eep in the north reaches of the Cargid Sea, on the island of Hemanen, huddled against the side of Mount Pemberset like a piglet to its mother’s teat, was the barony of Ledgerwood. The Baron Ledgerwood was a bountiful man, of whom it was said that he treated his cattle like they were his butlers, his butlers like they were his children, and his children like they were the Archdukes of Strohsvane. In short, it was a cheerful district of plenty, where there were always enough stores for the long winters, and every freedman went to bed fully contented with his lot. And not only contented, but oftentimes even joyful that whatever gods they cared to acknowledge had seen fit to locate them in such an altogether pleasant place.

Baron Ledgerwood’s wife, whose name was Candida, gave him seven sons, each of noble bearing, long limbs, and broad shoulders, just like their father. The seven sons grew fast, and soon were ranging the steep hillsides of Ledgerwood, watching over their father’s flocks, hunting, chasing down foxes and boars, and sometimes the young girls of the village. Needless to say, the seven sons of the Baron were much beloved throughout the barony.

In the winter of Ledgerwood’s twenty-ninth year as Baron, when Candida was pregnant with the Baron’s eighth child, a traveler brought news of a dire famine in the county of Zalack, two days ride west. The Baron immediately summoned up his charitable nature and, after several drinks, pledged strongest aid to Zalack. The Baron Ledgerwood had left his barony exactly once before, when as a young man he rode four days to Strohsvold, the capital city of Hemanen, to pledge his fealty to King Halldór. Unwilling to leave his pregnant wife behind, he prepared his finest carriage, filled it with furs and cushions, and made ready to depart.

If the Baron Ledgerwood had a fault, it was that he was headstrong, at times even imprudent. So when one of Hemanen’s deadly northeasterly snowstorms threatened, storms which were known to erase a man from all sight in a minute and a town in an hour, he thought only of the starving masses in Zalack crying out for him, their savior. He thought of the weeping mothers with no food, whose children were dying in their arms for lack of milk. So, those things in mind, he steeled his resolve and he ordered his procession forwards through the storm.

When they reached the pass of Zan-Zeller, disaster struck. While Baron Ledgerwood was in front of the train, breaking a path through so the wagons and horses could follow, a ledge on the cliff above them collapsed and sent down a cascade of snow, striking the Baron’s finest carriage, knocking it over and sending Candida flying against the far wall. When the Baron pulled her out from under the crushing weight of the snow she was already weak and short of blood. All the Baron could do was watch her red life spilling out and staining the heavy packed snow. That night the Baron and his men made camp in the pass to weather the storm, and Candida slowly died. By the morning, she was dead, and her child had been born, a girl, small and pale. He called her Eleyna, because she was a born like a ray of cold sunshine bouncing off the ice. Eleyna was so small at birth that even the Baron was forced to admit that she likely wouldn’t survive even a week. But Eleyna survived the slow, three day trip home, survived her father’s anguish and neglect, survived her infancy and youth.

After the death of his wife, the Baron was grief-stricken. He wandered his house in a fog of anguish, lamenting and singing long, mournful songs with no words. After overhearing a scullery boy make the joke that, since the Baron had lost a wife and gained an infant, he had effectively shed the house of 130 pounds of woman-flesh, he beat the boy senseless. No one blamed him.

As for Eleyna, she only knew her father as distant and reserved, and never imagined that he could be otherwise. She satisfied herself playing with her seven brothers, learning to hunt, fish, run, and wrestle as they did. By the time she was sixteen, she could leap tree to tree like a squirrel from one side of the barony to the other, and she could swim three times the length of the west pond, even in December. She showed no interest in marriage or the courtly affairs of Strohsvold, and her father showed no interest in forcing such things on her.

In the spring of her sixteenth year, while running the boundary of the barony on a warm green morning, Eleyna was spotted by a traveler, riding the wide road between Strohsvold to the south coast that cut west through Ledgerwood, around Mount Pemberset. This meeting meant little to Eleyna, who barely noted the traveling party in passing, but it meant everything to the traveler, who, the moment that he saw her, fell deeply, intensely into a sort of love with Eleyna. Her lithe, young, willful body called to him like the sun is called inexorably to the western horizon. He vowed that, out of all the precious things in the world, he would take her above all others, and not rest until he possessed her. This traveler was Prince Arden of Ixthan, who had never before had any difficulty in wooing a woman, and did not expect to start now.

The next morning Arden intercepted Eleyna’s run and asked her to stop. She watched him from a distance, muscles still tensed and ready to run.

“Where do you run from, and to?” asked Arden.

“This is my father’s land,” said Eleyna. “I need answer to no one.”

Arden smiled and put up his hands. “I don’t mean to impede you. It’s just that I find you exceedingly fair, desirable, beautiful, sensual.” He turned his hand, making visible the princely signet ring on his third finger.

Eleyna cared nothing for rings, princes, or their ideas of sensuality. “Unfortunately,” she said, “I don’t share your strong amorous feelings. So I suppose I will be off.”

“If you accompanied me,” said Arden, “I would make you my wife, one day to be queen of a vast and wealthy kingdom.” This argument had never failed to help Arden bed a women in the past.

“No thank you,” Eleyna said, laughing. “I’m sure your wealthy kingdom will be better off without me, and I without it.” She ran off, faster than Arden could follow, leaving the prince at once confounded and piqued.

Arden’s company made camp one more night, and the next morning he met Eleyna again at the same spot. “Why do you persist in irritating me?” she asked him. “Don’t you have other things, affairs of state to attend to, if you are a prince as you claim?”
“Some affairs are more pressing than others,” said Arden, taking Eleyna’s hand and putting it on his chest.

Eleyna pulled her hand away from him, shuddering in distaste. “Don’t be so forward,” she told him, “or I may be forced to hurt you.”

“Love is an insistent emotion, it demands immediate and decisive action,” Arden told her. Meanwhile, one of his bodyguards stepped from the bushes behind Eleyna and struck the butt of his sword to her head in a quick blow. “I hope you haven’t damaged her much,” Arden said, watching his men carry her small, crumpled body.

When Eleyna woke, she was in Arden’s carriage, with the doors and windows tightly locked. She quickly broke open one of the windows, and was rewarded with another blow to the head. When she awoke the next time, she was on the deck of Arden’s boat, the Avila, bound south by southeast, towards Ixthan and a throne she did not desire with a husband she could not abide.

It is here that our story begins.