PELAIR. The Gems of the Golden Serpent.

Prologue

PROLOGUE

"I'm cold," Brezia told her brother Graco in a whisper. She did not want the warrior that advanced a few paces ahead of them, to hear her and lash her with his whip, as it had happened to a fellow young prisoner who dared to ask for a drink of water.

"Sister," said her brother, who was walking hand in hand with her. "Let's not make things worse."

"What will happen to us?" The girl asked again. "I am very scared."

Dusk was falling rapidly and the persistent rain that had accompanied them during most of the journey contributed to increasing the inclement cold that went right through their bones. All prisoners, men, women, and children went almost naked, covered just by a loincloth, and walked side by side in a row of two, bounded by their wrists with hemp ropes. They had to endure that ordeal as part of their punishment before being to the God of the Oracle, in a ceremony of oblation that would take place as soon as they arrived at the place of the sacrifice.

The prisoners were part of the offering with which Runolf, Lord of the Northern Clan, expected to ingratiate himself with the supreme leader of the Fellowship of the Oracle and to increase the influence of his clan before the other three rival clans.

The party traveled along a narrow path through the middle of a dense forest, lit by maple torches that marked the way held by slaves belonging to some of the tribes this clan had subjugated.

Brezia and Graco were children of Theobald, leader of a clan of warriors who had opposed and fought The Fellowship that had subjugated and enslaved all the other tribes of the territory of Pelair. The rebel clan, which dwelt deep in the forests of the Misty Mountains, was the last that had remained independent of the yoke that gripped the rest of the clans. However, they had finally fallen prisoners of the feared Brotherhood.

"Halt!" yelled the captain of Runolf's guard. Theobald, his elder son Randal and two other warriors of the imprisoned rebel clan transported Runolf, in a litter made up of a pallet placed on four intertwined wooden rods with a small awning that shelter its passenger from the rain. The man got out of the litter to stretch his body. He approached the side of the path lit by a torch his lieutenant brought near him, to relieve his bladder. At opening his heavy bearskin coat, he uncovered a torso full of tattoos and a thick neck bearing an iron ring that had a small topaz embedded into it.

"Maybe about three leagues away, my lord," said Runolf aloud as if talking to someone else. "It is possible that about three hours by a hurried pace" he commented. "Yes sir. I take them, prisoners. I got their leader carrying my litter, sir," he answered again. "Yes, I keep an eye on him myself, sir."

There came a short silence before he spoke again. "Yes, Supreme Priest. I will do my best to get there as soon as possible."

Runolf voiced aloud the conversation he held in thoughts with the High Priest, only to boast and brag before his clan of the power he possessed.

That topaz was one of the gems that made up the Scepter of the Golden Serpent. This and four other topazes held by the other lords that formed the clans of The Brotherhood of the Oracle had the peculiarity of allowing their bearers to influence the thoughts and behavior of their peers and allowed them to speak to each other by thoughts regardless of the distance and to the Supreme Priest of the Brotherhood, who guarded the Scepter that housed the rest of the gems.

The power of the Fellowship resided in the gems embedded into that snake-shaped scepter. A large golden snake with a single eye on its forehead rolled on the scepter with its head pointing upward. It held with its mouth, a five-pointed golden star. Each spike had a receptacle where the five topazes fit.