Jennifer Fallon

Medalon

Book one of the Hythrun chronicles

According to legend, the last king of the Harshini sired a half-human child, known as the Demon Child, born to destroy a god....

Medalon

The Sisterhood of the Blade rules Medalon with an iron fist – a fist that wears the gauntlet of the Defenders, elite warriors sworn to uphold the Sisters and keep Medalon free of heathen influence.

R’shiel, daughter of the First Sister of the Blade, has pulled against the short leash of her mother ever since she was a child. Her half-brother, Tarja, is the dutiful son who serves as a captain in the Defenders. But when they run afoul of their mother’s machinations, they must flee for their lives. They soon find themselves caught up in the rebellion against the Sisterhood, though they revile their fellow conspirators’ heathen belief in the Harshini – a fabled race of magical beings thought long extinct.

But then Tarja and R’shiel encounter Brak, a Harshini outcast, who forces them to face the most shocking fact of all: R’shiel just may be the Demon Child, brought into this world to destroy an evil god.

Medalon, a bestselling Australian fantasy epic of heroism, honor, love, and terrible loss, is Book One of the Hythrun Chronicles, and the first novel in the Demon Child Trilogy.

for Adele Robinson

Acknowledgments

I always threatened that my acknowledgment would read something like: I would like to thank my children, without whom this book would have been finished several years sooner...

In fact, without their unwavering faith, it might never have been finished at all. I would particularly like to thank David, for his endless supply of coffee and for turning out so well when his mother spent so many of his formative years lost in another world. My heartfelt thanks also to Amanda, for her excellent proofreading and for naming the God of Thieves, and to TJ for being such a good listener – although I wish she had not waited until I was halfway through the final draft before asking, “What would happen if R’shiel was Joyhinia’s daughter?”

I would like to thank Irene Dahlberg and Kirsten Tranter for seven pages of insight that pointed me in the right direction and Lyn Tranter at Australian Literary Management for her patience.

My heartfelt thanks go to Dave English from the Alice Springs Yacht Club, for his expert advice on sailing. Nor can I forget to mention Toni-Maree and John Elferink MLA, for their unwavering support when I needed them most and for putting up with my eccentricities on a daily basis.

Last but not least, I must thank my good friend Harshini Bhoola, whose relentless enthusiasm and endless reading of draft after draft of this series earned her an entire race of people named in her honor. She deserves a place with the gods.

part one

THE CITADEL

chapter 1

The funeral pyre caught with a whoosh, lighting the night sky and shadowing the faces of the thousands gathered to witness the Burning. Smoke, scented with fragrant oils to disguise the smell of burning flesh, hung in the warm, still air, as if reluctant to leave the ceremony. The spectators were silent as the hungry flames licked the oil-soaked pyre, reaching for Trayla’s corpse. The death of the First Sister had drawn almost every inhabitant of the Citadel to the amphitheater.

R’shiel Tenragan caught the Lord Defender’s eye as she pushed her way through the green tunics of the senior Novices to take her place past the ranks of blue-gowned Sisters and gray-robed Probates. Feeling his eyes on her, she looked up. The Mistress of the Sisterhood would have her hide if he reported she’d been late. She met the Lord Defender’s gaze defiantly, before turning her eyes to the pyre.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Lord Defender take an involuntarily step backward as the flames seared his time-battered face. Surreptitiously, she glanced at the ranks of women and girls who stood in a solemn circle around the pyre. Their faces were unreadable in the firelight. For the most part they were still, their heads bowed respectfully. Occasionally, a foot shuffled on the sandy floor of the arena. How many were genuinely grieving, she mused, and how many more had their minds on the Quorum, and who would fill the vacancy?

R’shiel knew the political maneuvering had begun the moment Trayla had been found in her study, the knife of her assailant still buried in her breast. Her killer was barely out of his teens. He was waiting even now in the cells behind the Defenders’ Headquarters to be hanged. Rumor had it that he was a disciple of the River Goddess, Maera. The Sisterhood had confiscated his family’s boat – and with it, their livelihood – for the crime of worshipping a heathen god. He had come to the Citadel to save his family from starvation, he claimed, to beg the First Sister for mercy.

He had killed her instead.

What had Trayla said to the boy, R’shiel wondered? What would cause him to pull a knife on the First Sister – a daunting figure to an uneducated river-brat? Surely he must have known his plea would fall on deaf ears? Pagan worship had been outlawed in Medalon for two centuries. The Harshini were extinct and with them their demons and their gods. If he wanted mercy, he should have migrated south, she thought unsympathetically. They still believed in the heathen gods in Hythria and Fardohnya, R’shiel knew, and the whole of Karien to the north was fanatically devoted to the worship of a single god, but in Medalon they had progressed beyond pagan ignorance centuries ago.

A voice broke the silence. R’shiel glanced through the firelight at the old woman who spoke.

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