by J C Maynard
Trying to hold back tears, Aunika shook her head and spoke softly. “Don’t put this on me.”
He whispered, “What do we do?” He stood up and walked over to the window. Up the street, a little Dalah was running toward the house with a bag of potatoes in her hand. “Dalah’s coming, Aunika.”
Quickly, Aunika tried to wipe the tears from her red face.
Dalah burst open the door. “Mum, I got the potat-” She stopped instantly. It took her a second to register the four dead soldiers on the floor. “What’s going on?”
Aunika stepped forward. “Mum and dad are alright, they’re sleeping.”
Tears began forming in Dalah’s eyes as she tried to take in the scene. “Wh — What did you do? Wh —”
Calleneck walked over, trying to compose himself. “The soldiers came for City Inspections. They tried to get Aunika to open her Evertauri bag . . .”
Aunika looked at Calleneck, and then spoke to Dalah. “Dalah, we need you to run and get President Madrick. He’ll tell us what to do.”
Dalah looked around at the dead bodies and her parents knocked out in the kitchen.
Aunika grabbed Dalah’s shoulder. “Dalah, look at me. Go to the Nexus and get Madrick, now. We need to stay here to make sure they don’t wake up.”
Dalah breathed in heavily and nodded. She pulled the door open and headed out in the snow to the Nexus.
Calleneck and Aunika drew the window curtains and sat back down at the table, silently waiting for Madrick Nebelle.
Not twenty minutes later, the front door opened and Dalah walked in, followed by Madrick and Borius. Dalah quickly shut the door, and Madrick and Borius stared in shock at the scene.
Borius whispered, “Great Mother,” under his breath.
Calleneck stood up and looked at Madrick, “Sir, we —”
Madrick held up a hand, silencing Calleneck. He knelt down and felt for a soldier's pulse, but felt none. “Do you realize that this is the first attack on Cerebrian soldiers I haven’t issued?”
Aunika nodded. “Sir, we were just here when they came for inspections and —”
“I knew this was a bad idea.” said Madrick. “What could possibly go wrong letting three young sorcerers live half time unsupervised in the city?” Madrick’s face was turning red. “This! This is what could go wrong!”
Aunika tried to speak, “We did the only thing —”
“I trusted you with this, Ms. Bernoil!” yelled Madrick. “You said you had the situation under control!”
The Bernoil children stood in silence. Madrick looked at Aunika and Calleneck and spoke plainly, pointing to their unconscious parents. “Kill them.”
Borius stood up. “Madrick, you can’t be serious.”
Madrick stood firm. “They knew the price!”
“This is madness, President!” yelled Borius. “You were the one who allowed for this arrangement to take place from the start! If anyone had the foresight, it should’ve been you! They trusted you.”
Madrick bit down on his lip, looking at the crying faces of the Bernoil children. “Then I’ll do it myself.” Madrick stepped over the dead bodies to the fireplace. Launching a stream of sparks into it, the fire grew eight feet tall and began to devour the wall of the house. Dalah screamed for him to stop, but Calleneck and Aunika held her back. The flames jumped to the beams of the house and into the cabinets, consuming the room.
Dalah broke free and ran out the door. Calleneck sprinted after her. He turned the corner and saw Dalah far up the street. Leaving the burning house behind him, he ran into the city streets. His bare feet pounded through the snow and the air froze the tears on his face as he continued to cry. Dalah turned off to another street, and as Calleneck wheeled around, his feet slipped out from under him on cold, wet ice. His body hit the snowy street, scraping his hands and knocking the wind out of him. But he ripped himself off the ground, now numb to the cold. His long legs and adrenaline carried him fast as images of his parents flashed through his head. Around another street bend, Dalah was closer. He ran closer and she split into an alley. He dove forward on the ice and grabbed her feet, causing her to slip and hit hard on the stone.
She sat up, coughing and screaming, “Get away!” Crying, Calleneck grabbed her and embraced her in a hug, trying to calm her. They both sat there sobbing for hours in the snow.
Royalty
Chapter Twenty Two
~Midday, November 3rd
To Eston, the paintings on the Palace walls now looked dull, grayed, like someone had stolen the color off them. Three people, he thought. I’ve killed three people. That was of course, not counting the dozens of Ferramish soldiers he had killed in the body of Tayben. The brown leaves of the trees that covered the entirety of Ferramoor had nearly all fallen, leaving the branches cold and naked. The past ten nights — or forty — had offered him little sleep, for his dreams were plagued with images of Benja, the Bernoils, and the countless Ferramish soldiers he had killed.
The prince lay silently in his bed. The dull light of the overcast afternoon sky filtered through the large, motionless curtains of his massive bedroom. The room was cold, and for the first time, specks of dust gathered on the floor, for the prince had told the maids not to enter. A chair lay broken on the floor. He grabbed a vase on his nightstand and hurled it into a wall, shattering it. He dropped to his knees and knelt on the wood floor. A drop of blood fell from his hand, in which a shard of glass still stuck between his knuckles from his shattering of a mirror an hour before
He wiped the blood on his bed cover and walked to his desk. A drawer held a skipping stone covered in ashes. Eston slammed his fist down and hiccuped after seeing Benja again in his mind as the Guard pushed him up the steps of the gallows. “Eston! Eston, Listen! There is a paper beneath my mattress; read it and then burn it! Things in this Palace are not as they seem. Trust no one, Eston. Trust no one.” Nearly a month had gone by since the prince rushed to Benja’s room to burn the paper. On it was scribbled a single word.
Silverbrook
Sir Whittingale had replaced Benja Tiggins as Palace Overseer, leaving Eston without a teacher for the first time in a decade. No one had seen much of Eston at all for the past month, especially the past eight days, and his appearance at meals had decreased immensely. He blew on the ashes in the drawer, causing them to fly around the room like thousands of little ravens. Silverbrook. That word had consumed his thoughts day in and day out since Benja’s death. What the hell is that supposed to mean, Benja?
The word on parchment shriveled up and turned black in his memory, engulfed by the destructive flame of a candle similar to the pile of documents his father burned so many years ago. But at his new position — one that he took very seriously — Whittingale could no longer answer Eston’s questions about the past, about what Tronum did that long-ago night. He had searched endlessly in the Great Library. I could ask An’Drui. From somewhere in his mind, he heard Benja frantically say, “Trust no one.”
Eston walked out on his balcony, dripping splotches of scarlet blood on the concrete, and looking down, he clenched his teeth, knowing that a month prior, he would have cared about a bloodstain on his pristine, useless balcony. Eston unbuckled his jewel-encrusted belt and threw it back into his room. The leaves blew across the white courtyards below and passersby crunched them beneath their feet. He imagined the great fire and Tronum standing before it, watching documents burn. The image transfigured into Benja’s limp body hanging from a noose. A tear fell onto his ash covered shirt. I’m sorry.
A knock sounded in his bedroom and Eston bolted from the balcony. He cracked open his door only enough to reveal his face. Qerru-Mai smiled at him. “Hello . . . Umm . . . No one has really seen you in a couple weeks, and I was wondering if you still wanted to go to the ball tonight to celebrate your father’s trip to Ifle-Laarm?”
Eston’s heart sank and he hesitated. “Yes, umm, yes sorry. I’ve just been quite busy.”
She tried to look over Eston’s shoulder
into his destroyed room, her chocolate skin still glowing in the gloomy light. “Do you need a way to decompress? . . . We could shoot arrows in the target courtyard.”
Eston hesitated. “Yes, um, . . . yes that sounds good, but maybe some other day. How about I meet you fifteen minutes before the ball starts at the North doors to the Library?
Qerru-Mai nodded and tried to see if Eston would smile. “I’ll see you then?”
Eston nodded.
“Alright, goodbye.” She left and Eston shut the door, turning to his bed which was covered in feathers from his pillow.
◆◆◆
Unable to unlock it, Fillian pressed his ear to the door, listening for any sound he could make out. Then he heard it: eleven little clicks. Silence. And then again, eleven little clicks. Something was turning. Eleven clicks, silence. Like wood and metal wheels. A mechanical click, click. Twenty six times it went through eleven clicks, and then it stopped. A minute later, it resumed. But then he heard louder clicks . . . no, steps. He quickly ran to the other side of the dark hallway and into an unlocked room. Looking back into the hall from the room through the small crack he had left open, he saw Senator An’Drui remove a key from her sleeve and slowly open the door to the clicking room, disappearing into the blackness inside for quite some time. As soon as she reappeared, Prophet Ombern walked into the hallway.
Prophet Ombern watched Senator An’Drui as she exited the long underground hallway. She approached him and whispered, “eight, R.” She quickly left him alone in the hallway to return to her daughter’s room, where Qerru-Mai was getting dressed for the ball. Prophet Ombern scratched a letter onto a piece of parchment.
I L R
He smiled and whispered, “How soon the time comes when Ferramoor shall once again rule.” Stroking his long beard, Ombern left the hallway, watched closely through a crack in a door by Fillian.
Fillian waited for a few minutes, thinking to himself, I need to find a way into that room to see what An’Drui and Ombern are after. Where could I find a key? Fillian thought for a moment. The ball . . . Ombern will be gone . . . I’m sure he has a key somewhere in the Great Cathedral.
Fillian quietly made his way out of the depths of the Palace. But little did the prince know that down the hallway behind a pillar, another man with dark hair, young and tall compared to the Prophet, had seen the same scene transpire between Senator An’Drui and Prophet Ombern. The man watched Fillian closely, and slipped into shadow before Fillian noticed.
◆◆◆
Qerru-Mai fixed her scarlet dress in the mirror. “Mother.” she said, and Senator An’Drui walked into her bedroom. “Do you think the Prince has been odd lately?”
“. . . Which one?”
“Eston of course.”
The Senator walked out the door saying, “I couldn’t tell you yes or no dear.”
“Wait, mother.” She stopped. “Where were you this past hour?”
Senator An’Drui hesitated. “Talking with . . . Sir Whittingale.” She then left the room.
Why are you lying? thought Qerru-Mai. She sighed and looked out her window, which overlooked the front gate of the Palace. The light of day was beginning to fade, but something down below caught her eye. A cloaked person was leaving the Palace on the back of a cart. Prince Fillian?
She stood by the library doors as Eston approached. “What’s on your hand?”
The prince looked down. “Oh that’s nothing.”
“It’s all cut up and scabbed.” said Qerru-Mai.
“I tried to catch a mirror in my room as it fell but it shattered on my hand.” Using his other hand, Eston, wearing a white royal robe and scarlet sash, led Qerru-Mai toward the ballroom. “My father wants to leave soon for Ifle-Laarm, so he will likely attend only the first half of the party.”
“And he’s going to campaign for the war?”
“Xandria’s forces have been quiet lately, so he’s taking the opportunity to get more troops. Every day, more troops, more troops. A fourth of Ferramish men are either in Endlebarr or the camps at Abendale.”
“And I guess it doesn’t help that eighty percent of Camp Stoneheart was slaughtered in an attack . . . I’m sure you've heard about that.” Eston nodded, remembering it too clearly. They turned a corner. “How is your brother?” said Qerru-Mai.
“Fillian? I think he’s doing alright. I haven’t seen him lately.”
“Is there any reason he would be travelling outside the palace?” said Qerru-Mai. Eston halted and looked at her strangely. “I saw him leaving, heading out into the city.” Eston nodded slowly, deep in thought. “I think it has something to do with my mother.” she said.
“And why is that?” he and Qerru-Mai moved into an alcove.
“They have been acting strange around each other, like they’re following each other’s tails. It’s Prophet Ombern too. I’m afraid he’s using his power to sway your father into doing something. Benja-” Eston flinched at the name. “Benja used to tell me to keep a close eye on them, but for what I did not know.”
Eston thought back to the night he essentially killed Benja by stealing his keys. “The King will not let Prophet Ombern authorize it” said Senator An’Drui “and we must follow his orders. Ombern fails to recognize the danger of using those weapons if they were to fall into Xandria’s control; but we do need to use them. Tronum is afraid, and I’ve been here long enough to know he will not concede. We are being pushed back towards our borders, and they grow restless. We have to give them to the army and make it look as though Prophet Ombern did it. This is all for the greater good.” Eston looked into Qerru-Mai’s eyes, in which, somewhere deep and far away, there was an unsettling fear. “Has your mother mentioned anything about my father, his past?”
“. . . yes. She talked about the night of the fire-”
“-of burning documents beneath the Palace. Whittingale told me.”
Qerru-Mai nodded. “What do you think they were?”
“I don’t know . . . But your mother and Prophet Ombern do.”
A diplomat walking in the hall called out to them. “Prince Eston, Miss An’Drui, are you coming to the ball?”
“Yes, of course.” they said, taking each other’s hands.
A quartet of string instruments played on a balcony in the immense ballroom. An elaborate mural of historical events and coronations and scenes of battles and stories looked down at the large crowd from the ceiling. Elegant gowns floated over the wood flooring, and carts of Ferramoor’s best food sat along the edges. Tronum stood talking to Sir Whittingale, each of them holding wine glasses — all of the wine entering the ballroom had been checked for poison. As Eston and Qerru-Mai approached them, they caught the last few words of the men’s conversation.
“I’ll trust you to take care of her while I’m gone.” said the King.
“Your Palace is stronger than it ever was with Benja Tiggins now that I’ve made improvements.” said Whittingale, as the new Palace Overseer. “Why hello, Eston.”
“Sir, I’m sure you’ve met Miss An’Drui.” said Eston.
“I have indeed.” said Whittingale and Tronum greeted her, smiling with a twitch in his lips. “It’s been strange no longer teaching you,” said Whittingale “but you’ve proven to be a fine young man. I must go now, but I wish you two happy festivities.” Sir Whittingale left, and Tronum asked for a minute alone with Eston, and Qerru-Mai complied.
“Eston, I will be gone until Noxheim, for I have also decided to extend my war efforts north. This means that you do exactly what your mother tells you to do.” His hand holding the wine glass shook violently, spilling drops of scarlet on him, but he did not notice.
“Yes, sir.” Tronum began to leave and Eston grabbed his elbow. “Wait . . . during my last lesson with Whittingale, he told me about something that happened before I was born . . . at night beneath the Palace-” Tronum’s glance went sour, “next to . . . next to a fire of burning parchment . . . What did you burn?”
Tronum leaned in and
whispered as harsh as a Cerebrian. “You have no right to know about that! This party is no place to have this conversation.” Tronum turned his back on Eston and walked away with a barely detectable limp.
Eradine met the king and he whispered in her ear. The Queen called out, “Thank you everyone for coming. The King would like to get a head start on the trip and will be leaving now. I will be accompanying him as he leaves the city.” The crowd clapped as the royal couple departed, but Eston stood there without moving.
Qerru-Mai tapped his shoulder as a dance began, and he placed one hand in hers and one on her hip, his mind still off in another world. “What did your father say?”
“What? Oh, nothing.” Eston gazed around at the tables of endless food and the sparkling jewelry of the rich diplomats. His stomach began to feel hollow. Raelynn was looking for a document in the library . . . it was gone. The drunken laughs of people around him rang like a siren in his ear, and his mind flashed to the cold quietness of the forest of Endlebarr. His stomach dropped again, remembering the young Ferr he hesitated to kill. He was fighting for me. He was fighting for all these oligarchs.
“Eston, are you alright?”
“. . . I’m fine . . . I just feel a little sick.” The floor began to tip sideways and soon people were dancing on the ceiling . . . no, it just looked slightly blue . . . everything started moving away from him.
“You look awful, Eston.”
He stepped away. “I just need a little breather.” He stumbled dizzily toward a great column and leaned against it. He closed his eyes and in a jarring flash, looked through the eyes of Kyan at the rafters of the Great Cathedral. Standing next to him was Fillian. Only lasting a fraction of a second in Kyan’s body, a flash jolted him back into the body of Eston, who had fallen off the column. Qerru-Mai pulled him up off the floor. “Eston, are you okay?” Dazed, Eston thought, what the hell just happened? It’s not sunrise. “Eston! Are you okay?”