But beyond that memory, so much has vanished. I miss the magic of her presence in the strings of my heart and in the empty hopes of our age. I have always missed her, but now, for the first time, I am also afraid.
Soon, with the approach of summer, I leave Caer Corwell, taking ship for Alaron, to the palace of my king. Yet it is not time for me to depart-not quite. I do not know for certain why I wait, but I sense this need to delay as strongly as any premonition I have ever known. I await some symbol, some sign, I must be here when it happens.
When what happens? I do not know.. cannot even guess. But I will remain in Corwell till it is time to learn. Then I shall carry word to my king.
3
The black-haired princess closed the door behind her, welcoming the sheltering confines of the palace library. This was the only place where she felt that she was truly her own mistress. Often she buried herself in the great works here. She loved the histories of peoples and nations, the subtle mysteries suggesting powers great and deep-knowledge that lurked discreetly amid the volumes, waiting only for the one who had the patience to seek it out.
Now, however, she felt tense and impatient, finding it impossible to sit down and read. She paced the wooden floor over boarskin rugs and finally found herself before one of the three narrow windows in the library's outer wall. As usual, it was shuttered against the weather.
Now Deirdre threw open the shutters to reveal a landscape of moors and hills, all blanketed by a heavy overcast. No rain fell-at least, not for now-so she left the window open and then cast open the other two pairs of shutters. Finally she turned to regard the room in the increased illumination.
Several heavy tables stood between the boarskins, as well as soft chairs that formed a casual semicircle before a fireplace and hearth of heavy, rounded fieldstone. Oil lanterns occupied each of the tables, as well as the mantel over the hearth, but the princess much preferred the natural lighting, even filtered as it was by the charcoal-colored clouds.
Dark boards paneled the walls of the library, framing the great shelves with their rows of scrolls and tomes of arcane or historical import and the thoughts of learned sages-the most extensive library in all the Moonshae Islands.
Many sources, Deirdre knew, had been added to the royal collection only during the last twenty years. These tomes and volumes had been discovered in Caer Allisynn, the tall castle that now rested on the shores of Corwell Firth beside Caer Corwell, her father's home.
The tale of that castle had become a common legend in the isles, the topic of numerous ballads. The tomb of Queen Allisynn, bride of the hero, Cymrych Hugh, it had been built centuries ago to serve as a resting place for the young wife upon her untimely death. Bereaved, Cymrych Hugh had used the power of his druidic council to send the fortress into the sea, where for hundreds of years it had rested on the bottom, secure from trespass and plunder. But then, at Tristan Kendrick's hour of greatest need, the goddess had sent the castle forth from the depths. Its magnificent presence had helped to place him on the High Throne.
Upon the King's ultimate victory over the forces that threatened to drag the Moonshae Islands into darkness and chaos, the castle anchored itself upon the shores of Corwell Firth. There it remained proudly, a sign of the Kendrick reign. The fractious nations of the Ffolk-Moray, Corwell, Callidyrr, and Snowdown-had, for the first time since the rule of Cymrych Hugh himself, united under a strong leader. Together they formed a kingdom strong enough to stand against their traditional enemies to the north.
The northmen, savage warriors who had long ago sailed into the islands upon their sleek longships, seeking war and plunder, instead found homelands and farmsteads. Since well before Tristan Kendrick's birth, fully half the islands' land was controlled by the sea raiders. King Kendrick, however, had forged a lasting peace with their neighbors to the north. While the northmen swore no fealty to the High King's crown, they had nonetheless ceased raiding the lands of the Ffolk. In this state of truce, with the two cultures standing side by side, the isles had no cause to fear any outside threat.
All of this, Deirdre knew, was her father's legacy. His reign had changed the face of the Moonshaes and given the Ffolk the hero they had sought for centuries. For fifteen years, the promise of that gleaming coronation had been sustained. It was an auspicious start, she thought bitterly, to a reign that had slowly degenerated into a struggle for the Ffolk's survival. The threat to the people had come from an unexpected source: the skies, and the clouds, and the sea. The Ffolk had always lived as a part of their land, using the earth and her fruits as a means of prosperity, but never vanquishing the elements of nature and beauty. Led spiritually by the druids, who formed the staunch spine of their religion, the Ffolk had cared for their wild places with all the devotion they had given to their pastures and fields.
The first clerics of the New Gods had journeyed to the Moonshaes several centuries before the reign of Tristan Kendrick, and their words had been filtering through the cities and towns through all those years, enticing and converting many of the island people to the worship of deities such as Chauntea, Helm, Selene, and Talos. And though they welcomed these New Gods, and many people took them into their homes and their hearts, always the Ffolk remained rooted firmly in the earth-and the benign goddess who was the land's true mother.
But with the epic battle waged by Tristan Kendrick against the dark and warlike Bhaal, a transformation had come over the land. The Moonwells, once the lustrous sources of power for the druids, had faded to mundane ponds. The druids themselves had lost their powers. Although many of them still survived, dwelling hermitlike among the oaks, aspens, and pines of the Moonshae forests, their magic no longer flowed from the earth. Many of the Ffolk blamed the last five years' onslaught of storm, drought, blizzard, and hurricane upon the loss of this faith. They had called upon the druids to save them, to plead with the goddess for a return of her power, her benign influence and protection.
These prayers had gone universally unanswered.
Even years ago, at the wide-eyed age of fourteen years, Deirdre had known they would. She could not have explained then, nor could she now, the source of this knowledge. She only knew it to be a fundamental truth that she sensed in the deepest core of her being.
The goddess was dead! The Ffolk would turn to the New Gods and bring them into their hearts and souls. Only then would the storms cease and bounty once again return to the land. Yet the young princess inherently mistrusted gods and considered dependence upon them to be a mistake.
Still impatient, Deirdre tried to force herself to sit at the table. Opened there was a rare volume she had been perusing, The Military History of the Sword Coast, by the famed sage, Elminster of Waterdeep. She had spent more than a week with the volume and had come to the conclusion that the famed scholar was in reality a pompous old windbag. There was perhaps an element of parochialism in her opinion-the ancient authority had spent little space on the wars waged in the Moonshaes or the southern realms of Calimshan and Amn, preferring instead to prattle overlong about the crucial role of Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate to the advance of civilization in the world.
Angrily she pushed the book aside, knowing that it didn't contain the things she desired to know. She paced before the great shelf, examining scrolls-The Ballad of Cymrych Hugh, by the famed Greater Bard Dolsow. . Mastery of Arcane Transformation, a stack of parchments containing essays by many of the mightiest wizards of Waterdeep … a fresh scroll, barely ten years old, containing the epic poem called The Darkwalker War, by the bard Tavish of Snowdown.