The Grand Castle was silent, the reliefs etched like skeletal remains into its walls still and grim under the shadows cast by the sun. Cold wavered in insipid waves off of the stone, obscuring the tall, wide windows that surveyed the surrounding landscape in an icy haze. Arrow slits ringed the walls, though they were visible as little more than darker patches between or below the windows, and were all but lost in the shade cast by the numerous bony spikes that thrust, as a deterrent to climbers, from the castle walls. What other nameless dangers would threaten the lives of any wrongdoer who might wish entry to the castle were both innumerable and sufficient enough to be a repellent in themselves, because there was a strange, forbidding life to the ancient residence.

This Grand Castle that so utterly dominated the landscape was clearly the focus of the small procession of black-draped humans that approached its gates. These humans had a short, shuffling gait, as if they carried a great weight between them, but what that burden might be was not visible. Their eyes, when one lifted his to the forbidding towers that stretched high and away to pierce the sky, were drawn and gray, their faces pale and wearied. When one stumbled, another steadied him with a soft touch of one palm. Excepting that, there was no movement but for their steady plodding forward, and no sound but the hollow rise and fall of their breaths.

It was too early for the village beyond the gates to have stirred. That village surrounded the castle on three sides, and the hulking structure of stone and wood seemed out of place among the light, airy hues that dominated its surrounding buildings. These were constructed in most part by a light, natural stone, supported by a rust-red frame of clay that helped them blend in with the trees of the great forest that flanked the final side of the castle. Some buildings had even been built in the trees themselves. A silvery light, tinged red by the first touches of dawn, caught on the silky fall of water that limned the buildings and the many fountains that supplied them water, and weaved with the wind and the ferns and creepers that set the village awash in greens and browns. The streets were mostly empty, except for the dark-clad figures.

A collective call escaped them when they reached the gate and halted. For a long time, they stood waiting, the crisp wind tugging at their black sleeves in a mockery of their solemnity – long enough that they must have all noticed the eerie silence that permeated the land, and the chill that had come too soon to be natural at summer’s end. Then a man finally appeared on the other side of the wrought iron gate. He was not dressed like them, but instead in the black and silver armor that marked him as one of the king’s guard. His face was obscured. Even so, the figures bowed low to the ground in formal respect as he raised his palm to the dark and twisted gates.

Another long moment of silence passed, and then suddenly a blue spark leapt across the metal. It twisted, writhing, around the bars that held the gate closed, through cracks that were hardly visible in the dim lighting, until the great gate glowed. With a groan, the metal shuddered and slid slowly apart to admit the procession, and then closed with that same great shudder, as of an exhaled breath, when they were through. They left a snaking trail of dark footprints in the snow.

One, presumably the leader of the train, bowed again in thanks to the guard. Finally, the eight men were allowed passage into the great castle, through doors twice and again the height of each of them. Those doors were etched with tales of the castle’s tumultuous past, some long faded under the rush of the sands of time. Those symbols were the last of their kind.

All of this was observed from high above, from one of the castle’s tallest towers, by a girl just barely on the cusp of womanhood. Here was another girl whose name no one dared forget; Cevora Altin. She was not yet a force to be reckoned with, but she was a name not to be forgotten because one day she would be. It was clear from the set of her jaw that, if possible, she would like that day to come sooner rather than later. Pale, with dusty brown hair pulled back into a braid that shone in the dawn light, everything in her expression mourned the greatest loss in her young life.

Her mother.

Cevora sat in a brooding silence, looking down over the courtyard. She watched the guard, in his dark armor, move back to his position in the tower that flanked the gate, all the while tracing her long, pale fingers against the stone of the castle walls. Though she reclined comfortably against a cushioned bench, with her arm rested against the sill of the window, she also trembled slightly from the cold. There was no warmth in the land anymore. That was because Alti mourned with her.

The day she had lost her mother was the day the land had lost its queen.

Unlike the darkly clothed men, her silky dress was a striking emerald green, in part in defiance to their solemnity, but in part as a gesture of respect to her dead mother. She held true, as did many, to the idea that to wear black in the face of death was to invite Zara. Better to dress in the tones of the earth, or the pure white of magic. But those men were a part of the MASO, and if anyone would wear black now, they would. Their leader must have been Terrin, a man she had seen come and go from the castle a hundred times in the last fortnight.

The girl’s fingernail snagged on the frigid stone, and she dragged it roughly to a halt. She should go eavesdrop on his conversation with her father, but doing that would bring the time she had to go and face reality closer. Her mother had spent fourteen years raising her for a moment like this, and it still was not long enough. It all felt unfair, surreal. They had been together not so long ago.

At least the pain that wrenched her heart had dulled to a kind of resignation in the three days since she and her father had gotten the news, carried by the single, bedraggled guard that had somehow survived. She was too exhausted to deal with the hurt anymore.

The queen was dead.

Her mother was dead.

The guard had seen it all. Any tears that Cevora had been able to shed had fallen, leaving her feeling distinctly hollow and cold. It was possible she had cried her father’s tears as well. He had already been distant from his wife and daughter as of late, and he was more so now. When he had returned this morning from an audience with the dragons, she had seen the life gone from him. They had admitted their guilt, and that one of their kin, though one imprisoned and then escaped, had been responsible for the death of the queen. He had spared his daughter only a moment’s comfort, when he had seen her desperate tears, and then his words had been as much warning as kindness. They hung vivid, harsh, in her mind.

“Things must change now, Cevora. Whatever it was that your mother sought within the Issurak, the council will not believe that her death was accidental, and I cannot ignore that there remains ill blood between men and beasts. Our trust in the dragons runs shallower by the year.”

He had leaned in so close that his eyes were only inches from her own, dark, inky, overcome by a terrible sorrow, and burning with an anger that she was not accustomed to.

“Do not call the beasts your friends, Cevora. Not any of them. Do not trust them blindly. This point marks the beginning of dangerous times for us. Both beasts and men lurk within the shadows of our kingdom, eager to kill me, and eager to kill you.”

Cevora leaned forward until her chin rested against the smooth stone of the window sill. There was disbelief in her eyes where there had been hatred in his. Already, her heart walked the shaded paths of the forest and searched for her mother as she had always been, strong, graceful, kind, and in love with the mythical beasts that had known her from birth. But there was nothing left of the warm embrace Cevora longed for now. No comforting words. If she was to maintain some relationship with the dragons, she would have to do it alone.

As for her mother…there was only one gift she could offer her now. As the last of her mother’s living kin, or at least the last who cared, it was left to her guide her mother as she would have wanted, with the “Shadow’s Lament.”

In a soft voice that steadily grew stronger, Cevora sang the words of the song that she had always known, to guide her mother’s soul that she would not join the Zara:

Changing, shifting, darkest fear,

leeching parasite of life,

darkest night hovering ever near,

bringer of both hate and strife,

ancient cloud of deep injustice –

of pasts so deep and bold,

blackest form of carapace,

thee keeps stories untold.

Thou heart hath sprung a thousand wells,

each darker than the last.

A messenger of evil spells,

A creature of the past.

Hearts of blackest form thee sought

in sadness and disrepair,

to teach thee what learn thee could not,

but found what was despair.

O’ why is this the path thee choose

When life is by thy side;

When light awaits to set thee loose

And turn the darkest tide?

The soul so wounded does live still,

the heart still beats within;

when descends the deathly chill

and love and hope fray thin,

do not allow me wait in vain

for times that will not be.

I at least can feel thy pain

and heal thy heart for thee.

Changing, shifting, darkest fear,

leeching parasite of life,

I dub thee Shadow hovering near,

bringer of both hate and strife.

Ancient cloud of deep injustice

of pasts so deep and bold,

please now shed thy carapace,

return to love of old.

Fill my heart with happiness

if not in my life’s sight,

for even in the deepest darkness

there is always light.