The Virgin Queen
The Chronicles of Parthalan
Book Two
Jennifer Allis Provost
Genre: Fantasy romance
Publisher: Bellatrix Press
Date of Publication: April 5, 2016
Number of pages: 300
Word Count: 100k
Cover Artist: Veronica Jones
Book Description:
A broken queen. A friendship mired in deceit. Can one man from the desert help hold the realm together?
Asherah, Queen of Parthalan and Lady of Tingu, has led her people through eight centuries of prosperity. That peace shatters when Mersgoth, the mordeth thought long dead, attacks Teg’urnan. In the aftermath a new warrior emerges: Aeolmar, a man as secretive as he is deadly.
Asherah and Aeolmar race across Parthalan in pursuit of Mersgoth, and track the beast to the High Desert. While they're gone, Harek, now Prelate of Parthalan, conspires with the Dark Fae against the elves...Against Leran, the king of the elves and Asherah's son in all but blood. Will Asherah see the truth of Harek before it's too late, or will he bring down the fae once and for all?
Chapter
One
Asherah
held her hand against her brow, shading her eyes against the suns as she surveyed
the carnage across the plain. There had been no warning of this attack, led by
the mordeths Mersgoth and Esguth, no scouts had run to the gates
alerting Teg’urnan that demons had been on the move near Teg’urnan; then again,
the scouts probably had been the first to die. No, yesterday had been a day like
any other, almost boring in its sameness to the days that came before, until
darkness fell.
Shortly after the child sun went to
rest, demons had amassed before the gates, an unusual and effective tactic for
creatures who shunned the darkness. It was a force Asherah hadn’t seen the like
of since her army of slaves and elves, the Ish
h’ra hai led by herself, Lormac, Harek and Tor, had taken the palace from
Sahlgren. Since that bloody, tragic day when both Asherah’s mate and dearest
friend had perished, she had led Parthalan through nearly eight centuries of
peace.
Harek...the one time Teg’urnan was
attacked since she took the throne, her Prelate, along with all of the con’dehr,
had been away to the south. He’d been leaving the palace more often of late,
and Asherah speculated that the mordeths
had become aware of his frequent and extended absences. She suspected that
they’d waited until the Prelate and his guards hadn’t been in residence before
they moved against the palace. She wondered if Harek had been attacked, if he
yet lived. She needed him alive, needed him to return, for she doubted she
could set this mess to rights without him.
No, that’s not
true. I just don’t want anyone else near me to die.
The
queen shoved away her thoughts about Harek’s possible demise and brought her
ruminations back to the prior evening. Upon the alarm’s sounding, the legion
and hunters had scrambled to meet their attackers. Even the sola had emptied, with each and every nuvi grabbing the nearest weapon and
mustering in defense of their home. Asherah and her First Hunter, Argent, had
been among the first outside the gates. As they had called out orders, one of
the mordeths, Esguth, had taken notice of Argent, and had fixated on him
throughout the battle. While Esguth had baited the hunter, Asherah had shouted
for Argent to keep his head, for he had been too canny a warrior to fall for a
demon’s tricks. Or perhaps not. His body had yet to be found, but reports
claimed that Esguth had ripped Argent to pieces.
My Prelate is
gone; my First Hunter is dead. Why am I left breathing? Why Esguth had bothered
singling out Argent had been a mystery to the queen. While Argent had been
First Hunter, and therefore a target of all demons, she could not recall Esguth
having ever having had set eyes on him. Further, Argent had gone into battle
clad in simple leather armor that in no way differentiated him from the rest of
the hunters. She shuddered as she remembered the look in the mordeth’s eyes, as if Argent had been
his intended prey. Even now, after all the death she had seen, all the demons
and men she herself had killed, the malevolence in Esguth’s stare made her
blood run cold.
A
herald approached Asherah and confirmed what she had been dreading: none of the
hunters could be found, and each was assumed dead. As queen, Asherah felt the
loss of each and every Parthian deep within her being, but her hunters were as
special to her as her Ish h’ra hai
had once been. It had been Caol’nir’s idea to have a team of warriors specially
trained to fight demons, in much the same way he had taught her and Torim the
finer points of combat. She’d wanted Caol’nir to train them himself, but he had
not been swayed in his desire to create a quiet, demon-free existence for his
mate. Asherah never learned where he and Alluria eventually made their
home. She had honored their pact that
his name be stricken from Teg’urnan’s records and never had sought them out or
spoke, their names. Still, she never gave up hope that she would see them
again.
Gods. If only
they’d been here.
Caol’nir had killed seventeen mordeths
during the Battle for Teg’urnan, but the one who’d gotten away was
Mersgoth. Mersgoth, the beast who had
marked Caol’nir’s mate and driven them into hiding, the same beast who had led
yesterday’s charge alongside Esguth. What she wouldn’t give to see that
creature’s head on a pike.
The battle had suddenly ended when the
demons scattered, and it was later reported that the lessers had abandoned the
fight when Esguth fell. No one knew who killed the mordeth, and there was no sign of the demon’s carcass near the gates. Asherah now wended
her way down the Hill of Rahlle, named for the sorcerer who’d sacrificed his
sight for its creation, and across the deathly stillness of the battlefield, desperate
for any sign of her hunters. She forged ahead like one possessed, ignoring the
sucking noise the blood-soaked ground made against her boots.
Lormac, if ever
you wished to offer your wise counsel, now is the time. Lormac would
have rallied the survivors, issued orders… he would have known what to do. He
had always known the right word or action; he who had been her mate, he who
she’d lived without for far too long. She sighed, and wondered when she would
join him. On days like this, she hoped that day would be sooner rather than
later.
The queen wandered on, picking her way among
the dead as the sharp incline of the Hill of Rahlle gradually leveled out to
the flatness of the plain. She hadn’t realized the distance she’d covered from
the palace until she spied an individual kneeling before the rocky outcrop on
the far side of the plain.
Is that a survivor, or yet another
demon?
As she got closer she saw that it was a faerie man, kneeling with his head bent
forward as if in prayer. Scattered
around him, as if they’d been flung from a great sack, were the limbs and heads
of demons. His back was to Asherah, but as she approached she noted his long
chestnut hair, and that his jerkin looked to be blue underneath the gore...
“Aeolmar!” Asherah cried as she threw
her arms around the hunter. “Aeolmar, Aeolmar, Aeolmar, I thought those beasts
had killed every last hunter.” She felt his arms and back for wounds. “Are you
all right?”
Aeolmar nodded slightly; Asherah assumed
he was in shock. Still searching for wounds, she grabbed his hands, pausing
when she saw the sword he held in a white-knuckled grip.
“This is… Is that Esguth’s weapon?” she
asked incredulously. While she was aware of Aeolmar’s excellent swordsmanship,
the taking a mordeth’s sword was nearly unheard of. Not even Caol’nir,
arguably the greatest warrior she had ever known, had managed such a feat. She
looked again at the heaps of demon limbs, and noted how one arm was so much
larger than the rest. No, he couldn’t
have, not alone…
“Did you kill Esguth?” Asherah asked.
Aeolmar finally met the queen’s gaze, his face as unmoving as stone.
“Yes.” He glanced at the destruction
he’d caused. “I killed them all.”
Asherah stood, awed and slightly
frightened of this man who was able to dispatch at least a dozen lesser demons
as well as the mordeth on his own. In all her days she’d only known a
handful of people capable of such a feat, herself being one of them. She pulled
Aeolmar to his feet, and hunter and queen began the long walk back to
Teg’urnan. Aeolmar kept his free hand on the queen’s elbow as he led her around
the bodies, his other hand clutching the mordeth’s
sword as if one of the corpses may rear up and attack. After a time, they came
upon a man’s arm clad in dark green leather, which was the last either of them
saw of Argent. Once they reached the gates, they were told that the other mordeth,
Mersgoth, fled the battle shortly after Esguth fell, the suspicion now
confirmed by a sighting east of Teg’urnan. He had once again escaped with his
hide intact.
The queen nodded, hardly hearing the
detailed account of the demon’s whereabouts. Instead, she contemplated the statues
of the stag and doe as they leapt toward each other over the dark iron gates of
Teg’urnan. Sculpted as representations of Olluhm and Cydia, gods of the sun and
moon who were parents to the Fair Folk, they were meant to honor her kind’s
origin. To Asherah, the statues went far beyond a mere reminder. Olluhm was
strong and his justice swift; indeed, tales were told of him setting entire
realms ablaze to ensure the safety of his mate and progeny. Cydia, the calm
mother goddess, tempered her fiery mate with the compassion that only a mother
could possess.
For this offense
there will be justice, swift and sure. Compassion be damned.
“Aeolmar, you are now my First Hunter,”
Asherah proclaimed. “What is your first command?”
“Find Mersgoth and kill him,” Aeolmar
replied through clenched teeth.
Asherah laced her fingers with the new
First Hunter’s. This new threat would be dealt with, and Asherah wouldn’t need
Harek’s help. No, she and Aeolmar—she and her First Hunter—would have their
vengeance.
“As you wish.”
###
Harek stood in front of the large
window, his hands braced on the ledge and surveying the valley before him as if
it were his own private kingdom. Indeed, these past few winters he’d spent far
more time at this southern residence than in the palace, so much so that he’d
had a full manor built to accommodate himself and his con’dehr. They’d spent much of the cold season at this home away
from home, he and his warriors and no others. There was the occasional
complaint over the lack of women, but generally the men bore their isolation
well, and Harek needed no reminders of Asherah.
Many speculated as to why Parthalan’s
Prelate took such frequent leaves from Teg’urnan, though few dared to ask him
directly. Officially, he stated that since the old king had hidden away in the
south while plotting with the mordeth-gall,
there was a dire need to secure the region against further threats. That had
been reason enough for his presence, but then a routine sweep had revealed a
fissure at the desert’s edge, belching the all too familiar stench of demons.
It wasn’t large, perhaps the length of three horses standing nose to tail, but
its small size had mattered not. Whether by accident or design, there had been
a crack in the very fabric of Parthalan that lead directly to the underworld.
“So this is why he went south,” Asherah
had said when she was told of the fissure, assuming that the source of
Sahlgren’s betrayal had been at last revealed. Against Harek’s advice, she had
journeyed to look at it with her own eyes, though he hadn’t let her get too
close to the edge. Back then, in the early days of Asherah’s reign, she still had
worn the Sala, the armband given to her by Lormac that marked her as Lady of
Tingu. The four green stones of the Sala had glowed an ominous red to warn her
away from the evil sludge that oozed from the crack. Trust the elves to make an
object that warned you of impending evil when you were right in front of said
evil, not when you were still a league or two off. Foolish, foolish creatures.
No matter, Harek would worry about the
elves another day. It had taken nearly a full turn of the seasons to close the
fissure, which had first been first packed with rock and assorted rubble, and
then with dressed stone as masons fit together an impenetrable wall of granite.
Once the masons had completed their work, the royal sorcerers, under Sarfek’s
direction, had woven a net of spells tightly around the stones. When all was
said and done, the area looked like an ordinary hillside, not a gaping chasm
where evil once spilled forth.
Harek had never doubted Sarfek’s
abilities, and had been confident that the seal was sound. Life had gone on in Teg’urnan, and as time
wore on the queen wore the Sala less and less. Eventually the fog of despair
had lifted from Asherah’s sparkling black eyes, and those dark gems had settled
upon a man. His name had been Brendan, and he was one of the warriors who’d
fought in the Battle for Teg’urnan. He had been a kind man, strong and swift
and handsome, a man who made Asherah smile again. A man who wasn’t Harek.
Unable to voice his despair, Harek had made
up the excuse of ensuring that the fissure hadn’t reopened and fled Teg’urnan
before the sight of Asherah in Brendan’s arms drove him mad. As time continued
to flow, Harek stopped citing the fissure as the reason for his long absences,
and Asherah stopped questioning him. He wondered if she noticed when he wasn’t
there.
Soon, things
will be different. Soon, Asherah and I will be close like we once were, and—
A commotion in the courtyard below
interrupted Harek’s thoughts. It was a messenger wearing Teg’urnan’s silver and
blue colors tumbling off a horse that looked as if it would collapse in the
next moment. The messenger gasped his missive between breaths, then crumpled to
the ground. Harek turned from the window and rushed toward the stairs; his
warriors were already running to fetch him. It was Olwynn who spoke, his face
bloodless.
“Teg’urnan has been attacked!”
About the Author:
Jennifer Allis Provost writes books about faeries, orcs and elves. Zombies too. She grew up in the wilds of Western Massachusetts and had read every book in the local library by age twelve. (It was a small library). An early love of mythology and folklore led to her epic fantasy series, The Chronicles of Parthalan, and her day job as a cubicle monkey helped shape her urban fantasy, Copper Girl. She lives in a sprawling colonial along with her beautiful and precocious twins, a dog that thinks she's a kangaroo, a parrot, a junkyard cat, and a wonderful husband who never forgets to buy ice cream. She spends her days drinking vast amounts of coffee, arguing with her computer, and avoiding any and all domestic behavior.
Connect with Jennifer at www.authorjenniferallisprovost.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jennallis
Twitter: @parthalan
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