Sacred King: Prologue
Once there were three brothers, Brandrahoon the vampire, Isranon called the Dawnhand, speaker to spirits, and Waejonan the Accursed, first of sa'necari. Isranon defied his brothers and was destroyed, his descendants forced into the darkness. In those days there rose up three women, Asharen, Danae, and Rowan. They built Shaurone to hold back the brothers' darkness. And then there was Abelard who will be born again into his own lineage to ride once more beneath Rowan's banner. Mage-paladin to the God Kalirion the Lord of Light, healing and prophecy, Abelard's return will signal a god-war. Should he fail or perish, then only the Children of the Risen Dead will stand between the Fathers of Darkness and the destruction of the world.
St. Tarmus of Lorendon
Priest of Willodarus, God of the Woodlands and Wild Creatures.
PROLOGUE
Margrenan Lahktormi brye Rowan, called Margren, younger daughter of the Mar'ajan of Rowanslea, stirred uneasily in her sleep wrapped in coverlets of crimson silk in the depths of her curtained bed. She had slept late into the morning without resting, troubled by a dream that wound again and again through her sleep like an unending echo. Several times in the night she had risen to pace about the room, trying various ways to be freed of it before trying again in vain for true rest. Now a shaft of sunlight lanced between the crimson draperies to graze her dark-skinned oval face, the heavy curling masses of her black hair that fanned across her pillows, and laid a golden glimmering on the long, thick lashes of her large eyes.
She dreamed of her sister again. Margren teetered on the edges of a yawning abyss built of loneliness gaping at her feet like the hungry maw of some incomprehensible demonic beast, waiting to swallow her whole, to crush her fragile security in its teeth and suffocate her feelings of acceptance within the ranks of the Sharani nobility as it sucked her down its throat. She could feel the cold stone beneath her feet, see its gray-black outline, but she knew what it was-it existed both within her and without her, and it mattered not at all whether her body or her psyche fell into it. The result would be the same. She felt abandoned, unwanted, alone, and very lost.
"Step in. Step in," Her sister's voice at her elbow coaxed her toward it. "It's where you belong, isn't it? No one wants you, Margren. No one at all."
Margren turned to protest, her eyes met the dark gray, confident eyes of her sister, and she winced away, causing her foot to miss its step. She fell screaming "No!" only to wake with a start in her bed, clutching the silken sheets tightly enough for the blood to retreat from her knuckles.
She lay shaking for a long time. Margren used to try and tell people why and how her sister hurt her so, but no one seemed to care. Then when she would get upset and start crying they would write her off as hysterical and tell her to not be so sensitive. She hated that. It put her on the defensive. There was a difference between having passionate feelings and being excessively hysterical or emotional or sensitive. The former was strength, while the latter was weakness. But she had never been able to convince anyone that she was the former. The nobles and retainers at her ma'aram's court kept telling her that she got carried away and did not really see clearly. One day she would fix them all and then they would wish that they had seen clearly!
Her big bed was wedged tightly into a corner, one side and the head pressed solidly against the stone walls, trapping the heavy curtains on those sides. It felt secure and sheltered, like a stolid soldier who could not be moved. In fact the heavy, hard-rock maple bed had required six people to get it into her room.
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