by Ted Neill
The judge, waiting on a dais, was none other than King Oean himself. He was hoary with age, his long hair and beard gone white and clasped in tarnished brass bands. His skin was red, his eyes rheumy and opaque. The years had bent his spine so that he sat hunched, glowering out under bushy eyebrows. He wore no crown except for a silver circlet. A blue stone set in a necklace rested against his chest, its brightness was a contrast to his snowy beard, and it peered out like an unblinking, watchful eye.
No wonder he had called upon Talamar for help repelling the hordes of Maurvant, Katlyn thought to herself. Old as he was, Oean could have never led a charge against the sieging forces. Otherwise, she had only heard praise for the king of Karrith. He was called wise and beneficent by his people. Talamar had looked to him like a father, so it was said, and the bond between the two men had been strong.
But for all his wisdom and alleged joy at the triumph of their forces, Oean struck Katlyn, from where she was sitting in the front row, as nervous. The muscles of his jaw flexed unceasingly, his mouth frowning as if he chewed something disagreeable to him. His fingers curled tightly around the stone hanging from his neck and his eyes darted around as if he spied thieves in the crowd.
Katlyn sat alongside Val, Chloe, Cody, Gunther, even Twenge completing the row of Haille’s comrades, all ready and willing to be called to defend him. Her eyes burned and her head hurt, for she had slept little the night before. Instead she had stayed up reading Karrithian law texts which Cody had “borrowed” from the castle library for her. Now her curiosity centered not on statutes, procedures, or addendums to laws, but rather the stone that so preoccupied the king.
“Val, where did King Oean get that stone?” Katlyn asked.
“A trophy, I heard. It was taken from one of the slain Maurvant captains. His men presented it to him after the battle.”
“He prizes it, that is for certain,” Chloe said from Val’s far side. “Look how he touches it.”
“I noticed the same,” Katlyn said. “Strange isn’t it? By all appearances he seems to be a man who does not relish adornment. He wears no rings and a simple crown, yet that stone, and its necklace are . . . opulent.”
“Ostentatious.” Chloe snorted
“As trophies of war often are,” Val said with a shrug, his voice dismissive, as if he understood the ways of kings and warriors well. Chloe opened her mouth to offer a reply, but it never came. A guard hammered the floor with the end of his poleax, calling the room to attention. In the silence that followed, Katlyn could hear the chamber doors opening. Haille’s appearance in the center of the room was preceded by his shuffling footsteps and the jangles of his chains which ran from the shackles on his feet to the irons on his wrists. Val cursed under his breath when the prince walked into view. Chloe could not help covering her mouth with her hand; with her other she took Katlyn’s hand in a firm grip and did not let go.
Haille was nearly unrecognizable. In the weeks since the battle for Karrith, since his father had died, Haille had shunned the world, including his friends and most meals. The time in the dungeon had only worsened things. His skin seemed to hang on his frame, his face was pinched, his eye sockets deep and the cheeks beneath them hollow. His hair had grown long, his complexion pale, and his shoulders hunched. He did not look up to meet their eyes. Instead his face was vacant, his gaze focused on some invisible point in the middle space between him and the dais that held Oean.
“Do you understand the charges against you: that you conspired with the enemy in the betrayal and the murder of your own father, the King?” Oean asked, his voice reedy and thin.
Haille mumbled something, his chains tinkling with his slight movement. Oean asked him to repeat himself.
“I understand,” Haille said.
Oean continued, “As witnesses have reported, you rode into battle a creature, an elk, and it was these same creatures that broke through the lines of defense around King Talamar and slew him. Is there any part of this account that you dispute?”
“No, my liege,” Haille said.
“Can you explain your association with these . . . beasts?”
Here was Haille’s moment to defend himself, to proclaim his innocence, and to dispute the interpretation of the facts against him. Katlyn rose to the edge of her seat and felt a tremor in Chloe’s hand. But Haille did not stand erect, he did not raise his voice so that it could echo through the chambers. Instead his voice was but a murmur. He shook his head, as if confused, and attempted to wipe a bead of sweat from his temple, but his chains caught and his hand stopped short. “I can only offer that the beast I knew was of a different nature . . . a different disposition from the others I saw on the field that day.”
“Yet this one you rode has gone missing, like the other three. Do you feel that this implied collusion among their masters?” Oean rubbed the stone at his neck with his thumb.
Katlyn could see Haille’s throat flutter. “I do not know if these beasts have masters,” was all he offered.
“Do you claim that your own was tame?”
Now it was Katlyn who swallowed a lump in her throat. How did one explain all that they had learned of Adamantus, the elves, the vaurgs, all the many fantastical things they had witnessed on their journey in the past months? Even in Karrith, where myths were told around campfires and with more fervor than in Antas, all Katlyn and her friends had seen would strain credulity.
Haille was at a loss. Oean leaned forward. “Are you conspiring with the Maurvant?”
The room erupted in murmurs. Val’s hand balled into a fist and Chloe drew her own arm across him to keep him from rising up from his seat. Haille lifted his head for the first time, his eyes incredulous. “No, I came to aid my father.”
“Our messengers from Antas report that in previous weeks you had disappeared. Was this in order to liaise with Maurvant spies?”
Even the Karrithian nobles and army officers gasped with surprise at this accusation. Haille looked into the stands as if to beseech the crowd for help. Val shifted in his seat again.
“Only Karrithians are allowed to testify,” Chloe reminded him. “You will not help his case and only draw suspicion to us.”
“Suspicion be damned. Someone has to say something,” Val said.
“Someone is,” Chloe said, pointing to a figure that had risen from the rows of stands across the chamber. She was a petite woman but her posture was regal, her shoulders thrown back, and her chin tilted upwards with grace befitting her station. Queen Amberlyn’s hair was silver, her face lined with age, but her eyes were bright and her footsteps swift as she came alongside Haille. Even Oean could not hide his surprise, his head tilting to the side, and his fingers falling away from the stone that hung around his neck.
“My lord, my king, and my beloved husband, I beg leniency for the Prince. By what do we judge him, much less convict him? That he brought a contingent of reinforcements to help turn the tide of battle? The enemy rode horses. Our men rode horses. Does that place them on the same side or call their loyalty into question? I think not.”
“Here, here!” Val stomped his foot. “This city would be a burning ruin without the intercession of Prince Haille!”
“Silence,” Oean barked. “I will not have foreigners speaking in my court.”
Soldiers moved from the periphery towards Val, but he showed little sign of intimidation as he took his time to return to his seat, throwing challenging glares to his left and right. Katlyn’s palm, where it rested in Chloe’s, was slick with sweat.
“This is highly unusual,” Chloe whispered.
“Oean, my lord, husband, my friend,” Amberlyn implored, stepping towards the dais, one hand to her breast, the other outstretched towards Haille. “Is this the countenance of one who would commit regicide—patricide? We do not know what these creatures, these elk, are. But could it be allowed that they possess two natures? Much as men can be good or bad, so can animals?”
Oean’s features softened as he looked upon his wife, even the
beginnings of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, his eyes brightening, as if the sight of his love cleared some of the rheumy haze that clouded them. But the reprieve was short-lived for as he leaned forward the blue stone shifted on his chest. His hand moved to settle it and as he did so, his expression turned severe once more.
“These are dangerous, uncertain times. Loss is heavy on all of our hearts. I do not forget my debt to Talamar nor do I forget my duty to protect this kingdom, this realm. The nature of those beasts is a mystery but frankly, so are the motives of this young man.” He stared down at Haille, his hands twisting the chains that bound him. “I sentence you, Prince Haille, to exile. This is for your own safety and the safety of the realm, until more can be learned of our enemy and these beasts.”
A collective gasp rose from the stands, but it was the queen’s voice that cut through the clamor.
“My lord husband—”
But Oean cut Amberlyn off, his hand releasing the stone and chopping at the air between them. “That is enough. This session is at an end.”
Katlyn’s size allowed her to squeeze through the crowds filling the courtroom and those gathered outside under the bleak winter sun. She had left her cloak behind on the bench in her hurry but the cold did not touch her, so hot she was with indignation, fury, even fear. She was well in front of Val, Chloe, and the others, having moved quickly to follow Haille as he was led out. She wedged herself between commoners lining the courtyard, awaiting news. Their curiosity was rewarded when four horses pulled up with a prison wagon with a heavy oak door and barred windows. Oean was wasting no time sending Haille away. It occurred to her that it was almost as if the verdict had been decided long beforehand; the trial was but a show.
The sour smell of unwashed bodies, horse droppings, and wood smoke was thick around the pressing crowd. When she could not squeeze past adults, Katlyn did not hesitate to pinch their legs and even stomp their feet in order to make them budge. What could they do to her that would frighten her now? After all, she had faced soldiers, slavers, and vaurgs. By the stars above, she had died once by all accounts. No, the reaction of these adults did not matter to her. Only Haille’s fate did. So she was able to push to the fore just as Haille was led out of the keep to the waiting wagon.
“Haille, this is madness. Worse than Haines Point. We’ll rescue you, we will!”
“Stand aside,” one of the soldiers shouted, pushing her back with the length of his spear held to her side. The jailors manning the wagon, tall men with knotted faces under black helmets, stepped down to take Haille. They pulled his chains so that he stumbled, but still he was able to turn to Katlyn and ask, “Were we all such fools?”
She could only imagine that he meant Adamantus. The question weighed her heart like a stone anchor—she had been the one to release the elk in the first place, the one to trust him before all others.
“No,” she said. “He’s different than those things. We’ll find him and prove it.”
One of the two jailors yanked the chains and Haille surged forward beyond her. Katlyn forgot herself, cursing and finally spitting on the closest of the two. It was a miscalculation, for he wasted no time weighing the merit of retaliating: he struck her jaw with the back of his hand. Katlyn fell backwards into the mud. Her vision was blurred, be it from tears or the blow she was not sure, but as the jailors boarded the wagon and it began to roll away, her last impressions were seared into her mind: the blood on her hand as she lifted it from her lips, the clang of the wagon door slamming shut with such finality, the rattle of the chains, the obsidian sheen of horses’ coats, the black of the jailors’ armor, and the broken rings of gold that hung about their necks.
Chapter 4
Amberlyn
“We’ve got to free him,” Cody said, leaning across the table. Their party was gathered in the emptied servants’ quarters below the manor house. Since the trial they all had felt a certain vulnerability, even suspicion. Meeting in the cellar, like conspirators, followed naturally. At least there they could speak without worrying about spying eyes or ears. Even so, the hall was cold and dank. Her fury passed from earlier, Katlyn now sat huddled in a blanket while her friends debated, her swollen lip throbbing.
“That goes without saying. It’s simply a matter of when and how. If we wish to ambush the jailors’ wagon it’s best we let them move a bit farther from the city,” Val said.
“But what if we lose them?” Chloe asked.
“I have assets that are already following them,” Twenge said. “They headed west along the sand road. It makes sense, the east is still uncertain as we don’t know where the remnants of the Maurvant have gone. South is open desert and the Hand Sea is too dangerous to navigate this time of year.”
“But exile doesn’t necessarily have a convenient location. Oean could be sending Haille anywhere,” Cody said.
“Which is why Twenge has his men on it. I trust their tenacity as someone who has had to work hard at shaking them off before,” Val said.
Twenge nodded and Katlyn detected a bit of pride in his face at Val’s admission.
“Strange times . . . strange bedfellows,” Cody said, leaning back in his chair and slinging a leg over the arm.
“Strange indeed,” Twenge echoed.
“What is more important is to decide what danger we might be in,” Chloe said, leaning forward.
“Chloe is right,” Gunther said. “If this is how Oean treats his allies . . . .” His voice trailed off and he did not finish his sentence. He didn’t need to.
“The appearance of those elk-things and Adamantus’ disappearance have not helped us,” Val said.
“That goes without saying,” Twenge slumped in his chair.
The room went quiet, a heavy silence of disappointment, uncertainty, that was only broken by a banging on the door.
“I’ll see who it is,” Gunther said.
“Take your sword,” Cody said tapping his hilt.
“I have something better,” Gunther cracked his knuckles and rolled up his sleeves.
Val let out a long breath and balanced his head on his hands, his elbows on the table. “We don’t know where they are taking Haille—yet—and we do not know if we are safe here. Probably not. So it might make sense to join up with Twenge’s scouts sooner rather than later. After all, where Haille is going might be fortified. It might be best to strike on the road.”
“All rise in the name of the Queen!” a voice shouted from the far end of the room where Gunther had appeared, looking flustered while three figures followed behind him. Queen Amberlyn followed first, drawing the hood of her ivory cloak from her head. Her silver hair was plaited into two braids, one on either shoulder, and on her forehead she wore a simple circlet crown like her husband’s. Behind her, the man who had spoken was dressed in the green cloak of a Karrithian ranger. Behind him, to Katlyn’s great surprise, was none other than Avenger Red. Red’s hair was cut short like a boy and she was dressed like a squire, but Katlyn would recognize Gail Redmont, the woman who had effectively killed her with an arrow to her throat, anywhere. Only the power of the Font of Jasmeen had saved Katlyn.
Chair legs scraped the floor as the others rose to their feet. Katlyn, without thinking, moved her hand from her throbbing lip to her neck.
“Well met,” the Queen said. “Please be at ease. I come as a friend.”
“We are graced by your presence,” Val offered, his jaw working, his eyes darting to Chloe and the others, then back to the Queen. Amberlyn moved to the seat at the head of the table and rested her folded hands on its surface. Gone was the confidence she had shown in the courtroom; she now frowned and hesitated as if trying to find the right words. After wringing her hands, she finally spoke.
“These are dark times.”
“Truly,” Val said, cautiously. Cody touched his thumb in a casual way to his belt but Katlyn knew he was, consciously or no, inching his hand towards his sword. It was a motion that was not lost on the ranger, who placed his hand on t
he hilt of his own sword, the blade clicking in the scabbard.
“Darid, as you were. They mean us no harm,” Amberlyn said. The ranger, Darid, removed his hand but his scowl towards Cody remained. Red, for her part, hovered in the background, as if trying to hide in the shadows, her eyes averted.
“Cody.” Val only said his friend’s name, but it was also an order. Cody shrugged, releasing the tension in his shoulders and letting his hands fall to his side.
Amberlyn sighed. “It is a travesty what has happened to the Prince.”
“You mean the loss of his father? We agree,” Val said.
The queen met his stare with resolve, her hands clutching the back of the chair. “No, I mean his treatment, his exile.”
“Yet it is the will of your husband,” Chloe said, tentatively.
“Yes, my husband,” Amberlyn said, wringing her hands again, her eyes roaming to the ceiling, the corners of the room, then back to them. “I plead with you for understanding. The events of the past months have been, to say the least, a strain. But I fear, and I speak this in confidence, that the king is not himself.”
Katlyn recognized the danger of these words, even if spoken by the queen herself. Openly questioning the king’s judgment was sedition.
Val perceived as much and rose his hand to stop Chloe from whatever she was about to say.
“Please explain further, your highness.”
“If I may,” Amberlyn said, pulling out the chair. Darid rushed to complete the motion for her. She invited the others to sit and as they did, some of the tension in the room lessened, freeing the queen’s words to flow.
“It has been since the day after the battle. The king has been different. He sleeps at odd hours and keeps up at long conversations at night, with whom I don’t know for he whispers to himself alone in his study. He has always been a gentle man, and a benevolent and attentive husband, but lately his views have grown paranoid, his judgments harsh.”