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Overview
Charged with murder, heresy, and treason, Athaya spent months in captivity, her magic painfully sealed inside her mind. But her allies kept her mission alive—if only barely—risking their lives to recruit wizards and train them at their secret camp. Now Athaya has escaped, and her brother, King Durek, is desperate to stop her crusade against his reign. With a ruthless new ally at his side, Durek forms a Tribunal with the sole purpose of finding and destroying all Lorngeld and their supporters. And yet an even more immediate danger threatens Athaya’s uprising.
As Athaya’s followers multiply, supplies dwindle, leaving her camp vulnerable to Caithe’s brutal winter. Her people face starvation, until aid comes from an unexpected source—a group of military wizards on the Isle of Sare. Their intervention could save Athaya’s rebellion . . . but at what cost?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781625670359 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2019 |
| Series: | The Caithan Crusades , #3 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 363 |
| Sales rank: | 953,084 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 13 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Sister Katherine darted out of the tiny cell and slammed the door behind her only an instant before an earthenware goblet shattered into violent fragments on the other side.
"And stay out, you bloodthirsty hypocrite!" a high-pitched voice shrieked from inside the cell. The iron-banded door shuddered as another piece of crockery was dashed against it and rendered into splinters. "Stay out and leave me alone!"
Assuming a mask of bravery, Katherine tipped up her chin and let out a crisp puff of breath, sending aloft a wisp of honey-blond hair that had escaped the confines of her wimple. Delicate nostrils flared in a show of exasperation. "Delighted to oblige," she retorted, but the effect of her defiant words was ruined by an unsteady voice. The young nun lingered at the door only long enough to slide the deal bolt into place, locking the cell's enraged occupant securely inside.
That done, Sister Katherine cast a fleeting glance skyward. "Lend me strength, Lord." She hid her slender, shaking fingers inside voluminous sleeves and hurried down the corridor of the convent's guest cloister, the skirts of her somber gray habit whipping up behind her like churning waters.
"Oh!"
Katherine emitted a startled cry as she rounded the corner, her hands flying up to her cheeks as she narrowly avoided a collision with the two women silently approaching from the other direction. The first was a stout, stern-looking matriarch of middle years who held up a sagging chin with regal dignity and the second was an elderly wisp of a woman, shadow thin and humpbacked, whose face was as hard and pitted as the convent's limestone walls. Both were clad in the unadorned gray robes and starched white wimples traditional to their order; only the charcoal-colored stole draped over the younger woman's shoulders served to mark her as the highest-ranking resident of Saint Gillian's.
Sister Katherine placed one hand over her heart to steady its beating and then remembered herself and dutifully inclined her head to her superiors. "Good morning, Mother Abbess. Good morning, Sister Edwina."
Abbess Mary Helene nodded a wordless greeting, quickly discerning the look of distress on the young nun's face. Pursing her lips in distaste, she flicked her eyes briefly down the corridor from which Katherine had come. There could be no doubt as to what — or rather, who — had driven the young nun to such a nervous state.
"How is she this morning?" the abbess asked.
"Worse than usual, I'm afraid," Katherine replied. Wearily, she tucked the stray lock of hair back inside her wimple. "She was quiet enough yesterday, but today —" The nun bit down on her lower lip to keep it from trembling, but her frustration had grown too potent to suppress; her next words erupted like poison from a lanced boil. "Saint Gillian forgive me, but there are times when I think I'd rather have the Devil himself in my charge!"
"Katherine!" The abbess regarded her sharply, brown eyes flashing. "Do not cast such words about idly. The Devil has ears in Caithe and he might well grant you such a wish for your imprudence."
The nun lowered her oval face in contrition and sniffled softly. "I am sorry," she murmured. "I ought to have shown more compassion."
Abbess Helene cocked an ear at the faint sound of singing now drifting down the corridor, the eldritch music randomly broken by fits of shrill laughter. Her features shifted just then, growing darker and more condemning.
"We owe compassion to all God's creatures, Sister Katherine," she observed with cool deliberation. "Princess Athaya, however, is not among them." Then the abbess offered the younger nun a forgiving smile. "I only meant that you should not wish the Devil into our house. The Devil's Child is proving to be bad enough."
The abbess turned to the old woman at her side. "Come, Edwina. Let us see for ourselves how her Highness is faring today."
The elderly nun scowled up in displeasure, her face puckering like a piece of dried fruit. "And it had been such a pleasant morning ere now," she mumbled under her breath.
"With respect, Mother Abbess," Katherine ventured, anxiously wringing her hands, "I don't think that would be wise —"
"Now, now, Katherine ... you are overwrought! It has only been ten days since I last saw her. How much worse can she be?"
Katherine's eyes grew desperate. "Please, I beg you —"
Her superior's austere glare quickly silenced any further objections. "You may go and change into another robe, Sister Katherine," the abbess said in brusque dismissal. "Yours appears to be stained."
The young nun glanced down at the streaks of grease striping the front of her habit — evidence of the butter dish that Athaya had thrown at her earlier — and flushed bright red. "Yes, ma'am," she replied. She dropped a brief curtsy and scurried out of the cloister, visibly glad to be gone.
Another fragment of tuneless music floated down the corridor, and the abbess absently adjusted her stole as she listened to the princess' voice echoing off the stones like the wail of a ghost engaged in a fine morning's haunting.
"P-perhaps Sister Katherine is right," Edwina said. She touched her withered fingers to the abbess' arm, suddenly discomfited by the idea of entering Athaya's cell without a pair of well-armed men at her back. "The king may have promised us that his sister's magic is beyond her reach, but I still fear what she might do."
"Nonsense," the abbess assured her, raising her chin up to its customary position. "Without her spells, Athaya Trelane is nothing more than a common madwoman. Erratic, yes, but she can do little worse than throw insults and crockery at us and that she's done several times before." The abbess set off down the corridor with unruffled confidence, and Edwina grudgingly followed in her wake, limping slightly.
Abbess Helene, however, was not as composed as she wished her subordinates to believe. The princess was getting worse, and at a more rapid rate than before. Fewer were the days when she remembered where she was or recalled the names of the sisters who tended her. And more frequent were the days she lapsed into nonsensical babbling, carrying on fragments of conversation with herself; the days when one misspoken word pitched her into a fit of violence and compelled her to smash every dish within her reach. The abbess knew that something would have to be done soon, not only for Athaya's sake, but for the sake — and sanity — of every nun at Saint Gillian's.
It had not been so bad at first. Three months ago, when King Durek delivered his recalcitrant sister to Saint Gillian's, Athaya was in excellent health, seemingly unaffected by any sort of malady. Granted, she was sullen and troublesome, but according to his Majesty, that had been her usual state for the whole of her twenty-one years. She was lucid and sane — as sane as a Lorngeld ever is, the abbess amended hastily — and conversed normally, when she deigned to speak at all, with the nuns attending her. And since the king had made no mention of sickness, physical or otherwise, the abbess was certain that Athaya's sudden and rapid plunge into madness was indeed God's retribution for her sins.
And what a shocking array of sins! Few women could account for so many at such a young age, and already Athaya had been charged with her father's murder, arrested for heresy against the Church, accused of treason against her country, and found guilty of a host of lesser crimes. And all of it because she refused to believe the simple fact that her sorcerous powers were evil, and worse, that she insisted on spreading her heresy throughout all of Caithe, teaching unsuspecting folk the art of magic and thereby luring them away from the word of God and into the foul grip of the Devil's devices.
Magic a gift from the Lord? A sign of divine favor? The abbess felt her flesh grow cold at the very idea. These Lorngeld could grow dangerous indeed if they actually came to believe such things.
And they were dangerous enough already.
Abbess Helene and Sister Edwina halted before an iron-banded oak door bordered by blocks of sandstone. The echoes of singing and laughter were gone now, replaced by a deep and resonant silence.
"His Majesty was sure her powers can't escape?" Edwina asked, breaking the silence by nervously working her swollen finger joints until they cracked.
"Now, Edwina, how many times have we gone over that?" the abbess chided gently. "No, the king was quite certain on that point. The wizard who cast this spell on Athaya — a 'sealing spell' I think his Majesty called it — told the king that there was no release from it other than by another spell. A spell that, apparently, only a very few wizards in the world know how to cast. And since the wizard who did this to the princess is now dead, I'd say that Athaya is quite secure in her prison."
Both of them, the abbess added inwardly. Granted, the convent's official records claimed that Athaya had come of her own free will — imprisonment in religious houses was strictly against canon law — but the abbess, Edwina, Katherine, and every sister of Saint Gillian's knew that the princess was no less a prisoner here than any poor wretch rotting in the dungeons beneath the king's own castle in Delfarham. Athaya was most certainly not here to atone for her sins as King Durek would have his people believe, but as punishment for disobeying him. His Majesty had ordered her to recant her beliefs in the divinity of magic or face death by burning, but when he had taken her to the city square in Kaiburn — the heart of her infant rebellion — Athaya had shocked the masses gathered there by ignoring his command and using the public forum as one final attempt to spread her pernicious doctrine. But rather than risk making a martyr of her, the king secreted her away in Saint Gillian's, where she could spend her remaining years pondering the error of her sorcerous ways and begging God's forgiveness.
Thus far, however, Athaya had done neither, and the abbess was growing impatient.
"Now let us see if her Highness is being as onerous as Katherine claims," the abbess said with forced levity. Sister Edwina cowered behind the safety of her superior's bulk while Abbess Helene braced herself with a lungful of air, snapped back the dead bolt, and pushed open the cell door.
She had not taken a single step before her body — and her soul — recoiled in horror. One hand flew to her mouth as the abbess stifled a gasp of shock at the small-scale wreckage before her: the carnage wrought by caged evil straining against its bindings.
The floor of the cell was littered with a treacherous carpet of crockery fragments, and a straw broom, no doubt discarded by Sister Katherine only moments ago, lay abandoned in the center of the floor amid the remains of numerous plates, bowls, and cups. A savage wind roared in from a pair of open windows, casting the princess' few possessions about the room like flotsam from a shipwreck. Countless sheets of paper swirled about the abbess' head like autumn leaves, alternatively settling to the floor and hurling themselves up again with each new gust. The wind had blown the bedcovers into a rumpled pile in the corner and had overturned a half-empty jug of wine long enough ago so that the dark red pool on the flagstone floor had grown sticky, like old blood.
But if the chamber itself was in chaos, its occupant was infinitely more so.
Athaya Trelane, only daughter of his late Majesty King Kelwyn and sister to the reigning King Durek, stood braced before the open windows as if trying to hold back the winds by sheer force of will. Her pose was defiant: bare feet spread apart, head flung back, and arms crossed tightly over her chest as if clutching a precious keepsake to her breast. But despite this commanding posture, Athaya herself looked appallingly weak. Her skin was white as flour paste from a summer without sun, and the nun's robe she wore, which had fit her snugly enough three months ago, now hung loosely on her frame, the wind catching the loose folds and snapping them viciously around her arms and ankles. Her hair, once tightly braided, was fast coming undone; one meager strand trailed down her back like a frayed rope about to snap while the rest scattered in thick, black tangles about her face. Only her eyes exuded strength of any kind, though of an odd, unearthly kind, and there was the hint of a smile about her lips as she spoke in silent incantation — to what, or to whom, the abbess did not venture to guess.
"Saints in heaven preserve us," Edwina whispered, her voice quavering as she clutched at the abbess' sleeve for support. "She's mad ... utterly mad."
The abbess did not disagree. Athaya's wits were shattered, as useless as the shards of crockery at her feet.
"Your Highness?"
Unconcerned — or unaware — that she was no longer alone, Athaya did not reply. Her lips continued to move in wordless incantation; by no stretch of the imagination would the abbess dare to call it prayer.
Abbess Helene walked past her to the open windows, giving the princess a wide berth, and glanced down with a frown as she spied another pile of broken crockery peppering the weed-covered rocks far below. Pursing her lips, she glared at Athaya as if wishing that she would toss herself out of the window instead of the costly dishes, but soon repented the wicked thought with a perfunctory gesture of forgiveness.
The abbess set her hands on her hips, unnerved by the princess' manner but equally unwilling to let it intimidate her. "You shan't be brought another breakfast, your Highness. You'll grow hungry by midday."
Athaya stared right through her, seeming to look past the abbess' eyes and into the mind behind them. Then, stepping neatly around the abbess, Athaya returned her unblinking gaze to the white-capped waves that rushed in to dash themselves to pieces on the shore.
"And we'll be forced to restrain you if you keep throwing plates and goblets out of the window. And at Sister Katherine," the abbess added irritably.
Again, Athaya said nothing. She watched the waves for another moment, and then smiled contentedly as if they had just whispered something she had long been waiting to hear. "Credony, lord of the first Circle," she responded in a lilting voice. Athaya picked up the skirt of her plain gray robe and danced a bit, as if to music. "Sidra, lord of the second —"
"Your Highness?"
The abbess pitched her voice louder this time. For the first time, Athaya perceived that she had visitors and abruptly stopped her silent dance. Her face grew wary.
Before the abbess could speak again, a powerful blast of wind ripped into the chamber and sent her veil snapping across her face, temporarily blinding her. Athaya laughed merrily, while the abbess muttered her displeasure at the indignity and glared at the open window as if to scold the winds for their lack of courtesy. Then she furrowed her brows, noticing how quickly the color of the sky was changing. Less than an hour ago, the shoreline of the Isle of Sare had been clearly visible across the channel; now, heavy gray clouds blanketed the horizon and cloaked the nearby island from sight. The air had grown markedly colder, and a greenish glow from the west warned of an approaching storm — a common enough occurrence in northwest Caithe during August, but potentially deadly all the same.
"Come, let me close these shutters," the abbess said placatingly, as if addressing a rebellious child. "There's a storm blowing in."
Her fingers had barely touched the shutter when Athaya's arm whipped out and viciously slapped them back. "No!" she shouted, baring teeth. "The wind ... it speaks to me in its howling. It tells me I'm alive."
The abbess opened her mouth to protest, but hastily clamped it shut again upon seeing the murderous look in Athaya's eyes. Nothing would be gained by forcing a confrontation. Retreating a few steps, the abbess folded her hands inside her sleeves and regarded Athaya intently, and with more than a little dread. The princess was impossible to read at times like this; each of her words and gestures was like a flash of lightning without an ensuing roll of thunder to warn how close the danger was, lending no clue as to whether the storm was approaching or receding.
"Are you in pain today, your Highness?"
The question took Athaya by surprise. Her angry facade wavered, blue eyes pleading in silent supplication. Yes ... such pain! Make it stop ... please, help me make it stop!
"There's no need to hide it from us, Athaya," the abbess went on, careful to make no sudden movements toward her skittish charge. "We know that you are in great agony. We have known it for some time. But we also know how to relieve you, if you would only allow it."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Sage of Sare"
by .
Copyright © 1992 Julie Dean Smith.
Excerpted by permission of Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc..
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