Chapter One

Keepers of time live forever. They live forever and they watch as world after world is born; They watch as those worlds rise to their climaxes, then die away. They have watched the rise and fall of many countries, many empires, many rulers and monarchs; They have witnessed wars, peace, happiness and joy. It was only out of boredom that Sixteenth Timekeeper was watching Earth’s inhabitants on January 12, 3021. If there was anything more interesting to do, she wuldn’t have been idly staring at some unimportant mortal timelines. It was only because she was so bored that she saw the three figures flee. One ran from his monarch for a crime he had not committed. One ran from her village, exiled for being something she was not. One ran from those she had wronged to feed her family. Sixteenth had seen many such flights before, but these three intrigued her somehow. Their plight looked interesting, and studying their timelines, she figured that, with a little tweaking they could be made to meet up. She did the necessary tweaking, and so it was that she continued to watch the three figures—two female, one male—as their lives unfolded. She watched their timelines carefully; she could see them intertwining, forming a bond of friendship born out of necessity but carried on because of sincerity. Sixteenth’s boredom was washed away as she watched the three figures’ lives unfold before her eyes. They had rough times ahead—perhaps it would be fun to tweak their fates a little. She could aid them, maybe. She would have to make sure they weren’t under any other Timekeeper’s protection, but if they weren’t, then she would claim them as her own Chosen, those mortals who a Timekeeper protected and watched over. She stood up, resolving to check around.

Scheneu’s breath steamed in the bitter cold air as she trudged along. She had been walking for three days, and her feet were numb from the cold. She was shivering and her strength was waning. The young human didn’t know how much longer she would be able to hold out in the snow and the icy cold wind blowing in her face. She couldn’t drop to the ground, not here, not in the Wilds. There were beasts, fowl things that preyed on the weak and the helpless, and there were the fairies, rumored to be ruthless magic-wielders. The stories she’d heard about them made her shudder. Ever since the existence of other races—fairies, elves and suchlike—had been discovered in 2010, hatred had grown between them. The elves and the fairies got along with each other, and the humans tolerated the dragons as long as they didn’t disturb the villages—but humans, elves and fairies had a mutual hatred for each other.

But Scheneu’s strength dwindled by the minute, sapped by the stinging wind whipping her hair and making her gasp. She could go no further—not tonight. With fingers numbed by hours of exposure to the frozen outside world, Scheneu dug a quick hole in the deep snow. It was easily two feet deep, and she dug her hole as deep as she could. She quickly lowered herself into it, and the wind lessened. At least here she was sheltered from its icy rage. Scheneu curled herself up into a tight little ball on the floor of her hole, her hands tucked close to her body, and fell asleep. Her sleep was light and fitful, her dreams full of evil creatures of the night. But she had survived another day, and when she woke in the morning, she thanked the Timekeepers that she had survived another night.

Kishe’s sixth sense warned her just in time for her to leap aside and avoid the dagger that had been aiming for her throat. The young human’s reflexes were as quick as ever, but she couldn’t keep doing this forever. The irate elves behind her had amazing aim, and it was taking all her concentration to duck and dodge all their arrows and daggers. The hail of sharp weapons was unceasing, and the thief’s only other choice was to flea. And flea she did, nearly as quick as a fairy in flight and almost as agile as an elf. Long years of climbing walls and leaping quietly from window to ground had trained her body to be quick and light, and her lithe form would have been too quick for any human archer to even hope to shoot at. Many close calls and near captures had taught her to be fleet-footed and almost perfectly balanced, and it was partly this that allowed the young thief to move with such stealth. Even so, the deep snow that had piled up on the ground made her less sure of her footing. A misstep here, a slip of her foot that sent it below the crust of ice on top of the snow, could be fatal here. Kishe’s short black hair was plastered against her neck by her sweat, and her bangs very nearly fell into her eyes. She didn’t dare slow down to brush them away, though. Black eyes wide with unconcealed terror, she leaned to the right, dodging a flying dagger and nearly losing her precarious balance on the crust of snow. She knew well that humans were hated by elves, and she shuddered to think what would be done with her if she was caught by the angry beings behind her. It was bad enough that she was a human, intruding upon elven territory, but that she had tried to steal from the elves made it ten times worse. Fear and adrenaline pushed her onward, faster than she had ever thought possible, always barely dodging daggers and arrows.

Kishe was panting, stumbling and tiring when she finally saw a suitable hiding place. She was getting too tired to carry on much longer; she’d been running for a good fifteen minutes, and the elven archers and civilians were still right on her heals, shouting and shooting with as much vigor as ever. Quickly, Kishe made a sharp turn right and then another, so that she doubled back, running back along the line of elves, not ten feet to their right. It was extremely risky; if they heard her she was dead. Silently, she ran along the snow-covered plain, back toward a dead tree. She knew this place, and she also knew something she hoped the elves didn’t: the tree was hollow. It would allow her to slip inside and hide until they had given up.

Kishe’s family lived not far from there, in a tiny house that sat alone—the only one to be found for miles around. They lived on the huge, open plain the people now called Tradarre. It stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction; it was perhaps all that was left of the former Earth; the mountains had been leveled long past, the valleys closed. Now, the Tradarrean plain—flat and nondescript, with lush green grass in summer and spring and snow two feet deep in winter—covered the whole of what had once been North America. The lands beyond Tradarre were more wild than even the outskirts of the Plain, and no one had ventured there before.

Kishe threw herself into the dead tree as fast and as quietly as she could. Snow had been blown in by the winds that continually blew across the Plain, and the ground inside the tree was coated with a light dusting of white. But it was bearable, and Kishe sank down to squat with her back against the inside of the tree. And there she waited for hours as the elven searchers scoured the land for two miles in every direction for her. They did not think to search the trees, and it was because of this that Kishe’s life was spared. But really, it was not the fault of the elves that they overlooked her. If there had been no interference, they would have found her quickly. As it was, though, Sixteenth stepped in to save the young thief. Every time the elves looked towards the opening of the tree, she made it look as though it were covered in dead bark like the rest of the tree. None of them thought to second-guess the images they received. Sixteenth was pleased with her work, and when the elves had left, she returned to her place in the hall of the Timekeepers, to continue her vigil over her charges.

Rame was confused. He paced around his cell, walking along first one wall, then another, in a square. He stepped around the perimeter of the cell, over and over, lost in thought. He had done nothing wrong, or at least nothing that he knew of. He had been talking with his younger sister when there had come a knock on the door. Thinking that one of his friends was at the door, he had answered it without much apprehension. He should have been more suspicious. As soon as he had opened the door, the fairy noble’s arms had been pinned behind his back. One of the three fairies outside his door had grabbed a handful of his light brown hair and yanked his head up so that he was looking into the fairy’s eyes. “You are under arrest,” Said the stranger, uttering the lines he had been taught to speak. The lines that had been used in the days of Old Earth, and were still being used in New Earth. But why? What was going on?

Rame tried to ask, but another stranger’s hand over his mouth silenced the fairy-noble. He was bundled quietly away, and by the time his sister came to see what was taking him so long, he was all ready gone.

And now here he was, pacing restlessly around the edge of his cell. He was in the dungeons of the Fairy ruler—but he still wasn’t sure why. Fear nagged at the back of his thoughts—what would become of him? Why was he here? Was this arrest authorized at all? What would his sister think? Rame, barely the human equivalent of fifteen years old, didn’t have an answer to any of these questions. It made him more restless, and so his endless walking went on. Around and around and around the edge of his cell, around and around like his thoughts—spinning, but always ending up back where they began. It made him jumpy, the combination of the nagging fear and the deafening silence. He jumped at any small noise and unconsciously prepared himself for battle. But what was there to fight? Just another unanswerable question. There were too many questions—too much silence, and the light was almost nonexistent. Rame couldn’t tell whether it was day or night, but what he did know was that it was cold.

The young noble finally resorted to sitting on his knees in a corner of the cell, his wings tucked around him to try and keep him warm. The darkness was pressing on his eyes, the silence on his ears; it felt like the walls were closing in. He needed light—needed it badly. He felt like he was going to suffocate. And then, a shaft of light—moonlight, by the look of it—fell on his face. He stared at it, and he kept his eyes on it. It was light, and now the darkness didn’t weigh so heavily upon his thoughts. Rame fell into an uneasy doze, and the shaft of moonlight continued to shine on his face. The light was Sixteenth’s work, and high above New Earth, the Timekeeper glowed with pride.

Rame woke to a key being turned in a lock and the cell door swinging open. He got to his feet, his wings folded to his back; two fairy guards stood in the doorway, beckoning. He had no choice but to come. And come he did, fear spiking suddenly through him. What would happen next?

Rame’s arms were pinned roughly behind his back by one guard, and a gag was shoved into his mouth by the second. And he was bundled off, up many stairs and out of the oppressive darkness and damp of the dungeons. He was marched quickly down brightly-lit hallways, and the fairies they passed looked down and away from them. Why?

Finally, after a good ten minutes of walking, he was shoved through an ornate wooden door and into the throne room. This made no sense. The fairy lord wouldn’t put anyone in the dungeon, surely. He hadn’t done so in twenty years, so why should he start now?

“Rame Ladrinen, first and only son of the noble house of Ladrinen,” The guard announced, shoving Rame forward and to his knees. Rame didn’t fight—what use was there, and what reason? No use; no reason. It was best not to cross the guards.

“Good,” The king purred. “Rame Ladrinen, I have it from good sources that you have committed a great act of treachery. What do you have to say?”

“What treachery?” Asked Rame before he could stop himself. The king accepted a scroll from the servant boy standing next to him and read: “Rame Ladrinen, first and only son of noble Ladrinen house, was sighted by three witnesses the night of January 11, opening his door to a stranger. Further investigation revealed the stranger to be of the human race. Rame Ladrinen fed, watered and sheltered the human until midnight on the 11th, when the human thanked him and ran.”

“what?” Asked Rame. “I—“ the truth was that he had done no such thing. His last sighting of a human had been four or five years ago, when he had been running an errand that took him past Xani, and that human had been at least seventy feet away. “I did not shelter a human! I would never--!”

“Silence!” Roared the king. Rame quieted. “Rame Ladrinen,” The king began. “you have shamed your noble family. For this and for sheltering a human, I exile you to the Wilds. You must leave at once and be gone from the fairy city in two hours time. GO!” Rame left. He was allowed to pack quickly before he was turned away, but he was given no chance to bid his family farewell. He trudged away, dejected, with his head down, and making eye contact with no one. Whatever he had done, it had brought shame on his family. He tried to be ashamed of himself—he really did. But the thought kept nagging at the back of his brain as he heard the door close behind him. Why? Why had he been turned away, and what had he done to be dealt such cold treatment? He must have done something, he tried to reason. He tried convincing himself, but it didn’t work.

Rame walked for a good thirty minutes before he finally reached the borders of Strakyn. The guards at the gate didn’t even acknowledge his presence, and he passed through the gate unquestioned, unhindered and alone. He headed south toward the human cities; he would go around them—humans could be nasty to his people if they wished to be—and then head for the Wilds. He was loath to take up residence in one of the human cities, and so the Wilds was his only option. When Rame looked back, years and years later, he would say that it was his pride that he was grateful for. Because of it—because he had been unwilling to live alongside humans—he had managed to rescue and heal the exiled human named Scheneu. And later, partly because of that, he himself had been saved and taken care of by the young human thief Kishe. He would often ponder that life was an odd thing, and it worked in strange ways. It was almost like he was being repaid for saving a human.

Kishe’s brain worked to find any other explanation than that she was lost. Unfortunately, she couldn’t come up with anything other than that one thought: she was lost. She was lost, and she was probably not even that far from her own home. ‘this is ridiculous,’ she thought angrily as she trudged across the nondescript snow of the Tradarrean plane. She thought maybe she could trace her footprints, but they had been wiped out by those of her pursuers. Her talents didn’t include a good sense of direction, and so she stumbled in what she hoped was a straight line, tired out from her long run and stiff from her time crouched in the tree, trying to find any clue or any landmark that would lead her back home. High above, Sixteenth could see her turn a circle and begin to walk away from her home, towards the fairy city. She didn’t want that: The fairies would kill her if she came too close. So Sixteenth changed her timeline ever so slightly, and the thief wandered off in a totally new direction, leaving her home far behind. Fresh snow began to fall, obscuring the thief’s footprints as she walked.

Rame made good time. He had made it another ten miles by the time it was dark. He was by now far from Strakyn, and even farther from Xilta and Xani. He would have to take shelter in the open. Sighing, Rame began to gather what wood their was to build a fire. It would help to keep away what night predators lived in the Tamed lands, at least. Granted, not many wild things lived in the middle of the Tradarrean plain—the Tamed part, the people had named it—but the predators that got into it were fierce. Fortunately for Rame, a good, strong blaze would usually scare them off. So he made his fire, and he sheltered beneath a makeshift tent for the night, eating a small supper and a small breakfast the next morning, and then packing up to move on again.

By the next days end, Rame was nearly twenty-five miles from Strakyn, and by the time the sun set on the next night he had made another fifteen miles. Even at his quick pace he was not nearly halfway to the borders of Xilta and Xani, and he wasn’t sure his food would last him. All he could do was hope.

Hope was not enough. By the end of the tenth day, Rame was only 70 miles away from Strakyn; The human towns called Xani and Xilta were two-hundred miles from his old home. And his food was gone. He tried to find food in the outside—roots and berries—but there were none. Winter had fallen long past and the food was scarce. He was never a good hunter, but he tried. He brought down some small rabbits and once even a squirrel, but that was the best he could do. He saved as much of the food for as long as he could, and what he had hunted lasted him till he was perhaps one hundred and fifty miles from Strakyn. Xilta and Xani were another fifty miles away and his food would not last that long.

Rame set a quick pace for himself and by the end of the fifteenth day he was perhaps thirty miles from the human towns, and his food was again gone. It wouldn’t take him long now to reach the towns, but he had been eating so little that he was becoming weak from lack of food. He trudged on, but his pace grew slower and his step faltered more and more often. He rested frequently, and on top of all his other problems, it had started to snow.

The snow was piled up to Rame’s waste on the eighteenth day of his travel—the day he finally reached Xilta. By then, weak, shivering and exhausted, Rame had no choice but to enter the town. And this he did, slowly walking through the gates and stumbling down the main street. His head was dropped low with exhaustion and his body shook from cold and hunger. He looked a mess—but to the people of Xilta, he was a fairy.

The only warning Rame had before the stone flew was a shouted “Fairy filth!” He was too tired and starved to dodge in time and the rock slammed into the side of his head. He stumbled, fell to his knees and rose again, just in time to sprawl as another stone hit him in the back. He fell face-first into cold snow, and he heard the villagers laughing. There was a shattering sound and shards of broken pottery rained down around him; people were throwing pots, bowls and cups from upper windows. The assault continued as the humans released their full hatred upon the hapless noble, and Rame, too exhausted to rise now that he was lying down, didn’t really try to stop it.

The person who did stop it was a human. She was not a fool, so she didn’t actually come down into the street until the people had calmed. But she called to them from an upper window, told them to stop—that the fairy was dead, that they had done good work—and they desisted. When they had, she ran out doors and scooped the noble up. He was smaller than she had expected—perhaps three feet tall—and the wings that signified him as one of the enemies of humans were folded tightly to his back. He was bleeding—a result of the broken pottery—bruised and unconscious. She clucked her tongue as she carried him back into the house. He was thin and he was shivering. She guessed that he had been out and traveling for perhaps two weeks, maybe more, and he was simply too drained to stop the assault. Otherwise, the villagers would have probably all been killed.

The human tended Rame until he was back to his full strength. He was suspicious—surely there was a price for her services. And sure enough, there was. When he was back to full health, she asked him a favor.

“Noble?” She asked, walking into the room. She had never learned his real name and refused to call him “fairy” so she had simply taken to calling him “noble” instead.

“Yes?” Rame sat up, curious. The human had always been kind to him, but she didn’t talk to him unless she needed to.

“I have a…a favor to ask of you,” She said. “My daughter—my Scheneu—was cast out of our village not too long ago. She was sent away into the Wilds for being a “witch”. I know she is no such thing, and I wish you to go seek her out. This is my price for healing your wounds. Do you accept?” She was straightforward about it, and Rame liked that. That was mostly what made him accept.

“I will find her,” Said Rame. “but…If she has been cast out, she may be unable to return.”

“I know,” Said the woman. “But if she is not able to return, will you return by night, in secret, and bring me news of her?” This part of the favor complicated things. It would be dangerous, but now that Rame had accepted he might as well keep going.

“I will,” He replied. “I promise.” The woman looked a little worried, but she shouldn’t have been. Rame did not make promises lightly, and he would keep promises he made, and he would not make promises he could not keep. If he couldn’t return, he would send Scheneu back instead. If she could not return, he would. Either way, he felt like he was in this woman’s debt, and he would pay off the debt by bringing her news of her daughter. It shouldn’t be too difficult a thing to do, not for Rame.

Three weeks later, Rame was reconsidering. The Wilds was a huge place and if this young human had been cast out she could have gone anywhere. He had left the Tamed behind nearly two weeks previously, and he was deeply regretting that. The people who kept the streets and pathways in and between cities clean in the Tamed were not present here; so the snow was piled up to Rame’s waste, and sometimes higher, and trudging through it was horribly difficult. The only good thing about the Wilds was that there was plentiful food. The squirrels and other various small animals had taken refuge in the trees, and from there it was simple for an accomplished archer like Rame to shoot them down.

But the Wilds was not a good place to be when one is only three feet tall and traveling alone. At night, the nocturnal predators appeared. Mutated things, wild and fierce, stalked about in the darkness. And then there were the normal predators—wolves, for one, as well as bears. These hunters had taken to sleeping by day—if they did not, they would be shot down and killed by any travelers they tried to take down. And so Rame, too, took to sleeping by day and walking by night—at least then he wouldn’t be caught unawares if one of the night hunters decided that he looked like a good meal.

And so it was that at the end of the fourth week of travel, Rame made camp at break of dawn and prepared to eat and rest. Another night of searching for the human girl had left him exhausted, cold and hungry, although that was not uncommon nowadays. Rame had almost grown to ignore the hunger and the exhaustion, but not quite.

Rame was about to begin putting up his tent when there was a high-pitched shriek and a small shape threw itself into the clearing he was camped in. Rame, caught by surprise, leapt to his feet and drew the sword at his side. He, being the cautious fairy he was, had packed both a bow and sword—preferring to use the bow, but thinking the sword might be of use. And it was.

Seconds after the shape—a girl of perhaps thirteen or fourteen—had fallen to the ground hear him, another, larger shape crashed into the clearing. This one was one of the night hunters. Up and about late, he thought—but it was merely chasing a meal, and doubtless it would bed down once the meal had been caught and eaten.

The human pulled herself up and staggered behind the noble, shaking where she stood from cold and fear. Rame looked at the hunter. It was a lion, he guessed. Too large for a wolf.

It lunged. Rame brought his sword up quickly, and managed to keep the claws from ripping him to shreds. But the hunter’s weight threw him backwards and he nearly lost his balance. A pair of shaking hands steadied him and he brought his sword up again blocking a second attack. He thrust the weapon forward and the beast retreated, howling in pain. A long, deep gash ran from its shoulder to its hind leg. It yowled again, and then turned tail and fled.

Rame finally turned around to regard the young human. She was covered in snow and her clothes were tattered and torn. She was thin and exhausted-looking, and her hands—still on his shoulders—were trembling. At first Rame thought it was from cold. But then he saw the expression of pain that flashed across her face and he sat her down near the fire to look at her.

She was bleeding. A set of long, deep claw marks ran down her back, and blood flowed from them. Apart from those, she had numerous other scabbed cuts, scrapes and scratches, and another set of claw marks marred her left arm. She had lost a lot of blood, and Rame immediately opened his pack in search of bandages. When he found them, he went straight to work to stop the bleeding. She had evidently run into the lion perhaps fifteen minutes before, and she had run. It was only luck that she had stumbled upon him, and it had probably saved her life.