Cara’s eyes opened while it was still dawn, just in time to see the last traces of blue in the sky swallowed by dark thunderclouds. She broke her fast in silence, then donned a heavy oiled duster Noxi had loaned her. Working in the rain and mud had proved impossible in a cloak. Her arms and legs were soaked to the bone and she nearly caught a chill. And she refused to sit in the comfort of the castle while others toiled to lend aid to the refugees from Corn Hill.

It was a constant labor, building temporary homes for the people to live in. Their merchant lords lived in the warren within Cavanal, and the shelters were built along the roots of the hill. Their people were slow to recover from the gnoll attack, and so Cara’s father had directed High Alden’s farmers to work hard to bring in extra yield to feed them. Cara helped wherever she could, bringing water to thirsty laborers, relaying messages from her father to the knights patrolling the inner hills, and spreading blankets over cots and beds in the makeshift houses.

The homes they built were hovels, but a far cry better than the tents and longhall they were staying in when they first arrived. Cara worked hard to make the people as comfortable as possible. She had candles and fresh rushes brought into each house, and Howl’s help snuck a few casques of ale out of her father’s cellar to give the refugees. It was slow and tiring work, but a proper village was springing up at the feet of Cavanal.

Her mother had refrained from partaking in the effort at first, but eventually came down out of shame. She had claimed a longhall for a place to tend to the orphaned children. Maids and old women offered them comfort, and her mother read to them from the histories to keep them occupied when they found respite from their tears.

Cara mounted her silver and cantered down the winding path to Corn Town, as it was called. A pack of black dogs ran through Cavanal and barked as they frolicked in the heavy summer rain. The base of the hill had been astir with activity day and night. Most of the buildings had been raised, but many were still unfurnished. Carpenters had gathered in scores to build beds, tables, chairs, anything to make the hovels feel more like homes to the poor people. Cara could hear Hale in her mother’s longhall, singing and strumming his cittern to the orphans. She rode passed the longhall to the mile long plot of land her father commanded turned into a vegetable garden to help feed the refugees. He was there in armor, seated on his favorite horse, a blood bay destrier named Evenfall.

He called to Cara and gestured to a small spur of stone that stabbed outward from the haunch of the hill. She followed him there and bid him good morning.

“How did you sleep?” he asked.

“Not well,” she said, “and I blame Noxi’s Book of Tides. The passages of the Hidden Lord are awful. I don’t know why he wants me to read them. One can only stand so many pages of people weeping when forced to look into mirrors after their noses and lips were cut away. It was enough to read ‘the Hidden Lord practiced foul methods of torture’. Now I see the mournful faces of his experiments in my dreams.”

“Then you’ve finished with it?”.

“I suppose. I have a few pages left, and Noxi insists they’re important. I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to read it. I promise to finish it tonight, and then it’s all yours.”

“Take your time, my dear. You’ve been busy helping these poor people, and that’s what I wanted to speak to you about. I’m very proud of you, Cara, and I mean to show it. And not just to you, but to the entire world.”

“What do you mean?”. There was a look on his face she’d never seen, but could somehow read. It was the look of a man about to do a bold and daring thing.

“I mean to name you my heir.”

The words rang hollow in her mind. She knew their meaning, but it was a thing beyond her thoughts. “What?” was all she could say.

“I’d hoped for more to come of Hale’s time in Eruhal, but he’s no less a minstrel, and no more a knight, than when I sent him to Verrold ten years ago.”

“You mean… I thought… You sent him there for, grooming?”

“The court of Castle Gwynd has its share of loafing imbeciles, to be sure, but there are hard men of great valour there as well. I hoped for Hale to be molded by their influence. He may have been, somewhat, but not enough. I fear he took after Marcas, though he may speak scornfully of him. I’d hoped for him to look up to Derrion.”

“Father, Hale made me promise never to speak a word to anyone of this, so please never tell him I betrayed his trust. He does admire Derrion, a great deal.”

“So he also told me, but a man can sneeze as easily as he can speak. I look to a man’s labours to judge his worth. How else could I tolerate a ponderous beltsniffer such as Ser Walsh? He’s a buffoon, but a buffoon that can handle a lance and win a battle with green soldiers.”

“And you knighted Dennel.”

“Yes. The wisest choice I’d ever made, until now.”

Cara’s head was spinning. Of all the unexpected things to wake to… “Father, I just don’t understand. How can this be? The law…”

“... Is made by the king. Am I not the king? And are you not the daughter of the king? The mightiest empire of all our kin is ruled by a woman. Why shouldn’t High Alden be as well?”

“But father, Jannis Araad is east of the Ladder to the Moon, and they follow a much different way than the men of the west. And what will your lords think?”

“Exactly what I command them to. Feudal lords are little more than dogs in a throne room, fighting over scraps of food and begging to be scratched. Before I leave this world, I will teach you well how to keep them adequately fed and scratched.”

Cara’s heart began to race as quickly as her mind. She simply couldn’t fathom what her father was saying. It was not a thing she’d ever desired, let alone considered a possibility. A mix of fear and wonder quaked in her chest and her stomach fluttered. “Who will I marry?” she asked reflexively.

“Whomever you wish.”

She almost fell off of Arrow. The world of fear and uncertainty she once saw before her was raising like a curtain, and she saw instead a stage of decision and will. A fleeting thought passed through her mind then that shocked her, as her thoughts went to Howl for a moment, rather than Ror.

The rain abated as she stood there in mute amazement. A patch of blue broke through a hole in the black storm clouds, lined by a golden ring of pale sunfire.

“Titan’s tits!” she exclaimed at length. Her father laughed. “Have you told anyone? Oh father, how will Hale take this?”

“Only Dennel knows of my decision. It was his idea, initially. I’ve been weighing the matter since returning from Thrond. Seeing you care for these people, doing the work of peasants, yet holding your head high and bearing yourself like a queen, these things and more have sealed the matter in my heart. Hale will likely take it hard, but such is the burden of his choice to sit on the floor with children while his sister builds houses with the men of the realm.”

A heavy weight formed in her throat. Amidst her shock and wonder, she realised that she had sorely misjudged her own father. “I’ve always thought I was just a pawn in your plays for power. Father, forgive me. I’ve been so wrong about you. I thought you asked Verrold to foster Hale to curry favour with him, and that you arranged for Auntie to wed Balvor so you could curry favour with Grar. I’m sorry father. You’re a much better man than that. I’ve wronged you. I, your own daughter, have wronged you.” She felt her throat closing and her eyes moisten.

He spurred Evenfall close to Arrow and gently rested his hand on her shoulder. Sunlight glistened on his violet tabard and silver vambrace. “My most precious daughter, don’t punish yourself for a crime you haven't committed. You have not misjudged me. I’ve earned my reputation, seven times over I’ve earned it. When I was young and ambitious, I made many foolhardy attempts to expand our kingdom’s influence in all sorts of odious ways. Most of my missteps bore no fruit, but there were some ill-conceived bonds that haunt me to this day. I will teach you to avoid such mistakes, Cara, so that you will have no need for men like the Dyer.”

“Good! I never even want to see that man.”

“And you never will! Nor any others of his ilk, unless you wish to. And the old bonds that haunt me, they will not haunt you. My debts are paid, and my woes will follow me to the grave. Only the clean light of the Living Sun will shine on your crown.”

“When will you announce your decree?”

“Not for some time. At least not until the plight of Corn Hill is properly assuaged. Tell me, Cara, how would you respond to their crisis?”

She thought for a moment. She felt relieved that no announcement would be made yet. She would need time to become used to the idea herself, and for now she wanted things to remain simple. So much had happened to her since visiting Thrond, she felt overwhelmed at the thought of more sudden change. Even sitting there atop Arrow, peaceful in the break in the rain, with sunlight and cool wind annointing her hair, she felt as if she were about to drown.

“I’m sorry, I, I need to go,” she stammered, “to work, or just to do something.”

“Of course, sweet girl. I didn’t mean to press you. Go to the garden and wash your hands in the soil, or ride free over the hills and let the wind be your crown. There is no need for anything to change today.”

“Thank you, father. And father, I’m honored, truly. I won’t fail you, or our people.”

He smiled warmly. “I know you won’t. The mountain spoke to you, Cara, and no one else. You’re the one to ascend High Alden’s throne, and with it her people. Never fear the storm, precious girl.”

She held his gaze for a moment, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek before spurring Arrow to the garden. The rain was not gone for long, and came down with a vengeance when it returned. More than a few people commented on how kind it was of Noxi to loan her his coat, but she may as well have been in her small clothes for all she cared. Her head was swimming with the possibilities of being High Alden’s queen.

More and more her thoughts went to Howl. It bothered her at first. She felt she was betraying the affection she felt for Ror, but as the day wore on the grass was cleared from the muddy plot of land, it began to make a certain kind of sense to her. Her interest in Ror formed when she was worried over who her father might marry her to, and he seemed the best way her father’s plans could pan out for her. But now she could choose whatever man she wanted, and before Ror there was Howl. But now there was no suitor out of her reach. Deep in her heart, though the truth was slow to manifest, she knew that she would be happiest wed to a simple man. Her father’s words echoed in her mind. I look to a man’s labours to judge his worth.

By day’s end the garden was cleared of grass, though far too wet for planting. Istan and Gislain came down in the afternoon to help Cara, and were now playing in the mud, hunting for worms with the other children. The rain kept falling in an unrelenting torrent, and all Cara could think of was a hot bath and finding a quiet corner of the castle to read Noxi’s Book of Tide’s in.

She was eager to finish the Hidden Lord, and hoped to have enough time to read one of the more pleasant tales before loaning the book to her father. Her bookmark had fallen out, so she had to flip through the pages to find her place. She caught sight of a word as she was flipping and stopped the page. She wished she hadn’t. She was having such a peaceful and satisfying evening, and now her heart was thumping hard in her chest. Try as she might to keep looking for the Hidden Lord and ignore the page under her thumb, she felt compelled to move her hand aside and read. It was The Burning of the Oak. The name sounded familiar to her, and she remembered it from the book given her by the director of the Stars of Casimir. It had been spliced into the tale of Chaka, and at the time meant nothing, but now her thoughts went back to the Evershore, and the monstrous black worm consuming the castle in the sand.

The word that caught her was a name. She read back a few lines, wanting to remember what else was said as if that would some how put her at ease. I am no memory, the book read, I am the Speaker, the Refugee, the Dark Adaptation, the Inward Lamp and the Ember that will not die. I hear with the waters, I feel with the wind, I whisper Othominian. Cara looked up from the book with a quiet gasp. She was near a window, and could hear the rain continuing to pour. The sun had passed over the hills, and the Titan’s Torch cast a bloody haze on the heavy clouds outside.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Othominian, she thought. The castle was called Othomo. The Voice was from there. She looked again at the title of the passage. The Burning of the Oak. The Old Oak from Forever Man? She wracked her brain for anything from her waking dreams that might give a clue. She then strained to think of everything Audun and Ridzak had said. Then she remembered the title of the chapter the passage was in. The Dreams of Alon. Was Alon from Othomo? But how could he be the Old Oak, and the Black Worm, or the boy on the horse? The thought that the Voice calling her to walk with it could be the castle eating worm of her vision had always frightened her. She looked at the text again. I am the refugee. She felt a sense of relief, as surely the Refugee would be the child fleeing the Worm on horseback.

Othominian. Ridzak told me to whisper that name. I knew it already, only I’d forgotten. Did the Voice pluck that name from my mind? But then how could Ridzak know it also?

She read on. I tell you now, for I have seen both the bones after the doom of ages and the embryo of time's impetus; that the future is not a stream to carry you, but an ocean to drown you lest you dare to raise a sail. Hear me, and know that my voice is the clarion call of the deepening silence between suns.

The deepening silence between suns. She had seen the last star that died, scattered into an orange cloud that grew slightly dimmer every night. She looked again at the book, and felt a growing realization that the Voice might have a name. She reeled at the thought of these ancient stories being true, that there was once an actual goblin named Chaka who lived the lives of many men, and that Alon was not just a name of some mysterious author, but a man of blood and bone who spoke to people in dreams, and that she herself was hearing him. And now he’s gone. When he spoke to Chaka he was still alive, but now he’s only a memory, the light of a distant star.

She felt a twinge of sadness and wonder, and the thought arose that perhaps Alon may have only been another person the Voice spoke to, and confusion once again took her. Frustrated, she closed her eyes and tried to put the thoughts out of her mind. Just then the great tower horn on the Pillar of Autumn wailed over castle, city and town. Cara sat still for a moment in shock, then flung the book aside and leapt to her feet. All the Tall Hill was astir. Cara hurried to her father’s solar and saw him looking out his window to the eastern wall. Her mother came in behind her, followed by Dennel and Ser Walsh.

“Your Grace,” said Walsh. His face was white as granite and his hands were shaking.

“What is it Ser Walsh? I can’t see anything through this rain.”

Ser Walsh’s mouth moved, but no words came from his throat. Dennel pushed him aside and stepped forward. “It’s the dwarves, Your Grace.”

“The dwarves?” her father said. He sounded as confused as Cara felt.

“Thousands of them Sire,” Dennel went on, “geared for war, with the castle and all of Cavanal surrounded. The refugees from Corn Hill have fled to the barracks, and the dwarves have slain all the watchman on Cavanal’s wall. Ror is leading them, and he bid me to bring you his terms.”

“No!” Cara shouted. “This is all wrong! Dennel, you’re wrong! Father, this can’t be. Let me go to him. There has to be a mistake. I can speak with him.”

“Absolutely not!” her father said sternly.

“What have you done?” said her mother. Her voice was lifeless and hollow, and her face had turned the grey of a corpse.

“Yselde,” her father said, turning to her with his palms spread toward his sides.

“What have you done?”

“Nothing. Dearest, I swear it. I married my sister to their prince, and that’s all.”

“You sold them to the drow. You sold them to…”

“Yselde!”

She slapped him. “Don’t you shout at me! You had them murdered, didn’t you? Halfur and Yemi, that was no cave-in. Your masters snapped their fingers and you obeyed. And now the dwarves have come for blood, and all High Alden will suffer because of your stupidity!” She went wild. She slapped him again and again, then gripped his collar and tried violently to shake him. “YOU’VE KILLED US ALL!” she howled. Dennel and Walsh went to her side and pried her free, then dragged her screaming to her bed chamber and shut the door. Cara could hear her mother pounding on the door and screaming. She turned to her father.

“Cara,” he said.

“Father, what’s happening? Tell me the truth.” Her stomach was in a knot and she could feel bile threatening to rise up her throat.

“I don’t know. But, I will go to Ror, and I will settle this, I promise. Now, stay inside the castle, and keep everyone safe. Dennel, stay here and guard Yselde. Go to her, when she calms down. She knows less than she deems, fragments of past mistakes.”

Dennel bowed. “Your Grace.” His voice was sad.

Her father rushed passed her without another word. She ran to watch him go, and felt dismay when she saw him command Ser Walsh to stay behind with his family. Istan and Gislain came into the hall, asking why their mother was locked in her bedchamber and pounding on the door.

“I heard some of the guards talking,” said Istan. “They said we’re under attack. Did father say Nimbus Sanguine? Is the Dyer coming to help?”

Hale came into the hall. He was in his bed clothes and his hair was matted. He looked delirious and completely unaware. “Cara, what’s happening?”

“I want archers on the walls!” boomed Ser Walsh as he strode down the stairs and out of the keep. “And spearmen. Arm every ballista and trebuchet. Keep all weapons trained on Prince Ror. If he so much as shakes his fist at our king, I want him dead!”

“Cara,” said Hale, his eyes opening fully, “what's happening?”

“I don’t know!” she screamed. She was trying so hard to keep herself composed, but she was drowning in emotion and tears were flooding down her cheeks. Her mother’s screams were growing wilder by the moment, commanding Dennel to open the door so she could flee to safety with her children. Dennel’s face looked pained. Cara stormed over to him. “As your princess, and future queen, I command you Ser, tell me everything you know.”

The old knight looked as if the Final Arrow had struck him in the breast. “Your father… he, Cara, I don’t rightly know. Your father has ties to Drow Primus, to a foul and murderous order, the Black Sun, they’re called. They’re very secretive, and all I know of them I learned from Noxi. Your father hired the Hood, the Dyer, to keep him safe from them, but he’s not a loyal man and I fear the worst.”

“Why is Ror outside our gates with an army?!”. She tried to keep her voice from quaking, but anger, fear and confusion had overwhelmed her. Her thoughts went to the black sun looming over her in her dreams, and it was all she could do to keep from swooning. The loud crash of something heavy hitting the door made her jump, and Dennel, who stood with his back against it, was pushed slightly forward. Her mother began weeping wildly. “They’ll kill us!”

Cara looked at Dennel, who was tearing up as well. “Princess, you father never meant…”

“Tell me!”

The hard old warrior almost wept at Cara’s shout. “He betrayed Thrond, Your Highness. He tried hard to break free from the Black Sun, said he’d paid his debts, but they’d bought the Hood, and he threatened to have him kill every one of you in front of him if he didn’t serve them one final time. So he snuck a spy into Thrond for them. I don’t know who or how.”

“I do,” Cara said. Her heart turned to ice as the realization struck her. Noxi tried to warn me. “Where’s Noxi?”.

Dennel’s lip quivered and he covered his face with his hand. “I don’t know. He fled earlier today. I saw him leave, and tried to get him to stay, but he said he couldn’t. He called on an old debt, and compelled me to say nothing. Princess, I can’t tell you why Ror is here, or has an army at our gates. I’ve told you all I know.”

“Did my father try to hurt Halfur and Yemi?”

“The drow commanded him to, but I…”

“Gissy!” shouted Istan.

Cara whirled around and saw her sister flying down the stairs to the Great Hall. “Stop her!” she shouted to Hale.

He stood frozen, staring at her with a stunned look. “Future queen?”.

Cara burned with anger. She growled at Hale and ran down the stairs after her sister, almost tripping over her gown several times. She hoisted it up when she ran to the gate and flew over the drawbridge after Gislain. Ser Walsh had ordered every man at arms, be he soldier or guard, to the castle gate, leaving her path wide open until the edge of the training yard. Gislain had turned away from the soldiers mustering at the eastern wall and was making for a postern. She was screaming for Ror not to hurt their father. Cara ran as quickly as she could, trying to ignore the white banner that fluttered in the stormwinds atop the wall.

She made it to the postern and outside the southern wall, then her bare feet sank in the mud, and it took all her strength to put one in front of the other. Gislain was far ahead of her now, her skinny little body running lightly over the wet ground.

Walk with me, said the Voice.

Not now, Cara pleaded.

Lightning scorched the sky, and the thunder that followed clapped so loudly that she screamed and fell. Her hands were now stuck in the mud as well as her knees and feet. She wept as she struggled to free herself. The rain was pounding on her back, piercing through her thin sleeping gown and stabbing into her skin. She gathered all her strength, and with a fearsome roar she managed to free her left hand from the squelching mud. Another hand then took hold of her wrist, and she felt someone helping her to her feet. Sh expected to see Dennel, or Howl, or maybe her brother, but it was the eyeless woman.

Her hood flapped in the wind along with her robe, and Cara saw that she was naked underneath, save for a web of silver threads that held sparse pieces of black cloth over her breasts and loins. Cara shivered violently and fought to keep on her feet, but this naked, blind woman stood as still as a tower in the raging tempest.

“Who are you?” Cara asked, raising her voice over the lashing rain and howling wind. The woman spoke in a clear voice that somehow sounded soft and lilting despite her shouting over the storm. The words meant nothing to Cara. They were in a tongue she had never heard, and sounded more like singing than speech. She shook her head.

Walk with me, the Voice repeated.

The instant the Voice spoke to Cara, thunder cracked and the blind woman looked upward to the red glow where the Titan’s Torch bled through the towering black clouds. She then looked to Cara and pointed north and west, the direction of Castle Gwynd.

Cara shook her head defiantly. “No. No. NO!” She turned and walked as fast as she could through the mud, keeping her left hand on the curtainwall for balance. After a long and arduous trudge through clinging mud and slick grass, she rounded the corner and felt the cobbled eastern road beneath her feet. Lightning flashed, and for a second she saw row upon row of dwarven soldiers in blackened steel. Their spears rose like fangs into the night, and her father was on his knees in front of them. A second flash of lightning showed Gislain in her white gown. She was halfway between Cara and the dwarves. Cara screamed for her to come back, but her voice was drowned out by thunder. Every bone in her body ached, her skin felt like weeping ice, and she was feverish with grief and fear, but somehow she was able to hurl herself forward.

Rain and darkness blinded her, and only her sister’s voice and flashes of lightning to keep her from getting lost in the tumultuous gloom. The rain struck her like a thousand hammers, and the road was becoming a river. She slipped and fell, biting hard into her upper lip and twisting her ankle. Shaken by confusion, pain, anger and fear, she felt an urge to turn around and crawl back to the keep. But instead she rose, blood dripping down her chin and her ankle burning with pain. One agonizing step after the other, she quickly limped her way forward, at last catching up to her sister. She lurched downward, wrapped her arms around Gislain, and tumbled with her onto the ground.

She looked up in time to see the dwarven army lit again by the burning sky. They looked like giants to her then, huddled in a heap on the ground with her little sister shivering in her arms. There was one dwarf standing out from the others, flanked by two soldiers who stood just behind him. He wore a black helm with two white ram horns jutting from the sides, and in his hands was a massive warhammer.

No. Ror please, don’t. Please! Lightning flashed again, and the hammer was now raised over the dwarf’s head. Her father held his hands together, trembling and begging mercy for his people. Cara screamed Ror’s name, but again the sky cried louder. Hot liquid splashed hard onto her face, and when lightning flashed again she saw only Ror. His hands no longer gripped his hammer. Instead they hung limply at his sides, and in the red light of the Titan’s Torch, Cara could see his green eyes glimmer sadly through his visor. He was looking directly at her and Gislain, and between them the spiked haft of Malgond rose from the ruin of her father’s skull.

Cara felt as dead as her father was. All sense of emotion evaporated from her heart, and she may as well have been made of stone. Thunder bellowed again from the sky, but it was drowned out by the loudest sound Cara had ever heard. It began with a BOOM, then a crack so loud it hurt her chest to hear. She turned to see what caused the noise, holding Gislain tightly to her. The little girl whimpered and shivered, and Cara was clutching her so tightly she feared she might hurt her.

The sound came from the Pillar of Autumn. Huge chunks of its base were hurtling away from the castle, and with a loud and mournful groan, it tilted away from the keep and fell in pieces down the hill. Another BOOM sounded, and Cara saw Dawn’s End topple. Next was the Phoenix Roost, and then the Spear. After the towers went the walls. East first, then north and south together, and then the west. Large holes opened in the ground inside the courtyard and dwarven soldiers spewed out, killing the soldiers of High Alden easily in the confusion.

She turned back to Ror, but he was gone. Rank after rank of faceless, steel skinned dwarves marched past her and Gislain. Their breath came from their helms like hot steam, and they seemed to growl as they breathed. Cara tried to cover Gislain with her entire body, and the two girls shivered in horror as the dwarves of Thrond turned their kingdom into a grave.