by Lora Leigh
There was no escaping the Delmari, she knew. The Talagaria province they ruled was one of the largest of the Wizard lands, Cauldaran, and was written to have bred some of the most magnificent, arrogant Wizards in the land.
The Sorceresses who had been born of Joinings with those Wizards a millennium ago matched the power of those born of the Veressi province as well. Their inherent stubbornness and depth of power along with the power of the Sorceresses from the Veressi and Verago Provinces had assured the escape of the better part of the Sorceresses who had gathered together to escape over the mountains.
Their power and pride hadn’t ensured the survival of each and every Sorceress who followed them over the Winter Mountains, through Spring Valley and the brutal cold that filled the Feral Glaciers. Then had come through the Fiery Sands and the mountains of fire.
The mountains of fire had taken dozens of the older Sorceresses who were unable to move with the same strength and speed that the younger ones had possessed. They had lost many of their wisest Sorceresses in the trek across the streams of melted stone and in the sudden explosions of lava and steam that would erupt beneath their feet.
Once the Sorceresses had passed into the Ambrosia Plains, they had collapsed in grief, knowing they had lost not just beloved mothers, grandmothers, daughters, sisters and dear friends, but they had also lost so much knowledge. Of the six history keepers who had fled with them, only one had survived, and her injuries had not boded well for a full recovery.
She’d lived only months, not near long enough to record the history of the Sorceresses, their strengths and weaknesses, their past and the magick they could command. Even more, she’d had no chance to reveal the secrets of the land the wise women had led them to, a land that she herself had chosen because of ties she claimed to have had to it.
The Sorceresses knew when beginning the trek that the land they would call Covenan held a power that even the Wizards of Cauldaran had been unable to detect. It was a feminine magick, a power that called out to them, stronger with each passing decade that they suffered the forced alignments and the knowledge that they were not with their natural Consorts.
It was a magick that not just called out to them, but one that hid, within all its thick, heavy jungles and darkened forests, creatures whose knowledge of that power was far stronger than the Wizards who were but fledglings in age to them.
Magickal beings that, once discovered, would aid the Sorceresses in ways never imagined.
Or so the Grandmother Sorceress had sworn.
So far, those creatures had yet to be found.
Magick had been found. Great centers of magick that called out to those whose feminine power would become their Keepers. Magick that had once kept the land restless, that sent great geysers of flames and molten stone to burn through the skies. Power that would quake and tremble and shudder through the land as it sought to release the pressure contained beneath it and the Sorceresses of power who would direct it through the land instead.
With Tripelli racing through the Emerald Valley, his neck extended, his hooves pounding against the land, Astra could feel that power just waiting to tremble beneath them. Its only outlet was the receptive center of feminine magick, its only relief that of the most powerful Sorceresses in the lands as they centered it, watched over it and eased it through the land in the form of their use of it.
Once used, the remnants of it no longer amassing in strength, it then flowed back into the land, where slowly it would build again, seek release and call out to Keepers, their heirs and those of their blood to ease it once again.
It was a cycle that repeated year after year. One that they sensed, nay, they knew, was shared by beings who watched from a safe distance, who hid in the untamed, untrekked valleys, and within the darkened jungles and forests. Beings whom Astra could sense, especially in the wild lands of the Mystic Forests that she would one day rule.
She was heir to the Keeper of the Power of the Mystic Forests. Within her lay the power to ease the lands of the Mystic Forests as they rumbled in concert with the eleven other provinces and trembled in fury as they threatened to spew their power from Fire Mountain and destroy the beings who the Keeper there was rumored to have seen more than once.
Twelve Keepers of the Provinces, along with the Guardian of the Lands of Covenan, had managed to harness a magick rumored to be even stronger than the power contained within Cauldaran, the land of the Wizard Twins.
And she suspected the Wizards who now inhabited Covenan were beginning to suspect its great power. She often saw the Princess Marina’s Consorts as they walked the caverns, their power sliding into the cracks of the cavern walls only to reemerge moments later and fill their Wizards with confusion.
They were beginning to suspect, but, with her, her Consorts would know the secrets they hid, because there would be no possible chance to ever hide the truth from them.
Astra would one day inherit the throne her mother sat upon, the one that sat directly over the center of the power of the Mystic Forests. In that great land, beneath its mountains and in its hidden valleys were secrets that even her mother, the Keeper of that land, was unaware of. There were beings so majestic and proud, yet so wary and uncertain of those who had trespassed into their lands, that even a millennium later, they had not found the courage to come forth.
Astra had always promised herself that once she had taken her throne then she would seek these beings out, create alliances with them, and pave the paths for a greater understanding of Covenan and all it held.
Once she Joined with her Wizards, they would know those secrets as well. They would know all that her magick knew, and if they were indeed of a dark design, then they could easily destroy the Sorceresses as well as the land when that occurred.
Tripelli let out a loud, triumphant whinny as they reached Covenan Mountain. The gates to village common swung open as the tower guard’s magick released the locking spell set to the great iron gates.
In more than five hundred years those great gates had not been locked until darkness fell.
Now they were locked at all times, and opened only to those the guards were given permission to allow access to.
Bent low over the neck of the great Unicorn stallion, his silken mane flying around her, Astra sped through the gates and allowed the creature his head. He took the curve and sped along the wide stone path that spiraled up the mountain to the royal residence, the Sellane castle fortress that had been built at the peak. Hooves flying, pounding against the stone road that led up the gently sloped mountain, Tripelli ate the distance.
The inclined road was bordered with the village common residences on the down slope of the mountain and terraced gardens, orchards and temples on the rising slope.
Blacksmiths, bakers, dry goods, cobblers and the various businesses that kept a community running efficiently were all located in the flat land just beyond the inside of the gates.
Residences were not allowed within the business section, just as businesses were not allowed in the residential with the exception of seamstresses, cobblers or those businesses run from the homes of the proprietors and requiring little room for customers or clients to stable, stall or tie their mounts.
As the mountain rose, the more exclusive homes of the common became small estates. Larger temples to the Sentinel Select and their children were erected as well—gathering areas for the festivals of the Sentinel Select, the Joined Wizard Twin gods, Augurin, Pherdan and their Consortress the goddess, Musera.
They were said to have been the first to Join. The first to accept the desires and magick needs the One had gifted them as a way to align and combine their powers. They had been rulers as well as Guardians of power at that time. They had used the magick growing in the land in a way that had urged the spores of power filling it to multiply and bind others together.
They had reached such powers that one day they had disappeared before all their people as they gathered to celebrate their Joining day in a golden array of color
. It was then that the One had shown himself as a form of shimmering green and gold and decreed that as the first to follow his commands, they would rule from above for all time as the gods of Sentmar.
That had been so many eons ago that time could not even be measured for it. And still, the power of the Select, that first Joining of Wizards and Sorceresses, watched over them, guided them and so very often played with the destinies of their children.
With the wind streaming through her hair, blowing it back from her face, Astra sent out the magick call to the gate keepers of the royal residence to release the locking spell to the heavily magicked gates that protected Castle Sellane at the top of Mount Covenan.
The Unicorn did not slow as he passed the entrance. Instead, he kept the pounding pace as they shot through the gates, rounded the royal courtyard and took the turn that led to the back of the huge stone castle and beyond to the entrance of the caverns that began as the land sloped once again.
There was no entrance onto the mountain but for that of the village common or the magically secured caverns, which only a select number of Sorceresses had the key to. That select number was the twelve Sorceresses of the Sorceress Brigade and the caretaker.
Astra was heir to the Keeper of the Power of the Mystic Forests on the farthest edge of Covenan bordering the Raging Seas.
She was heir to one of the four greatest powers in Covenan. The Raging Magick Seas fed the Mystic Lands, its waters crashed at the shores of the Mystic Forests and its magick infused the land with the spray of the surf and the rains that sped in from the vast waters that were infused with the crystalline magick that fed the magick lands.
As the Unicorn came to jolting stop, Astra vaulted from his back, pulled her sword and sheath from the saddle then turned the great beast over to the caretaker. The wizened old man would remove his saddle and halter so the great beast could graze on the lush grass that grew on the plateau outside the caverns until she or another Sorceress needed him again.
Moving into the tunnels that led to the cavern used by the Sorceress Brigade, deep into the center of that level, Astra fought to center herself and ensure that no hint of Wizard magick corrupted her own.
The reigning Wizard Twins, Consorts of the Guardian of Covenan Power and currently holding the throne until the return of Queen Amoria, invariably attended the meetings of the Sorceress Brigade. They rarely spoke, but they watched, and Astra could feel the invisible tendrils of power that swirled about all of the Sorceresses, always seeking, always searching for information.
There were secrets now that there hadn’t been before. Guardian Marina, daughter of Queen Amoria, was strained and drawn since her mother’s and sister’s disappearance. The search for the two had covered all planes of Sentmar and still, they hadn’t been found.
Just as the Delmari Twins hadn’t yet been found, despite the Wizard pairs searching the land of Covenan for them. What none of them could expect, what Astra did suspect, was the Griffons had aided the shielding of the cavern where they rested.
The great beasts had no concept of the right or the wrong of the magickal beings who protected them, they only knew protecting their own. And she suspected the Delmari Twins, just as the Sorceresses, had somehow become part of their pride.
But if that were true, then it gave lie to the belief that such magickal beings could sense and were offended by dark magick. And that was no lie, she knew. The Griffons were murderous in the face of dark magick. So how then did that answer the question of the Delmari Wizards? Were they friend or foe? Dark Wizards or no?
The land was a magick that harkened only to feminine magick though, and even then the spell to reveal the secrets that watched them silently from the shadows of the lands had not yet been found. If the Sorceresses could not find it, then neither could the Wizard Twins, surely.
Rounding the path to the last tunnel leading to the cavern, she was brought up short by the sound of male voices raised in anger. Easing to the entrance of the main cavern, she felt her stomach drop in trepidation at the sound of one of the ruling Wizards speaking of none other than the Delmari.
“We sense their magick.” His voice grated in anger. “There are moments I can almost sense their location before it evades me like wisps of smoke on the wind.”
The fury that reverberated through their voices had dread racing up her back. If they could sense the magick of the Delmari, then finding them, surely, would happen soon.
There was an order to kill on sight, issued by the Wizards Justices, though Marina was certain no Wizard or Sentinel warrior would do so. The thought of trusting Wizards to heed their conscience wasn’t something Astra placed much faith in though.
“Even the magick of the land refuses to heed my commands to reveal them.” Anger and pain threaded through the Guardian’s voice, her concern for her missing mother and sister upmost in her heart and her mind.
“Why hide dark magick?” one of the Twins questioned, as confused by such a thing as Astra, and no doubt as confused as his Consort as well.
“I don’t know, Caise.” Guardian Marina’s voice lowered, uncertainty filling it. “Why hide Mother and Serena from me when I whisper my greatest pleas? My power builds daily with our Joining. I can locate any who I think of with the slightest need for their whereabouts and call out to them. All but those bedamned Delmari Twins, Serena and my mother.”
Astra felt an edge of relief, sharp and bittersweet as it began to ease the constriction in her chest. Thank the Select that she could not sense the Delmari, for if she did, then surely she would sense their Consortress as well.
“Their warriors know nothing. Our Justices nor yours can seer a conspiracy or hint of knowledge regarding the Delmari’s plans or their location. All are loyal to the Delmari though. They’ll be searching for them once we allow them to find their way to escape. We’ve only to ensure they do detect the magick following them, or the Wizards I’ve assigned to shadow their movements.”
Astra’s lips parted in shock.
Rhydan’s and Torran’s own men would find them. Their bonds to their Wizards would allow their Sentinel Warriors to locate them, whether the Delmari wished it or no. It was part of the bonds of Wizards and warriors.
She couldn’t allow—
She had to fight back the need to rush to Marina’s side, to go to her knees and beg for the lives of Wizards believed to be only traitors. Placing her hand tight over her lips, she fought the need to howl out in rage, to beg them to heed the call of her magick and the unknown force inside her that demanded her loyalty to them.
Instead, she backed slowly from the entrance, sent a call to the great Unicorn that had carried her in and rushed back to the exit of the caverns.
She had to warn her Wizards of the warriors who would find them. This conspiracy to trap the Delmari would surely trap her as well. It would doom them all, and the thought of such terrified her.
The caretaker was securing the light saddle back to the stallion’s back as she moved quickly into the sunlight, his brilliant-blue eyes filled with concern.
“Is aught about, Sorceress?” he questioned her gently as she gripped the pommel and lifted herself to the unicorn’s back.
“All is well, caretaker,” she assured him, hoping her quick smile would placate the concern in his gaze. “I merely forgot an important task I was to complete. If the Guardian asks, I will return anon.”
Or not at all.
Astra gripped the Unicorn’s mane. Giving a firm nudge with her heels, she sent the creature to rise to his back legs before taking off like an arrow from the strongest warrior’s bow.
Mane and tail flying, he hit the path down the mountain once more. Astra headed back to the cavern before Delmari Sentinel Warriors drew their Wizards into a trap they would never escape.
The caretaker watched, silent, contemplative as the Unicorn stallion, its golden horn glistening in the sunlight, raced for the exit from the village common.
He would have smiled, but one never knew when e
yes were watching.
Such as now.
He could feel the malevolent gaze, the assessing magick as he turned and hobbled to the small stables where grain, rich hay and sweet treats were kept for the Unicorns.
He was careful. Diligent. Always watchful.
Awakening to see the darkness attempting to slip into the lands he’d bequeathed to his daughters had rage pounding at his senses. Learning the magick he’d given to the children of Sentmar was being perverted in ways such as those he saw tendrils of as he walked the land had nearly stolen the careful calm he maintained.
In the centuries he had slept, much had happened. The distance he had been certain would ease between Wizard Twins and Sorceresses had only grown. The distrust his daughters felt toward their Consorts was even greater now than it had been when he had gone to rest.
Pulling his children together once more had been even more difficult.
Ah but the machinations it had taken to ensure Wizard Twins bent their pride and crossed the great frozen mountains that separated them had not been easy.
Thankfully, machinations and the Veressi went hand in hand.
The darkness invading the Sorceresses’ lands had spread far further than either Sorceresses or Wizards knew.
Far further than the lovely Astra Al’madere could guess.
Sadness crept inside him, hidden from the watching eyes and the tendrils of magick that sought to learn even the greatest of secrets.
Chapter Seven
They were still there.
Rushing into the cavern, racing along the long tunnel that led to the widening cavern at the end, Astra came to a hard, shocked stop.
She stared between the two Wizards, dressed only in the plain, rough silk pants of the warrior made from collin, the material created from the threads of the untamed, unoiled silk worms.
Standing, leaning negligently against the stone wall were the two Veressi Keepers of the Cauldaran Power dressed in black, brushed woven silk, the finest threads created in all of Sentmar, and black blade-skin boots.