The Golden Vial Read online

  © 2018 by T. Davis Bunn

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4934-1097-2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Praise for Emissary

  “Readers of inspirational fantasy will enjoy [Bunn’s] foray into a new genre.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Book one of the Legends of the Realm series is a wonderful journey away from the real world. . . . A fine start to this intriguing series.”

  —RT Book Reviews, 4 stars

  “Emissary is a superbly crafted fantasy adventure novel that engages the reader’s total and rewarded attention from beginning to end.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  Praise for Merchant of Alyss

  “The reader is drawn into this fascinating world and, in the end, left eager to see what will happen when the journey continues in the next book.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “The second Legends of the Realm book doesn’t disappoint! With love, loss, and adventure, Locke has another hit on his hands.”

  —Life Is Story blog

  “A deftly crafted and highly entertaining fantasy action/adventure novel from beginning to end.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  This book is dedicated to

  Dr. Pei Lun Zhang

  A dear friend and gifted healer

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Endorsements

  Dedication

  Map of The Realm

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  About the Author

  Books by Thomas Locke

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  1

  Almost everyone in the village of Honor called Dally a fortunate young woman. She had, after all, survived the fire that had robbed her of home and parents and three brothers. For years Dally heard her family’s cries echo through her darkest dreams. But she had not known that nightmare for over a month now. Not since the woman had started visiting her in the night.

  These new experiences were no mere dreams. Dally had known from the very first moment that the woman was real, and her name was Shona.

  What was more, Shona was coming for her.

  Dally was three days shy of her eighteenth birthday. Which meant she was a full year away from an end to Norvin’s guardianship. Not that she minded working in the mayor’s kitchen. Serving under his wife Krim, however, was another matter entirely. The big-boned woman had managed to run off every serving girl they’d employed. No family in the Three Valleys would allow their daughter to come work in this house. Dally did not know how she could endure another month with Krim, much less a year.

  Krim had not always been so. When Dally had first arrived, the mayor’s wife had been gruff and stern, yet loving in her own manner. But Krim had steadily become intolerable, driven to grim harshness by the shadows that now surrounded the Three Valleys. The problem was, Dally had no living relative and no money and nowhere else to go. Their region had been sealed off from the rest of the world for almost two years now. Not even news was getting through anymore. Dally had once considered the Three Valleys to be the finest place on earth. Now it was simply a cage.

  Krim’s screech rang through the kitchen window. “Scamp! Wastrel! Where are you hiding! There are cows to milk and butter to churn, and I’ll not be feeding any urchin who sneaks from her chores!”

  Dally crouched behind the pen holding the newest litter of wolfhounds. Norvin loved the dogs and treated them like his children. Krim tolerated them because they brought in more gold than the mayor’s crops, though Norvin’s fields were some of the finest in the Three Valleys region. The wolfhounds had always been fiercely loyal to Dally, minding her long before they learned Norvin’s commands. Dally’s ability to communicate with them had grown steadily over the four and a half years she had lived in what once had served as Krim’s garden shed.

  Norvin claimed this particular litter was the finest he had ever raised, for all eight of the dogs possessed a white streak from snout to tail. It was said their silver fur indicated strength and loyalty and intelligence. All Dally could say for certain was, her secret bond had never been as strong as with this litter. But the dogs were fully grown now, waist high and trained and ready to be sold. Dally’s heart cracked every time she thought of losing her most precious friends.

  She tucked herself into the shadowed corner where the pen met the garden wall, shut her eyes, and looked through the dogs’ eyes. She watched Krim shout and stomp about the yard, then retreat into the house, where she banged pots and yelled at the walls. These days, Krim was never happier than when she could scourge someone with her tongue.

  Using her secret gift, Dally reached for the wolfhound whose power of smell was strongest, and sniffed the air. The dogs had a particular way of testing for distant odors. They did not inhale like humans. Instead, they sniffed once, twice, three times, tucking the wind into various pouches behind their nostrils and inside their cheeks.

  There. Norvin was in the village hall. Honor’s mayor was with elders who often visited their home and spent time with the dogs. Others, though, carried scents she had never known before. Which meant this particular gathering was of leaders from the entire Three Valleys. Dally quailed at the prospect of interrupting such a meeting. But she had no choice.

  She checked once more to be certain Krim was turned away from the kitchen window. Then, quick as a flash, she rose and scaled the wall.

  Dally scampered up the village’s central lane. The adults of Honor might call her fortunate, but many village children picked on her mercilessly. To her dismay, she saw the three young girls who considered her the ideal target point in her direction, and knew they’d be off to tel
l Krim where she was. Which only made her run faster still.

  When she arrived at the village hall, the reins of three dozen horses were tied to the front posts. From within the hall, voices rose in strident anger or fear or worry, or all three.

  Then from far down the lane rose Krim’s furious screech. “Dally! You will come here now!”

  She wished she had thought to rebraid her hair while hiding behind the dogs’ pen. Now it was too late. She licked her hands and pulled the wayward strands from her forehead. She straightened her dress but did not bother to dust herself off. Dirt caked her legs up to her knees. A bit of dust on her dress would hardly be noticed.

  She took a deep breath and climbed the three front stairs.

  “Dally! Girl, you better—”

  Dally knocked once, loud as she could. Then she opened the door and stepped inside.

  The council members were seated in a circle. Norvin frowned at the interruption and said, “Dally, this is not—”

  “I have a message for you and everyone else who is gathered here,” she declared.

  Norvin had formerly been a cheerful man, full of great good humor. Even with all his valley now faced, Norvin’s manner remained as gentle as his wife’s was strident. But there were many reasons for Honor’s leader to fret these days, and few occasions to smile. The creases on his face were new and deep. “Lass, it must wait—”

  “An army is coming,” Dally announced. “Led by a lady.”

  Krim’s footsteps thundered up the stairs and she powered into the room. She was a heavyset woman who nowadays barreled her way through any opposition. But whatever she was about to say was halted by the sight of every elder in the hall standing and gaping at the girl by the entrance.

  Dally went on, “The lady asks for the use of the fields bordering the river. She knows this will ruin your crops, and she is willing to pay.”

  One of the strangers demanded, “Is this some form of jest?”

  “Dally has been with us since her family died in a fire over four years back,” Norvin replied. “Not once in all this time have I ever known her to joke about anything.”

  The oldest member of their clan demanded, “How do you know of this woman?”

  “We’ve been speaking together for over a month now,” Dally replied.

  Krim demanded, “And precisely why am I only hearing about this now?”

  “Krim,” her husband said.

  “Well, I ask you, husband—”

  “Krim.” When his wife went silent, Norvin asked, “She comes in dreams?”

  “Not really dreams,” Dally replied. “She comes just before dawn, and we talk, and then she leaves.”

  “A witch,” one of the strangers muttered.

  “A queen,” Dally corrected. “Her name is Shona.”

  The oldest of the women seated in the circle gasped.

  Norvin demanded, “What is it?”

  “Yagel often spoke of this one.”

  “The forest tinker?” A greybeard snorted. “Not to me he didn’t.”

  “Because you called him addled and wouldn’t offer the man a tin of cold water, much less listen to his news. You’ve been doing your best to stay blind to everything that’s been happening.” The woman turned back to Norvin and continued, “When the shadow-beasts began closing in—”

  “We don’t speak of them here,” the greybeard said sharply.

  “And it’s because we pretend they’re not out there that we’ve lost contact with the realm! We must do battle against the fiends, I say!”

  “Elders, please.” Norvin gestured for calm. He asked the old lady, “So the tinker spoke of this woman?”

  “Queen Shona, the first of her name,” the woman said. “Crowned by Bayard, the last of the Oberons. He knelt before her, offered fealty, and renounced any claim to the throne.”

  “Bayard’s over in Falmouth Port,” the greybeard replied. But his earlier derision was gone now, lost to the curiousness of a young woman speaking of news from distant lands. “All the way over by the badlands.”

  “And yet Dally here claims an army has crossed the realm and is coming to Three Valleys,” Norvin said. He studied Dally, then asked, “So this lady comes to you in the night and speaks with you.”

  “Clear as you and me.” Dally hesitated, then decided they needed to hear the rest. “Except for today. This time she spoke while I was feeding the dogs.”

  “What, just now?”

  “That’s why I burst in like I did. I was to deliver you an urgent message. The lady knows of our troubles and she will offer us help. She says to tell you she can’t promise to make all our problems vanish. But she can make things better than they are now. And she will do her best to keep us safe.”

  The valley’s elders pondered for a time, then Norvin asked, “Was there anything else, lass?”

  “Just one thing,” Dally replied. “She arrives at dawn.”

  2

  Dally was lithe and slender with lovely hands that had been scarred and roughened with hard work. Her most beautiful feature was her hair, which held to a shade of permanent autumn. It was brown and red and gold all at the same time, long and silky and thick as a living rope. Her eyes were green and held such intensity many people actually turned away.

  Most folks could not say precisely what it was that caused them to flinch under her gaze. But something burned inside those eyes that frightened all but the smallest and least of the villagers. The children loved her. Animals vied for her attention. Ever since childhood, Dally could milk the most ill-tempered cow and never know a scratch or a kick. The most savage of village curs crouched low to the earth and whined, begging for her touch.

  But for most of her village, especially those of her own age, Dally’s gaze was deeply unsettling.

  Even the young men who thought they might have their sweet way with the lovely kitchen wench retreated from those eyes. Why precisely, they could not say, or would not. Perhaps they feared Dally saw to the secret core of their dark lusts. As a result, most young men shunned her. The women her age mocked and taunted her. And afterward, when they gathered together and struggled to excuse their actions against one so defenseless, they resorted to the word their parents used to describe Dally.

  Strange.

  As a result, Dally grew up isolated and hurting and alone. And something else besides.

  The mayor’s household did not own a mirror, as was the case with many hidebound families. Back in the dark days, so long ago that even the legends had been forgotten, it was said that certain witches could treat mirrors as portals and reach through and capture those who studied their reflection.

  So Dally had only the other young people’s attitudes to gauge how she looked. And from their response, she had no choice but to assume that she was ugly as well as alone.

  At dawn the next day, the night guards rushed into the village. But they did not announce that soldiers were approaching. For Shona’s army was already there.

  A place centrally located yet set apart. A location they could easily fortify. A habitat within clearly defined boundaries that they could claim as their own. Even before Shona had finished her request, Dally already knew the answer. She had told the young queen where to go. And by the time the sun was fully over the horizon, it appeared as though the camp had been there for years.

  Even so, no citizen of the Three Valleys met this so-called queen for nearly a month. For most of that period, Dally remained the only line of communication between the Three Valleys inhabitants and the newcomers.

  There were several hundred in the army, perhaps more. Every three or four days Dally was informed of their immediate needs—so much bread and meat, vegetables of this or that type, horses needing a shoe or suffering from a saddle sore. The land occupied by the army extended into the river like a huge thumb and was rimmed on three sides by the streaming water. The stone dike that kept the spring floodwaters at bay had been laid in place by Norvin’s great-great-grandfather. Even when the newcomers
fashioned a thorn barrier from the forest perimeter and sealed off the entire peninsula for their use, Norvin did not complain.

  But after sixteen days, and the deliveries of food and supplies continued to mount, and still there had been no word emerging from the camp, Krim began urging her husband to demand payment.

  Another four days passed, and Dally could hear Krim’s complaints echo through every window of their home. She knew she was at least partly at fault for Krim’s rising anger. The entire village watched Dally now. Krim’s harsh rule over her life had ended, at least temporarily. Even so, Dally still ate her meals on the stoop of the shed. She tended the vegetable garden and she washed the cottage floors and she milked their cows and she helped Norvin with the dogs. But much of her time was spent on the river’s edge, staring at the camp and wondering if the queen might ever again wish to visit in the night with a lowly kitchen girl.

  Now and then she thought perhaps she caught a glimpse of the queen walking around the enclosure. Dally never saw the woman’s face, of course. But the cloak she wore was of some remarkable weave. Leggings of some golden material peeked from the cloak’s lower rim. What was more, the hood was lined in a strip of royal purple. And everyone the lady passed either saluted or bowed or both. If the woman responded in any form, Dally never saw.

  The first direct contact between Honor and the newcomers came on the twenty-third dawn. And only because Dally begged the queen to keep her best friends from being scattered throughout the Three Valleys.

  Dally knew her village in the manner of a young woman who had lived through hard years. Yet despite the nightmarish events that had brought her here to the garden shed behind the mayor’s house, with eight young dogs for her only friends, she loved her village and the valley region. Even now, when the forest sealed them away from the world and feral beasts slipped in to steal livestock and wreak havoc and fill their nights with desperate hours.

  Through the four hard years, Dally had come to know all manners of silence. Now and then she could take her pups for a sunset walk along the empty river path, where the quiet safety surrounded her. These lonely hours chanted a soft melody, inviting her to open up and reveal the sorrows and the memories and yearnings that she spent most of her days ignoring.