Description
A Strange Place in Time, Book Five: Even Fall
– Alyx Jae Shaw
Across the sea, in the Paladin Isles, the Court of Hercandoloff are considered a myth.
Aramaïs, Whitebird, and their friends are facing a crisis and a plague. Their only chance of survival could well be those myths. To save themselves and their people, they will travel the sea in a boat they have no idea how to sail. They have no idea that they are expected, and that someone is waiting for them.
And they are late.
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EXCERPT:
The house sat upon what had once been a green lawn, surrounded by a low field-stone wall that kept in a handful of bored sheep. The sheep had bitten the grass, and watched the doings of the people as they travelled up and down the simple dirt road that led past the house and into the heart of the town. Drovers had walked their flocks of geese or sheep, large wagons pulled by teams of horses had brought goods from far away, and even the knights on their great spirited chargers had once passed this very house, all watched by the sheep behind the wall as they chewed grass beneath an apple tree.
The sheep and tree were gone now, as was most of the wall. The filthy rain beat down against the ripped and dirty blinds that slapped listlessly at the crumbling house. The stone was chipped and blasted from the recent battle, and one wall of the lower storey was now little more than a gaping hole. The earth surrounding the sad building was churned to greasy mud, littered with dead and dying warriors, their blood mingling with the stench of sour ground and decay.
Evening, like the rain, was falling.
A lone figure, clad in chain mail and leather boots, wearing a tabard over his armour, darted across the field of death and into the house through the great hole in the wall. He was moving quietly and quickly, carrying a body over his shoulders, and made his way up the cracked and burned wooden stairs to the upper floor. He reached a closed door, and tapped it. Moments later the door was opened by a woman clad in black leather, her long curling dark hair held back from her face by a scrap of old fabric. She held the door open long enough for him to enter the room, then shut it quietly. It would not do to make their presence known. The woman carefully barred the door, then looked at the man.
“Who have you brought, Aramaïs?”
Aramaïs carefully lowered the bleeding and unconscious elf to the tattered bed in a corner of what had once been an elegant gentleman’s chamber, now little more than a dirty hovel. He cast a glance to his black-clad companion, who had moved to a window, and was peering cautiously into the grey evening.
“Do you see any more movement, Shendklin?”
“I see one man moving, close enough to grab, but we’d better hurry before the carrion beasts are unleashed.” She moved away from the window, and then paused as she recognised the elf on the bed. Her eyes grew large. “Isn’t that Whitebird? I thought he hated you!”
“It is and he does. He’s going to hate me even more when he finds out I had to put an arrow through his lover.”
Shendklin drew a slow gasp of horror. “No! Tell me you didn’t! Aramaïs, he is going to kill you!”
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