The Sunset Lands Beyond (The Complete Series, Books 1-3): An epic portal fantasy boxed set

by Sarah Ashwood

  As she advanced, she stooped from an impressive height of well over fourteen feet, thrusting her living corpse’s face in mine.

  “You are not yet dead, little one?” It sneered, victory in Its tone. “The light surrounding you has greatly diminished. I sense your strength has faded. Why, even your Simathe keeper has deserted you. You are dying. You’ve nothing left with which to defend yourself.”

  I said nothing, staring up defiantly into the face of my tormenter… the woman who’d once given life to my father and now meant to take that of his daughter.

  “You will not answer? No matter, no matter,” It chuckled, backing away. “I have won, my child. Admit it. Concede victory, and I’ll grant you a swift death. I suppose you’ve earned that honor, at least.”

  “Never.”

  Again, I slipped into the foul language we’d been using, even though the harsh, guttural sounds tore at my throat.

  “Admit it,” the Dark One jeered louder in the same tongue, anger replacing her façade of civility. “Serve me. Serve my masters, the Dark Powers. We have triumphed! Bow to us and acknowledge our greatness.”

  “Never! You’ve not won. Not yet. Not until I am dead, and I still breathe.”

  The Dark One laughed, and a million laughs of a million different Evil were voiced in the sound.

  “You may breathe, but you are dead, my child. You have only to realize it.”

  “No.” I lifted my dirty, blood-stained face, hoping she could read in it all of my courage, my defiance. “It is you who are dead. You are right, mother of my father. I’ve little strength left. No magic remains for me to hurl at you. I can no longer Command… but I can still Become.”

  …yet not

  “Become?” the Dark One roared, laughing. “What is that to me? Look up! Even the skies sense my time has come. Look up, look up!”

  The loud cry rumbled in an ancient tongue across the battle plain, filling even Ilgard’s ears. Like his lady, he turned his face upward and saw the sky had grown black as storm clouds rushed in with unprecedented speed to block out the morning sun. A dark, chill wind picked up. Grey funnels lowered from the sky.

  Any pockets of fighting that had broken out when his lady was maimed and thrown by her enemy now ceased. Was this it? The triumph of the Dark Powers, the defeat of the Artan?

  Still gripping his sword, covered in the blood of one slain dragon and three handlers, the Simathe High-Chief looked at the place where his lady stood. Unnatural terror gripped his heart, and he began to run.

  He was too late.

  Lightning flashed, but it was not from the sky. Every living warrior on that field of battle turned at the flash to witness the Artan disappearing in a blinding blaze of light. Rather, she did not vanish in it but into it. Her whole body dissolved, liquefying into raging, white-hot, pure light—and was gone. That light now blasted itself against the colossal figure of the Dark One, but as soon as it touched the creature, it evaporated, melting away. In a heartbeat, the light was entirely gone, and the Artan along with it.

  Having halted some distance away, Ilgard helplessly observed his lady’s final assault upon the Dark Powers. Now, as he beheld the outcome, his sword dropped from numb fingers.

  It cannot be...

  His lady was lost, as was his homeland.

  The Dark One threw back Its head, raising Its face to the darkened sky, and began to laugh. The grating sound reverberated in the sluggish, stormy air, washing over the defeated land like a cold, brutal wave. She laughed and laughed, her mouth wide open, her ugly head reared back.

  But her laughter did not last forever.

  Between one peal and the next, it abruptly stopped, the sound choked off in a strangled gurgle. A shaft of white light suddenly burst from Its open mouth, spurting high in the sky. Another spewed from the scar on the Dark One’s cheek, and a third leapt from a wound on Its side. Two more sprang from her eye sockets and more from her ears and nostrils. Cracks opened swiftly all over that great, black body, and pure magic exploded from each one. Every crevice, every fissure filled itself with hot, white light, until the black shell of the Dark One’s body could no longer maintain itself.

  The weakening shell burst! Like a smashed wall it crumbled, caving in on itself, crumbling to the ground in a heap of fetid, ebony rubble. The brisk wind caught it up, driving away both it and the wicked breeze filled with bits of dead things that had ushered the Dark One along.

  In the end, all that was left was clean, fresh air. And light. That white light gathered itself together, trembling violently like a woman giving birth—then exploded out into all directions from a central focal point. That point, that center, was the Artan.

  As if to fulfill her own sun-borne promise, she now hung suspended in light between the heavens and the earth, just as she’d done long ago above the Singing Bridge. Her arms were outstretched, her head falling back. Her face was upturned, lifted to the blackened sky. Light washed over her, cleansing her body, soul, and spirit from the wounds she’d received while battling the Dark Powers. For a long time she simply hung there as light swept across the battlefield, the city of Shayle, the Largese River, the sea, and Aerisia itself. For one brief moment, stolen from time, history, future, and eternity itself, the Simathe High-Chief tasted her ecstasy, the ecstasy of a victory that would never again be repeated.

  The Artan had triumphed!

  The white radiance hovered a few minutes longer, absorbing the darkness, swallowing the wind funnels, eliminating any lingering remnants of black magic that had poisoned the atmosphere. Slowly, it compressed itself into a thin, horizontal line that stretched across the face of the sky. It flashed a final time in a glowing incandescence of power then disappeared altogether. The body of Hannah Winters, Aerisia’s Artan, drifted gently to the earth.

  He was not the first to reach her. By the time the Simathe lord arrived, her head was already pillowed in the lap of an older Cortain. When he stooped next to his lady, her eyes turned toward him, those lovely, singular eyes, and her lips parted in a dazzling smile.

  “Ilgard, I did it,” she whispered, her voice tremulous and soft. “We did it.”

  The Cortain, permitting him to gather his lady in his arms, respectfully stepped away to give them privacy. He hardly noticed. Cradling her gently against his chest, he rested his forehead against hers, scarcely able to comprehend all he had witnessed. Words could not express what his eyes had seen—the fulfillment of ancient prophecy, the salvation of his homeland. This young woman, child of two worlds, had done all that legend had predicted centuries past that she would do. Fate had seen her through; her task was complete.

  When he drew back to look into her face, what he read on her features was simple confidence and absolute peace and joy. To him, she’d never been more beautiful than at this moment. The light enveloping and emanating from her was fading, but that did not matter. Her beauty was far from diminished. He scrutinized every inch of her face with his eyes, committing this moment to memory forever.

  “Birthed with the moon and dawn,” he said after finally finding his voice. “Today I saw shadow dissolved by light. By you, Hannah. The Artan.”

  She smiled, but it was now alarmingly weak. Too weak. The specter of death had crept into her eyes.

  “Ilgard, I’m dying,” she managed.

  There was no fear in her words. But if she was not afraid, the same did not hold true for him. He shook his head, clutching her closer.

  “That cannot be.”

  “You know that it is.”

  He would have protested, but she laid her fingers over his mouth, silencing him.

  “Death is not the end,” she soothed. “Wherever it takes me, I’ll love you from the other side.”

  Exerting all of her remaining strength, she raised herself to kiss him. Her lips brushed his before she fell weakly back, her eyelids drifting closed. Unholy panic filled his entire being.

  “No, Hannah. Not this. Not now.”

  Her peaceful smile vanished a
t his insistent plea. Knowing he could still be heard, the High-Chief pressed on, trying harder.

  “Please, lass, you cannot leave me.”

  She forced her eyes open. They were already glazing over, yet he could see pain in them. Pain not for herself but for him.

  “Ilgard—”

  “No, Hannah,” he insisted. “Fight this. Stay with me.”

  Staring up sadly into his face, she said nothing. Offered no condolences, no false assurances, no promises that she would not die. Through their collapsing bond, he felt the truth: she retained no strength with which to fight. The strange, mysterious thread that had held her life intact and buoyed her spirit for her final battle had snapped. She was going to leave him, and he had no power to prevent that from happening.

  As he acknowledged this bitter truth, the warrior-lord realized one thing still remained. She deserved to hear him say what he had never told her—or anyone else, for that matter. He was hers. She had earned the right to know that, to carry it with her when she passed.

  “Hannah,” he said, his arms tightening about her body, “heart of my own heart. You are my all. I love you more than you could ever know.”

  For so long she had waited, needed to hear those words. Now that he’d finally said them, her response was quiet, accepting, serene, as if this was something she had known all along would someday occur.

  “I know,” she whispered, her eyes holding his, a trace of sadness in her tone. She reached up, trailing soft fingertips over the dark stubble on his cheek and jaw. “Hold me in your love.”

  With that, her hand fell away. Her eyelids lowered a final time, her lashes settling softly upon her cheeks. Her head drooped against his arm.

  And she died.

  Part Four

  Death is not the end

  Defeat in Victory

  It began to rain.

  The angry clouds which had gathered during the battle between the Artan and her foe had lightened from a heavy, fearsome black to a calmer shade of grey. No longer was the storm symbolic of the Dark Powers’ awesome might. Rather, it seemed the heavens themselves had opened up to weep for the loss of the young woman lying so still in the Simathe High-Chief’s arms.

  With their leader dead, The Evil had no more desire to fight. Some cast down their weapons in surrender, while others turned to flee. Aerisia’s armies gave chase, dispatching those in flight with brutal ease. Soon, the battle was over, and the final resisters captured or slain. War was finished, and Aerisia truly won.

  But the Artan was dead.

  He carried her towards the city of Shayle, mindless of the raindrops that splashed on her face, changing into little rivulets that ran down her cheeks like tears. At first, the Simathe High-Chief half expected her to open her eyes and blink them away, or else lift a hand and brush them from her skin.

  She did neither.

  Then, he thought perhaps he ought to wrap her in a cloak, shielding her face, her hair, her body from the icy droplets.

  He could not bring himself to do it.

  After all, she could not feel them—like he could not feel her. Besides this, the rain spattering her face and soaking her long hair reminded him of the first time she’d admitted her love for him. It was raining then, as well, and he had held her and kissed her. Between his kisses, she had murmured it over and over again—sweet, breathless, excited. He could hear her now…

  I love you. I love you. I love you.

  Which she had. Loved him through these past weeks, right up until the moment of her death. Loved him with a flame that warmed the bond between them as the morning sun warmed the land. Yes, she had loved him—loved him as nobody ever had, or could. Nevertheless, the love that brightened his life of late only made her death so much more terrible. The pangs of their closed bond ripped through his spirit, his flesh. He did not try to stifle them. If pain was all he had left of her, then he would endure it willingly.

  Slowly, Aerisia’s warriors returned from giving chase. The fallen, healed by the Artan’s light when she first took the field of battle, picked themselves up off the ground. They edged forward, all of them, gathering into a crowd, lining a path many warriors deep. He passed silently through their mute ranks, past Ranetron, Cortain, Tearkin, and Simathe. Past all of those who had gathered to fight: not only for their homeland but also for the woman he carried.

  The rain beat down upon them all. No one minded. Some wept with it. Some looked angry, others grieved. Still others, the Simathe, simply appeared inscrutable. Their sorrow was invisible to anyone else, but their lord could sense it. After all, they had been with her from the beginning, had spent more time with her than most. She, rising above centuries’ worth of fear, prejudice, and superstition, had treated them as equals: the first non-Simathe, the first woman ever to do so. In some respects, his clan would mourn her as no one else could.

  With faltering steps the old Moonkind Tredsday approached, leading the magnificent white horse on which his lady had first appeared. He intercepted Ilgard and his burden, bringing the animal into their path. Risean’s deeply lined face was ravaged with grief. When he spoke, his voice sounded strangled. Of course. She had been his niece, his brother’s granddaughter.

  Laying a trembling hand on the warrior-lord’s shoulder, he said, “There is no need for you to do this, my son. Let the animal bear her into the city.”

  My son?

  The High-Chief stared at the old man. It was the first time in his long life that he’d ever been anyone’s son. He, who was centuries older than the white-haired, stoop shouldered Moonkind before him. However, kindly old Risean meant well. Meant well also with his offer of the horse. Still, it was an offer Ilgard refused: he trusted his lady to no one but himself. Shaking his head, he walked on.

  Ascending the hill, he entered the gates of the city. The army, falling into step after him, followed his lead. The citizens of Shayle, street folk, lord and ladies, gentlefolk, innkeepers, merchants, craftsmen, and tradesmen alike, saw the strange procession and left their work at the city walls or their warm parlors and cozy hearths to see for themselves what transpired.

  With a single glance, they knew. Their reaction was much the same as the soldiers who had fought so hard these past few days. Perhaps they had not been directly involved in the fighting, but she was their Artan too. They grew angry, shed tears, or fell despondent. Like their countrymen and women, they too fell into step, mingling freely with the army until he came to the palace of the Portex and passed inside. Even then, not one of them left. Standing out in the damp, grey weather, they gazed up forlornly at the windows and balconies of the palace’s upper tier, wondering into which chamber their Artan would be taken.

  Inside the palace, Ilgard carried his lady to her former bedchamber and placed her gently upon the bed. Lady Alvana, wife of the Portex, was the first who dared enter. He heard the swish of her skirts as she drew up beside him. She stood there a long while before speaking, staring mournfully at his lady.

  “If the High-Chief so desires,” she said at last, “I myself will prepare her for… for—”

  Hearing the sob that choked her words, he said, “My thanks, but we will depart for Laytrii as soon as can be arranged. She will be cared for there.”

  “Aye, my lord,” the lady sniffled. “Then, may I do anything else to serve you?”

  He gestured in the negative. She, with a broken, “Very well, my lord,” quit the room.

  He was not alone long before someone else entered, assuming her position beside him. Kurban, the Tearkin prince, said, “They wait without, my friend. They wait below, in the rain. Will you not speak to them?”

  Ilgard requested the Tearkin to take his place. “You are more skilled in these matters than I,” he said.

  The giant left to do as bidden. Ilgard never knew precisely what the Tearkin lord said to those outside the palace. Yet, within a few short hours word came that the army was ready to depart, to commence the return journey to Laytrii. Nor were they going alone. Many people
from Shayle would travel with them, going along to pay their last respects to their fallen leader.

  Galandorf seamen, Shayle naval vessels, The Captain’s Lady, and other private vessels kept to the river, a silent accompaniment to those traveling by land. They marched both day and night, sparing little time for rest. The Simathe lord, suffering the emptiness of a closed Joining bond, rode his Restless and cradled the Artan in his arms, leading the somber procession.

  They made excellent time.

  After only a few days, breaking free of forest roads, all were able to see off in the distance the jutting spires and lofty towers of Laytrii’s palace. Beyond lay her glorious white city.

  The morning sun was rising.

  It was to the city of Laytrii, not the palace, that they took her. She was brought to the city’s Great Hall of the Dead: no other place would have befitted the burial of this legendary heroine. A splendid edifice of marble and gold, the Great Hall of the Dead had stood proudly since the days the city of Laytrii was first built. Ten tall, fluted columns stretched across the building’s portico. Thrusting a hundred paces into the air, a rounded dome with interspersing slats of white marble and patterned, stained glass, graced the Hall’s top.

  Inside this building reposed many Aerisian rulers, Elders, and Council members. Here, their bodies were brought to lie in state. Here, funeral rites were conducted and final respects paid before the dignitary was entombed in a box of solid stone, with their names and deeds graven on its lid and sides.

  Here, they brought the Artan.

  With slow, precise steps, the Simathe High-Chief carried her body, loosely swathed in white silk, inside the Great Hall of the Dead. The huge iron doors squealed on their hinges when the uniformed doorkeepers urged them open. The place remained sealed unless needed, and the heavy double doors had not been opened since the death of Lord Elgrend, Aerisia’s former High Elder.