Worlds Unseen - Rachel Starr Thomson (beach books .txt) 📗

At the head of the line the Ploughman walked. His cloak was torn and his face streaked with ashes as a sign of mourning. Libuse walked by his side, a broken spear cradled in her arms. Around the splintered handle was twisted the silver thread of the Huntsman.

Behind them came the widows and mothers and children of the men who had fallen. They wept loudly as they walked. Then came the men, rebel soldiers and villagers and farmers who had come to the new freedom of Pravik. They marched grimly and silently.

Pat was behind them on crutches, and Mrs. Cook walked beside her with one arm around Virginia’s waist. Virginia had been found in the road by villagers on their way to the city. Her skin was dark with soot and her lips cracked and bleeding, but there was a power about her that made even her friends a little afraid. She would not say where Lord Robert had gone, but all understood he was not coming back.

Nicolas was missing from the procession. He had left the city unnoticed in the commotion that followed the battle. He had come to Maggie first, while she kept vigilance beside Jerome’s open coffin.

“I’m sorry, Maggie,” he had said, faltering. “He was a brave man.”

Maggie had not answered.

“Anyway, I’ll be going,” Nicolas had said, his tone deliberately light.

Maggie had turned with tear-filled eyes, but Nicolas was already nearly out the door. At the last minute he had turned and looked at her, and she had heard anguish in his voice.

“He loved you very much,” Nicolas told her. “I heard the love in his heart. It was beautiful.”

And then he was gone. “He will be back,” Huss had said when she told him.

“You sound very sure.”

“The world is taking sides,” Huss had said. “Soon even the most determined wanderers will have to make a choice. And I am sure I know what side he will choose to take.”

The long procession reached the bottom of the hill. The men came and lifted the coffins, laying them on the ground beside the open graves. High on the hill behind them Pravik stood mournful watch, and the wind sighed up and down the sides of the valley.

Maggie stood near Jerome’s coffin as the Ploughman stood in the midst of his people and spoke of the battle and the courage of those who had fought. More, he spoke of the future, in which their toils would be rewarded. A future in which Athrom would hear them and they would be free.

Libuse spoke also, of days gone by, and of the faded glory of the Eastern Lands which once more was beginning to shine. “In the Hall of Kings there does not lay one man of more worth than we lay to rest here today,” she said. “This day we say farewell to the truest sons of the East.”

At the last Huss stood and spoke a blessing over the burial grounds, a blessing pronounced in the name of the King. Maggie stood and sang her lament once more.

Finally the last moment came. Maggie’s eyes clouded with tears as the men came and began to lower the coffins into the ground. She stayed near as they took up the body of Jerome, and her eyes widened. A large white seabird flew down and perched on top of the coffin. It smiled at her with knowing eyes and bobbed its head once. Then it spread its wide wings and soared away.

Maggie watched it go, and she called after it. The bird bore her last farewell along with it to the southern sea.

*

That night Maggie ate for the first time since the battle had ended. She sat on a cushioned seat near the fire in the house of Libuse and let her eyes trace the outlines of the faces that sat at the table with her. The Ploughman and Libuse; Mrs. Cook and Pat; Huss and Virginia. They were a strange little company, Maggie thought, but a smile came to her as she reflected that they were no stranger than another council that had met, forty years ago, to dream dreams that would lead to this day.

Pravik was taken, but the battle was not over. Athrom would not hear them yet. Even now High Police were marching from Athrom. The Emperor roared in his den, eager to avenge the death of his Overlord and teach the rebels a lesson. In the city, the people were moving underground. The tunnels through which Maggie had run from the guards what seemed like an eternity ago were only one level of a great web of tunnels and caverns that led deep down into the rocky foundations of the city. The High Police would find nothing but mystery when they arrived.

Soon they would go, too, but the little company wished to eat one last meal above the ground. In a way it seemed that they were still sitting in the old Pravik: the Pravik where Libuse had longed for the days of her ancestors; where the Ploughman had lost his brother in a riot sparked by hopelessness; where Huss had battled the Empire by teaching secret truths to all who would listen. It was the Pravik where the old Maggie still lived, the Maggie who had ridden over the Guardian Bridge with Nicolas and shivered at the sight of the pleading statues, before love and truth and song had changed her forever.

But it was not the old Pravik any longer, no matter what illusions and memories the night whispered to them. When Maggie took Huss’s arm that night and left the house of Libuse, she stepped into a new world.

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Burning Light

After five hundred years, the Seventh World is beginning to wake to the realities of the unseen world behind their own. The rise of the Gifted portends the coming of the King of ancient days-but evil is also waking. Aware that their control is beginning to slip, the Order of the Spider sets out to convert the Gifted or destroy them. Among those caught in the conflict are Nicolas Fisher, a young Gypsy running from the past, and Maggie Sheffield, driven underground in the city of Pravik. Others also stand against the Blackness: the young chieftain Michael O’Roarke, the mysterious healer called Miracle, and the indomitable rebels of Pravik. Together, they will unearth a terrible plot and stand against the greatest evil their world has ever known. As the world takes sides, their lives will play an integral role-in the coming of light, or the triumph of darkness. Burning Light is the second book in The Seventh World Trilogy.