Griselda would not relent. “Do you watch our princess? Each day she cries her dusky tears. Each day she retreats a little deeper into the corners of the house, becoming one with the darkness. Arael would be grief-struck were she here. Your queen would insist we staunch Lyra’s hopelessness before she loses her love of light altogether.”
In less than a fortnight, the king left for the battlefields with three of the kingdom’s most faithful guards in tow, handpicked by Griselda herself. He carried three gifts for Queen Nova as proof of his daughter’s soul sickness: a thick, braided plait of Lyra’s silvery-white hair, a vial filled with her violet tears, and an echo of her birdsong voice captured within an ensorcelled seashell upon a silver stand.
On a rainy autumn morning, a fortnight later, news came of a treaty, but only the king knew of the details, for it had been a private meeting between him and the queen. He was said to be behind the messenger so Lyra waited by the window, wrapped in the heavy drapes, imagining her father’s red steed trotting up the path.
In the king’s absence, the servants had been appointed various tasks by Griselda, keeping them busy so they had little time for Lyra. Not once had she fallen asleep to the gentle stroke of a tender hand, or heard a kind voice practicing writing or reading with her. She’d been lonely. One kiss upon her head by her father, and everything would be right again.
The door rattled open on a rain-drenched gust, and it was all the princess could do to stand back so the sun filtering through clouds wouldn’t catch her. But King Kiran did not step inside. His limp body was carried in by two of his three guards. Their armor was dented and their heads wounded and bleeding, just like the king’s.
The minute the door shut, Lyra stumbled toward them, touching her father’s unblinking eyes which looked past her in a faraway stare. Emotionless. Lifeless. A piercing sensation tweaked her heart, as if a thorn burst through the organ’s walls. Her fingers tangled in his hair, chilled by his scalp. She stifled the shouts of anguish growing inside her until she feared she’d bleed musical notes from her eyes and ears. She couldn’t let even one escape, for her song was far too jubilant for this monstrous day.
Explanations abounded: Night Ravagers, the pale, skull-faced mercenaries of the under realm, attacked them. The guards tried to save the king but were outnumbered; the third one lost his life in the struggle.
The war would never end now. Neither would Lyra’s sadness.
At her father’s interment ceremony two days later, she said farewell to his body, which would be buried beneath the ground where moonbeams, absorbed into the soil from the night realm, would cushion his eternal cessation.
He was gone forever. Just like her mother . . . just like the nightsky hood.
They held the service in the castle’s great hall with all the drapes closed. The scent of candle wax that had once comforted Lyra hung in her throat, and the smoke stung her eyes.
The two guards who had fought to save the king were knighted by Griselda for their bravery. They stood at the head and foot of the coffin, bedecked in glistening gold medals and gems.
Lyra looked upon her father’s body one last time, sunken inside the red satin lining, remembering how safe she felt within his strong arms. How cherished she was, in spite of her differences.
Dried lavender rose petals drifted across him, sprinkled by his royal subjects to honor his lost queen who loved the plant so much it killed her. The very same plant that had poisoned Lyra’s life from the beginning. Inspired by the floral cascade, dark tears fell to her feet, a violet rain spattering the white marble.
Griselda stood in the deepest shadows of the room wherein only Lyra could see. Her aunt’s lips curled upward—revealing teeth as unnerving as bleached-out bones at the bottom of a creek. Within that smile, the princess saw the deadly slant of her future, and for the first time in her life, she knew fear.
2
A Breath of Death
Every land has a place where evil congregates. Like a gaping wound, it reeks of spiritual rot, a stench that calls to those of similar faithlessness and disorder.
In Eldoria, this place was the Ashen Ravine.
The deep rift in terrain had been caused centuries earlier, when Nerezeth retreated underground with night and all its occupants in tow. The land sutured, but it didn’t fully heal. So, nature and magic came together, forming a mystical forest to cover the wound.
Large, brambly trees grew almost overnight—their thorn-tipped branches and roots warped and knotted, as if they couldn’t decide which direction to grow, for they fed off both the night from below, and the day from above. The trunks, black as pitch, stooped like withered old men yet had the illusion of eternal youth with leaves that never faded or changed when spring surrendered to summer, and summer to fall.
Like lions’ manes, the foliage thickened over time to riotous lengths until the dreary gray-green velvet blocked the sunlight. Beneath the conjoined canopy, any wrongdoer could find sanctuary. Thus, it became a metropolis for smugglers, murderers, degenerates and outcasts. The leaves worked as a sponge to absorb the sins of the ravine’s occupants, and they grew thicker and denser each day until at last the trees could no longer bear all of their weight.
The wickedness began to slink down the trunks in mossy trails—furred and pulsating—a living, breathing umbrage. It overtook the ground, carrying the stink of decomposition, and made smoldering mounds of whatever goodness and beauty—blooms of columbine, bleeding heart and larkspur—had managed to adapt to the sunless terrain. Soon a gray carpet of shifting, rustling ash dusted the base and slinked from tree to tree, resulting in the ravine’s title.
This was the in-between, a great crack in the earth stretching for hundreds of leagues. Beginning at the northern base of Mount Astra, it carved a distant scar on the other side of the Crystal Lake and the lush hilly valley where the ivory castle and its township nestled, fecund and plentiful with farms, cottages, gardens and shops. The crack then continued off to the west into the lapping waves of the endless ocean.
Even with its stooped trunks, the ravine’s woodland stood tall. So steep was this pit, that to look down from the castle’s highest turret, the treetops appeared level with the ground, and the crack resembled a living thing that slithered along in the sun with leafy scales shifting from gray to green. To venture within was to risk a fatal fall, unless one followed the steep, winding path without straying—no easy task with the forest’s dangers lying in wait to distract the wayfaring wanderer.
The day after King Kiran’s burial, Crony emerged from this powdery, poisonous terrain that she called home.
She was the only one of her kind: a harrower witch. She had existed long before the great magical battle rent the earth and separated night from day centuries earlier. Long before the citizens of both kingdoms were altered by magic to adapt in their new worlds and terrains. Those in Nerezeth became tall and willowy and learned to speak mind-to-mind so they might tread nimbly and quietly on snowdrifts; in the same instant, they absorbed the moonlight and starlight—a silvering that started in their hair and skin then gave amber illumination to their eyes. Eldorians, in contrast, retained their sturdy builds and varied complexions, growing more durable, able to face the sun’s radiance with no pain. Crony had lived long enough she could feel the changes affecting her own comfort.
She had many reasons for wanting the sky as it once was—a courteous turn from light to dark—and some were tangled with regret. No one would believe a witch could feel any such emotion, so she never spoke of it.
Clasping the neck of her cloak in place, Crony clambered along the path leading out of the ravine, toward the entrance where the leaves thinned to let in dapples of grayish-yellow light.
She paused upon hearing a blood-curdling screech and turned to her right where a gurgling puddle skimmed through the ash—scattering powder on either side—in pursuit of a brown squirrel. There was rarely a bug, bird, rodent, or scavenging animal here, being little vegetation or rotting flesh for them to feed upon. The Shroud Collective in the lowlands left only the bones of their prey which most often fell to wayfaring quag-puddles—swallowed whole and digested—leaving no remains to claim: the very fate to befall this pitiful rodent that had dared to venture in.