Chapter 1
A tiny, glowing figure cut a swirling arc across the surface of a still pond, her bare feet leaving a trail of tiny ringlets in her wake. In front of her, a dragonfly flitted, its translucent wings casting back a light wind that stirred the fairy’s hair. She laughed and reached out, stroking the dragonfly’s scaly body. It veered sharply and raced away, leaving the fairy to seek other mischief.
On a nearby hill, a young girl stifled a giggle as she watched. Her older brother laid a warning hand on her shoulder. “Shh! You’ll frighten her.”
The little girl nodded vigorously and sealed her lips, drawing comically hard lines over her round features.
Her brother glanced away over the hill and then whispered, “Look! You can see the city now. The sun is just high enough. Do you see it, Veil, that silver shape on the horizon?”
Veil’s eyes sparkled. “I see it, Hefthon! I see it—the Fairy City!”
Her brother smiled. “Tell me what it looks like.”
Veil thought for a moment and then said slowly, “It looks like—more.”
* * *
“Dust is a sign of idleness,” Tressa said, sweeping a feather-tipped wand over her husband’s book case.
Reheuel coughed as his wife continued flicking dust about his study. “And dusting is a sign of avoiding more worthwhile occupations.”
Geuel, Reheuel’s oldest son, glanced up from the pages of a worn book. “Oh, Father, please don’t.”
Tressa shook her duster at her husband menacingly. “Cleanliness means gentility! And I shall not have my husband, the newly appointed Captain of the Guards, living like a withered scribe in a dusty cubbyhole.”
“But he’s nearly fifty,” Geuel called from his seat near the window. “Pretty soon he will be a withered scribe.”
Reheuel glanced at his son and raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you get off with such comments, rogue? I raised you better.”
Geuel set aside the fencing manual he had been reading and shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you’ve just been letting things slip in your old age.”
Tressa nodded with a gently mocking smile. “It has been terrible, darling, seeing you fade these past few years.”
Reheuel laughed and wrapped his arms around his wife, lifting her from the floor. He swung her around him in a tight circle, clutching her waist in his strong hands. “Fade? Do you call this fading?” He lowered her down softly till she hung over the floor in his arms and planted his lips on hers, laughing through his kisses.
She laughed also and hung in his arms, staring at his face. “Sure you can hold me here, old man?” she whispered.
Geuel rolled his eyes. “And that’s my queue. I’ll be in the stables with Hefthon.” He planted his hands on the window ledge and began to launch himself outside.
“Use the door!” his mother shouted after him. “We need to be dignified.”
Geuel landed lightly in the grass outside and strode toward the stables, shivering slightly in the evening chill. He was tall, twenty-one with a narrow but athletic build and dark, curly hair that helped widen his otherwise narrow features. As he entered the stable, he heard his younger siblings, Hefthon and Veil, chattering to the horses. Geuel stroked the nose of his charger, Iridius, and watched his siblings as they brushed their horses’ coats. “Where did you ride?” he asked Veil.
The little girl grinned with ill-concealed excitement as she recited dutifully, “Nowhere special, just around the farms north of town.”
Geuel laughed. “Don’t bother, Veil. Leave the lying to your brother. He’s better suited to it.”
Hefthon threw his brush at Geuel in mock anger. He was a blonde, burly youth, large at nineteen and still growing, with thick, heavy features and a wide, simple face. “Better suited! I only learned it from you. Mother says that you and deception are like mermaids and water. The first would die without the second, and the second would lose its charm without the first.”
Geuel shook his head. “How far did you ride, really? You’ve been gone all day.”
“To the edge of the blue hills—but no farther. I was careful.”
“You know better, Hefthon. There have been sightings,” Geuel said, unsurprised but angry.
“I just wanted her to see the City of Youth, just once while she’s still of age. Father showed us both when we were younger. And besides, Daris saw one goblin. That’s hardly sightings.”
“There’s never only one,” Geuel replied. “Risk your life for a sight-seeing trip if you want, but don’t risk your sister’s. Are we clear?”
Hefthon nodded. “Yes.”
“Good, then I guess Father needn’t hear of this.”
* * *
Reheuel sat beside his wife in his study, softly stroking her back and whispering in low tones, “The Emperor has recalled another unit of guards from each of the inner cities. I’ll have to send Hadrid and his men out soon.”
“But you’re already stretched so thin,” Tressa replied.
“I know that, and you know that. But what does that mean to a ruler a thousand miles away? He only cares for his borders. The Empire is expanding—rapidly. Through conquest and truce alike. Before long, all the civilized lands in Rehavan will lie in the shadow of the Golden Iris. With such gains at the borders, what do towns like Gath Odrenoch matter? He hardly thinks of the dangers still within his realm.”
“And the goblins?”
“We don’t even know if the rumors are true. As far as the scouts can tell, only six or seven have left the mountain.”
“I wish we would have killed them when we had the chance,” Tressa said, “when our forces were still full.”
Reheuel sighed. “Yes, that’s what we say now, but we were sick of fighting.”
“I just pray that they don’t come here,” Tressa whispered.
“So do I, Love. So do I.”
Tressa lifted her head from his chest and smiled. “Love—after twenty-two years of marriage, the word still thrills me.”
He smiled at her. “Has it been that long? You still look like the bashful maiden of eighteen who swore to be mine.”
“And you still look like the confident guardsman who wooed me with songs in the evenings.”
“Where does time go?” Reheuel asked, staring at his calloused, beaten hand as it flit across his wife’s shoulders.
“It goes to our hearts, Love. Our hearts eat time, and they turn it to memories. Time never returns because it’s already used up.”
They sat still for a while longer, lost in silent remembrance, thumbing idly through the great volumes of their memories, prying the covers of dusty books and pulling apart pages that had become stuck and stiff through disuse and time.
It seemed to Reheuel, as he sat there, that his wife fed his mind, that her presence cleared his thoughts. The silence and her presence together drove his mind back through memories which had remained untouched for many years. Little glimmers flashed in his focus, special moments which used to be precious but, long since, had faded into obscurity. Little smiles that had flitted over his wife’s lips, occasional glints of light in her hair, words spoken in the stillness of a summer evening—all these things rushed over him. He remembered moments which he had sworn never to forget—and had forgotten. He remembered moments that he had striven to burn out of his mind—but never had. It was all there for the reading—his life. Fifty years. All he had to do was turn the pages.
Darkness crept over the old farm that night, sweeping away the sounds and sights of daylight and giving way to its own nocturnal symphonies: crickets sang in the marshes, an owl questioned the night, and a band of coyotes yapped in the forest, scrapping over some minor prize. Geuel and Hefthon sat in the living room, their voices rising and falling to the flicker of dim candles melting on the table.
“It was stupid. You should never have left alone. Think of Veil. She’s a child,” Geuel said.
“I know she’s a child. That’s why I took her,” Hefthon replied. “Do you remember what it felt like—to see the Fairy City as a child? There was a moment, a moment when your heart stopped beating and a shudder rippled through your blood, screaming that you were alive and that the world was still beautiful.”
“Yes, I loved that trip,” Geuel replied, “and I remember the thrill—but you can’t endanger your sister’s life for a thrill.”
“Thrill! You call it a simple thrill? I saw the city today, brother. I saw it as a man, and all I saw were buildings. I saw tear-shaped buildings that glinted in the sun. Oh, it was still beautiful . . . But it was only beautiful. The magic was gone. Veil saw more than beauty. Where I saw buildings shining in sunlight, she saw the glint of innocence and the spark of youth.”
“It’s just a place,” Geuel replied, “just a part of the world.”
“Does that make it any less fantastic?” Hefthon replied. “Even dreams are part of this world. But the Fairy City is more than just a place. It’s immortal childhood, a place where innocence and wonder never die. To be a child and to see eternal youth, the opportunity only lasts so long. I wanted her to have that while she still could. She’s growing: soon the Fairy City won’t matter.”
Geuel sighed. “I know it’s important to you. Just don’t ride beyond the farmland anymore. I’ve heard things—in town. It’s not safe out there.”
“Fine, it won’t happen again.”
They blew out the candles and returned to their rooms in silence.
* * *
Dawn broke over Gath Odrenoch the following morning, and across the countryside men dragged themselves free from the loving arms of sleep, leaving her for the cold of life. Over the foothills, in the mountains of Gath, goblin laborers laid down their tools and crept back to their dark caverns, replacing man in sleep’s fickle embrace.
Reheuel rose from his bed lightly, gently smoothing the blankets back over the form of his sleeping wife. He walked to the window and inhaled, swelling his muscled chest and basking in the morning chill. When he reached the kitchen a few minutes later, he found his children preparing a meal. They paused as he walked to his chair and then resumed.
Sitting down, he turned to Geuel. “We need to repair the fence in the southern pasture this morning, before I head into the city.”
Geuel nodded. “Yes, Sir. I’ll prepare some planks.”
A few hours later, Geuel and his father stood along the wooden fence line in the southern field of their farm, Geuel digging at the base of a snapped post, trying to pry it from the clinging earth. Reheuel sat across from him, widening the slots in a new post with his hunting knife. He was already dressed in his uniform, the folds of his cerulean robe spread out over the field grass around him. “So, Geuel,” he asked, “how have your fencing instructions progressed?”
“Quite well,” Geuel responded with a grunt, his arms straining as he edged the post up its first inch. “Master Kezeik says I should be able to test next month.”
His father nodded with a light smile on his lips, glancing up only briefly from his work. “Excellent, you shall be an officer one day if you continue as you have. And your archery?”
Geuel released the shovel and responded as he dug his hands down into the earth around the post, seeking a hold. “Not so well, I’m afraid. Master Deni tells me that if I were a hunter I would do best to dig a grave with my bow.”
His father laughed. “That’s just Deni’s way. I expect you to focus more on archery though. We must be versatile. Specialization is a luxury that the guards can no longer afford.”
“Yes, Sir,” Geuel replied. He waited a few seconds to see if his father would continue, then asked, “Will there be fighting soon?”
“Someone has been listening to barracks-room gossip,” Reheuel replied, standing and lifting the new post. “We don’t know. We know that the goblins have been venturing farther afield, getting bold. Several farmers have reported vandalized fences and missing cattle. But, as far as actual war goes, no one knows. We haven’t had a conflict with the creatures in decades. I was younger than you the last time they attacked. Who knows how many are even left up there.”
“Would we win—if there were a war I mean?” Geuel asked.
“I’m confident we could defeat them,” his father replied, “but win? I’d hardly call it victory. We would leave blood and bodies on the field, neither of which we can afford right now. The Emperor is still calling for conscripts, and we’re running out of soldiers. No one would win.”
Geuel tossed aside the stump of the old post and waited for his father to slide the new one into place. “I guess we should hope for peace then,” he said.
“Always,” his father replied.