Sons of Ironstorm - Book 3: New Alliance

Hope and Dispair

Will looked up from the heavy tome he had been glancing through at the shout, a frown on his face. A ruined city on the edge of a chasm? Wasn't he just reading about such a thing ...? Closing the book and setting it aside, he stepped away from the book stand he had been using and back to the shelf he and Aine had been working through. Of the slender Mamran princess, there was no sign. She had vanished nearly a turn of the big glass ago to check on something one of the indices had intrigued her with.

But he didn't need Aine to find the book he was looking for. There, a thick book bound in black leather, most of the lettering worn from its spine. He pulled it free and flipped it open. Fingers already dry and sensitive from turning thousands of pages, he quickly flipped a couple of the heavy velum pages aside, their surfaces covered with line after careful line of an archaic form of Taren, difficult to read but still understandable.

Ah, yes, there: the account he was looking for. Penned nearly a thousand cycles ago by a cartographer employed by the Cadremoor Alliance to map the western marches of the Aramas, the report detailed an expedition across the plains to a great rent in the earth. There the cartographer described finding a massive ruin, stretching over several leagues of territory before abruptly terminating on the edge of the canyon.

"Got it," he cried, carrying the book to the end of the aisle where an excited Lawrence met him. Handing the book over, he grinned.

"Your ruined city on the edge of a chasm."

His smile growing with every word he read, Lawrence nodded.

"Aye, here it is. Sitting on the eastern edge of the Rift."

"Is the Weapon of Power there?"

"No." Lawrence closed the book with a dusty slam before handing it back to a querulous Will. "But it's a landmark that allows me to have a good idea of where to look. Bones and shards, Will, this is the sign we've been waiting for!" He smiled in broad satisfaction at his friend and comrade as he folded his muscular arms over his powerful chest.

"All the setbacks, the trials and tribulation, all of it brought us to this exact moment in time, and to this place. If it weren't for Morgan's archive, we wouldn't have found the clue I need to discover the Tree's hiding place. Hope is born anew."

His grin broadening at the abrupt swing in Lawrence's mood from morose to jubilant, Will opened his mouth to speak. Before the words managed to tumble free, however, a soft scuff of sound behind him caught both men's attention. Thinking it Aine returned from her mysterious search, Will half turned, his grin growing as he prepared to announce their discovery. Only to fall silent at what greeted his eyes instead.

She was a willowy beauty, hair dark and rich as it tumbled in gentle waves to her shoulders, offsetting her brilliant blue eyes, sparkling like cut sapphires in her exquisite face. Clad in a simple dress of subtle hues in blue and indigo which did little to hide her well shaped form, she was a sliver of bright life amongst the drab and dusty remains of a long fallen civilization. As she noticed Will and Lawrence's eyes falling upon her, she smiled, an expression so sweet and full of energy it rendered the young lord speechless.

Lawrence, however, wasn't so easily swayed.

"Hello, Janis," he greeted the lovely newcomer with a smile of his own, the familiar greeting earning him a stunned look from a bewildered Will. "What brings you down into the heart of your father's archives? I didn't take you for the scholarly type."

The young woman's eyes immediately focused on the powerful prince and her smile grew, if that were possible.

"You know me, Lawrence," she replied, her voice a melodious contralto that sent shivers down the spines of both young men. "I try to keep everybody guessing."