The peace was always a lie. They just didn’t know whose.
Queen Eloise of Ardanthia has done everything right. She
negotiated the alliance with Caladorn, married the prince, held her court
together through blight and borderland attacks and the whispered threat of an
ancient secret order. Now, with villages vanishing overnight — crops blackened,
livestock dead, people simply gone — she does what any good
ruler would do. She sends her best.
Sir Cedric Blackthorn, the precise and principled
knight-investigator. Captain Elira, a soldier who has survived too much to
flinch at anything. Tomas, a scholar more at home with footnotes than
fistfights. Ryn, a street thief from the Saltspire docks whose instincts are
worth more than anyone’s education. And Auralias — the Court Mage, brilliant
and unsettling in equal measure — who brings knowledge of old magic that none
of the others possess, and who may be the only thing standing between Ardanthia
and the League of the Moon.
Together, they are hunting the League before the League can
finish what it started.
What they find will change everything they think they know —
about the attacks, the conspiracy, and the true scale of what is being
assembled in the dark. There are artifacts, older than any living kingdom,
whose power was thought lost to history. There are secrets buried so deep that
uncovering them will cost more than anyone is prepared to pay. And there is a
question, growing louder with every mile: who, exactly, is the enemy?
Set across mountain fortresses carved from living rock,
fog-wrapped port cities, a besieged royal palace, and the treacherous corridors
of two kingdoms in collision, this is epic fantasy for readers who like their
politics sharp, their magic consequential, and their betrayals earned.
Sir
Cedric Blackthorn has been sent by Queen Eloise to investigate a string of
attacks on eastern villages — crops blackened overnight, animals dead, people
vanished without trace. He has assembled a team: Captain Elira, the scholar
Tomas, the street-sharp Ryn, and the Court Mage Auralias. They are holed up at
a battered inn in the village of Riverbrook, pooling what they have learned.
Ryn has found a symbol at the attack sites that she recognises from her past.
The Court Mage would prefer she hadn’t.
~800 words
A serving girl arrived with a tray — three
mugs of thin beer, a hunk of bread already sliced, a battered tin bowl of what
might once have been rabbit stew. She set them down with the briskness of a
woman determined not to get involved.
Cedric waited until she retreated, then
signalled the others to lean in. “What did you find?”
Elira was first. “Nobody trusts the
Queen, or the Watch, but they’re more afraid of the thing in the sky.”
Tomas nodded, tapping his notebook. “A
few remember blue light, but most didn’t look up. What they all describe is the
shadow.”
Cedric cut a piece of bread, chewing while he
thought. “Is someone calling it, or guiding it?”
Ryn cleared her throat, the movement
dramatic. “I’ve been thinking about the sigil. The one we found at the
granary.” She looked around, daring anyone to interrupt. “In Marinth,
there were stories about a League, never heard it called anything but that.
Supposedly, they could move information, gold, even bodies, without ever being
caught. I thought it was just a trade guild myth.”
Tomas looked up, interest lighting his face.
“Could the League be the League of the Moon?”
Auralias made a dismissive noise.
“You’re giving too much weight to old wives’ tales, Ryn. The League is a
legend designed to explain incompetence in the city guard. There’s no evidence
it was ever real.”
“Then why’s the sigil match?” Ryn
shot back. “And why are you so keen on ignoring it?”
Auralias’s expression remained bland, but
Cedric noticed a pulse beating at the mage’s temple. “Symbols recur,
Investigator. That’s what makes them useful. Even a street child should know
that.”
Cedric intervened, keeping his tone calm.
“Auralias, what do you really know about the League of the Moon?”
The Mage’s lips pressed together. “More
than you, and less than I’d like. If it ever existed, it would have been in the
days before the Crown outlawed private orders. All records are destroyed, and
the only witnesses are centuries dead.”
Tomas leaned forward. “Except the sigil
is real. And the glyphs at Oakvale match. Ryn sketched them, I checked.”
He fished in his coat, produced a stained scrap of paper, and set it on the
table. “See? The same looping curve, the half-moon mark. Whoever is doing
this wants us to know.”
“Or wants to make sure only certain
people understand,” Ryn added.
Elira interjected, “It doesn’t matter if
they’re real or not. If someone’s using their symbols to orchestrate attacks,
we treat it like a live threat. We set watches and keep everyone out of sight.
Tomas, you map the attacks; Cedric, you cross-check with any suspected League
activity. I’ll lock down the inn, keep the townsfolk from panicking.”
Cedric raised an eyebrow at his subordinate,
though he appreciated her directness. He looked around the table.
“Agreed?”
“Never thought I’d see the day I’d be
guarding a village from a bedtime story,” Ryn said, flashing a grin.
Auralias turned away, eyes on the fire.
“Just remember: stories are dangerous when people start believing
them.”
The meal finished in silence, each companion
lost in their own thoughts. The villagers cast sidelong glances, their
conversations stilled whenever the group moved or spoke too loudly. Ryn broke
the tension by stealing a second bowl of stew, then made a game of picking out
which villagers might have been spies or informants in another life.
Elira stationed herself by the door, hand
always resting on the hilt of her sword, eyes never quite still. Tomas worked
by lantern, scribbling diagrams and lists and odd runes that might, in another
context, have been poetry. Cedric alternated between reviewing his notes and
watching Auralias, who stared into the flames with a focus so intense Cedric
wondered if he saw something there that no one else could.
Cedric pulled Ryn aside as the others made
ready for bed. “You’re sure about the sigil?”
“You don’t forget a symbol that comes
with that many warnings,” she said, fierce and certain.
He smiled, in spite of everything.
“We’ll follow it through, then. Watch yourself around Auralias.”
“Always do.”
They rejoined the others. Tomas and Elira had
staked out bunks at the back wall, with good sight lines on both windows and
the main door. Cedric took a spot on the floor while Ryn slid onto the bench
nearest the exit, hands folded behind her head.
The last thing Cedric saw before drifting
into a restless half-sleep was Auralias, standing at the window, face a mask of
moonlight and calculation. The mage’s hands were clasped at his back, but every
so often, they moved in slow, deliberate patterns, tracing out invisible glyphs
that lingered, for just a moment, in the shadows along the wall.
*
Captain Elira waited until the inn’s common
room had emptied of all but the snoring and the truly sleepless. She stoked the
hearth to life, then pulled on her oilskin and stepped outside for a final
circuit of the perimeter. The mist had thickened, rolling up from the river in
ragged layers that clung to the ground and distorted every light and sound.
Above, no moon showed; even the stars were erased.
She made her round efficiently, checking each
window, every door latch and bolt. The cold was deeper now, sinking past flesh
and into the bone. At the back of the inn, in the wedge of shadow between
outbuildings, she paused and listened. The silence was not empty, but heavy,
filled with expectation, like the moment before a duel.
It was then she saw the watcher.
A figure at the side of the orchard, a good
thirty yards off, where the line of trees met the remains of a split-rail
fence. A hooded cloak, pale in the mist, motionless except for the faintest
stirring as the fog eddied around it. Elira’s hand went to her sword; she let
her eyes adjust, waited for the trick to reveal itself, but the silhouette
remained.
Newbie… 
