Prelude to a Hero: Hero's Chance, #1

By Ruth Athmore

The metallic chime of gold coins as they dropped one by one into a traitor's hand. The dull click of a pawn set upon a board. War, famine, dynastic marriage. All part of the game the powerful played with lives and blood and pain.

To nine-year-old Alkesra iddri-Lant, the greatest darkness in her life was the absence of her father. Gone for most of her young life, his disappearance meant his beautiful Eldiron wife and two young children were at the mercy of any ambitious petty king who wanted either the Keep or his heir.

Everyone demanded a price for their aid and no one in Lant had the coin to pay it. So when the power-hungry clans of the Tækanen marched from the west to destroy the last remnant, the far-seeing Lady Uátha set her daughter's feet on a path that would take her far from home and family.

But before Alkesra would win the chance to become the hero Lant needed to live again, a few things needed to happen first...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sebastian & Theodore Publishers
• Release date: Oct 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386642282

Ruth Athmore

Ruth Athmore lives on the prairies of the Upper Midwest, United States with her family and numerous cats, dogs, goats and sheep to keep her busy when she is not dabbling in the affairs of other worlds.  

Book preview

Chapter 1

FIRES FLARED ON THE plain in front of the thick, high wall of the Keep, great flames feasting on piled logs.  The light marched across the barren rocks of the valley, a play of shadow against the slopes where the wood had once grown dense and green.  That was before the mages came and sacrificed the great forest to the fires, a prelude to the blood price they would exact from the people of Lant.

Far to the north, a silver line ran along the horizon where the sea tumbled against the cliffs along the wilder shore.  The rocks flung the waves back, into the bay that rolled out to the greater sea. Overhead, the deep, dark blue of the night sky glittered with the cold lights of the distant stars.

Mother didn't want her to look out and see the fire light glint on plate armor or count the number of men encamped around this last stronghold of Lant.  Row upon row of men, horses and weapons, all of them gathered against a people who could not repel them.  They camped and walked and watched with a frightening orderliness that spoke volumes of their leaders, men who sent no messages to the Lady of the Keep nor offered any terms for surrender.

Alkesra looked anyways.  She peered between the crenellations, standing on tip toe in her thin leather shoes with her brown woolen tunic flattened against the cold stone.  Her belt pouch with the sharp bodkin pressed against her leg, hard enough to hurt, but she didn't back away.  Silent and solemn, her child's clear blue eyes traced the smoke rising from those fires until it vanished in the star-studded, moonless sky above. She gazed on the ambitions of the men who came from far away when they heard her father was gone and presumed dead and the treasure of Lant stood unguarded.

Behind and below her, the buildings enclosed by the sturdy stone walls were silent and dark, except for the lanterns burning on either side of the doors to the great hall and the garrison.  The only sounds were the faint chime of chain maille as the guardsmen stalked the parapets and the sleepy snuffles of horses and livestock in the stables and byre.  Even the forge of Taum the blacksmith was cold and dark, waiting for the aging worker to rise again before dawn and begin the never-ending task of mending weapons and armor.

Ye shouldn't be here.

She turned just enough to see Meluk from the corner of her eyes.  The chief guardsman leaned his shoulder against an abutment tall enough to shield him from the sight of archers or artillery below, his light brown hair tousled from the helmet he usually wore and his dark eyes steady with the regard of a man who knew his fate.  In the dim light, she couldn't see the wrinkles in his tunic and trousers from too many nights spent sleeping in them or the lines weariness carved around his mouth and nose.  He was just the usual comforting, well-muscled bulk of the man who had watched her family since they first came to this fertile valley near the roof of the world.

Mother doesn't know.  Alkesra turned back to the outside, the slightest movement of air on this too-warm night teasing her dark brown hair from its long braid and blowing the fine strands into her eyes.  She brushed them away with an irritable gesture.  The perpetual cold that the sun's heat never banished seeped through the leather soles of her shoes, burning against the callused skin of her feet, but she refused to shift her weight to ease the pain.

Th' Lady knows.  

She made a scoffing sound, just soft enough that the guardsman couldn't reprimand her for manners.  Perhaps they were afraid of Lady Uátha and the powers gifted by her eldritch people when she left the Vale to follow a penniless prince to Lant, but to Alkesra she was Mother who never raised her soft, gentle voice to either daughter or son.

Who did ye think sent me up 'ere?

A chill went through her, and she fought down the instinctive shiver.  Just because Mother didn't raise her voice didn't mean the Lady of Lant couldn't be very angry. 

Small mountain ranges cowered when Mother was angry.

Her gaze went back to the camps.  I wanted to see them.

They'll be there in th' morning, said Meluk.  Soon enough to see.

Maybe.  Alkesra clenched her teeth as the chill grew stronger.  She didn't like it, hadn't since it first started two sevendays past.  The first squad of horsemen had come over the hill from the south not more than a half day after that, and since then it crawled from her dreams into her waking like a rotting, diseased scavenger that refused to die.  

The empty space before the Keep drew her attention.  It was where the crofters and tradesmen grazed their herds and flocks, close to the walls for protection.  But there would be no greensward this summer, just the rotting flesh of those who perished in the furious assaults on the walls.  Mother had coaxed more green from the earth until it flowed over the bodies twisted in death's final agonies and hid them from sight during the day.  But at night, in the darkness like this, the shadows accentuated each lump and dip of the earth, and Alkesra could mark each body and know that she would remember its place for the rest of her life.

Where is Tækanen? she asked curiously.

Meluk didn't move.  Far away.  A land of greedy fools what think with their lusts instead o' their heads.

Selka told Mother they wanted me to go with them and marry into their families, said Alkesra as she once more studied the massed army.  But I do not wish to go.  I only want Lant, so they can go away and leave us alone.

A burst of movement erupted around the biggest tents.  The richly colored pennants of the different clans floated above the canvas expanses during the day, the gem chips and fine metal threads glittering in the sunlight.  Those hung limp now as men strode from their pavilions and sent boys running in every direction.

Bad.  Meluk straightened, his attention with Alkesra's on the sudden activity.  He shifted closer, his hand dropping to the handle of the axe he kept at his side.  Run back to your lady mother.  Now.

No.  

The hand she'd laid on the rampart to support herself curled into a fist, tiny and impotent.  They won't get my home.  I won't let them.

Alkesra.  Meluk's fingers gripped the point of her shoulder, digging into the tendons with unexpected strength.  She reacted as badly as she always did, when someone used her smaller size and strength against her.  Mother would scold, but Alkesra didn't let anyone get away with it.  

Lightning flickered through the deep, clear sky, not an apocalyptic stroke but rather a flash more felt than seen.  The resultant thunder didn't even shiver the air and it certainly didn't bother the stones sunk deep beneath their feet.

Meluk snatched his hand away.  Ye wouldn't.

"I can.  Alkesra didn't turn her stare from the camp now bustling with purpose.  There's a prince down there.  The others swirl around him, not quite touching but trying to.  Everything centers on him.  Everything that was, everything that will be.  Unless he is no longer there."

She reached, much as Mother taught her, stretching her other senses across the cool night air towards that place on the far side of the valley where the focus of the new activity stood still.  There were other threads of awareness around him, some even encroaching into that other place where Alkesra quested.  Those which pulsed the brightest she avoided, for they had power she couldn't deflect.  Whether mage or scholar or other, she could not run afoul of them without entrapping herself.

Alkesra.  No.

Mother's gentle touch blocked her, swiftly pulling her back to the Keep before she could struggle.  With a firm bump, she set Alkesra back into her body and threw a webbing of power around her to make sure she stayed there.

Years of knowing kept Alkesra still.  Mother might disapprove of her action, but defiance was the quickest way to add irritation to the list of sins.  She opened her eyes, and gazed steadily at the unearthly beautiful woman standing on the ramparts with no care for whether she was visible from the ground below or not.

No one knew how many years had passed for Lady Uátha in the land of her people, before Prince Haim was carried half-dead into her healing rooms.  All that men knew was that she had lost none of the grace and beauty that transfixed a prince and caused a barren, abandoned land to grow green again.  

Her long, unbound hair was a shade darker than Alkesra's and streaked with broad swaths of glittering silver that curled and rippled with a mind of its own.  It tumbled down her back to just above her knees, and even now it lifted and stirred