Chapter 1

1

Alec was drawn to his home, wanting nothing more than to sleep in his old room and wake up refreshed for a new day. He wanted to rummage through the kitchen pantry and clean up the playthings that he had carelessly left strewn about. He wanted to lope across the threshold with a boisterous “I’m home!” and pretend his parents were still alive to welcome him into their arms.

Instinct had led his feet home. He despised the sapphire wings on his back, as they had done nothing to protect him or his parents from the dragon that destroyed their lives. He curled them uselessly behind his back, sulking in silence as he walked.

He reached the ring of trees that surrounded his oaken home and gave a sad smile of recognition. The spirits of these trees had been the Sentinels who had kept him and his parents safe for many generations of men.

He put a scarred hand on a Sentinel’s tree, yearning for comfort, but its cold and lifeless bark did not respond to his touch. He removed his hand quickly, stung by the hurt of its emptiness. His courage faltered; he suddenly did not want to know what lay inside.

The winged elf turned away from his home, following the stream that led from Krozer’s lands to Cazort’s lake. Evening fell as he continued to limp alone through the woods in silence, doing his best to ignore the silvery tears that stained his cheeks.

His feet stopped as he heard loud shouts in the distance. A few moments later the shouts became louder, closer. Voices were preceded by a rustle of motion in the underbrush and foliage; he realized that something large was approaching him, and fast.

Quickly he scanned his surroundings, looking for an adequate hiding place and finding none. In his mindless wanderings, he had paid no attention to his footsteps and had accidentally approached the city, leaving the forest instead of receding farther into it. He was still miles from the city walls, but was nevertheless in a clearing with no available tree to hide in. His only hope of escape from detection was to plunge into a nearby stream.

Alec sent a prayer of thanksgiving to the fates for his gills and dove into the water. A few moments later, he saw another elemental burst through the clearing in a panic. At first Alec thought it was a winged elf like him, but soon he realized that this was no elf, but an angel.

Alec sighed in sympathy as he watched the angel trying to elude his captors. The angel’s dovelike wings twitched desperately, pinioned by a half-dozen arrows that protruded from them; the boy kept trying to pull them out, but could not reach back far enough to grasp them.

Alec watched the youth race along the stream bank, searching for a way to cross over it. He saw the angel gulp in terror and nervously begin to tread through the water with such embarrassing lack of coordination it proved he did not know how to swim.

His chest tightened in sympathy as he watched the winged stranger struggle to cross the stream. The boy continued to stumble over the debris of the riverbed but desperately tried to keep his head above the water.

Alec heard another loud shout and spotted the angel’s human pursuers entering the clearing. In a moment, they would spot their prey and the youth would be captured.

Alec cursed, determined to help. In an instant, he grabbed the youth by his ankle and pulled him underwater.

There was a brief struggle as the strange elemental tried desperately to return to the surface. Avoiding touching the angel’s wounded wings, Alec grabbed him by the waist and kept him pinned to the riverbed underneath the waves.

“Be still!” Alec warned, using his touch to convey a message telepathically. “They’ll be gone in a minute! Be still and I’ll get us out of this mess…somehow…”

The youth whimpered in fear, bubbles of air escaping from his panicked lips.

Alec saw him beginning to founder and he cursed.

“Try not to move,” he whispered, then strained to use whatever green magic he possessed to summon a shrubbery root from the shore above them.

A thin tendril of a tree root snaked upward from the riverbed. Alec nodded in thanksgiving and placed the root into the foundering angel’s mouth.

“Here,” he urged, “breathe through this. It will give you air until the humans have gone.”

The youth spluttered, quaking in fear.

The two boys remained motionless in wait, clinging to each other as they waited for the humans to pass by.

After a long time, Alec tapped the angel’s shoulder and announced, “I’m going to see if they’ve gone. I’ll be back.” He quickly and carefully swam up to the surface.