by R Cavanaugh
“I wandered for two days in the Forest of Promise before I came upon him. Valor was great in size and domineer. He was black with fine streaks of emerald throughout and happened to be drinking from a pool when I saw him. His eyes were the color of tourmaline, and he looked up from the water and stared right into my eyes with his pale watery ones.
“‘James Tungston,’ he said in a hard, crisp voice, ‘Do you feel worthy of being my rider and my companion through the course of our lives?’
“I remember thinking to myself that there was no way that I could be worthy of him and all of his magnificence.”
“What did you say, then?” Rose asked as they continued to walk.
“I said, ‘No, I don’t think that I am.’”
“Then he strode over to me and said, ‘I think, then, that you and I will get along fine.’”
“After that he said that I could mount him, and we rode back to camp, where they outfitted me in black and green armor and created my sword, which I called Truth.”
“That sounds incredible,” Rose sighed, “it’s like he knew what you would say and already decided that you were a good match for him.”
“He did.”
“I don’t think any animal would want to make a journey with me through my life,” Rose said in a dull voice. “Why would they? After all, I wasn’t even raised here and wouldn’t deserve any that would choose me.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” James said with a small smile. “You might be surprised by what you’re capable of. I mean—”
But here he was cut off, as they had begun to walk upward, and then suddenly they were enveloped in brilliant sunlight.
“Welcome, Rose Heartington,” said Evan, “to the camp of Rose and the Tiara of Emerald Thorns.
Chapter 14
Defining Constance
On the Road to Decorus Regnum Corset
Jonathan Stipes was exhausted; never had he been so tired. Well, that wasn’t completely true, there was one other time, twenty-one years previous, when he had been this tired, maybe even more so. The path he was on was rocky and uneven, full of knolls and tree roots sticking up to trip those who weren’t paying attention. This path was through a mostly wooded area, and that was due to the fact that the road to the Stipes’ summer home had been carved out of the Mendacious Forest. The path had been created some two hundred years previous, and the parts that had been cut away had long since grown back in.
“You’re being too quiet, Jonathan,” Constance’s voice seemed to come from far away. “I hope that you are not still angry with me for taunting your brother.”
“No,” he sighed, “I’m just thinking about the situation that we are now in. Or maybe I should rephrase and say ‘mess.’”
“What kind of mess?” Constance questioned, although she only halfheartedly asked it; she had begun to chase a small sort of creature off the road.
Whatever the creature was, it didn’t strike Jonathan as important; not now, anyway. That matter was a mere trifle compared to what his brother might do to him. Igneous had been furious with him and said that he had lied: not only that he lied, but that the idea to lie had been Jonathan’s idea and not Exotius’s.
“Where would he have gotten that idea?” he asked out loud.
“Where would who get what idea?” Constance inquired again, only sounding passively interested. Her full attention was now directed on the road she was walking on and trying not to get herself too much dirtier.
“Igneous,” Jonathan hissed, “he thought that it had been my idea to lie about the girl and her father twenty-one years ago.”
“It wasn’t?” she said absentmindedly but moved away ever so slightly at his angered gaze.
He was already frustrated, and now she was adding to it. In many ways the horse he was riding, which was normal, was more loyal and interested than his animal. This, he thought, was quite funny, considering her name was supposed to imply that those very qualities existed in her.
Constance had, like all the animals paired with an Aquamarinian, come from the Forest of Promise. She had been the one to choose him, and they then and there became what was called companions for life. He couldn’t remember how long it was until she found him or why she had decided to choose him, but she had, and now he was stuck with her. There were times that she wasn’t so bad, but then there were moments that he wished he could take her back. After all, it had been more than a century since she had happened upon him, and he felt that they were far different than they were then.
“You are thinking hard again.” Her voice seemed to come from a completely different and distant land.
“You want to know how I can tell?” Here she paused for effect. “I can tell because your face is doing that funny thing where your eyebrows furrow, your nose scrunches up, and your mouth begins to twitch ever so slightly.”
At these words he was drawn back to reality and found her staring up at him, slightly agitated at being ignored, as he seemed to miss some of the previous statement.
“What!?” Jonathan hissed at her. He was aggravated himself now, due to the fact that she seemed to think it was all about her.
“Well,” she said, doing her best imitation of innocence, “due to the fact that I have paws with claws and not fingers with nails, I cannot open the doors before us leading into the city. Nor, for that matter, could I turn the key to unlock them.”
“What?” Jonathan exclaimed aloud.
I don’t believe it, he thought, we’re here already? Now he had to make a choice. He could go into the city and then into the Castle of Heartington; there he could wait for his brother to return. Or, he thought, I could join Exotius on his hunt for the girl.
“Hello!” Constance purred, but a soft growl lurked in the depths of that purr.
Ignore her, he thought, I need to figure this out. If I wait for Igneous, he will be livid that I stood by and did nothing. However, he told himself, you and Exotius do not get along very well. It was a fact that the two of them had actually never got along, due to how Exotius conducted himself.
“Jonathan!” There was no pretend purr this time, and as he looked down at her, he saw that she was now pacing, her movements filled with aggravation and disgust. Her amber eyes piercing his very existence.
Shut up! his mind shouted this angrily. After thinking about it, he had decided that there was no true bright side in either situation, and he would need to pick the lesser of the evils: his brother’s fury or Exotius’s dislike.
“Igneous is scarier,” he voiced aloud to the gate more than anyone else and began to take the path around the city, leaving a very confused and disgusted Constance right where she was standing.
“Wait,” she growled angrily, catching up in the process, “are you telling me we aren’t going to the castle?”
“Nope.”
“Then why did you have me stand there forever just to abruptly turn the other way and start around the city?”
“I thought,” he said through clenched teeth, “that your name meant you were going to stick with me and the decisions I make.”
“Constance can have several meanings,” she muttered curtly, “and it isn’t like I abandoned you at any point in time. I am still with you.”
“But are you with me?” he mused.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” she growled shortly.
This heated discussion sent them into a silence as they continued around the city walls toward the road located at the entrance on the other side. Their path was hilly, and the silence strained. Each wished to speak to the other but wasn’t sure about what to say and didn’t want to be the first to apologize to the other.
Then Jonathan heard an “Ouch!” followed by a low growl and wince. He turned to see that Constance had stubbed her left rear paw and was now limping.
“That sounded painful.�
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“It was,” she growled.
“That’s karma for you.” He grinned.
“Karma for what!” She limped on, continuing to glare at him.
“Karma for pissing Igneous off.”
“Oh, I keep this world in balance when I get under his skin.” She smiled. “Besides, you have to admit you enjoy me making him miserable.”
“Why would I enjoy you taunting him?” Jonathan exclaimed. “Whenever you taunt him, it comes back to haunt me.”
“Admit it: you love seeing him miserable.” Her toothy grin was sharp and annoying. “Not only because he makes you miserable but because he is so high up there on his mountain of greatness that it is fun to watch him fall off and flat on his face.”
It was true; Jonathan did gain some satisfaction from Constance’s ability to get under his brother’s dragon hide, or skin, as she called it.
At this point the hills were becoming level, and the road was becoming wider. They had reached the front gate.
Decorus Regnum Corset was the largest city on Aquamarine. While it was grand, it seemed less so when compared to the Mountains of Treachery just to the north and east. It did seem far more solid in comparison to the River Luminis that flowed through the city and which they had already crossed.
“Well, have you made up your mind yet?” Constance had a patience level that rivaled his brother’s.
“Made up my mind about what?” He pretended that he didn’t know what it was that she was insinuating.
Rolling her eyes and staring at the sky, seeming to ask why, she reiterated her question with more clarity: “Are you going to the castle, or are you going to look for Exoti—”
But she had stopped and was looking in the direction of the road that led to the city of HawThorns.
“Now that’s nice,” he said. “You start to ask a question and don’t even finish…” But his sentence was lost because of what he saw coming toward them.
It was Exotius and a quarter of the band of soldiers he had left with. They looked as though they had been rolling around in the dirt.
As they approached, Constance turned to Exotius and taunted, “Your immortality is sure to be in jeopardy now.”
“Since things didn’t end the way I wanted them to,” he glowered at her with those awful eyes, “Jonathan’s immortality is in danger too.”
“Excuse me!” Jonathan would not be threatened in such a manner. “I think you forget that I am the king’s brother!”
“Oh no, I didn’t.” Exotius said through gritted teeth, “In fact I quite enjoyed telling your brother that you’re the one who wanted to lie to him.”
“I noticed.”
“Well, it’s good to know you noticed something.”
“Must be nice to feel so full of one’s self.”
“Why, you stupid—”
But the rest of Exotius’s statement was lost, as Constance had let out a growl and roar that sent the horses into a tizzy. So much so that they were practically throwing their riders off in fear.
“Constance,” Exotius screamed over the ruckus, “you are a huge pain in the—” But he didn’t finish his statement for a second time as he fell to the ground. Standing up and pulling himself together, he grabbed his horse, Wildfire’s reigns and calmed him. The rest of his men attempted to do the same, although some were still shaking a little after it was all over.
“Why aren’t you back with the girl!?” Jonathan said coldly. “Igneous will be livid that you didn’t get her.”
“Well it couldn’t be helped,” Exotius grumbled. “We were hot on her trail when the worst possible thing happened…”
Chapter 15
The Dead End
A Few Days Previous at Draughtningr Manor
“…Stupid boy,” Exotius said as he stepped over his body and led his men through the entrance and began their trek through the passageway.
These tunnels were old, and so were the markings for them; such markings hadn’t been used since the Great Battle for Aquamarine.
“Good thing I was around then,” he said aloud. His men were exchanging puzzled, fearful looks. They all thought he was losing it, but no man would dare say so.
“These markings will lead us toward our foe as easily as if he were our guide—or should I say ‘she’?” Exotius exclaimed, almost laughing at the stupidity of it all. Here there was a secret tunnel, or maybe even a series of tunnels, with clear, discernible markings telling him, their foe, where to go.
He then led his men down the left tunnel and walked a ways. Here and there things had been dropped, valuable things, things that would normally be missed. Yet they had been left behind in haste so as to flee from him and their king. The walk began to feel long, and while he could go on forever, his men would soon be—what was that Earth phrase?—dropping like flies.
“We’ll rest here for a while,” Exotius said. He liked the power he heard in his voice.
Sighing was heard from every direction except in front of him, and one by one the men began to sit down, and some various forms of snoring followed.
“Humans.” He shook his head and began to walk a little farther on.
As he turned the bend, he found himself in what would be almost like a town square aboveground. There were tunnels coming from every direction. Some tunnels were labeled. Others were not, but one label caught his eye: ‘Tungston Manor’.
“So,” he said aloud, thinking all the while, “James, Topaz, Don, and the woman had all escaped in the same manner as the Draughtningr family.”
That must have been a long walk, especially with an Earth-raised woman in tow. I bet, he thought, grinning to himself, that she probably complained the whole way here, and she most likely moaned when they said they had to keep going.
His mind then turned to the other symbols. Some referred to the names of prominent families. Yet others referred to towns and a few cities. There was one symbol that he knew was going to lead him to that treacherous, treasonous band of rebels. The T on that foolish boy’s arm would ultimately mark the path to the girl. The reason being that one tunnel had that very symbol, as large as life, above it.
“Fools,” he hissed satisfactorily. After taking one more good look around, he made his way back down the tunnel he came from. Once he reached his men, he then sat down and waited for them to recuperate.
After only a few hours’ rest, he made all of them get up. As he took a quick look around, he noticed that some of the men looked as though they might groan. However, as he caught their eye, they seemed to think better of doing so.
“We will make better time than these villainous traitors,” he said with a sureness he was certain that some of them wished they had, “for they have women and valuables that they must bring with them.”
But it was not only possessions and people that he hoped would slow his enemy down, but a spy that had been carefully placed within their midst. His hope was that this spy would remain undiscovered and learn as much as possible about the operations of his foe.
He led them down tunnel after tunnel, a left, a right, two more lefts, and then straight on. It will be a thrill, he thought venomously, to catch them after he had to go through all this trouble to find and capture them. Not only the girl and the two families, but the rest of that puny, worthless organization known only as RTET that had been a thorn in his and the king’s sides for a very long time.
It was as he was thinking about what he was going to do when he got his hands on them that something caught his eye, and he stopped. The great Crystal Lion of Jerard sat there before him, poised as if to pounce on the first passerby. It could be a trap, he thought, or it could have become too heavy for them. Heavy or not, the Draughtningrs wouldn’t want to leave this lion if they had the choice.
“You two retrieve that lion.” Exotius watched as his two men walked forward to lift it.
Suddenly the center of the crystal lion glowed, and with only a second’s warning, Exotius screamed, “Take cover!” And with those words, the lion exploded, sending shards of crystal in every direction. He had only enough time to take cover in the next tunnel.
“Well!?” he shouted in question and disgust.
“Creg, Alick, and Alistair are dead. Sean and Maude are injured.”
“I have no time to deal with injured men,” Exotius said with an air of impatience. “Take care of the problem, Draco, and the rest of you, move out.”
Draco was the new head of the men he was leading, and he had decided to learn his name since he seemed to follow orders well enough. After all, it wasn’t his fault that those men did not get out of the way in time. I mean, he thought, it wasn’t like I asked them to do something impossible. I got out of the way without a problem.
There were cries of pain, then there was silence, and his remaining men continued down the next passageway behind him. This one had a lower ceiling and was narrower as well. Not only had it changed in size but in temperature too; it was cooler, and there was more moisture in the air they were breathing.
“Strange,” he said to himself and thinking aloud, “the tunnels have changed as if the environment above had done so.”
He began to notice tree roots here and there along the tunnel walls. The roots had tiny beads of water resting on them and were moving very slowly, as if the laws of gravity and matter ceased to exist. Despite the evident moisture, the ground under their feet remained hard, and as they continued down the tunnel, it became steadily darker. Not only was it darker, but the other tunnels began to converge on this one until there were no more branches merging with it. As they continued, darkness seemed to swallow them. Just when he was about to order his men to light some torches, the cave was filled with a cool blue light.