The Noble Fool

by Heath Pfaff

  I looked back at Kye, her wasted face barely recognizable. "Tell me, then, shade, why does she live on like this, what is the secret that you hold? Tell me, or leave me be, but do not torment me with promises of hope you will not deliver."

  Tyvel sighed from his place in the corner. "I wouldn't tell them because I feared what they would do if they knew, but I will tell you so long as you are willing to make me a promise, Lowin."

  I was in no mood to negotiate with the ghost, but I had little choice. "Fine, what is it that you want?"

  "I just want you to take me with you when you leave. I don't want to be here any longer. I have done a terrible thing in creating the binding process." He gestured towards the bed, towards Kye. "I do not wish to remain in this house I built any longer. It has become an evil place. To help me, you need only take my box when you leave, and I can aid you even more. I know a great deal, including how to get out of here without having to fight the whole way." There seemed to be a sincere pleading in his voice. I knew not whether I could trust him, or if he would betray me at some point, but I needed to know what he had to tell me. We would need to know how to escape the villa with as little trouble as possible if I was to carry Kye out with us, which I intended to do. Whether she ever woke again or not, I would not leave her to die in the hands of the king's researchers.

  "Fine, it is done. Now what secret do you keep?" I made my decision without consulting the others, but I was in no fit state of mind to take advice.

  "She is pregnant." The ghost's words caused me to literally stumble backwards from where I was crouched at Kye's side.

  "What?" I asked incredulously.

  "Yes, she is carrying your child, Lowin. I had suspected that it was yours, but now that I see your eyes, there can be no denying it. The binding wouldn't be so pure if your connection hadn't been very deep." He seemed to grow distracted for a minute, as if thinking about something, but his attention focused again in a moment. "Kyeia will not die so long as she is carrying the child," He said, hovering across the room to her bed. This time neither Malice nor Wisp tried to stop him. "She is fed very little, and is giving all nutrients to the child, so she does not show the pregnancy, but I know the baby lives within. I see things differently than the living. I can detect the glow of life. There are two forces of life in her, though hers is but a flickering candle in the wind."

  I shook my head, "But we only lay together once..."

  "My boy, it takes but once," Tyvel said softly.

  I was to be a father. It was a turn of events I could never have anticipated, and one that filled me with such a mix of emotions that I was at a loss as to how to react. I would have a son, or a daughter, but I would be losing the woman I loved forever. Then there was the question of what sort of father I might make. Could any child love such a thing as I had become? I was a thing of battle and death, certainly not a care-giver. I knew nothing of raising a child, and worse yet, I endangered my own offspring by simply being alive. I had made too many enemies that might pose a threat to my child's life just because of its relation to me. What hope did any progeny of mine have? I found myself filled with fear for the life that had not yet fully kindled, and sadness at the life that dwindled before my eyes. What excitement I might have felt at the news of being a sire was squelched in the mire of worries that such news brought with it.

  A hand touched my shoulder. "We should be going Lowin. We don't know how long we have before someone notices the trouble we've stirred," Malice's voice was full of concern, whether for me or our situation I couldn't be sure, but it brought me out of my thoughts and back into the moment.

  "Of course, you're right," I said, clearing my head as best I could, and pushing away the crushing emotional burden of all that was happening. I would have to deal with all else later. Right now my friends, my unborn child, and Kyeia needed my immediate attention. I walked to the bed and picked up Kye's fragile body. She seemed to weigh nothing in my arms. Whether that was simply an illusion of my immense strength, or a testament to how much weight she'd lost in her sickness, it pained me to have it so. It seemed as though she were barely real, as though she were as much a ghost as the phantom Tyvel, standing in the corner.

  I saw Wisp walk over and pick up the black box that Tyvel said contained the bone fragment to which he was bound. I half expected him to waver in substance as she moved the box, or to be moved along with it, but he didn't seem to change at all.

  "All right, specter, lead us out of here," I told him. I did not trust the ghost, but I had given him my word and I would keep it until such a time as he gave me reason not to. I was tired of the whole mess; the constant fighting, the raised then crushed hopes, the hard decisions. I wanted only to spend what little time I had left with the woman I loved before she died, even if that time would be spent in silence, as I knew it surely would. I looked down at her still face, wanting to see some indication there that she knew I was holding her, that we were together again, finally. Her eyeless sockets stared into nothingness, and her face was slack and emotionless. A tear fell from my right eye but I ignored it.

  "I shall take you to the catacombs, but you must stay close to me," Tyvel said, indicating Wisp with a gesture. "If that box gets too far away, I cannot maintain my form, and will not be able to lead."

  Wisp eyed the spirit with a look of suspicion. "There are no catacombs beneath this villa, spirit. I have been here a long time, and have held many guard positions. Those I haven't held, I have heard of. I would know if there were chambers below this villa. What game are you playing?"

  Tyvel simply shrugged, a slight smile on his lips. "My dear girl, I assure you there are catacombs beneath this villa. I should know as it is my house, and I am the one who drew up the plans upon which it was based. There are tunnels beneath us, of that you can be certain. They have remained untouched for generations, but they are still there, and so are the secret paths that lead to them." The ghost walked across the room to a closet at the far end and stopped, "If you would all be so kind as to follow me?"

  We did as the ghost asked, all of us wary of the strange spirit we were following. The inside of the closet was large, easily big enough for all of us to fit within comfortably. Once Wisp was in far enough for Tyvel to progress, he indicated that we should shut the door and walked to the back wall of the closet, the only area not lined with shelves. "Come, young lady," he gestured for Wisp who approached cautiously, tying the small black box containing the ghost's bone fragment to a rope line on her sword belt to free up her hands.

  "You'd have me believe there is something hidden beyond this wall, and that none of the staff has discovered it?" She asked, as she came closer.

  The ghost seemed nonplussed, "Of course there is. Most of the main rooms have access to the catacombs, though very few people have ever known of their existence. I want you to move your hand as I do, across the stone. Be careful to do it precisely. If you make a mistake we shall have to start over." The phantom's hand reached out to touch the stone wall before him, and Wisp followed his example. Tyvel traced a pattern across the stone, pushing, and sliding his fingers across different points in the wall. As he traced his surprisingly complex pattern, Wisp mimicked the design with her own hand. After several long seconds of this, there was an audible click and the wall slid back and to the side, exposing a narrow stairway that led down. "...And we are free," the ghost said, a smile on his glowing features.

  We trudged into darkness.

  We walked out of the villa easier than we entered, and traveled far into the king-less territories beyond. Wisp did not leave us, despite the fact that she could have done so freely at any time. Whether she decided she liked our company, or merely thought we might provide a place for her now that she was an enemy of the king, I never thought to ask. We traveled for weeks, caring for Kye and learning of all that had been done to her in the interim since she'd been brought to the villa. Those stories still raise my ire and threaten to break my spirit. I often wish I had never questioned our spirit
guide on those details. Finally, as Kye's health became ever poorer, I realized that we needed to stop our traveling and settle down, or neither Kyeia nor our child would survive. It was then that I put my king's sword to the best use that it ever received. Together with the help of Wisp and Malice, we built a cabin deep in the woods of the most forsaken area of the world we could reach. We hewed trees with our blades, and shaped the wood with the finest forged steel the kingdom could produce. As I said, a sword has never seen a nobler purpose. The beasts of the area we settled in were dangerous, and the hunting difficult, but we three were strong enough to carve out a living.

  Five months after the completion of our cabin, Kyeia died while giving birth to our child. I buried her in the heart of a quiet grove of trees, and put up a head stone of amethyst rock in which I chiseled her name using my wood-dulled and abused sword. I lay the blade upon the earth there, and left that grove knowing I would not return. Some can find peace in visiting the final resting place of a loved one, but for me only bitterness at all that had been lost resided in the ground there. The Kye that I loved existed only in my memories, and those memories are what I chose to hold onto. I would keep them, and eventually pass them on to my daughter so that she might have something of her mother, though it would be only my handed down memories.

  I named my daughter Kaylien. I would have liked to give her an Uliona name, in honor of her mother, but I knew of none to give. The name I chose was a human name, but one that reminded me of Kyeia. It rolled on the tongue in a similar way, to me. She was a beautiful child. She had eyes of brilliant purple, but instead of being entirely purple, with streaks of white like the people of the Uliona, her eyes were like those of humans, only dressed in a shade that I had never seen among my folk. She had a shock of down-soft pale blond hair and an intense gaze that made you feel that, even as a baby, she was looking right through you. I missed her mother terribly, but my love for my daughter sustained me. In her I found a reason to move from day to day.

  I wish that I could say that my story ended there, in that cabin among friends, family, and phantoms, but I'm afraid that is only where it began. That peaceful time in the woods was to be short-lived.