by Morgan Rice
“My lady, it shall be the greatest honor.”
Gwendolyn nodded, pleased. It was past due that Steffen had a station befitting his special place in her heart, that his selfless loyalty was rewarded. Given his humility, if anyone deserved to be elevated, it was he.
“Very good, my lady,” Aberthol said, “a most excellent choice of council indeed. Now, the most pressing matter of business is the McClouds. With the Empire gone, the McCloud cities sacked, and the McCloud ruler dead, you are ruler now of all that remains of the Ring, of both kingdoms, of both sides of the Highlands. Surely, the McClouds will look to us to lead, to unify. Never before in the history of the MacGils has there been such an opportunity for unification. No MacGil before you has had the power you now have.”
“They are disorganized now,” Srog chimed in. “Weak. Now might be an opportunity. Now might be the time to attack them, to crush them once and for all and occupy their side.”
Kendrick shook his head.
“We must try to unify the kingdoms peacefully. The Ring has seen enough war. Win their hearts at this difficult time, and you will win their loyalty.”
“The McClouds are a savage people,” Erec said. “No diplomacy, no gestures, will win them. They are who they are, and their nature will not change. They are not us. Pacify them, and they will turn on you. Now is the time to wipe them out. It is the only way to assure true peace in the Ring.”
“The McClouds fought for us when we needed it,” Bronson reminded.
“Yes, but they only did so because they were also under attack,” Erec said.
“Gestures of peace and kindness can be interpreted by some as acts of weakness,” Srog said. “Our kindness to them might embolden them to attack us.”
The men broke out in disagreement, arguing amongst themselves, and Gwen thought it all over quietly as they did. She wondered what her father would have done if faced with this situation. Then she shook her head and realized that did not matter. She was ruler now. She had to trust herself.
Gwen finally cleared her throat, and the room fell silent.
“There is greater might in love than fear,” she said.
The men turned and looked to her, quiet, hanging on her every word. She could see the love and respect in their eyes.
“We must try to make the McClouds love us,” she continued. “We must try to unify the two Rings. If we attack , we may occupy them for a while; but not for the long run. Force is short-lived; the greater strength lies in harmony. Which of you would want to make peace with a kingdom that has slaughtered your wives and children?”
All the men looked down, humbled, silent, realizing she had a point.
“Peace may be the harder course,” Gwen continued, “but it is the course we must embark on. The McClouds may look upon as an enemy still; but they may also be looking to us for leadership. We must assume the best in them until they give us reason otherwise.”
“Yes, my lady,” Aberthol said.
“Bronson!” Gwen called out.
Bronson stepped forward, kneeling.
“You have served our kingdom bravely in our fight with the Empire. I owe you an apology. You should have not been mistrusted due to the deeds of my sister.”
Bronson bowed.
“Thank you, my lady. All is forgiven. I am grateful for your taking me in and giving me a second chance.”
“To reward your loyalty,” Gwen said, “I will give you leadership of the Eastern Kingdom of the Ring. You will rule the McClouds, and you will rule with my name.”
“My lady,” he gasped, shocked. “Are you certain? I am but a simple warrior.”
Gwen shook her head.
“You are far more,” she said. “You are the son of a king. And you are a McCloud. The McClouds know and respect you. You know them. Who better to lead them? Embark and cross the highlands and act as my emissary. Show them love and peace, and help them rebuild. Unify our armies.”
Bronson nodded quickly.
“As you say, my lady.”
“A most wise and tempered decision, my lady,” Aberthol said. “Your father would be proud.”
He cleared his throat and pulled out another scroll, squinting as he read.
“While we’re on the topic of the McClouds, there is another, more unpleasant, matter that needs to be dealt with. Your sister. Luanda. She has been caught.”
Gwen gasped. So, her sister, who had betrayed them, had survived after all.
“What shall be her fate?” Aberthol asked.
The men broke into an agitated murmur.
“She must be hanged for her crimes,” Srog said.
“She betrayed all of our people,” Erec said.
“She betrayed Thorgrin most of all,” Kendrick said.
Gwen burned as she thought of it. She turned and looked at Thor.
“My lady,” Thor said. “I hold no grudge against her. She is your sister, after all.”
Gwendolyn thought it all through, debating. Luanda had been a thorn in her side her entire life. Her ambition was limitless, she had a streak of ruthlessness in her, and Gwen knew that would never change.
“My lady, if I may,” Bronson said, clearing his throat, stepping forward. “Forgive me, I do not mean to intrude on affairs not my own. But Luanda is more than your sister—she is also my wife. I do not dispute her faults, or her wrongdoing. And yet, I ask you a favor. I ask for your forgiveness, your mercy, on her behalf. If I have done any good to merit it, please forgive her. It is greater for a leader to show mercy when underserved than to punish when it is.”
Gwen paused, debating, seething with conflicting emotions.
“Where is she?” Gwen asked Aberthol.
“She waits outside, my lady.”
Gwen thought long and hard, debating. Finally, she nodded.
“Bring her in.”
Aberthol whispered to an attendant, who ran from the room. Shortly, he returned, accompanying Luanda, hands bound behind her backs with ropes.
The men parted for her as she walked down the center, placed before her sister. Luanda hung her head low, not even meeting her eyes.
Gwen was shocked at her appearance. She looked much aged. She looked broken. Her head was shaved, her face covered in bruises and scratches. She looked as if she had been through hell and back.
Luanda also wore a look that Gwen had never seen: humility. She continued to look down to the floor, her lips bruised and chapped, her cheeks swollen. Despite everything, she could not help but feel some pity for her.
“Forgive me, my sister,” Luanda said, and she dropped to her knees and burst out sobbing. She wept, and as Gwen watched, her heart went to her. She’d always had a rivalry with Luanda—one of Luanda’s own making—yet despite that, she had never wished her harm.
“I am ashamed of what I have done,” Luanda said. “Not just to you, and Thor, but to the entire Ring. To our family. I do not know what overcame me. If I could take it all back, I would. It is your prerogative to have me killed. But I beg your forgiveness. I do not wish to die.”
Gwen watched her sobbing, the room quiet. Gwen sighed, realizing all eyes were on her.
She thought long and hard and realized there was much truth in what Bronson had said: there was more power in mercy than justice. She knew that any good ruler must exhibit both, and weigh both carefully.
“I will pardon you,” Gwendolyn said.
Luanda looked up with shock, and hope.
“But your face is not welcome here anymore. I have dispatched your husband to the Eastern Kingdom, and it is with him that you shall go, not to cross to this side of the Highlands ever again, on pain of execution. Not because of what you did to me, but because of what you did to Thorgrin.”
Gwen thought Luanda would be relieved to have averted a death sentence; yet to her surprise, she seemed dismayed.
Luanda wept again.
“You are my sister,” she said. “This is my home. You cannot banish me. I love you.”
“No you do
n’t,” Gwen said. “It’s taken me my whole life to realize that. You love ambition. Not your family.”
Gwen nodded, and two of her attendants stepped forward and took Luanda’s arms, and led her away.
Bronson bowed.
“Thank you, my lady, for granting her mercy. I shall never forget this kindness.”
Gwen nodded back.
“Accompany your wife to the Eastern Kingdom,” she said. “Represent me. Our people are counting on you. I am counting on you. A Ring divided will always be weak.”
Bronson bowed, turned, and hurried from the room, and a long silence followed.
As Luanda was being dragged from the room, she resisted, bucking.
“No!” she cried. “Don’t do this! This is my home, too!”
The men continued to drag her away. Before she reached the door, she turned and yelled out to Gwendolyn one last time.
“You are my younger sister! When we were young, you would do anything for me. What has happened to you?”
Gwen stared back at her, watching her sister’s face for the last time, feeling much aged herself, feeling, oddly, as if she were her older sister.
“I grew up,” Gwen replied.
The doors slammed behind her, and they all stood there in the long, reverberating silence. Gwen saw the glances of the men, and saw that they looked upon her with a new respect. She had made a hard choice.
Gwen was already feeling tired, older, weighed down by her rule; she heard the distant cheer of revelers, and she wanted to be outside, to be anywhere but here. She could feel the baby turning inside her, and she just wanted to be somewhere alone with Thor.
“Is there anything else that is pressing?” she asked Aberthol, hoping the answer would be no. “I would like to go back out and join our people.”
“Just one more pressing matter, my lady,” he answered. “The fate of Tirus.”
Tirus. It all came rushing back to Gwen—his betrayal. She had been foolish to trust him, and because of her trust, many of her men, good men, had died. She felt ashamed—and determined to set wrongs right.
“He was captured, along with his sons. All of them alive,” Aberthol said.
“He must be executed, my lady,” Kendrick said. “Tirus is a traitor of a different sort than your sister. His treachery is far more insidious.”
“You set an example for all traitors, my lady,” Erec added.
“Consider it all carefully, my lady, before you perform any hasty actions,” Aberthol said. “The Ring will never be truly stable until you put an end to the scheming nature of the men of the Upper Isles.”
“As much as we may detest them, we need the other MacGils. Your father knew that—which was why he tolerated them. This might be your chance, my lady, to make history. To unite the two warring MacGil factions, as they once were,” Srog said.
“We do not need them,” Kendrick said. “They need us.”
Aberthol shrugged.
“That was what your father believed,” he said. “He chose to deal with them by ignoring them. Yet as you can see, that only left time and room for Tirus to revolt.”
Gwendolyn sat there, thinking.
“Where is Tirus now?” she asked.
“He awaits judgment outside this hall,” Aberthol said. “This matter of the Upper Isles, of Tirus, cannot wait. It must be resolved now. For the stability of the Ring.”
Gwendolyn nodded, sighing.
“Bring him in,” she said.
Aberthol sent an attendant, who rushed out the room and returned shortly, several soldiers leading Tirus and his three sons. They were all brought before her.
Tirus was defiant even in captivity, even in his haggard state. He sneered up at her.
“You inhabit my brother’s seat,” he said scornfully to her. “Yet you are but a young girl.”
Gwen was filled with distaste at the sight of her uncle; she always had been.
“I inhabit this seat because I am Queen,” she corrected in a confident voice. “The lawfully appointed Queen. Because my father, your brother, the lawfully appointed king, placed me here. You, on the other hand, stand before me today because you tried to usurp what was not yours. It is not I on trial here, but you.”
Tirus’ three sons looked to the ground, clearly humbled, yet Tirus, still defiant, turned and looked to Kendrick.
“You are the eldest,” Tirus pleaded to Kendrick. “The firstborn of MacGil, and a man, bastard or not. It is you who should rule, if not I. Do something here. Tell Gwendolyn to know her place and get down from that throne.”
Kendrick shook his head, staring back at Tirus coldly and gripping the hilt on his sword.
“Watch your tongue around my sister,” he said. “She is our Queen, make no mistake about it, and she carries the full authority of our kingdom. Insult her again and you will face my wrath.”
Tirus turned reluctantly back to Gwen.
“If it is an apology you want,” he said, “you will not get one out of me. The throne you sit on is rightfully mine. It always has been. I was passed over for your father, who was a lesser man than myself.”
Gwendolyn felt her cheeks redden at his words, but she breathed deep, remembering her father’s advice: never let people know what you’re thinking. And never let emotions sway your decisions. There were so many traps to avoid as ruler.
“You are nothing but an ambitious traitor,” Gwendolyn said, “a disgrace to the MacGil blood line. By all rights of our kingdom I should have you executed.”
Gwen paused, debating, letting her words resonate in the thick and heavy silence.
“But I shall not. Instead, you shall be banished to live out your days back on the Upper Isles, never to set foot on the mainland of the Ring again. Furthermore, you shall be imprisoned there, under guard of my own watch. You shall live out the remainder of your days in a dungeon cell.”
Tirus stared back defiantly.
“Then I should rather you would execute me. I choose that over life in prison.”
Gwen smirked.
“You’ve lost the privilege to choose. The choices are mine now. Justice is done, for the Ring, for my family, and for my dead father. Enjoy your time underground.”
Gwen turned to her attendants.
“Get him out of my sight,” she commanded.
They rushed to do her bidding, dragging him away, and Tirus screamed and resisted, forcing them to drag him.
“You shall never get away with this!” he screamed, while being led away. “My people are a proud people! They will never allow this indignity! They will never allow their king to be imprisoned!”
Gwen stared him down coldly.
“Whoever said you were King?”
They dragged him outside, screaming, and finally slammed the door behind them.
The room was thick with a heavy silence, and Gwen could feel the fear and respect for her in the room. She also was beginning to feel tougher, stronger, than she ever had. Finally, wrongs were being set right, and it no longer intimidated her to do it.
Gwendolyn turned and looked over at Tirus’ three sons, all standing there, staring back, clearly afraid. Two of them looked like the father, and appeared equally defiant. The third, though, with long, curly hair and hazel eyes, seemed different than the others.
“He spoke the truth,” one of the sons said. “Our people are as hard as the rocks our island was formed on. They will never abide his imprisonment.”
“If your people take affront at the imprisonment of a traitor, then they are not a people who are welcome in the Ring,” Gwen replied coldly.
“My lady,” Aberthol said, clearing his throat, “I suggest you imprison Tirus’ sons as well. They are clearly loyal to their father, and nothing good can come from allowing them to roam free.”
“My lady,” Kendrick interrupted, “please do not jail the youngest of the sons, Matus. He was instrumental in helping our cause during the war, in freeing all of us and sparing our lives from death.”
Gwe
ndolyn studied Matus, who looked different than the other two: he did not have the dark eyes and features of his brothers, and he had more of a proud, noble spirit to him. He did not look like an Upper Islander; he appeared to look more like one of her own people. He even looked as if he could belong to her own family. She remembered all of these boys from her childhood, these distant cousins they would visit once a year, when their father visited the Upper Isles. She remembered Matus’ always being apart from the others, kinder; and she recalled the other three as mean-spirited and cold. Like their father.
“Release his binds,” she commanded, and an attendant rushed forward and severed the ropes binding Matus’ wrists.
“The MacGil blood flows strongly in you,” she said approvingly to Matus, “I thank you. Clearly, we owe you a great debt. Ask anything of us.”
Matus stepped forward and lowered his head humbly.
“It was an honor, my lady,” he said. “You owe me nothing. But if you ask me, then I shall ask you to release my brothers. They were swept up in my father’s cause, and they did you no harm.”
Gwen nodded approvingly.
“A noble request,” she said. “You ask not for yourself but for others.”
Gwen turned to her attendants: “Release them,” she commanded.
As attendants rushed forward and released them, the two other sons watched with surprise and relief.
Aberthol stepped forward in outrage.
“You make a mistake, my lady!” he insisted.
“Then it is mine to make,” she replied. “I shall not punish sons for the sins of the fathers.”
She turned to them.
“You may return to the Upper Isles. But do not follow in your father’s footsteps, or I will not be so kind the next time, cousins or not.”
The three brothers turned and walked quickly from the hall. As they were leaving, Gwen called out: “Matus!”
Matus stopped at the doorway, with the others.
“Stay behind.”
The other brothers looked at him, then frowned and walked out without him, closing the doors.
“I need people I can trust. My new kingdom is fragile, and has many positions to fill. Name yours.”
Matus shook his head.
“You do me too great an honor, my lady,” he said. “Whatever actions I took were out of love—not out of a desire for position. I did what I did because it was the right thing to do, and because what my father did, I am ashamed to say, was wrong.”