The Raven and the Rush

Introduction

Introduction

There exists a kingdom set upon an isle, surrounded by a sea no one has ever traveled beyond. The Kingdom of the White Sea it is called, or simply the kingdom, for they have no other name for it.

The individual Reaches—Northerlands, Southerlands, Westerlands, and Easterlands—once ruled themselves. Two centuries past, the Rhiagains washed upon their shores, claiming to be gods. From gods, they became kings.

But the Rhiagains were not the first to come from Beyond.

Hundreds of years before this, there were the Ravenwoods. Priests and priestesses, both avian and man. First hunted, as a kingdom with an already tenuous relationship with magic feared them. Then, revered, as the men of the Northerlands came to their rescue, benefitting handsomely from the resulting arrangement. Magic, in exchange for protection.

The Ravenwoods built their castle high in the Northerland Range, into the side of a craggy peak of Icebolt Mountain. The men of the Northern Reach thrived under this treaty, while the Ravenwoods simply existed without assault.

Necessity begot tradition. Tradition birthed a new Ravenwood dynasty. One wholly reliant upon the women to deliver hope, in the form of consistency and stalwart loyalty. One that could so easily snap under the pressure of even a single High Priestess refusing to do either.

The Ravenwoods didn’t introduce magic to the kingdom, but their arrival strengthened the prevailing belief that anything not easily explained should not easily be trusted. The Consortium of the Sepulchre in the Skies—the ruling body on all things magic and the oldest extant institution in the kingdom—has fought for centuries to protect magic by regulating it.

But even that is not enough for some men, who would see magic banished for all time. Its practitioners, burned.

Lord Aeldred Blackrook of the Westerlands is the most conspicuous of such men. His campaign of terror against “witches” has made the Westerlands unsafe for any born with gifts. He boldly sundered the alliance between the Westerlands and the Sepulchre, denouncing the august body as heretics, an act that alienated him from his allies in the other Reaches—particularly the Northerlands, whose protection of the Ravenwoods borders on treasonous.

It’s pride Aeldred feels as he strikes magic from his borders.

It’s death and ruin he’s invited in its place.

Disease runs unabated in his Reach. Its destructive tendrils are beyond the curative powers of physicians. Without magic, his people are dying. He will soon become sick himself, succumbing to the very illness he alone has the power to assuage.

His second son, Evrathedyn, whiles his days away at university in Oldcastle in the Easterlands, blissful in his obliviousness to the horrors his father has wrought upon their people and land. He escapes into his dusty books, content in his powerlessness. His irrelevance.

I’m only a second son, Evra tells himself. This has nothing to do with me.

Farther north, a young Rhosynora Ravenwood tells herself the same thing. My sister is the High Priestess. I’m nothing. Nobody.

But time and fate have a way of correcting all things.

As Aeldred Blackrook takes to his sickbed, a storm of change is brewing in the kingdom. On this wind rides death, but also hope.

It begins in a small room, in a tower at Oldcastle.

But this is not where it will end.