Fall From the Moon (A Bánalfar Novel Book 1) Read online

  Counting to ten was difficult, but it wasn’t the searing pain in my leg that distracted me from my task of “One … two … three …” It was the ghost of Doc. And Zhou. And Bari. And the twenty other members of our contingent. Katrina, whose face had melted off because she couldn’t keep from embracing Dave’s corpse when it was finally recovered. Addison, whose lungs eventually brought up blood because she stayed to help Doc, even though she knew what the end would be.

  “Seven … eight …” And here I was — the lone survivor — because I’d stayed tucked up, nice and safe, until the danger had passed. I might have been named after the daughter of a Viking king, but sitting there, injecting the microscopic robots that could save my life into my leg, I had to confront the fact that the only reason I’d survived was because I was a coward. Yes, it was better that I wasn’t accompanying my comrades on their journey to the sun. They deserved glory. I deserved everything that awaited me below.

  I programmed the coordinates of a wide, open plain that reminded me of the Mongolian steppes as the landing site. Away from civilization, but not too far. The computer had told me there were towns in the foothills to the east and more in the wooded area to the west. I supposed that someone would see the falling “star” and come investigate. I would have. But I doubted my reception would be what I would have given myself. Maybe it was lucky the escape pod had no self-destruct mechanism. The technology would be proof I wasn’t a witch or something, but it would announce that I was an alien.

  The Palmas Cove had already begun its course toward the sun when I pushed the button that detached the tiny, two-seat pod from the ship. I watched the Cove glide away between me and Teridun’s blood-red moon, the color a reminder of the enormous price paid, before it headed toward the furnace of the sun.

  Below me, Teridun Four was not so different in appearance from Earth — clouds, seas, continents — but I knew enough about the galaxy to understand that anything could await me.

  It was ironic. I was still gazing at my grave. No one would know I was there. Whatever else happened, the planet before me would be my last. Cremated, buried, left above to be torn apart by animals, I was looking at my final resting place.

  A loud, insistent beeping from the control panel cut through my macabre thoughts. The pod began to shake violently. Everything I looked at was nothing but a blur. I reached out a hand, desperately trying to pull the scrolling message into focus, but my hand kept closing around nothing. Or worse, slamming into the panel.

  Wham!

  My ears rang from the impact. Something had hit the pod, but then the shaking became spinning and the ground rushed up, filling the window. I closed my eyes, held onto the seat, and prayed.

  Don’t let me die. Don’t let me die. Don’t —

  THE WORLD STILL spun. A roaring like the ocean, only magnified, filled my ears. But instead of white and blue, the world was now green and blue. The kaleidoscope of images shifted until they became something that looked like hills, but I couldn’t make them stay still. My head pounded, vibrated with a roar I could feel even in my tear ducts. I turned, searching for the walls that should have enclosed me, and fell to my knees. Long grass tickled my hands.

  Time became a wash of blurred forms, heat, foreign yet familiar smells, and swirling grass. Almost like a night in Tokyo where I’d walked into a club and the rest of the evening dissolved into nothing more than lights and disjointed images.

  But there was no traffic here. Just grass. And a pressure on my upper arm. I tore my gaze away from the wavy, green blur and stared at my arm, willing my eyes to focus on whatever was causing the discomfort.

  “Tay! Tay! Mood nee do lait.” A baritone voice wormed its way through the roaring.

  The shifting images began to settle. Long blond hair swung around a thin, handsome face that was not that foreign, though something seemed off. Blue eyes stared back at me. Humanoid.

  The man gently pulled on my arm again. A flash of silver caused my eyes to water. Armor. He was wearing armor. “Mood nee do lait!” His voice was more insistent this time.

  I could practically feel the thrum in my head as my language chip started its decoding program. It had ninety-thousand languages stored on it, but this one was new. Not surprising, since the planet was off limits. It would only take a few hours, if the people around me continued speaking, and I would not only begin to understand their language but speak it. A necessity for a customs specialist and essential for my survival here.

  The analyst part of my brain finally kicked in. I knew that I’d hit my head — hard — at some point during the crash. The blurred vision and ringing in my ears were proof of that. And a mental whirring began as my ingrained protocol process kicked in. Assess.

  A cluster of men behind Blondie possessed similar hair and green robes over articulated armor, though they were wearing helmets. Some were astride, others standing and holding reins to creatures that looked like a cross between horses and deer. Knights. Security.

  I looked again from the hand around my arm to its owner’s face. Concern. Urgency. I blinked as a wave of pain accompanied the analysis.

  “Cortan!” one of the other men shouted. Blondie turned his attention to something behind me. His hand tightened on my arm.

  I followed his gaze. A line of men on horseback appeared over the ridge of one of the rolling hills in the grassy sea and drew to a standstill. They were darker, more wiry than the ones now with me.

  Appearances can be deceiving. It’s one of the tenets of customs and diplomacy. A stabbing pain shot between my eyes. It was too soon to do this. The repbots needed more time to work on whatever damage had occurred to my brain.

  “Mood nee do lait.”

  Just because someone finds you first doesn’t mean you should go with them. Sometimes “the first” can be the death of you.

  Blondie sighed heavily. Panic crept through my belly. Would he throw me over his shoulder and carry me off? The sound of scraping metal filled the air as I hesitated.

  “Cortan!”

  A horse on the hill stamped impatiently. The cloak of its rider flared around him with the motion. My stomach pitched. Something wasn’t right with the men on the hill. My brain scrambled to process the information but a wave of pain shut it down. I took a step toward Blondie.

  He scooped me up and tossed me on the back of one of the strange horses before swinging up behind me. One arm clamped me against his chest, the other grabbed the reins. Blondie clucked to the horse and we thundered off, his men moving to protect a cart I now noticed next to my escape pod. Other men with ropes were attempting to hoist it onto the cart.

  “Cosul, mo banorisa. Drea nigh dull,” he said in my ear. The whir in my head caused my eyes to water. Of course, that also could have been the wind streaming by my face as the horse covered the grassy sea in massive strides.

  I’m going to be sick, I thought, just before I passed out.

  A gentle rocking motion matched the throb that pulsed through my head with every heartbeat, the pain somewhat mitigated by the cool air that brushed my face.

  “Are you sure she’s alive, Heymond?”

  Rescued. We’d finally been rescued. I lifted my head.

  “Welcome back, princess.”

  My breath caught. I opened my eyes then gulped back a scream. I wasn’t in my bunk on the Palmas Cove fighting off the mother of all hangovers. Our distress call hadn’t been answered. The nightmare had been real. The rocking motion was the stupid horse, and I was still in Blondie’s arms.

  Only now he’d been joined by a company of men. And I understood them. I must have been out for hours, long enough that the chip had decoded whatever language Blondie and the others spoke.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To the castle. Valemar is expecting you.”

  Expecting. That didn’t sound good.

  I kept silent and took in my surroundings. The road wound through a wood of tall, ancient trees. At least, I took them to be ancient from the
girth of their trunks and the open space around them. They had long since crowded out any competition except for some kind of bracken that dotted the forest floor wherever sunlight reached through the leaves. The air had the unmistakable scent of chlorophyll, and the horses’ hooves made a dull clomping on the earth.

  And what strange horses they were. The shape of their heads was like the deer on Earth, with bumps that made me wonder if someone had cut off their horns. But they were bulky, with tails and manes like horses, and solid, not cloven, hooves.

  The men were not that strange, though all of them looked like their hair had never seen a barber even if their faces had. Not a whisker among them, and all had long, straight hair like Blondie.

  Which I needed to stop calling him. Rule number two: Always get their names.

  I’d developed a list of rules for myself when I first began at Agçay Enterprises. Customs, protocol, and politics can throw you into the deep end, as I quickly learned. Hence rule number one: Things are never what they seem. When you learn things the hard way, you want to remember them. Especially if it’s not you who had to learn that lesson.

  I mentally pulled up my work persona and put it on. For the foreseeable future, there would be no Astrid Carr, only Protocol Specialist Carr. A piece of armor to match the ones the men wore. Even if mine was weak. The pounding in my head kept drumming out my thoughts.

  “Who is Valemar?” I asked.

  There was a chuckle. “Our king, my princess.”

  I tried very hard to keep my body from tensing. It was either a good thing that I was on my way to the highest authority or it was very bad. And it was the second time that Blondie had called me “princess.”

  Banorisa – princess, the chip supplied. So third time. It was a puzzle I was willing to let slide for the moment. “And you are?”

  “Heymond, captain of the King’s Guard.”

  There were a million questions I wanted to ask, but rule number seven — Don’t ask about what you should already know — tied my tongue. How far have we come? What are you doing with my ship? Why is your king expecting me?

  The last one was the most troubling. The answer could have been simple. Someone had ridden ahead and notified the castle of today’s strange events and, hence, I was expected. But the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck had lifted, and rule number thirteen was Don’t ignore your gut, and I was pretty sure my gut and my hair were connected.

  I tamped down the thought as my stomach rolled and pain stabbed between my eyes. I was in no condition to do this. I’d keep my mouth shut and my ears open and just try to survive the next twenty-four hours. Or however long their day was.

  The road meandered through stretches of woodland and farms. The place reminded me of Nottinghamshire in England. The area had a lushness to it. Farms were tidy, full of crops and healthy-looking livestock. The woods were wild but inviting.

  Heymond skirted around the small towns that we encountered, so I was not surprised when he took us around a larger one. We forded a river within sight of the town then followed the river on the bank opposite it. The castle that came into view was magnificent, with towers and ramparts. Stained glass glittered in many of the windows.

  The flag waving in the breeze was quartered blue and green. A crowned, bearded, blue creature with a tail like a fish sat in one green field with a green, stag-like animal in a rampart, upright fighting position, on the blue beneath.

  Heymond halted his horse-like creature near a small boat tied up on the bank of the river. The hairs on my arms rose again. The Tower of London has a watergate. Known as the Traitor’s Gate, it was the entrance used by prisoners in the castle’s ancient past. The passageway had the benefit of forcing new arrivals to view the piked heads of recently executed prisoners as they passed under London Bridge. A decoration I was glad to find missing here. They were, however, taking me in the backdoor, and the significance of the gesture was not lost on me.

  Heymond dismounted and helped me slide off. He led me to the waiting boat. I hesitated before I took the boatman’s hand.

  “And you’re bringing me in the back way, why?” I asked, trying for the regal tone of a princess.

  “Too many eyes, my princess. There are those who won’t be happy you’re here.” Heymond bowed slightly and extended his hand. I gave him a hard look but said nothing. That didn’t keep me from cursing the truth of rule number five: There’s always intrigue.

  I took the hands offered me as I stepped into the boat, then held back a gasp as the boatman’s hair swung forward and revealed his ears, something that had been hidden beneath the helmets of the others. They were curved ears, something between an elf and a wolf. The erect ears of a predator.

  I allowed myself a gulp as I stepped toward the seat, my back to the others. The pounding in my head renewed as my heart kicked into readiness to fight or flee. Neither of which was an option. I balanced myself on the seat, thinking of a question I could ask, just to get a chance to see their teeth. Heymond and his men had talked off and on for hours, but I hadn’t cared. Hadn’t paid attention. Not that the chances were great that they’d actually eat me. Still, I’d had a close call once on Peryglis Seven, and it was best to be prepared. Even if it was being prepared to die.

  “Do I need to worry about the eyes inside the castle?” I asked imperiously.

  Heymond chuckled. His teeth were flat like mine. “No, my princess. We’ll have eyes on them.”

  There were few eyes to see me as we made our way from the watergate. The passageways twisted back and forth upon themselves. We went up a few sets of stairs, and then we were in a grand hallway that I knew would lead to the throne room. Glances lingered on me and heads turned to whisper, but there were no shocked looks on the faces we passed.

  The throne room, however, was surprisingly empty. The man who rose from the throne as we entered was tall, even taller than Heymond. His long hair was white-blond, a perfect backdrop to his crown of leafy gold branches interlaced with rolling silver waves and studded with blue and green stones. His long green robes glittered with an iridescence. The king’s expression briefly showed surprise before it was covered by a mask of graciousness. I’d met his type before. Handsome. Proud. Lethal.

  His eyes flicked toward a woman lingering by a side door. Deep red hair flowed to her waist, the darkest red I’d ever seen that didn’t come out of a bottle, almost matching her robes. She gave him a barely perceptible nod. I swallowed dryly as every warning bell in my system went off.

  Heymond bowed his head. “Raislos is aware.”

  “And the craft?” A voice like a polished stone flowed from the king’s perfect lips. It was smooth yet ungiving and nestled against me like the heated stones of an Altraxan massage. I wanted more.

  “On its way.”

  Heymond’s words broke through my distraction, and I realized they were talking about the escape pod. How long had I been out there, wandering incoherently? If they’d seen my fall to earth, it still would have taken hours to mount the retrieval.

  The king gave a nod, and Heymond turned to leave. The look he shot me was inscrutable. The king made a tiny gesture of dismissal, and the red-haired woman melted away through the door leaving the two of us alone.

  “Astrid Carr at your service,” I said.

  The king’s mouth curled into a thin smile. “I hope to be of yours, my princess, for I fear we have a problem.”

  “Oh?” I asked, pasting my “curious” smile on my face.

  The king wandered over to a small table and poured a glass of what looked to be wine. “The steppe where you landed is … disputed territory, and the Cordair are not as accommodating as we are.” My mind flashed back to the appearance of the men on the ridge. I blinked back a shooting pain. There was something about them I should know. “And as you have chosen to seek refuge with us,” the king continued, “I thought I should make you aware of what you’re facing.”

  He extended the glass of wine to me which I declined with a shake of my hea
d. A true smile crossed his face with a huff of laughter then he brought the glass to his lips and drank. “There. It’s not doctored in any way. You’re welcome to this one, or I could pour you another. No way to guarantee there’s nothing in the other glass, though.” An eyebrow arched. He’d taken my measure surprisingly quick.

  “Maybe later. And since I’ve introduced myself, perhaps you’d be willing to let me know whom I’m addressing. Your Majesty,” I added.

  “No?” he said, referring to the wine and drank before replying. “I’m Valemar Dönal Carbrev, King of Bánalfar and the Lian Isles.” He poured wine into another glass and held it out to me. “You’re going to need this.” I hesitated then took it from him. The glass was paper-thin and filled with a yellow wine that looked and smelled like a bright summer day. “I don’t think you’re the fainting sort, but still …”

  “No,” I said, and drew up the invisible armor I’d forged from nine years of dealing with nearly every type of intrigue imaginable. I flashed him an inscrutable smile. “I’m not the fainting type.”

  “Hmm.” His lips turned up in amusement before he continued. “Tomorrow Raislos of the Cordair will appear on my doorstep and claim you and your ship as his property.”

  I was barely conscious of bringing the wine to my lips before I swallowed. Valemar’s eyes danced with amusement. He picked up the carafe and brought it forward. “There’s only one thing that will stop him from claiming you.”

  I kept my gaze on the wine flowing into my half-empty glass. “And that is?”

  “If you’re my wife.”

  THE SOUND OF breaking glass filled my ears. Strong fingers closed over mine. “I think I need to sit down,” I said weakly. My knees shook and threatened to collapse beneath me. As the only seat in the room was the throne, I allowed Valemar to steer me through the side door. It swung shut with a heavy thud, closing us in.

  He pulled out one of the chairs from around the large table. Council chambers, my brain automatically supplied, clued in by the dispatch box, writing paraphernalia, and maps scattered across the table. The red-haired woman had thankfully vanished.