Master's Mind (The Dagger of Dragon Rose Book 1)

Paths through the past can be dangerous roads - Shaunna Nightshade

Dusk was just beginning to take over the land as they walked into the cave that housed the Wolftracker pack. It was a simple dwelling at first look. It consisted of a large cave that was used for pack gatherings, such as meals and meetings. A gigantic fire pit was arranged in the center of the cave. The floor was rough with scratches in the stone from centuries of pups roughhousing. Several long hallways led from the main room to where, Taren thought, the pack must sleep.

“Welcome to my home.” Grathius said with pride as they entered the large cave. “I have things I must attend to. Please wait here.”

All of the Canavars in the main hall stopped what they were doing and stared as Narissa was dragged carefully into the chamber. A small pup crawled up to her and began to sniff her face. The tickle sensation woke her. She quickly became aware of the discomfort if the dog people that were staring at her, so she changed back into her smaller, less feline form. Shaunna pulled a blanket from her pouch, and covered Narissa with it.

The four waited in the main hall in silence, waiting for their host to return. As they waited, each of them walked back through the paths that had brought them to this point:

Taren remembered the look on his human mother’s face as she revealed the painful memory of how he had come to live with her and her husband. He remembered the loss of two of his companions. He again wondered if this quest was going to be worth the trouble. How many more of his loved ones and friends was he going to lose before this was all over?

Shaunna allowed herself to walk along paths that she had previously forbidden herself from treading. She remembered vividly the day her world had been shattered. She and her parents had gone to visit the king to celebrate his children’s birthday. On the day of the celebration, the dragons attacked, killing almost everyone. She had thought herself the only survivor.

At the age if five she had witnessed her mother’s death at the hand of the frightened Elves. The castle had literally come apart around her as she fled from the mob that had pursued her, thirsty for her half dark elf blood. She had thought she was going to die, until Ularen Hope had found her and healed her.

For twelve years she had to fend for herself, picking up various skills here and there. Some times had been harder than others. When she was ten, eight years ago, she had found someone that she had thought would be her savior. He was a guard in one of the smaller towns near the ocean she couldn’t even remember the name of and he was well respected by the town populace. He had seen her come into town, broke, filthy, friendless, and homeless.

He took pity on her, gave her a place to live, and got her a job as a barmaid in the tavern. She had been well liked at her job. Nobody knew about her past, or her heritage.

Then one day it all came crashing down around her ears. He had come home in a drunken stupor and forced himself on her. He beat her within an inch of her life. “I know what you are, dark elf witch,” he had proclaimed to her as he grabbed an empty wine bottle to hit her over the head . As his hand raised for the blow, her hand trying to find some means of protecting herself, found the long knife that had fallen from his belt. As her hand wrapped around the hilt of the dagger she rolled to the side to avoid the blow that had been aimed at her head. In one fluid movement she had rolled to her feet and thrust the dagger into the man’s heart. Four years of fury then took hold of her, and she pulled the dagger out of the man, plunging it back into his body several times before he fell to the ground lifeless.

As comprehension of her predicament dawned, fear set in. She had just killed a well-respected guard. True, it had been in self-defense, but how many people had been informed of what he knew about her. Stories of her great-grandmother’s trial and execution sprang to mind without being consciously called forth. As the final vision of her ancestor’s neck snapping in the hangman’s noose flitted through her mind, her fear developed into sheer panic. She quickly packed the few belongings that she had managed to procure, grabbed the dagger, and fled the town without looking back. As she fled silently through the forest her body reacted as if all of her life had been leading her up to that moment. The skills she had learned, the mind set that had been forged through years of strife, and an attachment to nowhere all added up to the choice she made at that time. She dropped her first name, choosing instead to go by her surname, Nightshade. In the next few years she became an assassin for hire, and she was very good at what she did. She had never failed to pull off whatever job she had been given, until now.

She remembered then the strange dark man that had approached her in the tavern in some un-named city telling her that he had a job for her. She was to track down an elf male in the forests around the old castle. A dark haired human girl would accompany him. Nightshade was to kill them both. The man paid her in advance and told here exactly where to find the man.

When she found him however, a large white tiger was mauling him, trying to rip his wings off, and the human female had just struck the beast with a sword, causing it to focus on her instead of the young man. The tiger leaped off the man to attack the woman. The man took the time to look around trying to find a weapon. After an instant a strange sword had erupted into his hand. Nightshade recognized it at once. It was the Sword of Star Fire. At that point things got very interesting.

No mortal was supposed to be able to wield that sword, yet here was her prey using it like any other sword. She watched the rest of the battle without actually seeing what was happening. It wasn’t until he had fallen unconscious due to blood loss that she had come to her senses. She recognized the signs immediately, having just recovered from near fatal wounds. He was dying. She made a rash decision to use the teleportation crystal twice in quick succession. It had been risky, but it had paid off.

The wings would have been enough to convince her of her targets’s identity, but his ability to use the Sword of Star Fire filled her with a new hope. Not only was the prince still alive, but he was the one that would fulfill the three hundred year old prophecy.

Narissa remembered vividly the hallway and everything that had occurred before she found out that Dareth had betrayed her. She remembered the loathing in his voice as he spoke of the young king. She was still having occasional flashes of memory from before the Lord of Night had stolen her life from her, but these flashes did not bother her as much as the first one had. She knew that she was going to be hunted by the Dark Lord and his brothers for failing him, but she didn’t care. She wanted to hurt them as much as she could. She wanted them to suffer for the pain they had caused her and her family.

Ularen Hope had led a hard life since the disappearance of his mother. His father had been murdered two years before, and he and his mother had lived alone since then. They had run a medical clinic in a small out of the way town. After his mother disappeared, the burden of the clinic had fallen squarely on his shoulders, a burden that a teenager should never have to handle alone. For ten years he ran the clinic by himself. It was in this clinic that he had run into an old childhood friend, Shaunna Nightshade. She had sustained severe injuries somehow, and he had nursed her back to health. It was during this time that he had discovered that she was none other then Nightshade the assassin. He had turned a blind eye to it. Suddenly here she was, and he didn’t know why. He had found his mother’s old sword and discovered its secret of life. The sword had informed him of the life of the son of Paron, his mother’s friend and king. He had dismissed the news, until the young king had showed up on his doorstep. Now he was traipsing all over the place from one danger to another, just as his mother before him. He had not expected to enjoy it this much.

Nobody knew how long it had been before Grathius emerged from the hallway carrying a scroll in his hands. He beckoned them over to a large rock, where he smoothed the scroll out, revealing an ancient map of the world.

The companions all gathered around the rock, which was just high enough that they could all, with the exception of Narissa, sit on the floor comfortably and see the parchment that now resided there. They all stared at the ancient map, reliving stories that had been told to them.

The map didn’t affect any of them as deeply as it had affected Shaunna. To her, this was not a map of the world that had been before the time of the ten thousand year war, before even the time when the heart of the world had broken forming a mountain range. No, to Shaunna Nightshade this was a map of her history, her heritage.

The map had been made shortly after the creation of the final race, the humans, before the landscape had been altered beyond what it had been before the creation of the balance. It showed the hunting grounds of the old ones, and it showed the second continent that had since been lost into the depths of the sea…

“What we need to do now is to underrrstand what the enemy wants, and what they arrre capable of doing.” Grathius spoke in his gruff voice.

Taren looked around, his head still throbbing in pain. “How can we understand the enemy, when we don’t even know who they are?”

“We know who they are,” Shaunna spoke very quietly, never taking her eyes from the surface of the map. “And I can help you understand them.”