Chapter 7

Havillah is a very beautiful place. If anyone gives you the opportunity of taking a vacation there I would highly recommend it. Tall dark trees ring the whole land; some would say that these trees have magic powers to keep all evil out of Havillah. Perhaps it is true, perhaps it is not. It is certain that for hundreds of years no evil had found its way through the borders, but this had perhaps more to do with the land itself, rather than the trees. Inside of the borders, the trees were less wild, more orderly than a forest. There were still plenty of trees inside Havillah, they just stood at the exact location they had been planted and had no scraggly underbrush. A small merry stream broke off from the Great River a few miles north of the bridge of Tar-Nesh and wound its way through the main part of Havillah.

Havillah is a country within a country. While its inhabitants had always been loyal to the true King of Aeral, they also had their own king. At one time many different tribes of people had been united. It had been called the Great Alliance. The Thurrim and the Orem were two of the five nations that were joined. But that had been many years before the Kings of Aeral. Some petty differences had destroyed the Alliance and the five nations had gone their separate ways. It would have been better for them to have stayed together. Of the five nations only two were still existing. The other three had faded into obscurity, and even their names were forgotten. The Thurrim had always been the greatest of the five, and Meunin had been the King of the Great Alliance.

At one time the Thurrim had been a nomadic group, but hundreds and thousands of years before Miriam set foot in Aeral, and before the Great Alliance, they settled in Havillah. As a remembrance of those travelling years they still lived in tents, but it was only a token remembrance, because many of the tents could not be moved. Often they were two stories tall, crafted of a light wood frame and then covered with the tent curtains. They were lovely to look at, for the coverings were of many colors. All of the wall curtains were pulled back at the frames during the day, and the wind would blow them around with a hearty whipping sound. A great deal of art was put into the making of the pavilions. The tops of the support poles were often carved in different shapes and designs, and the shapes of the tents themselves were as varied as the flowers that scattered over the grass. In the very center of Havillah was a huge grandfather of a tree. A massive tent was built all round the tree. This was the castle of Meunin elf-King. Onto the tree itself a covered balcony had been built. It was in these balcony quarters that the king reposed when he was not busy with matters of state.

Across the great expanse of green grass, growing trees, and colorful tents, walked eight figures. Seven of them were taller then men. The grown woman and the six grown men all had different appearances, yet there was, in their faces, a steady look of dignity and grace that likened each one to the others. The eighth was a child of ten with wavy brown tails of hair, dressed in clothes unlike anything seen before in Aeral. The eight swiftly walked into the palace of Meunin, and the lady proceeded to ask something of a page. The page listened to her words, then paused and took a long look at the child before disappearing up the steps to the king's quarters.

After a moment a man came speedily down the stairs. Like the others, he was tall, but everything about him bespoke of royalty. He wore a crown made in the fashion of Triton's cap, with one large point in the center of four smaller. He took the lady's hand and touched it to his forehead, then kissed both of her cheeks. The two conversed for a while in their language, then the king turned and looked at the little girl. She may well have wondered why he stared at her for so long, but she could not have known what he saw. She could have no idea that in her dark blue eyes and brown hair, in her smiling but thoughtful face, he saw his king. At last he spoke to her.

"Greetings, Child, I am Meunin: King of the Thurrim, one time Lord of the Great Alliance." Of course the child knew nothing of the Thurrim or of a Great Alliance, but she knew her manners so she shook his hand cordially. He turned back to the lady.

"Gazaelle, where did you find her? How is it that you came to find the Queen of Aeral?"

The little girl never heard the lady's response. The words "Queen of Aeral" were swirling around in her head so she didn't even know when she fainted.