Moonshadow (Book 1 of the Torrent Skies Saga)

Chapter One: The Crystal Pendant

868 P.C, Early Lumynos (Spring), Hearth-Home, Luminya.

Katerin stood in one of the many temples of the city, still holding back her tears. She had cried many times today, but it seemed her ability to continue was endless. The spacious chapel room was full of somberly dressed people. Some she knew well, many she had never even heard of. Everyone had come to offer their condolences. She was sick of hearing the words, "So sorry for your loss" and "you're in our thoughts."

She held her stepmother's arm tight and kept her face in the best smile she could manage—which was more of a grimace. She only faintly heard the words of the priests in the background as they performed their rituals of salt and prayer to keep the body of her father from being turned into a mockery of life. The funeral rites of my father. The thought made bitter acid roil in her stomach and she grimaced, fighting to hold the stinging tears at bay. She would not let them fall.

Not now.

Later she would find somewhere quiet in the Tower, on one of its steep, slanting roofs, and she would cry. Of course, it was against the Tower's policy, but Katerin had always found the roofs to be the perfect place to escape. It did not take her much magic to reach them, only a few simple spells to hasten her climbing. The Tower had taught her the magics necessary in her first year of studying there, and ever since, not one person had come looking when she sought the solitude of the roofs.

She focused her thoughts on her father, instead. Igan had been loved by many, she realized as she looked around the room. He had been trained as a blacksmith in Lagamar. The subterranean dwarven city was known for endless deposits of ore and excellent weaponsmiths. The inhabitants of Lagamar were more than a little picky about who they would train in their craft. Her father had never been a weaponsmith, despite the urging of his mentors. He had preferred art, or the more practical side of his craft. He could craft the finest horseshoes you ever saw, and he had spent his days making beautiful iron gates, fences, sconces, and even things as simple as nails, but never a weapon. No amount of urging or coin had ever changed his mind.

The people in this room today all behaved as if he was the finest smith to have ever been born, and Katerin hated it. Any of these people could have stopped by to see him at any time if they had cared about his health, but it seemed that the dead were more important than the living.

She sighed and tried to pull herself away from her bitter thoughts, but failed.

One day, he had simply begun feeling ill. She and Imeiza, her stepmother, had believed it to be no more than a spring cold, but the fever never left him and he kept that "spring cold" long past the time that spring had come and gone.

Over the course of several long months, through the guidance of many practitioners of healing and magic, no one could offer any answers about what plagued him. The sickness got worse and worse, his body and mind weakening to such a degree that he was by all means, insane. He would spout nonsense when he could speak and he would writhe and shake—as if in some immeasurable pain—when he could not.

Her memories of his illness were vivid and terrifying still.

A ten-day ago, he had begun to improve. Of course, the healers and clerics on hand at the time had insisted that it was their doing. He had risen from bed, regained color and energy, and come back to his family. Until the morning Katerin had awoken to find Imeiza crying over him, begging him to stay.

Katerin jerked herself from that dangerous path of thought and memory. It was a pain for another time. Right now she had to be strong, for her stepmother and for herself, for she feared that if she broke down again she might not recover. She felt as though the floor was rolling and shaking beneath her feet—like the room would collapse around her at any second. She squeezed Imeiza's hand and huffed out a breath.