The Cold Light Fades - Book 1 of the Crystal Chronicles

Chapter Twenty-Three - A Cold Funeral

Thick puffy snowflakes danced back and forth around the small frozen garden behind King Bhell's palace. The garden's foliage was just a few dark green bushes and trees that were topped with mounds of cold snow. Inside the royal grounds was a single grey stone structure that looked old and slightly eerie. It was the royal tomb and today Alesson would bury his mother for a second time, within the cold crypt.

Alesson stared numbly at the tomb. His emotions were all jumbled up inside his head and the events of the past three days had gone by in a hazy blur. The celebrations inside the city of Antar had gone on for the best part of two days as the citizens rejoiced that they had beaten back the black army and that their fair city was still intact.

Then the victory ceremony had taken place in King Bhell's throne room, where Alesson had been given his first medal and the crowd had roared. Alesson however, had felt no such jubilation. He was still in a state of exhausted mourning and did not feel like being praised. Before the ceremony, the young prince had been presented with his very own set of black Scorvain armour. Which pleased Alesson, because the colour matched his mood and gave him a way of hiding his expressions under his dark visor.

King Bhell had only said a few brief words when he placed the silver medal's blue and white ribbon over Alesson's head, for the King had also suffered a terrible loss during the battle for Antar. The King's son Harg had been amongst the artillery unit that had been just outside the city walls and the poor prince had been sliced in two by the evil Cyclops' horrific attack. In fact, the death toll for the forces outside the city had been incredibly high, only a few hundred of the Asoua cavalry had managed to survive and only two dozen of Rakk's foot soldiers had returned alive.

Alesson's father had told him long ago that war was not glorious and although heroes should be distinguished for their courage, the act of starting a war should never, ever be celebrated. Trengar had said that fighting a war was easy, but coping with the aftermath of the conflict was hard. The loss of life meant that there would be fewer workers to grow food in the miracle cave and new soldiers would have to be trained to fill the depleted ranks. It wasn't all bad however, if the battle had taken place in the south, the enemy would have probably destroyed all the crops and resources as they marched toward their target, but because most of Antar's supplies were inside the city's underground caverns the people wouldn't be instantly starving.

A new problem arose later however, after the victory ceremony took place. Out from the ice spires, marched the remains of the black army, this time though, they just settled down and made camp well beyond the bright blue walled dome. They would every now and then send a beast to test the deadly barrier and the black creature would gingerly touch the wall and then its limb would freeze and shatter into dust. So although the people of Antar were very well protected, they were also being held captive within their own city.

Alesson did not know how long the stalemate was going to last, but thanks to the miracle cave, the city would have enough food to last for at least another year, by which time maybe the other Kingdoms of Pentatha would come to Antar's aid.

Something small and warm suddenly wriggled its way under his arm and he felt something slide round his waist. Alesson tilted his head and smiled down at Princess Cerah as she assumed her favourite position. The white-haired princess had been waiting for Alesson and his companions outside the temple of Ana with Garlent and King Bhell. Then when Alesson had stumbled out from the temple, Cerah had become very concerned, and she had insisted that she help support the exhausted prince all the way back to the palace. Cerah continued to wheedle her way into this position under the prince's arm whenever she saw him and even through Alesson knew it was no longer necessary, he let her carry on anyway. He quite enjoyed the princess's company, her sweet-smelling fragrance quite often left him feeling weak at the knees and fuzzy headed for some strangely pleasant but thoroughly unknown reason.