Free Sands of the Soul by Voronica Whitney-Robinson

daughter’s personal stationary.
    Shamur was slightly in shock from the culmination of events that evening, and the note was too much for her. She slid it into a fold of her robe and, when she returned to her chambers later on, she hid the missive in the hollow panel in her wardrobe. She felt she needed some time to decide what was best for her daughter.
    Now, a year later, she saw that some sort of divide existed
     
    between her daughter and Erevis Cale. Obviously, he had never spoken of his feelings for her except in that note.
    Perhaps he has grown tired of waiting for a sign from Thazienne, the woman who “holds his heart forever,” she thought, before coming to a decision.
    Shamur looked a final time at the Elvish words of love written to her daughter from a family servant and threw the note into the fire. As the flames licked up the paper, Shamur felt certain she had done the right thing.
    She loved her daughter fiercely and would do anything to ensure Thazienne’s happiness. She wouldn’t have her daughter trapped in a painful union if it could be avoided. V Being linked to a common servant just wasn’t right for her daughter, though it had taken this sad encounter between Tazi and Cale to cement her decision. Shamur had struggled for months with what was best and took this night as a sign. With the letter destroyed, she felt certain Thazienne’s long-term contentment was ensured.
    A soft knock on the door startled Shamur from her concerns.
    “Come in,” she said.
    Thamalon Uskevren, wearing a maroon and gold robe, walked in.
    “I’m not disturbing you, am I?” he asked.
    For the first time that evening, Shamur smiled. With her ash-blonde hair loose about her face, she looked more her daughter’s age. That fact was not lost to her husband’s appreciative gaze.
    “Come sit with me,” she invited, patting the cushion next to her.
    A year before, Shamur would never have extended an offer that intimate to her husband, but many things had changed over the past months, mostly for the better. She didn’t have to hide behind a mask with him any longer. When all was said and done, there was no one else with whom she would rather share a moment like this.
     
    Thamalon sat down beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Shamur settled against him and let a small sigh escape her lips.
    “What keeps you awake, wife?” Thamalon asked kindly.
    “I’m just thinking of our children,” she finally replied. “There are so many things that could go awry for them.”
    The Old Owl, as he was known to many, kissed his wife on her head and replied, “With you guarding them, nothing horrible could ever happen.”
    “I hope you’re right,” she answered and hugged him close.
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    “How utterly perfect,” Ciredor chuckled aloud as he watched Tazi step out of Cale’s bedroom.
    There were very few unanswered questions in his life, but the room Ciredor was in happened to contain many of them. Sometime during the Age of Skyfire, the chamber had been hewn out of the desert mountains while the djinn, Calim and Memnon, raged against each other. The walls were carved with an ancient script that defied all his efforts at translation, but beyond that, Ciredor had very few clues as to who else might have occupied it before him.
    He had let his anger get the best of him many years before when he discovered the sanctum and killed its former guardians too quickly. Realizing that he had lost an opportunity for knowledge, the necromancer wrote off the mistake as one of many lessons of life and vowed never to make that mistake again.
    At various points in the natural recesses of the room, glow lights winked in the darkness, but their illumination was outshone by the radiance of a multifaceted, amethyst no bigger than a man’s fist. It rested on a natural rock pedestal, the focal point of the room. The eerie, purple light it emitted flickered oddly off of the jagged walls and the hollow caverns
     
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