by Y. R. Shin
Evinbur’s thundering shout echoed through the valley, urging the knights following Paseid to look back. At that moment, long, reddish-brown hair and the breath of a fierce horse danced before their eyes on the cool streak of wind.
When the knights realized what was happening and drew their swords, Reuyen already had the sharp dagger in her hand pointed toward Paseid’s lower back. But not taken aback by this at all, Paseid drew Rionac at lightning speed and blocked her weapon.
Claaaang.
The two blades clashed.
“What is the meaning of this?” His eyes flashed at her.
The end of her dagger held tightly against Rionac and touched Paseid’s belt. Reuyen only moved her eyes to take the belt into view, then looked straight into his black eyes with the same expression on her face. She put pressure on the hand holding the dagger.
Snip.
The precious leather belt around Paseid’s waist snapped.
“Step back this instant, or you will die!”
The cold blades of the knights’ swords touched her neck. After looking at each of them by only moving her eyes, Reuyen smiled faintly and muttered, “I have already put my worthless life in your hands, sir. Can I at least borrow your eyes for that?”
And then.
As soon as the knights reached out to take hold of her, she arched her back in a snap and took the snow-white scabbard tied to Paseid’s belt. Before the knights holding their swords toward her could even react, she lowered her body tightly against Den’s mane. She swung the white scabbard and struck all the swords pointed toward her away. A loud clang echoed in the valley.
The knights were flabbergasted. What she was holding was the scabbard of the historical Rionac, an heirloom and symbol of the Noble House Brionake. In fact, the sword and its scabbard were historical artifacts by themselves. There was no one unaware of their greatness.
The moment the knights hesitated, worried that they might leave a mark if they swung their swords carelessly, Reuyen did not miss the opportunity and ran through the soldiers at a whirlwind speed.
“Sir Calandok! Are you all right, sir?” Evinbur hurriedly came running and examined him.
Instead of answering, Paseid touched his empty waist.
It had all happened within a matter of seconds. The woman had broken the army’s formation, holding Rionac. It was clearly a challenge.
A couple knights were running after her, but her horse didn’t even have proper barding and was much swifter than the average horse.
“I will ring the alarm to catch—” started Evinbur.
“No.”
Anger seeped into Paseid’s cool voice. Going around in a large group in a place with rough geography such as this would actually hinder their pursuit. Moreover, it would be impossible to catch up with the woman’s horse.
I have already put my worthless life in your hands, sir.
Yes, it seemed so to him as well.
He realized he could no longer disregard her. He had let her be despite all his suspicions, for he recognized her contribution and commended her for valuing her kin like she would herself, but that had turned out to be neglectful and resulted in this. So, this was his own doing.
“Sir Gran, take charge of the rear.”
“Sir? Oh, yes, sir!”
Paseid whipped Rotsa. Before Evinbur could even stop worrying, Paseid was running in between the soldiers on the winding, rocky road, following Reuyen.
Chapter Twenty
Disarrayed whispers reached the midsection of the cavalcade and echoed through the valley. Jacalrin, who was looking over those who were injured and counting the number of the dead from the now nearly extinguished fire, turned around at the sudden sound of hooves.
The first thing that came into his sight was Reuyen nimbly moving this way and that, so the soldiers didn’t get kicked by her sleek horse. Soon, Paseid appeared with frightening eyes frightening and followed, whipping Rotsa.
It was truly an odd sight.
“What on earth… Hey! Where are you going?” Jacalrin forgot to finish his question.
A giant shadow moved over his head, and he automatically tilted his head back. Reuyen’s trick of stepping on a large stone in the middle of the road and jumping over a man sitting on a horse was not even surprising at this point.
But that was not what mattered. Jacalrin took a moment to ruminate on what had just passed by his eyes.
A white stick? A scabbard?
Then Rotsa, who soon followed, did exactly what Den did and stepped on the stone to jump over Jacalrin’s head.
“Paseid, what is going on?”
Neigh! Jacalrin winced and ducked at Rotsa’s fierce cry coming from right above his head, then saw Paseid’s empty waist and gasped. He wanted to stop Paseid and ask something, anything, but Paseid was long gone in the direction Reuyen ran to, completely neglecting Jacalrin.
What’s all this about?
Things were going strangely in the rear, starting from the disarrayed formation of the soldiers. Should I chase after them? While he was looking around, seriously contemplating this, Evinbur led a couple of knights between the soldiers split on either side of the road. Instead of jumping over Jacalrin’s head and making chills run down his spine like Reuyen or Paseid, Evinbur galloped swiftly past.
“Sir Haldroff, what is going on right now…!”
“Stay at your post, sir.”
Even Evinbur coldly ran past him without an explanation.
Jacalrin followed the four knights, Evinbur, Paseid, and Reuyen, whom he couldn’t even really see now, with his eyes. “Can’t you at least tell me what’s going on?”
She had lived two childhoods, two adolescences, and two adulthoods. All she did not have was the twilight of old age leading to death, the time when one organizes one’s life in preparation for death. She could not enjoy that glorious and monumental time of life because she had been forced to atone in her former life, and because she was not of age yet in her present life. But the reason she did not consider it a shame was that most of her former life was intimate with death, covered in a redder hue than twilight.
She had lived amidst the royal family’s covert fights and the nobles’ struggle for power as a child, and amidst the battlefield where ruthless swords were swung as an adult. In a life where death was a symbol for weakness, she’d learned how to reflect on her life before a life-and-death crisis, how to let go of those who were leaving, and how to embrace the newcomers in her life.
The only thing she had not learned was how to give up on her hopes.
Men don’t stop running until their whole world falls apart at a glimpse of hope.
The words she’d once all-knowingly said to Jess were also a sneer at herself. Those with hope did not allow themselves to give up, running straight into their devastating end. Thus, hope was a hideous, devilish thing. There was a man who once said the humane irony of poison making the drinker writhe in an unending thirst was beautiful, but the queen mocked him. In her life as an heir to the throne, giving up had meant giving up one’s life. Hence, it was a beauty that could never be allowed. Even if one was driven to the edge of a cliff because of it.
Once, she had shined purely and innocently. The seven-year-old girl’s world had turned upside down the moment she climbed on Dekallia. Since the day her incomplete mind got swallowed in parts by her memories, suspicions followed her around like shadows.
The townspeople had thought her dubious, and at times even her parents had looked at her strangely, like they could not understand her. Eivan had still given her a warm smile and praised her for her excellence, but that was all. She could easily figure out that the attitude Sidan took when he became emotional was the general attitude of the people toward her.
But Reuyen did not blame those suspicious of her. She did not have a way to explain herself, either. It was a time that had passed already. There was neither a way to make them understand her reflection of the past and the impact it had had on her current lif
e, nor a need for that. So, she lived behind a mask, pretending to not notice the doubtful eyes of the world looking at her.
It passed. That’s what memories do. Memories cannot overpower oblivion, and oblivion provides space for new experiences and perception, so they will be forgotten in time.
But the moment she was surrounded by the past, Reuyen revisited and repeated her past like a piece of writing. Those memories she had cleared away from her mind exploded like the gunpowder and overturned her reason.
And she realized. Not a single thing had changed.
She’d thought this was a different life. She’d mistaken this as a gift or an opportunity to hold the myriad regrets in her heart and live anew. But her nature remained the same in her new life. Her setting her feet back on the battlefield was the fault of her pride that could not bear the weight of the shackles Eivan had chained on her ankles, and the dichotomy between her past and present crumbling down before Olzore was the fault of a selfishness she could not cast away.
The queen who had dedicated her life to her country had changed the object of her passion and spent her life trying to climb one fort. Two hundred years later, the woman who held up her sword for her young, immature brother was once against risking her life to climb that fort. The consistency was nearly dreadful. And yet, her desperate yearning confirmed it.
This was the reason she went against the natural order of the world.
The reason she was reborn at a time of repeated war and headed to the battlefield like she was enchanted, and the reason these men set their routes around Olzore, were all for this. If this was the place that awakened the obsession of the monster sleeping a death-like sleep inside her, all the chains and shackles would break once she tore this place down. Once the past she regretted disappeared, the only thing left would be the present.
She left the set path and steered Den onto a narrow trail. Studying the trail, so unlike the one from her memory, Reuyen felt her heart beat like the drums.
Tightly grown tall trees angled this way and that, newly flourishing bushes, thickened leaves, stones that somehow moved. There wasn’t a single thing that was exactly as it was in her memory. Thus, feeling like she was stranded in the middle of a wide ocean, she moved, using the fort as a reference point.
Even if she could not find the way, even if she forgot the once familiar marks, she could still see the entrance to the mine on the small path right under the fort in her head, as clear as day. That place that drank and swallowed countless people’s sweat and blood was her last dream, which she could not let go.
The chilling wind smacked her face and blocked her way, but she did not stop. If she was born again, if she had returned for this, she had to remember. So, remember.
Reuyen ceaselessly studied her surroundings. The quickly passing objects and landmarks had convoluted over the past two hundred years, but she moved her cold eyes without giving up.
The sound of Paseid’s horse galloping came from right behind her. She had recognized the horse’s fine blood from the get-go, but heavens, he was catching up to her fast. The closer the hooves rang, the harder it was to breathe with all the anxious tension. Feeling like she would be caught if she lessened her concentration, Reuyen couldn’t even turn her head.
She just ran forward. She ran until she couldn’t keep the fort in view just by looking up. Running around the edge of the valley’s path laid out like a spider web, Reuyen sensed an almost murderous fury from Paseid, who was nearing her.
She felt the intaglio on the white scabbard she was barely holding on to.
Are you…going back to the battlefield, Your Majesty?
The voice of the one she longed for hung around her ears and whispered. Reuyen closed her watering eyes tightly, then opened them again.
The last. This is the last, Belbarote. This is the one debt you owed me. This was Rarke’s desire. This was the final, lasting grudge of Rarkalia, the country you made to be no more. So… This is the last.
The day that wish comes true, the queen who became a monster driven by madness will disappear into history.
Not caring about the branches scratching her cheeks and her body bleeding from the new wounds, she ran across the trail that changed in its inclination and width. Then, she reached a familiar path and spotted an old sword covered with moss and stuck in a crack of stone. She stopped Den. Paseid, who was following right behind, hurriedly stopped Rotsa as well.
Reuyen jumped off the horse like she was bewitched. She stepped on the slippery moss with her hand on the rough stone for balance and started walking along the wall.
“Stop.”
She could hear the armed knight’s armor rustling close by.
Dismissing that sound, she looked around. It was here somewhere, but she could not remember where. The aged pebbles, stones, trees, and the bushes sat in the windless silence like they were mocking her.
She felt something hot bubbling inside her. The time that had passed was standing in her way.
As she fumbled along the stone wall covered with softened moss and weed, something violently grabbed her shoulder. Reuyen surrendered the snow-white scabbard she was holding to the force that sprang on her without a warning. She turned her head as weakly as a leaf in a storm and looked up at him. He wasn’t even out of breath after chasing her all the way here. His icy eyes flashed with anger.
“I take it you will not object to immediate execution, since you declared your life was in my hands.”
He pointed the frighteningly shiny blade against her. Reuyen clenched her teeth and backed away. Her back touched the moss on the wet valley wall. The coldness covered her neck like a snake’s scale and froze her in her place.
She was this close, and the man was standing before her like an iron wall.
Den cried and galloped toward them, perhaps sensing the murderous intent of the one pointing the sword at his master. Then, Rotsa raised his front legs and blocked Den, snorting. Paseid glanced at the two horses ferociously confronting one another.
“You wore the brassard, though temporarily, so I will at least hear your last words.”
“I will not evade my punishment. But…the mine is here, somewhere near here, sir.”
The nonsense did not stop even with a sword against her neck. But her voice was so desperate that he looked at the narrow path, then the towering fort, and then forward again.
Suddenly, his pitch-black eyes landed on the valley’s wall right behind Reuyen’s back. Reuyen gripped her beating heart. “The mine exists for sure, sir. This place is…”
Paseid’s eyes were still fixed behind her. His lips opened for a moment. “This place is.”
His words ended there. Rionac, pressed against her, did not move, either. Reuyen carefully tried to turn her head to follow his gaze.
Paseid suddenly dragged her away from the wall and pushed her. Reuyen stumbled a couple steps at the unforeseen violence. He stroked the moss on the wall with his palm. After scraping it away with his fingertips, he edged his sword and scratched the wall from top to bottom.
Skreeeeek. The soft stone crumbled down with the moss.
Reuyen’s gaze moved to the wall. Before she could even say anything, the sound of hooves rang from not far away.
“Sir Calandok, are you all right…?”
Evinbur and four other knights came running over and stopped before them. They bore open wounds on their faces, like they’d had quite a hard time running along the rough trail. Evinbur approached to find Reuyen struggling to stand and Paseid frozen in his place a couple steps away from her, glaring at the wall. Evinbur hurriedly dismounted his horse. The other knights hastily surrounded her and pointed their swords at her.
Paseid was standing alone like a frozen statue and looking intensely at the valley’s wall under the moss. A fuming knight ran over to Reuyen and growled, “Should I execute her, sir?” But there was no reply.
It was an odd silence.
Evinbur realized that Paseid’s and Reuyen’s eyes were fi
xed on the same place, and turned around to see what they were seeing. The old knight let out a groan.
“What is this, sir?”
Paseid slowly turned his head and looked down at the valley covered in a dark-green hue. Moss growing in odd shapes popped out. A faint design covered the valley’s wall, grown over with moss. It was none other than the numbers and characters of the Royal House of Rarkalia.
Wind carrying a moist scent blew from somewhere. A knight who was patrolling the area in case there was an enemy hiding somewhere shouted, “Sir, there’s something here, sir.”
“Go and check.”
Another knight rode off on his horse.
Twenty steps or so behind Reuyen’s back, moist wind was coming out from in between the valley’s walls. When two of the tense knights cleared the debris of rotten and broken trees and bushes, a small chasm where four fully grown men could barely stand next to one another revealed itself.
“It appears to be…an entrance to what it seems to be a cave, sir!” the flustered knight shouted.
Paseid’s eyes fell on the pale face of the woman.
Only after his eyes were solely on her did Reuyen smile. Her eyes started to water. But this was not the time to shed tears yet. Calming the burst of emotions, she slowly fell to her knees.
“Please, look, sir.”
Look with your eyes.
The last struggle of the foolish queen.
Chapter Twenty-One
Many knights, including the commanders who were standing by, were called to the entrance to the mine. Jacalrin was among those who’d just arrived. He found Reuyen surrounded by the knights and tilted his head questioningly again.
He was certain some kind of event must have happened, considering how fiercely Paseid chased after her, but their faces and the atmosphere were ever so tranquil. Jacalrin hopped off his horse and wobbled over.