The Crystal Chalice (Book 1) by R.J. Grieve Read Free Book Online

gently
wooded hills in the distance. After a short distance he left the road and
ascended a grassy knoll. The top provided a magnificent view of Addania, now
about a mile away. The sun illuminated its silver-grey walls, the slender
towers and proud battlements. The blue flags emblazoned with the chalice flower
flew bravely in the autumn breeze. He sat on his horse for a long time, staring
at it, saying nothing, his profile clear-cut against the sky, almost unaware of
his companion.
     “It’s beautiful,” Elorin finally said. “You must be
so proud of it.”
      He started slightly as if she had broken the spell.
“Every time I leave the eastern gate, I come to this hill to look at it. For me
it is more than a city, it is a symbol. It represents all we fight for, all we
defend. It stands for order against chaos, civilisation against barbarity and
light against darkness. Tissro described it as the silver city on the hill and
when the sun catches it, one can see why he used those words.”
     “You love it dearly.”  It was a statement, not
a question.
     “All Eskendrians do. There is not one of us who
would not give our lives for it.” He sighed and turned away. “It looks as if it
will soon come to that.”
     “Do you mean Celedorn?”
     “Partly. My plans are nearly ready. I leave for the
mountains in under two weeks. The snow can come early in those mountains and I
have no wish to conduct a campaign on the fox’s home territory up to my eyes in
snow. It’s going to be difficult enough to flush him out of there, without the
weather coming to his assistance. He will soon realise what our intentions are,
of course, but my hope is that he will retreat to Ravenshold, trusting in the
strength of its walls to defeat us. Hoping that the cold will freeze us ,
before we can starve him .”
     “Will he not know that time is on his side?”
     “Of course he will, but hopefully what he won’t
know, is that dismantled into sections in our baggage train, are siege engines
which I trust will make short work of Ravenshold’s defences.”
     “Is it an easy castle to attack?”
     “No, far from it. In fact, in all the centuries that
it has stood there, it has never been taken by force - only by treachery.”
     “I thought that the Turog stormed it after killing
the Lord of Westrin.”
     “Not quite,” he amended. “It was a time of peace,
you see, so they found the gates open and the castle only lightly defended.”
His face darkened. “There was no time to close the gates. No time to put up an
effective defence. It wasn’t battle, it was just a massacre.”
     “Celedorn will be prepared,”
     “Oh yes,” said the Prince, his face grim. “He will
be prepared. The task will not be easy but it must be done. We cannot have him
harassing us while we attempt to fight the biggest Turog army that has ever
been thrown at us. We never thought they could field such an army against us
again, after their defeat at the hands of my great-grandfather. He led the last
great alliance of  the civilised nations, including soldiers from as far away
as the Isles of Kelendore. They crossed the river Harnor, over the old bridge
of the twelve arches which has now been destroyed, and pursued them into the
forest, into the territory that they had taken from mankind before even the
Chronicles of the Old Kingdom were written. But the Turog ran before him and
would not fight. They relied on the forest to disorientate his army so that
they could be picked off in small groups. It was then that the King called the
third great Counsel of the Sages. They used one of the old spells of adamant
from the Book of Incantations. An invisible wall sprang up around the forest, a
wall that a human being could walk through without knowing that it was there,
but that the Turog could not penetrate. The Turog were trapped and turned to
fight. We slew them all, every last one. But we were too few in number to
reclaim the land beyond the Harnor that