by Marin Landis
Full of lessons about air bubbles, heat and boiling points, Melvekior found himself nodding off reading an updated History of the Three Kingdoms. Updates by Aeldryn of course. The book itself was written a decade before he was born and made no mention of the current rulers of Maresh-Kar or Uth. No mention of Melvekior, but a chapter devoted to his family and not a word of his mother. Consequent additions to the tome had been made by Aeldryn, but not distributed yet to the Kingdom at large. It was explained to him that Kings were not interested in descriptions of themselves that are anything less than flattering and history is seldom flattering to any but those who recount it.
The story of his family, the Martelles, was relatively flatteringly described though. From the founder of the clan, Mellek-Esh, to his son Mordecai who lost the family fortune and gambled the title and estate away. His son, Malvaki was a wastrel and beggar but somehow had managed to bring forth into the world Mikael Martelle, a swordsman and tactician almost without peer who took his ancestral home back from its legal, if not rightful owners, and restored the name to renown.
Two of four of his known ancestors were glorious conquerors and two, pitiful wretches. This fact seemed to grate on his father who would make constant referral to the faults of his father and grandfather. Similarly he would shamelessly boast of his own superior nature.
“While one man will woo a woman with his looks and smooth tongue, another will do so with boasts of grand deeds. The likes of you and I, son, will have already left the lady swooning on her bed. So it is with warfare, actions not words will see the day.” This, the Aeldryn offered translation of his father’s cruder, “Pretty words and promises are well and good son, but to win a woman’s lasting favors ye’ll need to give her a good’un. That’s also how you win a war or a kingdom, you ignore them that can’t hurt ye and stick it up them that can.” A master military tactician he might be, but a poet he was not. The point however, was made with Melvekior and well and truly remembered. He could see the passion in his father’s oratory and the wisdom behind his actions. Putting him through endless lessons with the Aelvar, however he had managed to win those services, was also part of the strategy and also imminently martial training because it was “about time.”
Lying in bed, more excited than he could remember having ever been, he struggled to sleep and had wandered to his bookshelf to collect the vast tome that he now read. His lamp was partially shuttered to ensure the light was concentrated on the pages he viewed. He found himself fascinated by the Three Kings. Martelle land stood within the Principality of Maresh-Kar, oddly referred to as a Kingdom. There must have been some subtlety that he missed there as surely it was either a Principality or a Kingdom, but his young mind didn’t quite understand pride or ego as of yet. Also, his father paid allegiance to King Calra Alpre XVII of Uth rather than Calra’s distant relative Prince Sunar within whose “kingdom” the Martelle ancestral home stood. In fact, Mikael had nothing kind to say about Sunar; they had fought together in the Battle for Earngael Reach and were the Earl to be believed, Sunar was a most desperate craven. Cowardice being one of the many personality traits that Mikael found repulsive and unforgivable.
Melvekior could feel his eyelids drooping and he knew the inevitable was close. He looked up to check the Laricon, the strange plant that Aeldryn had given him, that showed at which quarter the Moon lay. During the day, the pale flower turned in on itself, quite the opposite of the bright yellow ones his master grew outside, and the closer it came to midnight the flower would gradually open to reveal small tendrils of black and gray that waved in the moonlight, sometimes spurting forth tiny clouds of spores. Quite harmless, if Aeldryn were to be believed, which he always was, and eerily soothing. It was shortly approaching that time and he reached up to adjust his lantern just so, leaving the slightest sliver of light to illuminate the small wonder of the Laricon while the nightly ritual of opening occurred.
Settling down to drift off with the waving of the stamen, head on his pillows, mind on battles yet fought, a shadow crossed his window. And then again. The first he could believe might be a trick of his drowsiness, but for it to happen again meant it was no phantasm. The third time a huge form, or so it seemed, blocked out all the light as it rapidly entered his window and was at his bed in a flash.
The shock of it all and his half-conscious state prevented more than a small peep of surprise from the young man and then a rough hand covered his mouth, his mind flaring with remembrance of the unpleasant odor earlier that day. Earth and putrescence. The grave, he suddenly thought and panic struck him. Kicking his legs and flailing his arms in a frenzy, the figure that held him pinned him with a great weight and Melvekior strained his neck to see that his attacker lay half over him in an attempt to prevent movement. The figure loomed and it afforded the terrified boy an opportunity to see his attacker.
Pox-ridden and blackened with filth, the scraggy-haired intruder loured above him, an almost maniacal grin on his face. The scarring on his cheeks was very pronounced and the eyes, they were the worst feature. He could only see them momentarily but they were dead eyes, sunken into the face, possessed of no life, save a bestial drive. The eyes of a cow when the first hammer blow to the head doesn’t render it insensate, the blind panic and hopeless desperation that one hopes to see never again. Such a look drilled into the boy’s consciousness and redoubled his furious struggle.
The lunatic’s hand tightened around his mouth and he could feel the man’s breath upon him, the stench of rotten something stronger now. He felt the scratch and the pain as nails pierced the skin on his cheeks, but still his mind was fixed on the repulsive smell. Melvekior could feel his gorge rising and he started to feel weaker now, fearing greatly that he’d be sick and choke on it. His throat tightened and his inability to breathe out suddenly became extremely important and he fancied he could see bright points of light flicker before his attacker’s eyes. The grip failed to tighten further and he felt the creature’s breath now upon his neck. He tried to cry out as its lips and face rubbed against his neck. He, quite reasonably, feared the bite of the bloodsucker, but it did not come. A moan escaped the creatures lips and for a brief, insane, moment, Melvekior thought it made some sort of sense, “memmemm,” it said, if indeed it said anything.
The body tensed upon him and a second later the fingers blocking his mouth slackened. There was a bright light and a burst of heat, accompanied by an awful smell. The smell of charred flesh that combined appropriately if repulsively with the already overpowering stench. There was no longer any pressure on him as the maniac’s now dead body rolled onto the floor, a black patch on its chest marking where it had burned. Melvekior scrabbled back to the wall behind his bed, to see Aeldryn before him, standing, a look upon his face he’d never before seen and in his hand a long knife that glowed with the same light as the Laricon.
“Wait,” he commanded in a tone that brooked no disobedience and left the room, leaving the boy in a room with what appeared to be a dead peasant, maddened by whatever ailment, crazed to the point of attacking a child in his room. The smell remained and Melvekior knew that he had reached his limit of self-control, leaped from his bed and voided his guts out of the window until he felt a comforting hand upon his back. It was Aeldryn returned and a maid who let out a screech of fright as she entered the room.
“He’s no danger, now,” Aeldryn mumbled to the woman who stood startled, hands to her mouth, unwilling to approach the corpse. His tutor sighed. “Bring guards, then. I will yet require you to clean up the blood and change the bedding.” He motioned to the body and then stopped. He bent over it, a frown on his face.
“What is it, Master?” Melvekior’s innate curiosity overcame his desire to be away from his would-be murderer. The stench seemed less overpowering now but it was still present, hanging thick in the air like a broken promise between friends. Irrationally, inside he felt happy that his father was on some mission or other for the King and had not seen him wilt beneath the onslaught of this dead man.
He pushed the window open as far as it would go and stepped closer to Aeldryn. “I see nothing out of the ordinary, if dead men smelling of old wine vats are ordinary.”
“How many fatally stabbed men have you seen, young bravo? I hazard at none.” He hunkered down next to the corpse, sweeping his robes behind him as to not let it touch the body. “There is nothing to see, which is rather the point. What would you expect to see after such an incident?” He looked up at Melvekior who was concentrating furiously.
“Blood, there is none. Your blade, is it similarly free from gore?” He moved round to his headboard and opened up his lamp to its maximum luminance.
“The simple logic of youth,” said Aeldryn with a laugh. The gray knife, glowing gently, was in his hands and upon it, no blood. He shook his head and reached to the shoulder of the dead man and rolled him over.
“Mithras preserve us!” a deep voice sounded loudly from the doorway, giving both the Aelvar and his student a fright.
“You damned fool!” snapped Aeldryn, angrier than Melvekior had ever seen him. He paused for a moment and then laughed. “I’m sorry, Egalfas, words spoken in haste. I fear you took years off my life with your stealthy entering.”
The guard, one of two always stationed at the gatehouse, didn’t seem phased by the chastising or the apologizing. He nodded and stepped back. “I’ll comfort young Wynflid meanwhile.”
“Why is there no blood, Master?” He feared to hear the answer, though he didn’t understand why that would be.
There was silence from Aeldryn. His knife in one hand, he reached with his other and pulled back the eyelid of the pock-marked face, nodded almost imperceptibly and then pulled back the top lip. Melvekior almost gagged. What teeth remained were blackened stumps, the gums gray, the same gray as the lips. With dawning realization, he realized that all of the man’s skin was gray. Not just dirty but, a dismal shade of colorless ash, of raw meat left to sit for days before it starts to stink. The gray of no-life.
“There is no blood because this man has been dead for years.”
Melvekior shivered as he pondered those words. Then he ran to the window as his body rebelled once more against the very thought of what almost happened.
CHAPTER THREE
Summershade
“I know of no man or woman less savage than she.” Melvekior
"How are you feeling this morning?" Aeldryn asked carefully.
It was the morning after the intrusion into Melvekior's bedroom. He was shaken up at first but had slept without any of the nightmares Aeldryn would have expected. The Aelvar had watched him all night.
Melvekior was allowed a late breakfast and a morning off lessons, but Aeldryn had found him in the library nevertheless, reading what was an old story. The Redemption of Almund the Younger. This wasn't part of the reading strategy that he had set for the boy, which meant only one thing. He was reading for pleasure.
Aeldryn was beaming with happiness to notice this but then took a more serious tone when he asked after the boy's health.
"Good, thank you," Melvekior answered, barely looking up.
"What about last night? Any thoughts on that?"
The boy looked up, eyes wide in concern. "Oh, I'm sorry Aeldryn. Did you want to talk about it? I only know that I'm fine and didn't think about anyone else who might have been scared by what happened. Shall we talk about what Sir Almund would have done?"
Aeldryn ruffled the boy's hair. He loved him like he was his own son and felt an upwelling of pride in his heart.
"You're going to make a fine Knight, Melvekior, Almund's equal or his better."
"Do you think so?"
"I do," and that was the truth. Aeldryn could see something in the lad. A spirit of indomitability. Like his father. Aeldryn loved Mikael too, not for anything else but what he had done for his people. Loved him enough to dedicate these years in molding Melvekior into Mikael's ideal. It may even be moot as he seemed to be walking that path with very little prompting from anyone. The best he could do now would be to give him a firm moral compass and the desire to do the right thing. Luckily, there could be no better instruction manual than The Redemption of Almund which was almost prissy in its depiction of the fight between good and evil.
"Keep reading that, my boy. We'll leave the lessons for another day," said Aeldryn, but Melvekior wasn't listening. He was lost in the tales of the heroic knight.
The telling of the tale to Mikael was nearly as bad as the event itself. He was a hard man and even at twelve years old, Melvekior felt a dread of failure. Aeldryn tried to reassure him but it was futile. His father would be disappointed that he hadn’t fought off the revenant and saved the day himself. This irked Melvekior as the rest of the household praised his bravery, calling him favored of Mithras, the event growing in the telling. Before long it was being recounted that a Blessèd of Mithras had appeared and scorched the attacker with a ray of holy fire. The story made him feel important so he declined to correct anyone.
Aeldryn told the story, with his usual set of embellishments and Mikael did nothing but frown.
“The boy now fears your disappointment, that he did not lay the creature to rest himself,” he finished.
They sat in front of Saens Martelle, the keep in which Melvekior had grown up, and the family house for five generations give or take a few decades. Forty feet from the large double doors stood a huge willow, its boughs drooping to the ground, offering shade in summer and cover in winter. This was Mikael’s thinking place. When he had something to consider he would haul a chair from the reception hall and simply sit, talking freely but not moving until he had a solution to whatever ailed him. This was one such situation.
At least the weather was warm, the wait could be a long one and Melvekior was still tired from the previous evening. He sat on the grass near his father’s chair, incongruous in its finely carved luxury, almost a threat to the tree beneath which it was situated. He eyed the ivy on the front of the house, so thick that the stonework was largely invisible. Was that how the man last night had gained ingress? If “man” was even the right word.
“In Amaranth, the envoy of Mithras to the people is named Bavh and I believe she might hold the key to this mystery, Mikael.” Aeldryn was one of the few people who called the Earl of Martelle by his given name. Most people referred to him as Lord Martelle unless they felt themselves his equal and then it was simply “Martelle”. Melvekior’s mother called him darling quite often but that was before she went and Melvekior simply did not think of that.
“Aye? Her, I know!” The retort was short and aggressive beyond what either Melvekior or Aeldryn expected. The Earl evidently did not like her. “I wouldn’t bother with her meself, fine looking but treacherous!” he snarled.
Mikael still had not given his son a hard time about the incident but Martelle the younger expected it sooner or later. Hopefully sooner. His father leaned back in his chair and casually picked at his teeth. He’d arrived home earlier that morning and refused breakfast until the story had come out and then wolfed an enormous side of fatty bacon. Alone. Aeldryn did not eat animals. Melvekior did not want to eat anything ever again. Besides, his throat felt like he’d swallowed sand and his chest and stomach were still twisting in on themselves.
“When last Sunar was here, he spoke of her,” began Aeldryn.
“Aye, he spoke of bedding her, the wretch. How I wish I could have been party to that refusal. The dolt won’t even know of the Sister’s promise to Mithras.”
“Regardless,” admonished Aeldryn, ”I have read of a theory of hers. A theory concerning spates of these fetches and gaunts, coinciding with coronations of Kings. She feels the two event types are related.”
“How could that be and what of it? No new King is being crowned now, less I’ve not been told of Sunar’s demise for fear of my subsequent death from celebrating too heartily.”
“Well, that is certainly true,” continued Aeldryn unabashed, “however, I believe this corpse to be that of Jemiah, t
he ostler.” Melvekior perked up at this. To name the undead was certainly something he thought interesting but they had no ostler. He tended the horses himself.
“Pah! He’s been gone seven years as I’m alive.” Mikael stood now and stretched.
“My point entirely, seven years since Sunar took the throne of Maresh-Kar.”
The Earl of Martelle never spoke when silence would do his talking for him and he now merely gazed at Aeldryn. The Aelvar stared back. Their relationship was one of wonder to the boy Melvekior. His father, notoriously aggressive and unaccepting of fault. Aeldryn, scion of a proud and mysterious people who resisted integration. Both here, not fighting, against all the odds. Whatever Mikael had over Aeldryn must have been equal to what Aeldryn held over Mikael.
“In addition…” Aeldryn motioned his head towards Melvekior who immediately recognized the ‘send the boy away’ signal.
“He stays. He’s old enough and besides, he’s involved.” There was recognition there and if felt almost like he’d gone through some rite of passage, being told that he was good enough for something by his father. It struck the young man that because he rarely received any form of praise from his father, it made this slight nod that much more important.
“Very well,” continued Aeldryn. “I don’t suppose you’ll remember, but we buried Jemiah with half a dozen others at Summershade.”
“Leave the room, son.” Mikael said softly, not even making eye contact. “This no longer concerns you.”
He knew better than to challenge, emboldened though he was after the slight praise. “Yes, father,” he stated quickly, as to not awaken any ire or suspicion, and walked to the house, only hearing the faint hum of whispered conversation once he had opened the front doors. He ran quickly up the main staircase and into Aeldryn’s bedchamber. Unlike his, at the back of the house, this chamber looked out onto the lawns in front of the keep. He could see Mikael and Aeldryn involved in animated conversation, man to man, not servant to Lord. His father now started shaking his head and then again more firmly, also pointing to emphasize how much he was opposed to the suggestion made.