Green Hearts Weep

By Kenneth McDonald

After clashing with a band of vicious bandits near Whiteridge, hauflin scout Jaron Feldergrass returns home to his village of Fairhollow to find that the raiders bear grudges. Jaron and his off-kilter cousin Beetle join with a company of human soldiers in pursuit of the slavers who have taken his people hostage. The trail leads them across the Cinder Valley to the raucous mining town of Mulstone. There they find the foes they seek, but also threads of a plot that threatens the future of the entire valley. The second book in the series "The Colors of Fate."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kenneth McDonald
• Release date: Nov 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310025006

Kenneth McDonald

I am a retired education consultant who worked for state government in the area of curriculum. I have also taught American and world history at a number of colleges and universities in California, Georgia, and South Carolina. I started writing fiction in graduate school and never stopped. In 2010 I self-published the novella "The Labyrinth," which has had over 100,000 downloads. Since then, I have published more than fifty fantasy and science fiction books on Smashwords. My doctorate is in European history, and I live with my wife in northern California.

Book preview

Green Hearts Weep

Book Two of the Colors of Fate Series

Kenneth McDonald

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 by Kenneth McDonald

Cover Credit: The cover image is adapted from the painting Wheat Field with Cypresses by Vincent van Gogh (1889). The image is in the public domain.

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Works by Kenneth McDonald

Wizard’s Shield

The Colors of Fate

Black Shadows Gather

Green Hearts Weep

The Mages of Sacreth

The Labyrinth

Of Spells and Demons

Grimm’s War

Grimm’s Loss

Grimm’s Love

The Godswar Trilogy

Paths of the Chosen

Choice of the Fallen

Fall of Creation

Daran’s Journey

Heart of a Hero

Soul of a Coward

Will of a Warrior

Courage of a Champion

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Prologue

Tandrin was coughing again, huddled in the lee of the cliff, his tiny body wracked by uncontrollable spasms. The cloth he held against his lips was flecked with blood. The others that formed a miserable line behind him looked hardly better off; shivering in the chill of the camp, clutching the remains of their tattered garments together and pressing close to share what little warmth their bodies could muster. The cliff face offered scant protection against the wind, which blew through the mountain pass with unforgiving intensity and found every gap in their defenses.

Yarine pressed her hands against Tandrin’s face. The hauflin farmer had a fever. Invoking the power of the Green, she funneled a trickle of magical energy into the stricken man. It did little to help him. She might have invoked a ritual to purge the sickness from his body, but her magical adjuncts, the herbs and other medicines that she needed were many leagues from here on the far side of the Cinder Valley, at her home in Fairhollow.

That might as well have been on the other side of the world.

Tandrin nodded at her in thanks and Yarine felt a stab of guilt. She’d done little to preserve her people, the hauflin that she was supposed to watch over and protect. Certainly she hadn’t been able to keep them from the fate that loomed like the white-capped mountain peaks that surrounded them.

A faint clink of metal and a stink of sweat different from that which pervaded the hauflin prisoners warned of a presence behind her. She turned to see a warrior looking down at her, with as much emotion in his eyes as if she’d been a sheep that had escaped from its enclosure. He was one of the Tall Folk, a human, so big that even if she’d been standing she would only have come up to the buckle of his belt.

You come now, he said.

There was nothing to be gained by defiance, so with a final reassuring squeeze of Tandrin’s shoulder she rose and followed the warrior. She tried to gather some shred of decency around her, but it was hard with her tunic torn and ragged and streaks of dirt marring the soft skin of her face. She had been slightly plump before her capture, but all of the prisoners were rapidly becoming trim, even gaunt, from the hard marching and short rations that their captors had provided.

The stink of blood greeted her as her escort brought her to the other side of the camp, where a deep niche in the cliff face culminated in a dark opening that was shrouded in darkness. The crevice, not quite a cave, looked warmer out of the wind, but she had no urge to go any closer. An ugly carcass lay in the gap, and other had been dragged against the base of the cliff a few paces away. She’d overheard one of the warriors refer to them as gavrals. She’d never seen their like before, and would have much preferred to avoid ever seeing them altogether. They looked like some kind of cross between a badger and a lizard; by her guess they probably weighed a good hundred pounds each. They certainly had been ill-tempered, not hesitating to attack the much bigger humans that had been leading their column through the pass. She looked over into the open, where two men were unloading the saddle gear from one of the horses that they’d killed.

The attack had come and ended so fast that there had been no chance for the hauflin to try an escape. There was nowhere for them to go in any case, Yarine thought. Perhaps if they’d had food, or decent clothes, she might have tried leading some of her kin away. She was just glad that the creatures had attacked the human warriors at the front of their company. Had had they lunged into the line of prisoners… At the very thought she closed her eyes and whispered a silent prayer to the Green.

Not that the humans had escaped injury. The priest, Zhadroff, was crouched beside a warrior lying against the far wall, a scant pace from the mangled form of the second gavral. His red robes flapped around his body, but if the cold touched him, he didn’t show it. He looked up as Yarine and her escort reached him.

You will heal him, he said simply.

Yarine turned her attention to the fallen warrior, who regarded her coldly with eyes that flashed with pain. With him lying nearly prone against the wall, their gazes were almost level. The gavral’s claws had opened long gashes in his side that had torn through his armor. The wounds had been hastily bandaged, but Yarine could see the wet pulses of blood that indicated ruptured arteries. The wounds might not be mortal, but the man wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

She glanced up at Zhadroff. The priest noticed her hesitation. You are slaves now, and have value, he conceded. But there are parts of your bodies that can be removed without unduly reducing your worth. I will start with the younger ones. You will be last.

Yarine could not suppress a shudder. Zhadroff spoke without rancor, his voice as cold and even as the stone beneath her feet, but somehow that made his threat that much more menacing. As she knelt beside the injured warrior, whose expression had not softened in the slightest, she felt a surge of despair in the back of her mind, as the hope that she’d so desperately clung to since her capture receded just slightly more, until it was just a tiny distant twinge in the farthest reaches of her thoughts.

* * * * *

Chapter 1

The only sound within the small, richly appointed office was the soft scritch of a quill pen upon parchment, broken only by brief interruptions as the chamber’s sole inhabitant paused to dip the pen into the crystal vial of ink set slightly off to the side in front of him.

At first glance the man seemed like a prosperous clerk. His face, lined by the passage of fifty years or so, showed nothing but a quiet concentration as he wrote, and the pen did not waver, did not make so much as a single error as it left a trail of letters across the page. A careful observer might have noticed however, that the writer’s shirt was silk rather than linen, and that the small pin at his throat was solid gold rather than gilt.

The man finished his writing, and after blotting the text he folded it efficiently, reaching out to dribble wax from the candle burning on the front edge of the desk. He drew out a signet ring from a small carved wooden box to his right and pressed it into the wax, closing the letter with a seal.

The door opened and a soldier came into the room. He was a man in his early twenties, clad in a hauberk of steel scales sewn into leather and a longsword with an ivory-inlaid hilt resting easily on his hip. There was more than a subtle similarity in his features that bespoke a relation to the man at the desk, even before either spoke.

You seem upset, Carzen, the older man said, placing the sealed parchment into a tray that lay on one corner of the desk. An identical tray sat on the opposite corner, empty.

It’s that bastard Jakkanis, Carzen said. Father, that man is insufferable! You should hear what he said to me this morning, in front of the—

Jakkanis is the Commander of the Guard, and your superior officer, the older man interrupted, cutting Carzen’s sentence off as neatly as a knife. The young soldier opened his mouth to protest, but his father continued over him, adding, Just because you are now my heir does not mean that I will tolerate any shaming of our family name.

The statement obviously stung, and the soldier bit back an angry retort. Instead, he said, If it was Ahlen whose honor had been challenged, you would say different.

The older man’s expression eyes flicked up, the deep blue cold like ice and just as hard. Your brother is dead, he said ruthlessly. You dishonor yourself to sully his memory so.

Carzen held up before that stare for only a few moments before he subsided, his eyes dropping to the floor. I am sorry for my hasty words, father.

The elder cleaned his pen and put it back into its case, like everything else carefully arranged in its proper position upon the desk. Without looking up again, he said, You have made your choice of profession, Carzen. Now you must follow its rules, and excel. That is what is expected of a member of the house of Zelos.

The young man’s lips tightened, but he did not directly challenge the man seated in front of him. The older Zelos sighed, and held up the signet ring. Do you see this? Do you know what it is?

Carzen nodded. It’s Stone’s sigil, he said.

It is. And while the Lord Founder is in the distant south, I wield it in his name. He paused, just for a moment, a contemplative interval that a casual observer might have easily missed. The Stones have ruled over Knowlton since its inception, long before our family first came to the Cinder Valley. A long time. But few things last forever, do you understand?

The youth nodded; for a moment he looked much like his father. Slightly subdued, he said, You sent for me, father?

Indeed I did. Vhael has arrived with his party in Knowlton.

Already? But I thought he was coming all the way from Albestin.

One of the things you must learn, Carzen, is to always question your assumptions.

I still don’t see why we need that fossil to deal with this.

The old man rose out of his chair. "That is why I have this, he said curtly, holding up the signet once more before he put it back in its box. And you will refrain from the use of such denigrating terms, even in private. The Zelos do not resort to crass slurs, regardless of our inner feelings."

Carzen’s expression darkened further, but he held his tongue. There was a knock at the door behind him and a servant entered, bowing his head to the elder Zelos before acknowledging the younger with a nod.

M’lord, General Vhael has arrived with his companion.

Have you attended to their comfort?

Yes, m’lord. They indicated that they would prefer to meet with the Lord Founder’s designee at once.

Please ask them to join us in the South Hall, Zelos said.

The South Hall of Founder’s Keep was only a fraction of the size of the Great Hall below, but it offered a striking view of Knowlton. The town had been built on a tor of exposed granite, spread out upon several tiers that overlooked the twisting expanse of the Whiterush River below. It was a clear latesummer day, the sky above a brilliant azure that stretched from horizon to horizon, broken only by a few pale wisps of clouds above the mountains to the east.

Lord Zelos and his son entered through the side door even as the main doors opened to yield the servant accompanied by Vhael and his escort. The two of them were about as mismatched a pair as one could ever hope to encounter. Vhael was only a scant inch or two taller than Carzen, but the old warlord’s shoulders were broader, suggestive of the vigor and strength that he must have had in his prime. He was clad in a simple tunic of faded blue over a mail hauberk and breastplate of dwarf-forged graysilver, the metal gleaming brightly in the sunlight that slanted in through the great windows in the east wall. He was not carrying a weapon, but even with his hair more gray than black he somehow managed to look slightly dangerous. Several visible scars covered his head and hands, which were tinted from age and sun.

The old soldier’s companion was a woman. She looked to be in early middle age, but she sagged with the weight of a deeply ingrained weakness. She wore a habit of dark blue cloth and a robe that concealed her from neck to ankles, but even those bulky garments could not conceal the damage that her body had suffered. Faint lines of scars were just visible at the edges of the cloth that framed her face, and she moved with the slow deliberation of one who felt pain. There was something about that face that was just slightly… odd, some ethereal quality that drew the eye but couldn’t quite be placed. The only decoration she wore was a bright silver sigil of a White priest, which shone upon her chest in the light streaming through the slit windows of the hall.

The pair came forward, the woman’s arm resting upon the general’s, the priestess looking almost like a fragile glass carving in contrast to his sheer vitality.

General Vhael, on behalf of the Lord Founder, welcome to Knowlton, Zelos said, coming forward to greet them. Carzen followed but kept a short distance back.

General no longer, the man said, his voice deep and heavy, with just a faint trace of an accent. The days of great armies and desperate battles are past.

If Zelos was surprised by the comment, he hid it well. There is always a need for strength of arms and the wisdom to know when to use it, he said. This is my son, Carzen.

The soldier’s nod was barely noticeable. He indicated his companion. The Lady Draela Silveras, priestess of the White, he said. We had expected to find Lord Stone here. The letter we received was sent in his name.

Sadly, the Lord Founder has been detained longer than expected at the conclave of the great lords in the south. I am empowered to represent him in these matters in his absence.