With the sunrise of the next morning, a long procession made its mournful way to the western mountain on which Pravik rested to lay to rest all who had given their lives in the battle. They passed by the reaching hands of the Guardian Bridge and through the gates of the city to the hillside. Maggie walked with one hand on Jerome’s coffin, and Huss walked on the other side. The line of coffins stretched far ahead of them, each one carried on a small wagon pulled by farm horses and ponies. It stretched down the high hill to a valley where open graves waited.
At the head of the line the Ploughman walked. His cloak was torn and his face streaked with ashes as a sign of mourning. Libuse walked by his side, a broken spear cradled in her arms. Around the splintered handle was twisted the silver thread of the Huntsman.
Behind them came the widows and mothers and children of the men who had fallen. They wept loudly as they walked. Then came the men, rebel soldiers and villagers and farmers who had come to the new freedom of Pravik. They marched grimly and silently.
Pat was behind them on crutches, and Mrs. Cook walked beside her with one arm around Virginia’s waist. Virginia had been found in the road by villagers on their way to the city. Her skin was dark with soot and her lips cracked and bleeding, but there was a power about her that made even her friends a little afraid. She would not say where Lord Robert had gone, but all understood he was not coming back.
Nicolas was missing from the procession. He had left the city unnoticed in the commotion that followed the battle. He had come to Maggie first, while she kept vigilance beside Jerome’s open coffin.
“I’m sorry, Maggie,” he had said, faltering. “He was a brave man.”
Maggie had not answered.
“Anyway, I’ll be going,” Nicolas had said, his tone deliberately light.
Maggie had turned with tear-filled eyes, but Nicolas was already nearly out the door. At the last minute he had turned and looked at her, and she had heard anguish in his voice.
“He loved you very much,” Nicolas told her. “I heard the love in his heart. It was beautiful.”
And then he was gone. “He will be back,” Huss had said when she told him.
“You sound very sure.”
“The world is taking sides,” Huss had said. “Soon even the most determined wanderers will have to make a choice. And I am sure I know what side he will choose to take.”
The long procession reached the bottom of the hill. The men came and lifted the coffins, laying them on the ground beside the open graves. High on the hill behind them Pravik stood mournful watch, and the wind sighed up and down the sides of the valley.
Maggie stood near Jerome’s coffin as the Ploughman stood in the midst of his people and spoke of the battle and the courage of those who had fought. More, he spoke of the future, in which their toils would be rewarded. A future in which Athrom would hear them and they would be free.
Libuse spoke also, of days gone by, and of the faded glory of the Eastern Lands which once more was beginning to shine. “In the Hall of Kings there does not lay one man of more worth than we lay to rest here today,” she said. “This day we say farewell to the truest sons of the East.”
At the last Huss stood and spoke a blessing over the burial grounds, a blessing pronounced in the name of the King. Maggie stood and sang her lament once more.
Finally the last moment came. Maggie’s eyes clouded with tears as the men came and began to lower the coffins into the ground. She stayed near as they took up the body of Jerome, and her eyes widened. A large white seabird flew down and perched on top of the coffin. It smiled at her with knowing eyes and bobbed its head once. Then it spread its wide wings and soared away.
Maggie watched it go, and she called after it. The bird bore her last farewell along with it to the southern sea.
* * *
That night Maggie ate for the first time since the battle had ended. She sat on a cushioned seat near the fire in the house of Libuse and let her eyes trace the outlines of the faces that sat at the table with her. The Ploughman and Libuse; Mrs. Cook and Pat; Huss and Virginia. They were a strange little company, Maggie thought, but a smile came to her as she reflected that they were no stranger than another council that had met, forty years ago, to dream dreams that would lead to this day.
Pravik was taken, but the battle was not over. Athrom would not hear them yet. Even now High Police were marching from Athrom. The Emperor roared in his den, eager to avenge the death of his Overlord and teach the rebels a lesson. In the city, the people were moving underground. The tunnels through which Maggie had run from the guards what seemed like an eternity ago were only one level of a great web of tunnels and caverns that led deep down into the rocky foundations of the city. The High Police would find nothing but mystery when they arrived.
Soon they would go, too, but the little company wished to eat one last meal above the ground. In a way it seemed that they were still sitting in the old Pravik: the Pravik where Libuse had longed for the days of her ancestors; where the Ploughman had lost his brother in a riot sparked by hopelessness; where Huss had battled the Empire by teaching secret truths to all who would listen. It was the Pravik where the old Maggie still lived, the Maggie who had ridden over the Guardian Bridge with Nicolas and shivered at the sight of the pleading statues, before love and truth and song had changed her forever.
But it was not the old Pravik any longer, no matter what illusions and memories the night whispered to them. When Maggie took Huss’s arm that night and left the house of Libuse, she stepped into a new world.
THE END
The Seventh World Trilogy continues in Book 2: Burning Light
Click here: https://www.rachelstarrthomson.com/burning-light-list-optin/
A Note from the Author:
Thanks for reading! I’m honoured that you took the time to delve into my world with me. I’d love to connect with you‒you can find me at Facebook.com/RachelStarrThomsonWriter or on Twitter @writerstarr.
My website, www.rachelstarrthomson.com, lists all of my other novels, short stories, and nonfiction. You’re cordially invited to come by! You’ll also find buy links, a blog, and usually something free to read.
Finally, if you enjoyed this book enough to tell others about it, would you consider leaving a review at the retailer where you got it? I’d appreciate it a whole lot.
Stan Lee always said it best: Higher!
Rachel Starr Thomson
Burning Light
Prologue
A preview
It was cold in the shadow of the pine trees. The moon was shining, but only a few brave slivers of light found their way through the woven canopy of long green needles to the bank of the stream where Nicolas Fisher sat. The air smelled of heavy snow, the first of the year in Galce—a thick, swirling snow that blew down from Fjordland in the far north and swallowed the world in white.
Nicolas was watching the water.
He had not been watching it long. For hours he had listened to it running over rock while he thought of other things, other places; of a black river in the City of Bridges, of a girl he loved, who was still there.
He thought of these things, and breathed the air that had lately drifted over the northern mountains, and he was not sure when he noticed that the water was running uphill. Yet noticed it he had, and now he could not take his eyes from the sight of it, black and silver in the moonlight, calmly doing what it could not do.
He reached down, touched it, and jerked his hand back. The water was warm. Its warmth ran up through his fingers, into his hands and arms, and his skin tingled.
It was then that he heard the voice.
He heard it first as a barely perceptible change in the water’s flow. A deepening—then a shimmering echo as though something had cried out far away, and the stream had carried the musical cry up into the forests of Galce.
As Nicolas listened, the echo became a whisper, and then a call.
Come for me, the voice said. I am the prisoner River-Daugh
ter, yearning to be free. Come for me. Set me free.
He closed his eyes while the words swirled through his mind. Another voice mixed with the first—a young man’s voice. His own. It repeated the words urgently before the running of water drowned it out. Come for me. Set me free.
“Where?” Nicolas asked, the sound barely escaping his lips.
Follow the stream, the shimmering whisper answered.
A moment later the deepening became shallow again. The whisper was gone, and with it the echo. The stream was running downhill, as though it were a normal stream without any voice beyond that of rapids rushing over mossy stone.
Nicolas stayed by the stream for a little longer. The form of a great black bear melted out of the pines and stood by him, snuffling. Nicolas stood and stretched his legs. He buried one hand in the fur of Bear’s neck.
He said nothing, but together they started to walk. Downstream.
And the snow began to fall.
Finish reading Burning Light!
Worlds Unseen Page 26
