The Broken Council (The Guardian Chronicles 1) (2 page)

“Kishi,
please be on time for the meeting. It is very important,” the king asked
clearly dejected about their interaction.
 
Inwardly the king felt a wall go up between him and his eldest
daughter.
 
You loved me once child…what happened?
 
The king shook his head almost imperceptibly
as he turned to leave.

“I
will be on time, but do not think that you will somehow win my support in this
pointless venture,” she retorted.
 
She
gave him a look that was filled with both anger and sadness.
 
As she watched the vanguard leave her thoughts
turned inward once more.

Kishi
felt her body temperature rising even though the spring morning was quite
cool.
 
Her temper was always just under
the surface these days, and she was growing weary of being told what to do and
how to think.
 
Today that would all
change, and nothing would ever be the same.
 
She would do what she wanted regardless of what her sister chose to
do.
 
Her father would not have the
satisfaction of using her as leverage against Kira.
 
He would be on his own in that meeting and would
be sadly disappointed in both of his daughters, though for very different
reasons.
 
The poor fool…I hope he will still love me after today.

***

Kira
sat in her bedchamber staring out the balcony with a look of someone who was a
keeping a secret so sweet that she would soon burst if she did not reveal
it.
 
She had a twinkle in her deep brown
eyes as she thought of what would take place later at the elven high council.
 
If my
father only knew of the plot against him...he would be livid!
 
A smile of fierce pleasure crept across her
face at the idea of finally revealing her plans.
 
The internal conflicts about what she was
planning vanished since her husband came into her life.

The
princess felt happier than she had been in years as a result of her recent
marriage to the man, Yukio.
 
She had
decided that now was the perfect time to unveil her true intentions to the
elven leadership.
 
She knew that the joy
she was feeling was a mix of her feelings for her husband and for the plans she
had been working on for months.
 
She knew
that revealing her true intentions would likely mean a revolt of some
kind.
 
While a revolution would bring
tragedy and death, it would lead to the freedom she knew many yearned for.

Princess
Kira had an elegant, slim body like her twin sister, Kishi.
 
Her long brown hair swished slightly as she
walked to the balcony and began to pace back and forth.
 
She too was a very powerful sorceress, but
she did not like to use her power to get her way or enhance her capacity with
magic the way her sister did.
 
Instead,
she relied on her womanly wiles to get what she wanted, which had worked very
well on her husband and several other failed suitors.
 
However, the welfare of the elven people was
desperately important to her, and that made her drastically different from
Kishi, who cared only for herself.

She
sighed pleasantly as she turned to look at her husband who was resting
peacefully on their bed.
 
He was an
enormously built man whose stature resembled most of the elves, though considerably
more muscular.
 
He was taller than his
new wife by a few inches, which was not a common occurrence since elves were
almost always taller than men.
 
He had
long reddish-brown hair dangling loosely over his silk pillow.
 
He had several scars on his back from the
many wars and battles he had fought in service to his queen.
 
He had the look of man who had been made by
difficult circumstances and one who could withstand a great deal more than
most.

General
Yukio stirred at the sound of his wife’s incessant pacing and sat up on one
elbow to look at her.
 
He thought that
she was very beautiful and had such youthful-looking skin that it was difficult
to believe that she was several hundred years old.
 
I am
truly blessed by the gods for such a treasure.
 
She is a prize far greater than any jewel or horde of treasure.
 
I will not allow her father to ruin our
plans.
 
If he should pose a threat, I
will end his reign in a more permanent fashion today.

As
the general rubbed his bleary eyes, the morning light illuminated the red mixed
with the brown in his eyes as he gazed up at his wife.
 
It has been said of him that while in the
throes of battle his eyes burned red as though they were on fire.
 
The intensity of his look could pierce the
most accomplished magician’s magical defenses and penetrate any mental
barrier.
 
He was a fierce warrior and a
good man to have on your side when things were going wrong.
 
If he were against you, the gods themselves
would not be able to protect you from his wrath.

“What
is vexing you this early in the morning, my love?” he inquired in his deep,
husky voice.
 
As he sat up in bed he
began to stretch after another night of sleep…something that he was still
struggling to get used to.

“I
am going over our plans to make sure that what we do today plays out as we have
foreseen,” she replied after a long moment of thought.
 
She was pinching her lower lip as she
nervously continued to contemplate.

She
stopped pacing and stared out over the balcony’s edge without seeing anything
in the distance.
 
She knew she should
feel some guilt about what she was thinking, but her father’s
obduracy had only cultivated her aversion to
his wishes.
 
I cannot wait to see my father humbled!
 
These were not typical feelings a daughter
should have toward their father.
 
Then
again, her father was the king of the immortal race of elves and had never
really been a true parent by any stretch of the imagination.
 
He cared more for his kingdom and himself
than for his own blood.
 
If mother were still alive, things would be
different.
 
I would not have to take such
drastic measures against my own father. She would have made him see
reason.
 
Mother would want me to go
forward; she was always able to see the big picture.

King Ciel had lost his beloved wife
five years to the very day when she was
waylaid by a pack of savage wolves as she journeyed along the southern edge of
Renshaw.
 
The king had forgotten about
this as a result of the current political turmoil.
 
Kira and Kishi, on the other hand, would never
be able to forget such a traumatic day.
 
These two sorceresses blamed their father’s lack of military leadership and
unorganized home guard for the tragic loss of their mother.
 
Neither of them could ever feel safe again
within the forest, and that was one of the reasons why they both must
leave.
 
The council convened by their
father actually played into their hands without him being any the wiser.

“General
Yukio, you must get ready for the meeting,” she said playfully over her
shoulder.
 
“I think that this will be a
day long remembered in the history of my people, so you need to look your
best.”
 
She turned to look at her husband
and gave him a quick smile as the sun silhouetted her slender figure.

After
several moments, General Yukio reappeared from the closest dressed in his
military uniform he wore when meeting with royalty.
 
His medals shined and glistened as he walked
up to his wife on the balcony.
 
Out
with the old and in with the new
.
 
He
was going to be the first king of the elves from the race of men.
 
A male elf always ruled the kingdom, but that
was going to change now that he was part of the family.
 
He would have liked to force the change, but
he could not doubt the brilliance of his wife’s plan.
 
It was going to work.

“Well,
we should not keep the aged council members waiting,” he said with a sly
grin.
 
He took her arm in his, and they
left Tiranidrol Castle together.
 
They
had an hour to get to the sacred
Eáránë
Minyatur
, the sacred meeting place where the elven high council met.
 
That was on the other side of Tarisdell, the
capital city of the elven nation.
 
The
city was located at the heart of the ancient and enchanted Black Forest, also
called Renshaw, so they took their time to
enjoy their last day in the remarkable woodland.
 
They would be sad to leave such a beautiful
place, but their new home would be just as breathtaking with views that could
not be found anywhere else in Tuwa.

The
Eáránë Minyatur
was silent aside from
the shuffling of feet as the members of the high council took their seats.
 
The room had stunning vaulted ceilings made
of marble with gold and silver inlaid into it.
 
The round table the council
members sat around filled the center of the spacious hall.
 
The table itself had been hand crafted by
King Nognili’s dwarves as a gift for King Ciel’s five hundredth anniversary as
a sign of their alliance.
 
At the center
of this table there was a large open area that had a gold-and-silver embossed
cauldron resting in the very middle.
 
There was a silvery black substance that appeared to be simmering and
turning inside the ornate pot while giving no reflection of its surroundings.

The
cauldron was used for the purpose of casting votes and for revealing glimpses
of the future for those who looked into its portents.
 
The name of this magical device was
Thraalillith
.
 
Most of the predictions made by this powerful
object were not to be taken as at face value because it showed only
half-truths.
 
There were several
occasions that the council had used the mysterious power of
Thraalillith
to try and foresee outcomes
of their decisions.
 
Each time they acted
on what they had perceived to be the truth, they ended up suffering greatly for
their trust.
 
It was now believed that
the magical properties of the cauldron were too powerful to be controlled by
even the most potent elven magic.
 
Hence
the reason why it was no longer used for anything aside from voting.

When
the members of the council used the cauldron to cast their votes on debated
issues, they would throw a piece of paper into a magically created fire that
would hover above the silvery black portents of the
Thraalillith
.
 
An affirmative
vote would turn the fire bright blue, while a disapproving vote turned the fire
crimson red.
 
The council secretary
recorded the number of votes for each side of the debated issue.
 
The elves relished in using their magic
whenever they could, and this was another frivolous way for them to do just
that.
 
They loved being reminded of their
supposed superiority over the lesser races of Tuwa because of the magic and
also because of their immortality.

The
side door of the high council chamber opened abruptly to admit a stoic-looking King
Ciel who was followed by his guard and his daughters Kira and Kishi.
 
They were all adorned in the finest silk and
cloth made by elven seamstresses.
 
The
king wore an impressive crown that was encrusted in a wide variety of dwarven
jewels and gems.
 
This crown was another
gift from the dwarves.
 
His daughters
wore simple-looking leaf crowns made of silver and gold.
 
Everyone stopped talking and stood up at
their sudden and unannounced arrival.
 
This show of reverence was an elven custom that had been practiced for
centuries and had become a requirement since King Ciel took the throne.
 
When royalty entered a room, everyone must
stop what they were doing, stand if they were not already doing so, and face
them.
 
A slight bow was also required as
they passed by.
 
In this case, everyone
bowed as the royal family made their way to their seats at the head of the
round table even if they did not walk by them.

King
Ciel took up his seat and nodded to the members of the council to be
seated.
 
His throne was made by some of
the greatest craftsmen from Mount Carrick by the order of the dwarven king,
Jarvis Dagnolir.
 
The chair was encased
in silver and gold in a magnificent swirling fashion.
 
The high-backed chair had the crest of the
Tiranidrol house carved into it.
 
The crest
had a depiction of a forest resembling the Black Forest with the Blaine River
running parallel to it, which appeared to be moving.