Sign of the Throne: Book One in the Solas Beir Trilogy (4 page)

The portal was solid, but viscous, and she found she could pass through it with some effort. The gelatinous substance felt thick and sticky, and tingled against her skin like the sting of a sea anemone, pulling at her hair, her gown. She pushed herself upward and kicked hard with her legs, the weight of the dress pulling her back. At last she broke the surface of the water and gulped icy air that burned painfully in her throat.

But before she could regain her strength, something pulled her back below the surface. She gasped in surprise as dank water flooded her nose and mouth. She swallowed and opened her eyes wide in the murky liquid, trying to understand what had grabbed her. In the light from the other side of the portal, she saw it. To her disbelief, the portal was shrinking, and the train of her dress was caught fast, pulling her back under to be trapped between worlds. She grabbed the waterlogged material and jerked on it. Nothing happened.

Lungs on fire, she planted her feet on either side of the portal and tugged again. This time the fabric ripped, launching her to the surface. She reached out to grasp the marble lip of the reflecting pool and dragged herself from the muck. She filled her lungs with delicious air, lying on her back on the icy stone surface of the edging that framed the rectangular pool, her dirty, sopping dress spread out like a ragged fish tail.

After a short rest, Eulalia sat up and looked around at the world she had entered. The pool lay just outside a glass conservatory, which was attached to a mansion. Something bad had happened here—she could feel it on the wind and see it in the cracks of the building’s plaster walls. Beyond the mansion’s front door, she could hear the sound of something heavy falling. She stood up and walked past the Spanish colonial facade just in time to see an entire wing collapse, a remnant of the damage that must have been set into motion when the portal was destroyed. She listened for signs that the mansion was inhabited, but heard nothing. At least Lucia had not harmed anyone in her flight from Cai Terenmare. Perhaps that was a sign that she had not harmed Artan either.

Eulalia knew one thing for certain—she had underestimated Lucia’s knowledge about the portals. Not only did Lucia know how to use them, she had rigged the portal to close if triggered from the other side. Cael had been wrong about trying to capture her—his army never could have passed through the water portal.

While Eulalia regretted her own impetuousness, she also knew that she was fortunate to have escaped the trap. What if the portal had closed when she was halfway through? She didn’t want to think about that. But with the first portal destroyed and the second diminished to a sliver, how could she return? She needed to send a message to Cael to find the Sign of the Throne, a magical pendant, and pass it through what was left of the tiny portal. Her son was to be the next Solas Beir, and she was a
cai aislingstraid,
“a dreamer who sees.” Between the two of them, they would be able use the Sign of the Throne to reopen the portal. Artan would have to be older to make the journey, but as long as he was safe, they could wait here.

She knew there wasn’t much time—Artan would age more quickly in this world, like a human. He would become mortal and lose the light within. But once he returned to the other side, that would change. On the other side, he would be strong. Ardal, his father, had been strong—the Great Bear King, he had been called, and so he had been. When he transformed into his warrior form, the white spirit bear, he was nearly invincible; he kept the armies of the Kruor um Beir at bay for hundreds of years.

If Cael was right about Lucia’s betrayal, it was only the treachery of a woman and a meal laced with poison, silver powder that had brought Ardal down at last. But as long as Eulalia and her son made it back to Cai Terenmare before Artan’s twenty-third birthday, all would be well. Tierney, that ruthless wyrm, would remain imprisoned, and Artan would ascend his father’s throne, vanquishing the darkness that had gathered in the king’s absence. And if they didn’t make it back in time…Artan’s birthright would be forfeited and Tierney would claim the throne. That simply could not happen.

Eulalia walked toward the large, iron gate, which was dusted with a light frost. She was wet and cold, but she could worry about that later. Once she had her son.

She reached out to open the gate, and as she grasped the handle, a new chill swept through her, a deep cold that enveloped her heart and spread throughout her body. To her horror, her left hand, still touching the handle, began to wither. She snatched her hand away, but not soon enough. The withering spell, hidden in the enchanted metal, spread up her arm, past her shoulder and neck, and up her cheek. She shrieked in pain as her left eye was overcome with blindness. Her beautiful raven hair turned white, and she was left disfigured and alone in a world not her own.

She was trapped.
Now that the gate and wall surrounding the mansion were cursed, crossing them would mean death. She could neither return to her world to heal, nor escape the boundaries of the ruined estate.

Cael was right. Lucia
had
been jealous when Eulalia had married Ardal and become queen, and Lucia had also opposed the king’s policies against the
Kruorumbrae
, likely because of her alignment with Tierney. Then she had killed Ardal for her love of that monster.
Curse Lucia—curse her for her betrayal and her cruelty
. Eulalia wept. This was too much—to be so close and to lose so much—first her husband, and then her child, her health, and any chance to change fate.

Under the sapphire sky of his prison, Tynan Tierney sat on a desert floor, his hands cupping the scarlet sand.  Head bowed, he was intent on his task, mumbling the numbers to himself—counting, counting, counting. Suddenly, he stopped, raised his head, and smiled. Somewhere
, a queen was weeping—and soon, all of Cai Terenmare would be his.

The queen sat by the reflecting pool for hours. She cradled her withered arm and sobbed, too devastated and overwhelmed to move. Eventually she fell silent and gazed with her remaining good eye into the black nothingness of the water. She stared at the reflection of her face, which had been twisted into the mask of something ancient and terrible. The moon set in the west and the night grew dark, too dark even to see her ruined reflection. She had no sense of time passing. She was numb from the cold, her mind drifting in a fog of hopelessness.

Somewhere in the stillness of the night, she heard a small, insignificant chirp. A little frog had crept to her side, unnoticed until it began croaking softly. The creature was miniscule, small as a coin, with velvety, smooth skin the rich emerald color of forest moss and wide black pupils set in circles of gold.
How strange
, thought Eulalia,
that this creature would be here, resistant to winter’s sleep.

The tiny frog blinked intelligently at the queen, and then shuddered, as if from the cold. Its amphibian form fell from it, vanishing like fading ash, and standing in front of the queen was a small, green faery with webbed fingers and toes.

“I am Fergal the Valorous,” he croaked, bowing formally. “I hope Your Majesty will not be angry with me, but the knight Cael asked me to follow you, in case you might need my assistance. He was worried when you did not return, my queen.”

Eulalia had wept so much, she thought she had run out of tears, but somehow the presence of this brave sentry brought forth new tears. “My dear friend,” she said, “I am not at all angry with you.”

Fergal nodded, silent and waiting.

A chance for hope, however slight, was better than none at all. Composing herself, the queen wiped her face on the sleeve of her good arm. “You found the portal? You were able to make it through the tiny opening?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Fergal replied. “And I am prepared to return for help.”

“Thank you, loyal and courageous one. My fate now rests with you. You must tell Cael what has happened here. He must leave the kingdom in the hands of the council and make haste to the Northern Oracle to find the Sign of the Throne. When he finds it, you must bring it to me. Only then can the portal be restored. I will walk with him in his journey, if only in his dreams.”

Fergal nodded, and resumed his amphibian form. With the slightest of splashes, he vanished.

ORDINARY

Twenty-Two Years Later

T
here was nothing remarkable about eighteen-year-old Abigail Brown’s life. She came from an average, middle-class household and lived in a modest three-bedroom home with her father, Frank, an accountant, her mother, Bethany, a middle-school teacher, and her ten-year-old brother, Matthew, who was a pain in the butt more often than not, but only because he looked up to his older sister and liked to mess with her things. Even her last name was ordinary.
What kind of name is “Brown”?
she thought.
Average. Boring. That’s what kind.

Neither skinny nor heavy, Abby was simply a teenage girl of average height and average build, with light brown hair that fell in soft curls just past her shoulders. Her most striking feature was her bright blue eyes; they might have caught more attention had she not been such a wallflower.

It wasn’t that people didn’t like Abby, but she was introverted and had only a few friends she considered close. She could pass as pretty, but with limited finances and little knowledge about fashion, she kept her makeup minimal and her wardrobe simple. The usual Abby Brown uniform consisted of jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt from one of several favorite underground bands with odd monikers, such as the
Well-Meaning Sociopaths
and
Epic Pickle Chuck
. She had banished the T-shirt identifying her as a “Pickle Chucker” to the back of her closet after a barbaric incident in the cafeteria involving a pickle slice projectile. Thankfully, the condiment had sailed over Abby’s head, but hearing its juicy smack against the wall was enough to convince her that the shirt was a social hazard. Funny how nobody ever chucked things at her when she identified herself as a “sociopath.”

Now that she was a senior in high school, Abby planned to attend college
, and studied hard, but she ranked only slightly above average, according to her report card. She was intelligent and clever, but did not stand out among her peers, who held starring roles in academic competitions. The word
brilliant
was something she associated with other people, the kind of people who earned scholarships and had college recruiters knocking on their doors. No one came knocking at the Brown residence, and Abby knew her last year in high school would mean the end of her career painting sets for the theater club’s musicals and working more hours to save for college the next fall.

It was the overwhelming normality of her life that drew Abby out of her own boring neighborhood and into the attractive historic district of Newcastle Beach. Here was a place in the universe where nothing was simply average. In Newcastle Beach, stunning, successful people drove gorgeous cars and lived in beautiful, sprawling homes with impeccably manicured lawns. Even the paint on the Newcastle Beach houses was a little bit brighter than in the rest of the world. The exclusive community had been built next to the beach on the western edge of the city of Santa Linda.

Bounded by a wall of smooth, round stones, a circle surrounded the entire neighborhood. Large iron gates marked the eastern and western entrances, and the cobblestone paving of the Newcastle Beach streets was in stark contrast to the potholed asphalt roads of Santa Linda. Parallel to the shore was one of the oldest buildings in the neighborhood: the Newcastle Beach Inn.

Although it remained a working hotel, and at times entertained guests of great wealth and fame, the inn was more of a country club for the residents of the community. The children born in the neighborhood learned to swim in the resort pool, wandered the many gardens during the annual Easter egg hunt, practiced their tennis skills on courts with a view of the sea, and, as they grew older, attended more formal functions in the grand ballroom.

With its clean, whitewashed plaster and tiled fountains, the Spanish colonial architecture of the inn stood in contrast to most of the other buildings in the town. It was larger and grander, with an old-world presence. The only building that came close to matching its greatness was an old mansion across the street, but its grandeur had faded after it was damaged by an earthquake decades before.

With cracked plaster, broken windows, and a ruined reflecting pool filled with water the color and consistency of sludge, the mansion was shrouded in an overgrowth of trees and brush, surrounded by a tall, imposing wall. Children in the neighborhood avoided it as a rule. Only the bravest among them dared to peer through the large, wrought-iron gate, returning to scare their young friends with ghost stories of a mad lady in white, a witch who lurked in her dark lair, waiting to steal and eat snooping children.

On nights when there was no wind, strange noises could be heard emanating from the bowels of the intimidating, lightless building. Ravens seemed to be drawn to the trees surrounding the estate. The large, black creatures called out mockingly to would-be trespassers, unnerving anyone who came too close.

Abby was fascinated by the ravens. She was also fond of Edgar Allan Poe, whose works she had studied in a literature class sophomore year. She could imagine her Newcastle Beach ravens in a more Gothic setting, with a chorus or two of “Nevermore.” They seemed even more magical than the rest of the historic district. On the days when she walked to her job at the inn, Abby preferred the north side of Ocean Avenue
, just so she could watch the ravens before crossing the street to the resort.

With dark, gold-rimmed eyes, the birds cocked their heads as she passed by, and she sensed their otherworldly intelligence as they stared back at her, unafraid. She had always loved animals, and as a child had attracted many a stray, much to her mother’s chagrin. She remembered an elementary school field trip to the Ocean Research Institute at the University of Santa Linda, during which she had gotten separated from her class because she
’d lingered at the dolphin tank, not even realizing her teacher and classmates had moved on to the next exhibit.

From the viewing area below the main exhibit floor, she
had been watching the dolphins intently, pressing her small hands and forehead to the cool glass, when one of the dolphins had broken from the pod and floated at eye level in front of her. Mesmerized, she had dared not move or break eye contact, until she’d heard her teacher worriedly calling her name, chastising her for leaving the group.

It was the same feeling with the ravens—a strong connection that felt both familiar and foreign, like meeting an old friend she had not seen for a very long time. The ravens made her love the tree-lined neighborhood even more, with its intricately decorated Victorians and sprawling Tudors, homes with shaded windows like half-lidded eyes, coyly keeping secrets.

Abby had begun working at the inn the summer before her senior year. The job was not prestigious, but she got to spend time with her best friend, so it wasn’t all bad.

Her relationship with Jonathon Reyes had quite literally begun the day they were born—their mothers
had bonded in the maternity ward, and gave birth within hours of each other. Soon after, Jon’s father had decided he wasn’t ready for a kid. He walked out of the ward and never came back. Suddenly on her own, with her closest relatives back in Mexico, Blanca Reyes and her infant son had moved into the rental next door to the Browns, just outside of Newcastle Beach.

Abby and Jon had been inseparable since they could crawl, sharing birthday parties, friends, classmates, their first kiss, and a tree house they had built together at the age of ten. Jon had the good looks of a mischievous
, but charming boy intent on having a good time and getting into a little trouble, but nothing too serious. It didn’t help that he was whip-smart, witty, and had his mother completely wrapped around his little finger. He could have done better in school—academics came easily enough—but so did boredom, and that was the problem.

They’d tried dating once, and Abby had the sneaking suspicion that Jon wouldn’t mind trying a romantic relationship again, but that’s where things got complicated. She loved Jon—it was easy to be with him, and she felt like she could tell him anything. It was a matter of chemistry—Jon was charismatic, but he could be a little too wild.

The only reason Jon had never gotten in real trouble was because he’d never been caught. Once, when their neighbor Mr. Burke was on vacation, Jon had dared Abby to jump the fence and take a dip in Mr. Burke’s pool. Abby took the dare, and she almost got caught when Mr. Burke’s adult daughter stopped by to check on his house. That had been too much of a close call for Abby.

The next spring, when Mr. Burke put his house up for sale and moved out, Jon suggested that they trespass again. Abby stayed home that time, and she ended up glad. It turned out that some of the friends Jon recruited for the dare had gone skinny-dipping in the pool. Mrs. Johnston, the elderly woman who lived across the fence from Mr. Burke, called the cops when she heard the ruckus coming from his backyard. It was a miracle Jon wasn’t arrested
—and Abby was grateful she missed her friends’ moonlit swim anyway. It would have made for a really awkward Monday morning at school.

Jon’s unbridled enthusiasm for pushing limits overwhelmed Abby. She wasn’t sure she could keep up with his energy, and she thought there were romantic boundaries he was willing to push that she wasn’t ready to test. She had heard about some of his exploits from a mutual friend he had dated. Not that Abby believed the story.
She’d known Janie long enough to know the girl was fond of exaggeration. But still, given her own knowledge of Jon, Abby suspected he was more experienced than she was, and she was too chicken to ask Jon how much of Janie’s story was true. So she relegated him to best friend/soul mate and kept him at arm’s length.

While Abby held the glamorous post of pool hospitality, making sure hotel guests had luxuriously plush
, white towels and picking up used towels, trash, and empty cocktail glasses, Jon was something of a minor celebrity, working as a lifeguard. His job description involved four tasks: making sure no one drowned, improving his already perfect tan, accepting adoration by awkwardly proportioned preteen girls, and being ignored by the beautiful girls he admired. There were three in particular who held his interest: Michal, Monroe, and Marisol—M
3
for short.

Michal Sloane was a classic California beach beauty—statuesque, shapely, tan, and blond. She was the self-appointed leader of the trio and seemed to take sadistic pleasure in flirting with Jon and then dashing his hopes, bluntly reminding him that her station in life was well above his. Michal verbally bullied Abby when Jon wasn’t around, and although Abby tried to dismiss the snide comments directed at her, she couldn’t ignore mistreatment of her best friend.
That
she could not forgive. She hated Michal for it, but was at a loss for what to do about it. If she retaliated, she knew it would cost her the job, and she needed the money—college wasn’t going to pay for itself.

Monroe Banagher was no less beautiful, with dark skin and eyes, and curly hair that fell to her shoulders, framing perfect cheekbones. Abby towered over Monroe by several inches, but she had a feeling the girl could hold her own in a fistfight. Considering how intimidating Monroe could be, it was easy to forget that she was tiny. She wasn’t quite as mean as Michal, but she usually went along with whatever Michal wanted, an accessory to cruelty.

Marisol Cassidy was kinder, and Abby thought she might actually like Jon, even if she weren’t brave enough to say something in his defense. She had inherited captivating green eyes from her father, a wealthy businessman from Dublin. Her gorgeous body and the dark hair that fell to her waist in soft curls came from her mother, Esperanza Garcia, a world-renowned model turned artist from Mexico City. During more than one episode of teasing, Abby had noticed her smiling shyly at Jon, as if she were silently apologizing for her friends’ rudeness.

For his part, Jon seemed impervious to rejection, and was not at all deterred by a lack of success. “They want me, you know,” Jon said, helping Abby fold towels.

“Who?” Abby asked. Of course she knew who he was talking about. It was a topic on the verge of becoming an obsession with him. She didn’t have the heart to tell him how awful Michal was behind his back, and she was annoyed at herself for that. And annoyed that he couldn’t let it go. Was he really so oblivious that he couldn’t see the truth?