The diminutive figure of the halfling, clad in an elegant blue waistcoat and shiny, high-topped black boots, waved enthusiastically from the wharf. As the skilled northmen crew, with a few strokes of the oars, brought the vessel bumping gently against the dock, the Lord Mayor Pawldo of Lowhill, longtime friend of the Kendrick family, rushed up to the princess and embraced her. Alicia bravely tried not to cry, but this was the first time she had seen her old friend since her father's death. She couldn't bear the embrace of the halfling, such a great companion of her father's, without shedding tears of grief.
"There, there, child," whispered Pawldo, and for a brief moment, Alicia felt like a little girl. The strength of his shoulder to cry on was a great relief.
But in another moment, she stepped back and wiped her eyes. Pawldo gave her a hand as she stepped up from the hull onto the dock, and again she was a High Princess, returned to the town of her family's clan.
The Ffolk were not a great people to observe formality and ceremony, so there was no turnout of the castle guard or any such display at the wharf. Earl Randolph was present, however, and he quickly joined Pawldo in greeting Alicia and her party.
The earl had been a young captain who fought for King Kendrick twenty years earlier, in the Darkwalker War. When Tristan went to rule in Callidyrr, he appointed the loyal warrior as seneschal in Corwell, and later made him an earl. Now Randolph's eyes, too, were moist as he bowed to the princess. She introduced her companions as they climbed from the Coho's shallow hull.
"Do you recall young Hanrald Blackstone?" she asked Randolph. "Now the Earl of Fairheight?" Hanrald bowed formally, then extended a hand to his fellow earl.
"Indeed-your service to our lady princess has been well told by the bards!" proclaimed Randolph. "It is an honor to have you as my guest."
"And Brandon Olafsson, Prince of Gnarhelm," continued Alicia. "He provides us with the fast transport-and more, for without his aid, we would not have broken the thrall of the Stormbringer."
"King Kendrick has done our people a lasting service when he made peace with the northmen," said Randolph, bowing with easy grace to the prince. "My honor is doubled to have such an esteemed ally as another guest!"
Brandon flushed in embarrassment. Such niceties of diplomacy always discomfited him. "Well, thank you," he finally remembered to say. "And the transportation might have been faster," he reminded Alicia, "if we'd had the use of my own Gullwing."
The prince's eyes swept the horizon wistfully, as if he expected that proud longship, sunk by the tempest of Talos the Stormbringer, to come sailing toward them. Alicia knew that one of Brandon's countrymen had willingly given him use of the Coho, but the love he had felt for his own vessel was clearly lacking with the new longship.
"Your mother will arrive soon?" inquired Earl Randolph, drawing Alicia's attention.
"Yes. She rides the wind now, as she did when she was younger. The love of the Earthmother, I think, is the only thing that lifts her spirits."
"And your sister?" inquired Randolph, with a meaningful look along the hull of the longship. The rest of the crew, longhaired northmen sailors to the last unshaven face, stared back. It was quite obvious that Princess Deirdre was not present.
"She, too, arrives under powers other than sail," Alicia said, mildly irritated at the thought of Deirdre's icy arrogance when she had declined Brandon's invitation to sail on the Coho. Her younger sister's dalliance with magic seemed to Alicia to be a vexing pastime. It annoyed her that Deirdre planned to teleport from Alaron to Gwynneth. Still, Alicia had trouble understanding the stark concern that others, notably Keane and Robyn, had expressed about Deirdre's mysterious powers.
"Many of the lords have gathered," noted the earl, pointing to the field full of colorful tents that lay between the town and the castle. Different banners flew from many, and at first glance, Alicia saw the boar of Lord Koart and the unicorn of Dynnatt, two of the local cantrevs. Farther away streamed the white banner of King Truac of Snowdown. Soon all the lords and kings of the Ffolk would be gathered for the High Queen's court.
And above the field rose Caer Corwell, with its partially completed stone wall joining the wooden palisade. The towers of the keep rose beyond the wall, and the whole structure crowded the steep-sided knoll that placed it in command of all the ground for miles in every direction.
Suddenly the little castle seemed like home to her-a home she missed very much. Though she had spent most of her life living in Caer Callidyrr, her time in Corwell had included many idyllic summers. Now, as that season came once again to the Moonshaes, she wanted nothing quite so much as to pass through those great doors and enter the cooling shelter of the family hall.
Talos the Stormbringer, god of maelstrom and cyclone, deity of destruction and chaos, brooded malevolently as he pondered his lust for revenge. A monstrously powerful god, Talos was not used to frustration, yet a short while ago, when he had thought that he stood at the brink of his mightiest accomplishment, he had instead suffered the greatest defeat in a long and combative existence.
The crux of his hatred, and his defeat, was the island group called the Moonshaes and the people known as the Ffolk. These enchanted isles were places of sublime and ancient power, but power that had of late drifted in a vacuum. A yawning space had beckoned the Destructor like a bottomless pit, urging his own claim to the lands and seas.
And so Talos had sent Coss-Axell-Sinioth, his most trusted servant, a vile being of corrupt origins and deepest evil, to plant the seeds of war in the land. Talos also enlisted the aid of undersea minions, the sahuagin-ravenous predators, ever eager to serve his cause. The most faithful of these was the king of the fishmen, Sythissal.
Aided by the fierce and bloodthirsty sahuagin, the forces of evil had assailed the Moonshaes. Talos quickly neared complete mastery of the isles. Only the tattered remnants of a dying faith and a dead goddess had stood in his path.
But then those remnants had flared to life. The goddess Earthmother, hallowed mistress of the Moonshaes, surged into the world from an absence that had been perilously near, but not quite, permanent. The goddess reborn infused the land with vitality, and Sinioth, the agent of Talos, had been banished to a nether plane.
There, in the few short weeks that had passed, the avatar of evil had suffered what seemed to be an infinity of torture and suffering, punishment for his failure, meted out to him by his dark master. Now, however, Talos summoned Sinioth to face him. The avatar appeared immediately, assuming the body of a withered old man as he stood trembling beneath the wrath of his awful god.
"Coss-Axell-Sinioth! You failed me once. Do you dare attempt my works again?"
"Please, Master, I beg for a chance to redeem myself!" wheezed the frail form, his voice tremulous.
"Dare I trust you?"
"I beseech you, O Mighty One, allow the chance to prove my worth! It is true that I failed to succeed in your name and deserve nothing more than your immortal scorn, your disgust and loathing! But remember, O Master!" — here the voice became more courageous, wheedling persuasively-"I planted the tool, the mirror of scrying, that still allows you to witness the world, to spy on your enemies!"
"Bah!" snorted Talos haughtily. "I have seen naught of that glass!"
"Time, O Great One … it will take only a short time, I am certain, before the Kendrick princess discovers it. She will cherish the mirror, Master, and through it, you will see all that she beholds! She will give you a window into the lives of your greatest enemies!"
"You may speak the truth," mused the god, considering the possibility that this time Sinioth's plan would succeed. Talos also had another source of good fortune-a piece of luck that encouraged him to quickly reenter the fray.