Chapter Three
Book Two
1/
Late in the morning, the clouds that had plagued the sky throughout the night and earlier that day began to dissipate and break upon the eastern horizon. The towns’ people in the city below the Serenian Castle bustled about in the markets, many stopping to look at the newest additions to news boards.
Two weeks had already passed since King Graveis had sent his message out across the Land agreeing to the Challenge. No message had yet come back from the man, Gondrake. But the King was an impatient man and instead of waiting for a response from his foe, he issued another announcement. This announcement contained the time and place the Challenge would be held.
The vast majority of magic-less humans in the city, let alone the others living across Serene, had already forgotten who Ardunaze was and did not care to find out who Gondrake must be. They thought the Challenge was some type of their barbaric entertainment. They had forgotten the Old Ways and laws just as they had forgotten the Great War. They now believed that men were stronger than women, and denied women their rights as the stronger gender. To them all of it was history. Their lives spanned little more then half centuries at best. And they had thrown away old customs in what felt like the blink of an eye for the magic folk of the Land. Very few even recalled the great Legends and the tales of the Goddesses that had created them all.
Now they made up a little more than half of the Land’s population. The Great War had killed over three fourths of the Tribal people, the magically gifted protectors of the Land. The Gerudys and the Serenians had suffered major damages, with over half their people gone. But the worst loss of all was the extinction of the elves, a group that made up the majority of the Woodland Tribe. The Kochis, the other group within the Woodland tribe had survived with minimal damage, but they would forever grieve for their other half. Men themselves had run and become afraid of sorcerers and witches of the Tribes peoples, blaming the War totally upon magic users.
Then there were those who had once been magic users that had been broken from their power during the Great War by foes stronger than them. It had been those unfortunate souls that had lead to the taint the Gerudy and Royal Serenian Tribes had faced. They had been the cause of the integration between the Tribes people and their magicless counterparts. So man had become ignorant and weak, and with him he pulled down the Tribes, so that they too, became weaker.
Having lived all of the long years with Katrine before the War and surviving long after it and her death, Avaery had seen all of this through her own eyes. If things did not change, soon all would be lost, and evil would be free to roam the Land . . . *But for now everything must continue the same, for the Dream to come,* thought Avaery as she strode up the steps to one of the higher towers of the castle.
This particular corridor to Valruuah’s chambers was very feminine in its decoration. Pastel pictures and tapestries lined the spiraling walls upward and little shelves cut out of the thick, stone walls were lined with lighter woods to compliment the painted stone. Little statuettes, vases, books, and crystal glasses filled the little nooks, and Avaery enjoyed the light streaming in from the windows that filtered sunlight in at every full turn of the staircase. Soon she came to an open doorway, with its maroon door curtain tied off to the side, at the top of the two flights of stairs. Avaery walked casually into the room through the open doorway. This public sitting room of Valruuah’s was decorated much like the staircase leading into it, with hand picked paintings and many lightwood and glass coffee tables. Warm pastels greeted visitors into two separate seating areas that were set up around the large hearth and the viewing area, where a music sphere and a projecting sphere were located. White couches scattered with all sorts of throw pillows flattered the pale spring green carpeting and the four large windows, two on either side of the room, were fitted with window seats sporting upholstered, pale pink cushions. In the window seat on the far left of Avaery sat Valruuah.
She was dressed in a long, emerald green tunic with tan wide-legged capris that complemented her fair yet slightly tanned skin. Her long golden hair was tied back into a low french braid woven together with tan beaded strips of leather, and her long bangs were side-swept behind one ear. The neutral expression upon her face looked away from Avaery and her emerald eyes were focused on something outside the window.
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