Avalyne Series 01: The Queen of Carleon (5 page)

‘
I agree,’ Keira said giving Celene a look of amusement. ‘You sound like Tully when he’s describing one of the sheep after quickening!’

‘
Fine, fine,’ Celene rolled her eyes, ‘Your highness, is your heart all aquiver and your soul warm with the joy of delivering to your lord and master his first heir?’ she smirked.

‘
I think I preferred the first way,’ Arianne returned, making her face at Celene's amendment. ‘However to answer your question, I feel well. I am told that this will change as the child grows, but I suppose it is the same for all women, mortal or elf.’

‘
Tully is looking at me strangely,’ Keira frowned. ‘I think your situation has made him wonder why we aren’t like everyone in the village, saddled with a dozen children. Not we have failed for the lack of trying.’

Although she was smiling as she spoke,
it did not reach her eyes. Both Arianne and Celene understood that this would bother Keira because the people of the Green tended to have large families and the lack of children at Furnsby Farm would not have gone unnoticed by their neighbours. Worse yet, she had to be concern that there was the possibility that the Disciples’ torture might have made her incapable of bearing them at all.

‘
I think a child will only form when it is ready, but there is nothing wrong with enjoying each other before a third party arrives. It felt like Dare and I waited to be with each other for so long that we wish to wait for nothing. We have only one life time to share together and so we must fill every moment of it as soon as possible. It feels right for us that a child should come sooner rather than later.’

Arianne
smiled to herself, remembering the searing night of passion that followed after she had told him about the baby. ‘Do not worry about children just yet,’ she said to Keira trying to put the woman’s mind at ease. ‘Let it happen as it will. If I were you, I’d enjoy the time when it is just the two of you, because once the children come, the whole world changes. I know it has already for Dare and I.’

‘
That's true,’ Celene agreed, giving Keira a look of sympathy realising what Arianne was about. ‘Still I think all men feel that they have failed in some fashion if they do not produce a strapping son to follow them. I came from a house of
five
brothers. When the time comes for me, I want a
girl
.’

‘
You
would
say that,’ Arianne retorted, ‘you just want someone to teach the sword.’

‘
I know I could teach a boy too but it won’t be nearly as interesting.’ Celene winked at her two friends.

‘
Honestly Celene,’ Keira declared. ‘I don’t know if I would have had the courage to do what you did. Fighting at Astaroth and then leading your father’s army into battle.’

‘
Nonsense,’ Celene dismissed such talk immediately. ‘You saved Dare from the Disciples. We all know what you went through to do that and I cannot say if I would have prevailed in the face of the Blinding Curse. I can fight against things I can raise a sword to. What you endured, that was different.’

‘
Strength does not require a person to be a great swordsman,’ Arianne said squeezing Keira’s shoulder. ‘Sometimes its just having the will to endure.’

‘
Thank you,’ Keira said gratefully. ‘Poor Tully seems to think I’m so fragile and I want to show him I’m not.’

‘
He’s a man,’ Celene snorted. ‘They never know
anything
until you hit them on the head with it. I never had to prove myself, it was only when I left Angarad that I was treated differently. Men always seem to think you need special consideration.’

‘
Tully loves you Keira,’ Arianna said kindly, ‘I think that he has been so worried about you healing that he has forgotten to do it himself.’

‘
I suppose,’ the lady of the Green sighed before deciding that a return to a happier subject was in order. ‘So I suppose this means that if we have daughters, they too will be headstrong, determined and thoroughly capable of getting into trouble?’

‘
I prefer the word self-sufficient as opposed to headstrong,’ Celene quipped.

‘
Self-sufficient, I do believe I like the sound of that,’ Arianne nodded with agreement before the three women exchanged glances and burst out into another round of laughter.

Suddenly, a beam of moonlight slipped past the clouds and struck the pond in the centre of the garden. The reflection of
the moon shimmered across the surface and its light caught Arianne in the eye. For a moment she felt her mind empty and the voices of Keira and Celene seemed like distant echoes. Without warning she heard her mother’s soft voice speak inside her mind.

Come
Arianne, it is time to begin.

*****

The summons by Lylea had left Arianne with such a feeling of anxiety that both Celene and Keira insisting on following her to her audience with her mother. None of them spoke as they approached Lylea because they could feel the weight of something terrible awaiting revelation in Arianne’s eyes. There was a sense of ominous foreboding as they found themselves standing next to Lylea at another part of the palace grounds. This space was more isolated with a tall hedge that allowed no one to see them as they stood in its boundaries waiting for Lylea to speak.

Oddly enough, Lylea did not object to ei
ther Keira or her being present, Celene noticed and wondered why. The elves were not known for their ability to take other races into their confidence and while Arianne was different from most, Celene did not expect her mother the Queen to be similarly disposed.

‘
Thank you for accompanying my daughter,’ Lylea said to Celene and Keira upon receiving them. ‘She will need your strength.’

Celene suddenly felt terribly afraid for Arianne.

‘My daughter,’ Lylea turned to Arianne and spoke softly, reaching forward to brush her hand over her daughter’s hair like she had done for most of Arianne’s life. ‘There is something you must see, something I must show you.’

‘
What is it mother?’ Arianne asked more than a little afraid. All her life she had seen Lylea’s prescience at work and although she did not have her mother’s talent, she believed in its power.  Her mother was standing in front of a smaller pond, holding an urn she knew her mother used when there was a vision she wanted to share with someone who did not have the Sight.

‘
I think you know,’ Lylea replied and poured the contents of the urn into the pool. The water trickled forth lightly, creating gurgles against the broken surface that sent ripples outward

‘
I
don't
know,’ Celene blurted out, feeling the same fear and reacting in the only manner in which she knew against such anxiety. ‘Tell me.’

‘
All in good time,’ Lylea said smoothly, accustomed to such impatience from the race of men.

Arianne
swallowed thickly, looking to Celene and Keira before turning to Lylea once more, her innards twisting with growing anxiety. Her mother’s Sight showed many things—the past, the present and the future. It was a window into infinite possibilities, and yet as Lylea asked her to look she felt uncommonly afraid, more than was usual for her. She was not a woman who cowered in fear at the first sign of danger. She had faced evil before and prevailed. But this thing that Lylea would have her do frightened her in a way she could not explain and yet could not refuse either.

Arianne decided finally
the fear would only have more power over her mind if she continued to delay and so she neared the edge and cast her gaze into the pool, seeing what it was Lylea needed her to witness. As Celene and Keira took a step closer she wondered whether they would see the same things she did.

At first, she saw nothing except water becoming stilled after its earlier turbulence
. The ripples disappeared into a smooth reflective surface once more. Arianne could see the stars twinkling from the sky above in the reflection and drew comfort from that. However, it was short lived.

The twinkles of lights coalesced on the surface of the dark water into a raging i
nferno that turned the pool amber with flame. Arianne's breath caught and she wanted to recoil, but the images forming before her were mesmerizing. They ensnared her mind in their trap so she was unable to look away.

And showed Arianne her son.

She knew he could be no one else because he had the look of his father except perhaps his hair was darker and his chin more set.

He wore the armour of
the king about to ride into battle and though she did not know him, she loved him immediately for he was beautiful as she always imagined a child of her and Dare’s would be. She saw him riding into the night, with Carleon’s banner held high and his armies behind him. But there was something strange about the soldiers—they did not appear as they should. For a brief instant, Arianne tried hard to discern what about them was so strange when the glow of the flames illuminated one of their faces and she understood why.

They were
Berserkers!

Her son was the leader of an army of
Berserkers! How was this possible? There was little time to question this as the image changed again, and this time, it was not of a handsome king leading his troops into battle. It was the image of a madman waging war and presiding over the slaughter of innocents in a ruined city. She knew without doubt was Gislaine. Its tall spires were ablaze like candles burning in the night, she could not hear the screams but she could feel them in faces of the people fleeing and by the Orean River that ran through Gislaine filled with bloated bodies.

And in the centre of all this
carnage was her son!

She knew without
seeing the scope of it all that he was bringing war to the cities of Carleon as if he was claiming his lordship over them by violence. Her child—the one slumbering even now in her womb as she watched this nightmare unfold—was going to be monster! Her and Dare’s child would be an evil more terrifying than even Balfure! The horror of it was beyond her comprehension. She could not believe that the Gods would allow an act of love between two parents to culminate in the birth of such a creature!

‘
WHAT IS THIS OBSCENITY?’ Arianne demanded screaming, stepping back from the pool too horrified to think.

‘
Arianne!’ Keira immediately came to her friend's side as Arianne sank to her knees shaking in disgust and horror at what she had witnessed.

‘
What has she seen?’ The Lady of Gislaine demanded vehemently of Lylea. She and Keira had not seen what Arianne had but the horror on her face told Celene it was terrible indeed.

‘
She has seen what could be,’ Lylea revealed, her face showing the pain of forcing her child to see the dark future that lay before her and all of Avalyne. However, she stood here not as the mother of Arianne but as the queen of elvendom.

‘
What
could
be?’ Arianne cried out, looking up at her mother with tears running down her face. ‘You turn this happy day into a nightmare and speak in riddles? My son cannot be this creature that I have seen! I will not believe it!’

Lylea
finally went to her daughter and lowered herself unto the grass next to Arianne, taking the hand that Keira had been holding and spoke gently,  ‘You must believe it, little one,’ Lylea was using that childhood nickname, ‘you must believe it because it will come to pass unless
you
stop it.’

‘
Me?’ Arianne stammered, her mind reeling still from the images. ‘I do not understand!’

‘
There is an evil afoot—an ancient one that we have not seen hiding because we were preoccupied with the threat of Balfure and his war,’ Lylea explained. ‘For many years this Enemy has been watching and waiting for one thing—the conception of your child.’

‘
What is this Enemy?’ Celene demanded, furious that there was still evil that could bring darkness to Avalyne after their hard won battles against Balfure. Have there not been enough brave men dying to prevent such a thing? How many more needed die? How much more was needed before they could be truly free? ‘What is this new evil?’

‘
It is not new,’ Lylea continued and turned her attention back to Arianne. ‘My sweet Arianne, trust me when I say to you that all is not lost. What you have seen is indeed your son in the flesh, but his soul was vanquished before he was born and replaced by another.’

‘
Replaced?’ Keira exclaimed in shock.

Arianne was growing confused and stared at her mother.
‘Who then has possession of his life?’

‘
Mael.’ Lylea’s voice was barely a whisper.

Neither Celene or Keira
recognised the name immediately but Arianne certainly did.

‘
That’s impossible!’ she declared. ‘He was destroyed! The Gods threw him into the Aether! He was vanquished!’

‘
Mael is one of the Celestial Gods,’ Lylea replied. ‘He was made by the Supreme and is equal to any one of them. He may have been bound to Avalyne when he chose to come here, but like the Gods, he does not die. He is disembodied but his spirit lives. The Enemy has decided that now that Balfure is gone, it is time for the return of his former master, Mael. However, Mael cannot be resurrected without a vessel and so the Enemy has chosen your child for that purpose.’