Journey To The Rift (Coimirceoirí: Guardians of the Marked Ones) Read online

  Coimirceoirí

  Guardians of the Marked Ones

  Book 1: Journey to The Rift

  by

  Cathi Shaw

  Ink Smith Publishing

  www.ink-smith.com

  Copyright © 2016 Cathi Shaw

  All Rights Reserved

  Journey to The Rift

  Coimirceoirí: Guardians of the Marked Ones, Book 1

  by Cathi Shaw

  Cover Design: Chris Arlidge of Cheeky Monkey Media

  Map by Caitlin Shaw

  Author Photo by Becca McNeil

  Formatted by: VJO Gardner

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.

  eBook Edition, 2016

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-939156-91-4

  Ink Smith Publishing

  710 S. Myrtle Ave Suite 209

  Monrovia, CA 91016

  www.ink-smith.com

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to all the readers of the Marked Ones series, who badgered me for more Five Corners adventures. I hope you enjoy this instalment of the prequel to the series.

  Special thanks to my wonderful beta readers: Carol Doyle Jones and Tarie Lynn Rempel for enthusiastically reading the draft of this book and giving such honest and heartfelt feedback.

  Thanks once again to my daughter, Cait, who continues to be my writing companion and muse for all my projects. This book wouldn’t have been completed with her.

  I am so very grateful to Meaghan Craven for her outstanding editing skills. I was thrilled to have such a gifted and generous editor work on this book.

  Thank you to Chris Arlidge and Treena Bjarnson for making sure this instalment of The Marked Ones once again had a beautiful cover. Chris, your talents as an artist continue to astound me.

  And special thanks to Ashley Howie and the team at Ink Smith, the best little publishing family one could ask for.

  Dedication

  To all the readers of The Marked Ones series, your continued excitement for this story inspires me every day.

  Characters

  Queen Aibhilín (AHV- i-leen – Elder queen of ancient times who sacrificed herself to the darkness

  Aranel (Are-uh-nell) – Nurse to Prince Meldiron

  Bellasiel (Bella-seel) – Elder healer

  Beriadan (Bear-ee-ah-dahn) – Senior Elder knight

  Brijit (Bri-jeet) Carnesîr – Chosen Coimirceoirí from the Academy

  Elsa – Brijit’s friend at the Academy

  Eöl Ar-Feiniel (Ay-owl Are-Fen-el) – Elder and archivist

  Erulassë (Air-oo-lahs-say) – Mother of Princess Neirdre and sister of Nestariel

  Finn – Weylon’s friend at Stone Mountain

  Gregor – Weylon’s mentor at Stone Mountain

  Meldiron (Mel-dear-on) – Son of Princess Neirdre and Crown Prince Suiadan

  Minathrial (Min-ath-ree-al) – Name chosen for future queen of the Elders

  Mistress Cowan – Headmistress at the Academy

  Nestariel (Nehs-tahr-ee-ell) – Elder healer and Mistress of Tèarmann

  Princess Neirdre (NE-a-Dra) – Princess of the Elders

  Raina (Rai-na) – Elder girl servant at Téarmann

  Raspella – Brijit’s mentor at the Academy, a potions instructor

  Samred – Aranel’s son

  Serena – Brijit’s friend at the Academy

  Suiadan (Soo-ee-ah-dahn) – Crown Prince of the Elders

  Weylon Forborrow – Chosen Coimirceoirí from Stone Mountain

  Terminology

  Aptrgangr (Aptr-ganga) – Forest creature or creatures that have been tainted by the evil from The Rift

  Coimirceoir (Coym-eer-kee-oy-r) – Protector of the princess

  Coimirceoirí (Coym-eer-kee-oy-ri) – Guardians of the Elders

  Draíodóir (Dray-Or-Door) – Druid or Druids (magician or magicians)

  Kurunii (Coo-roo-nee) – Witch or witches who live in Five Corners

  Places

  Bermgarten – Largest eastern city, where Serena is assigned duties

  Dead Sea – A sea tainted by evil, to the west of Five Corners

  Evendel – Village where Brijit grew up with her grandmother

  Forbidden Coast – Western coastline that borders the Dead Sea

  Island of Nasseet – Island to the south of Five Corners in the middle of the Sea of Arcadia

  Jirgen Forest – Dying forest east of The Rift

  Lowlands – Forested lands in the middle of Five Corners

  Merryville – Small village east of the Academy

  Outlands – Desert plains in the southwestern part of Five Corners

  Pinefrest Mountains – in the North, where Elsa is assigned duties

  Revuover – Large city close to the borders of Séreméla

  Sailsburg – Southernmost port city in Five Corners

  Sea of Arcadia – Sea to the south of Five Corners

  Séreméla (Sar-A-Mell-A) – the Elders’ home

  Tèarmann (CHAR-mun) – Elder fortress on the edge of The Rift

  The Rift – A little-known dead zone created to the west of Séreméla when Queen Aibhilín sacrificed herself to the Evil that was consuming the Dead Sea and threatening the rest of Five Corners

  Wastelands – Land to the west of the Outlands, tainted by the Evil in The Rift; a place where no one lives and little grows

  Western Sea – The name for the Dead Sea before it was tainted by the Evil

  Prologue

  “The Evil must be held back at all costs, my queen! We will fight to protect you!”

  Aibhilín stood on the ramparts of the dark castle, her pale hair streaming behind her. She held back the emotions that were coursing through her. What her Captain of the Guard did not understand was that the Elders were not prepared to give up as much as he thought they would. “At all costs” was not something her people understood. Instead, they took and took and took. They didn’t want to give up their lifestyle or comforts. She herself had been guilty of the same mentality until she had seen the devastation their excess was causing. Her people were selfish and foolish. In recent years, she had come to understand this. She knew she had done all she could in this realm to convince them to change their ways.

  As she stared into the vast darkness in front of her, a sureness came over her. As the Elders’ leader, it was up to her to break this cycle of destruction. She knew what she must do.

  Her closest advisor objected when she told him her plan. “It will be a short remedy, Queen Aibhilín. What will happen when the magik wanes?”

  Aibhilín was silent as her advisers began to argue in earnest. They were quite correct. This would be a short solution. But it would hold the Evil at bay for a time, until her people were ready to make the true sacrifice they must. Or until the Chosen One appeared and sealed the Evil for good.

  Her guards shifted nervously behind her. The darkness in front of them churned with wickedness. It was a living thing. And while the option that was presented to them was not ideal, they had no choices left. They would act or they, and all of Five Corners, would perish.

  “The Prophecy speaks of this,” Aibhilín said finally. “This and what will happen in the future.” Her tone was calm.

  “But, Queen Ai
bhilín, your life will be shortened if you do this. The Darkness will bind you.”

  Her lips lifted in amusement. They were so naïve, the men who surrounded her. They had no idea that the Darkness had been with her from the beginning. And it had been calling her more and more lately. Every time she had used magik in the last three years, she had felt the tug of that darkness, inviting her to join it. She had helped to create this – as much if not more than most of them. No, she was not the one who would save Five Corners, but she could attempt to give her country time to heal and to begin to make the changes that were needed.

  The Chosen One that the Prophecy named had not yet been born, would not be born for generations. But Aibhilín’s job in this realm was done. Now she must bind to the darkness. Her essence would protect her people and all of Five Corners.

  For a time.

  She only hoped that amount time would be enough for her people to recognize that the world would not be healed through their greed and excess. They, too, would have to sacrifice or they would lose it all.

  The arguments from the Elder council rose in volume. She let them bicker as she stared into the Darkness. Their arguments were weak. None of them wanted to make a true sacrifice. None of them wanted to give up their queen. The irony was that none of them even realized that they had contributed, and were still contributing, to this growing evil. It seemed as if she were the only one who had seen the truth.

  As their leader, she felt her destiny was clear.

  She raised her arms and they fell silent. “It is done,” she said with certainty. And the tone of her voice brooked no argument.

  The silence followed her as she made her way down to the plain. Her guards flanked her. A hundred feet out on the sands, she turned to them.

  “I will not allow you to sacrifice yourselves. You will protect our homeland. You and your children will keep her safe. I will be with you always.”

  She saw the tears that glinted in the strong men’s eyes and she smiled again, gently this time.

  “This is how it has to be. Rest easy, my comrades.”

  And with those last words, the great Queen Aibhilín turned and walked into the darkness.

  The guards and the members of the Elder council who were present that day saw what happened, but it was so unbelievable that the legend of her act, told for centuries afterward, was considered folklore rather than a true story.

  As the Darkness greedily rushed to envelop Aibhilín, there was a flash of light so bright and hot it blinded those who were looking directly at it. After the flash, the queen was consumed by the dark; in a blink of the eye, she was gone. As the onlookers watched in disbelief, a magikal border rose up and the earth cracked in two. The Rift was born and Five Corners was saved.

  For a time.

  Chapter One

  “Brijit! Wait for us!”

  Brijit turned to see Serena and Elsa walking down the empty, brick-lined hallway behind her. The clicks of their boot heels on the polished marble floor echoed through the vacant hall as they scurried as quickly as they dared without breaking into a run. They looked ridiculous. One of the unspoken rules of the Academy was that students never run in the halls. Even the preteen girls who trained with them knew this. Eighteen-year-old soon-to-be graduates were expected to conduct themselves with grace at all times.

  “Where are you going without us?” Serena scolded as she linked arms with Brijit. “Not looking for the Stone Mountain Coimirceoirí on your own, are you?” she teased.

  Elsa giggled, and Brijit rolled her eyes.

  “Hardly. I’m heading to Raspella’s chambers.”

  “Oh, seriously, Brij? Why?” Elsa asked incredulously.

  Brijit kept her face free of all expression. With the assignments being announced tonight, she did not want to discuss her growing unease with her friends. They wanted to celebrate and have a bit of fun. And she knew they would be in no mood to hear about her suspicions.

  She pasted a smile on her face and pretended to be interested in their plans to hunt down some boys from Stone Mountain and start celebrating early. But Brijit wasn’t so sure celebrating was in order. She couldn’t shake the feeling that had been growing in her mind for the last few months. Something was being planned that the Coimirceoirí had no say in; something the Elders were in charge of, and she wasn’t sure it was a good thing.

  Serena stopped in her tracks when she recognized that Brijit’s mind was elsewhere. “Please tell me you’re not thinking about your conspiracy theories again?”

  Brijit sighed. Okay, so she may have casually mentioned her worries to her friends more than once in the past few months. And, true, she had not yet been able to uncover anything concrete in her research, but she still had that niggling feeling that her grandmother had trained her to never ignore. After what she had witnessed in Merryville, she was even more convinced that something sinister was going on. Not that she’d told her friends about that. For some reason, she’d felt compelled to keep those events to herself…at least for now.

  Of course, going with your hunches with no substantive evidence, or none that you could share, made it rather difficult to explain yourself even to your closest friends, especially when you weren’t ready to talk about the true root of your concerns.

  But Brijit felt her time to uncover this mystery was running out. Tonight their fates would be decided, and in the next few days they would be scattered across Five Corners. By that point it would be too late to convince Serena and Elsa that something was not right with what the Elders were doing. Brijit would feel much better knowing her best friends knew what she had discovered, and were on her side, should something happen.

  The three of them had met soon after arriving at the Academy five years ago. At first glance they were an unlikely trio. Serena, a blond beauty, was easily the prettiest girl at the Academy. And Elsa, with her wit and kindness, was the most popular. Brijit, on the other hand, was the bookworm of their year and tended to question everything, which made her unpopular with some of their classmates and many of their teachers.

  Still, the girls had bonded quickly when they had been assigned as roommates in their first year, and now they were as close as sisters. It was hard to imagine that the next few days would be their last ones together. Brijit couldn’t believe that their studies were finally coming to an end. After anticipating graduation and their assignments for so long, now everything seemed to be moving too fast to be real.

  She knew that Elsa and Serena just wanted to cut loose and celebrate. And her friends weren’t alone in wanting to do so – the halls were buzzing with other students anticipating the evening’s festivities. But the graduation ceremony was only one part of why her classmates were so excited. Today was the day the Coimirceoirí students from Stone Mountain would make their first appearance at the Academy. The male students.

  As was tradition, the younger girls would not be present when the Stone Mountain apprentices arrived. Although five years of students usually resided at the Academy, every year when the senior class graduated and the male students arrived, the younger girls were taken on a week of various field trips. The faculty pointed to tradition for this practice, but everyone knew it was to keep the younger, supposedly more impressionable, girls away from the older boys.

  Brijit had pointed out the major flaw in that reasoning was that it did nothing to keep the older girls away from the male Coimirceoirí. And over the last few days, it seemed that most of the girls at the Academy could talk of nothing else. Even Serena and Elsa had been preoccupied.

  Brijit had listened to her friends’ excited chatter as they analyzed every detail of the coming meeting with the boys, the first they would have come across in their five years of training. She had to admit that she, too, was curious about the young men who would be arriving but probably not in the same way her friends were.

  She’d seen her friends flirt endlessly with the boys they met in the village, but the simple, honest town boys were no match for the allure of the
male Coimirceoirí. Brijit shook her head. For Elsa and Serena (and many of their fellow students) part of the excitement was knowing that they, as Coimirceoirí, were forbidden to marry. And while the Elders tended to turn a blind eye to relationships Coimirceoirí might have with the “regular” people of Five Corners, they strictly banned all relations between two Coimirceoirí.

  The instructors at the Academy tried to scare them into accepting this rule by telling them the old legend of Ester and Kane. The story went that the two were matched as Coimirceoirí apprentices but that their bond went beyond the work they did for the Elders. They had fallen deeply in love. As a result, their attention had been so focused on one another that they failed to protect the royal family, including the small Crown Prince and his mother, who was rumored to have been carrying the next great heir to the Elder throne: the elusive girl-child.

  Brijit didn’t really believe the Elders could have known that that ancient princess had been carrying a girl, but it did make the story more powerful. As a result of Ester and Kane’s neglect, the prince and his pregnant mother had been murdered. Lucky for the Elders there had been a younger prince safely stowed away in Séreméla who had been able to take on the role of Crown Prince after his older brother’s demise.

  The story of Ester and Kane reeked of fairytale to Brijit. But still, the Elders and the instructors had used it for hundreds of years to keep another Coimirceoirí couple from mating. And it had worked, like so many of the rules and regulations that were imposed upon them. They drove Brijit nuts.