Crown of Destiny

by Small Bertrice

  “Cadi!” she called to her servant.

  “We are going to Zeroun,” Cadi said as she came forward to join her mistress.

  Lara laughed. “Is it that you read my thoughts now?” she said.

  “Nay, I should not presume, my lady. But I know that when you get that certain look upon your face, we are going to Zeroun,” Cadi answered with a smile.

  “I would ride Dasras,” Lara said. “But I will send you now to prepare my dwelling ahead of time.” With a wave of her hand Lara opened the magical golden passage saying but one word, “Zeroun!” And without another word Cadi stepped into the tunnel and hurried down the shimmering passage. The tunnel closed. Taking a white silk cape lined in soft natural-colored wool from her wardrobe, Lara draped it about her and with another wave of her hand transported herself to the stable where Dasras was housed.

  The great white stallion looked up, nodding a greeting to her as Lara magicked his blanket, his saddle and bridle on. “In a hurry, are we?” Dasras asked drily as the cinch magically tightened itself about his belly. “Where are we going?”

  “Zeroun,” Lara told the horse. “Your stall is dirty. Has it not been cleaned?”

  “The grooms are careless now,” Dasras said. “Ever since Jason’s grandson died I have not had a personal servant.” He stamped a hoof and shook his head. “My mane has not been combed recently,” he said. “The time draws near, mistress, for us to leave this place. Terah is no longer a home to us.”

  “I know,” Lara half whispered, and felt the tears springing to her eyes. Taking up a currycomb she ran it through the stallion’s thick mane, tears now falling softly. “That is why we go to Zeroun. I must think on what to do.”

  “We should go to Shunnar,” Dasras responded. “You know the prince has wanted you there. He was even willing to raise up a palace for you so you might maintain your cherished independence.”

  “Perhaps I should go to the Forest Kingdom of my mother,” Lara suggested.

  The big stallion snorted derisively. “Nonsense,” he told her. “Besides I cannot run free in the forest with all those trees. Climb upon my back now, mistress, and let us be off to Zeroun. I am eager to take to the sky today.”

  Lara did as Dasras bid her, pointing at the stable doors, which flew open allowing them to exit. The stallion burst forth from the stables into the open courtyard, gaining a certain satisfaction as the stablemen and grooms scattered, making a path for him. They were afraid of him, he knew, feeding and watering him grudgingly because they were more afraid of Lara. But his stall was not cleaned as often as it once had been, nor was he curried and combed. His great wing extended, and Dasras took to the skies.

  “Do you think he’ll come back this time?” one of the stablemen asked another.

  “Who knows with that wicked lot,” his companion said. “I hope they’re gone for good. But we had best clean the beast’s stall while we have the opportunity.”

  Above them Dasras turned in the blue sky, setting his direction toward the Emerald Mountains.

  IN HIS LIBRARY the Dominus Cadarn happened to gaze out the large window in his library and saw Dasras as he gained altitude. He squinted, then grabbed for his peering tube, setting it to his eye. As he guessed, Cadarn thought with a frown. The faerie woman who was his great-grandmother was upon the stallion’s back leaning low over the beast’s neck urging him onward. Where did she go when she disappeared from the castle? He was actually afraid to ask her, but each time she went he half hoped she would not return.

  Cadarn turned away from the disquieting sight. He was expecting his uncle Amren, who had just returned from Hetar. There was a new trade agreement to be discussed. He had already seen the paperwork, and was not pleased with it. Hetar could no longer continue to take advantage of Terah as they had been doing. And it was going to be up to Amren to tell that to Hetar. The young Dominus considered it might be time to retire his uncle. Amren was elderly now. He had lived most of his life in Hetar. Of late Cadarn had begun to consider his uncle’s loyalties lay more with Hetar than with Terah. The Dominus had placed a spy in his uncle’s household. His spy believed that Terah’s ambassador was taking large bribes from the Merchants Guild and possibly from the Coastal Kings. And his uncle’s wife was a Hetarian woman from the important noble house of Ahasferus. Oddly, he could understand Amren’s duplicity, but if he could gain confirmation of it, his uncle would be replaced. He would not embarrass Terah or their family by exposing Amren’s sins, of course. As Dominus, he would simply say that his uncle was entitled to a comfortable retirement, and thank him publicly for his long and faithful service. But of course the difficulty would lie in finding another to serve who would not be corrupted too soon. He considered his own younger brother, Cadoc. Cadoc already had a wife, and his loyalties would not be torn, although eventually, Cadarn thought cynically, he could be bribed.

  A knock sounded upon the library door.

  “Come!” the Dominus barked, and the door opened to reveal Amren. “Ahh, uncle, come in, come in,” Cadarn invited the older man. “We have a great deal to discuss today. I do not like the new trade agreement, and so it must be renegotiated.” He smiled toothily at Amren’s obvious distress even as he waved him to a chair. “We must do better for Terah, uncle. For Terah is our first priority, isn’t it?”

  Ambassador Amren smiled weakly. “Of course, of course!” he agreed.

  Dominus Cadarn restrained his laughter. Aye! It was past time to replace the old fool. With or without further proof of his dishonesty, it was time for a change.

  2

  DASRAS FLEW OVER THE EMERALD MOUNTAINS, and as Lara looked down, she could see that the marble quarries gouged from the steep land were beginning to fill in again with new green growth. That was something to the good, she thought, and her spirits lifted. Clearing the mountains where the Jewel and Ore gnomes still worked their mines, they crossed the great plains of the New Outlands. Nothing had changed here. The clan families lived as they had always lived, tending their herds, their flocks and their fields. Each Autumn the clan families would all attend the Gathering, reuniting with one another briefly before returning to their own lands. There were a few more villages than before, but little else had changed. They lived by the same laws as ever.

  On the edge of their lands an ocean stretched. It was called the Obscura. Until a hundred or more years ago, few had known of its existence. Now the Taubyl Traders crossed this sea to trade with the clan families. On the far side of the Obscura, the desert realm of the Shadow Princes lay. Only from the skies above were their palaces and great green valley visible. Beyond them lay Lara’s destination, the oasis of Zeroun, with its graceful palms, beautiful waterfall and crystal clear pool. Dasras’s delicate hooves touched down upon the warm golden sands, and he slowly came to a halt, his wings folding themselves away as he danced to a stop. Lara slid easily from his back.

  “Send Cadi to lift the saddle from my back, mistress,” Dasras said. “I see my shelter is already waiting for me.” A striped awning was set near the water, a stall and feed boxes beneath it. The stall had fresh sweet hay within it. One of the boxes was filled with oats, the other with the mixture of green vegetables, carrots and apples that Dasras favored.

  “I brought the combs and brushes,” Lara told him, pulling them from her pocket. “I will ask her to groom you, as I saw you had not been attended to in many days before we departed the castle. I will speak with the head groom about that when we return.”

  “Then we are returning,” Dasras said. He did not sound pleased.

  “This time, aye. Something of import is about to happen, my old friend, and instinct tells me that I need to be in Terah when it does.”

  The stallion nodded his head, and then turning, trotted off to his shelter.

  Cadi came forth from Lara’s beautiful turquoise-blue silk tent, standing beneath the blue-and-coral-striped awning. “You did not dally, mistress,” she said with a smile.

  “Nay, I did not.” She sighed. “
I needed to come to Zeroun quickly.” Turning so she might see the entire oasis, she cast a protective spell about it, making her refuge invisible to the human eye. Few ever came this way, but it was foolish to take chances. “I will swim before the prince comes,” she told Cadi, shedding her cloak and her robe. Then, walking to the clear pool, she stepped into it, smiling as the cool water rose up about her. There was something cleansing about this particular pool. Swimming to the little waterfall, she let the flowing waters pour over her head. Swimming back into the pool itself, she was amused to find Kaliq was suddenly there.

  He was grinning, obviously pleased with himself, and swam to her.

  Lara laughed, filled with happiness. “You always know,” she said.

  “I always do,” he agreed, and taking her into his arms, kissed her a long deep kiss.

  “Ahh, Kaliq, my love,” Lara said as she broke off their embrace, “the very sight of you makes me joyful, my lord.” She brushed a lock of his dark hair from his forehead.

  Catching the hand she used, he brought it to his lips, and kissed the palm softly. “If I make you so happy, Lara, my love, then come and live with me in Shunnar.”

  “Soon,” she promised. “I will soon, Kaliq,” Lara told him.

  He was surprised by her answer, for she had always insisted her place was in Terah. “What has happened?” he asked, and taking her hand, led her from the water across the soft sand into the tent.

  Cadi immediately came forward with soft white robes. She tossed the first one in Lara’s direction, and it immediately enfolded itself about her beautiful mistress. She did the same with the garment she held for Kaliq. “There are refreshments on the table, mistress, master,” she said to them. “Dasras needs my attention if you do not require my services any further.” Then with a smile she hurried from their presence.

  Lara flung herself among the multicolored pillows surrounding the low ebony table. Reaching for the decanter of frine she poured them each a goblet, handing her companion one. The brass bowl that always sat upon the table was filled with fresh fruits, and Cadi had added a small plate of tiny crisp honey cakes. Lara reached for one.

  “What is the matter?” Kaliq repeated the question.

  “I don’t know,” Lara told him. “But I am filled with a sudden awareness that something of great portent is about to happen. I have not felt like this at all in the last century. I suppose I have grown complacent like an ordinary mortal.”

  “Have you sought for an answer?” he asked her. He, too, had been afflicted the same way as she had. Something was changing, and not necessarily for the better.

  Lara shook her golden head. “Nay, my thoughts have been too confused, Kaliq. I very much needed to come here to Zeroun to clear my head and contemplate what I must do. Even Ethne has been strangely silent, my lord.” She touched the crystal star pendant that hung about her neck, and it glowed but briefly as her fingers caressed it.

  “Your thoughts, I suspect, have been deliberately confounded, and until you realized it, you remained in Terah. Fortunately, you are a strong being, and came to understand that something was not right. Lara, you must not dwell among the mortals any longer. I say this not just for my sake, for our sake, but for yours,” Kaliq said. “You must be clearheaded and strong for what is coming.”

  “What is coming?” she asked him.

  He shook his dark head, and his blue eyes were concerned. “Even I cannot answer that, my love, but it is past time we began to look again more closely at Hetar’s world. Their inability to learn from their mistakes has been discouraging. Both you and I have avoided looking too closely in recent decades because if these mortals cannot learn from their own errors, what is to become of them? But now I suspect the time is coming for us to involve ourselves with them once more.”

  “I seem to have no more influence with either the Terahns or the Hetarians,” Lara told him regretfully. “As the years have passed my appearance has disconcerted them more and more, for they grow old, and I do not. They seem to have lost their belief in magical beings and our world. They have rewritten the history of Hetar to suit themselves. And the New Outlands is no better. Vartan and his faerie wife have been relegated to fiction. And once Noss and my daughter were gone, there was no one who remembered me among them. They think they have always lived in Terah, and as their way of life has changed little over the centuries, who is to nay-say them? It is as if everything we have done was for naught, Kaliq. I have made a grave error in remaining among the mortals. I should have disappeared years ago, appearing only when I was needed. Now I have become little more to them than an oddity. They attempt to ignore me as much as they can for my very presence disturbs them. But, Kaliq, my love, I could not leave while Magnus’s son lived. That small part of me that is mortal would have felt it a betrayal.”

  “Yet Taj has been dead lo these four years,” Kaliq said. “You had no real affinity with your grandson, Amren, and even less with your great-grandson, Dominus Cadarn. Yet you remain in Terah. You do not belong in Terah. You belong with me in Shunnar.”

  “In Shunnar I do not hear the voices on the wind that I need to hear to know that all is right with our world,” Lara told him. She sipped at her goblet thoughtfully.

  “And what have those voices told you of late?” he asked her.

  “They are suddenly silent, Kaliq,” Lara answered him. “That is why I have come to Zeroun. To regain my equilibrium, to sharpen my senses. They have grown dull with boredom, and complacent with the unchanging pattern of my life.”

  “Something is amiss in the magical worlds,” Kaliq replied. “The winds blow in Shunnar as they have never blown before. There is a chill to them, and my fellow Shadow Princes grow restless of late, for none of us can find answers to all the questions that are whispering about us.”

  “It is the darkness,” Lara said suddenly and with perfect clarity, and she shivered.

  “Then certainly your son is preparing an assault against the light once more,” Kaliq said, nodding.

  Lara no longer denied her maternity where Kolgrim, the Twilight Lord, was concerned. Her mortal children had never known, of course, nor did Marzina. But the son she and Kaliq shared knew of his half brother. Lara was glad that Dillon ruled the kingdom of Belmair, that bright distant star that shone down on the world of Hetar.

  She need only worry about her youngest child, her daughter Marzina.

  Kolgrim’s father had forced his seed upon Lara while she was visiting the Dream Plain. For this outrage he had been imprisoned for all eternity in a windowless dungeon deep within his own castle. No one knew he was there now except his successor—who had entrapped his twin brother with their father—Lara, Kaliq and several other members of the magical community. Lara had been pregnant at the time with Magnus Hauk’s son.

  When Lara birthed twins, a son and a daughter, her mother had remarked how like a faerie ancestress the infant girl looked. Marzina was pale of skin, with black hair and eyes that eventually became the color of violets, while her brother was a golden child like their father, and his older sister, Zagiri. Everyone had accepted the word of the Queen of the Forest Faeries, and nothing was ever thought of how different Marzina looked from all of her other siblings. And Lara had never told her daughter the truth of her birth.

  “What wickedness is he now up to,” Lara wondered aloud. “Has he not enough to do ruling his own turbulent kingdom? Certainly Ciarda gave him his son, and he is kept busy teaching the little devil all manner of wickedness.”

  “Ciarda failed. She was not the chosen bride,” Kaliq said. “He killed her.”

  “What? Why did you not tell me, Kaliq?” Lara wanted to know.

  “I did not consider it important,” he replied.

  “Oh, but it is! It is very important,” Lara exclaimed. “Kolgrim is preparing to take his chosen bride, my love. That is the change I have felt. He has consulted the Book of Rule and learned where to find the girl. If we can find her first, prevent him from mating with her, there wi
ll be no new Twilight Lord. We can defeat the darkness for good! If I had known that Ciarda was dead, I should have thought of this sooner.”

  “We cannot defeat the darkness entirely,” Kaliq said. “There must always be a balance between the light and the dark, Lara.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because there has always been a balance,” he replied.

  “That is not an answer, my lord. Would not a world without avarice and cruelty be good? A world whose inhabitants actually cared for each other rather than were jealous of one another, and sought to do harm to each other.”

  “Mortals have not yet reached that strata, nor have those of us in the magic kingdoms, though we are much further along,” Kaliq said. “If there were no temptations, no reasons for striving or improvement, what would be the point of it all, Lara? Even the magical kingdoms must have a balance of dark and light.”

  “Are you saying we shouldn’t prevent Kolgrim from siring a son?” she asked him.

  “Your son has kept the peace for more than a century, Lara, and yet do you see an improvement in either Hetar or Terah?” Kaliq queried cleverly. “Have the mortals inhabiting those kingdoms grown kinder or more thoughtful of each other?”

  Lara shook her head in the negative. “I despair,” she said.

  He laughed, wrapping an arm about her. “You are too serious, my love,” Kaliq told her, and then he pulled her close, his mouth taking hers in a soft and sensuous kiss. He smiled against her lips as his kiss drew the tension from her body, and with a sigh she relaxed against him. Pressing her back against the colorful pillows the Shadow Prince undid the row of tiny pearl buttons that held her caftan closed. His lips wandered down her slender pale throat to bury themselves in the valley between her breasts. His tongue plunged between the twin orbs, licking slowly as he inhaled the fragrance of freesia, which she now favored. He adored her. He always had.