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Tall Tales: The Nymphs' Symphony (Scott T Beith's Tall Tales Saga Book 1)

Page 38

by Scott Beith


  “No don’t!” I shouted back, moving to try and grab her, her leaps fast and nimble as she scurried up the towers stone spiralling stairs with an ever-increasing stride, bolting up those steps with a speedy reform I never had a chance of matching.

  “Anara! Wait! Come back!” I begged, running up the stairs behind her.

  But she was too far ahead, the distance between us growing more and more with each upwards turn. About halfway up the endless turns of those giant stairs, I simply just gave up, lowering my head like the fool that I was while I slumped the rest of the way up the long staircase slowly, thinking about how I’d gone against Camilla’s clear instructions to lay low. Not to mention how I was about to be single-handedly responsible for the pinnacle argument that would forever break any chance of Milena and Anara rekindling their crumbled relationship.

  Once near the top, I lingered, half-exposed, my head just above the top step of the Sunspire’s chamber, taking in the chaotic scene of both Arlo and Anara bickering loudly with their mother. The crystal rested upon the paved floor in the middle of the chamber hall as every dignitary stood around the walls, trying to politely pretend they were not in the room for the awkward and loud discussion.

  Anara was on Arlo’s left, arguing with his mother about something he had been told. His voice was too muffled for me to here, but Ebony wanted to hear none of it as she kept herself far from the dispute. The king himself had walked over from the sidelines with Akoni, trying to mediate and settle his family’s discord in a polite and formal manner that wouldn’t embarrass his family in front of all the technicians and council members who stood awkwardly beside the old cracked crystal stone that had already been removed from main middle socket of the huge motionless golden-framed sphere.

  Many of the surrounding technicians were nervously pretending to be humble cleaners as they busied themselves with sweeping decade-old dirt into the corners or putting fallen bolts into buckets, feeling the need to look busy so that they couldn’t be witness to the echoing commotion and loud shouting occurring from right beside them. It was worse than any nightmare I could have imagined.

  “We had a deal,” Arlo snarled to his mother. “I kept my word and you’re going back on yours.”

  “Can we not do this now?” Milena said in a scolding restrictive tone. “Son, a king must keep his word,” she voiced to him for all to hear.

  “But a queen doesn’t?” Arlo snapped back rudely, speaking squarely in front of all the engineers and his nearby betrothed without care of consequence.

  Akoni dropped his spanner as he and the rest of the scientists eavesdropped beside the crystal by the paper schematics laid out on the floor.

  “Fine then,” Milena announced. “You win. Tell her,” she said

  The prince looked to his confused and uncertain bride before surrendering to a sudden defeat and silence. It seemed as though my exile had sparked another controversy that had clearly been swept under the rug.

  “You don’t have authority to do this!” Anara protested, attempting to change the subject back to her own cause.

  The queen moved her eyes to the princess, catching a glimpse of me beside the stairs as she did so. The most sour and displeased look across her angry wrathful face. all I could do was shrug my shoulders in a bold statement as if to say, ‘Well, what did you expect?’.

  “I do. And it’s done. And we’re not discussing this anymore,” the queen decreed, walking away from the discussion altogether, Arlo following after her and whispering something from the right hand side of her. Milena snickered dismissively at it was said. “Arlo,” she said with a satisfied smirk, “you’re a good kind man, and you couldn’t disappoint me even if you wanted to,” she mocked, rather pleased with herself as she walked away, moving towards me by the stairs.

  Arlo stood still, infuriated beyond belief, and yet defeated all the same; obviously, he hadn’t received the response he’d wanted.

  Anara looked to me as she walked towards her mother in chase, ruffling the back of her dress in a strange discomfort, deciding to let her mother go as she restlessly started fidgeting. Looking around erratically, she stared at everyone near her, appearing almost paranoid that someone was touching her, or as if a parasite sat on the back of her neck and was biting her. She suddenly started bumping into spectators as she wrestled some imaginary opponent, only to vanish with perfect camouflage.

  Seeing exactly what I just had, Akoni stood up, trying to spot her. “Anara?” he called.

  “Help!” Anara shouted.

  Everyone’s heads snapped around in immediate panic, searching the room for the invisible princess.

  “Quit fooling, Anara,” Milena said in a childish denial of what was going on.

  “Let go of me!” Anara yelled, reappearing near the side wall, wrestling with the air.

  “Anara, what’s wrong?” Milena asked, all of a sudden greatly concerned with what she was witnessing.

  There was a muffling, like the princess was trying to speak but something was covering her mouth.

  “The princess is under attack!” Zephyr called out, smashing two flint stones together as he lit the top wick of his bow. He drew an arrow and pulled back his bow, blocking the balcony exit as he scanned the crowd, who stood stunned in the very middle of the room.

  “I’m over here!” Anara called out again, appearing halfway across the other side of spire. She was on the ground, kicking her legs as if trying to free herself from something. Something invisible appeared to have a steady and strong hold upon her, and it was dragging her away from the crystal and crowd. The princess vanished again a second later.

  I ran into the centre of the room while everyone else quickly picked up tools, like hammers and wrenches, to use as temporary weapons, fearing for their own lives as well as their princess’s, no one was doubting the sudden existence of ‘Midas’s ghosts’ that were among us.

  “Protect the king,” an imperial soldier ordered.

  “Anara, where are you?” Akoni anxiously called out, reaching for his pistol and tapping his glasses frantically, trying to switch between various spectral wavelengths in search for a possible heat signature. “Over there,” he announced, pointing his pistol towards the ongoing rustling disturbance beside Zephyr and the balcony corner. Neither Zephyr nor Akoni capable of finding a steady and clear shot with Anara in front of the cloaked creature.

  “LET ME GO!” Anara screamed to that invisible assailant holding her from behind, trying to wriggle herself free of it. A ghostly gnoll under a shroud partially unveiling upon a hit to its head as a surprisingly thin and slender image of similar size to Anara appeared to be holding her from escaping.

  “Someone do something!” Helios demanded, helpless to intervene.

  “Cover your ears!” Milena yelled to us all, giving little notice before unleashing a crippling hot scream. My brain felt like it was beginning to boil as I, and everyone else, dropped to the floor in instant agony, covering our ears, which did absolutely nothing to shield us from the ear-bleeding pain that had engulfed the chamber room.

  Milena’s banshee cry shook the floor and began to turn my vision black. I was gasping as if I were drowning, sight coming to me only in blinks as my delirious princess returned to our spectrum, only to be tackled down again by our cloaked assailant short moments later. The silhouette of a bow and quiver wrapped around this dark gnoll figure as it stood before an orange descending sun that was slowly setting across the tower. Light streaming in from the balcony beside where the gnoll and Anara were upon the ground. The gnoll ripped off its shroud, puffing into a vanishing white smoke. To everyone’s combined horror, the princess disappeared along with it.

  26

  Treason

  Everyone was left kneeling, stiff as stone, watching the spot where Anara had vanished from, waiting for her to reappear.

  I was in complete denial about her being gone, expecting her to be the same daring escape artist I knew her to be – a resourceful girl capable of picking any sh
ackle or lock and crawling her way back to us. So I stayed on the ground, naively waiting for her return long after many others had already stood back up, wastefully allowing the clock to tick on when every second mattered more than the one before it.

  No one ever comes back once they’ve been taken, and everybody in that room knew it but was too afraid to be the one to say it out loud.

  My ears were still ringing from my queen’s loud ghostly scream, and my vision was still hazy from the pounding migraine it had delivered, but slowly I stumbled back to my feet, swaying a little, just like the rest of the people already standing. Some feeling those debilitating effects more than others as those nearest to the balcony were in direct line of the scream and were still virtually incapacitated.

  The prince was quite close to the left side of his mother when it had all happened, and as consequence, he was one of those who were worse off than the rest, battling his own failing feet as he struggled to pull himself up and off all fours.

  The genuine lack of movement and aid to help him throughout the dimming Sunspire chamber was evidence enough of just how truly shocked everyone was over what had just transpired. All of them looking as if they had already reached the same conclusion I had, and had no idea how our wrathful queen would soon react.

  Many of the noblemen kept to themselves as they helped each other up quietly, only to stand beside a frozen and expressionless queen, waiting for directions on what to do, no one daring to have a sense of free speech before Milena was to speak.

  We were all in dire need of somebody to speak, though, for anyone to simply shout out some hasty orders to follow, rather than wasting precious time and allowing the sky to dim, slowly descending this palace into a grim orange coloured darkness.

  “My lady,” Zephyr gently said to the queen, trying to rouse her. Wake her up from the frozen shock she was stuck within as she stared towards the spot her daughter had vanished from.

  Milena was usually strong under the face of hardship, but this time was an exception. Even I was wishing for the queen to wake with rage, to be her ordinary self and take ruthless command. To scream and shout orders of frustration. To send another army into callous war — anything other than remaining stunned in silence like the woman we had before us.

  “Keep working!” Milena finally vented towards Akoni and his fellow engineers by the crystal on the floor, her eyes moving to the bright new crystal lying parallel to the old cracked one. Her voice trembling with a raw yet rattled ferocity, much like she was holding them solely accountable for taking too long to repair the spire in the first place. She wiped away a trail of tears from her right cheek, only to turn away and look towards the windowless balcony instead in an attempt to hide her tears from others.

  The timid lesser technicians all got back to work after a moment, scheming on how best to erect the spire, only to stop and glimpse towards Akoni in further need for him to take lead while he stood there as still as a statue in wild thought.

  He had chosen to ignore her instructions, Akoni got up from the floor, turning to face his queen’s back. She turned around and stared at him, no doubt waiting for him to explain why he wasn’t following her immediate orders.

  “I said start moving!” Milena snapped, sending a short screech reverberating through all of our heads as it bounced up and down the echoing chamber tower. Her bark spooking everyone nearby, all but Akoni shaking in their boots upon her unsteady verbal command.

  “My queen...” he initiated. “If we reinstall the spire and it eliminates all eclipses, what chance does Anara have of finding her way back to us?” he said to her.

  “We have half an hour at most before night sets on every rural town of The Borderlands,” she said bitterly to him, looking to the rest of us as everyone bowed their heads in a silent sorrow of acceptance and shame.

  Guilty-feeling dignitaries all secretly thankful they weren’t being asked to put their lives ahead of the princess. “She is gone,” Milena then sobbed, a devastated tone more terrifying than she had ever shared to express with any one of us before.

  “Honey,” Helios said in approach towards his distraught wife, “I won’t abandon my daughter,” he dared to say, overruling her orders with his own.

  “They never come back,” she repeated, aggravated by her family’s unwillingness to accept her cold perception.

  “But how many times have we tried properly looking?” Akoni defiantly questioned, loosening the grip of a wrench he held in gesture of humble protest.

  “Where? Where can we look!?” she criticized

  “In the darkness,” he responded

  “You want darkness! Look outside!” she stated, pointing towards the tower’s balcony and its gradually dying sun. “Our entire countryside is about to be overrun by night. How many might die for us to have this discussion? Just fix the spire, Akoni, that’s an order!” she said to him and before us all, revealing the very real threat of impending danger, should that dusk settle over the lands and the carnivores of the night begin to return. “Don’t any of you get it?” she continued “They took her so we would leave the spire off overnight. Because one night is all it’ll take for us to lose everything we’ve built,” she explained, revealing the harshest truth of all. “The fact is, we can’t help her if our city is in just as much danger.”

  As in truth, she made a very compelling point. I knew just how hard it was for her to have to choose between the life of her daughter or the preservation of our entire society. Dusk was indeed setting unsuspectingly on all of our towns, and Milena had very few minutes to do something about it before The Borderlands would have its first full night in nearly twenty years. But that cost was too great for any one of us in her family to be willing to bare.

  “Listen to me, boy. Until we have a better plan, I need you to reactivate the spire,” she said passively aggressive to Akoni, giving him barely a few seconds to think before she grabbed him by the collar of his nice suit jacket and shirt, not caring about all the dignitaries present to witness it, as they, too, nodded and silently cussed in agreement with her ruthless command.

  “Just do it already man,” someone young and privileged called out in frustration from within the noble crowd.

  “Akoni, we have no choice,” said one of Akoni’s fellow technician associates, trying to look out for his friend’s immediate welfare.

  But as scared as Akoni was, he was adamant in standing his ground, doing what he thought was right and unwilling to abandon the hope of his princess coming back to him. “Answer me this,” he said to Milena as she held a firm grip upon his collar, beaming her most soulless death-stare directly into his stubborn and unfaltering eyes.

  “How will we negotiate with the gnolls if you close the very bridge they need to communicate with us?” he said, speaking surprisingly calm and clearly, without any of his usual shy stutters.

  The crowd looked sceptical but didn’t seem to care about anything other than what Milena wanted to do. Very few of them seemed sure about whether they should be supporting or condemning Akoni over his resilience. He was the only one with enough brains to ask those questions, and the only one impervious to harm, seeing as only he and his reluctant father knew precisely how to reinstall the Sunspire crystals. That meant Milena had no immediate threat she could use to control him other than shallow intermediation tactics, used in bluff to try and force him to cooperate.

  “Which begs the question to who exactly we would even be negotiating with, my queen?” Akoni then dared to ask, looking her dead in the eyes, suddenly sure with himself that she knew more than what she was letting on.

  “Your father!” she bickered. “Who else?” she said.

  “No, Mother,” called out Arlo, shaking his head to a daze as he stumbled over to assist his friend, despite the temporarily head trauma he seemed to be steadily dealing with still, “he’s locked down in the dungeons at your request. Watched over by at least a dozen of our best guards who have raised no such alarm,” Arlo confirmed, just as sceptic
al.

  “Then it’s one of his lieutenants,” she sniped quickly.

  “You mean those old feeble men who’ve clearly never had a day of combat experience?” Arlo debated before her and the crowd. “What are you not telling us about the gnolls?” he continued to press, moving between Akoni and his mother, blocking their path as he forced her hand to lower enough to let go of Akoni altogether. “Every potential threat in this world has been neutralized,” he rebelled. “What is outside of this world that you’re not telling us?” he speculated, maintaining the military mindset he had always had when it came to never leaving another member behind, let alone his very own sister.

  The queen ignored his question before her eager crowd though. Men and women of all different types were beginning to drift away from each other, dividing up by their loyalties. The lesser ranks looking to nobles like Zephyr and Ebony for a means of closure beside their queen. The vast majority of soldiers and council leaders eventually appearing to unanimously back their queen over their future king in a sudden but surprising turn of events.

  The anxious crowd was sticking with their queen despite wondering whether an ‘undiagnosed madness’ had suddenly progressed within Arlo and Akoni this time around. Midas’s rambles of ghosts and demons seeming all too realistic to simply pretend they were just fictitious lies, meaning members of this room had no choice but to follow someone based on their need to survive.

  “What is wrong with you both?” Milena erupted, stepping away from both of them, only to face all members of the crowd. “They are at our doorstep!” she proclaimed. “What they are doesn’t matter when they are already breaching our walls!” she pointed towards the balcony once again, “This entire city will be overrun if daylight doesn’t repel them away.”

  The crowd seemed to be carefully listening to her words. Her husband, the king, eventually dropped his own sceptical resolve in guilty acceptance of such a harsh and undeniable truth. “Akoni, let’s just do it. Reset the spire,” the king said to his protégé and friend.

 

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