1167, Great Tree Moon - The Rhodos Coast

The saltwater air blew cold as the monks bundled Anthiese tight in a thick blanket to lift her into the wooden boat. Another man with a tan face and grey eyes stood waist deep in the water and held the hull steady for them as they passed her belongings up a chain and piled them in behind her.

"You'll want to be keeping that'n there bundled around you. Might bit cooler where we're headed," said the tanned faced man.

"Where are we headed?" Anthiese asked.

There was no immediate answer and she had learned that when adults didn't say anything that it was best to stop asking and just let them do what they were going to. The choppy surf rocking the boat made her feel that she would become dizzy if this went on too long, but there was a much larger boat across the water waiting for them. That was the first step, she thought. This was a journey that would have many phases and parts.

When she was little and Zyah was still alive, she remembered her saying to think of any difficult task as a series of smaller ones. Leaving the abbey and most of the people she had known in her life was the biggest thing that she had ever done. But maybe it could be serval small things. The first one was making it to that boat. One step closer to the goal.

There was a flurry of movement from the monks on shore and the men who were helping them. Some of the soldiers of from the abbey were there too stationed along the beach. They were in a hurry to avoid something, she didn't know what.

Anthiese turned her attention to the open water where the larger ship waited. This was the first time that she had been to the shore of a beach before. When she heard it mentioned or read about it in books she thought that the ocean couldn't have been much different than the rivers, lakes and ponds she had grown up around.

She was wrong.

The water stretched on forever in front of them. There was no sign of trees or land on the other side. No mountains cresting in the distance to show that there was something out there.

Just the gray blue expanse of waves.

"Do you remember when those men came and attacked the abbey in the night?" Asked Brother Newman.

Anthiese turned, taking a second to remember what it was he had said. She nodded.

"It's not safe for you at the abbey anymore, especially because that Woman knows where you are," said Newman.

The Woman was what they called Lady Rhea, the Archbishop. She had been so nice when they met months ago. She had called Anthiese family and said that the Crest of Mila that she bore was special. Everyone was so sure that the Crest of Mila was very special.

The man who rowed the boat only had the one eye, it was blue, like his hair. He smiled down at Anthiese. "I've got a daughter you'd probably get along with. When we get there you'll meet her."

No one would tell her where there is.

In the days leading up to them leaving she had hidden in the corners of room and waited with her ear pressed to doors to hear them talk about men coming to steal her away and them having a letter on them implicating Rhea herself. She had even seen one of the men after he was…gone. His body looked strange like he had been drained of all color and there were strange markings on his skin.

She didn't dare let them know that she knew this. Maybe they wouldn't physically touch the Scion of Mila, but they would take a switch if she acted out of line.

"Do you see that little island over there?" Asked Brother Newman.

Anthiese got up onto her knees and turned to look off to the right of where the boat was headed. There was a stone structure jutting up from a small island just off the coast. "Yeah," she said.

"It's a monument to Saint Cichol. He was the husband of Mila, the progenitor of your crest," Brother Newman said. "It's a good omen that we should leave from this place." He stared into her eyes over top of the blanket bundled around her small frame for a long time, as if trying to see something. She wasn't sure what.

"Times are…difficult," Brother Newman started. "A noble family from the Kingdom so to it that we could leave this place. The Western Church is indebted to the Lord of Gaspard."

"Gaspard." The name was familiar to her lips, the monks had made sure that every night before prayers she recited the noble houses of the Kingdom from memory. Blaiddyd. Gaspard. Fraldarius. Gautier. Dominic. Charon. Rowe…

Waves broke around their small vessel as the one eyed man rowed. They were hoisted up on the crest of each wave and dropped back down in between, but as they moved the large ship grew nearer and with it the end of this tiny leg of their journey.