Page 1 of The Dragon and the Dove

Part I

One eve while I was fretting beneath a chestnut tree,

A dove came soft and cooing and perched alongside me.

Calmed by her gentle presence, my worrying did cease,

And there inside the forest glade, I found a ray of peace.

When again I went there walking, a hunter I did meet,

In greed he came to kill my dove and take her heart to eat.

Deep in her breast the arrow struck, his prize was all but won,

Yet to my shock, the dove took flight and soared into the sun.

CELIANA BARONE, SAINT OF SONG AND POETRY

The Old Soothsayer

High up in the eaves of House Armand, where cobwebs clung to dusty beams and a candle flickered on a narrow sill, an old woman slumbered in her chair. In her hands, she clutched her tarot deck.

It was long after midnight and despite the ravens croaking on the roof, Madame Josephine Fontaine was fast asleep. There was no peace in her slumber. Not while the thread that bound her to her ancestor, Oriel Beauregard, was as taut as a sailor’s knot. The Saint of Destiny was yanking on the other end, whispering.

Look and see, Josephine.

The fate of Fantome is changing.

Josephine scowled in her sleep. A thousand years gone, and Oriel would not leave this bloody kingdom alone.

Let me be, you infernal pest! I am old and tired and soon to die.

She cursed that blasted drop of Beauregard blood in her veins. Not magical like the blood of the saints but old and powerful in a different way. The remnants of a bond she could not sever, no matter how she tried to ignore it. Was she doomed, in her ninth decade on the vast continent of Arthos, to never know peace again?

That familiar voice hissed at her.

The world is falling into great danger, Josephine.

You must rise to your destiny.

Pah! Destiny had left it late enough. Josephine was half blind and all but deaf, not to mention mostly drunk these days. What use did destiny have of her now? What use had she of destiny?

A vision was knocking on the door of her mind. It had begun as a tap just after dinner, rising to an insistent thud as she’d sat reading in the library afterwards. Oriel’s fist was heavy with impatience now, pounding and pounding and pounding.

Too tired to fight it any longer, the soothsayer relinquished her stubbornness. As she sat slumped in her rocking chair, gilded by the dying candlelight, the door inside her mind flew open…

The winged army of Urnica rose up from beyond the Western Ridge like a plague upon the skies. A flock of monstrous black birds blanketed the horizon, tail feathers like flames beneath the rising sun. The Strix. Native to the southern cliffs of Urnica and not seen outside their kingdom for over one hundred years, the war mounts were weapons unto themselves, with keen eyes to see in the dark and talons as sharp as cutlasses.

There was a touch of magic about them.

Dark magic.

Upon their backs, the notorious Stargrazers of Urnica were as fearsome as their mounts, the king’s prized legion of aerial fighters clad in black leather and helmets crowned with a mane of blood-red feathers. The smudging of kohl round their eyes obscured their gazes, but there was no doubting their destination.

The western peaks of Valterre seemed to shrink beneath their shadow, as though nature, in its oldest and truest form could sense death on the wind.

Down by the shore, waves thrashed against the rocks, as if to jostle the kingdom awake.