by Greg Curtis
Briagh wasn't innocent! It didn't matter what the priest thought. He was clearly a saddle-goose! The morph was guilty. They all were! She knew it. Even if he hadn't been the one who had done the deed and destroyed her family, he was involved somehow. He must have been working with the first morph. There was no way that he could simply have been in the Arcanium at the right time when the globe that had caused all her family's ills was stolen. And he hadn't selflessly saved either the arcanist or the barmaid as Argen believed. In the Arcanium he'd actually given her mother the time to find the globe, steal it and escape the Arcanium. Saving the arcanist had been incidental to achieving that goal. And when the dire wolf had attacked them on the trail he'd actually been saving his own life as much as the girl's. They'd both been in danger. The priest though couldn’t understand that as he always wanted to see the good in people. It blinded him to the truth.
Except, when it came to her family, Elan thought angrily. The Divine Right of Kings indeed. He was calling them monsters! Would be tyrants! And of course, fools! They after all, knew the stories like everyone else. He was accusing them of discarding her too. Of not caring about her. That was cruel.
That he could even suggest such a thing made her blood boil.
But none of that mattered now. Not with the Court’s latest decision. It seemed they had become desperate. Abysynth was in ruins. Rumours were out there despite all their machinations, that the king was dead and that there were no heirs. The kingdom was falling apart in front of their eyes. They needed a king, and they were no longer prepared to wait for her twenty first birthday. It might be tradition, but they had decided that it wasn't law. Or at least not one that they wanted to obey any longer.
So an offer had been made and if things went as they hoped she would be hand-fasted within the month.
That she could have lived with. It was unexpected and she didn't have as much time to prepare herself as she'd thought she would have. But it was for Abylon and she would have been willing to do her duty. It was the choice of husband that made it impossible.
Gone were the four choices she had been given. They were as she had known, all competent, diligent, quiet men. They would make good kings. But none of them were great men. None of them would make great kings. And the Court had decided they needed greatness. More than that they needed strength. Abylon was in trouble. The capital had been destroyed. The kingdom was in disarray. The people were frightened. And it seemed, the wolf mother was still alive. There had been sightings.
So they had chosen Prince Vel Moran. The barbarian Prince in exile. They had chosen a monster.
How could they have done that? That was what she didn't understand. The Prince – a barbarian from the Kingdom of Grole – was an evil man. And truthfully he wasn't an exile so much as the loser in a contest of arms with his brother Durock. Now King Durock. The Prince would have been killed had he not been fast enough and strong enough to flee to the far edge of the barbarian realm with a small army and take a stronghold in the foothills. In fact, his own brother would have cut out his heart and eaten it. Such was the way in Grole.
Having lost to his brother did not make Vel any less a monster than Durock. The two were the same. And the legends of the Prince's exploits on the field of battle were terrible. He had slaughtered without mercy and eaten many hearts. He had killed the innocent for strategic advantage or simply to take their land. Sometimes it was just for fun.
As a ruler he was even worse. He had imposed laws on his people that were brutal. Laws that forbade women from being seen in public or speaking. Laws that allowed husbands to not just discipline their wives, but to kill them. Justice was decided in the arena. Right and wrong gave way to strength of arms. Magic too gave way to steel. Those with gifts, no matter what they were, were not accepted as equals. At best they could be servants. More often they were killed. Even the priests suffered under his rule. The only god barbarians accepted was Hed – the Lord of Wrath. All others were killed.
Of course, she did understand something of the Court's reasoning in choosing Vel. He would definitely be a strong king. He would bring order to the realm. And he would hunt down her mother and kill her. And perhaps they thought they could control him in some way? But she knew better. Vel Moran was not the sort to allow others to control him.
But that wasn't what had determined her path. It was the fact that Vel would have brought in two other laws that would destroy all that she loved. He had all simpletons and those afflicted by madness killed. He considered madness a contagion. And he forbade all rivals to the throne. They too would be killed.
Her father was dead. Vel would hunt down and kill her mother. And he would have her brothers executed, both because they were mad, and because if they ever recovered their wits they would have a claim on the throne. She would be left truly alone. And in time he would kill her too.
When she had been told the news, Elan had been shocked. So shocked that she had refused. Perhaps that had been her mistake? Because her refusal had forced them to finally do the one thing they had never dared to do. They had openly defied her. and told her, her refusal was not acceptable. No matter how it looked, they had to have a king. And so they had decided to lock her away for a month until the day of the hand-fasting ceremony. And then they would force her to be hand-fasted the barbarian Prince whether they had that right or not. The pronouncement made, they had then had her escorted back to her chambers by the guards.
In that moment the charade had ended. Abylon had no king. No heirs. And no royal family. But in a month or two it would have a king and that was all that mattered to them.
Unless she ran. Which was what she had decided to do.
Two bells had rung. All was silent in the palace. Everyone should be asleep. Everyone that was, save for the guards on duty, and those outside her chambers. Ostensibly they were there to keep her safe from intruders. In truth their duty was to prevent her leaving and they knew it. If they didn't already, soon the rest of the kingdom would. Fortunately, she had a way of dealing with them.
But was what she was about to do the right thing? Elan asked herself that question for the thousandth time as she fastened her heavy riding cloak around her shoulders and pulled the hood up, making certain that every square inch of her skin was protected. Yes, she was running away from a hand-fasting she didn't want. No woman would want it. And she was probably saving herself a lot of pain and an early death. But at the same time she thought, her actions would save the kingdom from a despotic rule. The barbarian Prince would destroy everything that was good about the realm. In time it would become another barbarian realm like Grole. The Court would be unable to stop him. And in leaving she would also save her brothers. The true king of Abylon and his brother. Surely that had to count for something when the rights and wrongs of her actions were weighed up?
It was definitely the right decision. She decided that once more as she reached for her gloves, taking care not to let the outer leather touch her skin. It was tricky to pull them on, making sure that her fingers buried in one glove touched only the inside of the other, but she had had practice. You only made the mistake of touching the outside of the gloves to your bare skin once. For while the inside was lined with normal calf hide and was soft and supple, the outside was made from the scaly skin of the snakes from a gorgon's head. A single touch was enough to paralyse a man or a beast for a good twelve hours.
With the gloves on her hands and the siren whistle around her neck she felt ready. Ready enough to open the door to the hallway and begin.
“Guards! Attend me! There is a man in my chamber!” She called to them and instantly the two guards ran into her chamber. A second later they were both on the floor, completely immobile after she had touched them on the arms as they ran past her. Elan then checked the hallway, making sure there were no more standing watch.
That left her standing there, breathing a little bit more heavily than she liked, but surprised at just how easy it had been. She had planned it carefully of cours
e. Still, the reality of the two men lying on the floor of her bedchamber floor and the empty hallway surprised her.
The guards taken care of, Elan closed the door behind her and headed down the hallway, and then down the stairs, taking them one flight at a time. Normally she would think about taking the elevator. It was slow and noisy but it befitted one of the royal family more than taking the stairs like everyone else. But it would also have raised the alarm as the steam powered device was only used by the royal family. It also rattled and clanked when used.
On each floor she made certain to check and see if there were any more guards standing watch. There weren't many, but then she hadn't expected there to be. The east wing of the palace was mostly left for the royal family so they were mostly guarding empty chambers even if most people didn't realise it. Now of course since two of them were no longer in residence but rather locked away in the royal hunting lodge, and two more were gone – her father dead and perhaps her mother as well – with her departure all the chambers would be empty.
It wasn't until she reached the second floor that she found some more soldiers standing guard. Two more of them standing watch outside the private audience chamber where the Court met. She had no thought as to why they were there. It was the early hours of the morning and the Court was not meeting. Still it was a matter of a moment to call them to her and then leave them both lying helpless on the floor.
The ground floor was a different matter. On it at least half a dozen soldiers were standing at attention. They were there to prevent intruders from entering the palace, not just the royal chambers. They had to be handled more carefully.
The first two were easy to deal with. First she switched off the electric lamps that lit the stairways of the palace. She loved that the technologists had installed the devices some years back. It was so much more convenient to simply flick a switch than douse a flame. They were cleaner too. Having done so, she crept out into the hallway, kicked over the nearest suit of armour on its stand, before retreating back to the stairs and into the shadows as the various bits and pieces of steel plate clattered on the floor. Moments later a pair of soldiers went rushing by her to the fallen suit of armour and she simply stepped out behind them. They never saw or heard a thing before they too were lying face down on the ground, helpless.
Next came the dangerous part. She knelt down by the fallen guards, grabbed the siren whistle by the very tip – if she touched even her lips with the gloves her escape was over – drew a deep breath and called them.
“Guards! Intruders!” She yelled out as loud as she could and waited. As she expected she didn't have to wait long. Suddenly there were the sounds of boots thudding onto the marble tiles as soldiers ran for her. Of course they didn't know that she was the enemy. All they saw was a woman dressed in a heavy cloak bent over the bodies of two fallen guards. And by the time they thought to wonder who she was she had the whistle in her mouth.
Elan blew it, her heart in her mouth, knowing the instant she did so that this was the moment when everything could go wrong.
It didn't. Not then anyway. Instead, as she looked up she saw four soldiers, their hands over their ears, terror in their faces, completely under the spell of the siren whistle. And they stayed that way while she walked over to them to touch each of them on the cheek with her gloves. After that they too collapsed to the floor.
Of course she knew that the sound of the whistle would have woken others. The magic of the whistle was not stopped by stone walls. It carried. And it would have pulled soldiers out of their barracks in a hurry. Soon she knew, they would be running for the palace. She had to be gone before they arrived. And so, just as they no doubt pulled on their weapons to prepare for battle, she rushed to the entrance hall. There she found one of the large statues to hide behind and waited, having already switched off the electric lamps. In the shadows she hoped she was completely hidden.
Maybe thirty seconds later the first of the soldiers burst through the main doors to the palace, and came running into the entrance hall. A moment later they spotted the fallen guards in the east wing hallway and ran for them, shouting. Others followed them at a run, while she remained safely hidden. It didn’t seem to occur to them to search for someone in the great entrance hall as they ran after their fellow soldiers. Dotards and saddle-geese the lot of them!
A minute later they did exactly what she expected them to do. They spotted the now darkened stairway leading up to the upper stories of the east wing and decided that the intruder had made it upstairs. A dozen men immediately ran up the stairs and she knew that they would be beginning a palace wide search for the intruder, never realising that they had run right past her. And while they did that she had only two more soldiers to deal with. The two who had stationed themselves at the main entrance to the palace when they'd realised there was no one else standing watch any longer.
Elan waited a minute or two until she was sure the rest of the soldiers were spread out throughout the rest of the palace searching for the intruder, before stepping out from behind the statue, blowing her whistle and then touching the two soldiers who were frozen in fear. After that she opened the main door and retreated once more behind the statue and waited.
Sure enough the soldiers who had been upstairs came rushing back down to the entrance hall. Spotting the fallen guards by the open door they immediately assumed what she had wanted them to.
“He's outside!” The call was made and the soldiers instantly burst through the doors and ran out into the courtyard to begin the search. They never even thought to look behind them.
It was a large courtyard. Large enough for hundreds of soldiers to drill there every day. And it was walled. The palace was walled as was the Imperial Quarter as well, and all the walls had ramparts. also It also housed a lot of buildings, including a blacksmiths forge, cavalry stables and storage buildings. There were a thousand places in which a man could hide, and it was dark outside. She knew the soldiers would be busy hunting for the escaped intruder.
Soon there were sirens wailing, and soldiers running everywhere as they searched for an unknown intruder somewhere in the courtyard. With their attention focused elsewhere Elan headed up the west wing hallway to the private chapel, turning off the lights as she went, and then stepped out into the cemetery through the side door.
The solitary soldier standing watch at the cemetery gate never saw her. He was too busy staring out of the gate into the gardens, trying to work out what was happening. Soon he too was lying helpless on the grass while she walked out into the gardens beyond. After that it was simply a matter of wandering around the back of the palace in the darkness of the gardens to the private stables where her horse was kept.
Saddling her horse took longer than she'd expected. But then it was dark and she normally had the grooms do that for her. But at least she remembered to take off her gloves before she began and stuffed them in the saddle bags. The one thing she couldn't do was ride with them on. One touch of them to the horse's neck would have had the mare on the ground like the soldiers. Besides, she needed to keep skin contact with her horse to protect the mare from the power of the siren whistle.
Her heart beating as fast as that of a bird, Elan led her horse out of the stables mounted up, and kicked the horse in the side. This she knew was the next risky part of her plan. For she could get shot. In the darkness she wall they could see was an escaping intruder. They didn’t know it was the princess.
Elan reached the courtyard at full gallop and immediately soldiers started shouting. Many were drawing weapons. Bows and rifles. But she touched her hand to her horse's neck to protect the mare from the sound and blew the siren whistle. Bullets and arrows flew, but none came anywhere near her as she all but flew for the gate. It wasn't surprising. People couldn't aim when they were quaking with fear. And under the power of the whistle they couldn't even operate the gate.
Then, just as she was starting to think everything was too easy something grazed her shoulder. A bullet or an ar
row, she didn’t know what. The soldiers might not be able to aim their weapons at her, but there were a lot of them firing. She had to ride fast.
Elan urged the mare to yet greater speed and they burst through the gate flat out while soldiers were crouched all around, trying desperately to cover their ears with their hands. None of them even came close to stopping her. After that it was too late for them to try. She was out of the palace, and a minute or two of hard riding later, nearly out of the Imperial Quarter too. All she had to do was keep blowing the whistle and riding for all she was worth. And hope that nothing hit her.
More bullets and arrows flew of course. And some of them came close judging by the sparks on the ground around them. But none of them hit, and soon the gates of the Quarter were behind her. She was out!