the riders had set off Tamsyn the last of the ancient Order of the Enphilim had left his secluded retreat to ride with all haste to the Wanderer’s Wood so as to take counsel with Queen Lylea. The journey was long but such was the urgency of the situation that he dared not stop for too long.

What he had seen in
his Scrying Pool would not allow him the time.

Following the Yantra River as far as he could, he turned inland and took refuge at
Angarad, the home of the men and women who considered themselves the greatest warriors of Avalyne. While Tamsyn knew of a few elves who might disagree with them, the Angarad had kept Balfure out of their lands although that achievement had come at a bloody cost. It had also stunted the growth of the kingdom as the business of Angarad for the next thirty-five years became dependent on servicing the war effort.

Gaining a fresh mount at their capital city of
Wyndfyre, Tamsyn set out again. This time, with the great Baffin Range flanking his southward journey and did not stop until he reached the city of Cereine, now once again apart of the kingdom of Carleon.

After the fall of House Icara,
Carleon had been broken up into city states under the occupation by Abraxes. It was usually Balfure’s habit to kill the ruling families and replace its rulers with puppets of his own. As it had been with House Icara, House Paden was also brutally purged. However, while Balfure had unintentionally left Dare alive, in the case of House Paden, he had allowed the survival of Selkirk, House Paden’s youngest son.

Selkirk, who was born with a weak leg that left him hobbling and a speech impediment that had him stuttering most words appeared
to be of little consequence to Balfure. It suited the Shadow Lord’s cruel sense of humour to leave the seemingly frightened boy in charge of the city. Except that while Selkirk might appeared outwardly feebly, there was an agile mind beneath the surface that was soon able to manipulate the situation enough to ensure that his people enjoyed some freedoms under his rule.

Dare
saw this when he came to consult with Selkirk, and so he regarded the Lord of Cereine with the respect he was due. Enlisting Selkirk’s aid to build his alliance, Dare had presented Selkirk to the rest of the Alliance as someone who had his full confidence. For that respect, Selkirk had put the full support of Cereine behind the exiled king until Dare was able to win his throne and reunite Carleon. After the war, Dare legitimized Selkirk’s standing as the head of House Paden and also made him Lord of the Northern Province, providing him an army to defend the realm from the remnants of Balfure’s Berserkers.

Selkirk’s gratitude towards the king ensure
d that Tamsyn was provided with the hospitality of his house before he resumed his journey once more.

Within two days of leaving Cereine,
Tamsyn arrived at the court of Eden Taryn, home of Lylea, the High Queen of the elves.

It was not for nothing that Lylea held such a high station among her contemporaries. She had been a young woman during the Primordial Wars, when the
Celestial Gods battled Maelog or Mael as he was known later, for the future generations of Avalyne. Tamsyn had been intermediary between elf and the gods, revealing their will to the Immortals as they battled Mael and the dark things that god had spawned to rule Avalyne.

Even then she had been unique among the elves for none had the prescience she possessed.
Her father Antion, was the product of an elf maid and the Celestial Enphilim. To the elves, he wasn’t just the High King but a demigod and Lylea inherited that reputation. Her position as High Queen was never challenged. Not even when she chose to take mortals as her consort for the brief duration of their lives. While most attributed this to Lylea having no desire to rule with a king who might claim lordship over her, Tamsyn knew she had other reasons.

The city of Eden Taryn was not as lavish as Eden Ardhen which had stood for thousands of years before its destruction by
Balfure’s Berserkers. It was an infant thirty-five years old and although the elves had constructed a beautiful city amongst the woods, it had none of the grandeur of its predecessor. The city was built upon the branches of the Great Tree, nurtured by the elves to achieve its immense size so that it could take the weight required to bear it.

Tamsyn ascended the great winding staircase that coiled around the tree, leaving behind the forest floor. Its branches were thicker than most tree trunks and it spread across the sky until only
a single stream of light could penetrate the dense canopy of leaves. He had been greeted by the Queen’s guard and suspected that by now Lylea would be awaiting him. This would be the first time they had seen each other since the wedding of the Queen Lylea’s only daughter, Arianne.

He wasn’t sure how he would be received
now that they would face each other alone.

*****

When Tamsyn had first met Lylea, her father had died fighting a Primordial. The young woman was called on to lead her people as High Queen and it was a role she had not expected to take so soon. Not even betrothed, Lylea was expected to lead a war that saw the elves as foot soldiers to the gods. Their immortality was granted to them as a way for the Gods to keep as many of them as possible alive for the battles ahead.

It was longevity that had come with a bloody price.

The war against Mael and his Primordials had already raged for two thousand years by the time Lylea became High Queen. Even with her prescience, she was young and unsure, certainly impressionable enough to take the guidance of a mage who as was as new to his role as liaison as she was to being queen. While he was far older than she, he had the appearance of a man in his fiftieth year, with dark hair and equally dark eyes and while he never considered it, he might be thought of as handsome.

Certainly Lylea had found him so
, and while he should have known better, he indulged the attraction, even consummating it. So much so that by the time he realised the folly of what he had done, she was deeply in love with him. His realisation coincided with Mael’s banishment to the Aether and the destruction of his Primordial army. The surviving elves, and there were not many of them, were weary of battle. Choosing to retreat behind the Veil where they could rebuild their civilisation without any interference from the new races the Gods were preparing to inflict upon them, Lylea had asked him to go with her.

While Tamsyn cared for her deeply, he was conscious that she was a young woman
even for an elf, and probably would be better off sharing a life with her own kind, as opposed to a mage who could be called on to serve his masters at any given time. There was also a part of him that feared what it meant to become a husband and a father so he had taken the coward’s way out. Instead of telling her any of his fears, he retreated to his tower in the mountain of the Jagged Teeth and there he had remained, in a deep sleep lost to the world.

When he was awakened by the intrusion of the
dwarves some two thousand years later, he learned that Lylea had never taken an elven husband. Her consorts were almost always human and usually coincided with the birth of a child, the last being Arianne. Although proposals had been made to her, she accepted none of them and Tamsyn wondered if it was because his betrayal had soured her on the experience for all time.

At the wedding of Dare and Arianne they regarded each other for the first time
two millennia even though news of his return must have reached her ears through Arianne and Dare. He could have tried explaining himself, but she treated their past association as little more than an old friendship from long ago. Not once did she acknowledge that once upon a time, they had made each other burn beneath the light of the stars.

*****

‘Mage,’ Lylea gazed down at him from her single throne, elevated on a raised platform, resting atop the wooden floor upon which he was presently standing. While she now had the appearance of a woman in forties, she was still no less dazzling than she had been as a young woman. Possessing the same mahogany hair as Arianne, Lylea wore hers up instead with delicate strands brushing her long slender neck. Her cheek bones were high and gave pronouncement to her elfin features as she stared at him with blue eyes lacking their usual warmth.

Although her personal guards were present, there was
no one else in the hall and the emptiness of it made him uneasy. There was too much unspoken between them and the substances of it lingered in the air, waiting to choke them at any moment. However, Tamsyn remembered he was here for a reason that had nothing to do with their turbulent history.

‘
My queen,’ he replied with a bow. ‘I am sorry to impose upon your realm but...’

‘
I have seen it too. I know that my daughter’s life is in danger.’ She cut him off abruptly, her voice hard, and he knew that it was not usual for her to speak this way for he noted one of her guards shifting his gaze subtly in their direction, noticing the difference.

‘
Then you have seen the portents.’ he said grimly, ignoring her aloofness when he knew she had cause for her hostility.

‘
Yes,’ Lylea nodded immediately thinking of the impending doom hurtling towards her youngest and perhaps most beloved child. ‘I have felt the growing malice coming from the north for some time now but its source is unclear. I had hoped would not manifest itself so soon after her marriage. It does not please me to tell my daughter that her happiest day may soon be her darkest.’