by R. J. Grieve
Pevorion sank into a chair as if his legs had failed him.
“Dead?” he repeated, as if unable to comprehend what he had been told. “Dead? But….. but this cannot be?”
“He died suddenly yesterday morning. And that is not all the ill news I bring. Perhaps I had better start from the beginning.”
“Perhaps you had,” agreed his lordship grimly.
“As you know, my lord of Westrin ordered me to return to Addania to find out if the Ravenshold Brigands had obeyed his order to return to their fortress. He had warned me to be discrete, so instead of announcing my arrival by going to the palace barracks as I normally would, I took a room at an inn near the city walls. It did not take long to discover that the regiment had not returned to Ravenshold but was still present in Addania. My lord of Westrin’s orders had, apparently, been countermanded by Prince Enrick, using his father’s authority. I managed to speak to my second-in-command in secret and he told me that the Prince had presented him with written orders delivered under the King’s seal, which he could not disobey without committing treason. I need not tell you that it went against the grain for him to disobey my lord of Westrin but had he refused to comply, he would have been arrested and executed. The Prince’s move was not exactly unexpected and as there was little that I could do to mend matters, I was preparing to make my return journey to Sorne and deliver my report, but I had not taken account of the Prince’s army of paid spies. Apparently he had received word that I had returned to the city clandestinely from Sorne. He is well aware of my loyalty to the House of Westrin, and suspecting that I might stir up unrest with the Ravenshold Brigands, he dispatched a party of guards to the inn to put paid to my activities by arresting me. It is fortunate that I am not without friends amongst their number and I received a warning in the nick of time, that enabled me to elude them. But I couldn’t get out of the city. The Prince seemed surprisingly determined to get hold of me and not only closed the gates but began to comb the city street by street.”
“Where did you go?”
For the first time during his recital, Seldro’s severe expression almost lightened into a smile.
“The barracks. The Ravensholders hid me in the loft above the guardroom – the one place, apart from the Prince’s bedroom, that the palace guards did not think to search. But it was while I was in hiding that news began to filter through to the city that the lord of Westrin and the Prince and Princess were all missing in the Forsaken Lands. At first I could hardly credit what I was hearing. I knew they were hard on the heels of the fugitive and expected to be only a day or so across the Harnor. I also knew that you would be moving heaven and earth to find them, and you can imagine my frustration at being stuck in an attic when I was itching to come and help you search for them.” He paused, and the grim look returned to his face. “Then, a few days later, your letter to the King arrived bringing the news that all of us, except perhaps one, had dreaded to hear.”
Pevorion stood up and resumed his favourite position by the window.
“Aye, Captain, that was the most difficult letter I have ever written, or ever hope to write. How do you tell any man, much less your King, that his son and daughter and a man who was as much his son as if he was born to him, are all missing, feared dead. When they became overdue, I began to worry, wondering why it was taking so long, wondering if I should have sent my sons with them for extra protection. So I sent out a search party into the Forsaken Lands and almost the first thing they encountered was Prince Eimer’s horse, riderless, running wild through the forest near Greendell. My sons discovered the tracks that the party had made on their outward journey, and even though the trail was old, managed to follow it northwards for two days until….until they found a scene of butchery in a clearing. Ferron, my best huntsman, was lying decapitated on the ground in a pool of dried blood, clearly killed by the Turog some days ago. Near him were two of the Ravensholders, also slain by the Turog.” He struck his fist against his forehead in anger. “I remember my stupid words to them, telling them with such misplaced confidence that the Turog would not attack so large a party. This is all my fault, Seldro. All the fault of my criminal over-confidence. How can I live with myself after this?”
“But no other bodies were found?”
“Another guard was discovered some distance further north. There were signs that this was the place they were ambushed. The Turog clearly attacked in vastly superior numbers but no sign could be found of Vesarion or the others. My sons said that the tracks showed that they were attacked by over twenty of those beasts. They could not have survived so unequal a fight.” He turned towards the window once more in order to hide his face from the man listening so intently to him, and said over his shoulder: “So, Captain Seldro, I had to write the King a letter that I would rather have cut off my own hand than write.”
The Captain regarded him in pity, and it came almost as a shock to find that when the bluff bear of a man finally faced him again, tears were welling up in his eyes.
“How did the King die?” he asked, his voice rough with grief.
It was the question that Seldro had been dreading, for he knew he must give an honest answer, and his honesty would bring with it great pain.
“Forgive me, my lord,” said the Captain sorrowfully, “for what I must tell you now. But….but they say that it was the news of his children’s death that killed the King. He received your letter and as soon as he had read it, I am told that he went white with shock and fell where he stood, the letter still in his hand. Apparently, he spoke only one word before he died.”
“What word?” asked Pevorion, the tears now pouring down his bristly cheeks.
“Vesarion.”
Pevorion gripped the back of a chair to steady himself and drew his sleeve across his eyes.
“Oh, unhappy land that this has become,” he groaned broken-heartedly. “First we lose Queen Triana, which caused grief enough, even though she was of a great age, but now so soon afterwards we lose her son – the only one with the power to restrain these foolish suspicions of Prince Enrick. The House of Westrin, a long and noble line, is no more, and young Prince Eimer and his lovely sister are lost to us. How much more grief can one nation bear? For how much of this do I bear the blame?”
“My lord, you must not blame yourself. No one knew that there were so many of those filthy animals across the Harnor. No one could have predicted the attack. This kingdom is going to need every good man before we are done, if I read the future correctly.”
His words steadied the older man.
“I fear you are right, Captain. Tell me, how did you escape?”
“Friends smuggled me out of the city, but before I left, I heard one other thing. The new king, with almost indecent haste, has already issued a declaration annexing the Barony of Westrin to the crown. He has declared them all officially dead and has announced a day of national mourning. The King’s state funeral will take place next week and a month after that, Enrick is to be crowned king – although the coronation is a mere formality,” he concluded bitterly. “He already sits on the throne and wields absolute power with no one now to check him.”
Pevorion, having gained control of his emotions, merely bowed his head in acknowledgement.
“One other thing, my lord,” said Seldro tentatively. “it is not my place to advise you, but be wary of attending the King’s funeral. Prince – I mean, King Enrick has many grudges to settle, real or imagined. I have already sent word to my family in Ravenshold to take to the mountains in case he tries to use them against me. I go to join them now, my lord, but should you have need of me, send word to the innkeeper of the Running Boar in Ravenshold. He knows were to find me.”
He arose to leave but Pevorion crossed to him and unexpectedly held out his hand.
The younger man found his hand gripped in a vice-like, but sincere, handshake.
“I wish you luck, Captain.”
“Thank you, sir,” Seldro replied feelingly. “I will need it – I think we all will.”
Vesarion and Sareth spent the afternoon following their quarrel in very different ways. Sareth returned to the Rose Tower, stormed past Eimer, who made the mistake of trying to speak to her, and mounted the stairs to her room two at a time. When she finally reached her sanctuary, she locked the door behind her and flinging herself on the bed, gave way to a torrent of bitter tears.
He had let her go so readily, making no attempt to persuade her to keep to their engagement. She must now accept that she meant nothing to him and never would. All the hopes she had cherished that their journey together would cause some affection to grow in him, were now dead.
As she lay on the blue counterpane, staring at the ceiling, exhausted by the storm of grief, she recalled the old proverb that hope was a flower that bloomed in the snow. But now the last few petals of that fragile flower had been frozen by so much indifference that they had lost what little life had remained in them. She did not know how to face him again. She did not know how to face the rest of their journey together or, indeed, how to tell the others what had happened. Even when Iska, alerted by Eimer that something was wrong, knocked on her door asking if all was well with her, she could not summon up the strength to reply. So she lay watching the shadows creep stealthily across the ceiling, unaware that they signalled the passage of time, as the sun, caring nothing for her distress, followed its appointed course regardless. She saw only the hurts of her past, the wounds of the present and a future so empty and bleak that it filled her with dread.
The cause of all her tears, forgetting the fact that he had just delivered a lecture on the evils of disappearing off into the forest without telling anyone, strode away from the scene of the crime in a thoroughly bad mood. If she had never wanted this engagement, he reasoned, determined to justify himself, then why had she ever agreed to it in the first place? And what was all this nonsense about not knowing one another? He had known her since the very day she was born. He even had vague memories of being invited by the proud parents to see the infant princess in her cradle. The thought brought him to an abrupt halt. Perhaps that was the root of the problem. Perhaps he was simply too old for her. He did a rapid mental calculation and worked out that he was exactly nine years and eight months older than she was. Not such an impossible gulf between adults but an unbridgeable chasm between children. He remembered the little tomboy who insisted on following him around, getting under his feet. He pictured her climbing trees in pursuit of stolen apples. He smiled a little in recollection of the day she had fallen off the stable wall straight into the midden. Probing deeper into his past, he could recollect binding up cut knees and lying heroically to cover up her truancy from her lessons.
And all at once his anger left him. He sat down a little wearily at the base of a tree and leaned his head back against the rough bark. Above him the golden leaves stirred uneasily, giving him glimpses of the blue sky above. He had never seen her so upset. Now that his irritation had left him, he began to review their conversation calmly and realised that she had been struggling to hold back tears, especially towards the end. He saw again her hand holding out the ring to him, and remembered how it had trembled slightly.
Finally, he made the belated admission to himself that, for whatever reason, he had hurt her.
Yet she had called him cold and selfish and implied an arrogance that he found unjust. She had accused him of merely wanting to further the line of Westrin, of not caring whom he married. When he got to this point in his train of thought, his reasoning fell to pieces and he became uncertain as to what his exact motivation had been. When he had first read the King’s proposal back in his mountain fastness, surrounded by the familiar snow-capped peaks, he had sat down in his favourite chair by the fire, a glass of wine in his hand, to make a cool, reasoned and logical decision as to what constituted the best means of furthering the interests of his beloved barony. He was untroubled by the presence of the object of his decision, unaware of the detachment that his isolation from Addania had brought. He had accepted without question the King’s assertion in his letter that his daughter was willing to receive his proposal, without ever wondering why. If he had thought about it at all, he would have assumed that she, too, had considered the advantages of the match, not least of which was the opportunity to get away from Enrick. But now, for the first time, he questioned all of those comfortable assumptions. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps they had been too much apart in recent years and now were strangers to one another. Certainly her behaviour since they had left Addania had disconcerted him. Images of the last few weeks flashed across his mind. Confusing. Fragmented. Contradictory. They gave him no clarity at all. He saw her fierce concentration as she had fought the Turog in the forest glade. He relived how her eyes had avoided his, when she had defied him by voting for the mission to continue. Yet he heard her scream his name when the creatures in the sand began to pull her down. He saw her hand stretched out to him for help and remembered his own frantic fear when he couldn’t reach her. In his mind, he heard her laughing at Gorm’s antics, that light, carefree laugh that was as familiar to him as his own heartbeat. Finally, he saw her standing at the foot of the stairs in the Rose Tower, the candlelight shining on her hair, and he realised that she was right – he didn’t know her at all.
Slowly, like someone awakening from a trance, he climbed to his feet and looked around a little uncertain of where he was, or how he had got there. The sun was sinking, casting the long, languorous stripes of late afternoon and he realised that he had been away much longer than he had intended.
Carefully, he retraced his steps until he emerged once more in the infamous clearing. The log was still sitting in the centre of the glade, is rough edges illuminated by the slanting light – but it was empty. The ring had gone, and for some reason he could not quite fathom, he felt a sense of relief. She must have relented and come back for it. Perhaps the breach was not so serious after all.
However, as he approached the thorn hedge, he found himself accosted by Eimer, who had, in fact, been searching for him all afternoon.
“Where have you been?” the Prince demanded irritably. “Iska has had me looking for you everywhere.”
“Why?”
“Why? I’ll tell you why. Sareth stormed past me earlier today looking like a thundercloud and has locked herself in her room and refuses to speak to anyone. Iska thought that it might have something to do with you.”
“It has.” He hesitated for a fraction, then took the plunge. “She…..we have broken off our engagement. You can now celebrate the fact that you are not going to have me foisted upon you as a brother-in-law.”
“Oh?” was all Eimer could think of to say.
Vesarion looked at him more closely. “You don’t seem very surprised. I take it that you, too, didn’t think it would last. According to Sareth, I am cold, selfish and arrogant. I assume you agree with that assessment.”
“Well, no, but you can be a bit closed up inside yourself at times and that can give the wrong impression.”
“Tell me, Eimer, do you know why she agreed to my proposal in the first place? I had assumed that she was tired of Enrick’s plotting and wanted the peace and safety that being Lady of Westrin would have conferred, but clearly I erred. Do you know the real reason she agreed?”
“Em…she didn’t really take me into her confidence but she did mention something – although, perhaps I shouldn’t repeat it.”
“Eimer, I think it would help if I understood – but I won’t press you.”
The Prince glanced uneasily towards the tower as if he expected his sister to be listening. When he returned his gaze to his companion, he found a pair of disconcertingly piercing eyes bent upon him.
Weakly giving in, he said: “It was something to do with Enrick but I’m not sure exactly what. At first I thought he had threatened her safety but I soon realised that such a move would hold very little water with Sareth. On balance, I now think it was you that he threatened. She wouldn’t tell me exactly what he said b
ut I got the impression that she felt that she was protecting you.”
Vesarion frowned. “She must know that there is little he can do against me as long as I command the Ravenshold Brigands.”
“My friend, you are hampered by your own honesty. You are thinking in terms of some sort of direct confrontation. That is not the way Enrick operates. If he wanted rid of you for some reason, he is the sort of man who would not be above such underhand tactics as slipping poison into your wine – and well Sareth knows this.”
Vesarion looked thoughtfully at the ground. “So,” he concluded quietly. “She saw it as a matter of duty.”
“Come to that, it seemed to me that it was a matter of duty with both of you. The only thing that surprised me is that Sareth did not choose to confide in you. I had thought recently that she had grown cold and distant, but I now think that it was just that this matter was worrying her and she didn’t know what to do. The one thing that this journey has shown me is that my big sister is just as she has ever been – ready for any adventure and not cold in the least.”
Vesarion smiled ruefully. “Definitely not cold! You forget that I have just been on the receiving-end of her temper. You say she has locked herself in her room?”
“Yes. Iska and I have both knocked on the door but she won’t answer.”
“Very well. I will see what I can do. We may not be engaged anymore but I do not wish to be at daggers drawn with her, especially as we have still a long journey ahead of us.”
Eimer blew out his cheeks. “You don’t lack for courage, I’ll give you that. Be thankful if you don’t get your ears boxed.”
Vesarion laughed but was, nonetheless, aware of a certain amount of trepidation as he ascended the stairs.
He knocked softly on the door. “Sareth, it’s me. I want to talk to you.”
For a moment there was no answer, then a rather muffled voice said: “Go away.”
“No, Sareth, I will not go away. We have been friends since were children and I do not want bad blood between us. So open the door, please.”