Firestone Key

by Caroline Noe

  * * *

  Leila was not a sexual innocent and the smitten Gawain endeavoured to be as kind and gentle as was humanly possible. Thus their wedding night passed quickly enough, without causing the bride undue concern or particular interest. It was only when her new husband was asleep that she allowed herself to feel the pain of Caleb’s loss and the disappointment of life’s change of road. Her diamond engagement ring remained on her left hand, since the culture into which she had married didn’t recognise it as such. To them, it was only an ostentatious and rather ridiculous piece of jewellery. She lay awake, turning the ring with her thumb, hearing the siren call of lost love and current addiction.

  * * *

  News of Leila’s pregnancy was celebrated in all corners of the domain and amongst the alliance. Only Gawain’s enemies lamented the fact that an heir was on its way. Male or female, it mattered not. The expected power struggle after Gawain’s demise would not, now, materialise, thus weakening their claims on his land. Their only perverted hope was that his wife would miscarry or produce a weakling.

  Leila had not thought to become a mother until the condition was upon her. Once she got used to the idea, she rather enjoyed it. That was, until the sickness arrived. Following that indignity, her burgeoning womb gave her backache and made her feet swell, necessitating long periods of fretful rest. Unfortunately, the latter stages of her pregnancy also coincided with Gawain’s obligatory absence.

  The alliance was growing and required his presence at every long-winded negotiation, in order to stave off power struggles between tribal leaders. With peace a growing possibility and fatherhood beckoning, Gawain was a happy man. Leila, unable to travel with him, was left at home to sit, bored out of her mind. Frustration inevitably led to an escalation in magiking.

  Observing the long absences of his leader’s wife, a vigilant Morden followed Leila into a dark and shady corner of the castle, praying that his fears were unfounded. What he observed was little more than he expected. He flung open the door, to find Leila busily dripping blood from the carcass of a bird into a stinking potion.

  Leila had the grace not to attempt to deny the obvious. All pride laid aside, she begged him not to expose her. To do so, would not only bring a death sentence upon her, but would taint Gawain and his soon-to-be born heir. The alliance could crumble under such a scandal, with war the inevitable result.

  “I’ll stop. Please, don’t tell him,” she begged. “Please? It’d break his heart.”

  Morden knew that to be the truth. Gawain adored his wife. To be confronted with such depravity would ruin him and the future along with him. It was possible to beat the addiction, Morden knew that much from traumatic personal experience, but, unlike him, Leila would not have Anne to take her through the dark times. He would never tell his wife of Leila’s need. If Anne should find out, she would try to assist and, in helping, run the risk of killing herself. To his shame, Morden knew that Anne’s illness had come on her as a direct result of secretly nursing him through his own nightmarish withdrawal from addiction. Even now, the sight of a cauldron or the smell of a potion made his heart skip a beat and his body sweat.

  Shaking off the pull of his own sin, Morden agreed to keep his silence, but only if Leila put magiking behind her, forever. Upon her ready agreement, they decided that she would return to her rooms, pleading fatigue from the pregnancy. There, he would see to it that she was supported through the terrible withdrawal to come, even if he had to do it himself.

  * * *

  With the alliance in place, Gawain returned home to a hearty welcome from his people. Two days later, to universal rejoicing, a strong, healthy son was born. Leila suffered in the delivery, but not as much as she had secretly suffered in the weeks leading up to it.

  When the newborn Harlin - named after his great grandfather - was placed into his mother’s arms, Morden could finally breathe a sigh of relief. Like most men, he assumed that motherhood would thrill the woman and fill her days with joyful wonder, banishing all thoughts of magiking forever. For her part, Leila felt no animosity towards her new son. He was pretty enough, as babies go, and even breast feeding wasn’t the horror she had expected it to be. She did, however, find the deterioration in her once firm physique to be of concern. She wondered, silently, whether magic existed that could arrest or even reverse it.

  One long evening, when Harlin decided that he was going to scream without ceasing, Leila was sorely tempted to use her skills to silence his tongue. Feeding, rocking and the singing of lullabies had no discernible effect on the miniature decibel level. The healers came and went, along with a long line of wellwishers trying to assist the distraught parents. Anne, the realm’s most prolific surrogate mother, could not placate the monster that had been unleashed in the castle. Even Grain, though singularly unimpressed with babies, tried bouncing the child on his shoulder, receiving only a perforated eardrum for his sacrifice.

  Having finally given up trying to sleep, Bert shoved his way through the crowd of advice givers and whipped the howling child out of Gawain’s arms.

  “Be quiet for Bert,” was all the gruff soldier said in order to produce a miracle.

  Harlin’s screams ceased and he stared, wide-eyed, at his new nanny. As tiny fingers closed around his calloused thumb, Bert’s leathery heart unpeeled its defences and admitted a tiny newcomer.

  Chapter 13

  As year folded neatly into year, the castle gained its defensive wall and moat. Human moles dug their way around their safe haven, two semi-circles eventually meeting. Gawain would have accepted the original plan to fill their new defence with water, but Leila made it clear that she would not abide the smell of stagnation. She was granted her way, as usual, necessitating an immense feat of engineering on Morden’s part.

  Leila insisted that, because the castle was built on a slight slope, the nearby river could be diverted to provide running water in and out of the moat. Heavily armoured, lockable sluice gates could then operate to isolate their defences from any tampering or access by boat. Morden refused to believe that it could be done, until Leila provided him with a working model. The resulting smile on Gawain’s face sealed the enterprise.

  Although Morden moaned and groaned his way through the extra work, Anne knew that he was happier than he had ever been. So was she, having spent weeks coming to terms with her new condition, although, knowing what her husband’s reaction would be, she had delayed telling him of this development.

  One night, Morden sleepily wrapped his arms around his blissfully slumbering wife and the sobering truth was revealed. Anne was the slimmest of women and the ‘bump’ was too pronounced to be ignored. The following morning, when birdsong awoke the mother-to-be, she found her husband on his knees, beside the bed. He had been fervently praying throughout the hours of darkness. Intuitively, she realised that her secret had been discovered.

  “I will be fine,” she whispered as his eyes met hers.

  Neither truly believed it.

  “Not able losing ye,” Morden told her, his throat raw.

  “Ye never losing me, even if I have to leave.”

  Morden abruptly rose and flung his arms around her, trying to keep her in this world by sheer force of will.

  “Just be promising me that childlin will be loved,” she whispered in his ear.

  “Always,” he promised. “Always.”

  * * *

  The fiercely negotiated alliance had only wavered once during those halcyon years. One particularly belligerent tribal head persistently refused to join, but had been kept at bay by the strength of the forces arrayed against him. Hostile he may have been, but he was neither stupid nor suicidal. His son, Adam, was an entirely different matter. When his father suddenly died from a severe case of stomach ache, brought on by the son’s dagger, Adam eagerly seized power before any could question his succession. His first act was to murder any opposition within the tribe; his second, was to declare war on Gawain’s alliance.

  Thankfully, the battle h
adn’t lasted long before Adam’s troops were routed and ran for their lives. With his taste for killing rapidly waning, Gawain had allowed them to escape, hoping that they would flee across the waters to the infamous Darklands. Nothing more was heard of Adam for many years, so the domain began to relax back into a state of peaceful readiness.

  Strangely, the more lasting effect of that short-lived conflict was the domestic battle that followed it. Asher, nearing the closing days of his teens, was delighted to be engaged as one of Gawain’s legendary troops and was convinced that the test of his manhood was upon him. As with all youthful exuberance, reality proved to be a far harsher experience.

  As he had expected, Asher’s footwork, swordsmanship and nerve proved exemplary. For what he was not prepared, was the element of sheer bad luck. In the midst of battle, he placed his left foot on a stone, hidden under a thin layer of mud. His foot turned and down he fell, finding himself completely at the mercy of his assailant. He would have died that day, had not a certain teenage girl been, yet again, disregarding the stern instructions she had received the night before.

  Following him to the battlefield, hiding in nearby trees, she was close enough to witness his mortal peril. Devoid of a single weapon and with no time left to search for one, she took the only course of action open to her; she flung herself at Asher’s opponent, smashing into his back. This was one occasion where her bulk proved to work in her favour. The man, unable to retain his footing under the onslaught of flying Melith, landed nose down in the mud, right in front of Asher. The surprised young man promptly finished him off.

  With fighting raging around the exposed Melith, a newly rescued Asher was forced to occupy precious minutes in dragging his saviour to safety, zigzagging across the battlefield. His accompanying words were far from complimentary or even grateful. A throwaway remark about her size and weight, which, in truth, he had not completely passed through his brain prior to pronouncement, proved to be the final straw for Melith. When, with Gawain and his men, a triumphant Asher returned to the castle, he found his former shadow resolutely refusing to look at him, let alone converse.

  Ever since the arrival of the podgy orphan, Asher had prayed for the day that her attention would divert to someone else. Now faced with that very prospect, he found the situation more disturbing than he could have imagined. Pride would not let him admit it to anyone, but Asher found himself missing Melith’s chatter and comforting presence. The world around him grew strangely silent and miserably lonely.

  Little did he know that the mischievous Anne was hard at work on his behalf. With her pregnancy becoming more obvious with every passing day, she had set about trying to create an ideal future for all her young charges. Anne believed that Asher’s happiness was wrapped up in Melith’s love and vice versa. Following the battle, she secretly advised the teenage girl to cease all declarations of love, thereby allowing the object of her affections to feel the cold wind of rejection.

  The plan was perfect and came to a glorious conclusion on the sunny afternoon that Asher caught Melith coyly laughing in the presence of another man. The fact that his rival was a year older than he, ignited a ballistic reaction. After he had shouted himself hoarse for fifteen minutes, Melith gave him her very best sigh of disdain and flounced away, leaving him quivering on the spot. She slept very well that night…not knowing that her greatest advocate was passing from this world.

  * * *

  The brightest light of the domain - its very angel - was extinguished, but not before she had seen the light of life in the eyes of her newborn son. As weeping women covered the body of his beautiful Anne, Morden sat close by the bed, stunned by the magnitude of his loss. He would not allow them to move her, nor would he admit a single friend, not even Bert. When dawn arose the following morning, Gawain could leave it no longer.

  “Go away!”

  Gawain ignored his friend’s instruction and entered the room. Morden was sitting in a rocking chair, the wood creaking as he rocked back and forth, his eyes fixed on the bloodstained bed. As he knelt beside his friend, Gawain had no idea what to say. He had tried to get Leila to come with him, but she had refused; her own grief was too raw for her to be of comfort to a heart-broken husband. He had left her in their quarters, watching two year old Harlin sleep as though the child’s life depended on it.

  “Morden,” Gawain began. “Morden. Ye have to let her go. Ye have son. He needing ye now... Been what Anne wanted.”

  Grief-stricken eyes swivelled to meet his, shock and dismay written in every line of the face. Slowly, Morden rose to his feet, leaving the chair to rock faster on its own. As Gawain ushered him from the room, the new widower glanced back at the shape that had once been his entire happiness. Tears burned his eyes, but didn’t fall. The women respectfully waited until the two men reached the bottom of the steps before they went about their solemn task of preparing Anne for burial.

  Having sat the bereaved widower beside a roaring fire, a tear-stained Melith forced him to eat a little food. Anne would have been proud of the young woman; proud and grateful.

  A gentle cry brought Morden back to the present. Remembering his new son, he scanned the room and was surprised to see the tiny bundle sheltering in Asher’s arms.

  Far from being uncomfortable, the young man was staring at the baby with unabashed wonder. If Melith had not already been utterly in love with him, she would have developed those feelings as a result of that sight. Asher sensed her gaze and looked up, smiling. He then noticed the expression on Morden’s face. “Here,” he said, making his way over to the grieving father. “Yer son.”

  Asher placed the tiny baby in Morden’s trembling arms. Looking down at his squirming son, Morden was afraid to hold him too tightly, for fear of breaking the delicate creature.

  “What be his name?” Gawain softly inquired.

  “He naming after Anne’s father. Been what she wanted,” Morden whispered. “Myrrdinus.”

  The sounding of the name somehow broke the dam of grief. Tears began to flow freely, splashing onto the rosy face of the child beneath.

  * * *

  In the absence of Anne and with the prolonged grief of Morden, the huge brood that had once occupied their time began to melt away, finding comfort in the villages. They were happy to be away from the castle of mourning. More often than not, robust little Myrrdinus could be found toddling at the feet of Melith or Asher, while his true father filled his days with finishing the castle moat.

  Even though he was only an infant, Harlin became aware that his ‘Uncle Morden’ could no longer be a playmate, without ever being told. The boy’s affections had always been bonded to Bert, as much as to his own father, so he didn’t particularly rue the passing of Anne or the silence of the widower. Besides, he was too busy making Grain’s life a misery by setting tripping hazards everywhere.

  Although Melith and Asher greatly mourned her passing, they were also aware that Anne’s fervent wish was to see them together. They were still very young when they married, but they could not be persuaded to postpone the ceremony any longer. Having made the glorious realisation that his newly beloved Melith was wonderfully cuddly and strategically padded, to spine-tingling effect, Asher fully intended to make the most of that fact and quickly.

  He had filled out into a muscular young man, for which he was grateful during the lengthy ordeal of carrying Melith to their wedding. Bone and muscle strained, his face turned a shade of purple, yet he uttered not a single insulting word to his proud bride. Impatient for the celebrations to end, the newlyweds vanished two hours after the ceremony and only reappeared a week later. They were too busy examining each other and happily conceiving, what would turn out to be, another fat little girl with hair as curly as her father’s and as red as her mother’s.

  * * *

  With peace enveloping the castle and its protected villages, Gawain could have rested in contentment, had there not been the dual problem of his friend and his wife. Once water began flowing around the castle, Mo
rden found himself at a miserable loose end. At the same time, a bored and frustrated Leila was causing equal concern. Her husband, not being privy to the secret of her unquenched addiction, assumed that she was lamenting not having become pregnant again and searched for a way to divert her thoughts. Having ascertained from Leila that she would like to have a garden, he duly assigned the construction of it to Morden.

  Although the widower moaned, stating that “flowring be not manly” he was, in truth, relieved to be active again. Leila, for her part, was ecstatic and immediately set herself to gather every flowering plant she could find, some mightily obscure. Having bored both husband and seven year old son with floriculture, she was quietly wandering around the muddy site, when she made the fateful discovery.

  Morden was busily digging up the far section of the vast courtyard and pegging the outlines of the garden when, unnoticed, an innocuous little pebble rolled out of the mound of earth, just in time for him to accidentally kick it in Leila’s direction. The stone came to a halt, leaning against the toes of her right foot. Glancing down at the offending item, she caught a glimpse of a shiny black surface, punctuated by red lines, peeping through the mud. Curious, she bent down to pick it up.

  As soon as her fingertips touched the stone, a terrifying wave of ice cold, raw power swept through her body. The addiction to magiking, that she had long fought to contain, was suddenly overwhelmed by a much more visceral force. Finding it difficult to breathe, as though a giant hand was pressing on her thorax, she fought to maintain an appearance of nonchalance. She rubbed the remaining dirt from its surface while thoughts raced through her brain.

  Dear God, it looks exactly the same. This is what she betrayed me for. This is why Neil died.

  “Find something interesting?”

  Morden’s question made her jump. She had forgotten he was there.