"My name is Coryn," the woman began. "I have been asked to escort you to the king's throne room. Follow me." She turned to her left and began walking down the long hallway, her boots resounding on the tile floors. Jason and the assassin had little choice but to follow her. She was tall for a woman, with long strides, causing the two of them to modulate their pace to keep up. Jason, happening to look behind, found two of the black cloaked guards from the bedroom following behind the assassin a little ways back. They had hidden their miniature crossbows and walked with an easy gait, but he had no doubt they could draw their swords in an instant. After perhaps thirty paces, the small party came to a corridor. Across the corridor, the hall continued into darkness, presumably on to other bedrooms. Their path lay to the right, where they found a grand staircase leading down toward the next level. Coryn began to descend the staircase, and after passing three floors, they arrived at the ground floor.
The halls were devoid of nobles or other visitors. Only servants populated the halls, dropping curtsies or bows as they passed the small party and then hurrying silently on to continue their business. Jason noticed the servants wore a sort of uniform. The men wore black breeches with a black tunic that featured a white eagle embroidered on the breast over the heart. The women wore black dresses with matching embroidery.
Despite the late hour, Jason felt wide awake. I suppose that nearly having my throat cut will serve to wash away my fatigue of the day, he thought.
Daydreaming and distracted as he was, Jason nearly ran into the back of Coryn and had to quick-step aside to avoid a collision. They had arrived at a set of large double doors which towered above their heads. Jason, at first, had no idea why the doors to the throne room should be so high, but then he remembered the tales of giants and other creatures that towered above the average man and supposed that the king would want to be courteous to such creatures. The guards flanking the door were near replicas of the guards outside of the king's antechamber. All except one that is, one who was slightly shorter, a woman Jason thought, pulled open the doors. Coryn glanced back and gave him a look, as if he had embarrassed her, before striding into the throne room.
Jason's breath was taken away as he stepped into a room of immense splendor. Tiles covered the floor, a gray swirled with light pinks that was polished until it shone, reflecting the light from the dozens of candles in sconces around the room, as well the five magnificent golden candelabras hanging, a few paces above their heads, by thick cables from the high vaulted ceiling. A thick blood-red colored carpet ran from the doorway to the steps leading up to the four thrones, and Coryn continued to walk down the carpet, her pace slowing. The thrones were of various sizes. The contrast reminded Jason of the story of the Three Bears, with how there had been the big chair, medium-sized chair and baby chair. While there was no baby throne, the king's throne dominated the scene, with the queen's throne diminished only slightly, and the two flanking the center pair looking diminished as much again as the queen's had to the king's. Around the room were various smaller, single pane doors, used by the king's staff and guards, Jason assumed, with the door directly behind the throne being the private entrance and escape route of the king and royal family. In each corner of the massive chamber, heat rolled from fireplaces, lending a pleasant warmth to the place.
The king's staff had been alerted to the fact that the king would be entertaining despite the late hour, for already half a dozen servants moved through the doors and filed along the wall, waiting to do the bidding of the king and queen, whatever that should be. Guards also ringed the room, with two flanking the door the party had just entered through and two flanking each of the smaller doors.
The small procession came to a halt near the end of the red carpet, a short way from the lowest step. There, Coryn turned and looked at the assassin and said, "Lower your hood and remove your mask, assassin, so the king may look upon your face."
The assassin stared back for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to obey the command. At last, she made a decision and lowered her eyes in acquiescence, pulling back her cloak with one gloved hand and with the other lowering the cloth that had been concealing the lower part of her face. Her eyes rose and darted to Jason's, as if daring him to make a comment.
But Jason was speechless, unable to utter a word had his life depended on it. For, to his eyes, her face was magnificent. She was young, at least as young as he was, Jason thought. Her raven black hair was tied back in a short pony tail, for her hair was not long to begin with. Her blue eyes were complemented by a cute face which, surprisingly, lacked scars.
Any response by Jason to her revelation was cut off by the sound of a door opening ahead of them. Turning, Jason witnessed the king and queen entering the throne room hand in hand. Out of the corner of his eye Jason saw the guards around the room dropping to a knee and placing their right hand over their heart in a fist as they bowed their heads in respect. Coryn had done the same, though she had not gone to her knees, only bowing to chest height and resuming her position. Jason repeated the bow he had done in the king's antechamber and saw the assassin do the same. The king and queen separated their hands and split, moving right and left respectively, to take their seats. Jason noted the king had a narrow box perhaps a pace and a half in length in the crook of his right arm. Once they were seated, Coryn surprised Jason by ascending the steps and taking the seat to the left of the queen. Of course! She must have been a princess, which explained the lesser courtesy shown by her and the greater courtesy shown by the servants toward their party as they had passed through the palace halls. Her mother patted her hand and Coryn kissed her on the cheek in return.
The king studied the two before him silently, his eyes lingering on the assassin's face the longest for this was the first glimpse of it he'd been allowed. At last he spoke a question. "What are your names, children?" His eyes turned first to the assassin.
Jason felt the assassin bristle at being called a child, but she answered curtly, "Bridgette Johnson."
The king's eyes turned to Jason and he answered, "Jason Thorpe, my king."
The king seemed to absorb the names, trying them out in his mind. "Assassin Bridgette, you are here before me for the attempted assassination of my personage. Do you deny that assassination was your intent?"
"I do not deny it," Bridgette answered. Her gaze did not deviate from the king's and she seemed to have stood up straighter, if that were possible.
The king nodded as if seeing something he approved of and said, "Then you have left me with few options, young Bridgette. You can face the headsman's axe, life imprisonment below the palace, or…" The king's gaze returned to Jason. "There is a third option. But it requires the cooperation of you, young master Thorpe."
Jason gulped, but answered, "If what you ask of me is something that will grant Bridgette her freedom and her life, I will do it without hesitation, my king." At that moment, he knew he would do anything to save this woman, to let her see her brother again.
"The action you undertake will preserve both Bridgette’s life and her freedom. Do you not wish to know what the action is before undertaking it?"
"My king, the answer would make little difference, for nothing could stop me from going through with it," Jason answered. The words surprised him, for he barely knew this woman. He had only just learned her name, in fact. Would he really do anything just so she could see Dawyn again?
"Even if that action were to take your life in place of hers?"
At that Jason stumbled, but only for a moment. He had already committed himself and could not turn back. So, squaring his shoulders he stated, "Yes, I would willingly surrender my life if it meant Bridgette would live." At those words, Jason heard a gasp beside him and found Bridgette staring at him, her mouth wide. Seeing him staring at her, she snapped her mouth closed and masked her features, her eyes turning to ice and her head returning to face forward, but for a moment Jason would have sworn he had seen something else flash in her eyes; something soft, like the me
at within the shell of a clam.
A quick smile crossed the king's mouth before he spoke, "Then step forward, both of you, and face each other at the base of the steps." He rose from his throne and descended the steps.
Jason took a deep breath and walked forward. He saw that Bridgette was walking in time with him. When they reached the base of the stairs and faced each other, the king, who was standing on the bottom step, told Bridgette to remove her gloves and for Jason to take her hands in his. Bridgette removed the gloves and hid them on her person and then proffered her naked hands to Jason who took them in his own. Her hands were warm and dry with a hard feel from calluses caused, presumably, by the prolonged use of her deadly knives and other weapons of her profession. His, by comparison, were becoming sweaty as he contemplated their fates.
The king removed a thin black rod roughly a pace in length with an orb the size of a large male fist topping it from the box he had carried in. The orb, like the rod, was black, though the darkness within the orb seemed to be swirling, alive with purpose. The king held the rod before him with the orb of a height with his eyes. He began chanting in an unknown language that at once sounded strange and familiar, like those who spoke Spanish or French or other romance languages might have felt hearing Latin spoken. The incantation was short, but it had the desired effect on the orb. The previous darkness had been banished, replaced by pure white light emanating from the orb, pulsing outward as the king held it between them.
“Take the rod,” the king commanded.
As Jason and Bridgette placed their hands on the rod, Jason felt a prick on the index finger of both his hands. A moment later, a tingling began in his fingers and began to run up his arms.
“A foreign program has been inserted into your blood,” a male voice came from Jason’s left. He whipped his head around to see a bald man dressed in strange brown robes looking back at him. “Please confirm you wish the implantation process to continue.”
“Who are you?” Jason asked.
“I am your human-implant relations manager. I monitor your body to detect foreign objects and carry out various other functions as I am programmed.”
Jason looked around. The king was watching him, but no one had noticed the bald man standing next to him. “Can they see you?” He nodded toward the king and the others.
The bald man did not look toward the king. “No other person can see me except you. I appear to you visually only through stimulation of your visual cortex. I am not physically present.”
“So they think I’m talking to myself?”
“What you hear is your sub-vocalization of your thoughts being relayed to you through your auditory nerves. You are not actually speaking out loud.”
“Oh. Well, that is good. What is this implant process you refer to?”
“The rod you touched inserted a series of nanites into your blood stream that are programmed to construct an interface in your brain that will allow communication between you and a linked partner. Are you aware of this request and do you accept it?”
Jason looked again toward the king. If I say no, Bridgette could die or be imprisoned. Returning his gaze to the bald man, he said “I acknowledge this request and approve it.”
The man nodded his head. “Approval noted and acknowledged. Implantation process will proceed as designed. Goodbye.” The bald man disappeared.
That wasn’t so bad, he thought. Moment’s later, immense pressure built in his head, followed by blinding pain. He put his hand up to his forehead but the pain was too great. He felt himself falling forward and hitting the floor, darkness taking him.
Chapter 22 - A New Day
Jason again knew consciousness. Like climbing out of a deep well his mind stumbled awake and he opened his eyes. He was amazed he was still alive, for surely he had felt his life end. One hand lifted as he touched his face to confirm he was still in his body and the other pinched his arm to make sure he was not dreaming. Reassured that he was both awake and alive, Jason sat up and looked around, his vision swirling for a moment. Across from him on his right was Bridgette, still in her cloak and other clothing, though her boots lay at the foot of the couch. She still appeared to be fast asleep. Jason wiggled his own toes and realized his, too, no longer resided in boots. Jason turned next to where the high-backed chair closest to the hidden panel sat and found the king seated there, perusing scrolls containing a great deal of writing.
The king, looking up and noticing that Jason was awake and looking at him began speaking, "Reports. They are quite boring, but since I cannot sleep I decided I would make good use of my time while I awaited the awakening of you both. Ah, she is awake, good." Indeed Bridgette had sat up as well and was looking around as dazed as Jason imagined he had been. So much for being fast asleep, Jason thought.
"What happened to us?" Jason asked. He was alive, Bridgette was alive and not in chains, but what had happened to them?
The king cleared his throat and took a sip from a cup of steaming liquid before answering. "Would either of you care for tea? It really is quite good," the king said as he lifted the tea kettle suggestively, his eyes passing between Jason and Bridgette. At the shake of their heads, he set the kettle down and leaned back in the high backed chair. "The two of you have been bonded to each other. Your minds are linked via a magic the Founders brought with them. With this bond you will begin to share emotions and feelings. When one feels anger the other will sense that anger; if one of you is in physical pain the other will feel that physical pain as if it were your own. The distance these emotions and feelings are felt at will increase the longer the two of you are alive. It will start that you will feel the other person only when you're in the same room as them, but then it will grow so that eventually you will feel it across the world. The bond also allows for you to communicate across vast distances."
Jason was shocked. He'd never heard of such “magic”. Memories of the bald man speaking of nanites flashed before him. Could he have told the truth? Had some sort of interface been built in his brain? This was madness! To the king, and others in this place, it must seem like magic. But it was really technology. Tearing his eyes away from the king he looked across at Bridgette and found her eyes wide, whether in shock or disbelief, he did not know. He finally asked, "Why, my king?"
“The reason is this: It is the only way I would allow this woman to be set free upon the world. I can see by your faces that neither of you are familiar with the bond that has been made between you, so I will give you a brief history of the bond so that you may better understand exactly what it is.
“The Rod of Binding which you saw used today was brought to this world by the Founders of Tar Ebon. It is the only one in existence and utilizes magic that no mage thus far has been able to replicate. It was fiercely guarded by the Founders, and they determined in their wisdom to keep it secret. They decided the safest place for the rod to reside was with the royal family itself, for the royal family would survive as long as Tar Ebon stood. To that end, a tradition was begun. Each ruler of the kingdom is bonded to their spouse. This ensures that the rod is kept in use but not misused, for the effects are not something all people can handle. The king and queen are bonded in a private ceremony after their marriage.”
“So you and your queen are bonded in such a way?” Jason asked.
“That is correct,” the king confirmed, “we have been bonded for these last 20 years. And my daughter, when I die, will become queen and share a bond with her husband.”
“Does the bond allow me to control her or something?” Jason asked.
Bridgette snorted, “Just like a man to think of ways to dominate women.”
Jason blushed.
The king chuckled but shook his head and answered, “No, the bond does not grant any powers of domination over the other person, other than any powers of manipulation that are granted by knowing another person's thoughts and feelings so well that you know how to make them do something they might otherwise not have done.”
J
ason pondered what the king said and opened his mouth to ask again why the king had bonded Jason and Bridgette when Bridgette spoke up.
“So then why did you place such a collar around my mind?” Bridgette demanded. “What will the two of us being able to sense each other’s emotions and hear each other’s thoughts do to stop me from walking away and continuing my previous career path?”
“When two people are bonded, they cease to be who they were and become something - someone - new. In essence, it changes them because they are no longer exactly who they were the moment before the bond was applied. For example, if a brutal man who seems not to have a shred of compassion in him were to be bonded to an innocent young woman, the man's temper would be tempered by the pure compassion of the woman. The bond works both ways, however. The young woman would find herself becoming more coarse and brutal at times, unlike the pure innocent compassion she had exuded before.”
“So the idea is that being linked to Bridgette will make her less inclined to be an assassin?” Jason asked, risking a glance sideways at Bridgette to see her glaring in fury at the king.
“Yes. I saw such pure compassion in you today that I knew you could be the temper to this young woman's anger and aggression. Like a freshly-worked iron blade being plunged into a barrel of water to be quenched. The blade will still come out warm and it will retain it's shape, but it will no longer burn anyone who touches it.”
Jason, grasping the analogy that the king had used, pondered further, “And likewise, the water the blade is quenched in becomes warm and steams and boils, though water is calm by nature.”
The king smiled widely. “Yes! That is precisely what happens. You will find your normally calm and composed personality at times boiling and steaming because of the influence of her mind on you. It is for precisely this reason that kings or queens often choose a spouse who is their opposite, so when the bond has been enacted they will be the stronger for it.”
The Shadow Trilogy Complete Box Set Page 28