The Sundrian Gate
an excerpt

“Prince Gowan,” she said, choking over his name. It was the skull that she noticed first. This corpse was as bad as the mage’s had been – blackened bones and seared flesh lying in a heap and half-buried by a pair of massive beams. She didn’t turn, couldn’t look away from those empty eye-sockets. Her own eyes burned as she blinked away hot tears. They came around her to examine the body, crowding over it, blotting it from her sight. Someone stood beside her, put an arm around her has she had done for Petrabel and she turned into him and held him close.
“You shouldn’t be up here either, little sister.” Bennet tousled her hair.
“I saw it,” she whispered. “Bennet, I saw everything from up there.”
“I guessed that,” he said. “But you still shouldn’t be here. You’re injured, I can tell.”
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” The prince’s men had collected what little remained of the body onto a blanket and pulled it into a bundle. Such an undignified way to travel, Jasana thought, not that he could complain about it. Poor Nevan. He had suffered so much already on her behalf, and then to come to this. She had never thanked him for any of it, and the thought brought fresh tears to her eyes.
Gowan came up beside them. “My men are taking away this body and that of the king. Bennet, if you will escort Merachel’s young apprentice down, I shall accompany your sister. The quartermaster’s room stands out our disposal. We’ll meet there and determine what needs to be done. Follow my men, they know the way.”
With a quick extra hug for Jasana, Bennet went to Petrabel’s side and offered her his arm for the long walk down. King Walvere’s body had been laid out on a makeshift pallet and covered again. He was carried down first, followed closely by the third man carrying that bag of bones over his shoulder. Bennet and Petrabel followed slowly behind. But Jasana waited. The prince, no, the new king of Baracur wanted a word with her.
“Tell me what you saw.” The tone of command was unmistakable, but how could she explain and not reveal herself. She turned and walked on along the room’s perimeter, moving deeper into the shadows to cover the motion as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “I know it’s difficult,” he said “a terrible tragedy for all of us. But I need to know who is to blame for this. Was it some magical accident brought on by Merachel’s grand experiment? Or was it an explosion? Chemeria has lost their mage but they still have plenty of black powder and the will to use it against us if they thought they could even the playing field.”
Jasana kicked at a stone and watched it plummet over the edge of a jagged hole. She listened to the echoes of its long fall. She didn’t want to think about wars as playing fields. “I’m not sure what I saw, your highness, but I don’t think it was bomb,” she said finally. She had to tell the truth, or as much of it as she could, but her eyes wouldn’t fix on anything but that shadowy hole. It held her attention almost against her will. Why? It was nothing compared to the destruction on the other side of the room. It wasn’t large, less than two paces across, just another point where a bit of falling stonework had holed the floor.
“So you think this was all just an accident?”
Jasana took a step closer and held out her stub of a candle, straining her eyes toward the far edge of the breach. Something was there, something that hung over the edge.
“Stand back from there, the whole thing could collapse at any moment,” said the prince. But she could hear something now, something that until now had mingled with the whistling of the wind through the wreck of the tower. Something that breathed.