Prologue

The great city, the city of the King of Kings, was attacked by evil forces while the King and his army were away, at war with distant enemies to the east. A large slab of rock had been split apart in an underground cave deep in the woods, and from that the hordes had come. Half man, half creature, savage beasts with dark, leathery skin and green, unblinking eyes, they had surrounded the Royal city during the dead of night, and scaled the walls while the night-watchmen slept, an enchanted sleep, cast upon them by some evil sorceror in their dark ranks. They crept unbidden into the Royal city of Yasalle and attacked while the people were sleeping, killing some mercifully in their sleep, dragging others from their beds and slaughtering them in the public square, torn limb from limb.

Fortune, however, turned as the day began to break, and the inhabitants of the Royal city mustered the best of their strength to beat the enemy back. When the last of the creatures ~ Ty'Goth, they were called ~ had either escaped (and so many had escaped, scuttling back over the castle wall like insects) or been killed...before all the dead men lost had even been numbered, named, buried or mourned, the leaders of the noble town met to discuss how to get word to the King that he was needed at home. Few volunteers could be found willing to risk their lives to ride through the dark woods where the Ty'Goth had been seen retreating, and where they might certainly be lurking still, preparing for another deadly assult on the city. Nevertheless someone would have to go, and immediately, The inhabitants of Yasalle could not be sure they would survive another attack, especially with dark magic a constant threat, and the night-watchmen ~ still asleep, still enchanted ~ a constant reminder of it.

Just then a rider, a lone rider on a white horse, was seen emerging from those black woods, a tall standard flapping behind him. An alarm was raised. Jeed and the city leaders rushed to the castle walls, anxiously watching the rider's approach. Would the wind never blow that banner out, so the standard could be identified? What more could Fate bring on this terrible day?

Still a quarter-mile from the city gate, the rider fell from the horse and lay on the plain as if dead. As one body, Jeed and all those gathered with him upon the wall gasped. From their high perch they could clearly see the banner which the rider had carried, and which now lay discarded on the ground ~ it was the banner of their King.

Before the command could be given the gates flew open and the people rushed out. The castle's youngest stableboy, who had for the first time that morning borne a sword, rushed out. The governor's charwoman, whose two sons had died in the fighting, her two sons that she had not even buried or mourned, rushed out. The two brothers Durran and Kite, and their young sister Olivia, who were the three nearly grown children of the famous knight Xander the Red, gone at war with the King, these three rushed out. Indeed it seemed all the living left in Yasalle rushed out from the open gates to come to the aid of the fallen rider. When every hand that could touch the unconscious young man had lifted him from the ground and carried him inside, it was the stableboy who turned at last to retrieve the King's standard from where it lay, forgotten on the damp morning grass.