Three days later a white dove came down out of the sky to perch on Aidan's upraised arm. He had been enjoying the sun of a rare warm day in early autumn. Snow would be flying soon here in the far north, so days like this were to be savored.

He removed a tiny scrap of parchment from the dove's leg. It grew to a palm-sized note when he unfolded it, but he had expected the little touch of magic. He had gotten quite a few such notes before, over the last few years.

Come as swift as you can. All are needed, and this is a more urgent matter than any we have yet seen to.
-Tara

Aidan's eyes went wide. A more urgent matter than any they had seen to? They had "seen to" some pretty urgent matters. Matters of life and death for hundreds, even. What could possibly have gone wrong that was that urgent? And then he remembered the bell tone of three days past. It had felt like the whole world had rung. It would be a massive coincidence indeed if that wasn't related to this sudden summons. This is something big. Bigger than just Tara.

"We'll come as fast as we can," he said to the dove, and threw it into the air. It took wing and streaked off to the south, moving impossibly fast.

Less than an hour later he and his wife were following the dove's path, if much slower. They flew together, Aidan leading with Flame in his slipstream, both of them born on snow white aerian wings. They had made this journey many times before. But normally they went at a leisurely pace, enjoying the scenery below and taking plenty of time for rest and food. Now they pressed on as fast as they could fly, stopping only when absolutely necessary. They traded off flying point so that neither would tire faster than the other. They made it over the pass and into Snowcap in less than two days. They stopped there to sleep and eat, and then set out on the hardest leg, the ocean crossing. It was a day and a half before they reached land, tired and hungry, and stopped again to rest. But they didn't stop long, they were soon winging their way southwest. They flew for a full day over the dense forest of the elven woods. Then they crossed the high peaks of the Aerie Mountains, though far north of Aerievale, where the peaks were lower. The crossing took nearly a day, and then two days' flight over settled fields and pastures saw them to Tara's Tower. They landed in the central courtyard, and were immediately ushered into Tara's private library, the place where she most often called the Queen's Own when she needed them.

They were both worn and hungry, but they were the last to arrive, and apparently this couldn't wait. Only the dwarf Belak, who made his home in Coppertop, took longer to reach the tower, and he had already been in the southern lands on other business when the summons came, so this time he had beat Flame and Aidan there.

There were thirty-odd people gathered in the modest room, the full membership of the Queen's Own. Humans and aerians, elves and dwarves, were-folk and even one goblin, they represented a cross-section of Tara's people. Queen Tara herself sat in a chair near the fireplace, with the eyes of all present fixed on her. She appeared to be a human woman of average appearance, not too tall, not too short, not too thin, not too broad, with brown hair and brown eyes and tanned skin. Completely unremarkable. But she was not human, and she was anything but unremarkable. Her true form was that of a magnificent golden dragon. She seldom took that form now. She ruled a kingdom of smaller beings, and her tower and castle had been built for such, so her magic kept her in human form nearly all the time. But everyone in the kingdom knew what she was. She had ruled there now for nearly three hundred years, and she had ruled well. Long ago she had taken over a tiny kingdom devastated by plague, torn by wars of succession that had killed what few of the ruling family survived the plague, and threatened by attack from without. She had defended, and healed, and built that tiny space around her tower up into a kingdom that now stretched from the southern plains to the northern sea, and from the eastern peaks to the western ocean. The name of that long-ago kingdom had been forgotten. Her realm was now called the Kingdom of Tara, or simply Tara, as she herself was, and indeed she and her kingdom were inseparable, it was unthinkable to have one without the other.

The stories of her battles with the Dark Lord Lavasida were the stuff of legends, repeated over countless generations, and the stories of how she had used her magic to tend to the sick and dying people of her kingdom were told nearly as often. At that thought, Aidan flicked a glance to one corner of the room, where the firelight almost didn't reach. The tall, dark-clad form of Lavasida stood there, watching his once-enemy with a slight smile on his pale face. Few outside of the Queen's Own knew that Lavasida still lived. And even they didn't know how the Dark Lord had gone from being Tara's bitter enemy to being one of her closest and most trusted servants. Neither of them had ever shared the story. But Tara had told the rest that Lavasida could be trusted, and such was their trust in her that they had accepted him without question.