Wyvernhail

CHAPTER 1 Fire. Serpiente who held to the old myths believed that the world began in fire. Out of the numb void came passion and heat, and Will too strong to be denied. Order and chaos--Ahnmik and Anhamirak--began their eternal dance, and from the embers of their battle, the world was born.So perhaps it was not surprising that the world would end of that same heat.I was pulled from my musings as the door opened, drawing my attention to the small two-room building in which I had been sitting cross-legged before the hearth, perhaps for several hours. I looked up as a trio of falcons entered the candle shop, their steps uncharacteristically light and their expressions unguarded."Hanlah'ni-aona'pata'rrasatoth-rakuvra'pata'Diente." Cobras change kings, Spark observed with some amusement, as easily as the white Lady's heir changes lovers.The four falcons who frequented this shop at the edge of the avian hills of Wyvern's Court were in hiding, criminals who would probably be executed if they ever showed themselves in the white city again. Though Spark, Maya, Opal and Gren disguised themselves as simple avian merchants in the public areas of Wyvern's Court, here they switched back to the falcon language ha'Dasi.I enjoyed hearing the language of my home, even spoken by these exiles. Some of the serpents of Wyvern's Court tried to use it, but ha'Dasi always sounded stunted and twisted to me when it came from the tongue of a snake.Opal emerged from the back room, his eyes heavy lidded from sleep. Without sparing a glance at me, he asked, "Hehj' hena?" What happened?Gren, the owner of the candle shop, answered in the same language. "Oliza Shardae Cobriana," he announced, "has just abdicated the throne of Wyvern's Court. She and some wolf have run off in the woods together, leaving Salem and Sive holding the bag."The words stole my breath, not because they shocked me but because they left me with a powerful sense of deja vu. Months before, I had seen a vision of the wyvern princess dethroned. The image had been unclear, and all I had been able to do was go to Oliza and warn her: "You are about to do something that changes everything." I had hoped to make her think through her actions.Instead, I had triggered the very events I had sought to avoid.Around me, the falcons continued their conversation. "Changing leaders like autumn leaves is better than letting one rule for a thousand years," Gren observed."It makes you wonder, though, how easy it might be to put someone on the serpiente throne who would turn this land in a more favorable direction." Maya looked pointedly at me.This was not a new argument, and Opal dismissed it before I even needed to reply. "Makes you wonder, perhaps," he scoffed. "One would think that several days of punishment by the Empress's Mercy would have taught you not to speak treason with every word.""The Heir gave me to her Mercy for conceiving a child," Maya spat. This was the crime that had led to her flee from the falcon island. "If that is treason--""Which it is," Opal said, interrupting, "seeing as the Empress forbids kajaes from breeding."Kajaes were falcons born without magic, freaks in a city whose inhabitants breathed power and worked spells as if they were weaving baskets. But Ahnmik's magic was poison to new life; the royal house had had only one child in the past thousand years: Araceli's son, Sebastian. Kajaes children were conceived more easily.Almost as easily as quemak, mongrels like Opal--whose father was human, leaving Opal with the stigma of mixed blood in addition to no magic--and of course me."If that is treason," Maya said softly, "and is deserving of what I suffered for it, then do you think I fear a cobra's punishment? Besides, I speak only of replacing one cobra with another. It's nothing new for serpents."Sometimes I envied Maya forAtwater-Rhodes, Amelia is the author of 'Wyvernhail ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780385904421 and ISBN 0385904428.