When Perrin finally woke from the vision, Glord stood beside her. He was barefoot in the sand and looking up at the magnificent Dragon. She addressed him with the glorious song of her voice, “Welcome, Glord, protector of the rightful queen of Havenstahl. You are an honorable soldier, a fierce warrior who would die before abandoning his duty. It is an honor to meet you.”
Glord had never heard a sound so sweet as the Dragon’s song. The immersive bliss he felt just then was beyond any emotion he had ever experienced. It was uncontainable and poured forth from his eyes in a torrent of tears. He fell to his knees before Helias and wept, “I don’t deserve the honor of your praise.”
“Of course, you do, my love,” Helias’ smile remained unwavering. “We are all bound together in Coeptus as are all things. You are me. I am you. We are love. Rise, dutiful knight.”
“You and the men must return to Havenstahl,” Perrin blurted as Glord obliged Helias’ command.
“Forgive me, highness, but that ain’t a command I am willing to obey,” Glord bowed deep before his queen.
Perrin smiled and gently placed her hand on Glord’s cheek. “There ain’t nothing to forgive,” she began. “You have been a faithful protector and mentor. You have prepared me for this journey, and it is a journey I must finish on my own. The Great Mother showed me a vision of the place where my path leads, and I can’t ask any of you to continue with me on this quest. Any who do will be long dead before we reach our goal.”
“You know I never had no daughters,” Glord took both Perrin’s hands in his own. “If I did, the last thing I would do is leave them alone when they need me the most. What you ask of me is akin to asking me to leave my own daughter to fend for herself against a pack of wild mountain scarra. That ain’t a thing I would ever do. Your path is mine, and the rest of the men will tell you the same. All of us knew what this journey meant, even from the start. We march off into dark, unknown lands to challenge a god for your son’s life. The vow we made was to give our lives for his. I beg you, please don’t command me to walk away. You will force me to betray you, because that is a thing I cannot do.”
Perrin failed to contain her tears as she threw her arms around Glord’s neck and kissed his cheek. “It is a terrible shame you never had no daughters. I can’t think of a better father than the man standing before me.”
Helias lost a tear, “I will lose many more tears for you all when the Lake calls you home.”
Chapter 30
The Harvest
Three days on the trail had been a welcomed adventure for Cialia. If it were just the two of them on swift horses, they could have made the journey in a day. It would have been a long one, beginning in the wee hours as the sun is only beginning to paint the dark eastern sky with color until just after dusk. However, it was not just the two of them on swift horses. Father supplied the king’s army with weapons. Their cart lumbering over the deep, hardened ruts of the trail was loaded down with them. Though it was just the two of them, even the swiftest horse is less so when tugging a heavy load.
Cialia had almost convinced Marielle to accompany them for the great harvest, but she had her own wares to peddle and a good bit of baking left to do. The harvest celebration was her busiest time of the year. The fact was only slightly disappointing. Father was different on the trail, easier, treating Cialia more like a fellow adventurer than a daughter. Back at their hut, Cialia was responsible for all the chores typically reserved for women, washing dirty trousers and soiled kettles, sweeping floors, feeding chickens and pigs, and preparing all the meals. The trail was different. In the wee hours of their first morning, she had slipped away with her bow and bagged a stout fallon. Roasting meat over an open blaze on the trail is different than boiling stew in a kettle over a small flame in a hearth. She had not minded preparing that meal one bit.
Sitting in the glow of a healthy fire listening to father’s stories was probably her favorite part. He would occasionally spin a yarn sitting at the table over a cup of ale back at their hut, but the trail brought something out of him. He looked different, like he had been trapped in a cage and someone left the door open. The shackled bird he resembled shuffling from his hut to his forge and back again looked nothing like the magnificent animal soaring down the trail alongside her. Sitting beside the fire after a long day of travel bathed in the flickering orange glow of a proper fire, he looked every bit the hero she learned about through the stories folks would tell her about him.
He had a story for her that first night. After filling up on a good, thick slab of the fallon she had roasted up, he leaned back against a fallen tree and said, “Did I ever tell you about the only time I was ever truly afraid?”
“The grizzly mongs?” she had asked. That was the most terrifying tale she had ever heard about him. She had never seen one herself, but the descriptions painted a frightening enough picture she hoped she never did.
“No,” he chuckled. “They were terrifying to be sure, but I’d been running on rage and adrenaline. My men needed me. There was no time for fear. No, the only time I ever truly felt afraid was after my fighting days had long passed. I had woken in the middle of the night. The hut was always drafty and creaky, old bones, but on this night, everything was louder than normal. I quickly realized all that noise was caused by the wide-open door of our hut. Mind you, that didn’t frighten me at all. My soldiering days may have been over, but I’ve still enough fight in me to send a thief back to the Lake on the end of my blade. I became afraid when it occurred to me what an open door might mean when the only person sharing the hut with me was a lass of just under three summers. That was the moment I noticed you were gone. That was the moment I became truly afraid.
“I jumped out of my cot and ran out in my nightshirt. When I heard growling and rustling brush about fifty yards off from our hut, well, that fear turned to terror. I just knew it was full grown scarra ripping my little girl to shreds. I shrunk inside, could have laid down right there in the road and died. I didn’t even want to look. My heart was pounding so hard and fast I could hear it in my ears. The growling just kept getting louder. That was the moment I realized I had forgotten to grab my sword. Barefoot and bare-assed were bad enough. Half-lame, I’m pretty useless battling beasts without my blade. It was too late to worry about that. I took a deep breath and pushed my way through the shrubs into a clearing. All the way through I knew I was going to find a beast chewing at my dead child and I’d have to fight the monster for your carcass. That moment, just before I poked my head out into the clearing where all the growling was coming from, was the only time in my life I have ever been truly afraid.”
He left it there like that, unfinished. It was a technique Cialia had become accustomed to from him. He would build up the tension, charge steadily toward the climax, and then stop, sip his ale, and act like the tale was complete. She let him drag his game out long enough to take a nice long drink, and then she dutifully asked, “Well, what happened? What did you see?”
He gave her the same satisfied smile he always did when she begged him to finish the story. They both knew she was patronizing him but neither cared. It was part of the game, part of the story, and part of the fun. “What did I see?” he asked. “Do you really want to know? I don’t know. Might be it’s too much for you. I told you how afraid I was.”
“Stop torturing me,” she laughed. “Spill it.”
“Okay, okay,” he laughed back at her before finishing the tale. “So, there I am pushing through the brush in nothing but my nightshirt, getting ready to battle a beast for my daughter’s bones, and what do I find? My own sweet little girl barefoot in her nightgown with her chubby little arm stretched out to pet the woof. That’s what you called scrods back then, probably on the count of the sound they make. I doubt you remember, but we would sit out on the porch when you were small like that. You would sit on my lap and we’d look at the moon. I’d ask you, what do we say to the moon, Cialia? And you would look up at the moon and say, ow, ow, owooo. Then we’d
both do it. We’d throw our heads back and howl at the moon. Then you’d tell me, that’s what the woofs say. Well, that beast in that clearing wasn’t no scarra. It was just a scrod. By the time I’d made it through the brush, you were petting him, and he was licking your face. You looked up at me with those sweet, innocent eyes and those chubby cheeks and said, woof, Papa.”
“Starless,” she replied quietly. “That was Starless, wasn’t it?”
“Aye, that’s what you called him,” Agrimon agreed. “It was a sad day when we lost him, but that’s a tale for a different time.”
“I cannot see him in my head,” the idea had suddenly occurred to her. “I remember the name, but I cannot see his face. How old was I when he died?”
Agrimon scratched his head, “Well, it wasn’t more than a summer ago. It was a tough time for you. Maybe you blacked it out of your head.”
Cialia had left it alone at the time, but it wasn’t the only thing she should remember but could not picture. Her memories seemed like unfinished paintings. The essence was there, but the details were missing or didn’t add up. When they rounded the bend onto the busy road leading up to the great city at the top of the mountain with its towers scraping the sky and glowing orange in a setting sun, and father said, “There she is, Varisghoul, the great city of the north,” she had to pick the conversation back up again.
“I know the name, father, but it sounds wrong to my ears,” she complained. “Why are all these things familiar to me but feel unreal. It feels like I’m walking through someone else’s life.”
Agrimon gave her an odd look, “There ain’t another name I know for the place. It was Varisghoul when I rode under its banner. It was Varisghoul when my father did, and his father before him. You’ve been acting strange since we celebrated the end of your fifteenth summer. Maybe we take some time out to visit old Hagen and have him look you over.”
Hagen, that was a name with a face that sparked some real memories. However, they were not memories from her hut in Brickley’s Bend. They were from a different place, a city in the trees somewhere, and a city on a mountain just like Varisghoul. But it was not called that. It was Havenstahl. She stretched toward that word, that idea. It seemed just out of reach.
“What on Ouloos has happened here?” father’s voice distracted her from her search.
The edge of the city was always a bustling clutter of commotion, but what they rumbled into on their heavy cart was different. It was not the bustle of folks bringing their wares to barter or sell. People were fleeing. Some charged up the hill toward the city proper with its high walls and lofty spires. Others fled past them away from the city. Still others fled into their huts, slamming doors and shuttering windows.
“Hey there,” Agrimon hailed a man rushing to his hut whose face flushed red with agitation. “What is all this ruckus?”
The man slowed enough to turn and shout back, “The prince, Cardon has been taken by the great wizard who sits atop the mount of fire.”
“Merkhal?” Agrimon’s face twisted in confusion, “What would that old wizard want with the king’s fair son?”
There was another name which sounded familiar, but this one lacked even the essence of a memory to go with it. It felt like something she had heard once in a story. All her memories felt like that. Things she recalled from descriptions rather than the residue of experiences. All the commotion kept her from exploring the idea any further. As much as she wanted to dive deep and examine these false feeling memories, try to find an answer to whom they may belong, a missing prince was too compelling a story to ignore. The king’s men would be mounting up to march off to war against this wizard. She dared not wish the king would be in such a state as to allow a girl to march under his banner, but the idea refused to leave her mind. She would pledge her blades. The king could take them or leave them.
The massive drawbridge spanning the deep chasm between the southern gate and the entrance to the city proper was down, but the heavy iron gate allowing passage to the bridge was closed up tight. They should have been thrown wide for the harvest celebration with traffic moving in both directions across the heavy bridge. Instead, four guards in full dress stood before the gate turning all away. Their shiny prang helms dazzled in the sun.
“None in or out,” one of the guards hollered to Agrimon as he and Cialia approached. His tone was deep and dripped the kind of authority which is rarely questioned.
Agrimon stopped the cart, “I’m loaded down with weapons for the king’s army. If the rumors spreading through the town are to be believed, it may be wise to see me through.”
Another of the guards leaned over to the first and whispered, “That’s the swordsmith, Agrimon, from Brickley’s Bend.”
“The titan?” the first guard whispered a bit too loudly.
“One and the same,” Cialia answered. Agrimon touched her arm and shook his head slightly. She shrugged and smiled as the four guards hurried to open the gate, “Only fair they know to whom they speak.”
Chaos danced all about the stone streets of the city, as people ran this way and that carrying this thing or the other. None of it appeared useful to Cialia. Father had taught her early, and repeated the lesson often, precisely zero problems were ever solved by panicking. The only goal the folks zigging and zagging through crowds pushing against each other were accomplishing was slowing she and her father down. Sit tight and wait for someone with a clear head to solve your problems.
The city center was the spot where King Carowell should have been addressing throngs of people gathered from far and wide in celebration of a bountiful harvest. People should have been packed in tight around the fountain watching soldiers parade around in formation showing off their crackerjack timing and extensive training. Those same soldiers should have been engaging in mock battles and feats of strength while the boisterous mob cheered them on. The boisterous mob was missing. The vast courtyard surrounding the fountain sat mostly empty. The soldiers were there, dressed for war and flying the colors of their houses, but none of them looked prepared to storm a wizard’s keep in honor of their king’s good name. Most of them did their best to avoid the pleading eyes of their sobbing king as he begged for a champion.
The king’s crown was off. His bald, normally pink head was red with frustration. Though his arms suggested at one time in his life he was formidable, the rest of his body suggested too many years spent on lavish pursuits. His gayly colored tights strained to cover his bare ass as he crawled from one champion to another with his belly nearly dragging across the ground below him.
“Please,” he sobbed as he hugged the legs of a large man in gaudy plate armor buffed to shine without blemish, “help me rescue my son from that monster.”
The man ignored his grace’s pleas, turning away from the king he was sworn to protect. The scene disgusted Cialia, a king groveling at the feet of men dolled up for parade with brightly colored plumes decorating their helms and matching fabrics flowing from their pauldrons. Not one of them looked like they could defend a sweet cake from a pack of hungry children much less rescue a prince from the clutches of some magical being.
She looked at her father and said, “No.”
“The king needs a champion,” Agrimon said soberly without looking at her.
“This is not right,” she shook her head. “That is no king, and those are not soldiers. This cannot be real.”
“Of course, it is,” he finally looked over at her. “You see it with your own eyes as I do with mine.”
She scanned her father’s face, looking for some clue he truly believed the words leaving his mouth. He looked blank to her just then, as fake as the crying king and his supposed champions. This was not her life. Despite the feeling she moved through scenes in some kind of dream rather than living and breathing in a world that was real, she simply could not sit and watch the pathetic drama unfolding before her. “I will be your champion,” she finally called out.
The laughter of the men in their pretty armor echoe
d off the stony walls surrounding the courtyard. The sound swirled around her like a mocking tornado. The king did not laugh with the rest. He looked up at her, his pink cheeks shaking under his tears, and said, “You jest. It is unwise to tease his highness.”
Father touched her arm, “Cialia, no.”
It was too late. She was off the cart confidently stalking toward the prostrate king. “I see no other champions in this place, only frightened men decorated for parade not battle. I will challenge your wizard and collect your son.”
“Petulant child,” the big man with the shiny armor lumbered toward her. “Merkhal will suck your bones from your body with a breath and leave your flesh in a slimy pile.”
Cialia smiled as she ducked under the backhand he tried to bruise her cheek with. It surely would have hurt had it connected. His gauntlets had thick nubs over the knuckles. He swung three more times. She danced away, gauging his movements and dodging around his attacks.
“I see why you fear this Merkhal,” she chided. “He must be formidable to stroll into a heavily guarded city and steal its prince. You are unable to even strike a defenseless girl."
He finally drew his sword as two more lumbering giants of men approached and did the same. Their armor and swords were too fancy for fighting. They looked all a show. Cialia did not bother pulling her blades. She stood relaxed, waiting for the first the attack.
Before that attack could come, the king finally found his feet and gained a bit of control over his voice. “Enough,” he shouted. His fat, pink cheeks shook as spittle flew from his lips. “None of you are willing to band together to challenge Merkhal for my son’s life, but you will band together to challenge a wee girl for a slight?” Then he looked to Cialia and said, “What is your name, girl?”
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