The Coral Kingdom

Deirdre shrugged. 'You have your own life, Mother, and the goddess has chosen to favor that life. Once again you wear the mantle of the Great Druid, but that's not the way for me!'

'Your sister shows a growing awareness of the Earthmother,' the queen said. 'She wears the bracers of a druid, and soon she will bear the staff that I'm making for her. I should like to grant you an equal gift, my daughter-but I don't know what it should be.'

'There is something that I desire very much,' Deirdre replied, her tone level, her eyes serious.

'If it falls within my power-'

'It is freedom, Mother-freedom from you, from the goddess! I have to be free to follow my own course, through the spellbooks and scrolls of wizardry. I need to see the hallowed places of magic in the Realms, visit the great sages, have the freedom to learn!'

Her impassioned voice rose as she spoke, and when she stopped suddenly, an almost unnatural silence settled over the room and the world outside, as if the birds and insects, even the wind, paused to see what happened next.

'No,' the queen said, quietly and firmly. 'You're one of two royal children. You must be prepared to rule should it be required of you. Your place is here, in Callidyrr-in the Moonshaes.'

'But there is so much more in the world!'

'Your father is dead!' snapped Robyn, and the bluntness of the painful admission was enough to quiet Deirdre for the moment. 'The three of us-you, your sister, and I-hold the destiny of the Moonshaes in our hands. The great peace begun by King Tristan can flourish or fail. Do you believe for one moment that the Council of Lords will agree to the continuance of the Kendrick reign for old times' sake?'

'Surely they won't try to wrest the crown from you!' exclaimed the princess.

'Who knows what they'll try?' Robyn sighed. 'In three days, in Corwell, we shall see. I know we have allies- the good Earls of Fairheight and Corwell, to name two. And the Grand Mayor of the Halflings, Lord Pawldo, will certainly side with us. As to the others, who can say what schemes they've set in motion.'

'They wouldn't dare!' There was no fear, just an icy fury, in the younger woman's tone. The queen looked at her daughter sharply, never doubting the threat in her voice.

'If the three of us are united,' Robyn said quietly, 'then I'm certain there is little that the lords can-or will-do. But if we go into the council squabbling and bickering, I don't doubt that some challenge is inevitable.'

'I hear you, Mother,' said Deirdre softly.

'But do you understand me?' Robyn persisted. 'Will you do as I ask?'

The princess stared at her mother, and Robyn saw anger flashing in those dark eyes. She barely heard the reply.

'I will.'

Neither woman averted her gaze for a moment, but finally Deirdre looked away. 'May I go now?' she asked angrily.

With a sigh that was more tired than angry, Robyn nodded, turning back to the window as her daughter left without another word. Once again she saw the sunlit landscape and the dazzling sea, and it was a scene that seemed to mock her. With conscious discipline, she forced her mind to turn back to her plans.

The funeral could not be a simple ceremony. It must be a festival worthy of the passing of a great High King. Yet neither would the normal rites suffice, for they had no body to bury.

Traditionally the great men and women of the Ffolk were put to rest in large barrows, mounds of earth raised over timber enclosures, where the corpse was laid together with an assortment of weapons, treasures, food, and drink-all that the deceased would need on his long journey into the afterlife.

For Tristan Kendrick, there would be no place in the barrows mound, no gifts for him to bear into the realms he now explored. Yet his queen would ensure that his passing was marked with proper ritual and ceremony. This goal had given her strength during the past weeks, and now that the event drew near, it provided a focus for her mind when it would have been so easy to collapse into grief.

Corwell! She knew instinctively that she had made the right choice in the location for the ritual of the king's passage. That pastoral kingdom, childhood home to both Tristan and Robyn, was a place where she could get away from the chaos of the high court, returning like a wounded animal to the den from which she had emerged as a cub.

Corwell was the ancestral home of the Kendricks, and both the queen and her daughters bore that name. The ancient castle-protected still by a palisade of wooden timbers, though the king had ordered a stone wall started some years back-would reinforce in the minds of the lords and kings of the Ffolk that Robyn came by her rank honestly. And that her daughters, too, bore the blood of the island's royal line.

And there was more than political truth to her choice, just as Robyn was more than a queen to the Ffolk. The kingdom of Corwell was on the isle of Gwynneth, and there Robyn would find Myrloch Vale, the heart of the reawakening power of the goddess Earthmother.

Robyn Kendrick had once been the great druid of the isles. With the passing of her goddess, the order of druids had drifted into the wilds of the Moonshaes, their numbers shrinking, their powers gone. But now, thanks primarily to the actions of the two Kendrick daughters, the goddess had surged back to life, her druids reborn.

Robyn herself was no longer a young woman. A return to the isolation of a druid's grove seemed like a strange form of exile now, something she did not desire, nor would have accepted. Yet she had seen the awakening of similar powers within Alicia-powers that Alicia denied, preferring to believe that she would become a warrior queen. Yet now the older princess wore silver bracers on her wrists, the coiled bracelets in the shape of dragons that identified her as a chosen daughter of the goddess.

'Carry me a little longer, Mother. . please.'

Robyn whispered the words like a prayer and felt a lightening of her oppression. She did not feel joy-there were times she believed that happiness was a thing from her distant past-but she could steel herself to her work.

Finally Robyn stepped to the window. The city and the harbor seemed to pause, frozen in tableau. The queen leaned outward, spreading her arms wide, and they became her wings. The human woman fell from the window, but an eagle of purest white flew away from the the castle, away from the town-away from all of Callidyrr.

In two days, that eagle would reach Corwell.

Brigit Cu'Lyrran hauled back on the reins of her white mare. Talloth reared silently, raising her rider so that the elfwoman could see over the screen of quivering aspen branches before her. Her keen eyes had detected a flash of movement up the valley several minutes before, in the direction of the Fey-Alamtine.

She had been right-the Synnorian Gate would open today! Quickly she nudged Talloth with her knees, and the fleet mare exploded into a gallop, carrying her mistress swiftly up the trail. Passing a steep upward branch to the left, a rarely used trail that led to the human kingdom of Corwell, she continued up the main path.

In a few minutes, Talloth slowed to a lope, and then a trot as the trail opened into a clearing. The mare instinctively paused before the Fey-Alamtine, the Synnorian Gate.

A wall of obsidian-black cliff shimmered before Brigit, as if an invisible sheen of water flowed across the surface, but Brigit knew that the rock was dry. The visual effect had a magical cause.

Three or four times in her life the gate had been used, and once before she had been here to witness. Those memories, from a hundred years ago, remained with her as vividly as this morning's. But today she was the only one here, and as the shimmering grew more pronounced, she knew that the gate would open soon.

As captain of the Sisters of Synnoria, Brigit spent much of her time riding the swales and valleys of this tiny elven realm in the Moonshae Islands. Synnoria, and its beautiful capital Chrysalis, bordered the Ffolk kingdom of Corwell, yet the Llewyrr had existed without human intrusion for more than ten centuries. Magical wards and rugged mountains surrounded Synnoria on all sides; indeed, many of the Ffolk believed that the Llewyrr were creatures of history or legend.

Brigit was one of the few Llewyrr to have journeyed beyond the borders of Synnoria. Twenty years earlier, she and a small company of her knights had aided the human king, Tristan Kendrick, in the Darkwalker War. Now she would happily spend the rest of her days riding these valleys and woodlands.

A burst of light washed over her like a cool dawn, and her attention riveted to the Fey-Alamtine. The glossy black wall slowly grew opaque, taking on a rosy hue and an appearance of great depth, as if she looked through a foggy window at a scene many miles away. The shimmering stopped suddenly, replaced by a fixed glow.