The King Rolen's Kin: The Uncrowned King - By Rowena Cory Daniells Page 0,6

decided against it. He'd creep upstairs to the abbot's chamber, light a candle and check the seal. If he was right, they could send someone to warn the weapons master. A single skater could travel the frozen canals faster than hundreds of warriors. If he was wrong, he'd come back to bed and put it down to a vivid imagination and no one would be any the wiser.

'Go back to sleep, Feldspar. It's probably nothing.' Fyn kept his voice low so as not to disturb Hawkwing on the other side.

Already dressed in his breeches, Fyn slipped on his indoor shoes, soft-soled slippers, and tugged his saffron robe over his shoulders. The abbey was built into the side of Mount Halcyon and warmed by her hot springs, but even so the night was cold.

Leaving the sleeping acolytes, Fyn entered the hall leading towards the spiral stairs. He was already beginning to doubt his memory of the seal and wondered if he should simply go back to bed, when an odd noise made him stop. It sounded like the distant pattering of rain. The abbey had been unnaturally quiet since the warriors set off, its empty halls and chambers magnifying every sound.

Fyn tilted his head, straining to hear. The sound made no sense. It was too cold to rain. Silent on his indoor slippers, he ran to the window which looked down into the courtyard.

Illuminated by brilliant starlight, the courtyard rippled with life. Hundreds of warriors hurried across the stone flags, their boots making a soft susurration. Fyn's mind refused to accept what he saw, even as the men crept across the courtyard, flowing into the abbey's formal ground-floor chambers.

How could the enemy have penetrated this far without sounding the alarm? The old monk on night duty must have been tricked into opening the gate. The abbey was defenceless!

Alarm made his heart race. Fyn's feet hardly felt the ground as he ran back to the acolytes' chamber, waking Feldspar. 'To arms! We are under attack!'

Feldspar threw back the covers.

Hawkwing rolled out of bed, reaching for his boots. 'Merofynians?'

'I didn't stop to ask,' Fyn admitted.

'Did you have another vision?' Feldspar asked. 'Is that why you woke?'

His last vision had been of his brother's betrothed, Isolt. What manner of king would promise his daughter in marriage then make war on his future son-in-law's kingdom?

An unscrupulous man, a cunning man. The kind of man who would send a fake message to lure Halcyon's monks away from the abbey, leaving only acolytes and old men to defend it.

The boys... they didn't stand a chance!

'What's going on?' an anxious voice asked.

'We're under attack,' Hawkwing answered. 'Get everyone up.'

Word spread like a forest fire.

Their surprised exclamations made Fyn impatient. They had no time for this. He grabbed Hawkwing's arm. 'Wake the abbot, tell him the abbey's been breached.' Fyn turned to Feldspar. The boys, aged six to twelve, were on the floor below, between them and the intruders. 'Feldspar, take the boys down to the inner sanctum and bolt the door. Do it quickly, before the Merofynians find the great stairs.'

'This would never have happened if the grucranes hadn't left us,' Feldspar muttered, putting on his slippers.

He was right. The god-touched beasts had lived in the abbey for generations. One of their flock always stood guard ready to call a warning, but...

'No time for ifs,' Fyn snapped, thinking of the day the grucrane leader had been injured, the day the old seer had foreseen this very attack. When she'd spoken of Halcyon Abbey in ruins, he'd laughed. The seer must not be proven right. 'Hurry, both of you!'

Hawkwing and Feldspar darted away.

Fyn turned to the others. They'd tugged on boots and robes and faced him. 'The rest of you, come with me.'

He snatched a lamp someone had lit and ran out the door and down the corridor. Behind him, he could hear the acolytes' boots slapping on the tiles, hear their hurried explanations as the younger acolytes poured out of their sleeping chambers. He couldn't possibly lead thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds against grown warriors. Fyn stopped in his headlong race for the armoury and spun to face them.

'You.' He pointed to a youth of fourteen, whose name escaped him. 'Take the younger ones down to the sanctum, the rest of you come with me. We must defend the abbey.'

There was muffled shouting as boys of thirteen insisted they should stay and take up arms. The thought made Fyn sick to his stomach. True, they'd been studying weapons since they