With pure and simple joy, the king snatched it and quickly placed it on his head where it slowly sank, low enough to need tilting back. Plainly, that ultimate emblem of office had originally been fashioned for one of a somewhat larger hat size.
With the king now happily enthroned and crowned, Laixac motioned for them to stand before him, in an area carefully delimited within the pattern of the floor. He grinned, making Falmeard feel distinctly uneasy, then snapped his fingers and beamed at them. “So, you purport to be emissaries of the invasion force and do dare present your conditions before us. And what, pray, are your conditions?”
“But we are not from the invading force. We have come here to state what we have witnessed, from within the castle.”
“Ha! You’re nothing of the sort, you’ve come to confuse and distract the king, to take advantage of him, and so win time for your army to make good their invasion. You need not argue with me for I know of what I say. I also have seen the invasion and your part in it is clear.”
Throughout their exchange, the king was treated as though he were absent and sat staring back and forth at the exponents, looking increasingly alarmed. Each time his eyes landed on Nephril, though, his face darkened and became more anxious. He seemed no more relieved when Nephril said, “But we are long standing and loyal citizens. We would never dream, nor dare to dream, of doing anything to harm our lord, or his realm. How dare thee imply such!”
“Denizens of the castle my foot! I know not your face, and am certain you’re a foreigner, an alien spy. You’re an immediate threat to the king’s person, something I cannot possibly allow!”
Just as Nephril’s face was turning bright red, his jaw setting firmer and his right foot about to step towards Laixac, there was a sudden and slight movement at Laixac’s left hand. They heard a strangely metallic snapping noise before Falmeard felt his stomach go light. The throne room appeared to lift high above him, vanishing into a bright square of light, before he realised, to his dismay, that it wasn’t the throne room rising but he and Nephril who were now falling.
7 Pettar’s Loss
The river’s ceaseless bubbling and turmoil, as it tumbled and cascaded over age-worn steppingstones, conjured a myriad decked and plumed white stallions, forever leaping to their icy demise. Such short lives they lived yet, in their recurrent transience, sustained a soul becalming salve as they skirted the otherwise stolid feet of the castle. Even the once harsh towering wall there lent tonic, its dark stone long obscured and softened by a vertical, verdant carpet. Its mossy expanse glistened with a dew-jewel encrusted veil of gossamer webs, like a star-studded sky.
Upstream, the calmer surface reflected a peaceful blue sky until gradually disturbed by what, at first, appeared to be nothing more than a drifting log. Tipped down at one end, its other radiated an incongruous swirl of grey tendrils, a tangled, hirsute mat that slowly gathered to a tail in the strengthening current. It was ineluctably borne towards the crossing and there dragged, by the pull, between its smoothly worn fingers.
As chance would have it, it slid neatly through but with its matted end lifting clear for a brief but sickening moment. It would have passed unnoticed, and vanished into the foam and spray below, had an arm not flailed out and slapped, wetly, against the stones.
Had it not been for that, Pettar would have remained deep in meditation, his mind calm and unruffled. Instead, he was startled awake to find his eyes following the supposed log as it bobbed into sight a short way downstream. Before long he was stumbling, up to his waist, through cold, green water towards the gently rotating body of a becalmed Ambec.
It was horribly mutilated; torn and slashed, skin as grey as slate with an eye staring, in blind horror, at the gay blue sky above. Pettar stood, knees shaking from the icy cold, and nestled it in his arm as he swept its tangled hair aside. He’d no idea who it was, the river’s ravage and the slaughter’s savagery poor bedfellows with their kind’s close breeding. He closed its eye and let it float away as he mourned its anonymous loss.
Calmly, he watched it drift downstream, towards the Sea of the Dead Sun and the great Crystal Plain beyond, content it no longer suffered. Was it family feud, he wondered, or more likely wrought of some age-long enmity, a disagreement with the Bosherins, the Averons or perhaps the quarrelsome Greywainers beyond the Wetwolds?
His sadness failed to hold back the pain of the river’s freezing. He was soon urged back to the riverbank, shivering, where he then cast his eyes once more upstream, toward their pitiful village. There, he saw yet another unfortunate, floating serenely upon the river’s torpid depths.
He ran along the bank to the crossing, his eyes all the time firmly on the new arrival. As it was drawn, ever quicker, into the spurt of the river’s squeeze it too was spun by the eddies and currents but came, instead, broadside against the crossing. Fortunately, it was face up but with its body held fast by the river’s huge weight.
Pettar leapt out, along the stones, and soon kneeled beside. Luckily, he was a large and powerful man, for the river was intent on holding the Ambec. Even for Pettar it was a hard fought battle but at last he carefully carried the sodden wretch back to the bank where he laid him softly on the grass.
Although mortally wounded and chilled to the very bone, the Ambec feebly coughed and dribbled river water as Pettar turned him on his side. Kneeling at his head, he gently wiped muck from the shocked and shivering face. All the while, scared and panic-ridden eyes stared straight through him. “Try to breath slowly and deeply, my friend. Don’t be afraid, you know who I am. You know you can trust me.”
The Ambec feebly reached up and weakly drew Pettar nearer. His lips only quivered at first but eventually croaked, “We’re fin … finished … all … dead.” Even that small effort was too much, his arm falling limp at Pettar’s side. Although the lips continued only a rasp or two came between.
Pettar thought it his last but his voice gathered its final strength. “Strong men … many … from t’north.” Terror spread across the Ambec’s ashen face. “Arrors! … cut us darn wi’ arrors they did. No … no … chance.” His eyes finally stilled and a long gurgling sigh slowly bubbled and rattled from his mouth. Once more stillness descended, to the accompaniment of the river’s incessant music.
Pettar lowered the Ambec’s head and, for a second time, closed eyelids over vacant eyes. This time he didn’t mourn but instead found his mind beginning to foment, found intrigue rudely shouldering aside grief. ‘What fateful day is this?’ he thought, as he left the morbid tranquillity behind and stepped out along the bank, around the river’s bend and away onto higher ground.
Before long he was steadily rising, away from the river’s wooded course, and onto a small hill some distance from the castle’s wall. It was well clear of the trees and proud of the fields and grasslands of the Vale of Plenty. From there he could see the village to the east and, beyond it, the sweep of the Great Wall as it ran massively on to the far distant Eastern Gate.
There, the gate’s two great six-sided towers could just be seen, peeping from beyond the Great Wall’s abrupt turn south. Pettar could only just make out Eastern Walk, where it crossed the Eyeswin on its long journey east. As usual, nothing stirred there, nor thereabouts. Whichever way he turned, in fact, there was nothing untoward, no body of men disturbing its eternal peace. Invaders! Strife! The very idea seemed an affront to the immensity of the castle.
It was only when he returned his gaze to the Ambec village, nestling up close against the castle’s wall, that he then saw newly lofting plumes of smoke. Their source would have eluded him had flames not begun to lick at their bases, had they not given plain evidence of pyres. He knew now where most, if not all, of his Ambec flock had gone.
Wading through long grass, he came down off the hill, down into the meagre fields they’d tilled, along their age-worn paths and then out onto a rutted lane. It soon led him back to the wooded banks of the Eyeswin and east, beside it, towards the village.
It wasn’t long
before he came to the lane’s junction with the Lost Northern Way where he turned south. Ahead, on the approach to the village and neatly piled on either side of the road, were a number of burning mounds. As he neared them their hiss and crackle came to him against the north wind at his back, mercifully driving away the stench of burning flesh.
Not for long, though! When he was near enough to see burning bodies, the smell began to engulf him. He retched, as it clawed at his nose, then his mouth and throat, and even through the sleeve he quickly threw across his face. It was a pervasive smell, more a taste really, and it lingered like scum on long cold broth. He could avert his eyes, and did, but there was no escaping the stench.
Fortunately, it blew shy of the village itself, carried away to the southwest as an ochre pall. His body and clothes, however, brought it with him and kept the memory all too much alive. Before entering the village, his eyes searched amongst the huts and hovels for signs of life but sadly found none. His cocked ear also confirmed it, no tell-tale sounds, only the lowing of the few cows they kept.
When he entered, he quickly passed from hut to mud cottage to dank, earthen hovel, but still found no one, alive or dead or injured, no men or their wives, or their sons or daughters. Even the vicious, flea-ridden dogs they tolerated had all gone, leaving naught but a few hogs and chickens now running lose.
He was soon through and out onto the rise of crags that there gave foundation to the castle’s wall, climbing ever higher until he came to the very base of it. There, Pettar stopped before a narrow doorway set within. No more than a foot wide and just tall enough for a man not to crack his head, it was separated from the ledge, upon which he now stood, by a deep fissure a good four yards wide.
Behind him ran a narrow rock jetty that jutted out into space, with a clear fall of some two hundred feet beneath. He turned and walked carefully out to its end where he again turned to face the doorway, now some twenty feet before him. For a few moments, he flexed his muscles, shook his limbs and stretched their joints, arched his back and then loosened his neck.
He set the doorway firmly and serenely within his mind before gracefully leaning forward into a sudden sprint. It took him, full pelt, out and above the fissure with his body slowly beginning to turn. He’d timed it such that he came sideways on to the doorway as he spread arms and legs and vanished into its dark embrace.
Out of daylight and into pitch blackness, his leading foot cartwheeled him along an unseen but smooth floor. Out loud, he counted three complete turns before landing squarely on his feet in a dimly lit room. It was small and had only one feature, a small grey door set with a large iron rimmed keyhole.
He pulled a length of purple twine from his robes, at whose end a large iron key appeared which he deftly thrust in and turned. It made a metallic grating that ended with a resounding clunk. As Pettar pulled the door open, creakily, the first thing he noticed was the heavy scent of ancient tallow.
When he looked through, he could see a long line of torches vanishing down a very long passageway. Quickly through, he turned, gently closed the door behind him, locked it once more, and then returned the key to his robes.
He was now into a fast run, his sandaled feet pounding the stone floor, sending sharp reports ricocheting from the closely confined walls. Before long, he was deep in contemplation, the walls sliding past unseen as his legs gained stamina and suppleness. They carried him as though floating upon the very air itself. He was fair flying by the time he broke into the glare of daylight, speeding across the first of the yards that jammed the Outer Courts.
Untiringly, Pettar passed through umpteen ornate gateways, each marking resplendent boundary twixt noble courts. When he passed through a particularly exuberant one, burnished in gold and inlaid with quartz, it brought him abruptly to a wide flight of steps.
They curved in an ever more precipitous climb until, almost vertical, Pettar stepped onto a balcony. It hung before a broad doorway, through which he strode before turning sharply towards the Royal Courts and coming face to face with Laixac.
The aide’s skin lost what little vestige it had of colour as his eyes widened with shock. They widened further, and lifted in surprise, when King Namweed then absently ran into him. Pettar saw pitiful reverie in the king’s face before pleading, “Your majesty, pray, tell me what you know of this supposed invasion.”
Laixac quickly regained some of his composure and, with a pounding heart, stepped between them. “Stay us not for we’re set on a most important errand.” He tried to force his way past, futilely attempting to brush Pettar aside, but only ended up pushing himself against the wall. Trying to save face, he scurried on down the passage, calling his sovereign lord to follow.
Namweed just stood stock-still, staring like a lost child. “Your majesty, it’s important you tell me what’s going on.” Namweed stared up into Pettar’s face and giggled, as he half sang, “Fly away Pettar, fly away Paul, oh to be a bird … cheep, cheep!”
By the time Laixac had retraced his steps he’d found Pettar roughly shaking the king by the shoulders. “Wake up you fool, stop this gibberish and tell me what’s happened.” Instead of the king’s reply Pettar felt Laixac’s hands about his neck, bony fingers pushing hard into his jugular.
Pettar swung heavily around, lifting Laixac clear off his feet, and landed a quick jab, from his large fist into the aide’s left ear. It sent him sprawling against the wall yet again, but now with considerably more force. Pettar bent to the stunned aide and drew him up by the skin of his chest before growling, threateningly. “I’ve no doubt you could make more sense for I suspect you know far more than your puppet king.”
Laixac groaned and whimpered at the pain and then hissed spittle into Pettar’s face.
“If you stop spraying me then I may consider releasing you. If you’ve got something I can learn it’d be unwise of me to break your scrawny neck, now wouldn’t it?” Laixac hissed the louder and tried, vainly, to scratch at his face. “On the other hand, wouldn’t it be fine sport to tear the skin from your miserable carcass, bit by bit, and then feed it to the castle’s mice, eh, now, how’s that sound?” At that Laixac’s eyes bulged wide, his jaw dropping, and he soon hung pliantly in Pettar’s grasp.
“That’s better, little pussy. Now, tell me where you two were speeding to and, more importantly, why.” Pettar lowered him to the ground and then let go of him, letting Laixac rub at his chest where large purple bruises were already forming.
Sobbing slightly, and with some trembling in his voice, Laixac tried to brazen it out. “We’re upon King’s business, let us alone.”
“You’ll soon be upon no business at all if you continue to thwart me, and I can see in your eyes you believe me.” He made to reach for Laixac again, at which he cowered back against the wall and cursed under his breath.
Pettar’s voice gathered a storm and boomed terrifyingly as it filled the passageway. “Tell me now, you fool, for it’s only the chance you have useful knowledge that stays my hand.” He lifted said hand high and stared hard and loweringly at Laixac, whose eyes popped even further.
“We hope to trap the invaders at the Eastern Gate,” he blurted out. “We watched them march, not long ago, along the Lost Northern Way towards it. Many hundreds strong they were.”
“To trap an army! Are you serious? And how do you intend achieving such a feat then, eh, how? Tell me that.”
Laixac was deafened by fear and so didn’t hear. “We caught two of their spies, you know, trapped ‘em alright, aye, dropped ‘em in the throne room dungeon, ha! T’was easy.”
“Two spies?”
“Yes, come to deceive us they did. Threatened us with warnings of dire outcomes. Two aliens. One who called himself Falmund, or something, and one who …”
“Falmund? Think carefully, feral cat, before you answer but did this spy go by the name Falmeard by any chance?”
“Err, well, could ‘ave been … maybe. But they’re no doubt dead already, by the fall. The other one, though, well�
��”
This time it was Namweed who cut him off. “Nephril it were, Master of Ceremonies to my father, and his father before him, and his before him, come to that. Nice man! He’d come to tell us of an army he’d seen. Seemed very concerned he did.”
“T’wasn’t him at all, you’re just mixing it all up in your addled ‘ead.” Laixac then remembered himself. “Nay, your majesty, it were perhaps a striking likeness that you saw, but nothing more, I’m sure.”
He wasn’t, though, and it made him look decidedly flustered when he then went quiet. Quieter still when he saw Pettar’s face grow steadily redder and his jaw set firmer. Even dumber when Pettar’s hand shot down and grasped him about the throat, bodily lifted him, chokingly, clear of the floor and close to his own simmering face.
For what seemed like an age, inner turmoil churned within Pettar’s mind whilst the life blood and air was slowly but ineffably choked from Laixac. As Laixac’s eyes bulged further and further, and his colour turned crimson, his vision of the world began to dim and narrow, leaving almost nothing but Pettar’s tormenting face.
Within Pettar’s mind there raced, around and around, an argument between two old and wearied opponents. On the one hand the vows and beliefs he’d taken against, on the contrary hand, the raw animal passion and rage that now engulfed him. It was all fuelled by the fact that Falmeard and Nephril were both known to him, and both well respected.
How he arrived at resolution he’d no idea, but it was fortunate for Laixac that he did so when he did. With seconds left, Pettar relaxed his grip, dropping Laixac limply to the floor. Whilst Laixac coughed and choked life back, Pettar spoke quietly and with utmost control. “You’ve been very fortunate, oh worm, oh vilest bag of innards ever to have besmirched this great realm. You’ve been very fortunate indeed that my oaths and vows proved so strong, strong enough to spare your worthless carcass, to overcome the natural loathing you instil.”
Leiyatel's Embrace (Dica Series Book 1) Page 6