The Passage of Kings

by Anant V Goswami

  “No…not this time…do…as…i…sa…sa…say.”

  “Which chapter does he speak of?” Elsa asked Diyana.

  “Not one that I have read. Perhaps he is traumatized by what happened to him. Who wouldn’t be?”

  Elsa looked at Sanrick. The boy had closed his eyes once again, while his body shivered from the high fever

  “We should not stay in one place for too long. We have to come to a decision.” Diyana was getting impatient.

  Perhaps the boy’s injury has a silver lining to it.

  Dark grey clouds were encroaching upon the pale blue morning sky, and a soft breeze danced its way through the trees of the Endless Forest. Elsa Faerson looked towards the sky, and a drop of rain fell on her plump lips and trickled down to her chin and then onto her neck.

  “Elsa?” Diyana whispered.

  “My kingdom named me the ‘Princess of Roses’, while the rest of the realm called me the ‘Princess of Thorns’. They think I do not have a heart. And why would I? Only a woman devoid of emotions could endure the torture that I faced, all the while plotting her revenge,” Elsa said, her head pointed towards the sky, her eyes closed, little drops of rain snaking their way from her face and onto her body, “but what people forget, is that love towards someone also has the power to make a woman do miraculous things. Now that love could be for a lover, for a father, or for a brother,” Elsa opened her eyes and looked at Diyana with a soft gaze, “we will not go back if that is what my brother wants,” she said, and for the first time, Diyana saw the ‘Princess of Roses’ smile.

  ∞∞∞

  Finally, the setting around them began to change. After having ridden for three days through a jungle of giant trees and veiny leaves, the trees around them began to grow shorter and less leafy. Their barks were less broad, and the thick entanglement of their ancient roots was no longer visible. They even came across a few boulders, strewn across their path, covered with moss, and a few low-lying cliffs that jutted out from the mouth of small caves and mounds of grass, that sometimes appeared to be as tall as hillocks. Diyana also observed the mouth of what appeared to be rocky tunnels, extending into the darkness, forming the base of some of the hillocks. Diyana wondered what sort of creatures dwelled in the darkness of these tunnels, and what would make them crawl out of their lair, and if it would be two maidens and a handicapped boy on horses.

  Diyana tried remembering Toren’s accounts of what he came across after the bats. But Toren had not known himself. He was made to travel with a cloth over his eyes by a race he called ‘The Elves’, and when he removed the cloth, he beheld the Vizarins in front of him, all five of them, and that is where the accounts of the Endless Forest had ended, and the story of the ‘Beginning of Aerdon’ had begun. The Vizarins had narrated the tale of the creation of the five kingdoms, and of Aerdon itself. They told him about the ‘First men’ or the Viranins, they told him about the ‘Great War’ and the fall of Azgun and the banishment of Vornoth. But these tales had come to be known as myths and legends, and Toren came to be known as nothing but a glorified storyteller. Although the five kingdoms kept worshiping the Vizarins, and kept erecting temples for them, however, they stopped believing in Toren’s tale and the legitimacy of his words. The ‘man who met the gods’ they had named Toren thousands of years ago, but subsequent generations started calling him the ‘man who lied about meeting the gods’. Why and how this happened, no one knew. But some scholars of old continued reproducing Toren’s work and teaching the forgotten language to their disciples. And one of those scholars had been Diyana’s teacher. Diyana had loved her as much as her mother, and her death had been the only time Diyana had shed a tear.

  “Food, I need food,” Diyana heard Sanrick mumble beside her, riding with Elsa on a greyish stallion. Diyana herself was starving. They had left all their provisions behind when they were fleeing from the bats. All Elsa could find in the pouch that hung from the saddle of her horse was a flagon of water, a few berries and a fried pigeon that the owner of the horse might have stolen and kept for himself for future consumption. But they had eaten everything by the end of the first day since the three set out together, and now they had not eaten anything since a day and a half. Whereas, it had been a victory for Diyana to get her horse to carry her, let alone find something in a pouch tied to its saddle.

  The hunger seemed to have the worst effect on Sanrick. His fever had not lessened, and the skin near his wound had turned blue, indicating an infection that was slowly spreading under his skin. The blood had finally stopped seeping out of the grotesque hole left in the place of his hand, and Elsa had tied a piece of her tunic around his shoulder to hide his deformed upper body. Diyana knew he needed something to eat and drink. Otherwise, his death would be slow and painful.

  A quick death by a sword would end his misery. But will Elsa have the heart to do it? Will I have the heart to do it if she would ask me to?

  It was only at the end of the third day, on a starless night, with wisps of clouds floating by, did a miracle finally happen. Diyana had not come across any living creature ever since she had set foot in the Endless Forest, not counting the human-bats who were just dead people trapped in a bats body. But on that night, as she lay huddled under her cloak, trying to chase sleep that was becoming hard to come by, did she notice a tiny red worm, crawling its way out of the mud, slithering towards the bark of the tree she had taken the support of.

  For a long time, Diyana had just sat motionless, looking at life in a forest devoid of it, and thought how the smallest of creatures hold importance in the right context. And then she had crushed it with her thumb and index finger and sucked the gooey pulp into her mouth. The worm had tasted earthy, and Diyana thought it made sense as it’s mud that the worms eat, and thus they tasted like it.

  She saw the head of another one pop out of the mud, and soon enough, her hungry mouth was savoring the taste of yet another earthy worm. That is when she started to dig around the bark of the tree with her ballock dagger, in search for more, and soon she found a host of them, trying to crawl away from Diyana as fast as they could.

  “Elsa! ELSA!” Diyana had shaken Elsa awake, and showed her the food she had discovered, the food that she now held in her palm, trying to wriggle away from her grasp.

  Elsa had been repulsed at first, but then she realized the importance of it when her eyes fell on her dying brother. Sanrick had enjoyed his meal that night, and it was the first time Diyana had seen him completely conscious, as he sat beneath an enormous beech tree, stuffing his face with worms still wriggling on their way to his mouth. Diyana had eaten a few more until she felt she would vomit if she ate another morsel, while Elsa sat observing the two, and no matter how much Diyana asked her, she did not eat.

  “This might be our only choice as food for a long time. It’s not what you would be used to in East Shade, but it will keep you alive,” Diyana had remarked.

  “I am certain we will find better choices in the future. I won’t eat like a beggar from the streets of Riverhelm.”

  “From what I have heard, they eat rats,” Diyana had said, wiping the blood from the corners of her mouth.

  Elsa frowned, “does it matter?”

  “I suppose not. Although if it weren’t for the rats, there would be a lot of dead beggars on the streets of Riverhelm.”

  “I won’t starve to death, if that’s what you are worried about.” Elsa had said with an air of confidence.

  “What will you eat then, if we find nothing better?”

  “The horse that you ride on,” Elsa had said with a smile, and Diyana wondered whether she had jested, or she had meant it.

  However, better choices did not become available for the next few days, and Elsa grew thinner as time passed. Diyana and Sanrick continued eating worms which they found near the barks of the tallest trees. The horses were the happiest out of the lot as there was plenty of grass all around them, and the trees began to grow sparsely as they continued onwards. It would rain every no
w and then, and Diyana would soak her cloak in rainwater and then squeeze it into her mouth and into the empty flagon that they carried with themselves. However, the rain usually meant a night of screaming and howling, as water would seep into Sanrick’s wounds and the lad would writhe and squirm in pain and let out wails that Diyana thought would surely attract whatever evil that lurked in the rocky tunnels beneath the grassy mounds all around them. But nothing crept out, and Diyana gradually started to wish it did.

  An encounter with another creature, or an event out of the ordinary would indicate that they were heading in the right direction. But presently, directions had lost all meaning to Diyana and time crept as slow as the worms she ate each night. She began wondering whether she was destined to ride eternally in this forsaken forest, or until the end of time, or the end of Aerdon. Her clothes had begun to stink, and she vomited almost every night, feeling progressively weak and frail as the days passed.

  Elsa was also going through the same tribulations. Her body had begun losing its curves, and her face had lost the glow it had when Diyana had first seen it in the forest of Eravia. But no matter what she was going through, her face had not lost the look of tenacity and stony resolve that it had had throughout the journey. During starless nights, when darkness reigned all around them and when even Diyana felt her brave Maeryn heart beat a little faster, the Harduinian princess would walk among the trees, and her white silken gown, now torn and tattered in places, would be visible to Diyana as a soft white glow in the dark, and then after a few paces, she would disappear silently into the wall of darkness, and reemerge after hours, or sometimes just before the sky would start bleeding red in the morning.

  On one such, when Sanrick had lost himself to sleep, Diyana walked over to where Elsa sat, huddled beneath a dark grey cloak, eyes staring into nothingness, and sat down beside her.

  “You will die soon if you do not start eating.” Diyana murmured, staring into the same nothingness that had seemed to catch Elsa’s attention.

  “I will not die before my brother.”

  Diyana did not know if she should say what she had been thinking, but then, something made her change her mind, “Do you think he will make it?” she asked.

  “I will make sure he does. Do you have a sibling back home?” Elsa averted her gaze from the darkness and looked at Diyana.

  “I had. A sister who was a few years elder to me. My mother had her, and then a few years later, I was born, and my father died the next day from the White Curse,” said Diyana.

  “The White Curse took her as well?”

  “No, Maeryn and its thirst for knowledge, took her life,” Diyana said as she leaned back against the tree of the trunk, and closed her eyes, “she was only fourteen, the age when Maeryn girls are sent on their first expedition, to scale the peaks of Zaeyos, and unearth the treasures Miervana has left behind, hidden among the caves and hollows of the mountains that surround Silentgarde. For years, we have ventured deep into these caves, and every time, we came back with books, and herbs, and sometimes weapons that no eye had ever beheld in the realm. From where you think the wisdom that Maeryn is known for originates?” Diyana said, and saw that she had Elsa’s full attention, as a pair of emerald eyes twinkled in the light of the small fire that burned merrily before the two princesses.

  “I thought your people were born with wisdom and above average wits.”

  “Well, we are. We do have a mind that is better equipped to grasp intricacies that the average Aerdonian struggles with. But we were also aided in our quest for that wisdom by ‘The Mother’, our Vizarin, and the protector of Maeryn, Miervana. For generations, we have been finding her statues, and beside those statues, chests filled with objects that are a sure indication of the Vizarins having walked on earth, on the lands of Aerdon,” said Diyana, as visions of tall Maeryn warriors, wearing jeweled turquoise armor and carrying massive golden chests, entering the Floating Hall, filled her mind. She could see wisps of clouds drifting mere inches from the giant windows that lined the hall, looking out into a great drop of twenty thousand feet. She saw flashes of her sister, only eleven, pulling a huge oaken trunk filled with books on the forgotten language of D’ran, and the hall erupt in applause as the women in the hall screamed in joy and admiration at the young princess’s triumph. And an instant later, the vision changed, and she remembered how they had brought her sister’s corpse through the same door, and how the women had screamed again, but this time in grief, and how her mother had sat on the throne like an ice queen, with tears falling onto the white marble floor of the Floating Hall.

  “My sister died on one of those expeditions. And it took a great deal of persuasion from my part for my mother to allow me to come on this journey. She did not want to lose another daughter, but then she thought as the queen of Maeryn, and did what we have been doing for thousands of years; she thought of the realm over her own emotions, and here I am.” Diyana did not know why she told Elsa so much, but she had begun to like her. Diyana saw a steely resolve in her which was similar to what the Maeryn girls were taught to cultivate from a young age.

  She loves her brother. And I know what it is to love and lose your own blood. Her demeanor is a result of the years of hardship that she faced, and before she could enjoy the fruits of her toil and patience, the world around her began to crumble. You may try to hide your emotions, but I know exactly who you are, Elsa Faerson, you are someone I was a long time ago.

  “Have you ever loved someone, Diyana? A man? Or are the rumors true that Maeryn women prefer the scabbard over the sword?” Elsa broke Diyana’s chain of thought.

  Diyana chuckled, “Yes, but not all. The women outnumber men twenty to one in Silentgarde, so we need to look elsewhere. But I am a princess, and all my life, I have been surrounded by women. So, when the time comes, a man will be chosen for me, with whom I shall make babies, and that will be the end of it.”

  But I have already chosen mine.

  “I loved Olver Liongloom, even though I know you will scarce believe me. I loved him from a distance, and when I met him, my love deepened. And then he too was taken away from me,” Elsa said with a melancholic smile on her face.

  “But I thought you did not care for him?”

  “You expected me to share my deepest feelings after just a few days of riding together in a forest? I did not trust you enough, Diyana. You seemed arrogant, and behaved a little too much like me to be honest, and I would never trust someone like myself. But now, I respect you for that exact same reason, because I also know that it takes a lot to be like Elsa Faerson,” Elsa’s gaze fell upon her brother as she continued, “I am sorry for your sister. I cannot imagine your grief at the time. I hope I never go through the same.”

  “You will not. He will survive, I will make sure of it.”

  ∞∞∞

  The well was a strange sight when they found it in the middle of the forest. Old and crumbling and made of black stone bricks that jutted out haphazardly, displaying poor masonry from the part of whoever built it. It looked out of place in a world that had previously been thought to be devoid of any man-made structure. It was Diyana who had first noticed it, concealed by the thick blanket of mist that had been following them for two days, it appeared before her as an outline of an ominous shape, which Diyana took for an enemy, or an obstacle designed to hinder their progress. But upon closer inspection, the trio was relieved to discover that it was nothing but a well.

  “What do we make of this?” Elsa said as she circled the well on her horse, followed closely by Diyana. Although it hadn’t turned out to be a foe, Diyana still had an uneasy feeling about its existence in the middle of nowhere. Its presence felt planned. Its aura felt evil.

  Diyana dismounted from her horse and approached the structure, treading lightly and cautiously. One hand was on the hilt of her sword, and the other was behind her, clutching an arrow in her quiver, ready to shoot at anything that would dare to crawl out of the darkness. Elsa and Sanrick sat motionless on the horse
, and she could hear Sanrick’s labored breathing and the occasional wheezing of the horses behind her. As she neared the well, she noticed ivy creeping up the sides of the well and then disappearing into the depths below, and in some places, the ivy had burst from the cracks on the sides and ensnared it in its long leafy arms like a snake around its prey.

  Finally, Diyana reached the mouth of the well and peered into it, to find pitch black darkness staring back at her. At first, the walls of the well appeared to have nothing extraordinary about them, but just as Diyana was about to turn back, her eyes fell upon the steps that were carved into the sides, spiraling, descending and then disappearing into the dark abyss.

  “How deep is it?” Diyana heard Elsa’s voice from a few paces behind her.

  “Difficult to say, although we can find out. There are steps going down into the darkness.”

  Diyana heard Elsa say something to Sanrick in a hushed tone, then dismount her horse and walk to where she stood staring into the well.

  “There might be water at the bottom. It hasn’t rained for two days, and we are running out.” Elsa said.

  Diyana picked up a small rock from the ground. “Let’s find out,” she said and dropped it into the dark of the well. Diyana and Elsa waited for a few heartbeats before they heard a soft plunk that echoed back from the depths, confirming a pool of water that waited for them at the bottom of the well.

  “I do not see rain for the next couple of days as well. We might do well to fill our flagons with as much water as possible. Fetch me the flagons. ” Elsa said and turned to look at Diyana, who did not move.

  Diyana shook her head, “no, your brother needs you. It is better if I go. Anyhow, I have more experience in climbing down slippery walls and descending into dark caves with wet floors.”