The
Virgin Queen
The
Chronicles of Parthalan
Book
Two
Jennifer
Allis Provost
Genre:
Fantasy romance
Publisher:
Bellatrix Press
Date
of Publication: April 5, 2016
Number
of pages: 300
Word
Count: 100k
Book
Description:
A
broken queen. A friendship mired in deceit. Can one man from the
desert help hold the realm together?
Asherah,
Queen of Parthalan and Lady of Tingu, has led her people through
eight centuries of prosperity. That peace shatters when Mersgoth, the
mordeth thought long dead, attacks Teg’urnan. In the aftermath a
new warrior emerges: Aeolmar, a man as secretive as he is deadly.
Asherah
and Aeolmar race across Parthalan in pursuit of Mersgoth, and track
the beast to the High Desert. While they're gone, Harek, now Prelate
of Parthalan, conspires with the Dark Fae against the elves...Against
Leran, the king of the elves and Asherah's son in all but blood. Will
Asherah see the truth of Harek before it's too late, or will he bring
down the fae once and for all?
Chapter
One
Asherah held her
hand against her brow, shading her eyes against the suns as she
surveyed the carnage across the plain. There had been no warning of
this attack, led by the mordeths
Mersgoth and Esguth, no scouts had run to the gates alerting
Teg’urnan that demons had been on the move near Teg’urnan; then
again, the scouts probably had been the first to die. No, yesterday
had been a day like any other, almost boring in its sameness to the
days that came before, until darkness fell.
Shortly
after the child sun went to rest, demons had amassed before the
gates, an unusual and effective tactic for creatures who shunned the
darkness. It was a force Asherah hadn’t seen the like of since her
army of slaves and elves, the Ish
h’ra hai
led by herself, Lormac, Harek and Tor, had taken the palace from
Sahlgren. Since that bloody, tragic day when both Asherah’s mate
and dearest friend had perished, she had led Parthalan through nearly
eight centuries of peace.
Harek...the
one time Teg’urnan was attacked since she took the throne, her
Prelate, along with all of the con’dehr,
had been away to the south. He’d been leaving the palace more often
of late, and Asherah speculated that the mordeths
had become aware of his frequent and extended absences. She suspected
that they’d waited until the Prelate and his guards hadn’t been
in residence before they moved against the palace. She wondered if
Harek had been attacked, if he yet lived. She needed him alive,
needed him to return, for she doubted she could set this mess to
rights without him.
No,
that’s not true. I just don’t want anyone else near me to die.
The queen shoved
away her thoughts about Harek’s possible demise and brought her
ruminations back to the prior evening. Upon the alarm’s sounding,
the legion and hunters had scrambled to meet their attackers. Even
the sola
had emptied, with each and every nuvi
grabbing the nearest weapon and mustering in defense of their home.
Asherah and her First Hunter, Argent, had been among the first
outside the gates. As they had called out orders, one of the
mordeths,
Esguth, had taken notice of Argent, and had fixated on him throughout
the battle. While Esguth had baited the hunter, Asherah had shouted
for Argent to keep his head, for he had been too canny a warrior to
fall for a demon’s tricks. Or perhaps not. His body had yet to be
found, but reports claimed that Esguth had ripped Argent to pieces.
My Prelate is
gone; my First Hunter is dead. Why am I left breathing?
Why Esguth had bothered singling out Argent had been a mystery to the
queen. While Argent had been First Hunter, and therefore a target of
all demons, she could not recall Esguth having ever having had set
eyes on him. Further, Argent had gone into battle clad in simple
leather armor that in no way differentiated him from the rest of the
hunters. She shuddered as she remembered the look in the mordeth’s
eyes, as if Argent had been his intended prey. Even now, after all
the death she had seen, all the demons and men she herself had
killed, the malevolence in Esguth’s stare made her blood run cold.
A herald approached
Asherah and confirmed what she had been dreading: none of the hunters
could be found, and each was assumed dead. As queen, Asherah felt the
loss of each and every Parthian deep within her being, but her
hunters were as special to her as her Ish
h’ra hai
had once been. It had been Caol’nir’s idea to have a team of
warriors specially trained to fight demons, in much the same way he
had taught her and Torim the finer points of combat. She’d wanted
Caol’nir to train them himself, but he had not been swayed in his
desire to create a quiet, demon-free existence for his mate. Asherah
never learned where he and Alluria eventually made their home. She
had honored their pact that his name be stricken from Teg’urnan’s
records and never had sought them out or spoke, their names. Still,
she never gave up hope that she would see them again.
Gods. If only
they’d been here.
Caol’nir had killed seventeen mordeths
during the Battle for Teg’urnan, but the one who’d gotten away
was Mersgoth. Mersgoth, the beast who had marked Caol’nir’s mate
and driven them into hiding, the same beast who had led yesterday’s
charge alongside Esguth. What she wouldn’t give to see that
creature’s head on a pike.
The
battle had suddenly ended when the demons scattered, and it was later
reported that the lessers had abandoned the fight when Esguth fell.
No one knew who killed the mordeth,
and there was no sign of the demon’s carcass
near
the gates. Asherah now wended her way down the Hill of Rahlle, named
for the sorcerer who’d sacrificed his sight for its creation, and
across the deathly stillness of the battlefield, desperate for any
sign of her hunters. She forged ahead like one possessed, ignoring
the sucking noise the blood-soaked ground made against her boots.
Lormac,
if ever you wished to offer your wise counsel, now is the time.
Lormac would have rallied the survivors, issued orders… he would
have known what to do. He had always known the right word or action;
he who had been her mate, he who she’d lived without for far too
long. She sighed, and wondered when she would join him. On days like
this, she hoped that day would be sooner rather than later.
The
queen wandered on, picking her way among the dead as the sharp
incline of the Hill of Rahlle gradually leveled out to the flatness
of the plain. She hadn’t realized the distance she’d covered from
the palace until she spied an individual kneeling before the rocky
outcrop on the far side of the plain.
Is
that a survivor, or yet another demon?
As she got closer she saw that it was a faerie man, kneeling with his
head bent forward as if in prayer. Scattered around him, as if
they’d been flung from a great sack, were the limbs and heads of
demons. His back was to Asherah, but as she approached she noted his
long chestnut hair, and that his jerkin looked to be blue underneath
the gore...
“Aeolmar!”
Asherah cried as she threw her arms around the hunter. “Aeolmar,
Aeolmar, Aeolmar, I thought those beasts had killed every last
hunter.” She felt his arms and back for wounds. “Are you all
right?”
Aeolmar
nodded slightly; Asherah assumed he was in shock. Still searching for
wounds, she grabbed his hands, pausing when she saw the sword he held
in a white-knuckled grip.
“This
is… Is that Esguth’s weapon?” she asked incredulously. While
she was aware of Aeolmar’s excellent swordsmanship, the taking a
mordeth’s
sword was nearly unheard of. Not even Caol’nir, arguably the
greatest warrior she had ever known, had managed such a feat. She
looked again at the heaps of demon limbs, and noted how one arm was
so much larger than the rest. No,
he couldn’t have, not alone…
“Did
you kill Esguth?” Asherah asked. Aeolmar finally met the queen’s
gaze, his face as unmoving as stone.
“Yes.”
He glanced at the destruction he’d caused. “I killed them all.”
Asherah
stood, awed and slightly frightened of this man who was able to
dispatch at least a dozen lesser demons as well as the mordeth
on
his own. In all her days she’d only known a handful of people
capable of such a feat, herself being one of them. She pulled Aeolmar
to his feet, and hunter and queen began the long walk back to
Teg’urnan. Aeolmar kept his free hand on the queen’s elbow as he
led her around the bodies, his other hand clutching the mordeth’s
sword as if one of the corpses may rear up and attack. After a time,
they came upon a man’s arm clad in dark green leather, which was
the last either of them saw of Argent. Once they reached the gates,
they were told that the other mordeth,
Mersgoth, fled the battle shortly after Esguth fell, the suspicion
now confirmed by a sighting east of Teg’urnan. He had once again
escaped with his hide intact.
The
queen nodded, hardly hearing the detailed account of the demon’s
whereabouts. Instead, she contemplated the statues of the stag and
doe as they leapt toward each other over the dark iron gates of
Teg’urnan. Sculpted as representations of Olluhm and Cydia, gods of
the sun and moon who were parents to the Fair Folk, they were meant
to honor her kind’s origin. To Asherah, the statues went far beyond
a mere reminder. Olluhm was strong and his justice swift; indeed,
tales were told of him setting entire realms ablaze to ensure the
safety of his mate and progeny. Cydia, the calm mother goddess,
tempered her fiery mate with the compassion that only a mother could
possess.
For
this offense there will be justice, swift and sure. Compassion be
damned.
“Aeolmar,
you are now my First Hunter,” Asherah proclaimed. “What is your
first command?”
“Find
Mersgoth and kill him,” Aeolmar replied through clenched teeth.
Asherah
laced her fingers with the new First Hunter’s. This new threat
would be dealt with, and Asherah wouldn’t need Harek’s help. No,
she and Aeolmar—she and her First Hunter—would have their
vengeance.
“As
you wish.”
###
Harek
stood in front of the large window, his hands braced on the ledge and
surveying the valley before him as if it were his own private
kingdom. Indeed, these past few winters he’d spent far more time at
this southern residence than in the palace, so much so that he’d
had a full manor built to accommodate himself and his con’dehr.
They’d spent much of the cold season at this home away from home,
he and his warriors and no others. There was the occasional complaint
over the lack of women, but generally the men bore their isolation
well, and Harek needed no reminders of Asherah.
Many
speculated as to why Parthalan’s Prelate took such frequent leaves
from Teg’urnan, though few dared to ask him directly. Officially,
he stated that since the old king had hidden away in the south while
plotting with the mordeth-gall,
there was a dire need to secure the region against further threats.
That had been reason enough for his presence, but then a routine
sweep had revealed a fissure at the desert’s edge, belching the all
too familiar stench of demons. It wasn’t large, perhaps the length
of three horses standing nose to tail, but its small size had
mattered not. Whether by accident or design, there had been a crack
in the very fabric of Parthalan that lead directly to the underworld.
“So
this is why he went south,” Asherah had said when she was told of
the fissure, assuming that the source of Sahlgren’s betrayal had
been at last revealed. Against Harek’s advice, she had journeyed to
look at it with her own eyes, though he hadn’t let her get too
close to the edge. Back then, in the early days of Asherah’s reign,
she still had worn the Sala, the armband given to her by Lormac that
marked her as Lady of Tingu. The four green stones of the Sala had
glowed an ominous red to warn her away from the evil sludge that
oozed from the crack. Trust the elves to make an object that warned
you of impending evil when you were right in front of said evil, not
when you were still a league or two off. Foolish, foolish creatures.
No
matter, Harek would worry about the elves another day. It had taken
nearly a full turn of the seasons to close the fissure, which had
first been first packed with rock and assorted rubble, and then with
dressed stone as masons fit together an impenetrable wall of granite.
Once the masons had completed their work, the royal sorcerers, under
Sarfek’s direction, had woven a net of spells tightly around the
stones. When all was said and done, the area looked like an ordinary
hillside, not a gaping chasm where evil once spilled forth.
Harek
had never doubted Sarfek’s abilities, and had been confident that
the seal was sound. Life had gone on in Teg’urnan, and as time
wore on the queen wore the Sala less and less. Eventually the fog of
despair had lifted from Asherah’s sparkling black eyes, and those
dark gems had settled upon a man. His name had been Brendan, and he
was one of the warriors who’d fought in the Battle for Teg’urnan.
He had been a kind man, strong and swift and handsome, a man who made
Asherah smile again. A man who wasn’t Harek.
Unable
to voice his despair, Harek had made up the excuse of ensuring that
the fissure hadn’t reopened and fled Teg’urnan before the sight
of Asherah in Brendan’s arms drove him mad. As time continued to
flow, Harek stopped citing the fissure as the reason for his long
absences, and Asherah stopped questioning him. He wondered if she
noticed when he wasn’t there.
Soon,
things will be different. Soon, Asherah and I will be close like we
once were, and—
A
commotion in the courtyard below interrupted Harek’s thoughts. It
was a messenger wearing Teg’urnan’s silver and blue colors
tumbling off a horse that looked as if it would collapse in the next
moment. The messenger gasped his missive between breaths, then
crumpled to the ground. Harek turned from the window and rushed
toward the stairs; his warriors were already running to fetch him. It
was Olwynn who spoke, his face bloodless.
“Teg’urnan
has been attacked!”
About
the Author:
Jennifer
Allis Provost writes books about faeries, orcs and elves. Zombies
too. She grew up in the wilds of Western Massachusetts and had read
every book in the local library by age twelve. (It was a small
library). An early love of mythology and folklore led to her epic
fantasy series, The Chronicles of Parthalan, and her day job as a
cubicle monkey helped shape her urban fantasy, Copper Girl. She lives
in a sprawling colonial along with her beautiful and precocious
twins, a dog that thinks she's a kangaroo, a parrot, a junkyard cat,
and a wonderful husband who never forgets to buy ice cream. She
spends her days drinking vast amounts of coffee, arguing with her
computer, and avoiding any and all domestic behavior.
Twitter:
@parthalan
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