The Story Begins

Ceara sat before the blazing peat fire, watching as smoke curled up and out the chimney. It was on nights like this when the west wind blew in, carrying with it storms, that her thoughts turned to family or rather her lack of family. Her mother had died at her birth and her father, not knowing what to do with a small girl child, had delivered her over to the care of his friend Merlin and had disappeared. From time to time treasures were sent back from the various times and places where he wandered but what she wanted most of all, a day to day father, was not to be.

 Now it was not as if her childhood was lonely or miserable. How could it be in the household of Merlin? For a time she had even had a playmate, a young lad by the name of Arthur, but all too soon he was sent away to act as squire to a nobleman in a distant land. Ceara learned all that Merlin thought to teach her. She learned to mix potions, cast minor spells and best of all to communicate with the animals of the forest. And then in the summer of her fifteenth year everything changed. Merlin disappeared.