Dark Forest

By Rigel Ailur

Torn apart by turmoil, the dark forest grows more dangerous every day. aristocrats, peasants, and soldiers; all contribute to the animosity and the bloody chaos by stoking the fighting between and within the groups. Then a mysterious figure surfaces, her only goal to help establish peace and calm. instead she finds herself a target of all those she tries to help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bluetrix Books
• Release date: Jul 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463231166

Book preview

Chapter 1

The strident clop of boots on hardwood approaching in the hallway outside the parlor door caught Lisle's attention. She glanced up from her book just as her mother paused in the doorway. The golden shimmer of a sword hilt under the folds of her mother's scarlet travel cape made Lisle jump up off the sofa. Mother, it's too dangerous to ride out! Scowling, she flung her book behind her onto the cushions. Is it the horses? Didn't you arrange delivery?

Yes, yes, they're on their way, Duchess Tinak replied. The stablemistress knows what to do, but if there is any problem, please take care of it. I'm going north. It shouldn't take me long to inspect the damage the fires caused.

That would take her out of the immediate area—and its cocoon of safety. Lisle folded her arms and glowered at her mother. How many soldiers are you taking with you?

Her mother's sword was as much an affectation as a symbol of her authority. Lisle didn't remember her mother ever using the weapon in her life. A noblewoman's true power came from the sixth sense, telepathy and telekinesis, not from any blade. A sword did little good against a foe who could grab it out of the wielder's hand by force of will.

Two dozen.

Lisle scowled at her mother's casual reply. You should double that. Affectation of the blade or not, soldiers helped. Even someone with the sixth sense could be overwhelmed or taken off guard. The peasants are getting worse throughout the queendom, and the fire won't have helped.

Ah, Lisle. Her mother shook her head and wore that expression of indulgent contempt that she directed at Lisle more and more frequently. You've been listening to too many stories from your friends. Rest assured, we have no revolutionaries in Northwood—least of all a band led by a man.

Mother, it's not safe. If you don't at least double the number of soldiers, I'll have to come with you. If her mother didn't like her daughter's company, at least Lisle could make use of that dislike to impose some common sense. The telekinetic ability of a second noblewoman with the sixth sense wouldn't make the group invulnerable, but doubling the psychokinetic abilities would help should trouble arise.

The duchess sniffed and shook her head even more emphatically. Such nonsense, Lisle.

You could send someone. We have a large enough staff that you don't have to go yourself.

I prefer to do this personally.

At least four dozen soldiers. Please, mother, Lisle added when the older woman opened her mouth and gave a dismissive wave of her hand, to humor me if for no other reason. Unless you'd like me to come. Lisle would have been shocked had her mother made that request, but a tiny part of her still hoped.

Her mother's next words dashed that faint hope. Such nonsense. I'm not going into battle. I'm going to see fire damage on our own land. But fine, I'll double the guard.

Thank you, Mother. Lisle relaxed some when the stubborn tightness disappeared from around the duchess's mouth. She could telepathically 'hear' her mother psychically broadcast the order for more soldiers.

The duchess switched back to normal speech to address her daughter. The horses might not even show up until this evening. I should be back in just a few hours. She hugged her daughter and kissed her cheek. Don't wait for me for lunch. Oh, and if Queen Astarte or Merie contact one of the advisors here for supplies, feel free to send whatever we can.

Of course, Mother. That made sense. Chanzir was a neighboring queendom, and the two had forged close ties over the centuries. Lisle could well imagine Queen Astarte of Chanzir requesting some help from her closest neighbors even though they were across the border. And Merie, Crown Princess and heir to Chanzir's throne, was a good friend of Lisle's.

Lisle often had the fleeting thought that she would have preferred being part of Chanzir rather than the Dark Forest. Then she always corrected herself. She loved the Dark Forest. She just wished its monarch were more like those foreign queens who didn't evoke hostility from their subjects. Strife didn't tear at every queendom on Mimion.

As her mother left, Lisle flopped back down onto the overstuffed green velvet sofa and let out a huge sigh. But her book, a romance set centuries ago during the founding of the Dark Forest, no longer held her attention.

She went to the window and pulled back one of the heavy velvet draperies. Her mother and four dozen soldiers had assembled in the front courtyard. The gates swung inward, and creaking chains thicker than Lisle's arm lowered the wooden drawbridge. Once it had settled with a thud in the dirt on the other side of the moat, the soldiers surrounded the duchess and they road out across the water.

Lisle gazed unseeingly at the book in her hand for a few moments before tossing it back onto the table. In response to the psychic request, her valet handed Lisle her sword as she reached the front door. Jogging outside, she communicated telepathically as she went.

Wan, saddle Rogue for me please. And if those horses Mother bought arrive, you're authorized to receive them. Let me know if there is any problem. Next she alerted her mother's main advisor to provide Chanzir with all possible help once they requested it. If Merie didn't contact them by this evening, Lisle planned to get in touch with her friend to find out what they needed.

Lisle reached the stables to find her stallion stomping with impatience, challenging stablemistress Wan to keep hold of his bridle. He surged forward to greet Lisle as soon as he caught sight of her, his enthusiastic head butt nearly knocking her off her feet. She stroked his sleek, powerful neck, noting with approval that his dark brown coat gleamed from recent brushing, then swung up into the saddle.

I'm joining up with my mother. Don't hesitate to contact me if you need anything. Even before the final words crossed Lisle's lips, her horse sprang into an easy canter and raced across the courtyard then over the drawbridge.

Turning north, Lisle expected to come across her mother in five minutes, ten at the most.

Instead she blundered into a battle.

The gale whipping between the hills carried sound away from her, but Lisle heard the clang of steel on steel in the narrow pass ahead. As she rounded the bend in the road, she could see the fighting. Nowhere in the chaos could she spot the bright scarlet of the duchess's cloak.

With her sixth sense, she screamed for her mother.

No reply.

Lisle still couldn't spot her among the thrashing bodies, but nor did she take the time to count the number of soldiers in the melee.

Switching her telepathic focus to the mob, she roared psychically and audibly as her stallion raced forward.

Some of the attackers fled. Some froze or looked frantically around, then fled. Others turned to engage her as Rogue thundered toward them. The soldiers didn't share the peasants' startled reaction. Accustomed as they were to telepathy, they pressed their advantage.

Lisle held her sword high but didn't need it. The sixth sense enabled her to psychokinetically pick up and toss away everyone who got close. Even so, she smelled the stench of the filth coating their unwashed bodies and absorbed into their tattered clothing.

Not needing her blade, she cleared a path to the thick of the fight. The soldiers did the physical work.

Where's the duchess? Lisle demanded as the last of the miscreants ran away, and the soldiers surrounded her.

Circling back to the castle with the rest of the guard, Ma'am. The older woman with iron gray hair and skin like leather had been captain of her mother's soldiers for as long as Lisle could remember. She was hurt, but not badly. Just half conscious, Captain Kyle said.

Lisle's gaze narrowed as the last of the brigands vanished into the woods. She—barely—rejected the urge to haul them back and confront them, or just plain maim them.

They hit her first? Lisle asked, already knowing the answer. Fleeting though the impression was, Lisle thought most of the attackers had been young and evenly mixed between women and men. The duchess might be dismissive of men, but Lisle knew better. Just because men had little, if any, of the sixth sense that enabled women to maintain their authority, didn't make male commoners any less dangerous than female ones.

Yes, Ma'am. Grazed by a stone, not bad, but enough to daze her so she couldn't defend herself.

Glancing around, Lisle figured thirty soldiers remained. Those on the perimeter kept watch to ensure no renewed attack. She saw little blood. They looked unscathed for the most part. Those peasants who'd been hurt were gone, carried off by their friends.

Bold, attacking so close to the castle. Very bold.

What did they want? Lisle asked.

Kyle's eyes glinted cold fury, but her voice sounded sad and tired. I'm not sure they knew. A few were yelling for food and shelter, like they thought we were carrying supplies or something. I think they just needed a target for their desperation and attacked the first one to come along.

All right. Lisle sighed and rolled her shoulders and twisted her neck, trying to work out the tension. I want you to continue north. Stay sharp. But we need to find out how bad it is. Don't hinder anyone who is hunting on our lands. It's hereby permitted until further notice. Let villagers know to be alert, but to share what food they can spare. I'll be sending more soldiers after you. We'll send supplies as well.

We'll escort you back first.

Lisle opened her mouth to protest, then clamped it shut. Good point.

Her escort stopped just shy of the drawbridge and Lisle rode galloping across alone. She pivoted her horse around as soon as she passed under the gate and saw the soldiers already turning en masse and racing off to follow her orders.

The outer wall towered sixty feet, encircling what for the duration of her childhood had been Lisle's entire world. Unaware of the extent of her sense of entitlement, and of her fearlessness—what could she possibly fear in her own home?—she'd explored every hidden alcove and back passage and stairway inside the castle, and all the courtyards around and between the various wings.

Her ancestor the very first Duchess built Northwood Castle, the oldest home in the local cluster, centuries ago. Originally—according to family history—little more than a Keep with the fields of crops also inside the protective walls, Northwood Castle grew haphazardly with new wing upon wing sprouting from that first building and spreading closer and closer to the perimeter, eventually pushing the fields outside the walls as the population grew in tandem with the building and the villages sprouting up nearby.

The castle retained its own stables, and forge, and mill, and storehouses the current duchess ensured remained overflowing with certain produce that didn't spoil quickly, and with jars and jars of those fruits and vegetables that needed to be preserved to remain good.

The only thing missing—according to commoners, not according to the high born—was dried meats or fish, or a butcher of any sort.

Those with the strongest sixth sense easily talked to animals, so over time the class as a whole had gotten away from any desire to eat them.

The aversion had yet to trickle down to the peasantry.

If it ever would.

Lisle supposed some nobles still ate meat, but she didn't know of any and hadn't met any in person. Yet another division between the classes that seemed to be making genuine communication more and more difficult.

Considering her telepathic skill, Lisle found the gulf as annoying as it was ironic. Surely the nobles and commoners hadn't grown that far apart that they could no longer understand each other at all?

Or, had they?

Plentiful books and tutors notwithstanding, Lisle considered her first trip outside the castle walls the true beginning of her education. That's when she first saw all the people working in the fields that supplied their crops. And fishing in the nearby river. Cutting trees to build log homes instead of living in sprawling constructs of stone with their cavernous rooms.

Even in their tininess, some looked quaint or charming, and proudly well cared for.

Others looked like hovels, not even fit to house the nobles' horses.

That was the first time it dawned on Lisle that all those people serving her family, waiting on them hand and foot, went home to someplace very different than anything Lisle had previously imagined. She'd simply never thought about it before.

But since then, she did.

Since then, she knew why the number of guards high on the castle walls continued to increase.

Her mother was inordinately fond of insisting that all the peasants worked the land for the nobles. In essense, they served at the nobles' pleasure, according to Duchess Tinak. But with the upper class comprising such a tiny percentage of the population, Lisle thought her mother had the situation reversed.

Helping the lower classes whenever possible was the right thing to do. Lisle believed that without a doubt.

But even if that weren't the case, she knew with equal assurance that it was the smart thing to do.

Mentally bracing for yet another battle, Lisle delayed as long as possible by taking her horse to the stables and brushing him down herself. As she cleaned his hoofs, then saw to fresh food and water, she communicated telepathically with their steward in charge of the household.

Send a quarter of our surpluss directly to Queen Astarte in Chanzir. Take another quarter and distribute it to the villages on our side of the border, the ones hit by the fire. Spread it as evenly as you can.

There. That should help somewhat, although it would only slow, not stop, the flood of trouble.

But at least it should quell the immediate panic and allow matters to quiet somewhat.

Then, already pulling a face at the conflict she'd much rather avoid, Lisle marched inside to the inevitable.

She might as well tell her mother in person instead of letting some hapless servant report to her.

Chapter 2

Bracing herself and concentrating on keeping her temper, Lisle strolled into her mother's favorite sitting room, then stopped short at seeing the healer wrapping a bandage around her mother's head. The duchess lay on a sofa, her boots, cape and sword in a pile off to one side. A bright red splotch of blood already soaked through the white fabric right above the duchess's nose.

Jaw clenched so tightly it was beginning to ache, Lisle leaned against the wall and folded her arms while she waited. Thank you, she said as the healer hastened out. Then she regarded her mother lying there with closed eyes.

How do you feel? Lisle asked, her voice sounding frosty even to her own ears. As concerned at the injury as she was, Lisle was even angrier it had happened at all. If her mother had listened to her just this once, she wouldn't be lying there all bloody.

Her mother opened one eye. I'll be fine. The eye closed.

Stifling a growl deep in her throat, Lisle attempted to soften her tone—or at least make it neutral. I've sent more soldiers north. I ordered others to scour the immediate area as well. And I sent some south to intercept the horses, just to be safe.

When her mother didn't react, Lisle continued, I've lifted the hunting ban for the time being, and I've sent supplies to the northern villages. That way they will be able to provide some help to refugees from the fire.

The duchess's eyes flew open. Those supplies should go to Chanzir.

I've sent some to Chanzir as well.

"Are you trying to beggar us?" The duchess struggled to a sitting position. After a brief hesitation, Lisle helped her sit up and arranged some pillows behind her.

There is no danger of that, Lisle bit out the words. We have plenty.

Lisle, it's not up to us to support the peasantry. The peasants support the nobility. It's the price they pay for being allowed to farm our land. And I hope you sent the supplies to Queen Astarte. It's not for us to undermine her by dealing directly with her subjects.

Lisle raised an eyebrow and refrained from commenting. Engaging on that topic—she knew all too well—lay madness. After all, the confrontation was nearly as old as she was. Still, it never ceased to amaze her how blind her mother could be.

True each queendom had its flaws. Lisle never doubted that point. But somehow the Dark Forest remained one of the few—if not arguably the only one—where the divide between upper and lower class was growing to an ever-deeper chasm.

Lisle had never traveled out of the Dark Forest.

Yet with the sixth sense, she didn't need to. She could—and often did—communicate with noblewomen from all over the planet.

And nearly all of them said the same thing.

It wasn't normal for the nobles to need to hide behind their castle walls. The peasants shouldn't want to kill them. Revolutionaries shouldn't be calling for an end to the monarchy.

Lisle kept her thoughts to herself. After so many years of contention, she now did that automatically. But that didn't mean her mother didn't know her opinion anyway.

As surely as if she'd read her daughter's mind, the duchess's face went from purest white to brilliant scarlet. For a moment, Lisle feared her mother was about to pass out or have some type of seizure. The force of her mother's rebuke told Lisle she needn't have worried.

One of these days, Lisle. One of these days when you are the one responsible for the Duchy, you won't be so quick to question, to judge. And perhaps you'll appreciate or at least understand the sacrifices that Queen Merien and Princess Zanthi make every day for the sake of the queendom.

Sacrifices? Lisle barely choked back a guffaw. She supposed she must have smirked, though, because her mother turned even redder. The clipped words hard like iron, her mother said, I look forward to the day when you finally grow up.

Lisle ignored the insult. I'll leave you to your rest, mother. Let me know if you need anything.

Her mother's insistence on unstinting support for the royal family was becoming an increasingly acrimonious issue mother and daughter. Lisle couldn't pretend nothing was wrong. Malcontents regularly attacked and robbed nobles. Commoners fought among themselves like scavengers shredding a corpse. The Dark Forest was rapidly turning into that corpse.

Lisle still remembered, albeit hazily, when Queen Merien had run the queendom with the help of her elder daughter Princess Zerah. At that time, over two decades ago, Lisle had been very young, but not too young to know that there hadn't been talk of starvation among the lower classes, and people hadn't been afraid to travel.

Unlike her mother, Lisle preferred finding solutions over ignoring the problem. Lisle didn't consider it disloyal to admit the truth, or to offer help.

Before the foul mood of the long-standing disagreement could take worse hold, Lisle returned to her favorite salon and forced herself to get back to her book.

After several false starts, she was finally able to. As so often happened, she lost complete track of time while she read, and would have finished the thick tome except that her friend interrupted.

Lisle, will you make it to the card game tonight? the disembodied voice sounded inside Lisle's head. A person's telepathy sounded like her speaking voice, so Lisle had no trouble identifying her friend Gala, the daughter of the Marquess of Dilv. Despite the outer edges of the estates being rather far flung, the main houses' proximity facilitated socializing among the families.

I should be able to, assuming Mother doesn't discover some emergency she needs my help with, Lisle replied telepathically. At least the duchess approved of her daughter's high-born friends. All the better to provide the proper influence. Lisle pushed the acid thought aside, glad it hadn't slipped out past her mental defenses, and returned her attention to her friend before the other woman noticed the distraction. Gala, she was attacked today. She and almost fifty soldiers. Have you had any problems in Dilv?

What?! No, everything is fine here. What happened?

There's really not much more to tell, Lisle said, but recounted the incident in more detail. Mother probably already spread the word, but be careful anyway.

And you're all right?

Me? Lisle snorted. "I'm fine. She just makes me