O.k. Ummm...hopefully this will go to a publisher when finished and it 
has a long, long way to go, so any C&C appreciated. *^_^*

Shannon
(a.k.a. Windlily)

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	Nellan stood on the topmost outcropping balcony of Raven'sNook, not 
sure whether he missed those noisy, ebony winged birds that had given 
this EarthTemple it's name or not. It had been four years since a Raven 
had come to roost here, four years since Kori had brought the water 
logged and near starved fledgling Sun hawk home to nurse back into 
robust and fierce health. The hard wind that always worried against the 
topmost levels of the Temple carved into the steep side of the mountain 
still held the cruel bite of winter as it found it's way through his 
heavy cloak, took hold of his shoulder length auburn hair and made it 
dance and tangle around his face like flames.  He tucked the four thin 
bead laden braids that whipped and stung against his left check firmly 
behind his ear, then held that slender and long fingered hand to shade 
his eyes, green as the new Spring growth that touched the valley he 
gazed down on as it did the vast plains of the MiddleMarch behind him .

	Eighteen years ago he had stood a similar watch but the Summer had been 
waning instead of approaching and the land was colored with browns and 
yellows as he looked to the West instead of East, as he now was, warned 
in Dreamtime that something of the Shadows was coming to them. Gods, had 
it been so many years? Yet in the long span of his time in the World, it 
had been nothing but a blink. A MiddleMarch Lord had come up through the 
Middle Pass, one of only three that provided an easy way through The 
Wolf's Teeth, the barrier of mountains that ran in an unbroken wall from 
the warm Southern beaches of Athlan to the cold, violent waters off the 
cliffs of Nandi. Stone fangs of the earth that protected the vast and 
fertile holdings of Turin from the wastes and desires of the East.

	He had watched the tiny figures with eyes sharpened by the power of the 
Blooded and his own will, which the men of these times called magic and 
wizardry, as the small entourage turned off the King's Road to follow 
the winding path that lead only to Raven'sNook. No standard went before 
him, no image of House or Clan was visible to curious eyes. Yet that 
hadn't been surprising, for it was treason to set foot on the grounds of 
an EarthTemple. Even after four hundred years that Law, willed into 
bloody being by Jehned, the first of the Zentrad Kings to sit on the 
Dragon's Throne was still enforced. Treason punished by a painful and 
lingering death. Yet in no ways was it enforced near as vigorously as it 
had been only three Kings ago. There was no King's Guard or Shidre 
priest in the little stone house across the road from the place where 
their path met the King's Road. The Zentrad where getting lazy and 
forgetful as they went from generation to generation, letting the fears 
of their forefathers slip into the realms of myth not to be taken 
seriously by any sane man.

	Nellan remembered thinking this Lord, for Lord it was, unmistakable in 
bearing and the quality of horse and harness that came with him, must be 
desperate to come to so cursed a place. A place populated only by 
haunts, if one believed the stories told by the Shidre Priests. Haunts. 
An amused yet cynical smile touched his lips. But that, in a true sense, 
was what they had become. Easy enough to blind unbelieving eyes and 
dulled minds to see nothing but shadows instead of breathing flesh, give 
them the dust and age and abandonment they expected to see. He and 
Ellias, the Shadows of flesh and blood that had held this lonely place 
for so long, until Kori.

	Kori, whose mother was in that curtained wagon that had come with the 
Lord. That desperate Lord, who never dismounted, never set foot on the 
forbidden ground yet had called out the words, "I am in need." Words 
that all who served the EarthTemples were sworn to answer. It should 
have warned him. It was very Qu'ain, that dichotomy of word and action. 
So Kori's mother had come to them, wandering lost in the dream the 
Qu'ain Shadows wove for her. A lovely Daughter of Men named Ewony who 
had made, he thought so still, a terrible and tragic bargain. Barren 
after three years of marriage and sent back to her brother in disgrace, 
she had gone into a Qu'ain Ring of Power, older even than the Tribes of 
the East, and exchanged Promises with Shadows.

	Her brother had found her naked and asleep in the Circle the next 
morning, her wits wandering with a moon struck tale of a Qu'ain Prince 
who had come to her in the night to give her what a Man could not. Her 
brother made excuses, excuses that he himself believed, of her growing 
belly to the Shidre priests. That she had fallen prey to bandits or some 
form of rough men, of this he was certain. Yet word reached them of her 
continued insistence that she carried a Qu'ain child. They had given him 
the choice. Kill her and the horror she carried honorably as befitted a 
Noble House or they would stone her publicly as the King's Law demanded.

	Her Lord brother had done something worse, loving his sister well and 
believing her raped and lost to a dream she had created for her own 
comfort. He hid his sister, took a common girl of similar countenance 
and number of months with child and slew her in his sisters place. He 
buried her quietly as the Shidre priests commanded, in unhallowed ground 
at the crossroads outside the town he held for his Zentrad King. Then he 
had brought his sister to them in secret, asking for sanctuary for her 
and the babe. It was a horrid tale, one that Kori did not know and never 
would, if he had his way. Ellias, dour and fierce with all but himself 
(and Kori after she had come) was about to refuse, offended by this Lord 
and the thing he had done. They had to give ear to the Need, but not 
necessarily answer it. Then Ewony had stepped from the wagon, unassisted 
and unattended and walked past them with unseeing eyes to gaze up at the 
wind rounded curves of the Temple and smiled, resting her hands on the 
bulge of the babe.

	"Safe here. We will be safe here." That was what she had said, then 
walked in.

	"We will grant Sanctuary." He remembered Ellias' furious look, Gods, he 
missed even that scowl so much. Yet the words were out, as they were 
meant to be and could not be taken back.

	The Lord had bowed from his saddle, his eyes, like that of the men who 
rode with him on the rapidly lowering sun and his red haired and green 
eyed self. The amber charm he wore around his neck only worked on the 
unsuspecting. It was a basic Law. If they expected to see a normal man, 
then that was what they would see. But these men were on cursed ground 
and facing feared and forbidden creatures of magic who only wore the 
forms of Men, if one believed the Shidre priests. He knew that none of 
them had ever seen his coloring on a human, colors that had once, so 
long ago, been hoped for in a child.

	Jehned's Purge had been so brutal and so thorough and still, to this 
day, on-going. The memory of that took him now for a moment to another 
place and an even father away time. They had had to ride double, his own 
horse having gone down under a Zentrad soldiers pike. Ellias held him, 
kept him in the saddle wounded and exhausted, the Sword clutched against 
his chest as they fled through that chaos filled night. The cobbled 
streets of Goldwater FreeGate had rung under Shushen's hooves as that 
great hearted horse had borne their doubled weight to the Night Gate. 
Shushen who Ellias had loved as none other and rode without mercy until 
he fell under them dead to save the life of his Denii. The Night Gate 
which was never closed and would be clear for them at the cost of so 
many EarthTemple lives. And the heralds harsh voices, he heard them now, 
ringing like Shushen's hooves, followed them through the city, 
announcing over and over as they had from that sun up as the new Zentrad 
King had commanded, the Kings Law.  

	"Hear the Kings Law! Any person, young or old, who carries the marks of 
the Dragon's Blood, or the marks of Qu'ain is ordered slain. A bounty of 
twenty sliver Stars will be given for the corpse."

	Twenty silver Stars. Twice more than a peasant could expect to see in a 
lifetime. Jehned had created so many willing hunters. The shudder that 
went through him was not from the numbing cold of the wind. But he 
hadn't been done with them yet, that Zentrad Betrayer. The rest of 
Jehned King's Law had come a week later. Law which demanded any child 
born with the telling marks of Dragon or Qu'ain was to be killed within 
the hour of it's birth. Any who allowed such a child to live beyond that 
hour would be stoned along with his household, down to the youngest 
child and the offending babe burned and it's ashes scattered to the four 
winds by a Shidre priest, damning it's soul to eternal torment but any 
who brought the babe, slain, to the priests would receive the twenty 
silver Stars of bounty. The Shidre priests had not had to pay that 
bounty for three generations of Men.

	He felt himself start to slip father into that time and place as the 
land blurred before his eyes. No. He would go no farther. What had 
started that morbid train of memory? Ewony. Ewony who's brother had told 
them that her goods where in the wagon and he would leave it as a gift 
then turned with his men and fled. So, the Temple had acquired one wagon 
(which was now with the overdue Kori), one gelded draft horse in good 
condition with harness and a Lady with her goods. None of which, of 
course, held any markings of House or lineage. Ellias rode the gelding 
that night, harness and all and complained bitterly about his soreness 
the next day, to leave with the triangle of the EarthTemple painted on 
it's flank in whitewash at a farmers house. One who remembered the old 
ways and had left a beautifully carved offering of such a horse on the 
Temples doorstep with his brand carved into it's flank. It had been one 
of Kori's favorite toys when she was little.

	Kori. Where was she? He worried at his lower lip with his teeth as he 
narrowed his eyes, willing clearer vision as he leaned into the wind. 
Kori, the child he had prepared himself to dislike. Prepared himself to 
kill, for he feared, as Ellias did, the Dark Will that had gone into her 
making. That Power, Shadowed and gray like all things touched by the 
Qu'ain, had wrapped itself around Ewony was beyond all doubt to those 
who had eyes that could see. Power of such force that neither he or 
Ellias had been able to see past or through it to discover what was 
being shaped in a human womb. Yet Sanctuary had been Promised so they 
had cared for Ewony, both pleased to find a chance to practise the right 
side of the Triangle, the two of them who had walked along the left 
incline for so long. Ewony, who would sit with clouded eyes and hum 
lilting children songs in her chair by the fire, fading as the world 
around her faded towards winter's harsh sleep while she sewed little 
cloths for the babe that was sucking the life out of her.

	The day before she labored she had rung the little bell that they had 
left by her bed to summon them for any need. He had answered that little 
used summons and winced still against the memory of her. By that time 
she was nothing but skin stretched over bone, making the distension of 
her womb even more of a horror to his eyes. Neither he nor Ellias had 
been able to get past that barrier of Shadow to strengthen her failing 
body and spirit with their own. So he had re-read all the chapters of 
the great Healer Rakishi's books on pregnant women and childbirth, had 
prepared the special meals and teas and made sure she drank all the milk 
he brought for her from the cow that Ellias had found lowing one morning 
two weeks after Ewony had joined them at the doors to their empty 
stable, udders full and hide unmarked by any brand. And watched as she 
had wasted away.

	She had been working on an embroidery, one that she would quickly fold 
and hide in the basket that held her threads whenever either of them 
would come to tend her, saying it was a surprise and she didn't want 
them to see it until it was finished. It was folded now by her side, 
folded so that nothing of the image she had worked into it was visible 
on the dark gray fabric.

	"Do you need something, Lady Ewony?" He had asked.

	"It is close to my time." She had looked at him, her golden brown eyes, 
pure human eyes, clear of the silver tint that had clouded them for as 
long as he had known her. "You think I have made a bad bargain. I tell 
you I have not." She had said it firmly, nothing of the gentle, bid-able 
soul that they had watched over about her now.

	"I know exactly what I have done." There had been a hardness around her 
mouth and in her eyes that had made him uneasy. "And I feel honor bound 
to tell you, who have granted us Sanctuary and cared for both of us so 
well. And I remind you, Temple Warden, that you granted both of us 
Sanctuary. Both of us!"

	He had nodded. What else could he have done? She had the truth of it 
and now the EarthTemple was bound, for better or worse. Yet there was a 
terrible thing he had been prepared to do, if it was for worse. It still 
bothered him that he had that streak of Darkness in his soul.

	"Good. Then I'll tell you what I asked for in that Qu'ain Ring. I asked 
for a night of true and gentle love and a child to exact revenge on the 
Man who could not perform as a husband should and blamed it on me! And 
my Qu'ain Prince came and made me a Promise."

	Dark Will...Oh Gods! But not by some uneasy lingering taint of a place 
of Qu'ain power as he had suspected but of her own shaping. How that 
knowledge had stunned him.

	"Lady Ewony. It was unwise, this thing you did." He had answered her 
gently, desperate to know what the Promise had entailed. "Qu'ain 
promises are easily misunderstood." Gods, he knew the truth of that, 
better than any.

	"Not this Promise." She had been confident and smug. "My Qu'ain Prince 
promised a night of true and gentle love, the child that I so desired if 
I would give my life to make it yet gentle dreams to see me through that 
shaping. And if I agreed to these conditions, then through that child a 
pain filled and untimely death to the Man who was never husband to me. 
He has fulfilled his side of the Promise so far, as I am fulfilling 
mine."

	He had almost groaned out loud. It was true Qu'ain, simple yet not so, 
if one understood and knew what to look for. This was the way of Qu'ain 
power, neither Light or Dark, but both intermingled. And terrifying in 
that it wove both Light and Darkness together, reckless and uncaring to 
achieve it's ends. Yet always a balance was struck. That balance seemed 
easy to see, yet never was it so simple. A child conceived in love for 
hatreds purpose. A life willingly given for a life. Death for a Man 
through that Child, and a pain filled and untimely one at that. That was 
what she hadn't grasped and Gods help him, he did. Not death by that 
child, but through it. How much chaos would the birth of this child of a 
Qu'ain promise set loose to create an untimely and pain-filled death for 
one Man? And what was the balance for that chaos and promised death? He 
still wasn't sure, though he held one small spark of hope in his heart.

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End pt. 1

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