Within the Hollow Crown

by Antoniazzi, Daniel

  Sarah shied away, but Michael lifted her chin with his hand, leaning in for a kiss. Their first kiss since the wedding, ten days earlier. They lingered there, in the hall, for a private moment before proceeding into the Great Hall.

  As they entered, hand in hand, Landos stood and raised a glass.

  “His Grace, Count Michael Deliem!”

  “Hoorah!” chorused the company. Glasses were raised and everyone took a drink.

  “And Her Grace, Countess Sarah Deliem!”

  Landos held his glass up high, staring right into Sarah’s eyes from across the banquet. Two hundred people in the room, but only the two of them understood what he was saying at that moment with his eyes.

  “Hoorah!” the room echoed. Sarah didn’t know she was doing it, but her grip on Michael’s hand tightened. Like a vice. But the toast ended and the feast began, and she thought nothing more of it. For now.

  Michael ended up digesting more news than food, as his system wasn’t prepared for mountains of salted meats and rich wines after a diet of Alderthorn’s herbs and roots. Landos and Calvin recalled everything that had happened since the Wedding, from the attack at the capital to the invading Turin. Gabriel was mostly silent, though he interjected when he thought Landos wasn’t making things sound bleak enough.

  And then the messenger arrived.

  “Can I help you?” Michael said.

  “Yes, Your Grace, I have a message from Lord Endior.”

  “Someone probably tried to sleep with his daughter again,” Gabriel grumbled.

  “Well,” Michael said, “Let’s see it.”

  The messenger handed the page to Calvin, who read it for the others:

  “‘Your Grace, Count Michael Deliem, please be advised that the march from Hartstone to Anuen has been ambushed six miles south of Raingrove. All the men are dead. We will be returning the bodies of Prince Anthony and Prince Nathaniel to Hartstone, as it is closer. Please advise on further actions. Yours, Lord Endior.’”

  The table sat in shock. The return of Count Michael couldn’t undo this bad news.

  “Alright,” Michael said, “Dinner’s over. We have work to do.”

  “They killed everyone?” Calvin said, more amazed than inquiring.

  “It says, ‘All the men are dead,’” Michael said. “But there was no mention of Lady Vye.”

  Chapter 45: Unforgotten Memories

  It was an overcast afternoon when Vye woke. She was nauseous and dizzy, a feeling that reminded her of some weekends in her ill-advised youth. But, more importantly, she didn’t know where she was, how she had gotten there, and was only vaguely aware of who she was.

  She hefted herself to her feet and stretched her muscles. She didn’t have much with her. She was wearing her armor, her sword was on the ground beside her, and there was a wool blanket covering her.

  Wool blanket?

  The words “wool” and “blanket” rang around her head in a desperate game of ping-pong. She didn’t own a wool blanket. Even if she did, it wouldn’t be the third item she would have in the woods if she were only allowed to have three items.

  Clues, thought Vye. She needed clues. So, she was in the woods. The Eliowode, from the looks of it. She wasn’t good enough at tracking to get any meaningful information from the ground. She lifted her sword up for a closer look. It was stained in blood. That felt like a clue to her. But she wasn’t sure what it meant.

  There were footsteps behind her. Footsteps, she thought, might be clues, but in her state, clues weren’t allowed to have footsteps. Footsteps were too dangerous.

  “Who goes there?” she called.

  “It’s me,” said an accented voice.

  “A little more specific, please,” Vye said.

  “It’s Halmir.”

  “Friend or Foe?”

  “Vye, it’s me.”

  “We’ve covered this already.”

  “Vye,” Halmir said, stepping into the clearing, “Don’t you remember what happened last night?”

  Vye got the wrong impression.

  “Look,” Vye said, “Clearly I was drunk, because I usually don’t just... Wait a minute, you’re a Turin.”

  “Yes.”

  Something else important dawned on Vye, “And we never slept together.”

  “It’s coming back to you.”

  “Why couldn’t I remember anything just now?”

  “We’re dealing with memory spells. You got confused. The fog in your mind will clear.”

  “Is that going to keep happening?”

  “It’ll get better, with practice.”

  Vye slumped against a tree, catching her emotional breath.

  “I can’t believe I broke you out. What possessed me?”

  “Are you doubting your decision?”

  Vye didn’t answer. Halmir knew he was walking on eggshells. But he had to get where he was going...

  “Let me put it this way,” Halmir continued, “If you had not freed me, then most likely you and I would both be dead right now.”

  “Well,” Vye shrugged, “When you put it that way...”

  “We had no choice.”

  “‘We?’” Vye snapped.

  “You broke me out of my cage. I betrayed my Master--” Vye shuddered at the thought of those fiery blue eyes-- “and killed one of my kin.”

  “Why did you do it? Betray your Master?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I need a better answer than that.”

  “I don’t have one to give you.”

  “Give me something.”

  “Your laws...”

  “Our laws? That’s why you betrayed your Master?”

  “It is difficult to explain. I am thirty years old. For all of those thirty years, I have learned to hate the people of Rone. My Master taught us that you are all cruel and uncaring people. That you eat your young. That you boil people alive for sport. The tales of your barbarism are ingrained in us from an early age.”

  Vye flushed with anger at the thought of these lies. But then something occurred to her.

  “They tell us the same things about you,” she confessed.

  “Once I was your prisoner... Of course you restrained me. Of course you jailed me. But you still allowed me some... dignity. I was not expecting that. I wasn’t prepared for you to have laws. To follow rules that said I couldn’t be tortured. I was amazed to learn you were going to have a trial. I didn’t think barbarians did such things.”

  “We don’t,” Vye smirked, but Halmir wasn’t smirking back. He was dead serious about this confession. Turning his back on three decades of indoctrination wasn’t easy.

  “It seemed so easy, when I departed my homeland on the first day of summer, it seemed like nothing to be a part of the Redemption of the Turin. I was prepared to decimate the Kingdom of Rone. To kill or enslave your entire population. But when I met you...”

  And now Halmir finally blushed. Vye never imagined a Turin could blush through their dark skin. But there it was.

  “What do we do now?” Vye asked.

  “I am a traitor. I cannot go home,” Halmir muttered, perhaps realizing it for the first time himself. “What of your people? Would they take you back?”

  “I hope so,” Vye said. “If I get a chance to explain everything. Will you come with me?”

  “I don’t want to die,” Halmir admitted.

  Vye paced about the clearing. They were playing with borrowed money at this point. The situation was desperate. Dire. But somehow, what she wanted more than anything was to make sure Halmir wasn’t killed.

  “I wish I could promise you that you wouldn’t be killed,” Vye said. “But you murdered a dozen people, including the Prince.”

  “I can help you,” Halmir pleaded. “You don’t know what you’re up against. My Master is more dangerous than anything you’ve faced before.”

  “I can only promise you this,” Vye said, “Come back to Hartstone with me. I will advocate for you. I will explain to my Liege Lord that
you intend to help. That I... trust you. And maybe that will be enough to stay your execution.”

  “Maybe?”

  “It’s all I can promise. That as long as I’m alive, you will not be alone.”

  “In that case,” Halmir said, “I accept.”

  Chapter 46: A Moot Point

  Michael marched his senior staff off to Gabriel’s chambers. While there were many places to meet and discuss things in the Castle, Gabriel’s room had two advantages. One, it was far from the crowd. And two, there was so much noise from the furnace that eavesdropping was that much more difficult.

  “It just never ends...” Landos lamented as he shut the door.

  “At least Vye’s alive,” Michael commented.

  “Very presumptuous,” Gabriel retorted.

  “Lord Endior chooses his words carefully. He made a point of saying, ‘All the men.’ I think he was trying to indicate that Vye’s body wasn’t there. And yet, if the missive had been intercepted, the enemy wouldn’t know.”

  “So, she’s alive,” Landos said. “We need to find her.”

  “No,” Michael said. “She’s not a priority.”

  “Michael,” Sarah said, “If she was there, she may know what happened.”

  “She almost definitely knows what happened,” Michael said. “But we have bigger problems.”

  “Your Grace--” Landos objected, but didn’t get further.

  “He’s right,” Gabriel said, “With Prince Anthony dead, we now have no way of securing leadership of the Kingdom.”

  “Brimford and Avonshire will tear each other to shreds,” Michael continued, “Unless...”

  He was lost in a thought. It was a crazy thought. A thought that would cock a lot of brows. But maybe, just maybe...

  “Is something wrong with the furnace?” Calvin asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Gabriel grumbled. “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s just there’s smoke coming out of the floor,” Calvin answered.

  Everyone stared at the smoke. It was rising out of the floor, but not as though there was a fire. Just as though that particular stone had a candle hiding in it. It was also odd that the smoke dispersed very suddenly six feet into the air. It didn’t waver and disperse slowly, it formed the shape of a door...

  A door of smoke...

  “Guards!” Michael yelled, “Guards, in here now!”

  Landos pulled Sarah behind him as Calvin and Gabriel drew arms. The Guards stormed in, surrounding the door of smoke.

  “Is that--” Michael said.

  “Yes.” Landos replied. “Calvin, take the Count and Countess to the carriages. Ride to Ralsean immediately. No delays, no questions. Go!”

  “Landos!” Michael shouted, “I need to be here to handle this.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Landos said. “Without Vye here, we can’t handle the Turin.”

  A Turin man ambled through the smoke. He was unarmed, but Gabriel held his sword to the man’s throat anyway.

  “Go-go-go!” Landos shouted to Calvin.

  But then Lady Vye stepped through the smoke and the door evaporated.

  “Lady Vye?” Michael said.

  “Your Grace,” Lady Vye answered. There were a lot of questions and answers, but Vye decided that even this situation called for common courtesy, “You’re feeling better?”

  “No, Yes, well, physically. Who the hell is this?”

  “Oh,” Vye said, looking over at her companion, “This is Halmir. He’s the one who assassinated Prince Nathaniel and stabbed you in the heart.”

  Michael thought about this for a moment.

  “Oh.”

  Chapter 47: Planning Ahead

  Jareld hated fieldwork.

  He had avoided it feverishly for the seven years of study he had spent at the Towers of Seneca, and all of his teachers knew how to avoid Jareld by climbing a few flights of stairs. He hated the fifteen kinds of mud in Arwall, he hated the eighteen kinds of snow in Aceley, and he hated not having a comfortable bed to sleep in.

  He also hated things that crawled in the dark, just out of sight, and waited for you to fall asleep so they could inject you with poison.

  And so, he could not sleep his first night in the Caves of Drentar. But if you took away the dank caves, the mud, the snow, and the poisonous critters, he still wouldn’t have been able to sleep. Because it was something else that was keeping him up.

  “Thor, are you awake?”

  “How would I know if I was dreaming?”

  “Good point.” After a moment, Jareld continued, “How would I know if I was dreaming?”

  “Your dreams wouldn’t include me, I hope.”

  “Also a good point.”

  Jareld turned to his other side to see Corthos snoring away. Jareld felt it was unfair that he could sleep so comfortably. He must have gotten the good spot.

  “Thor, what do we do about the papers?”

  “We left them in the boat.”

  “No, I don’t mean the papers themselves. I mean, what do we do about what they said? What do we tell people?”

  “What do you think we should tell them?”

  “The truth.”

  “So, we tell them the truth.”

  “Of course we do.”

  Jareld rolled back over to his first side. He heard something scurry away on the far wall, but didn’t care at the moment.

  Tell the truth. Jareld had never been obsessed with the truth. He had only obsessed with historical fact. A very subtle distinction. He wanted the record to be correct. Factual. And he always figured people would be better off knowing the true version of history.

  But this time he had doubts. The most dangerous thing Jareld could imagine would be to announce that the King wasn’t the King. There were consequences to the truth, and for the first time, they seemed worse than the consequences of lying.

  “Thor?” Jareld said after a few minutes. “Are you still awake?”

  “No, I’m having a nightmare. Someone keeps talking to me.”

  “What if we didn’t tell anybody? Like Dorn. What if we just keep it to ourselves?”

  Thor rolled over and sat up, leaning against the wall in thought. It was rare that Thor put much thought into what he was going to say, and so Jareld assumed he was about to say something very profound.

  “My back hurts,” is what he said, reminding Jareld that he should have known better.

  “What?”

  “Here’s something that should put your mind at ease,” Thor said, “Based on my latest estimates, only one out of every twelve people who go into the Caves of Drentar come out alive or at all. Of those that come out, only one in five still have their full mental faculties. We, by comparison to almost every other expedition that has entered the Caves, are less prepared, weaker, have fewer supplies, and have no ability to engage in meaningful combat. Of the three of us, Corthos is most likely to live, and he doesn’t know about the truth, not that he’d care very much. So, I think we shouldn’t worry about what we’re going to say to people if we survive, because we most likely won’t.”

  Thor, satisfied with his answer, yawned, stretched, and rolled back up into his blanket.

  “And you thought that was going to cheer me up, did you?”

  “I actually only hoped that it would stop you from asking me questions. I want to get some sleep.”

  “Well, get some sleep. I’m going to stand watch.”

  And within minutes, Thor’s snoring joined Corthos’ snoring in a sort of nasal duet. Jareld, not worried so much about dying as living, stayed up through the night, wondering about the strange turn his life and the world’s history had taken in the last couple of weeks.

  Chapter 48: The Reasons

  Against Lady Vye’s protestations, Halmir was immediately locked up and bound. Halmir went peacefully, even helpfully. His faith in Vye was complete.

  Vye and Michael had a long, uncomfortable conversation. Vye confessed her part in Halmir’s escape, and her failure to
save Prince Anthony. She pleaded, not for herself, but for Halmir, insisting that he had changed. That he was not the same man who had attacked them on the first day of summer.

  As dusk settled over Hartstone Castle, Michael and Vye descended into the dungeon. Vye opened the cell and released Halmir’s restraints.

  “Stand up,” Michael said. Halmir did so. “Lady Vye is convinced that you are reformed. I don’t believe her. Not yet. But if you want to curry any favor with me, start talking, and don’t stop until I tell you to.”

  “What do you want me to talk about?”

  “Vye kept referring to your Master. Who is he?”

  “His name is Argos.”

  “How have we never heard of him? We have spies in the Turin Mountains. Not many, and the truth is they report to the King, not me. But if there is a man as powerful as you say, how has he been kept a secret?”

  “It is his way. He commands from the shadows. He has influence over many, but contact with very few.”

  “And you are one of those few?”

  Halmir nodded. Michael glanced at Vye. She gave him a look. It was a look that could only be understood between two good friends who had known one another for more than a decade. It was a look of reassurance, that he was on the right path, that she still trusted Halmir, despite all the evidence telling them not to. Michael sighed.

  “Tell me about Argos.”

  Halmir took a deep breath and began. It was a long story, but he would tell every part he knew, and guess at any part he didn’t. Argos was older than anyone else in the Turinheld. Nobody knew how old he was. Nobody could speak of his childhood, nor did anyone know of his parents or other relations.

  By contrast, though, he seemed young. Yes, his hair was silver white, but it was still rich and full, and his skin was the sort of thing women wished they could buy in bottles. Only his eyes seemed ancient. Not the wrinkles around his eyes, for he had none. Just the depth of his eyes, which seemed sometimes to glow with a blue fire.

  And his voice was a thing unto itself. Deeper than oceans, older than stars, it dug into your mind and coiled around you. His command was absolute, and Halmir was certain he wouldn’t have been able to betray Argos so easily if he hadn’t been away for so long.