Chapter One

          I stood there gazing into the valley below. The morning mist made the view foggy, as if the valley was protected by an invisible barrier. I rolled my shoulders and flexed my arms to release some of their stiffness. My muscles were sore from tossing and turning all night. I had been traveling for weeks already. I still wasn't used to sleeping on the hard ground.
          I was beginning to miss the soft cot that had been mine for so many years. The monks had wanted me to stay but I had insisted on leaving. I needed to find this place, to see where it happened.
          I blinked my tired eyes to clear my blurred vision. From the top of the rise I could see the entire valley as the sun slowly rose causing the sky to glow with a soft pink radiance. The sheer beauty was enough to take my breath away.
          Tall trees poured into the valley from the mountains surrounding it. Rowan trees the monks called them. They spotted the land, providing shelter for the animals living in the valley. The lush flowers flooding the valley floor blew in the spring breeze. They resembled a sea of soft waves, like the ocean I had read so much about.
          Crumbling heaps of rock were all that was left of the houses of the people that once called this place their home. Like broken tombstones, they were scattered among the trees and flowers. Now the valley was nothing more than a cemetery spread out before me.
          This was all that was left of Tais, the hidden village of Kengara. It was once a place I too called home. Now it was merely a ghostly shadow floating in the depths of my memory. There was nothing left of the generations of families that once thrived here. Nothing remained but those grey stones that to this day still held the dark, soot smudged marks upon their rough surfaces.
          The gentle morning breeze rustled around me causing my cloak’s hood to slide away, revealing the brilliant red hair cascading down my back in soft ripples. I was no longer the innocent little girl I had been on that horrid day so many years ago. My innocence had been taken from me along with all I had known. I had nothing but my vague memories of what life was like here before the terror began. Before my life changed forever.
          As I stood breathing in the crisp air, I imagined I could still hear the screaming of the people as they died. So many lost their lives at the hands of the invading men. The shouts of rage and fear had echoed through the evening air that night. Our village had been set upon by an army out only for blood and death. The valley was torn apart by their rampage. The flames they started ate away at everything in their path.
          The memory of blood and smoke flooded my senses. The feel of death still seemed to linger in the air here. Or maybe it was just my memories conjuring the long ago ghosts of an ancient battlefield. A memory of the people forever etched into the land.
          I barely noticed the rays of the spring sun as they heated my flesh, wrapping me in it's warm blanket, so lost was I to the memories that shimmered before my eyes. I felt no pain as my legs buckled beneath me, my knees slamming into ground where I had stood. I stayed there, down in the grass, and stared at my past. My head throbbed with the dark memories. A ringing began in my ears. Like a wall of water, my memories washed away the world in which I lived, plunging me into a living nightmare. My breathing was ragged as that long ago fear gripped my heart once more. Broken emotions I longed to forget.