The King Of Birds

by Ross Dupree

for nearly 10 days. They say they are looking for a tomb. What do you know about that?"

  "We saw them just outside the fen. There are many of them, they didn't look as if they plan to leave soon."

  Lurm frowned. Cassian couldn't blame him. He wouldn't like an army of soldiers searching through his home either.

  Cassian did know what they were looking for, however. He knew whose tomb they sought.

  "Liurgia. They're looking for the Tomb Of Liurgia."

  Everyone looked at Cassian as if they just remembered he was in the bower at all.

  "They seek a legend, just as that old Rambler did."

  "The Rambler was looking for a legend that's real, boy. What are these soldiers looking for?"

  "Liurgia was a seer to an ancient king of Correndrum. He foresaw many of the events in the Second Ocean War. Correndrum would have been wiped out if not for his advice to the king. He was said to have possessed a book in which was written everything that would ever happen. A legend."

  "That's a grand tale, but why are the soldiers looking here? Ain't none of us Fen Folk can read a book, much less carry any around!"

  Much laughter from the men.

  "Many years after the war ended, Liurgia told the king of the king's coming death. It was written in the book, he said. The king flew into a rage and stabbed the seer through the heart, killing him instantly. The king commanded that Liurgia be buried along with his book, buried where no man would find him, buried where there could be no marker for his grave. And so the king's seneschal ordered his men to take the body of Liurgia and his book into the fens. And there to dig his grave and bury him deep. The seneschal knew that the wet earth of the fen would collapse in on the grave, leaving no trace, and that over the years, the ponds and reeds would change their places and obscure any path or markers left behind. Liurgia would be lost to time."

  At this Lurm nodded. "No one would ever find a grave like that. Not a year later, much less centuries."

  "But what happened to the king? Did it work? Did he evade his death?" This was from a skinny man, wrapped in what seemed to be the fur of squirrels.

  Cassian shook his head. "No man can escape his destiny. That was what I was taught as the point of the story. The king died, and he died when Liurgia had foretold that he would. The king locked himself in a tower as the designated day approached. He isolated himself in a room at the top, with only a trapdoor connecting him to any other room. He moved a heavy chest over the trapdoor. He fasted on the foretold day, not risking illness or poison from his food. He did not light a torch that night, lest the fire spread and burn him to death. He made it through the entire day, until just before midnight, with just a few minutes left in what was promised to be his final day."

  Cassian looked around and saw they were all wrapped up in the story, even Sera. He continued.

  "But at that moment, when he had almost evaded his fate, a bolt of lightning struck. It came from nowhere. There was not a cloud to be seen anywhere. The bolt did not strike the king, though he was startled by the flash and the loud clap of thunder that followed immediately thereafter. The report that we have in our books today say that the king then laughed loudly, and was seen in the window of the tower waving his arms at the heavens. He believed that fate had struck at him and missed. But it had not."

  Cassian paused dramatically and looked in the eyes of each of them, stopping with Sera.

  "The bolt had hit the tower itself, and it had exploded brick and mortar halfway down one side. The top of the tower leaned slowly to one side, and then, just as the town cryers were preparing to announce midnight, the tower crashed to the ground and took with it the king, crushing him under tons of stone. He was dead. He was not able to escape his destiny. None of us, not even kings, can escape our fates."

  Cassian found that he enjoyed playing the role of storyteller. He enjoyed having an audience for his learnedness.

  Lurm looked thoughtful, which had an almost comic effect on a man as large and as unkempt as he was.

  "This book, if the tale be true, is worth a great deal to a king. What king would not want to know what is going to happen? What would a king not give for such a tool? It is clear why an army has been sent to look for it, even if it is a tale. It is worth looking"

  Cassian mulled this over. Yes, even if you didn't fully believe in the legend of the book, it would not be unreasonable to send an army to look for it. The army had to be somewhere. They might as well be looking for something, even if it might not even exist.

  The skinny man in the squirrel outfit spoke up. "I know where this grave is. As do you, Lurm."

  "Yes. We have felt a strong magic we did not understand. We knew it was not of the reeds or ponds or trees or birds. It is the magic of man, and we know where it is buried. "

  Sera asked, "What will you do?"

  "We will see what the army will give us to guide them. We will make a deal with them and show them the way to the book."

  Lurm paused.

  "How much they pay us will decide how long it will take." He smiled. "And how many of their men become lost."

  Cassian remembered the guards at the edge of the fens. "They will not trust you. They believe you are savages."

  "We are savages, and they do not need to trust us. Or even like us. They must only pay us."

  Sera nodded at this. "We wish you good hunting in your negotiation with them."

  "Thank you for this information. You are welcome in our bowers, boy, and in our camps. Come stay with us and we will feed you. And show you what a woman of the fens is like!"

  Sera laughed and pushed Lurm towards the door. He bid her farewell, promising to have plenty to trade with her next time she was here. Then the Fen Folk left and all was quiet. A few moments later and Cassian heard the frogs resume their calls.

  Sera went back to her hammock and was asleep in minutes. Cassian, much to his surprise, followed her into sleep soon after.

 

 

  When they awoke the next morning, Sera was anxious to get on the road as quickly as possible. "Those soldiers will be coming back in the fens this morning, and I want to be ahead of them. I don't want to see them today."

  Cassian could agree with that, so they ate a fast breakfast and were back on the main road by the time the sun was fully up. In the pre-dawn light the bower blended perfectly with its surroundings, and Cassian wondered how many little huts like this were scattered throughout the fens.

  They rode swiftly through the wetlands, seeing only small game and birds along the way. Once they rode into a flock of swans taking flight on their migration to warmer lands for the winter. Seeing the birds with their long white necks take to the air would have been beautiful if it had not spooked the horses so. Nonetheless, Cassian enjoyed the experience. He wondered what Jack the Rambler would say to swans.

  They came to a fork in the road, and Cassian noticed they left the main road, taking instead a path that headed towards the mountains. After an hour or two of riding, he saw that the marshy ground was changing to rockier terrain, and the trees were getting taller.

  The path started to slope uphill, slowly at first, but then gradually steeper. Every time they came to a fork, Sera took them on the one that led uphill, which was almost always the smaller, lesser used path. Cassian didn't mind, the riding was pleasant, and the smell of the pines a welcome change from the vaguely stale smell that had hung over the fens.

  Even though they mostly rode in silence, Sera seemed to be in a better mood today. The talk with the Fen Folk seemed to have boosted her spirits. From time to time she would point or nod off to one side of the trail, and Cassian would then notice a deer, or a rabbit, or once, a bear. None of the animals seemed to pay them the least bit of attention, and they simply passed by each of them.

  As they climbed higher, the air began to cool, and the horses labored a little harder in the thinner air. Sera slowed their pace, and Cassian unpacked his cloak to wrap around
his shoulders. Sera, though, seemed completely comfortable in her lighter clothing. When Cassian asked her about it, she shrugged and said she felt no chill.

  The trees became less and less frequent until they were riding over open rock. The trail was packed hard, but the ground just off the trail was covered in tiny loose stone. Cassian could see they were quite high now, and looking back he could see the forest they had just come through, and beyond that the ten thousand little ponds of Whillwhistle Fens.

  It was well after mid-day now, and he was becoming acutely aware of how much time he had spent on a horse the last two days. Soreness was creeping into his unaccustomed muscles. Every time he thought they were nearing the top, he realized there was more slope to go. Cassian was learning the hard truth of mountains for himself. You can't see the end until you're there.

  At last they came to a small stream and stopped to allow the horses to drink. Cassian walked a short distance down the trail, stretching his tight muscles. Sera grinned at him, offering an apple from her pack.

  "Not the same as city life, is it?"

  He groaned in response, but in truth he was happy to be outside and covering so many miles.

  "I don't know how much more of this I can take," he lied. "Will we be there before nightfall?"

  "Oh yes. We just have to clear the top of this pass in the next hour or so, then we'll descend back into a small wooded valley. It's a dead end path, so no one goes there without good reason.