A mad king. An escaped slave. One warrior to save the realm…
When Asherah, stripped of both her memory and her dignity, learns that King Sahlgren is responsible for her torment it nearly breaks her. Instead, she leads her fellow slaves to freedom. More prisons are scattered across Parthalan, and Asherah vows to burn them all.
Caol’nir, a warrior descended from the gods, is sworn to serve and defend the king. Then a priestess is murdered, and Caol’nir learns that Sahlgren is to blame. Determined to stop the king, sacred oath or no, Caol’nir joins Asherah’s rebellion.
What Caol’nir doesn’t know is that Sahlgren has promised the demon lord a woman of rare and singular beauty, a woman whose abilities are rumored to rival the sun god’s themselves…a woman Caol’nir knows all too well.
Targeted Age Group:: 16+
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
Well, it was a music box. I was around twelve years old, and we got a catalog from the San Francisco Music Box Company. Inside was this amazing figure of a princess with red hair… To make a VERY long story short, I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and ended up creating the cast of characters in The Chronicles of Parthalan. The red-haired princess arrives in the third book 🙂
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
Honestly, with the exception of the music box (see above) all of my characters are products of my own imagination. Basically, i started this series by writing the third book (don’t do that – NOT EFFICIENT), and I didn’t realize until the end that I needed to know how my characters got there. Why was Asherah queen? How had she overthrown the royal house? These were questions that needed answers, and are why i wrote Heir to the Sun and it’s sequel, The Virgin Queen.
Book Sample
Hillel speaks…
I may as well call myself Asherah now, since it’s what everyone else is calling me, thanks to Torim. When I try to correct them, they just smile and say I’m being modest, calling myself by such a mundane name as Hillel (after all, my name does mean cloud, and one can hardly be more common than that), and they go on about their way.
We spent that first day, and the next, at the tiny cottage, which retained its palatial feel compared to the filthy cells we were used to. On the third morning, Harek and I climbed a nearby hill to survey the area. While we could find no evidence of our being pursued, we still made the decision to move on. North was our chosen direction, for no better reason than we were already north of Teg’urnan and it somehow made sense to continue on that path. Once we descended from our perch, we informed the others, and after we had packed up every morsel of food and item that could be carried, we left Rahlle’s most generous gift behind.
Our journey north was neither calm nor swift, and we continued our nomadic existence for nearly three seasons. I had been amazed to learn that there were more such slave camps (Harek later told me they were called dojas). My amazement was quickly replaced by determination to burn them all to the ground. We rescued nearly all of the slaves from the first two; sadly, the third camp we encountered held less than twenty women, all of them used without care or mercy. By their leave, I slit their throats and burned them with what dignity we could manage. After the nightmare that was the third doja, the others called me Asherah the Ruthless.
The fourth doja was the largest yet, with more than one hundred fae enslaved to vermin. It was also the most difficult fight we had yet encountered, and we managed to liberate only thirty. Our bittersweet victory was tempered by the fifth doja, where we rescued all sixty of the captive fae. The seventh and the eighth were much the same, as was the next, and the next, until they formed a blur across my memory. While each and every individual was offered the opportunity to take what provisions they needed and a map to their home, invariably they chose to remain with us. In time, our ranks swelled from twenty-four bedraggled survivors to hundreds of rescued fae.
Now, as the lot of us trudged northward, the question remained: where in the north were we ultimately going? Rahlle still left his gift of cottages along our path, filled with food and supplies in quantities that always matched our ever-growing ranks, but I wondered how long his generosity would last. I considered heading to the north and west to the land of the dark fae, our brethren. Yet (if such tales were to be believed) our great and noble King Sahlgren, the very bastard who had ordered our enslavement, was of the dark fae.
That was reason enough to avoid them, for who knew if this demonic pact wasn’t a means for the dark fae to usurp Parthalan for themselves? The legends say that Nibika’al, the goddess of night, had grown jealous of Cydia’s beauty, and the beauty of her children, and conspired to seduce Olluhm away from Cydia’s bed. Nibika’al succeeded, and thus the dark fae were born of night’s union with the sun. Some said that the dark fae had inherited their mother’s jealous tendencies and coveted all that Parthalan held dear.
So, rather than attempting to seek refuge with our distant cousins we continued northward, guided by Harek’s excellent navigational skills and maps that Rahlle thoughtfully left in our cottages. We only veered off course to burn more of those accursed dojas to the ground. As winter fast approached, we were so far to the north I worried that we would not be able to find adequate shelter for our ever-growing numbers. Some of the survivors, still healing from their torture, couldn’t camp outdoors as Torim and I usually did, and I didn’t want to rely on Rahlle’s generosity to feed and shelter us all. What if we suddenly fell from his favor?
Yet another reason made me want to find my own solution instead of continuing to rely on our benefactor; no longer merely the survivors, the rescued had become my people. While I will never understand why they saw me as their leader in the first place, I had nevertheless accepted the charge, and I was now honor-bound to guide them safely through this land.
I stood upon a rise one morning, looking out over the valley as the elder sun greeted the earth, and wondered aloud where we were to find shelter before the cold season found us.
“Why don’t we go to the elves?” Harek asked. I hadn’t realized he was standing there, and I wondered how much of my disjointed rambling he had been privy to.
“Elves?”
“Yes,” he replied. He crouched low and drew a crude map of Parthalan’s northern border in the dirt with a stick. “The elflands are just beyond this valley. Here is the Seat of the elf king, and here is the southern keep,” he added, using small stones to mark their locations. “While the elves are allies with Sahlgren, I doubt they’re involved in the dojas.”
I studied the faint scratches and considered his words. We had nothing to lose by approaching the elves for asylum; the worst they could do was turn us away. If they did we could continue north and leave behind the lands of elf and fae alike. However, I suspected Harek’s true motivation.
“You mean to ask the elf king to rally against Sahlgren?” I asked. The elves were renowned as warriors, their skill and cunning making them such formidable foes that would-be opponents usually surrendered rather than engage. As such, their borders had never been breached by the mordeth-gall, a fact the elves were more than proud of.
“Have you a better plan?” Harek countered.
“Why would the elves bother to get involved in fae business?” I pressed. “It would be wiser for them to remain safe behind their borders.”
“Do you think Ehkron cares where the border lies?” Harek retorted. “Elves can be enslaved just as fae can, and the horrors no less wretched.”
“Very well,” I stated, “we go to the elves.”
Onward we went, burning more and more dojas until I began to wonder if any fae were left at liberty in Parthalan. As our numbers continued to swell, another phenomenon occurred, one that always happens when a large number of people spend their days together: the former slaves began to pair off and seek cozy, secluded spots to while away the night.
At first, I was shocked that they would be so bold, then amazed that these women wanted to engage in the act of love at all. I couldn’t imagine a man’s skin against mine—the very thought turned my skin cold and clammy—yet these women practically leapt into bed with whatever warm man would have them. I confided my thoughts to Torim, and she laughed away my concerns.
“They are reminding themselves that they are alive,” she replied softly, “in the simplest way possible.” We were nestled deep within our bedroll; her touch I did not mind. Rather, I welcomed it as one parched would welcome a rainstorm.
“But how can they want that?” I asked. “Inviting a man’s touch after what was done to us…” My voice trailed off as I spied a solitary figure across the fire. “Harek remains alone.”
“I believe there is a special reason for that,” Torim whispered, her eyes glinting. “I’ve spoken with some of the other women, and it seems that our captors went to great lengths to make sure we only bore their whelps.”
“What do you mean?” I could not imagine what she was hinting at. What did they need to do other than confine us in a tiny cell and chain us to the floor as they violated us?
“Many of the guards were unmanned,” Torim replied. “Not all, but a fair few.”
“Ah.” My gaze returned to the lone silhouette of Harek as I considered this revelation. “That certainly explains a few things.”
Torim grabbed a section of my hair and twined it with hers. “You as pale as the stars, I as golden as the sun,” she murmured in a singsong voice. It had a familiar feel to it, as if it was a song I’d learned long ago…meaning in that hazy time before I was captured, when I imagined that I had a family who cared about me and wondered if I still lived.
Or, maybe I’d never been anything but a slave.
“Hillel.”
Torim’s soft voice snapped me free of my reverie, and as my memories faded away I was met by her soft brown gaze. In that moment she reminded me of nothing so much as a fawn, with her large, innocent brown eyes and golden hair, and I wanted nothing more than to protect her. That overwhelming protectiveness is what made me wonder if I had known Torim before our enslavement; at times, it even made me wonder if she was my child.
“If you question the state of Harek’s manhood, I’m sure he’d oblige you with an answer,” Torim said, loudly enough for Harek to look towards us.
“I’d like nothing less,” I murmured. Torim sat up and stretched, the blankets falling away from her torso as she arched her back. The moonlight outlined her small waist and taut breasts, and I felt a familiar warmth in my belly.
No, not my child, I thought as I wrapped my arms around her. Torim was pliant in my arms and let me drag her deeply into the blankets.
“What are you thinking?” she asked softly.
“About the elves,” I replied. “What do you think we’ll find there?”
“Help,” she replied confidently. “Help, and hope.
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