Excerpt: Her Sister's Gem

Prologue

The setting sun hit her eyes, blinding her for the briefest of seconds, hiding everything from her. When the liquid black dots cleared allowing her to see clearly again the world was different. The skyscrapers, houses and schools that made up her adopted home no longer dotted the landscape. Instead the landscape of her childhood lay before her, but not as she remembered. Ragged teeth of walls stood where the castle once guarded the now blackened forest. The magic was gone leaving ruin and destruction in its stead. This was home, but it was not the home she longed to return to. What could cause so much destruction in a land so peaceful?

Perhaps it was nothing, like her fiancé always told her. Perhaps it was just dreams of another time and of fear – wondering what it would be like to go back home.

Taellyren, or Taylor as she was known here, had all but convinced Chris that her home was not a place you really wanted to go. It was closed to her and she had to convince Chris of that or he would look for years until he finally drove himself mad trying to find the veil between Taylor’s adopted world and the world she came from.

There were so many reasons Taylor wanted to go back home to visit her family and the many multitude of cousins. But mostly, she just wished to see her littlest sister, Taellyn, who had been a baby when she left. To be with her as she reached the age if decision and realized the burden that was now hers when a staging of a child’s first decisions falls flat and shows itself for what it really is – a manipulation by the parents of the girl child of the house to marry, marry well and bear lots of children. If that wasn’t a recipe for disaster, Taylor had no idea what was so she ran.

It was just on nights like tonight, when the sky was inky black and the fireplace smell started penetrating the nights. These were the night she dreamed of home.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Taellyn loved everything about the snow. She especially loved watching the snow drift lazily down from the slate gray sky to settle gracefully on the blanket of diamonds that already rested on the ground. Each flake glimmered and shone a rainbow of colors as the moonlight hit it just right. Even the smell of snow was heaven to her.
Snow was not as frequent has it had been when Taellyn was younger. They only got one or two snowfalls a season now rather than the days and weeks of swirling storms of years past. That made this snow fall even more special, Taellyn told herself as she breathed in the scent, that much more of a treat.

Breathing lead to stepping, which led to swirling. As Taellyn skipped and twirled her way through the snowflakes, she ignored everything around her but the snow she danced with. Nothing could interrupt her joy. Each step equaled freedom – freedom from her books, her tutors and most of all, her parents’ incessant bickering in regards to a good match for her, their only daughter and the heir to their kingdom. The snow washed all of that away.

Suddenly she stopped still and peered around. It would not do to have anyone see what she was about to do. While peering in on humans on the other side of the veil was possible, it was dangerous and not encouraged for anyone not properly trained to work amongst them. As part of her royal training, she knew the principles behind making a hole in the veil, but no one knew she actually took those principles and put them to use on occasion.

She liked humans, the poor young souls, who lived for generations by the standards of her plane. She had been alive for at least fourteen of the human days, fourteen years by her time. There was one human in particular who caught her eye. She first saw him when she was thirteen, soon after her planar tutor taught her the mechanics of pulling back the veil. It was like a curtain, she remembered him saying. Imagine a film of gauze and pull it back as though it was a window curtain. That first time she only peered into the other plane.

Everything was so still – no one was moving. When she looked back the next day and the next everyone was still in the same place. It was only after a week or two of peering that she realized there were small differences – a hand had moved a pect or two, a look between friends had changed slightly, a dog’s tail was in the opposite direction, a falling leaf had moved closer to the ground. She asked her tutor about this phenomenon only to gain his ire of her having looked at all. While he had taught her how to look, he had not told her looking was strictly forbidden except in cases of extreme emergency. He hadn’t thought there would be a need as for all his years of tutoring royal children none had actually tested the theories of Planal Mechanics. Taellyn did not bring the subject up to him again.

She wanted to learn all she could about the still humans on the other side of the veil. She began wandering the library at night searching for books, parchments or scrolls to tell her more about the veil, the two planes and humans. When she was about twelve, she found exactly what she was looking for in a dusty, forgotten corner of the library. It was a diary of a girl not unlike herself who wanted to learn more about the humans.

The diary was old and written in a script only taught to royal children. In some way Taellyn was related to its author and felt a sort of kinship when she found it. Some cousin or aunt was interested in those who lived on the other side of the veil just as she was. The diary consumed her for the next several nights.

Taelrren was a royal daughter, not unlike herself, and about thirteen or fourteen when she started writing. At first she wrote about her days as a Lady, the lessons a young lady of her time would have to take such as weaving with silver and gold, embroidery, tending to nature. While all of these were just fine, Taeloren felt that there was something more to learn and wanted to take the same classes her brother took. After begging her father she was allowed to participate in some of the classes, those that were considered more theoretical than practical. It just wouldn’t do to have a young Lady with the ability to craft a sword or shoot an arrow, but learning the theories of planal mechanics would be acceptable. Taeloren was ecstatic. She wrote about the excitement of her first day and then her diary became about the class. Nothing else was worthy of note in her eyes.

As Taellyn continued to read, she noticed a change as Taeloren aged. For the first year or so, the diary spoke only of her classes and most notably of her Planal Mechanics class. Then, when she was about fifteen she started talking about a boy. He was tall, dark haired and athletically slim. Taeloren spoke of his running, and enjoying running as a sport. Mostly, she spoke of his eyes and how soulful they were. Soon, every entry was about the boy and Taellyn lost interest.
Taellyn thought briefly about the diary as she looked around. She never found out what happened to Taeloren, the diary had stopped abruptly after an entry about this boy winning a race. While it was somewhat odd, Taellyn just thought that a marriage match had been made that day and Taeloren no longer had time to write in her childhood diary.

After a final sweep of her eyes to ensure there was no one around, Taellyn took a deep breath and pulled the curtain back. The boy was still there, exactly as she had left him. His dark hair with streaks of auburn glinted in the sun. It was daytime again in his plane and still autumn by the looks of things. Today, he was sitting on a bump by the side of a wide trail reading with a writing instrument, which looked like a pen, in his hand. The building behind him had to be a palace it was so large. While there were others around, a different sort of stillness came from him. Taellyn looked closer and saw a look of quiet determination. This look is what drew her to watch him every day she could. She had been watching him for several months, from the time he started sitting down until now.

“Lady Taellyn!”

The sound of her shouted name pulled Taellyn out of her trance. Reluctantly, she took one last look before closing the veil, straightening her skirts and starting back towards the palace.

“Lady!”

“I am coming!” she called back looking over her shoulder one last time. “Tomorrow,” she whispered before she took another step in the snow.

Once Taellyn was half way to the palace, he stepped out of the woods. He watched the tall, slender, beautiful girl with straight red hair trudge up the hill that held her home. He was in love with her, always had been, but it was not to be for many reasons. Least of which was that he was of the KithRann house while she was of the GoudTaell house. Regardless, he felt they could be a good match for each other, especially when it came to beauty. The beginning of the RannTaell house, a house that could make history.

“Yes, my Lady. Tomorrow,” RannSundiral whispered as he watched her walk into the courtyard. “Tomorrow will bring everything.”