Analindë (The Chronicles of Lóresse) Read Online Free PDF Page A

entryway, then to the sitting rooms, the morning room and dining room, the music room and the council room—which she’d never entered before—and the kitchen.
    Nothing.
    As Analindë’s search progressed, rising anger and worry battled within her. Her spirits flagged, and the hope that her family had dragged themselves away somewhere safe began to dim.
    She shook herself mentally and jerked away from the anguish. They had to still be here, it wasn’t possible. Three fully-trained elven mages against a few measly humans? Everyone knew that any one elven mage was several times more powerful than any number of human wizards put together.
    In growing disbelief, Analindë frantically threaded her way through the disaster that was her parent’s bedroom, over-turned chairs and tables, strewn bedding, books of poetry flung across the room, broken glass crunched underfoot. She shied away from the loveseat her parents sat in during their winter night discussions and screamed aloud, “Where are you?”
    Silence answered.
    Her chin trembled, “Why did you leave me?” She whispered, wounded. Her eyes fluttered shut as she heard a block of stone break away from her home, whoosh down, and then crash and tumble against other stones in the great pit where the west wing had once stood.

    It didn’t take her long to search her entire home. She’d gone through the small and great receiving rooms, the gathering room, the pantry and cellars, the breakfast nook, the bedrooms, the conservatories, the guest towers, the inner courtyard, and the back passageways and hiding rooms, yet she found no clue as to where her family was or what had happened. There was neither blood nor bodies to give her closure. Certainly she should have found something?
    All of the books in the great house were gone, except a few books of elven poetry that had been torn apart and thrown across her parent’s room. The humans hadn’t carried any books when they’d left the house, but they had performed a number of spells. . . . Analindë recoiled. The humans had stolen their books!
    Her anger quickly subsided into sorrow as she realized the books had most likely been destroyed during their search. The humans were only interested in one set of books. The Mageborn books.
    She mildly wondered if her parents had known that they’d had a copy? Impossibly her heart sank once again, deepening the hollow part inside of her that ached.
    Analindë trudged back out of her parent’s room for the second time to the end of a hallway on the third floor. A gaping hole overlooked where the west wing of the great house should have been. She ran her fingers along the jagged tears in the stone. The remaining stones clung valiantly to their perches, holding up the rest of the floor and surrounding walls.
    They were gone. She slumped. . . . Dead? . . . No, they couldn’t be. She slumped further. Truth stared bleakly at her.
    If they were alive, they would not have left her.
    Analindë scrutinized the scorched barren earth where the foundation had been blasted from the ground. A feeling of not quite rightness settled into the back of her mind. Of course it wasn’t right. She brushed the feeling aside. Frozen in grief, her thoughts had space for only one thing.
    She was alone.
    Loss overwhelmed her.
    Her family? Gone.
    The books which had been carefully passed down from generation to generation through the millennia? Gone.
    Her home and safe haven? Gone.
    The corners of her mouth forced themselves down as images flashed through her mind. Glendariel lying face down in a pool of her own blood, her husband’s broken body lying in the herb garden. Riian’s sad but smiling face as he kissed her on the forehead then walked away, the empty house, her family nowhere to be found. Her heart felt as if it would break in two; silent tears streamed down her face. Another block of stone shifted, then fell from the house, landing below with a crash. The sound startled her from the mindless fog