"Golden Valley" ebook by: Rick Mallars
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PROLOGUE Yanley was returning from a trip to their nearest neighboring town, Swal, where he sold a great number of intricately beaded leather pouches that day. Although nightfall was at hand an eerie glow was spread across the horizon. The red glow became brighter as he hurried home towards Drisdan. It was then that he saw the smoke billowing into the sky, and fear clenched itself around his heart. Sheer adrenaline pushed him to run the rest of the way to his village, but he was too late. He ran to the center of the village, past huts whose roofs were engulfed in torrents of flames. He heard the screams of the dying, and when he stopped running, he realized that the ground was littered with people, his clansmen. Yanley searched desperately for his wife, shouting her name while stumbling through the village towards their home. His eyes watered copiously not only from the black smoke filling the air, but also with anguish at the sites he was viewing. He could hear men yelling nearby. As he neared his hut, a body that could only be his wife lay face down in the doorway. A keening wail escaped his mouth as he knelt at her side. Racked with grief, he could barely muster the strength to turn her over. He was horrified to discover that she had been brutally gutted, his unborn child savagely removed from her tender womb. Shaking violently, he turned from the evil sight and vomited. He then gathered his precious wife on his lap, and held her, rocking together. Suddenly, he was struck from behind with a blow so forceful that it knocked the breath from his body. His world swirled away in darkness. Yanley awoke with his head throbbing. He prayed to the gods that the images his brain now held had all been a nightmare. Yanley rolled over and felt someone kneeling beside him. It was his friend Darmon. Yanley remembered their conversation as if it just occurred. “Yanley, lay still.” Darmon told him. “Darmon, what has happened?” Yanley asked, confused and groggy with pain. “Terrible, terrible things my friend. We have been captured by evil men and our village has been destroyed.” Yanley then realized that he was living his nightmare, and his head throbbed with pain even more. Darmon was sobbing next to him; “They’re all dead Yanley. The children, our wives... all gone.” Yanley felt anguish engulf his body, as nausea washed over him in sheets of dread and rushes of pain. He could hear Darmon uttering to himself, “There was nothing we could do... nothing we could do.” Like a mantra. The anger and the fear he felt at that time was unlike anything he had ever experienced. It would have been a merciful release to cry, but he found that he was unable to contact his emotions fully. He felt as if he was encased in a bubble of agony, suspended in grief. He willed his analytical side to take over, that side of his personality which made him a great leader and respected member of his clan. Although he felt disassociated from his actions, Yanley took a mental inventory of his surroundings. He was in a cage fashioned of black metal bars along with three of his fellow brothers. There was barely enough room for the three of them to sit side by side on its cold floor. He turned his attention to the nearby cages. It was then that he saw Hollan. The look of grief and pain on Hollan’s face epitomized that of a tortured soul. It all seemed so unreal. His numbed mind slowly realized that Hollan’s wife and children must have been killed as well. They were all gone. Flashes of his destroyed hut invaded his mind. His beautiful Tania, his unborn son. Yanley shook himself from this remembrance. The tears streaming down his face were drying in the coastal wind. He knew these memories would never fade from his mind, but he was always surprised by the clarity of their pictures and the raw pain they evoked. It was dark now and the moon was shining overhead. Something had awakened him from his trance. Yanley stood and turned towards the valley below. His body stiffened like a predator watching his prey. He tuned his senses to the environment. It was the castle, it was the humans, something had happened to a friend. He had to go. Something terrible had happened. Login to review this product