Realm of the Witch Queen

A Saga of The Savage Innocence and Power of Ancient Druidism PART TWO Lahana, an innocent young princess, is traded for an appeasement treaty with a tyrannical king. On arrival, she is immediately caught in a web of evil sorcery and a sex cult - overwhelmed and mesmerised and drugged. Her inner power awakens to fight and escape this dark kingdom. Her freedom journey takes her to sanctuary with a powerful Druid priest whom awakens her true destiny within her deepest soul's yearnings. After trials and tribulations, she becomes a powerful queen and destroys the evil king's realm and rebirths a new civilisation out of the ashes of a dark age into an era of peace and prosperity. Her coming of age is full of love and pain until, finally, her true soul mate embraces her vision, and together they triumph over injustice and ignorance. EXCERPT All around them the birdlife was uninhibited, calling to one another, alighting from one tree branch to another, and pitching up through the forest canopy towards the pockets of blue sky overhead. A pair of small foxes watched the human party, holding their sharp eyes upon the strangers before darting back and away into the shadows. Other noises travelled beyond their vision: those of hoofbeats, light and dashing, a herd in quick migration. At nightfall, they set up camp in the shelter of a mighty oaken giant. They lit no fire, yet the sky was bright over the trees, with a clear Moon only just beginning to wane. The armed took turns at the watch, listening to the crystal clarity of wolf calls amplified across the distance by the chilled night air. They rose at the glimpse of dawn, setting out once again over the rise and fall of the forest floor. Hours of trekking until finally setting up another camp and resting through the night. At the edge of noon on the third day, the forest abruptly gave way to a wide clearing of land. The sheer brightness of the light, of both the turquoise blue sky and the dust-gold land, forcing each traveller to at first shield their eyes. As their eyes adjusted, they moved forward with caution, scanning the expanse of silent barrenness. In the distance, at the heart of the clearing, a huddled bulk of grey stones came into sight. As they approached the monument, it revealed a complex grid of stone pillars, the tallest set on the outer boundary as a perfect circle. While at the heart sat a flat plinth with altar-like smoothness. While the others stood guard, Sha'han and Lahana walked into the circle, passing beneath the shadows cast by the tallest pillars as they sought the centre. There, Lahana knelt to the ground before the altar, placing her hand upon its formidable starkness. Its surface crumbled at her touch. A parched, thick coating of earth loosened as rubble, dry and unsettled, catching on the slight breeze and scattering into dust. Lahana held her hand over her mouth, holding back a choking cough as she wiped away the remaining coating from the altar stone. The noise seeming abhorrently wrong within the pervading silence of the monument. The silence of one who watches all the small things come and go without concern. Lahana could sense it spreading out to the surrounding land. Silence like a glacier of dust, gradual and untraceable, slow as time itself moving beyond the cycle of a woman or man's life.