Crown of Destiny

by Bertrice Small

  She was his family. Not like their father dying painfully, helplessly and slowly in his captivity. Not like his twin brother, still looking about the small enclosure he shared with their sire for a way to escape so he might drink himself to death while taking pleasures and causing havoc within the Dark Lands and beyond. Not like his beautiful and powerful mother, who had never loved him. Nay, none of them were family. But Marzina was, and he wanted her. Nyura would enjoy her companionship for the serving women would not suffice. And Marzina would help him raise his heir. She would be charmingly and foolishly fond of the boy, as she should be. As he had never been doted upon.

  And the promise he had casually made to his mother to leave Marzina to her? Kolgrim laughed aloud. His mother should certainly know from her own personal experience that Twilight Lords did as they pleased, not as others wanted. So he would not underestimate Lara. She would be on her guard against him. He smiled. But he would have Marzina, her powers, and in time his mother’s powers. No one could defeat him. Not now! And he laughed aloud once more.

  LARA SHIVERED. HER WHOLE body had suddenly gone cold, and she grew pale.

  “What is it?” Kaliq, who lay next to her in their bed, asked, concerned.

  “I don’t know,” Lara replied. “It was if something dark and icy washed over me. Kolgrim does not mean to keep his promise to me, Kaliq. About Marzina. I know he wants her to remain here with him as he brings the darkness into our world. And I don’t know if I can stop him.” She looked surprised by her own words. “Oh, Kaliq, I really don’t know if I can keep Kolgrim from taking Marzina into his power!”

  “It isn’t up to you now, my love. Marzina for all her girlish appearance is a woman long grown. She lives in her own castle and conducts her life as she wishes,” Kaliq said in soothing tones. “You have done your best by her. Your mother and I have done our best, too. She has her own fate, her own destiny. You cannot help or save her from whatever lies ahead. You have to concentrate on what you must do. There is naught left for the magic here in the world of Hetar.”

  “Anoush, Zagiri, Taj, my three mortal children are all long dead to me, Kaliq. All I have left is Marzina,” Lara said. “Dillon rules Belmair with Cinnia. I have nothing to do with their lives. I just have Marzina.”

  “And Kolgrim,” he reminded her.

  “Kolgrim is his father’s son,” Lara replied bitterly, “and Kol would be proud of him, for he is evil like his father. Charming as Kol was, but even more evil.”

  “You cannot change him, or save him,” Kaliq said patiently. “He is what he was meant to be, but he has a weakness.”

  “Kolgrim? Weak?” Lara looked dubious.

  “He is half-faerie, my love, with just the tiniest touch of mortal blood in his veins. And that is his weakness. He will bring the darkness to Hetar, but it is his son who will be far more dangerous, for in Kolgrim’s son the blood of Usi runs twice as thick because of Nyura’s ancestry,” Kaliq explained.

  “But if we could prevent Nyura from conceiving,” Lara said hopefully, “then perhaps we could foil Kolgrim.”

  “The Book of Rule has ordained that she is his mate. Once it was believed it was Ciarda, but Ciarda failed because the magic of the Shadow Princes caused her to fail. We bought Hetar what time we could after the Hierarch departed so they might improve themselves, yet they did not progress, falling back instead into their old ways. If Hetar is to ever rise again it must fall into the darkness completely, and suffer the consequences of its failures,” Kaliq explained to Lara. “Until mortals can learn from their errors they will always be doomed to end in the darkness. They are intelligent creatures, and yet their egos overcome them more times than not. Still, I have hope for them. This world is not the only world they inhabit. Their race is spread throughout the Cosmos, my love.”

  “Are they any better in those other worlds?” Lara asked him.

  He nodded. “Aye, in some worlds they have progressed, but in others they have not. And there are a few I am told by others of my kind where they are even worse than Hetar,” Kaliq said. “I do not want you to grieve for Hetar, Lara. Like you, it has its own destiny. For a time your destinies were joined. They are now severed, and you must move on with me.”

  “When?” she asked him.

  “We have a little time left here,” he replied. “It is up to the Shadow Princes to oversee the evacuation of the magic from Hetar. Kolgrim will not stop us for without other magic his becomes supreme.”

  “Marzina must leave Hetar, Kaliq. Please help me in this. I do not want to control my daughter’s life, but you know how rash and incautious she can be. And Kolgrim means to keep her here. He wants her magic for himself. I know it!” Lara looked distraught as she spoke.

  “Let me speak with her, my love. You know that as much as she loves you, you chafe her,” the Shadow Prince said gently.

  Lara laughed. “You do not have to tell me what I already know, my lord.”

  Kaliq chuckled. “Go and visit your mother before the forest is emptied of faerie magic,” he suggested to her. “It will probably be the last chance you get.”

  Lara nodded. “I will go today,” she said.

  He wrapped his arms about her, and they made tender love to one another. Their passion, while heated, was comforting and familiar. They stroked each other’s bodies. They kissed long deep kisses until they were both dizzy. And when they finally came together the pleasures they took from each other were sublime. They lay together afterward in a sweet stupor, until finally Lara took the initiative and rose from the bed.

  Kaliq lay watching her as she bathed herself in a basin. He loved her body, and always had. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. She dressed herself in a simple loose gown of green, belting it with a twisted silver cord, plaiting her golden hair afterward into a single braid.

  When she had finished she came to the bed, bent and kissed his sensuous mouth. “Are you awake now?” she asked him softly.

  “How could I not be, having watched you bathe and dress. You gave me a lovely entertainment this morning, my love,” Kaliq told her.

  “I will return in a few days,” Lara told him, “but if you need me, you know where I am, my lord.” Then she kissed him again, and turning, she opened a Golden tunnel and hurried into it. The tunnel closed quickly behind her.

  He would miss her, but her absence would give him an opportunity to speak with Marzina alone. He would visit her at her home in the forested mountains. Marzina was less apt to feel the pressure he meant to bring to bear upon her in her own personal environment. He could give Lara the closure she was going to need with Marzina without interfering with the beautiful faerie girl’s own fate. Arising from the warm bed they had been sharing, the Shadow Prince walked from Lara’s apartment across their shared garden to his own quarters, where his servants were waiting to help him bathe and dress for the day. There would be a breakfast set out beneath the portico in the garden when he was ready for it. He disliked eating alone these days for he had grown so used to having Lara with him. He wondered how her visit with Ilona would go.

  LARA HAD EXITED THE GOLDEN tunnel into her mother’s private day room. Ilona was seated in a cushioned window seat looking out into her forest. Lara walked over to her, kissed the faerie queen’s rosy cheek and sat next to her in silence for the next few minutes. Finally the Queen of the Forest faeries spoke.

  “Do you know how many centuries I have looked out these very windows into my forest? Four and a half,” she continued, answering her own question. “It pains me that I must leave, but there is no choice. Our race cannot survive in the darkness. We need the light of the stars, the moon, the long days of sunlight.”

  “I’m sorry I have brought this upon you,” Lara said.

  “Nay, nay,” Ilona quickly protested. “If Hetar had been able to change, no Twilight Lord could have brought this upon us. It is the fault of those damned mortals!”

  Lara laughed softly. “Will you take Dillon’s offer, and relocate to Be
lmair, Mother? Moving away from the familiar and comfortable is difficult, but Beltran is a beautiful province filled with forests. I believe you could be happy there.”

  “Aye, we will take Dillon’s offer, but we shall also seek out another world eventually, where it will not be known that we reside. You know we Faerie folk like our privacy. We do not like mortals to be aware of us. Gwener has already located her people, the Meadow faeries, in Beldane. Annan has chosen Belbuoy, for it has several fine rivers and many streams for his Water Faeries. King Laszlo likes the mountains of Belia for his Mountain Faeries. It is all a great inconvenience, Lara, but it was bound to come sooner than later. Has the wedding been celebrated? What a word to describe the marriage of a Twilight Lord who will bring the darkness upon us.” She laughed wryly.

  “Kaliq said you are overseeing the evacuation of all the magic folk,” Lara said.

  “Aye, I am, and a difficult task it is, I want to tell you. Finding homes, if even temporary ones, for elves, gnomes, giants ad infinitum is not a simple task. The mountain gnomes in the Emerald Mountains have decided they will remain. Gulltop speaks for both the Ore and the Jewel gnomes now. He says they are few, and old. They are used to the darkness, but will disappear into the mountainsides until the light comes again. They will not labor for the Twilight Lord.”

  “The light will come again, Mother?”

  “Oh, Lara, the light cannot be extinguished entirely. Even in the darkness there is always a small flicker of it somewhere. And eventually that flicker will grow and grow until the darkness is pushed back into the Dark Lands, and the light rules again,” Ilona said to her daughter.

  “Then why must we leave?” Lara wanted to know. “Could we not hide like the gnomes of the Emerald Mountains?”

  “Oh, my darling,” Ilona said. “It will be centuries before that happens. Once the darkness takes hold of a world it is difficult to overcome it. Gnomes, used to living in their tunnels, can survive that time. We of the other magic races cannot. We need the light if we are to thrive. All the good magic there is in Hetar must leave it.”

  “Kaliq said he knows my destiny, but he will not tell me,” Lara said to her mother.

  Ilona laughed. “He probably does,” she said.

  “He says we are to be together, for now our destinies are one,” Lara continued.

  “Does he?” Ilona wasn’t surprised. Kaliq had always loved her daughter, and would of course share whatever destiny Lara had. “You are fortunate in your life mate, my daughter. He is the greatest of the Shadow Princes, next to old Cronan.”

  The door to the chamber opened, and a slender young girl entered. “Aunt Lara! How wonderful to see you again! Will you be coming with us to Belmair?”

  “I imagine I will,” Lara said. “I am certain your mother is glad you are returning home, Parvanah.”

  “I suppose so,” Parvanah said, shrugging. Parvanah was the daughter of Lara’s brother, Prince Cirillo and his wife, the Great Dragon of Belmair, Nidhug. And she was her grandmother’s heiress after her father.

  Cirillo and Nidhug had left an egg to hatch in the dragon’s nursery cave in the mountainous province of Belia well over a century ago. The dragon that would hatch from it, a young male, would one day take his mother’s place as Belmair’s Great Dragon. The Queen of the Forest Faeries had finally and reluctantly accepted the fact that her only son and heir loved the female dragon. But she was distraught when he could not seem to settle upon a faerie maid to create an heir who would follow him as ruler of the Forest Faeries once his mother was gone. And then one day Nidhug had told her lover that she was about to lay another egg. They had both been surprised for the egg in the mountain nursery was destined to follow Nidhug. There should have been no others.

  But the dragon could not restrain herself, and she laid this new egg upon their bed. It was pale pink imprinted with deeper pink roses. And it was smaller than her other egg. Both Nidhug and Cirillo watched in astonishment as the egg cracked itself open and within the shell lay a tiny female faerie infant waving its dainty fists and cooing. Ilona was called immediately. She examined the child carefully and pronounced, “She is pure faerie, although I don’t know how this is possible. Look on her back. Do you see the wing buds?” And then Ilona named her granddaughter Parvanah, telling Cirillo, “She will follow you and one day be Queen of the Forest Faeries.”

  Now fourteen, Parvanah was a perfect Forest faerie in appearance but for her eyes, which were like her dragon mother’s, dark with gold-and-silver swirls and thick purple eyelashes. She bowed to Ilona. “The evacuation of the Meadow, Water and Mountain Faeries is now complete, Grandmother. I have sent our soldiers into those areas to make certain that no one was left behind. The areas are clear now. The returning guards said you could feel the loneliness. Isn’t it sad?”

  “Aye,” Ilona said quietly. “It is indeed sad. It would appear, my daughter, that you have come to the forest just in time. Tomorrow our own people will begin their departure. We are through with Hetar.”

  13

  “I KNOW THIS IS HOW IT MUST BE,” LARA SAID, “BUT I am still unhappy over it.”

  “We will revisit our history in the forest tomorrow,” Ilona said. “It is important that we say our goodbyes. And you will see how low the Forest Lords have fallen.”

  “I don’t know if I want to revisit that particular place or time,” Lara said.

  “Nay,” her mother replied. “You must. Do not fear. They will not see us or even know we are there.”

  “Why don’t you like the Forest Lords, Aunt Lara?” Parvanah asked.

  “I will tell you one day in the hall of your kinsman, King Dillon,” Lara promised the girl. “It is an unhappy tale.”

  “But you had a happy ending,” Parvanah said. “Prince Kaliq,” she sighed, “is a delicious man, aunt. To have such a life mate is surely wonderful!”

  Lara thought a moment, and then she laughed. “Aye, it is wonderful to have such a life mate, my love. Thank you for reminding me.”

  “Let us have our meal now, and rest,” Ilona said. “Tomorrow will be a trying day for both of us, my daughter. Parvanah, you have done well. Tomorrow you will oversee the departure of our elves, brownies and the few gnomes who will go. Run along now, dear.”

  Parvanah curtsied prettily to her grandmother and her aunt as she left them.

  “Will any of the gnomes leave?” Lara asked curious. “I thought they chose to remain, Mother. Gulltop speaks for them all now, and he isn’t one to change his mind easily.”

  “Aye, the youngest among them, males and the few females young enough to still breed will leave Hetar. They are not a large race, and so I have suggested this in order that their kind not be lost. There are few gnomes on the other worlds, and their skill at finding ores and jewels is quite special. I have spoken myself with Gulltop on this matter. It was not an easy negotiation, mind you. He is almost ten centuries old, and not easily persuaded any longer, if he ever was. But I was finally able to convince him of the wisdom of sending some of his people with us by pointing out we could not know how long the darkness would last. If it held Hetar captive for too long his younger gnomes would be too old to breed, and their race would certainly die out. That he understood. And so those five centuries and younger will come with us.”

  “You look tired, Mother,” Lara said.

  “I am,” Ilona admitted. “This has been a terrible undertaking for me, and for Thanos. Your stepfather has exhausted himself seeing that the rare species of flora and fauna native to Hetar are removed to Belmair that they may continue to propagate. Too much darkness will kill much of what exists upon this world, for an endless Icy Season will set in. But let us not speak anymore on so unpleasant a subject.” Ilona waved her hands over the low table before them, producing two plates of faerie bread and cups of forest berry frine. She sighed, reaching for the faerie bread and tearing off a chunk. “I am ravenous of late with all this work. Umm! Roasted meat!”

  “Mine is capon,” Lara replied. �
��I do love faerie bread, Mother! I adore that it can be anything you want it to be.”

  When they had finished eating, they slept side by side on Ilona’s great bed. Lara awakened once during the night to find the moonlight streaming into the chamber across the bed. She arose and went to look out into the forest, seeing a small herd of does led by a great antlered buck grazing in the clearing of grass outside. Sadness overwhelmed her. The last Autumn would come soon, and then the Icy Season would be upon Hetar. But no spring would follow it. Eventually, much of what had been Hetar, mortal beings, creatures, the land, would suffer and die, or be changed forever. What would Kolgrim do when he had nothing but a dead world to rule? Or would he find a way of keeping his subjects alive, and at his mercy? And would the light come to Hetar again one day as Kaliq and her mother insisted it must? The tears began to slip down her face as Lara returned to the bed, sleeping fitfully until the dawn broke.

  Ilona was up first. She magicked a bowl of faerie bread for herself. This morning it tasted like roasted apples and porridge with a hint of sweet cinnamon. She saw the dried tears on the beautiful face so like her own. Lara had wept in the night, and briefly Ilona’s cold faerie heart felt sympathy for her firstborn child. One of the reasons Lara had been born was to save Hetar. The fact that she had been unable to weighed heavily upon her, for she did not quite understand that the magic world had always considered her success unlikely. They had planned a far greater destiny for her, which she would soon learn. Finished eating, Ilona arose and shook Lara awake. “Magick yourself something to eat so we may be on our way. We have much history to visit today,” the beautiful queen of the Forest Faeries told her now-half-awake daughter.

  Like a child, Lara did as she was bid while Ilona sent for Parvanah, and gave her her instructions for the day.

  When Parvanah had gone off, Lara asked her mother, “Why did you not ask Marzina to take on these tasks?”