Love and Sacrifice: Book Two of the Prophecy Series Read online

  Love

  and

  Sacrifice

  By

  Tove Foss Ford

  Inspired by an idea from Brian D. Ford

  Second Book of the

  Prophecy series

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright 2017 by Tove Foss Ford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  http://www.eirdon.com

  ISBN: 978-0-9981549-2-3

  Dedication

  To all who have known the red flame of love

  and the white flame of sacrifice.

  Book One

  The Middle Continent

  Prologue

  A

  t the center of The Sea of Grass, Tharan-Tul, Great Shaman of the the Thrun, sat on a hilltop by the dying flames of his fire. His gnarled hand smoothed an area of fine gray ash.

  He waited, listening, closing his eyes.

  They came – the whispering voices rising from the Sea of Grass. They sighed and sang of past and future.

  Tharan-Tul drew three interconnected circles in the ashes with his forefinger – Ascendance, Balance and Descent.

  He drew his runes from their small leather pouch and passed them from hand to hand, the worn bone discs clicking together softly. His mind called to the Spirits at The Light At The Top Of The World to help him see clearly. He cast the runes across the drawn circles.

  He frowned.

  The rune of the Winter Sun was in the uppermost circle, Ascendance, but the other two had fallen together in the adjacent circle of Balance. The third circle, Descent, was clear.

  Not a bad sign, but unexpected.

  Could Light Of The Winter Sun ascend so soon? The runes of Reflection of My Friend and Light Brighter Than The Sun had fallen under another influence, when before, all three of the chosen children’s runes had always been unified in one circle.

  The whispering voices sang that this was the near future he was seeing, not the present.

  Sweeping the fragile discs together into his hand, Tharan-Tul replaced them in their pouch, then erased the circles in the ash. Sitting back on his heels, he looked up at the night sky.

  The prophecy might yet come to pass, despite the division between the chosen children he had just seen. They could be reunified. There was still time.

  In the interim, there was much to be done.

  The Shadows, Mordania

  1

  Gladdas Dalmanthea

  Visits the shadows

  I

  for Trantz, former Mordanian spy, was riding home from a day of hunting when he saw a woman burdened with a particularly large portmanteau trudging along the road from The Shadows’ railroad halt. He frowned. No visitors were expected today. This was a serious breach of security.

  Ifor urged his large black gelding forward and rapidly overtook the figure toiling along in the dust of the midsummer road. As he got within earshot, it was obvious that not only was the woman toiling along, she was swearing expertly as she did so.

  “Gladdas, you old biddy,” Ifor grinned as he drew even with her.

  Piercing eyes as dark as his own glared up under heavy, shapely eyebrows.

  “Retribution for those tight shoes you sold me will begin,” Gladdas Dalmanthea, the only female freelance spy and assassin on Eirdon, snapped.

  “Gladdy, that was twelve years ago,” Ifor chuckled, sliding from his horse’s back and taking the portmanteau from her without a by-your-leave. “My back was so bad that day, it’s a wonder I didn’t sell you hobnail boots.”

  “They would have pinched less,” she retorted as he began securing the portmanteau to the front of his saddle. “Don’t think I’m going to flop around behind you on that grundar you call a horse,” she continued.

  Ifor smiled to himself and tied the portmanteau behind his saddle instead.

  “Should we leave her to cope with the dust and heat, Blackie?” he asked his very large saddle mount.

  “You call your horse Blackie?” Gladdas Dalmanthea asked sarcastically.

  “Makes sense. He’s black,” Ifor responded laconically. He remounted and crooked a booted foot for her to step onto, pulling her upward to sit sidesaddle before him. He pretended not to hear her involuntary sigh of relief. She had walked almost halfway to The Shadows from the halt on an unpaved road – a difficult journey on a hot day, particularly for a woman wearing very citified shoes.

  They were silent until they rounded a bend in the road and the great estate house called The Shadows came into view.

  “Good gods!” Gladdas Dalmanthea burst out. “Is that Menders’ little hut in the woods?”

  Ifor grinned to himself. The Shadows was as striking as it was imposing, four stories of elaborate Old Mordanian architecture. It soared against the sky, its onion-domed turrets frosted with decorative painted woodwork. Sixteen years of loving restoration and maintenance had made what was once a neglected, near-ruin into a gracious home for nearly seventy people – including Princess Katrin Morghenna, second Heiress to the Throne of Mordania

  “That’s it,” was all Ifor said.

  “It’s incredible – but not worth Menders staying out here in this wilderness,” Gladdas sniped.

  “He didn’t have any choice about it, if you’ll remember,” Ifor rebuked gently. “These days it’s far from a wilderness. You’re just grumpy because you were shuffling along in the dust. What brings you out, Glad?”

  “I thought I would take a look at the place I’m exiling some of my best operatives to for the next three years,” she responded, still staring at the house and grounds as Blackie strutted along.

  The grounds of The Shadows were at their summer best, green lawns sweeping up a gentle slope to the house. A lake on the right side of the curving oval drive shimmered in the sunlight, ringed with purple flag flowers and lilies. An extravagant rose garden nestled against the south side of the house – a dense forest of old growth trees guarded the sunlit gardens adjacent to the massive house. The display of light and shade was dazzling.

  A small, blond man sauntered out onto the massive front steps of The Shadows, shaded his eyes and stared in their direction. Ifor waved before the man darted back inside, to emerge a few seconds later with a pair of binoculars. He surveyed them and dashed indoors again.

  “Gone to tell Papa?” Gladdas sniped.

  Ifor smiled, but he pinched her waist just hard enough to get her attention.

  “Now then, Glad – we’re happy to have you, but if you’d let us know you were coming, we would have met you at The Halt,” he chided gently. “What’s more, I could have come and brought you over from Erdahn on the boat. That would have saved you the two day delay the trains have been having outside of Rondheim.”

  She groaned and he could hear the weariness in the sound. She leaned back against him. He wrapped a big arm around her waist affectionately. They had known each other for more than twenty-five years and nothing she threw could rattle or offend him.

  “You may take me back on your boat,” she finally said as they started up the drive to the house.

  The blond man reappeared with a companion who wore dark spectacles and thigh length black hair held back with a decorative clip. He peered through the binoculars held out to him by the blond fellow and la
ughed before he waved.

  “That is Sir Slippery Eel?” Gladdas Dalmanthea asked in astonishment. “Last time I saw him, he looked like a naughty schoolboy!”

  “It’s been a very long time,” Ifor observed. “Since before he went to deal with the Surelian Problem nineteen years ago? You haven’t run into him since then?”

  Gladdas shook her head, staring at the men she knew were Aylam Josirus, Lord Stettan, who went by the name Menders and Kaymar Shvalz, his second in command – first cousins to each other and second cousins to the Queen of Mordania.

  “No, it never came up. I spend a lot of time in Artreya now,” she answered distractedly. “And that’s Kaymar. The last time I saw him he was a child – albeit a frightening one.”

  “He still is at times.” Ifor smiled at her description of the mercurial man he had been bonded with for eight years. “I believe you’ll find that he’s quite grown up – for the most part.”

  Gladdas laughed outright and Ifor smiled. Now her visit would go well and she wouldn’t appear on the doorstep at her worst.

  Two heads popped out of a second story window – those of a golden-haired young woman and a striking young Thrun man. Gladdas glimpsed startling blue eyes on the woman and dark spectacles, like Menders’, on the man before the heads popped back out of sight and excited conversation could be heard.

  “The Princess, I presume?” she said. “I hope she doesn’t expect curtseying.”

  It was Ifor’s turn to laugh.

  “Glad, you have no idea – absolutely no idea,” he said, swinging off the horse and lifting her down to the steps, where Menders came forward and to her utter amazement, embraced her like a long-lost sister.

  ***

  “Gladdas Dalmanthea – here?” Eiren asked, her eyes wide. She had just come home from teaching at The Shadows Academy.

  “Indeed,” Menders smiled. “Turned up on the train and had walked halfway here from The Halt when Ifor rode by.”

  “In this heat? The poor thing!” Eiren rose in alarm, going toward her medicine cabinet.

  “She’ll be fine. She’s already had a bath and changed and is now being regaled by Borsen and Katrin, who are showing her the wood carvings throughout the house.” Menders smiled and sprawled across the bed.

  Sixteen years ago Menders had come to The Shadows at the age of twenty, having been appointed guardian of the newborn Princess Katrin. He had been Mordania’s foremost assassin during his youth. His unconventional and daring disruption of an attempt to infiltrate and conquer Mordania by the nation of Surelia had earned him the nickname “The Surelian Solution.” Then, at the Queen’s command, he had vanished from the world with the infant Princess and became Head of Household at The Shadows. There he had met Eiren Spaltz, daughter of one of the tenant farmers.

  Eiren had attended teachers’ college through the patronage of Menders and Doctor Rainer Franz, Princess Katrin’s personal physician. She was now the headmistress of The Shadows Academy, now a prestigious institution she had founded as a one room school in an unused building on her father’s farm.

  Eiren and Menders had lived as man and wife for some eleven years, though Menders’ commitment to Princess Katrin precluded his marrying. They had raised Katrin as their daughter and also acted as parents for Menders’ nephew, Borsen and Hemmett Greinholz, now a graduate of the Mordanian Military Academemy and the Captain of Princess Katrin’s Personal Guard.

  “Why do you think she’s appeared here without a word of warning?” Eiren asked, selecting several bottles from the chest despite Menders’ reassurances that Gladdas Dalmanthea would be fine.

  “That’s my clever girl,” Menders smiled admiringly, interlacing his fingers behind his head. “She turned up here dressed absurdly for anyone traveling. She does nothing by chance and normally would never get on a train in the getup she was wearing – purple silk dress, open-fronted laced shoes with high heels. She was deliberately appearing as a novice traveler, disguising herself well.”

  Eiren came and sat beside him.

  “What do you think she wants?” she asked, a line of concern showing between her eyebrows.

  Menders reached up and smoothed the line gently.

  “My dear, Gladdas Dalmanthea is impossible to predict,” he answered. “Something is afoot, but we won’t know until she divulges it. That will be in her own good time.”

  Borsen and Katrin both burst into laughter on the floor below.

  “All seem to be getting along well,” Menders smiled, sitting up. “I take it our young people are moving Glad along this way.”

  “I’m actually going to meet Gladdas Dalmanthea,” Eiren said a little breathlessly. Menders looked round at her.

  “My dear, you aren’t nervous!” he exclaimed.

  “I’m not sure,” Eiren managed.

  Menders took her hand, shaking his head.

  “You’ve heard far too many blood and thunder stories from Kaymar,” he said firmly. “Glad is very good at what she does and in her day, she was a ruthless and efficient assassin. But like me, and like Kaymar, that is not the sum of her. You’ll be able to talk shop, because Gladdas runs a school for young women in Artreya. Some of them do become spies and even assassins, but most are trained for clerical or managerial work. Those with talent for the arts receive appropriate training. They’re poor girls who would have no opportunity for education or advancement otherwise.”

  “Like a certain red-haired farm girl?” Eiren smiled, her eyes kindling with interest.

  “I think this red-haired farm girl would have become a great teacher whether or not a certain assassin with bad eyes and a baby girl under his arm turned up at The Shadows,” Menders laughed.

  “And now, darlings, you must introduce me to your brave Mamma,” a powerful and distinguished woman’s voice said from the stairwell.

  “Don’t forget our debonair Pappa,” Katrin responded, laughing.

  “My old friend, Sir Slippery Eel? He’s an old tune!”

  With that, a refreshed and transformed Gladdas Dalmanthea appeared in the doorway of the suite that was home to Menders, Eiren and Katrin.

  In reality, she was an anonymously plain woman, but Gladdas had acquired the ability to transform her appearance to anything she wanted it to be. Now free of road dust and being confined to a second class railway carriage, she had taken on her favorite persona – refined but worldly, a trifle sarcastic but kind, elegantly but casually dressed in a beautiful but simple deep red dress. Perhaps it was the persona closest to her true self.

  She smiled as Eiren came forward, reached out and took both her hands.

  “Well, my dear,” Gladdas pronounced. “Yes, you have to be the one who set that Therbalt character on his ear. Well done!” She embraced Eiren suddenly, murmuring something to her.

  Eiren laughed aloud.

  “I had Kaymar and Ifor there as well. Without them, things would have been very different,” she replied.

  The year just past had involved a plot against the Royal Family, cooked up by a flamboyant character who called himself Lord Therbalt. This danger kept The Shadows in lockdown status for months. Eiren had been approached by Lord Therbalt while she was attending a teacher’s course in the capital city, Erdahn. He had feigned romantic interest while attempting to winkle information about The Shadows from her.

  Ifor Trantz and Kaymar Shvalz formed a counter plot to eliminate Lord Therbalt. Aided by Eiren, who spent weeks luring Therbalt along with promises of information about the floorplan of The Shadows, their scheme culminated in a late night meeting in a garden with Kaymar impersonating Eiren. A case of mistaken identity allowed Therbalt to escape with his life – but not before Eiren’s knife had opened his cheek from his ear to the corner of his mouth. He had fled to Surelia. From his stronghold there, Therbalt launched a tide of assassins on The Shadows.

  Eventually, Kaymar went up against the worst of these assassins, a Surelian sadist named DeLarco. Though he took the thrashing of his life, he and Ifor managed t
o eliminate DeLarco and found information in his belongings that led Menders’ operatives to Therbalt’s Surelian hideaway.

  A bomb was detonated in Therbalt’s townhouse headquarters, but Therbalt himself narrowly escaped and effectively vanished from the face of Eirdon. His network of spies was destroyed. It was easy to believe the threat from Lord Therbalt had been eliminated.

  Menders hoped that Gladdas’ sudden appearance at The Shadows had nothing to do with the vanished Lord Therbalt.

  ***

  “But of course, my dear! My girls receive a thorough education no matter what final course they choose to follow,” Gladdas Dalmanthea said firmly. “Education is vital. Ask your Mamma and she’ll agree with me. It opens the mind to possibility.”

  “But I chose not to go on with school,” Borsen protested. “I think my mind is open.”

  “You’ve thought of nothing but sewing from the moment you left school?” Gladdas asked.

  Borsen’s elegant eyebrows went up over the rims of his clear indoor glasses.

  “Well – no. I read books with and talk about them with Uncle. Auntie suggests ways to improve my writing, though it never seems to get much better no matter how much I work at it.”

  “And mathematics?” Gladdas accepted another glass of wine from Menders, never taking her eyes off the slender young man with the heavy Thrun accent.

  Borsen grimaced. “Never cared much for it,” he admitted.

  “Surely in making a pattern you would use mathematics.”

  Borsen’s eyebrows went up again.

  “You could say – using measurements, yes. Geometry, I guess,” he answered. “Kaymar had to help me with that. He’s the advanced mathematics master at The Shadows Academy. He worked out ways I could see how geometry worked for fitting patterns.”