In A Time Of Darkness

by Gregory James Knoll

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  Lord Idimus had been sitting in his room for hours, preparing the letter he would send to Gerin. It was not the length that took so much of his night away, rather what to say in it. When it was finished, the King had less than a page, but it was enough. It got his point across all the while revealing nothing.

  The hardest part though, was not what information to relay. The King knew full well that he would not say anything about Fate in the letter, not even mention to Gerin that he required information. If that were to fall into the wrong hands, mainly those of Valaira, Idimus would be in far greater danger. Instead, what had the King toiling on was how to say them. It was the mentality and his treatment of Gerin he had to worry about. He wondered how he would send a man like Gerin on such a quest without ever telling him what he was seeking, or the reason he sought it. Part of the King believed he could simply tell him why, reveal to him who the woman in the forest was and what role she played in all of this. Speak of his sudden, overwhelming desire to kill her and free himself.

  But the paranoid, destroyed part of Idimus would never let that happen. That part refused to believe that the General—one that had risked his life time and again, bled and broke for his kingdom, the one that had never asked for anything in return—was trustworthy. After all, Valaira had snuck another rogue right under him, one very high within his ranks. Estophicles had been close to the King, too close more times than he could remember. At any given time Estophicles could have ended his life if he so chose. He would not give anyone that opportunity ever again, not until she was dead. Except one: the Wizard. Kalinies was like a brother to the King, and he was the one person within the kingdom that he trusted. He had proven his loyalty again over the past two days, driving himself mad within the library without sleep or food, until he had found what the King asked for. At any given time the Wizard could have let himself out. An oak door was no match for the world’s greatest spell caster, but Idimus wondered if that had ever crossed his mind. More than likely it hadn’t. He trusted such, because he trusted Kalinies. He, however, was the only one Idimus could say that of.

  The King leaned over his desk, binding the tiny, quickly written letter with a strip of leather and then crossing the room to a cage. With one swift movement, he unlatched the door and reached in, prying his fingers under the claws of a collared falcon, one that was trained to fly directly to Roane. Once the bird was out, Idimus strapped the leather to its left ankle and held it in front of himself on the way to the window. He shoved his arm forward and the falcon took to the air, disappearing into the night sky in a matter of seconds. The King fretted that perhaps even that was too much to say, even though the letter relayed nothing except for ordering Gerin to Kaldus, and stressed the urgency. And for a brief, maddening second, Idimus worried that a man he had known for a century and a half was plotting against him. Perhaps they all were.

  “So…many…betrayals…” he whispered, drawing his thin hands along the chipped stone windowsill, gripping it tightly. His mind tumbled to how many had revealed themselves as enemies within only the last two months: Estophicles, Valaira, and Rhimaldez. A slow sigh erupted and a sneer spread across his face. Of all those that he had lost, Rhimaldez was perhaps the least surprising, but in a strange way the most insulting. When it first happened, everything else followed so quickly that he had not the time to think about it, but now that was all he had. He could do nothing except wait for his General. It enraged him. He expected Rhimaldez to one day simply run. Leave behind his spear and his duty and then return to his family. Perhaps Idimus would have forgiven that; and he would have made his death quick once he finally caught up to him. But to side with the Champion, of all things, was unforgivable; incomprehensible. A part of Idimus believed that he would find Rhimaldez side-by-side with Grahamas in the forest, fighting alongside him. When he had not, the King truly wondered where he had run off to, and he had begun hunting him. The guards dispatched to his farm came up with nothing. Each member was long gone and not in any direction that they searched. Once free, Rhimaldez had hidden, and done well. But he had guards in every town, and a creature like that cannot easily hide forever. Idimus would find him, and he would end his life slowly and painfully; after he was forced to watch the same happen to his family. Idimus, however eager, found peace in that. He did not lay hope on much; perhaps that was the only thing. Maybe it was the fact that he had greater threats to deal with, seemingly more every day. Perhaps it was that Rhimaldez was no real menace if he stayed in hiding, but Idimus, to this point, had laid very little worry on Rhimaldez’s dissension.

  Because he didn’t have the resolve to think about it. His mind had been overwhelmed with paranoid delusions of Valaira flying through his window or Grahamas crashing through his door. Either of them ready to end his reign at any moment.

  Now, everything had slowed, other thoughts crept out to allow new worries to enter. Idimus believed he would survive Valaira. Since the discovery of Fate, not an hour passed without the King fantasizing about driving the blade—whatever it looked like—into her flat stomach.

  Idimus guaranteed that he would be there when the fated day came and his army trampled the weak rebellion of Grahamas and his companions. Idimus was certain he would watch Grahamas die. Sanctuary came in Idimus’ certainty that he would solve these two very dangerous problems.

  Slowly, involuntarily, the King fell to his floor. Weak and tired, he could only lean his head against the wall as his arms draped over the windowsill. “Rhimaldez…” he whispered. As if he was reliving his initial discovery of Grahamas, some three hundred years later, Idimus pondered the possibility that he may encounter that same event with his ex-captain. He could be at peace, alone in his throne room with nothing to worry about perhaps a decade from now, maybe a century, when it would start all over again. Like a violent whisper as it had been before, it may start with a guard’s death, and then another. Then towns far to the east being rid of them altogether, villages slowly claiming their liberation from him. Taunting letters. Hope renewed, one person at a time, until it grew again into what he was facing now. He would battle an enemy that knew every tunnel, almost every trick and every trap within his dark establishment; one that could sneak into his kingdom—even his tower. An enemy that could very well still have guards loyal to him that would follow his orders and Idimus would never know it. They could turn on him in an instant. Here in the only place he ever felt safe, he could be trapped…again.

  And as much as Idimus tried to stand, to rush out to tell any available guard to burn every village until they found him, he didn’t have the strength. Now deranged by a new discovery, he could only focus on it. He could do nothing but sit there, whispering and weeping.