Tales Of Nevaeh: The Trilogy and Backstory of the Epic Sci-Fi Fantasy Series Tales Of Nevaeh: (The 4 Book Bundled Box Set)

by David Wind

  “What flows beneath us is the same. It is what heats this valley. It gives life to the trees and plants.”

  “Without sun, how can they grow and live?”

  “I cannot give an answer for what I don’t know, but how do we live?” She went silent, her eyes still on Mikaal. How can there be magic? How can we have powers? How can you have the powers of a woman? In these past months, I’ve come to accept the impossible. We have seen too much to believe otherwise, have we not?

  “So we do not question, just accept?” he asked. Is it so easy for you?

  I see no choice. I believe your father will have an answer.

  Mikaal laughed. “He always does, somehow, he knows.” Then his features turned serious. “We must find a place.” He nodded toward the beginning of the thicker trees. “We go in there and find trees with branches low enough to reach from the kraals, so we do not touch the ground. I will have Charka lead Hero and the kralet deeper into the forest. When the wolves come…”

  Areenna nodded with the plan. “You have no bow.”

  Mikaal smiled again. He drew out the knife his father had given him, and reached into his boot to draw the one his grandfather had gifted him at Brumwall. “Both are perfectly balanced.”

  Mikaal had spent two days teaching her how to throw a knife. While he did this effortlessly, for some reason she could not master this skill. Yet, she told herself.

  “Gaalrie saw five. We will have to be fast.”

  “You said she wants to capture us, not kill us.”

  “It’s what I sensed.”

  “That is our advantage.”

  “They are on the downslope. Do not use any powers. We know not what formula she has set. If we kill them without such, there is a chance she may not be warned.”

  “Come,” Mikaal said and pushed Charka forward.

  When they were closer to the thicker stands of trees, Areenna and Mikal dismounted and walked next to the kraals. Each touched the boles of the trees as they passed by, making sure their scent remained. Soon they entered a heavier stand of trees and found several bunched together, their thick branches low enough for them to reach from the backs of their kraals and pull themselves up.

  Once settled in the tree and with a quick asking, Mikaal had Charka lead Hero and the kralet deeper into the forest.

  Then they waited on their branches for the dark creatures. Areenna, straddling a thick branch, selected three arrows and set them across her thighs. She held the bow comfortably in her left hand. Gaalrie was perched on a branch ten feet above her, directly over her right shoulder.

  Closing her eyes, Areenna began to ‘feel’ the valley. There was much life. Craves and their smaller cousins, smiges, were everywhere within the trees. She found a family of rabts, secure deep within their warren, not fifty feet below her tree. From them she caught ribbons of fear rising out, for they had already scented the wolf-creatures approach.

  They are near, she told Mikaal. She notched the first arrow. Across from her, Mikaal sat straighter, the tip of one knife held between his thumb and forefinger.

  She watched Mikaal set himself and close his eyes. They snapped open seconds later.

  Two come in the lead, more follow. Wait until they are directly below. We must take down the first ones together.

  Areenna’s muscles tightened when she sensed the wolves approach. Her fingers curled securely around the bow’s leather grip. She drew the arrow back and the tension of the gut increased. Just as she reached full draw, the first two heads emerged between the trees. Their snouts were close to the ground, following the mixed scents, their powerful bodies moving smoothly along.

  They were halfway to where she sat when the three trailing wolves came into view. These held their heads straight, their nostrils quivering. These were bigger than the ones they had faced weeks before. Their matted furred brown and black coats were shaggy; pieces of melting ice dripped from them. Amber and oval eyes, burning like orange fire, were set within wide and long black furred heads.

  As if recognizing something wrong, the lead wolves slowed. Mikaal sent a thought to Charka and the cry of a kraal echoed through the trees. The wolves stiffened and turned in the direction of the sound. They moved cautiously forward.

  When they reached the base of the trees below Areenna and Mikaal, Areenna released the first shaft a heartbeat after Mikaal’s knife flew from his fingers. The glistening metal struck true and the first wolf staggered, took two more steps and dropped motionless on the ground. A hairsbreadth later, Areenna’s arrow penetrated the space between the second wolf’s ribs. It fell in its tracks.

  Areenna notched her second arrow before the first hit the beast and let it fly at the next wolf. It struck the creature in its right eye. It fell sideways, all four paws clawing at air until it drew its last breath. Mikaal’s second knife spun downward, tip over handle in a perfect arc embedding itself in the neck of the middle wolf, severing its spine.

  Areenna’s third arrow soared at the last creature, who had turned and started to run. The feathered shaft caught its side and blood sprayed out in a sharp stream. The wolf screamed but did not go down; instead, with blood jetting from its side, it fled back along the trail and disappeared into the trees and the undergrowth.

  Dropping from the branch, Mikal called Charka back while Areenna shimmied down the trunk. They met at the first of the dead creatures. Areenna sent Gaalrie to search for the wounded wolf before turning to Mikaal. “Do we just leave them here? Let them rot?”

  He shook his head. “I have a better idea. Let those who await us see them.”

  Charka came to where they were, with Hero and the kralet trailing behind him. As soon as the kraal reached Mikaal, it stepped back to stare at the dead beasts, letting out a snort when he did.

  “I understand,” Mikaal said to his aoutem. After retrieving his knives and Areenna’s arrows, he took a coil of rope from the kralet’s rigging and looped one end around the neck of one wolf and the other around another. He mounted Charka, dragged the bodies to the edge of the water, and dumped them in. He watched for a moment as the brown and gray furred animal sank. It popped back up, and the current carried it westward. The freesh jumped over or dove below the carcass on their journey upstream.

  He returned and did the same with the next two and when he was done, dismounted next to Areenna and said, “It will be a perfect greeting for… whomever.”

  “The last one is still moving, but slowly. He bleeds his life out as he goes… wait, there are others,” she whispered. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on seeing through Gaalrie’s eyes. A few moments later, she exhaled and said, “There are more, but they do not move forward.” Her brows furrowed, her head tilting sideways. She pushed her senses toward the creatures. “I am having difficulty reading them. She holds them back. They will wait and stay further behind.”

  “Until the next time,” he said. Then he smiled. “And we used no magic to defeat them.”

  She returned his smile. “We did well.”

  “Now we hunt.”

  <><><>

  It was dark and late. The sky was so thick with clouds no light from the moon or stars reached the ground. Hundreds of feet below the southwestern palisades, the grouping of large boats floated.

  Above them, the deformed image of the Black Sorceress stood near the edge, looking not down on the boats, but north and west, trying to peer through the void. She held a clay pot filled with brackish green water pressed to her side by the stump of her left arm. Pieces of insects floated in it and with her right hand, she crushed them with an old wooden pestle.

  As she worked, low and unintelligible words poured from her mouth like sand through an hourglass. Then something struck deeply into her mind. The bowl fell from numb fingers. The pestle remained forgotten in her hand as the death cries of a wolf ripped through her.

  In an instant, she was staring into the chasm in the Frozen Mountains. Her wolf lay on the side of the trail, blood trailing from the arrow in its side acro
ss the rocks and down to the rushing water. The mutated beast lifted its head, staring upward as if it could see her. Then, its head fell and it breathed its last.

  “No!” she screamed and sank to her knees. Hatred for the two who did this, boiled in her mind. Then she sensed his presence behind her. She spun and knelt at the feet of her Master.

  “Master, they have killed my pets. They have destroyed five of the ones following them. We must stop them. We must!”

  Rise, he commanded her. Call back what creatures still live. Keep them well back.

  She did as she commanded, and when she faced him, her eyes locked with the flaring circles of his eyes. She offered her silent plea. Guide me Master; show me the way.

  He placed an elongated claw-like hand on her shoulder. We will create a wraith, not too large. Not to kill, but to follow. They are well blocked. They think they have some advantage with your wolves gone, but your pretty beasts have shown us the way. We know where they are and what they do. We shall know their every move.

  When he released her shoulder and lowered his arm to his side, he pointed to the bowl she had dropped. “Of that we have no need.” Join with what I do, create power with me, he commanded.

  When they finished, a wraith stood before them. It was not large; perhaps three times the size of a treygone, but it was powerful. Red eyes—two glowing coals fused within black circles were set above the dagger point of a long, sharp, and hooked beak, which curved over the bottom by several inches. It had four legs, not two, and its talons were curved spikes. Each wing was the length of a man’s body, and the long tail whipping behind it held razor sharp feathers so thin they had the appearance of hair and so sharp they could slice through skin and bone.

  Follow them, watch them, and always know where they are. I leave now to find them on the western side. You will keep me informed of their movements. I leave behind my ghazi warriors for you to command. The Circle requires the energy of Nevaeh and such we must have. Roth leads his people here as we speak. He thinks to defeat us but my brethren of the Circle are already riding the sea. Stop Roth and his people; hold them.

  The last Afzareen of Nevaeh—the last living sorceress protégé of the Circle bowed, before her Master, her eyes locked on the sacred ground where he stood. “I will, my Master.”

  “Soon the might of the Circle of Afzal will be at the lead of a vast army, its size alone will conquer Nevaeh.”

  She turned to the black-winged wraith. She raised her right arm, her hand open, her fingers pointing to it. Fly. Find. Follow!

  When she turned back, the Master was gone.

  CHAPTER 23

  Areenna stood in the stirrups and scanned the cavern’s height, trying to pierce the grayness above. Although it was hard to tell time in the gray light of the cavernous valley, she always had the ability to know the approximate time of day and to her, it was early morning.

  Following yesterday’s defeat of the wolf-creatures, they had hunted and had enough meat for several days. After hunting, Areenna had sent Gaalrie to see where the wolves had gone. The treygone had flown to the beginning of the chasm but had found no sight of the wolves. Both Areenna and Mikaal had tried to sense them, but neither could. “She called them away. But why?”

  After a badly needed night’s sleep, but before packing their supplies, they had studied Roth’s map. Mikaal had explained the full details of his plan, which, if successful, would leave the Dark Ones waiting at the end of the chasm and not where Areenna and Mikaal would be.

  Once they’d solidified their plan, and agreed on sacrificing their last kralet, they had packed their supplies and returned to the pathway in the mountainside.

  At the junction, Mikaal turned to Areenna. “We need to wipe our scent from here and release the kralet.”

  Dismounting, she concentrated on the best way to accomplish the task. “Take Hero and Charka twenty feet in. I’ll wait here.” Mikaal led the heavily laden kraals up the pathway while Areenna pulled the kralet to the western side of the opening and pushed an asking command for it to move away. When the pack animal was far enough from the opening, she back-stepped to Mikaal.

  Areenna called up her divining ability. Although she could not see the water, she reached it with her mind and called forth a column of clear crystal liquid. It separated from the stream and rose upwards until it was at the same level as her eyes. She curved it over the edge of the chasm’s trail and brought it to where she stood. She released it and the water crashed to the ground and rushed back over the edge, dropping to its origin. She repeated the process three times.

  “Our scent is washed from here.” She pushed a final asking to the kralet, and the small pack animal started westward on the trail, leaving its scent on the rocks it trod. When it was gone, she mounted Hero and with Mikaal, started upward.

  <><><>

  The small forces of Tolemac, Fainhall, and Kashold dressed in battle armor, waited in the badlands a half mile beyond the border of the southwestern wastelands. Twenty miles ahead laid the rocky cliffs of the Palisades. Roth sat on his kraal, staring at the barren land before him. He turned to Enaid and the three women beside her.

  “You are certain?” he asked.

  “They are a quarter mile ahead, over the far rise before us. She stands with them, in the flesh,” Enaid said.

  “As in the old days, she thinks herself invincible,” Aldimor’s Queen Layra declared.

  “Then we hold the advantage,” Roth replied. He turned to Prince Nevets, who was on his left and nodded to him. “When we move forward, take Kashold’s troops and ride the right flank. Come wide when you hear the signal and attack from the rear flank.”

  “As you ask, My Lord.” Drawing his reins, he rode to his troops.

  Standing in the stirrups, Roth looked back over his shoulder. The quickly raised army of men and women spread out before his eyes was a mighty sight. Hundreds strong, they stood with spears, swords, and bows held in proud readiness. There were six columns of troops: four with Roth’s ‘Six’ groups at their lead, two with Fainhall’s men, King Nomis and Queen Eetak at their head, and the one phalanx of the soldiers of Kashold at the right flank.

  Although the forces of the Dark Circle outnumbered the troops of Nevaeh, Roth knew his men and women held the main advantage: their minds were free so they could act and react independently. Their foes could not. They were drones controlled to perform exactly as instructed. They could not think for themselves—which was the most important advantage Roth and Nevaeh held—for it had led to their defeat twenty years before.

  The night before, in a meeting with the Kings of Fainhall and Kashold, the four Queens and the officers of the armies, Roth had presented his battle plans, laying out the troop movements to the minutest detail. If he were right, it would be how they would defeat the invading forces of the Dark Circle.

  With the sun at his back, Roth raised his arm and whirled his hand in a circle, finishing with a finger pointing forward. Behind him, the voices of the officers echoed his hand signal with commands to move forward.

  Roth urged his kraal forward. On his right side, Enaid did the same. Irii, her gorlon, padded next to her. Layra and her white gorlon rode next to Enaid. At Roth’s left were Ilsraeth and Atir. Ilsraeth’s treygone flew above. Her eyes were their scout for the upcoming battle, while Atir’s lionesque black rantor loped easily between her and Ilsraeth.

  This was a sight not seen for twenty years, the royalty of Nevaeh leading their army. Roth knew this would be no simple incursion; rather, a battle that would set the stage for their future. “We take no chances. We must weaken them now, stop them today, and destroy the Black Witch as well, if we are to have a chance against the ones yet coming.”

  They crested the hill and found the creatures of the waiting dark forces spread out below them. Standing in the center of the massed forces was the Black Sorceress, her red-rimmed eyes glaring directly at the man leading the Nevaens.

  “These are no exiles, they are ghazi warriors,” Roth
exclaimed.

  “Something’s wrong,” Enaid said the instant she saw the opposing force. “The Master is not there.” She turned to look at Atir. “What see you?”

  Atir closed her eyes. When they flew open, she shook her head. “I did not see this. He… the Dark Master, he has gone, and with him, he has a force larger than what stands before us.”

  “He goes north?” Enaid asked.

  Atir nodded. “He chases Areenna and Mikaal.”

  Roth cut their words off. “At this moment, it matters not what he does. We must concentrate on what lies before us.” He pointed at the Black Witch, the Afzaleem controlling the dark army of ghazi warriors.

  Glaring angrily at Roth, she raised her right arm, her thumb and first two fingers were directed at the oncoming riders. With a flick of her wrist, a lightning bolt hurtled toward them.

  <><><>

  It was afternoon when they reached the top of the pathway. Across from them, separated by fifteen feet was the other side of the Frozen Mountains. Areenna looked left and then right. The spot they were on was no more than twenty-five feet wide and was, as far as she could see, the only place where the divided mountains came close.

  It is a long jump for the kraals and harder with riders on their backs.

  We will not be on them, Mikaal told her.

  “I certainly can’t jump across. I doubt you can either.”

  He smiled broadly and observed the chasm, which was perhaps a thousand feet below. “It’s not too far, but I won’t chance it. Will you be able to get Hero to jump?”

  Areenna nodded. “He will do as I ask. But how do we cross?”

  Instead of answering, Mikaal went to Charka and removed the thick coil of rope attached to the saddle. He tied one end to the saddle’s cross bar and unrolled the rest. He stepped before Charka and put both hands on the side of his head and pressed the kraal’s forehead to his own. He picked up the end of the unrolled rope and wrapped it around his wrist.