The Fate of the Tala Read online

  The Fate of the Tala

  Uncharted Realms – Book 5

  by

  Jeffe Kennedy

  An Uneasy Marriage, an Unholy Alliance…

  The tales tell of three sisters, daughters of the high king. The eldest, a valiant warrior-woman, conquered her inner demons to become the high queen. The youngest, and most beautiful outlived her Prince Charming and found a strength beyond surface loveliness.

  And the other one, Andi? The introverted, awkward middle princess is now the Sorceress Queen, Andromeda—and she stands at the precipice of a devastating war.

  As the undead powers of Deyrr gather their forces, their High Priestess focuses on Andi, undermining her at every turn. At the magical barrier that protects the Thirteen Kingdoms from annihilation, the massive Dasnarian navy assembles, ready to pounce the moment Andi can no longer sustain it. And, though her sisters and friends gather around her, Andi finds that her husband, Rayfe, plagued with fears over her pregnancy, has withdrawn, growing ever more distant.

  Fighting battles on too many fronts, Andi can’t afford to weaken, as she’s all that stands between all that’s good in the world and purest evil.

  For Andi, the time to grow into her true power has come. . .

  Dedication

  To Grace for helping me sort the fruit of ten thousand apple trees into one basket

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to Marcella Burnard for an emergency read when I needed it most. Also to Sage Walker for, dare I say it, sage advice, as always. And to fantastic assistant Carien, for happily reading as soon as I send. Your support during the writing of this book meant everything.

  Evergreen thanks to all of my wonderful writer friends who brighten my life and enrich my world: Amanda Bouchet, Grace Draven, Jennifer Estep, Megan Hart, Darynda Jones, Katie Lane, Kelly Robson, Veronica Scott, Minerva Spencer, and many others.

  To all the faithful readers of this series, many thanks for your patience and all the messages of enthusiastic support during the extended wait for this book.

  Thanks to Rebecca Cremonese for her stellar production editing skills, and for being generally awesome.

  Awe and gratitude to Ravven for the absolutely incredible cover. Your images bring my characters to life and give me much-needed inspiration while writing. I could look at this cover forever.

  Many thanks to my family, especially to my mom, who worried this book would drive me crazy.

  Love to David, first, last, and always.

  Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer M. Kennedy

  EPUB Edition

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations or locales is completely coincidental.

  Thank you for reading!

  Credits

  Line and Copy Editor: Rebecca Cremonese

  Cover: Ravven, ravven.com.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  Maps

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Titles by Jeffe Kennedy

  About Jeffe Kennedy

  The Fate of the Tala

  by Jeffe Kennedy

  ~ 1 ~

  The elephant reared, its trumpeting loud enough to distort the vision. A tanned woman with white-blond hair clung to its back with athletic grace, sticking easily despite the surprise on her face. More elephants—a few I could see in the narrow frame the goddess allowed me, far more outside its scope—also trumpeted, making a deafening chorus. A lean, dark-skinned man with silver-streaked dark hair tied back at the nape of his neck staggered as the ground undulated beneath him, then caught himself, gaze snapping up to the colorful waves of magic ripping open the sky.

  The woman looked, too, the black beads in her braid catching the sun, her pale hair reflecting the cobalt, emerald, and rose lightning. Thunder rolled in bass counterpoint to the elephants’ warning calls, the grasses on the low, rolling plains in the distance rattling, and a great river churned an unnatural shade of violet behind them.

  The magic storm moved on, and they calmed the beasts, speaking to each other in a language I’d never heard. A young woman, brown-skinned and with amber hair, in fighting gear and daggers in each hand ran up on foot, yelling a question. The man spoke reassuringly, his voice authoritative, using a clear hand signal that she should sheath her blades. The ivory-haired warrior woman dismounted and cupped the young woman’s high-cheekboned face, kissing her forehead with maternal care.

  Then the blonde looked at me, her unknown watcher. The deep blue of her large eyes dominated a startlingly beautiful face—one that triggered a sense of recognition. She spoke a few words, a twist of accent also oddly familiar.

  As quickly as She had seized me in Her grip, the goddess Moranu released me, withdrawing Her presence along with the vision, restoring me to my own time and place.

  I sagged against the stone lion head on the breakwater. Sweat-drenched, I uncurled my folded legs to dangle my feet in the cool waves that lapped at the rocks I sat on. Around me, the pristine sea of Annfwn gleamed with serene beauty, a few shades lighter than the cloudless sky, and richer with crystalline depths. The harbor teemed with over a thousand ships, mostly Tala, bright sails and pennants catching the light breeze. High above, the magic barrier shimmered clearly to my eyes, glowing strong, but not rippling with lightning and violent color as it had in the vision.

  No, the barrier had only looked that way one time that I knew of: nearly a year before, when it expanded, extending its reach to lands familiar and foreign. The place the vision showed—and the people—had looked very foreign, indeed.

  Out of vigilant habit, I traced the arc of the magic barrier with my mind, testing its strength, checking for cracks, and following it all the way to the western boundary where it met the sea—and where the Dasnarian navy paced its outside edge, restless as starving wolves.

  Drawing on the Heart of Annfwn, I reinforced the barrier there, something I did several times a day. Ursula, my elder sister and High Queen of the Thirteen Kingdoms, reminded me often to do that, but she hardly needed to. It was unlikely I’d forget to pay attention to the one thing that kept the Dasnarian Empire from sweeping in to overrun our small kingdoms.

  Once I’d done that, I followed the barrier northward to the next section I habitually visited, one that felt like a rotten tooth, an aching abscess in the clear magic of Annfwn. The peninsula of Dasnaria penetrated the circular border of the magic barrier there. I’d thickened the barrier at that point—once our people had identified the problem—and made it impermeable to any crossing at
all, even the animal life the barrier normally admitted. A bit like closing the stable doors after your expensive breeding stock had run off, since the practitioners of Deyrr had taken advantage of the unwholesome portal to send their creatures inside the barrier to plague us.

  We still had sorcerers out there working to cleanse the seas of Deyrr’s foul presence. The stench of it had faded somewhat—I made myself taste the magic of that section, despite the revolting flavor and feel—but that piece of land had been so thoroughly possessed by Deyrr that it might never become wholesome again.

  Reassured that nothing of note had occurred at the barrier while the visions gripped me, I gathered my consciousness back to my immediate surrounds, sweeping my mind’s eye over the cliff city and verifying that all remained quiet.

  Well, as quiet as it could be with so many of the Tala concentrated in such a small area. It had been more than a month since Rayfe called the Gathering, and while some of the Tala had dispersed somewhat from those initial days, the population of the cliff city remained at easily four or five times the usual. Crowding the fierce and half wild Tala into close quarters, forcing them to wait for the brewing, war made for quite a bit of tension.

  Even though Rayfe had taken a contingent downcoast to clear out a plague of sleeper spies harassing one of our more remote communities, most everyone else remained here, where the first major battle would occur.

  Soon. Very soon.

  But not yet. For the time being, we could only wait, and do our best to prepare.

  Satisfied that all was as well as it could be, I took a moment longer to contemplate this most recent vision. A new one for me, and thankfully not another of us losing the great battle. I wasn’t so irreverent as to question the goddess of night and shadows, but sometimes I’d like to tell Moranu She didn’t need to show me that particular future anymore. I understood our imminent doom. Each time that vision assaulted me, I ended up gutted and despairing, with no new useful information to show for it.

  This new vision must be relevant, as Moranu never delivered anything that didn’t turn out to have import. Unfortunately, I often didn’t recognize the significance of the visions until the events came to pass—or well after, if I wasn’t personally involved. The visions I was able to identify as the past tended to be even less helpful, as I only ever connected those long-ago events with current ones much later. So, this new one might be relevant, but how?

  The warrior woman had the look of Dasnaria about her—that ivory blond hair, intensely blue eyes and those high cheekbones—but she was no one I knew, either from my own eyes or looking through the eyes of others. The land she’d occupied had not been Dasnaria, however. No doubt of that, especially as they’d been riding elephants. The only elephants I’d ever seen were Tala shapeshifters. The natural animals lived far from Annfwn and the other twelve kingdoms. Wherever that land was, it was inside the barrier, and something had shifted. They were involved in this war somehow, but on which side? Almost certainly Dasnaria’s.

  That meant more enemies inside the barrier. Wonderful.

  It would be terribly helpful if Moranu would show me solutions along with the problems. Would that be too much to ask? Apparently so. The goddess didn’t do my bidding; I did Hers. Up to a point.

  Since all remained quiet for the moment, I cast my mind out to the vast blank area where n’Andana should be. Where I knew it was and still couldn’t detect anything more than ocean and air. Zyr and Karyn had found the lost continent using the ancient mapsticks. I’d mentally followed Karyn with a magic tether, and even sent Zynda and Marskal to rescue them using that tether. And still I couldn’t find the place again. Zynda and Zyr could fly there, following physical landmarks, but sending our people to n’Andana posed a grave risk.

  How the high priestess of Deyrr managed to do this—and why I couldn’t crack her enchantment—worried me greatly. It spoke to her enormous ability that she could hide herself—and an entire continent—from my sight, inside the barrier and not far from the seat of my own greatest power.

  Why she hadn’t yet launched the devastating attack that loomed so large in my visions had us all guessing. Zyr and Karyn had seen her massive, horrifying army. They’d verified that the high priestess had mentally enslaved probably the entire population of n’Andana. She’d even managed to reincarnate her god, Deyrr. The last time He’d walked the earth, the n’Andanans had nearly destroyed themselves to stop Him.

  And here we sat, waiting for them to finish amassing their resources in order to crush us.

  Not that we wanted to be in that position. Ursula had agreed that attacking our enemies first was the smartest plan, strategically thinking. However, we couldn’t be sure that the Dasnarian Empire was our actual enemy. Amassing a navy implied war, but they hadn’t declared anything. And we didn’t know if the emperor had allied with the Temple of Deyrr, who had attacked us, multiple times, but never all out.

  Even if we decided to go after either Dasnaria or Deyrr, none of the visions indicated we could win. Quite the opposite.

  Thoughtfully, I dug in the pocket of my gown for the topaz jewel Karyn and Zyr had stolen from around the high priestess’s neck. The focus stone for her magic. Holding it in the palm of my hand, I let it roll across my skin and absorb both my body heat and some of my ambient magic. I’d removed it from its pendant setting, so I could more easily keep it with me when I shapeshifted. A perfectly smooth sphere, though smaller than the Star of Annfwn, the topaz glowed with light in the same way. I’d put the Star inside the Heart of Annfwn for safekeeping, as I didn’t dare risk the high priestess getting hold of it.

  She’d been able to work more powerful magics than I ever could with this smaller focus stone; I couldn’t bear to contemplate what she might be able to do with the Star. So far, though she’d tried for it many times, we’d kept it out of her grasp. She had access to other stones—Karyn had seen the junior priests and priestesses, the high priestess’s minions all wearing them—but this had been the largest and likely the most flawless.

  It had also been fouled. If I held it too long against my skin, I’d start to smell Deyrr’s odor, along with oversweet jasmine. I’d been leery of communing too deeply with it, the way I did with the Star, but perhaps the time had come to risk more. The sense of impending doom intensified daily. I couldn’t afford cautious inaction.

  To prepare, I took a deep drink from the Heart, then disconnected from it, just in case. I didn’t want the high priestess accessing the Heart of Annfwn through me. Steadying myself, I dipped into the jewel, sliding my magic through the focus point…

  I jerked in reflexive panic as something seized me in its grip, yanking me out of my body like a hawk’s talon abruptly pulling a hapless fish into the air.

  “Andromeda,” a sweet voice crooned. “At last we meet.”

  The lovely, lethal face of the high priestess filled my vision, overwhelmingly large. We occupied a nebulous place, not anywhere physical, but an ethereal realm of her making. She’d caught me by surprise and jerked my consciousness into it, and now attempted to frighten me with tricks of perspective.

  Oh, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t be her prey. I was the Queen of the Tala, and a sorceress to be reckoned with. I wrested free of her grip and took control of my side of the ethereal realm. She frowned as I pulled back my perspective enough to see her full form, until we seemed to be two women of equivalent size facing each other in a cloudless space.

  The high priestess appeared as she did in physical form. I’d seen her before through the eyes of many of my friends—including in Ursula’s memories from when the high priestess nearly killed her—but never with my own. Petite, slim, blond, she was very much a classic Dasnarian beauty, except for her matte black gaze. Illyria, the priestess who’d wreaked such havoc at Ordnung, had eyes like that. The mark of Deyrr. I’d grown considerably in my abilities since that brief glimpse of Illyria before Ursula killed her, so I recognized the numinous quality to their lightless depths.

 
; The presence of the god showed in those unsettling eyes. Not pits at all, but the physical expression of Deyrr, the god of corruption, starvation, and immortality through living death. As Karyn had guessed, the high priestess had indeed been born a long time ago, but her body had died before her twenty-fifth birthday. Deyrr animated her, keeping her preserved like a doll made of wax.

  “Nothing to say to me, Andromeda?” the high priestess purred, pouting prettily. “Or should I call you Andi? I understand everyone does. I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you. A conversation between colleagues, if you will. I wish I could say between peers, but you and I both know you can’t come close to my level of power and expertise. I hope you won’t allow your understandable jealousy to come between us.”

  “And you are?” I asked blandly.

  She giggled, wagging a finger at me. “Don’t pretend you don’t know perfectly well who I am, Salena’s daughter. I knew your mother, by the by. Dreary person. Depressed and crazy. A waste of all that delightful talent. I certainly hope you don’t take after her.”

  When you’re a manifestation of your own consciousness, lying—or hiding reactions—becomes terrifically more difficult. Still, I managed. I raised an eyebrow at her. “I meant your name.”

  “You can call me high priestess.”

  “No.” I hadn’t loved my despot of a father, and I didn’t miss him in the least, but I had learned a few things from him. Titles have power. I wouldn’t allow her to force me into a subservient position by using hers.

  “No?” she echoed. “But that’s the only name I have.”

  “That’s a title, not a name, and you serve no deity I recognize. You are no priestess of mine.”

  Her visage clouded with annoyance, though she tried to plaster a serene smile over it. She couldn’t lie either. “Oh, but He knows you, Andromeda. Deyrr can crush your pitiful moon goddess under His heel. Now would be an excellent time to abandon that misguided loyalty and come over to our side. You know we’re going to win. I’m sure even with your amateur training and paltry gifts you’ve seen the future as clearly as I have. And there are many things you don’t know. You may believe you’ve won a few small skirmishes, but you haven’t—” She choked on the words.