Hello! I hope everyone is having a nice week. Mine has been good. I did my labs yesterday and saw my oncologist today. He said he is pleased with my blood work and chemo will go ahead tomorrow. I am excited because I ordered a new mattress and had it shipped to a friend’s house. It arrived today and he will bring it over on Saturday. I am sooooo looking forward to it!

Here is the Tuesday teaser, Chapter 3 of the Storm King. Just for kicks, here is an image that I think looks like Jerriel.

The Storm King: Chapter Three

^{copyright Maddy Barone 2024}

Ashley jolted to her feet, groaning at the pain in her elbow. The sleeve was painfully tight around the swollen flesh of her arm. The early morning light gleamed weakly on the blond hair Maya shook back away from her face. They both looked blearily at the Erabiri who had opened the gate. One man, older than the others, stood on a nearby rock and shouted at all of them in the pen.

“Wake up, Thessian filth! I am Faldon, son of Ottil, and I speak in the voice of Rodir, King of Erabir. Your city has fallen to our hand. Your lord surrendered to us last night.”

One of the men Ashley and Maya had spoken with last night glanced at Ashley and called back, “Where is Lord Grimst?”

Faldon, son of Ottil, sneered. “Don’t worry about him. You have enough to worry about for yourself.”

“Why?” the man asked but was drowned out when Faldon continued.

“All of you, form a line. One by one approach the gate.”

The Thessians muttered and murmured, apparently not moving fast enough for Faldon. He bellowed, “Move!”

More Erabiri men came into the corral, all wearing swords, but carrying whips in their hands. “Form a line,” one of those said. “Anyone who hangs back will get a lash. Move it!”

Maya and Ashley exchanged a look and shuffled to join the back of the winding line. Not everyone moved quickly enough. One man screamed when the whip whistled through the air and cracked against his back.

“Shut up, filth,” the Erabir told him. “You can dole out lashes but not take one? Slaves are whipped, and if you are lucky, that is what you will be. Move!”

Ashley clutched at Maya’s arm. “Slaves?” she gasped.

Maya patted her shoulder. “Hang in there. It’ll be okay. You just need to find Jerriel.”

“Right,” Ashley muttered, scrutinizing every Erabiri she could see. Would she even recognize him? How long had it been since she—er, Valdis—had helped him escape? He had been fifteen then, and Valdis had been sixteen. If time moved the same here as it had in their world, then he would be twenty-four. But who knew if time moved at the same pace? And most of these men looked like they were in their twenties. We’re pinning all our hope on the fact that Jerriel will recognize me and help us, Ashley thought, trying push the feeling of hopelessness back. But what if he doesn’t? Her heart pounded so hard at that thought she worried she would puke. An even worse thought occurred to her. What if Jerriel doesn’t actually exist?

The line shuffled slowly toward the open gate. As each person reached the gate the Erabiri man posted there spoke to them, and then searched for something on a roll of paper he held. Ashley craned her head to see what happened next. The Thessian was waved through the gate and joined a cluster of people guarded by more Erabiri.

Someone in the line asked one of the warriors what was happening. He used a very polite tone, so the warrior only snarled instead of using the whip.

“You’ll see the King. He will decide your fate.”

Maya and Ashley gradually made their way up to the front of the line. “Name?” the Erabiri warrior demanded of me.

Ashley hesitated. “Ashley Johnson.”

Maya corrected her. “Valdis Grimst.”

The warrior frowned suspiciously. “Which is it?”

Ashley hoped this was the right thing to do. “Valdis,” she admitted cautiously.

He ran a finger down the writing on the papers in his hand. His finger stopped with a stabbing motion. He jerked his chin to the group of Thessians surrounded by Erabiri on his right. “Go there and wait.” He turned to Maya. “Name?”

“Maya Scholl.”

He looked at her tangled blond hair for a moment before perusing the paper in his hand. He turned the page over and read it again. “Not on the list,” he grunted before waving another man over. “Tarriel, take her to the evacuees.”

“Wait,” she said. “I want to stay with Ash—Valdis.”

“No, you don’t, sweetheart.” His smile almost looked sympathetic. “You really don’t. You have a better chance with the ones the King is allowing to leave.”

“Maya?” Ashley began, but the other man had grabbed Maya’s arm in a punishing grip and forced her away. “Maya!”

“I don’t want to leave,” Maya shouted as she struggled to get free. “Let me go!”

Tarriel grabbed her by the throat and shook her. “You can go, or you can die.”

Ashley had trouble breathing, but no one was choking her. “Maya, don’t worry, I’ll find you later, okay? Once I talk to J—”

The first man shoved Ashley. “Get over there with the others!”

She watched in horror as Maya was dragged away, kicking and screaming. She’d heard that phrase before, ‘kicking and screaming’, but this was literal. This couldn’t be happening. This nightmare had gone on long enough. She wanted to wake up right now. She pinched herself hard enough to bruise. Nothing changed. Why was she still here?

Another warrior came to Ashley and raised his whip. “Move, woman!” he snarled.

Helpless to do anything else, Ashley scurried toward the Thessians to the right of the gate.

She tried to watch Maya as she was taken away, but she couldn’t see her, and soon she couldn’t hear her either. Maya’s supportive presence had been the only reason she hadn’t freaked completely out. Now what would she do?

Maya would tell her to calm down. She’d ask, How do you walk a thousand miles? One step at a time. Okay, Ashley told herself, you can do this. First step: find Jerriel. Yes, she had to find Jerriel. She sidled cautiously up to one of the Erabiri guards. “Excuse me,” she said as politely as she could. “Some years ago, I knew an Erabiri boy named Jerriel.”

He looked down at her out of hard, nearly black eyes outlined in kohl. She remembered writing that Jerriel’s eyes looked like black ink except when he was in the sun, when his irises were barely perceptible as dark, dark brown. “That’s why you are here.”

“It is?” Relief made her wilt. Jerriel was real, and he was here. “Where is he?”

“You’ll see him soon enough.”

“Today?”

“Before noon,” he confirmed. The dark amusement in his voice confused her. But the important thing was that she would soon see Jerriel. Relief loosened the muscles in Ashley’s shoulders. Jerriel would straighten this mess out and help her find Maya.

Nearly two hours later, the unwieldy group of prisoners was marched through the city. Grimstaborg was oddly empty. Other than some corpses which the group had to detour around Ashley saw nobody except more Erabiri warriors who joined the group. Ashley purposely avoided looking at the dead. She couldn’t do anything for them, and if she thought about them too much, she would lose it. She was barely hanging onto her calm as it was.

An hour of walking in her thin silk shoes gave Ashley blisters on her heels and bruises on her arches and brought them to a large rectangular stone building that looked like a cathedral. The doors halfway down the long side were large and ornately carved. There were colored glass windows nearer to the roof than the ground.

The guards directed the prisoners to the back and through a small door. It looked like a cathedral from the inside too. It was a large open room about forty or fifty yards long by twenty yards wide, with a high ceiling painted with what Ashley thought might be gods and goddesses. The floor was large squares of white marble alternating with dark red squares in a checkerboard pattern. It was an empty space punctuated only by marble columns supporting the ceiling.

Ashley tried to remember if she had written about the Thessian religion but couldn’t recall anything. At the far end of the room was a low stage, like where an altar would be in a Christian church. At the front of the stage was a large, ornate chair. Maybe not a chair. It was more like a throne, like what a cardinal or bishop might sit in during mass at home. No one sat in the chair, but six Erabiri stood around it. The men and the chair were too far away for Ashley to see them clearly, and the light from the windows was dim, so she couldn’t tell if one was Jerriel.

Her hands fisted. What if she couldn’t recognize him? She tried to remember how she’d described the character. Handsome, of course. Large eyes of gleaming, liquid black under straight black brows. Black hair shaved in a slave’s stubble. A mouth with a curved lower lip that softened only for Valdis. Teeth white against the tanned skin of his face. Long-legged and lean. He’d held himself proudly erect in spite of the bruises from the beatings he received from his master, Emris Baker. Except for the hair, that described just about every Erabiri man she’d seen.

More Erabiri came in through the large main doors halfway down the room, kitty-corner from the dais. They lined up in front of the dais, five on either side of the two steps that led up to the stage. They unsheathed their swords and held them vertically in front of their bodies. An honor guard? A moment later two more men entered. Both were tall and slender, wearing black pants, black shirts, and black boots. Both wore swords at their hips. Their hair was long and black, twisted into heavy braids that hung down the center of their backs, but one had wide silver streaks through his black braid, indicating he was older. The other’s braid fell past his waist like a thick black rope.

The older man must be King Rodir. Was the other one Jerriel? Jerriel had been a prince, so he must be Rodir’s son. Right? Ashley’s heart rate picked up. How long would it take for a shaved head to grow thirty inches of hair? She squinted to see better, but the light was dim, and they were too far away for her to see clearly. They walked together to the stage and mounted the two steps. Without looking at the group of prisoners clustered in the back of the church, the younger one sat in the chair. The older man stood close beside him.

Which was the king? Ashley would expect the king to sit in the chair, and the lesser ranked man to stand. The one in the chair turned toward the back of the church and made a come here gesture. Two of the guards selected one of the prisoners, the secretary Ashley and Maya had spoken to last night, and escorted him to the stage. This took some time since it was half as long as a football field. It gave Ashley plenty of time to worry about what would happen. She dug her fingernails into her thigh, wishing Maya was here. Where was she now? Ashley needed to find her. But she had to find Jerriel first. She took a deep breath to calm herself. Running up to the front screaming Jerriel’s name was probably not a good idea. She took another deep breath, resolved to wait.

The guards made the secretary kneel on the marble floor in front of the chair, bowed, and walked back to prisoners clustered together in the back of the room.

The man in the chair leaned forward and spoke to the secretary. Ashley couldn’t hear what he said. They conversed for about a minute, then the secretary stood up and bowed. The older man on the stage said loudly, “Behold, the mercy of King Rodir of Erabir!”

 The secretary bowed again and went to the main doors and left. A little stir went through the other prisoners. Relief?

So, if the guy in the chair was King Rodir, then he wasn’t Jerriel. The older man was too old to be Jerriel. Ashley plucked at the sleeve of her dress, scanning the other men on the stage, looking for Jerriel. One looked young. Like, teenager young. Too young for Jerriel. Where was he? she wailed to herself. The relief the other prisoners must have felt passed Ashley by, leaving her stomach in one big knot.

Another prisoner was selected, this time Lord Ulsak. He marched up the marble floor with his head held arrogantly high. When he reached the stage, he didn’t bow or kneel until one of the guards kicked the back of his knee. Then he went sprawling on hands and knees. Ashley almost giggled. Not because it was funny. No, it was hysteria threatening to overflow.

The man in the chair leaned forward and spoke quietly. Lord Ulsak replied. Ashley couldn’t see his face or hear his words, but the angle of his head was haughty. Not the kind of attitude she would take with the king who had just conquered her city.

The king stood up, drawing his sword. He went down one step. The sword gleamed silver as it swept down, then shone red when it came back up. Ashley stared in numb incomprehension as Lord Ulsak’s head fell with a meaty thump.

She had to get out of here before she puked. A quick glance at the door they’d come through sent her heart plummeting to drown in her roiling stomach. The doorway was packed with Erabiri warriors, and another quick glance told her the prisoners were surrounded by more. It looked like there was at least one warrior for each Thessian. The other prisoners must have seen the same thing because she heard a low moan go through them. She swallowed and looked back to the front.

The King was wiping his blade on a piece of cloth. He handed the dirty cloth to the teenager and sat again with the bare blade across his knees. Two Erabiri were carrying Lord Ulsak’s body out while another placed the head in a bag. Don’t puke, don’t cry, don’t try to run away, Ashley chanted to herself. Don’t puke, don’t puke, don’t puke. A stray remembrance of a story she had read for her senior thesis popped into her head. After a successful siege the conquering king had beheaded the ring leaders of the defense. She shook her head. The words she read had not seemed so grisly. Not like seeing it in person.

Two of the guards separated one of prisoners, a man Ashley didn’t know, and herded him up to the stage. He dropped to his knees in front of the steps with his head bowed. He might have been trembling, but Ashley couldn’t tell. She would have been shaking like a leaf. In fact, she was shaking like a leaf.

This time, the older man announced the king’s mercy and the man left by the main doors. Another was brought before him and had his head removed. It went on like that for a while. Some were released; more were beheaded.

Ashley watched it all with the numbness of disbelief. This was a nightmare, not real. She needed Maya. She needed to find Jerriel. I need to wake up at home, she silently screamed, where I could tell Maya all about it and watch her shake her head over my overactive imagination.

The group of prisoners was smaller than it had been an hour ago. The king never looked toward the diminishing group at the back of the church. He looked bored. Of course, maybe it was only the distance that made his face look unmoved.

That changed when Ilsa, the woman she and Maya had met last night, was moved up to kneel before the stage. The king looked at her from his throne and his face showed some emotion that Ashley couldn’t interpret.

“A woman?” he said, loudly enough for Ashley to decipher his words. “I don’t make war on women.”

Ha, thought Ashley. Tell that to the women who were raped.

One of the prisoners’ guards bowed and spoke quietly to the king. A flash of something—Rage? Fear?—crossed the king’s face as he half-stood to stare at the prisoners. Ashley was too far away to tell. He gestured violently toward the back of the church.

The older man bellowed. “All females come forward!”

Ashley froze in place, really, really not wanting to get close to the king and his sword. Her earlier fantasy of running up to the front calling Jerriel’s name had died long before. The guards gave none of the women a choice. Ashley found herself between the baker’s wife and a woman she didn’t know being walked reluctantly up the room to the stage. She kept her eyes down, too afraid to look at the king.

When they got to the steps, she dropped to her knees before any of the guards could force her down. The other women, including Ilsa, were also on their knees. Ilsa was crying softly. Terror made Ashley focus on the black-booted feet of the king. He had stood from his throne and come down one step. Ashley took a deep breath. I’m not a sheep to go to the slaughter without a fight, she told herself fiercely. It would be more believable if she wasn’t shaking so hard. I have to somehow scrounge up enough guts to ask about Jerriel. Maya needs me. She licked her lips, trying to force them to stop trembling, put her shoulders back, and looked up.

Way up. The king was young, maybe her own age, and handsome with fierce eyes under a slash of straight black brows staring straight at her. Those eyes, as black as the kohl that outlined them, sent a shudder down her spine. His cheekbones were high, and his mouth looked almost too soft for his hard face. His black shirt was unlaced at the throat, showing a portion of his smooth chest. In the V of brown skin lay a teardrop pearl pendant suspended from a gold chain around his neck. Ashley’s breath stopped as she blinked at the pendant. Unconsciously, her hand crept to her own pearl pendant, a perfect match to his. Of course, the necklace she’d worn habitually since she was sixteen was gone, like her real clothes.

Her head swam and only her outstretched hand kept her face from hitting the marble step in front of her. “Jerriel?” she squeaked.