“I feel so ashamed that I let it happen,” said Indrid.
Anna looked at him. “You are not the king, and you didn’t make that decision.”
“I should be king,” Indrid said. “I ordered my men to stand down, but most disobeyed me and followed Alexandal’s orders instead. I still feel responsible.”
“You did everything you could to prevent it. It’s not your fault, so don’t blame yourself.” Anna turned back to the giant stones. “What do you make of these?”
“Well, they surround the entire kingdom. We tried to bring one down. But it wouldn’t even budge. They must weigh hundreds of tons each,” he said. “Men could not have done this overnight. No way.”
“But someone did, and whoever it was we better pray that these stones are meant to protect us rather than hurt us.” Anna suddenly thought of the attacks that had taken place just nights ago. She never got a report from Indrid. “Did you find the suspect that attacked Speaker Mongs and the fisherman?”
Indrid’s guards were walking towards them.
“I’ll have to fill you in on the details,” Indrid said, distracted. “It’s complicated and I have to run another perimeter check. I’ll fill you in later.” He donned his boiled leather gloves.
Anna uttered a final thought before Indrid excused himself from her company. “The strangest thing happened the other night on Rayne’s birthday.”
Indrid stopped. “Go,” he said to his men. “I’m right behind.”
“I went to visit his memorial near The Ponds, and I could have sworn I saw Montague step into the forest just as I was approaching. When I got close to the stone, there were flowers and a letter with strange writing stamped with a bloody fingerprint leaning next to it.”
“A bloody fingerprint?” Indrid asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, I highly doubt Montague would be venturing out by The Ponds at such a late hour. Does he even know we put a stone there for Rayne?” Indrid asked.
“Yes. I think I told him.” But Anna couldn’t be certain.
“Do you know how many languages that man understands and speaks fluently? He could have written a poem in some ancient tongue,” Indrid said.
Anna smiled, realizing how paranoid she sounded. “Yeah, I guess I was just surprised to see anybody out that far when a storm was coming through. It just looked so much like him.”
“If you ever go that far so late again, you better take an escort,” Indrid said. He walked off. “I’ll see you later.”
Anna strolled between the stones for just a little longer to feel the energy emanating from them. Who could have done this, she wondered?
On her way back home, Anna passed the street where the event had happened. Everything seemed to end that day; the day Rayne burned Fervan Mongs’s arm. The rear of the pub in the alleyway off the cross section had almost a dozen columns in front of it holding up the extended roof. Between the beams Anna noticed an apparition-like figure pacing in and out of the shadows. It scared her. With all of the attacks and disappearances that had been happening lately, she feared for her life. Then, suddenly, she heard a voice in her head. It sounded so familiar, but she couldn’t understand what it was saying.
She saw the figure again moving within the darkness as the rays of sunlight shone through the columns, and it looked at her with eyes glowing green, the same color as hers; the same color as Rayne’s. An overwhelming feeling of comfort swallowed her fear. She was now attracted to the phantom that lurked in the shadows.
Anna stepped behind the glimmering rays of light, but there was nothing but a few birds picking at pieces of bread discarded by the bakers. Just as Anna was about to debunk her sighting, a veil of darkness rose all around her, and a face that she never thought she would see again appeared before her. It was the true king, Rayne Volpi, now a mature and towering, handsome man.
Her heart pounded. She reached out to touch his face, assuring her that what was happening was real. And when the tip of her finger touched him, she knew that it wasn’t an illusion. Rayne, her long lost love, was again before her. They stared into each other’s eyes as a familiar melody started to play in Anna’s mind; a song that they used to sing as children at The Ponds. The silky pale gray skin of her stepbrother felt firm. But, without a reaction, Rayne just stared back at her curiously.
“You know me?” his angelic voice asked.
“Rayne! You’re alive! I mean…you’re here, right now!” Anna looked around at the fluttering air that flowed around her. His cloak hid them from the people passing by. Weightless, she knew that they were in another reality.
Anna held him tight and received a download of childhood emotions as soon as their heartbeats coalesced. They were two hearts with one sound. And he let her control the beating. All of their childhood sailed on the winds of memory. The experience was nothing she had ever felt before.
But Rayne cut the moment short and took Anna gently by the arms. “I cannot stay. You must tell your leaders and General Indrid Cole that Demitri Von Cobb is marching from the Eire Mountains to attack Ikarus at this very moment.”
“Because of the poison,” Anna said. Her heart sank at the thought of the innocent people and creatures of Mern that had died.
“Yes,” Rayne said, “Stay within the stones with your people. Keep them safe.”
“It was you who set them,” Anna said.
He smiled. “And tell the general, ‘she will protect him’.”
“Who?” Anna asked.
When she blinked, she found herself standing alone on the corner of the pub once again. The breakfast crowd from Jackson’s Bakery was making its way to the temple for morning prayer. The veil had lifted.
For Anna, it was an absolute miracle to know that Rayne Volpi was still alive and more mysterious than ever.
Without his officers, who had poisoned the Hart River after disobeying his command to stand down, General Indrid Cole finished scanning the perimeter of the kingdom. This time he’d ordered his men to secure the gates. And this time they complied.
In the late afternoon, Indrid visited Montague’s quarters, but Montague wasn’t home, so he made himself comfortable on the library’s sheepskin bench as he sifted through books. He was intrigued by the cloaked man’s form and his vision of Rayne. He suddenly wanted to know more about magic. Also, he wanted to look into the bloody fingerprints Anna had described.
Then he heard tapping on the door.
“A letter for Montague La’Rose, sir,” a young messenger said. “It came urgently.”
“Thank you. Leave it just there.” Indrid pointed.
The boy placed the letter on the desk and left.
A little blue seal of five intertwined circles at the bottom right of its face caught Indrid’s attention. The last time he saw that mark it was on Montague’s old letters from Burton Lang. On that very night, Rayne went missing.
Indrid took into account everything Anna had told him about thinking she saw Montague by The Ponds on the night of the recent attacks; both the letter and the rose at the memorial stone. He could no longer resist the urge to read the message sitting on the desk. He took the scroll and unrolled the script to see the sender’s name at the bottom before the text quickly disappeared from the parchment. It was from Burton Lang; the man who had been banished from the kingdom of Men years ago for practicing witchcraft.
The world as Indrid knew it suddenly turned upside down. He didn’t want to make the connections that he was making. But he was, and he couldn’t ignore them. Was everything a lie? Has Montague been deceiving us? His caretaker always pushed Indrid to read what he wanted him to read, directing his focus. Maybe, Indrid thought, he was hiding the truth by feeding him, Anna, and Rayne lies to compensate.
For years, Indrid believed that it was Montague’s intention to keep him away from Anna. And that bothered him most. At times it was infuriating.
Indrid felt an impetuous need to find him. He figured that if Montague wasn’t home, or in the castle kitchen
, then he must be having tea in the courtyard. He hoped that his childhood guardian had a genuine explanation, but the kink in his stomach warned him otherwise. The general took two officers that he’d been acquainted with while visiting Apollo from the arena dungeons to assist him; men he could rely on. If Montague was involved with witchcraft he would be dangerous.
On the lush garden lawn, Indrid found Montague sitting on a blanket reading a journal. A few books and papers surrounded him. Indrid reminisced having tea here with him, Anna, and Rayne many times before. They’d come here after dinner in the summertime to relax and tell stories. The sentimental memory caused him to hesitate.
But he was the general now. He could not let his feelings dilute clear judgment. Montague had once told him this. And Indrid struggled as he realized how much the man he was about to arrest had taught him in his life. He swallowed his reservations, putting responsibility and civic duty before his personal relationship.
Indrid stood over Montague, blocking the sun. “I’m going to ask you something that I already asked you a long time ago, and you said it was of no importance, but this time I want an answer. Is Burton Lang alive, Montague? Have you been communicating with him?” he asked, holding up the letter.
“I’m sorry, young lord…I—”
Indrid bent to read the notes that were sprinkled about his surrounding area and saw a list of ingredients and lyrics on an open page of a book titled, The Magic of Sound. “What is this Monte? Are you studying up on your craft, the religion of mages?”
“General Cole…Please…I’m simply searching for a weakness within it.”
“Now I’m ‘general’ to you?” Indrid snapped. Monte always called him ‘lad’ or simply Indrid. Montague is trying to flatter me to avoid an interrogation. “Is he the wizard, the one that you knew?”
Montague was at a loss for words.
Indrid believed that Montague’s silence proved his guilt. “He is and you are his mage!” he said, stuttering as his emotions intensified. His heart broke. “I remember the old stories. I know what kind of devilry people like you can conjure. Bind his hands,” said the general to his guards.
“Indrid, please wait,” Montague cried.
Without turning back, “Bind them!” said Indrid. He couldn’t look Montague in the eyes.
The guards tied Montague’s hands and lifted him to his feet.
“Wait!” Anna Lott yelled, running towards them from a distance. On approach, her right foot hit a small stack of Montague’s books. One landed in front of her, face up called, A Wizard’s Guide.
“Take it! Page two hundred, sixty-four,” Montague said.
Indrid slapped it right out of Anna’s hand before she could lift it from the ground. “I don’t think so,” Indrid said.
“Please. It will explain everything I have been researching!” Montague said.
“Don’t touch it, he could have cursed it,” Indrid said. He turned to address his guards, “Take Montague to a cell in the dungeon.” It was the first time Indrid addressed him as Montague instead of Monte.
Anna shot him a livid expression. “What? Indrid!” she snapped.
“Now!” Indrid shouted, ignoring Anna’s concern.
Being taken away with bound hands, Montague turned back. “The Guide, read it!”
“Indrid!” Anna said again. She came up close to the general and kept her voice down. “The man practically raised us along with Gretchen. If he meant us any harm he could have done it years ago.”
Indrid wasn’t as soft spoken. “You saw him the night of the attacks at Rayne’s memorial stone. Are you telling me that you weren’t suspicious?”
“I wasn’t proposing that Montague was a mage! And you didn’t seem to think it was a big deal. So why now?”
“I found a letter to Montague from the exile, Burton Lang. Then, I thought about what you told me; the bloody fingerprint left on a letter, and that you thought you saw Montague at The Ponds on the night of the attacks. Blood is a sacred tool in witchcraft.”
“So this whole time Montague has been dealing with the enemy?” Anna asked with one brow raised. She obviously thought Indrid’s theory was far-fetched.
“Look. Montague taught us everything we know about the world. What if he has been telling us half-truths to distract us? What if he’s hiding the truth right out in the open, mixed with just the necessary amount of lies to sway our perception of who is good and who is evil?” Indrid said. Ironically, it was everything Montague had taught him.
“That’s crazy,” Anna said, breathing heavily.
“Is it?” Indrid asked. “What’s going on? Why are you out of breath?”
“I ran as fast as I could. The Colony of Cobb is coming,” Anna said. “And the cloaked man…” she paused to catch her breath. “It’s Rayne. He’s back. He told me that an army of five thousand mages are marching here right now!”
All the hair on Indrid’s arm stood up. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. He no longer considered the thought that he’d been hallucinating when he saw Rayne at the bottom of the lake. Whether conscious or unconscious, he had seen him. He was sure of it. But he asked Anna to repeat herself to clarify what he thought he’d heard her say.
The watchtower bell rang within the distance. “Torches out in the plains, coming from the south!” the lookout yelled.
Loitering peasants panicked and scampered home.
“Rayne is back,” Anna said. “And he said to tell you ‘she will protect you’.”
“Who? What does that mean?” Indrid wondered. What woman, other than Anna, cares about me enough to protect me? He didn’t know of any female warriors in Ikarus. The new capital made ladies out of their women where Grale, his homeland, welcomed both genders to join its knight’s court.
“I’m not sure,” said Anna.
Beyond the gates, Indrid Cole stood and watched the distant cluster of red and yellow firelight as it twinkled under a sunset sky. An army of savages marched toward the Ikarus plateau, their torches held high.
Ahead, Apollo sat quietly in the high grass along the path that Indrid would be leading south. The beast stared at him, her ice-blue eyes reflecting the twilight. The general’s men were still inside the kingdom gates gearing up and preparing their horses.
Since Rayne had disappeared, Indrid had barely seen Apollo. Starved daily to the brink of death, the cat remained in servitude at the Ikarus arena and had endured many tournament battles, tearing apart criminals who were sentenced to death for food. But Anna had continued her relationship with the cat. She would take her out for walks and talk to her at night while she slept in her cage comfortably next to Maul, the other larger cat. But Indrid never connected with Apollo. His fear had built a wall between them.
How did she get out? Indrid thought. Anna must have opened the cage and led her here. But then, Indrid had a revelation. He repeated what Anna had told him in his head—what she claimed Rayne had told her to tell him…‘she will protect you’. And Indrid realized that she was Apollo. Could it be true that Rayne is alive and preparing Ikarus for battle as the evidence suggests? If Rayne is the cloaked man, what does that mean? Is Rayne a supernatural entity—an angel, a wizard? After realizing his ignorance of the magical world in which he lived, the vision of Rayne at the bottom of the frozen lake was no longer hard to accept.
Indrid was careful and approached the cat slowly. As he got closer, Apollo got low and dipped her head, allowing Indrid to mount her. Her purring shook Indrid’s bones. His hand quivered as he reached out to touch the massive cat. Her fur was long and thick. “Easy,” he told her, gripping her neck.
Upon the mighty Apollo, Indrid Cole felt strong. She was steady and listened to his gestures. “Go”, he said, and Apollo went forward. Carefully, Indrid steered her, moving the skin sack around her neck right or left, or back if he wanted her to slow down. She listened better than his horse.
General Cole gathered his army and led them toward the edge of the Ikarus plateau armed with bows
and blades to meet the incoming threat from the Great Flats. The torches approaching from below were getting close.
The Ikarus army made it down to the flatlands safely and timely. But the enemy was now only a few hundred yards away.
“I have never come across an elder,” Indrid said to his medical officer, Melborne, who rode next to him on a wild-eyed horse, terrified by the giant cat traveling next to it. “They have seen more battle than all of us combined. Even their pawns that I deal with every day could be menacing.” He began to question his abilities. “Dead elders can carry more magic than any living mage ever could. Since they are soulless, the construct of their bodies can be pulled apart and reorganized to function again. They can shapeshift.”
Montague had told Indrid about the men and women that had been preserved for centuries, who were able to carry and perform wicked spells; the elders or dead mages—the most dangerous. At the time, Indrid thought the stories about them were just make-believe. Now, he knew they were real. And he understood that Demitri Von Cobb was the one controlling them. But Indrid’s opinion of Montague and his teachings was compromised.
“That may be. But they have never come across you either, General. Your bravery has not gone unnoticed. Maybe you will be the last person these elders will ever see,” the officer said. He had a large gap between his front teeth.
Indrid’s attention was taken by the fragile jelly trees along the way, drooping like they were barely alive. It was common for this phenomenon to happen at this time of year.
“Trolls, General, scurrying leagues underground, sifting through the dirt with their claws, catching gumworms, and drinking the last sweet drop from the tree’s roots,” Melborne, said.
“I’ve heard stories about how our ancestors once worked with the underground cave dwellers they then called, ‘trolls’,” Indrid said, again thinking about Montague. “But they were only stories.”
“Do you think the shadow man will appear?” Melborne asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Indrid. His stepbrother’s face flashed before his eyes. Indrid didn’t know how or why, but there was no more doubt that Rayne Volpi, the king of Men, had returned to them in another form.
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