Free The Hollow Queen by Elizabeth Haydon Page A

following proudly in his uncle’s footsteps.
    Until the raid on Nikkid’sar.
    Now the young lieutenant, who had been a pleasant conversationalist, generous to his fellow soldiers about taking unpopular shifts and duties, and proud of his service to the royal house of Sorbold, had gone quiet and taciturn, appearing occasionally hollow-eyed and unkempt, though he was still reliable in arriving on time for muster and completing any duties assigned to him in a satisfactory manner.
    Kymel had confided the details of the raid on the abbey to his horrified uncle, had interrupted Fhremus’s subsequent rantings about execution and courts-martial to assure Fhremus that the unit had been acting under the direct orders of the emperor to leave no inhabitant of the abbey alive, even knowing that its purpose was to be a sanctuary for the poorest and most vulnerable of the continent’s children.
    Upon bearing witness to Fhremus’s own shock, Kymel had gone mostly silent, responding regularly, if slowly, to questions and commands, but otherwise keeping to himself.
    Fhremus, delayed in Jierna Tal, had tried to find a way to keep a quiet surveillance on his nephew, but to no avail. There are no secrets for long in the army went one of the most common expressions in military rapport, and to be seen as overseeing or providing special treatment for a family member was one of the most dangerous games that could be played. The supreme commander did not have enough experience or connections to do so without endangering Kymel even more, so he kept his distance and continued to pray silently to the All-God for his nephew’s safety, an action that in itself was punishable as treason by the crown if the authorities were aware of it.
    So on the eve of deployment into battle, a few short weeks after the rout in the fields of Roland just north of Sepulvarta that the unit had already experienced, Kymel was sitting alone on the rampart of the city wall, staring north.
    He knew the next day would bring a muster, a palpable excitement in which he would be expected to partake enthusiastically. He had already overheard Titactyk practicing his call to arms, his rhetoric of defense of the nation and retribution for wrongs perpetrated on Sorbold by the Cymrian Alliance and its leaders, the Lord and Lady Cymrian, his inflammatory speech designed to whip the soldiers of the first through fourth divisions into a frenzy of war-hate and rage, exploding into violence of both sanctioned and unsanctioned kinds.
    It would certainly be effective, he knew.
    What he did not know was what he would do upon witnessing it.
    Kymel watched the sun burning orange on its way down the welkin of the sky to the horizon.
    Wishing to be anywhere than where he was.

 
    11

    IN THE DEEP KINGDOM OF THE NAIN, UNDERVALE, NORTHEASTERN MOUNTAINS
    Lady Melisande Navarne, all of ten years old, stretched wearily and yawned.
    This day, like each day, had been long and dark, even with the luminescence of the sconces that brought the equivalent of daylight into the underground kingdom built into the forbidding mountains beyond the Teeth, north of the Bolglands, that she was now residing in.
    At the very end of the world, as far as Melisande was concerned.
    Logically, she was very glad to be where she was, happy that her life was what it was, given what she assumed was going on in the world beyond those mountains.
    But as time passed, as the days went on, as she assumed they did in the world outside, Melisande was growing bored.
    Boredom was not a bad thing, she reasoned. Safety and boredom went hand in hand for her these days, unlike her recent exploits, which were exciting but highly dangerous.
    She had been sent into the Great Forest by her adoptive grandmother, Rhapsody, the Lady Cymrian, on a mission to discover what had happened to the dragon Elynsynos, an ancient being of legendary stature and a beloved friend to Rhapsody. Elynsynos’s terrifying rampages had been