The Lonesome Crown by Brian Lee Durfee

Author:Brian Lee Durfee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Published: 2022-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

In the last days before Fiery Absolution, the Silver Throne shall be covered in white, covered in black.

—THE WAY AND TRUTH OF LAIJON

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX MANCELLOR ALLEN

15TH DAY OF THE BLOOD MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON

AMADON, GUL KANA

Princess Jondralyn Bronachell’s corpse was draped over the back of one of the three piebald ponies huffing for breath behind Mancellor Allen, Liz Hen Neville, and Dokie Liddle. The reins of all three ponies were gripped tight in Liz Hen’s balled fist. The piebalds were slow-moving and swaybacked, but they had been the only mounts left in Rutger’s small stables next to the Preening Pintail.

“You must open the gate to us!” Mancellor was unarmed, staring straight at the stone guard tower and bulky entry gate of Amadon Castle’s outer wall. The summer air was damp, laced with a light rain, heavy with the smell of the city. It was midday and his entire body was wet with sweat under his ragged clothing. “I beg of you, please. Open the gate!”

“I don’t think there’s anyone up there.” Dokie ruffled the soggy gray fur atop Beer Mug’s head.

“It’s just so big,” Liz Hen said, red-hazed eyes gazing upward. “The gate. The castle. Everything in Amadon is just so big.”

The Gallows Haven girl was right about that. Even Mancellor had been amazed at the size of the city. Everything in Amadon was huge, and at the moment, wet. Mount Albion and the massive black-and-gray-colored castle rose up before them like a brooding dark thundercloud. Circled by a daunting stone wall and lofty stone guard towers, the castle was a soaring patchwork of outer buildings and makeshift add-on structures, and a myriad of other crenellated battlements, spires, baileys, palisades, barbicans, and causeways, all peppered with flags of silver and black. The sheer grandiose stateliness and splendor of the structures stole Mancellor’s breath.

In fact, the awe-inspiring grandeur of Amadon itself was more than he had been expecting. The vast city and its warrens of crooked and cobbled streets and buildings spread out around him as far as his eyes could see, replete with all the illustrious, celebrated landmarks that as a child he had dreamed of one day visiting. The Hallowed Grove and the legendary thousand-year-old Atonement Tree. The prominent Royal Cathedral, shaped like a crown, the sanctuary where the Blessed Mother Mia was buried. The famed Hall of the Dayknights and the ethereal Temple of the Laijon Statue. All of it was real, and far more astounding than he had ever imagined. For generations, pilgrims the breadth of the Five Isles had flocked to Amadon to worship at the foot of these magnificent buildings. Mancellor’s father had dreamed of just such a pilgrimage. A religious trek that Niklos Allen had never gotten the chance to make, but a journey that Mancellor had made under the most bizarre of circumstances.

When they had passed by the circular, columned gladiator arena, the peculiar nature of Mancellor’s journey to this city had set in. For it was then he recalled his visions whilst in the clutches of the mermaid during the Battle of the Saint Only Channel.

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