The Crescents Read online

  The Crescents

  Joseph R. Lallo

  2007 © Joseph R. Lallo

  Cover by Nick Deligaris

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  From the Author

  Prologue

  The sun had only just risen. It had yet to chase the cold of night away. That was for the best. This close to the desert, it didn’t take long for the heat of day to become punishing. Best to get to the shore quickly and start fishing. Dillydallying only meant traveling under the baking sun before finally reaching the relief of the cool breeze of the North Crescent Sea. And so he hopped onto his horse and set off toward the pier, where his fishing boat and the rest of his crew would be waiting.

  Blindol squinted at the sky, eying a cloud creeping toward the sun. He tried to will it there, to reduce the glare upon the white sand that made up the path. Sometimes he questioned why he’d moved away from the forest. The desert—even the very fringe of one—was no place for an elf. Indeed, neither was the sea—though of the two he preferred the waves. But then, that was the point, wasn’t it? So few of his countrymen had ventured beyond the isthmus and braved the wilds of North Crescent; every day of work here was worth a dozen back home. Fewer boats vying for fish, fewer suppliers for local markets. It was trouble, to be sure, but it was worth it.

  A long, dark form swept along the ground. He grinned; finally, a cloud was braving the sun. But no… When he looked to the sky, there was no counterpart anywhere near the sun. Moreover, the shadow moved too quickly to be a cloud. He tugged the reins of his horse and watched the mote of darkness flitting over the dunes of the desert that opened up like a sandy sea to the north. He shielded his eyes. A shifting, dancing distortion hung in the air above the dunes. It blurred and curled the view of anything near the surface of the sand. He couldn’t be sure, but there seemed to be little puffs of sand bursting into the air and wafting away in the wind.

  “You’re seeing things,” he muttered to himself.

  The shadow slid along until it was gone from view, but he couldn’t bring himself to resume his journey. Instead, he remained atop his horse and strained his vision. Scattered puffs of sand continued to erupt in the distance. They traced a path… the same path the shadow had followed.

  “Childish superstition,” he chided, shaking his head at the notion. “But it will bother me all day if I don’t see for myself.”

  The answer was a simple one. It was a herd or pack of some kind. The desert was home to any number of little scampering creatures. They were the same color as the sand, easy to miss at this distance. Those little puffs of sand were kicked up by desert hares, or perhaps those odd little foxes he’d seen about. All he had to do to set his mind at ease was find the tracks they’d left behind. After all, rare was the morning he didn’t spot trails crisscrossing the road to the pier. This was simply the first time he’d seen the creatures making one.

  He waited until he saw one of the puffs beside an isolated bit of scraggly desert grass. With it as a landmark, he could be sure he’d found the right spot. His horse snuffed irritably when he guided it from the packed path to the uneven sands, but it was only a short detour. In minutes he reached the grass and hopped down to investigate.

  “That’s… curious…”

  He knelt and scrutinized the ground. There were no tracks. If anything, there was the opposite of tracks. The sand was unnaturally smooth. The little dips and furrows dug by the breeze had yet to disturb the surface, though each gust shifted things a bit more naturally. If he’d been a minute or two later, the wind would have wiped away any semblance of the bizarre patch of sand, but for the moment it stretched forward like a neat little ribbon rolled across the desert. It traced a perfectly straight line, the same path the shadow had traced. And now that he stood upon that very path, he saw that it led directly to his own village in the distance.

  Whether it was childish or not, he didn’t think twice about what to do next. He climbed upon his horse and spurred it back toward his home. It was better to feel foolish and be certain of it than to feel wise and fear that he wasn’t.

  He kept his eyes on the village, barely visible through the rising heat. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the way. He could find his way to the pier and back with his eyes shut. But something deep in his soul demanded he not look away. He fixed his eyes upon the watchtower. It was right at the edge of the village, a short distance away. Each day one of the townspeople would climb the tower and watch for danger. Just yesterday he had been the one in the tower.

  “It’s Logali on lookout today,” he said, snapping the reins to quicken the horse. “He’s a good man. I’ll have a word with him, see what he saw, and then be on my way.”

  Those words were still on his lips when he saw darkness descend upon the tower. At this distance, he could just barely see Logali lean out over the railing to check the sky. Then, in place of the unnatural darkness… searing flame.

  A brilliant tongue of fire enveloped the tower, consuming it from roof to foundation in a single monstrous column of churning red. It appeared in the blink of an eye coalescing from the air itself. By the time he’d spurred his horse to a gallop, the wooden tower was blackening. He was near enough to hear the sound when it finally splintered and collapsed. Next, he heard the screams. The town was in the grip of a full panic. Horses, mad with fear and lacking riders, scattered into the desert to escape the madness. Men and women rushed to the streets. A chain formed from the well he and the others had dug the previous year when they’d founded the town. Buckets traveled along the line, dousing the burning tower and the nearest buildings lest they join the blaze.

  “What happened?” Blindol shouted when he was within earshot.

  “It was no one! There was no one!” replied a woman, his neighbor.

  “It was the Aluall!” replied a younger man.

  “Never mind who it was. They’ve gone now. Help us put out the flames!” urged an older man.

  Blindol leaped from the back of his horse and joined the line, passing buckets and extinguishing the remnants of the watchtower. If he’d not seen it burst to flame before his own eyes, he would have sworn the tower had been burning for hours. It was nothing but a pile of cinders now, reduced to char and ash. There was no sign of the lookout.

  The fire may have done its work quickly, but it was still slow to die away. He and the others worked for more than an hour before the smoke stopped rising and they were free to investigate what had happened. Soon subtler happenings revealed themselves. Market shelves were empty. Pantries were stripped bare. It was as though a horde of locusts had descended upon the town and devoured every scrap of food and scooped up anything of value. Blindol made his way to his own home, where his wife was looking in dismay at the shambles it had become.

  “How did this happen?” Blindol said, lifting the lid of a crate once filled with bolts of fine fabric his wife had woven. “Who did this?”

  “Th
ere was no one! Not a soul!” she said. “I helped tend to the fire, and when I came back, this…”

  “Have you been through every room?” he asked.

  “No. No, I’ve just come through the door,” she said.

  He looked to the door to the pantry. “Stay where you are.”

  Blindol pulled a short, sturdy knife from his belt and stalked into the pantry. Like every other room with so much as a scrap of food, it had been stripped utterly bare. He found a lantern and lit it, then held it to the floor. It was clean. Even his own footprints from when he’d fetched the ingredients for breakfast had been wiped away.

  “How… how could this happen without anyone seeing?” he said, marching out to his wife again.

  She stood silently, one hand over her mouth as she pointed at the door. She’d shut it behind Blindol when he’d arrived. Doing so had revealed something they’d not noticed before. It was a message carved into the wood. Though the language was his own, it was poorly rendered. The looping and intricate glyphs of the elven writing were coarse and angular, but not so badly mangled that he couldn’t read what it said. He gritted his teeth and threw the door open. Others, having returned to investigate their own homes, were gathering in the street again, voices harsh and frenzied.

  “Friends!” Blindol called. “I’ve found a message.”

  “On your door?” called the nearest man in response. “So have we.”

  “All of you?”

  “There is one on every door in the village.”

  “There!” called another villager. “Even on the city gate!”

  They turned to the southern side of the town, where the gates stood. As small and new as the village was, they’d yet to build a wall. They scarcely saw the need. But it was a tradition in the elven villages of South Crescent, when first breaking ground, to erect a village gate to signal to travelers their entry into elven lands. They’d seen no reason not to continue the tradition in this tiny step into North Crescent. And so a great arch straddled the road leading back to their homeland, and the same crude carvings marred it with the same ominous message.

  Leave this place. This is only the beginning.

  Chapter 1

  Six weeks later…

  Five Point Hall was a magnificent structure by any measure. Its foundation straddled the precise point where the two kingdoms, which now collectively bore the name the Northern Alliance, met the two kingdoms that had long ago joined to form Tressor. The landscape around it was vibrant and green yet free of the overbearing heat Tressor frequently suffered. Its stone had been hauled from the far corners of the continent. Artisans and architects from both the Northern Alliance and Tressor had collaborated on its design. Hundreds of workers representing nearly every major city and village of both nations had gathered to build it, constructing the marvel in mere months. Everything about the building was an attempt to embody the very concept of unity, and it succeeded brilliantly. It stood with the elegance and grace of a cathedral, built with the sturdiness of northern buildings and the artfulness of Tresson ones. Great carved columns held its vaulted roof, and its massive polished wooden doors shone in the morning sun. On any other day, Five Point Hall would be the most remarkable thing for miles around. Today, that honor belonged to its visitors.

  The duke and duchess of New Kenvard, Myranda and Deacon, were dressed in ceremonial garb. Acting as they were as ambassadors from their land, they had to look their best. Myranda’s long red hair was gathered with a dark blue ribbon. She wore a silver circlet on her brow and topped her elegant gown with an azure fur-lined cloak. Deacon was similarly dressed, though the simple crown atop his head wreathed a somewhat less orderly mane of brown hair. Majestic though they were, the eyes of the assembled crowd of servants, soldiers, and dignitaries rested with a mixture of curiosity and concern on the other two guests.

  The first was Myn, a full-grown dragon. She too was “dressed” in her ambassadorial finest. In her case this meant thin silver rings around each of her horns. A sash the size of a military banner hung about her neck, blue with silver thread. In addition, she wore a small and rather simple amulet reminiscent of her own head rendered in brass and amber. It hung from a darkened metal chain, and beneath it a small, shiny stone with gold marbling dangled in a mesh pouch. The dragon had trained her gorgeous gold eyes on the southern sky. Every few moments, she shuffled her feet in place, churning up the earth beneath her and nearly dislodging the final member of their party, who was still perched on Myn’s back.

  “Easy, Myn,” chided Ivy from her perch between the dragon’s wings. “He’ll get here when he gets here. Look at this nice new building. They built it this big for you, you know.”

  Ivy was dressed a bit more simply than Myranda and Deacon but still looked every bit the part of an ambassador. She wore a fine dress of elegant blue but lacked any crown or other sign of nobility. Her outfit was, of course, not the reason curious onlookers gawked when they thought she wasn’t looking. Ivy was a malthrope, a vanishingly rare sight these days. If not for her role in the end of the war and the ongoing defense of both the Northern Alliance and Tressor, a creature of her kind would scarcely have been tolerated in civilized society. They were, it was believed, monstrous killers and thieves by their very nature. Ivy was waging a one-person war against such notions and had achieved a limited but measurable degree of success. Indeed, she’d not had to dodge a thrown stone in months.

  Myranda removed her heavy cloak and folded it over one arm. Though necessary when soaring through the sky on Myn’s back as they ventured from their home in Kenvard, here at the border the cloak was a bit heavy for the pleasantly warm day.

  “It really is a remarkable hall,” Deacon said, shedding his cloak as well. “It still smells of green wood and fresh paint. These days it seems everything smells of such things.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way. For a city, that is the scent of healing and growth,” Myranda said.

  Ivy wrinkled her sensitive nose. “I could do with a little less of the paint, myself. It’s a beautiful color, but blue paint smells awful.”

  “Duke Deacon, Duchess Myranda. Guardians Ivy and Myn,” remarked a voice from within the hall. “So fine to see you again.”

  An ornately armored man with the perpetually youthful face of an elf marched from within the hall and descended the stairs. He was flanked by servants, who eagerly took the guests’ cloaks.

  “Captain Lumineblade,” Deacon said with a courtly bow. “Always a pleasure.”

  “Yes. It is a rare treat to see you in formal attire without the continued peace of our land hinging upon the outcome of the gathering, Croyden,” Myranda said. “Is the queen waiting inside?”

  “No. Only some of the lesser dignitaries are present. You are the first of the guests of honor to arrive. I believe Queen Caya has grown weary of being upstaged by your arrival and has chosen to make a grand entrance of her own once the stir surrounding you has run its course.”

  “Caya wears the title of ‘Queen’ like it was tailor-made to suit her,” Myranda said. “You’d think she was born on the throne.”

  “I believe it is specifically the adoring crowd to which she’s become most accustomed,” Croyden said.

  “It’s nice to be adored,” Ivy said, hopping down from Myn’s back. “Good to see you, Captain.” She turned to Myn and bopped up and down. “Practice on him, Myn!”

  Croyden took a step back and eyed the dragon uncertainly. “What precisely are we practicing?”

  “You’ll see,” Ivy said brightly. “She’s been practicing for weeks. It’s adorable. Come on, Myn.”

  The dragon turned reluctantly from the sky and looked first to Ivy, then to Croyden. At her gaze, he took another cautious step back. Becoming accustomed to locking eyes with a predator several times one’s own size required more experience than Croyden had. She sidled into position before him, shut her eyes, and angled her head and body in a respectful bow.

  “Come on…” Ivy prompted.
<
br />   Myn rumbled a bit in irritation, then took a slow breath. “HELLO,” she said. Her voice was deep and resonant, and her pronunciation somewhat breathy, but the word was clear and distinct. Croyden raised an eyebrow and took a step back.

  “She speaks?” he said.

  “Just a few words,” Myranda said, vigorously scratching the brow on Myn’s lowered head. “But she’s learning so quickly. My heart practically sang when she first spoke. I was sick with the thought that somehow in raising her myself I might have robbed her of her voice.”

  “Now me!” Ivy said, trotting over to look Myn in the eye.

  Myn looked at her and, with visible concentration and difficulty, intoned, “IVY.”

  Ivy squealed and threw her arms around the dragon’s neck. “I’m so proud! She can say my name, and she can say Myranda’s name. Not Deacon, though.”

  “If I recall her disposition toward you correctly, this doesn’t come as a surprise,” Croyden said. “Would you care to wait inside?”

  “If it isn’t too much of a breach of protocol,” Myranda hedged, “I’d like a moment to stretch my legs. I’m sure Myn would prefer to wait outside until our friends from Tressor arrive.”

  “They’re here!” Ivy said, pointing to the southern horizon.

  Myn’s head snapped toward the sky, her eyes lighting up. She practically danced in place when she spotted the small speck approaching just beneath the clouds. Her wings spread and tensed, but she looked longingly at Myranda.

  “Go, Myn,” Myranda said.

  The dragon launched herself skyward with a single bound, causing a bit of a stir in the crowd.

  “Admittedly, I’ve not yet fully learned the nuances of diplomatic occasions such as this, but is it typical for Dragon Riders to attend summits such as this one?” Deacon asked.

  “It is not typical for Dragon Riders to attend anything,” Croyden said. “But the attendance of Grustim and Garr was specifically requested by King Mellawin.”