MIST MAIDEN ©
By Robert Ipcar

MIST MAIDEN©
by Robert Ipcar

In a future world reborn, where mysterious winged sentinels patrol the night skies, Clerci—a young woman of nobility—flees from an unwelcome betrothal into the arms of an invading army. That this small force will serve to resist a far more sinister enemy bent on subjugating humankind, soon becomes apparent even to the young Prince who unwillingly commands these invaders.

Prodded by the Prince’s tutor, Old Madge, Clerci sets out to discover how the ancient Sumerian hero, Ninurta,* defeated the Storm God, Zu—he who seeks to regain the Tablets of Destiny. Then comes the unexpected revelation of frightening powers beyond imagination, powers that those of her lineage once commanded; powers that stand in the way of her success.

*Ancient cuneiform tablets reveal that Ninurta defeated Zu, regaining the Tablets of Destiny on behalf the Gods. How he accomplished this task is a mystery to this day— that particular tablet still missing. It will be Clerci who finds out..

MIST MAIDEN©

By Robert Ipcar

Prologue
The ancient tower glistened beneath the driving rain, its portal open to the elements. Yet neither of the little people made move to seek shelter.
“Death they dealt; now victor and victim are one,” the Elder purred in satisfaction, his shiny black eyes taking in the remnants of the battered drawbridge. “Still that gate must be forever sealed with rutile and fire. Should Humankind regain their hold on the world, such weapons as are inside must forever be denied them.”

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CHAPTER ONE

Clerci peered through the beveled glass window that fronted the tower chamber, her attention drawn to the emerald streaked tide that poured through the crib-work causeway below—the Whispering Isles' sole connection to the Vargel Peninsula. Though the nighttime rains had long since dissipated, low scudding clouds and early morning mists, shrouded the ancient granite structure, making it impossible to see what travelers if any, rode from the far shore.

Not hard to imagine herself shipwrecked...
Had it not been the hollow reverberation of the fog bell that had first awaken her? Its monotonous toll carried none of the joyous timbre of the clustered bronze chimes atop the Abbey’s spires. The repetitive dull thud of its sheet metal clapper was more suited to the sound of a war shield shaped across a smith’s anvil than any nautical warning! While it was a voice best heeded by those who threaded the white capped shoals surrounding the Whispering Isles, she shuddered nonetheless, though the past eight of her seventeen winters had been spent cloistered on these windswept rocks—testimony to her determination to absorb the unique teachings entrusted to the Abbey’s keepers.

Clerci drew back from the view, the sameness of the north light filling her chamber all the more confining; its shadowless luminescence devoid of any sparkle. The faint acrid odor of ash conspired to further annoy her though the damper on the wrought iron fireplace had been locked firmly in the horizontal. As usual the Whispering Isles would know nothing of the impending Summer Solstice; the chilled ceaseless wind ever refusing to betray the surrounding season.

She turned to the oak paneled washstand...
That her image was not reflected in the twin copper mirrors above the basin came as no surprise. A smoky haze was all that could be discerned within the glass, a peculiarity of vision suffered by the women of her mother’s line. Urrel’s Sight it was called—that no mirrored image be visible to the eye.

Yet there was a trick...
Clerci bent forward, adjusting the second mirror to the first until her face materialized within the haze. This twice reflected image—always dark, always a profile view more or less—allowed her to examined herself through self-critical eyes...

Her ebony hair had become unmanageable over the winter, a chore to comb let alone wash. Her once tanned complexion now possessed the pallor of a prisoner long chained in some subterranean dungeon. Only her brown eyes were... acceptable... dark to the point of amber though perhaps set too far apart. While they served to accent her frail beauty, the disturbing likeness of her mother appeared whenever she chose to frown.

Nor was she a Lady in dress…
Her tan leather trousers and forest green jerkin barely registered in the darkened glass, though her sleeveless under vest was clearly visible at her neckline, its quilted folds serving to protect against the Abbey’s chilled corridors.

A sign escaped her lips…
No regal princess here in this chamber; her overall appearance that of a scullery maid dressed for the hunt! No matter that the sun chose to hide this day, this day of her departure! Never would she miss this tiny room atop the Abbey’s northernmost tower, nor the jug of cold wash water by her door every morning.

A five days’ ride would see her home once more, secure in the evergreen foothills of the lands known as Windreach. This day she would trade the dreary Vargel spring for the crystal clarity of a sunlit Highland summer far from salt laden air. She would spend her newfound freedom sleeping late; indulge in breakfast cakes and cream pastries brought by a fawning kitchen staff. She would canter through the green meadows and tangled woodlands that lay beneath Lychtly Castle without regard to studies. Best of all she would rejoice in the companionship of friends her own age for Summerfest would be in full swing: afternoon games of skill played beneath candy striped courtyard tents; spirited evening dances held throughout the red roofed valley hamlets where nightfires shot skyward—an ever-rain of fiery sparks pelting the star fields overhead.

Or would her friends now regard her as a stranger?
With a sigh of despair Clerci skirted the washstand bent on a new mission, her ankle length boots clicking softly across the red and blue tiles of a mosaic compass—its eight nautical points a magnetic charm against the mischievous spirits drawn by the Abbey’s nighttime beacon. She swept about the circular chamber, hastily gathering her travel necessities; deliberately arranging them beside the red leather saddle pack that rested at the foot of her bed.

Her personal treasures were few but sentimental, like the blue metal scissors—an unexpected gift thrust upon her by the curly haired stable boy back home who cared for her pony during the winter. She smiled as her fingers brushed a braided gold necklace, taking satisfaction that the solitary black stone set within still resonated a reddish-orange glow at her touch. Always she had felt like a queen with this jewel at her throat, a gift from her Urrel grandmother some five summers past marking her twelfth birthday.

Her leather headband she would wear, the well-worn silken flowers adorning the peak, delicate pink representations of the much maligned Mist Maiden evergreen. Indeed, those who tended the grounds around Lychtly Hall disdained these outlaw shrubs for they behaved as if they had minds of their own, little caring for the laws of nature, always obstinate as to whether they would choose to bloom each season.

One last item, acquired here at the Abbey—only this past winter...

Something equally mysterious!
A green satin pouch no bigger than a handkerchief lay beneath her hand, yet she hesitated to undo the flap. An enchanted plumage lay within, more gossamer cloak than the skin of any living bird. In a sense it was a magical garment to be donned by those who would fly free of their worldly bodies, its cobweb threads spun of her own living tissue though to this day she remained mystified as to how that could have taken place without her knowledge. A falcon fell the Abbey’s Brotherhood called it.

Yet one thing she knew to be true...
Its altered existence was somehow keyed to the sentinels, the dark silent guardians who swept the nighttides of Windreach on tireless wings; ever watchful sentries who had patrolled the length and breadth of her father’s domain for untold centuries. One winter more and she would secure the knowledge to join them...

The chamber door rattled in its hinges!
Clerci caught her breath.
A stray gust of wind perhaps?

The saga of Denyen’s Cove sprang to mind, a telling often given within the Great Hall…

In with the tide there swept a mist
A dreadful grayness borne of the sea
A dreadful Dark One who should not be…

She banished the remaining verses with a shudder…
The Dark One no more than a tiresome threat told by thoughtless nannies wanting time to themselves. Clerci hastily swept her belongings into the saddle pack and cinched the straps. Perhaps one of the Abbey’s Sisters stood outside ready to see her off. She yanked the door open...

Nothing!
No one!

She dashed from the tower chamber without so much as a backward glance and wound down the gloomy steps with the haste of a pursued child. Elongated patches of light played across the sparkling granite risers as she descended, a line of slender archer ports providing the only illumination. Always she wondered as to their design; decorative fancy perhaps or had they originally served some practical warlike purpose? She reached the first landing and hastily turned into the down flight of stairs leading to the courtyard. A hand grabbed her arm, almost spinning her around...

“A moment, young lady!”

Brother Salii...
His voice ever recognizable though a heavy brown cowl shadowed his face. His manner as always, was condescending, as if he resented the time expended on apprentices destined to fail. Few made it past their eighth winter here; even fewer survived his impatient scrutiny. Yet somehow she had defied the odds.

“You’re leaving...”

An accusation, not a question...
Though she would someday owe this man her powers of flight she hated his arrogance, not liking his direct stare, his look making her uncomfortable in her standing as a young woman indebted. Next winter she would willingly suffer his petulance for his unique sphere of discipline was that of keying, the fusion between human and sentinel—that point when the mind was induced from its physical body to acquire wings of freedom. Just now she wanted to tear away, dash down the stairs to the courtyard below. This summer would be hers alone!
He would stay.

“Brother Salii. My ride awaits below...”

His fingers still gripped her.
“We must talk, Clerci. The Sisters tell me you will not return next season; that you intend to continue your instruction under the Warden at Lychtly Hall.” A wish she had carelessly voiced aloud on more than one occasion…

Certainly the Wardenship of Windreach would be hers once the present holder took it upon herself to vacate. Lillith was her name, a red headed woman of twenty one who had most recently married a nobleman over three times her age, an Earl most anxious to leave an heir. Like herself Lillith was an Urrel though admittedly from some obscure mountain sept. According to her grandmother they were but simple country folk who were unduly obsessed with the weather.

“I am a Urrel,” Clerci insisted, finding the courage to protest at last. “I follow a calling that will serve the protection of Windreach’s borders. Why would I not complete my training here?”

Her voice sounded far from convincing...

“You’ve barely been aloft,” Brother Salii scoffed. “Yet unlike the others, you show promise. But now… now to take time off for some irrelevant summer festival when you are so close to completion? Do you not know the true nature of the sentinels?”

Indeed that tantalizing introductory flight had seemed more a drifting into disembodied nothingness; her only touch with reality, that of Brother Salii’s hand on hers as the miniature towers spun far below in the mists. Not one word of encouragement had he offered at the time, his mood as gloomy as the gray coals of the morning’s hearth. But as to the true nature of the sentinels? There were arguments still to this day…

The sentinels some said were clockwork hawks—intricate mechanisms fashioned by troll-like artisans from across the Sea of Laments. Yet others equally asserted that the sentinels were flesh and blood but of a nature knowing no natural birth—evil instruments of Northlands sorcerers long since dead.

Those arguments little mattered now...
“Admittedly you are determined,” Brother Salii hissed. “Perhaps why we’ve always drawn Wardens from the Urrel Valley; from women said to be impervious to suggestion. Perhaps why the mirrored image masquerading as reality remains invisible to those of your line.”

He abruptly released her arm, the hood dropping back onto his shoulders. In actuality he was rather handsome, perhaps in his mid-thirties with light curly hair resembling her father’s. But in his dark eyes lay a grayness, a flinty chill that warned of anger smoldering somewhere beneath.

“I’m sorry, Brother Salii...”

In reality she wasn’t...
He was a man who would have no real friends.

“There’s more for you here,” he again urged in a hushed tone, looking about as if fearing to be overheard. “I know you, Clerci. How long would you be content to be a Warden of the sentinels, suffer the sameness of nightly patrols? Of all children sent to our isle, the Urrel have proven the most adept; and the most discontent.”

Discontent?
She couldn’t imagine such a thing. Though she had only made that one hesitant flight, the matchless sensation of circling that miniature landscape below had filled her with a sense of independence. She had found a place where her elders could not follow.

Still he stared...
“I’ve your Brotherhood to thank for my training,” she mumbled, at a loss for what else to say. Her mother had dismissed the sentinels as a childhood thing, to be joked about, then laid to rest. Her grandmother on the other hand had been insistent that she train at the Abbey.

“Think of it, Clerci...” Again Brother Salii glanced over his shoulder. “I offer you a chance to join the immortals, join with the One who seeks the power to guide man’s destiny. Would you be content to remain at the mercy of fate; drift lifelessly through your given days; have no more power over your existence than a leaf floating down a mountain stream? As I was chosen, so shall you. What more could you want?”

What more could she want?
Just now, to dash down the stairs!

“I’ll return at summer’s end,” she offered, drawing back. She would tell him anything to make her escape. “I owe you so much.”

Brother Salii’s features flushed scarlet.

“Return? That’s not your present intent!”
“No, I...”
“They who cast the future see you not above the Whispering Isles...”

“No!”

Clerci dashed for the stairs, unmindful of his anger, and flung herself toward the daylight below. For one single moment a shadow loomed on the wall ahead of her, an open jawed beast about to spring. Then it was gone... a darkness of her own making? She had no desire to look over her shoulder.

Her heart pounded with each step.
“Clerci! Such a rush!”

Sister Myrrh hastily backed from the entrance as Clerci bounded into the courtyard, a lacquered tray with teapot and muffins barely floating out of harm’s way. Though the Sister’s gray hood was severely squared at the hairline, red and white piping along the pockets of her habit betrayed a playful disregard for the sanctity of her position.

Myrrh she trusted…
Had not the Sisters always been patient, gently lacing her intellect with the intricacies of music and literature to be found in the harmonic rings, the haunting voices of mankind’s lost past that had been entrusted to the Order’s keeping?

“Do you think I would have left without saying goodbye?” Clerci gasped, stopping short on the wet cobblestones. She was unable to bring herself to mention Brother Salii, her mind a jumble of self-accusation. She felt violated. What could she have possibly done to attract his interest?

“Ride off you would!” the older woman grumbled, her blue eyes dancing with a humor belying her hawk beaked personage. “You’re impatient, Clerci. When you reach my age, then you’ll truly discover that life passes far too quickly.”

“Oh, Myrrh,” Clerci retorted, Brother Salii now forgotten, “My father says the same. It’s his excuse to busy himself with some new project all the time. Even now he’s expanding the walls around Lychtly Hall. In a fortnight he will turn forty.”

“And I shall attend his celebration, my dear,” the Sister declared. “What a gala it will be with all Windreach invited. And not just for Lord Lychtly’s birthday, but that we might all share in the joy of your betrothal.”

Clerci’s heart fell...
Her envisioned summer evaporated like tea flung into the hearth. It was as if the mists overhead had cracked asunder with the darkest of lighting. She wanted to turn, flee back up the steps to the security of her little room.

Brother Salii would be waiting...
She was trapped!

How could they? How dare her mother promise her to some stranger without consulting her first?

Not now!
“Clerci?” Sister Myrrh looked to her questioningly, the tray of tea and muffins forgotten. “Have I said something wrong, Child? Didn’t... Hasn’t anyone told you?”

“Of course, Sister...”

How on earth would she have heard anything, trapped for a winter within the Abbey’s walls? Betrothal to whom? Suggested suitors rolled through her mind like a scroll gone mad. Old Asha, the garrison commander, always joked with her father that he would someday ask for her hand. Her mother, she knew, preferred the sons of visiting dignitaries from far off lands—posturing youths whose slurred accents rendered them barely understandable. Her aunt Sonya, rightly so, regarded them as uncultured foreigners, unsuited for a daughter of northern nobility. Her aunt Sonya, she recalled, favored...

Clerci gasped in recollection.
Her imbecile first cousin, Tam Toshup! Like his name, a fat lump of a tomato with a complexion as ruddy to boot! He was at least twenty-five! She would flee home first!

“Clerci?”
How to make a new life for herself...
She would become a wayward bard: wander the very soil where heroes once took their stand; extract shadowy tales still etched in the aura of battles long fought; sing of lovers pursued; the dreams of migrating peoples. She would perform in exchange for her lodging whether it be a rough planked floor of a country inn or gold satin sheets of a...

“Clerci, dear...”

There was a clatter of hooves as a rider entered the far end of the arched pass-through leading into the courtyard. Not one second too soon! She prayed that it would be her Schalian escort, Hasche, her assigned guardian whenever she found herself on the trail. Accompanying him would be her golden Highlands pony, her beloved Scepter. She knew what she had to do…

“Forgive me, Clerci.” Sister Myrrh’s eyes filled with tears. “I love you, truly I do.”
Clerci moved to embrace the older woman, allowing the saddle pack to slip from her shoulder. She was conscience of her own tears. Was it for this loving Sister... or herself?

“Let me wrap these muffins for your trip, Child; my small way of making amends.”

Clerci could only gulp, reaching down for her fallen possessions, not knowing what more to say. Sister Myrrh knelt beside her, unmindful of the wet paving stones that soaked her habit. As she expertly folded a cloth napkin over the contents of the tray, she looked up, unexpectedly frowning, gently reaching out to grasp Clerci’s hand...

“I’ll miss you, my child. Think of me often.”
“But I’ll be back... at summer’s end!” What was the matter with Myrrh? “The Whispering Isles are only five day’s ride from Lychtly Hall…”

“You’ll a life of your own from now on, Child. Take what you’ve learned and use it for the good of mankind. There is a darkness not of the storms that has begun to sweep about these waters. You’ve an independent nature that needs to be nourished, not enticed by those who dream of ruination. Better you keep this place a memory.”

Was her impending betrothal any better?
Was this to be the end of her dreams?

Just as quickly the Sister’s eyes suffused with warmth. “Remember, my dear, beware those who would tamper with destiny. The master plan for the Cosmos must be protected at all costs.”

“But Brother Salii...”
“Trust in me, Child. Believe in yourself. As long as you remember that, you will have the power to choose your own fortune.”

Clerci turned to the courtyard...
Her escort awaited, his features as always fixed in a perpetual scowl. Her highlands pony snorted his own brief acknowledgement before bowing his head sleepily, perhaps hoping for a quick snooze before heading back over the causeway. She would have hugged them both had her mind not been a jumble of desperate thoughts. Choose her own fortune, Myrrh had assured her? Only this morning, she would have said the same.

This betrothal would ruin everything...

(Chapters 1 - II - III)

Also, check out my Kindle Series, Children of Orion

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