Kristen Britain - Blackveil

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Table of Contents

ALSO BY KRISTEN BRITAIN:

Green Rider
First Riders Call
The High Kings Tomb
Blackveil

Copyright 2011 by Kristen Britain.

All Rights Reserved.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1535.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

First printing, February 2011

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES MARCA REGISTRADA HECHO EN U.S.A.

S.A.

eISBN : 978-1-101-47556-0

http://us.penguingroup.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks for the support, feedback, and many memorable Wednesday evenings at Darthia Farm goes to the Peninsulans: Annaliese (of Greywood) Jakimides, Elizabeth Noyes, Melinda Rice (OSSC), and Cynthia Thayer.

As always, thanks to team DAW for all they do to publish terrific books, especially my editor, Betsy Wollheim.

Thank you also to my agents Anna Ghosh and Danny Baror for helping to get my books out into the world.

My thanks to Ruth Stuart and Jill Shultz for providing comments and/or suggestions on certain aspects of the story. Thank you to Leila Saad for the use of her Italian carnival mask!

Thank you to Roger Czerneda for designing the all-new www.kristenbritain.com site and entertaining me with assorted apple flingings. And of course to his wonderful significant other, Julie, for her continuing encouragement and peach muffins.

I am always grateful for the existence of Acadia National Park for providing so much inspiration and mental and physical retreat over the years. Likewise for the music of Enya, Moya Brennan, Tingstad & Rumbel, and others that is often serene backdrop to my writing.

Finally, I always mention my four-legged buddies here because they mean so much to me and are generally great writer companions. Sadly, my last feline muse, Percy, a.k.a. Silly Orange Boy, passed away during the writing of this book, which is in part dedicated to him. He will never be forgotten.

As for Gryphon? Terriers to the fore! Want cookies!

For my sister, Sheri Flanigan.

Blackveil/Argenthyne

BLACKVEIL

R emember, we are all prey here.

As one, Grandmothers retainers glanced down at the puddle of blood soaking into the duff of the forest floor. It was all that remained of Regin.

Do not step outside the wards, Grandmother said, where I cannot protect you.

As if to augment her words, a bestial cry rang out from the forest. Sarat whimpered, and the others shifted uneasily.

Grandmother said some appropriate words in memory of Regin. Hed been a good, strong porter, always helpful with camp and obedient to her every wish and devout in the ways of Second Empire. During their break, he had left them to relieve himself. By necessity, the warding Grandmother set when they were stopped for a mere break was not great in circumference. Regin had taken but a couple steps too many past its protection. They heard his scream, its sharp cutoff, and he was gone.

Blackveil Forest was dangerous. Perhaps the most dangerous place on Earth. Grandmother frequently reminded her people of the forests treachery, but Regin proved that a moment of inattention could be ones last. A harsh lesson to them all.

It did not help anyones flagging spirits that they were lost. Again.

Grandmother pulled her hood up against the unceasing drizzle. It was late winter, but snow never seemed to reach the ground here. It was as if the whiteness of snow was too pure, too clean, to exist within the darkness of the forest. The drizzle seeped through the canopy of crooked tree boughs and matted clumps of pine needles, and anything that dwelled here lived in perpetual dusk. At night, the blackness was total.

Blackveil was the product of conquest and defeat. Long ago, Grandmothers ancestors, led by Mornhavon the Great, sailed from the empire of Arcosia to the shores of the New Lands seeking resources and riches. Not only did they find these in abundance, but they also found resistance from the native people, who rejected the will of the empire, sparking a hundred years of war.

The first land to fall to the empire was the Eletian realm of Argenthyne, which covered the whole of a peninsula that bordered Ullem Bay to the east. Mornhavon made it his capital and renamed it Mornhavonia. At first his campaigns to quash rebellion and dominate the New Lands went well, but then supplies and reinforcements stopped coming from the empire.

Abandoned, with dwindling forces and many enemies arrayed against him, Mornhavon fell in defeat.

The Sacoridians then walled off the peninsula, trapping within the residue of darkness left behind by Mornhavon. The perversions he created with the art festered here for a millennium. The forest rotted amid etherea defiled by the use of the black arts during the war, gripping the land and spreading like a disease; ignored, neglected, and forgotten, until an Eletian coveting the residual magical power of the forest breached the DYer Wall three years ago.

Their journey through the forest was not only dangerous, but toilsome. They attempted to follow an ancient road of upheaved cobblestones. Sometimes it vanished into bogs or was swallowed by masses of thorny undergrowth. Patiently they sought ways around the obstructions and more than once found themselves led astray along remnants of side roads, or following paths toward traps set by wily predators.

This time an impenetrable thicket of scrubby trees, exhibiting wicked daggerlike thorns, had blocked the road and sent them off course. During trials such as these, Grandmother began to believe their situation hopeless, for she could not even consult the sun or stars for direction in this cloaked, shadowed place. She thought theyd die, forever lost in the tangled wilderness of the forest. She assumed they might yet. Their chances of survival, even if they found their way back to the road, were not good.

She was careful never to convey her doubts to the others. She could not. She must hold them together. They expressed complete faith in her, believed she would bring them through this. But if she fell apart, theyd fall apart, too, so she maintained a facade of confidence, even though it was a lie.

She gazed upon her weary retainers. There were only five of them now. Five, plus her true granddaughter, Lala, who sat upon a slimy log playing string games. Lala never issued any complaint, remained implacable as ever, trusting in her grandmother.

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