War of the Gypsy

Prologue

Prologue

Crimson waves curled and spit as they rolled out onto a brown sandy beach. The salty wind bit at her as she stood on the lonely bluff looking over the beach. White seabirds floated effortlessly on the breeze as they curiously watched the woman.

Baobh Dark-Water—or Baobh Basilias as she was known now—bent down and gently brushed a dark-skinned hand across a small weather-worn stone, affectionately tracing the name Raven Dark-Water with her slender fingers. “Mother,” she whispered. “If only you could see what I have become.” Her words were quickly whipped away on the wind as a single tear slipped down her cheek. She remembered chiseling her mother’s name in the stone so many years ago; it was almost like a dream. Tenderly, she brushed away the dirt that had gathered over the years as if to erase her mother’s memory.

She stood, walking a short distance to where the edge of the Alba Forest gave up the land, and a ramshackle old hut stubbornly stood under the impotent rays of an overcast sun. The wood of the structure had long since faded to gray and parts of the roof were blown completely off. Baobh slowly stepped over the threshold; the door had fallen away. Oiled deerskin shutters still hung over the windows, dancing in the moist wind, stirring up motes of thick dust. What was left of a rug, lay in pieces near a darkened fireplace, and a blackened pot hung silently over half-burned logs still lying on cold clay bricks.

A lump formed in Baobh’s stomach as she looked around her childhood home. A discarded doll, a shredded blanket and some pots and pans were all that was left of the life that she and her mother had lived here, on the edge of the forest, so close to Castle Sona Tuath. This is where a young mother tried to keep her child safe after the Basilias’ had turned their backs on them. She walked over and picked up the old doll, turning it over in her hands. Her mother had made it.

Her dear, sweet mother. Too timid and ashamed to go after what she and her daughter were owed. Baobh sighed, remembering her childhood living in the shack on this rocky, grassy bluff. It was not an easy existence here, the two of them all alone. Being Goyor, finding food in the forest was never a problem, but theirs was a lonely life scratched from the sand, surf and the relentless, howling wind. She dropped the doll, it silently hit the dirty floor, sending wisps of dust into the cool air, and she fought the urge to cough.

As High Prince Eric’s only child, she was heir to the Sona Tuathen throne. She had heard the rumors that the prince and his wife had had a baby, but none was found, and Baobh made sure all the Basilias were dead when she had taken Sona Tuath. There was none that could challenge her claim to the throne, bastard or not.

She walked over to an ancient silver mirror that hung crookedly on the wall. It was covered with dust, and a long crack ran across its face. She carefully ran her fingers over the surface, leaving thin lines where she could dully see her image in the glass. She looked a lot like her mother.

Her mother had been one of Queen Danielle’s handmaidens. Fresh from Ghroc and wanting adventure, her mother was naïve and had given in to the teenage Eric’s advances. Eric had been enthralled with the exotic beauty of the Goyor, and when she had told him she was with child, he wanted desperately to marry her. In fact, her mother had told her that they had tried to run away together. King Lund and Queen Danielle had different plans though and quickly expelled her pregnant mother from Sona Tuath.

It seemed that High Prince Eric had been heartbroken because it had taken the king and queen a full twelve years to find him a suitable wife and many years after that before rumors of a royal pregnancy started to circulate. Baobh sighed again and almost felt bad at ordering her father’s execution all those long years ago. It had to be done, though, she reasoned. There had to be none left that could challenge her right to the throne. And it seemed to her that if he had wanted to badly enough, throughout all those years, he could have found a way to sneak from the castle to be with them.

Baobh sighed and walked up to one of the small windows in the shack and held up the leather flap. It crumbled and fell from her hand landing in broken bits onto the floor. She looked out the window and saw gray clouds scuttle across a gray sky pushed by an incessant wind. As if carried by the wind, her childhood memories flowed from her troubled mind.

She thought back to all those solitary years they spent on this windblown bluff. Her mother would spend hours staring down at the gleaming, white castle seemingly willing her lover to appear. But he never did. Mother kept them safe, made repairs to the shack as best she could, kept them fed and clothed. Theirs was a desolate, desperate existence because she and her mother were not good enough for Beaynidan royalty. Her stomach tightened, and her hands gripped tightly at the window sill, splintered wood biting into her fingers. Anger boiled up inside of her. She remembered when word finally drifted up to them that the High Prince of Sona Tuath had taken a bride. Her mother’s wistful, melancholy mood suddenly darkened into utter despair. Within a week she was bedridden, refusing to eat. Her beautiful mother withered before her eyes, turning to a wretched, old woman. Her dark eyes, once so bright, clouded with worthlessness, her smooth skin shriveled and scaled away. Her lustrous, shiny hair that she had meticulously kept braided eventually turned dull and fell from her head.

Finally, her mother had died. Her breath and memory blowing away on the agitated, ever-howling wind scouring away at her young daughter’s life. Tears formed and then fell from Baobh’s cheeks as she remembered cleaning the shell of what had been her mother’s body, hauling her out to the grave she had dug herself then rolling her mother into the earth and covering her over.

Her hand went up to the Necklace of Ventra that proudly hung around her slender neck. No one would dare challenge her with such a powerful weapon at her disposal. She angrily swatted her tears away, and her full lips curled into a bitter smile. She had learned of the necklace in Ghroc after her mother had been returned to the earth. Baobh went as a girl on the cusp of womanhood. She had not been sure that the Goyor would let in a half-blood spawn from one of their own who had defected so many years earlier.

But Journey-Of-The-Moon and her uncle, Fire-Starter, had welcomed her with open arms. Baobh took a deep breath and turned back to look upon the shack. She did feel bad for the way she left Ghroc. She truly regretted that she had had to kill Sun-Song and prayed to Pom-Ni that he would forgive her. But she was not like other Goyor. Though she worshiped Pom-Ni, even erecting a temple for him in the middle of Sona Tuath, her life was not for tending the dirt. She was born to rule, the daughter of kings, and now the Queen of Beaynid! She had more important things to do than shepherd the forest.

At length, Baobh slowly walked from the shack back out into the chilled wind that always howled through Sona Tuath. The sun was about to set, and she had been away too long. She turned her dark eyes up to the gray heavens and said a silent prayer to Pom-Ni as she melted into the form of a raven, in memory of her lost mother, and then silently floated away upon the salty wind.