David Dalglish - Wrath of Lions

Ceredon showed it to the rebel.

“This could have been you,” he said. “I hope you appreciate the gift I gave you.”

“But…why?” the elf asked.

“Because I wanted to,” he answered. “Now not another word-just listen. Tell your people you have a friend within the Quellan. Tell them I will protect as many as I can so long as I am able, but never say my name, if you know it. Should that happen, your only ally will be lost. Do you understand?”

The rebel nodded.

“Good. Now leave.”

The elf, wide eyed, finally lowered his bow. He twirled around and darted between the trees, disappearing into the dark recesses of the forest. Ceredon watched until he could no longer see the rebel’s outline, then stood, rolled his shoulders, and licked blood from his lips. His face and neck were sore from the beating Teradon had laid on him, but he was otherwise in one piece. He lifted the severed head, stared at the empty eyes for a moment, and then broke into a light jog.

It wasn’t long before he ran across the scene of a massacre, stepping into a small clearing to find a battalion of ten rangers of the Ekreissar surrounding a heap of headless corpses. The heads were stacked in their own pile a few feet away. Aerland Shen, the chief ranger, stood in the center of the carnage. His tight-fitting armor, made from the black scales of swamp lizards and waxed to a sheen, glistened in the meager blue light. He held his two great swords, Salvation and Condemnation, out wide. Both blades dripped blood by the cupful.

Aerland’s head was huge and nearly square, and his wide set eyes flicked in Ceredon’s direction when he emerged from the thicket around the clearing.

“Master Ceredon,” the chief ranger said, his speech slow and deliberate, his tone deep like a grunting bullfrog. “Where have you been? You were supposed to be with us.”

Ceredon reared back and tossed the head he’d hacked from the rebel’s corpse. It bounced twice and rolled, coming to a stop at Shen’s feet.

“I heard fighting,” he said, “so I followed it. The advance party fell under attack by a group of insurgents. I arrived too late to save your rangers, but I was able to kill two of the traitorous bastards before they fled.”

“Rebels succeeded in killing my men?”

“Yes. They were taken unawares.”

“Yet you live.”

Ceredon shrugged.

“Both were wounded, and this time I was the one doing the ambushing.”

The chief ranger grunted, cocked his head, and deliberately sheathed one of his two frightening swords.

“Do not run off again, Master Ceredon. You are under my protection while we patrol. Should you fall prey to the insurgents, the Neyvar will make sure it’s my head on that pile.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Ceredon said, “I am under your protection, but not your orders, Chief Shen. Should you have a problem with that, you can take it up with my father.”

Shen pointed the other sword at him and then slid it into the scabbard on his back beside its twin.

“Watch the way you speak, young prince,” he said.

The Ekreissar went about clearing the area. A group of twelve Dezren was summoned with six flat carts, onto which they slung the corpses of their renegade brothers. Ceredon tried to appear untroubled though he raged on the inside. These elves were cousins to his kind, two races created by the hands of the same goddess. Yet now the Quellan were considered the Dezren’s betters. Any Dezren elf who refused to bow before the Neyvar was thrown into the dungeons beneath Palace Thyne. The populace lived in fear, knowing that the slightest word might be taken as an offense worthy of execution.

He had argued vehemently with his father when he first caught wind of the plot to occupy the city. The Neyvar had chastised him and then locked him in his chambers for days without food. In the end, Ceredon had yielded. If he were to save these people, he would do it from the inside, with the support of an entire nation at his back.

His first act had been to free the Dezren of Stonewood from their cages, allowing them to flee the emerald city, and it was Aullienna Meln’s face he saw on the body of each dead elven girl that was carted past the palace gates. He wondered how she was, whether she were safe. He dreamed almost every night of the precocious young princess who had become like a sister to him.

For you, Aullienna, he thought. I do this for you.

As well as for yourself, his conscience corrected. He could not justify the cruelty he’d witnessed. His father was wrong if he thought he could belittle the populace into submission. The rebellion was proof of that.

The Dezren threw the last body on the carts and then collected the severed heads. With a crack of whips, they rolled down the path back toward the city. The Ekreissar followed, forming two equal lines, with Chief Shen in the lead. Ceredon lagged behind, looking at the darkened treetops one last time. He swore he saw the twinkling of eyes among the branches. He lifted his hand and made a fist, his thumb and pinky finger outstretched to either side in the Dezren gesture of unity. If there were indeed any rebels hiding up there, he hoped they saw him. And understood.

Palace Thyne was an immense structure of pure emerald, its spire rising two hundred feet into the air. Ceredon tramped up the steps leading inside, gladly leaving the gloomy afternoon behind. His head pounded from lack of sleep, and his jaw still ached from his clash with Teradon. The spiced tea and wickroot he’d taken to alleviate the pain had not yet performed its magic.

He passed by the Chamber of Assembly, a massive space that functioned as a throne room in a land without a king. Pausing, he glanced inside to see Lord Orden and Lady Phyrra Thyne kneeling before the giant statue of Celestia that dominated the rear pulpit. Their backs were to him, their heads bowed in prayer. He felt conflicted just looking at them. The Thynes had betrayed their own people by allowing his father to tramp over the populace and imprison whomever he wished.

Stop it, Ceredon thought. You cannot be too harsh on them. It was true. It wasn’t their fault they had been taken off-guard by a gesture of friendship veiling a darker purpose.

Lord Orden cleared his throat, and when his head swiveled around, Ceredon hurried out of view. He continued down the hall, made of solid gemstone, until he reached the entrance to the main stairwell. Deckland, a member of his father’s personal guard, bowed and stepped aside so he could enter.

It was a long climb up the fifteen flights of steps to the palace solarium. The sun-filled space was a tall and slender room, its walls smooth and shimmering green, filled with furniture crafted by centuries of talented Dezren hands. His father had once told him that all that remained of the history and glory of Kal’droth, the former home of the Quellan and Dezren before Celestia split the land in preparation for the coming of man, resided in this very place.

Neyvar Ruven Sinistel sat in a high-backed ivory chair positioned before the southwest-facing window, allowing the Neyvar a view of both the immense clearing in which the palace and supporting buildings were situated and the forest city beyond. His father’s long white hair was loose over his shoulders, so long it reached his waist. His flesh was as smooth and flawless as Ceredon’s own.

“Son, I’m glad you have come,” said the Neyvar, his eyes still gazing out the window.

Ceredon approached the chair and knelt beside it. “Why did you call, Father?” he asked.

The Neyvar tilted his head to the side, gazing on him with forceful gray-green eyes.

“I was told you broke etiquette early this morning. You left those meant to protect you.”