Bladeborn

by Clayton Schonberger

  He was going to get to the bottom of the matter. He went to Queen Deocarla’s apartment and entered the antechamber. Bladeborn did not see Esket, only a doorman.

  “I’m sorry,” the doorman stated, blocking his way, “but the Queen does not wish to see anyone right now.”

  “Out of my way!” Bladeborn said, picking the up squire by the shoulders and setting him aside.

  He opened the double doors to the Queen’s chambers and saw her siting on the edge of the bed. When she saw him, tears welled up in her eyes and she turned away.

  “Why have you come?” Deocarla demanded “Don’t you understand?”

  Bladeborn’s heart melted.

  “Why the tears? Did I do something to offend?” Bladeborn said, taken aback.

  The squire looked to Deocarla. She nodded to him and he shut the doors.

  “Forgive my tears,” Deocarla said. “I am certain that by now you have learned of our sorrow, Man of the North.” She looked up desperately at him, with deep regret. “My people are slowly disappearing. The Rhinolon have placed a powerful spell upon us. They cannot find our hidden Valleys, yet they destroy us still. For some time, no one in the Six Realms has been able to bear children. There has not been one child born anywhere, from here to King Rosen’s Sixth Realm, for over ten years.”

  “What?” Bladeborn said in wonder. He went to her side and took her hand. Sitting close by her, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted nothing more than our affair to continue, Bladeborn.” she said, as if ashamed.

  “Is there no way to break this curse?” Bladeborn asked.

  “My heart weeps for my people as they suffer so. We cannot break the hex, for there is no Wizard in our land powerful enough to unravel its nature. We suspect the force of it comes from the Rhinolon Tower of Shaman known as the Zelgron but we are not sure.”

  “Then this tower must be destroyed!” Bladeborn asserted, making his hand into a fist. “This must end, now!”

  “It is not so simple!” Deocarla stated. “We have no standing army able to make such an attack. Although the Rhinolon cannot find our precise location with their soldiers, their Shaman have targeted us. It is only a matter of time before we all die of old age, or worse.”

  “Worse…?” Bladeborn wondered. “What could be worse than that?”

  Queen Deocarla said, “We know that soon more Rhinolon soldiers will disembark at the huge Rhinolon river-port city of Onager. Rumors say that the Lizardmen and Ogres are nearly defeated by the Rhinolon in the Southern Seas. Soon all those Rhinolon, many legions of them, will turn their attentions Northward, to these Mountains. Our secret Valleys and our tunnels will be found by the brutes, and then all will be lost.”

  “There must be something we can do,” Bladeborn said defiantly.

  “There… isn’t,” Queen Deocarla said in frustration. “Although I pray daily to Saint Morth, asking for mercy, I feel it is beyond hopeless.”

  “It will change,” Bladeborn told her, placing his hand suddenly on Nightslayer’s hilt. The gesture was not lost on her. “This I promise. There will be change.”

  “Change—by your Sword?” she asked him, with unbelief. “What can one man hope to do?”

  “All that I told you of my past in Fortress City is true, my Queen. You can believe in it. And from my course of study in the libraries of the First Realm, I realize that with help, I am empowered to affect a turning of the ways. Healing is only one thing I am able to do.”

  Deocarla looked at him seriously and shook her head, “This is foolishness. There is no way that—”

  Bladeborn gently took her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes, “My Queen, I assure you, it can be done in the way lightning strikes in a darkened sky. Just give me your blessing!”

  Deocarla face lit up with a dawning of hope, “If you can do as you say—save the Realms from our curse and restore new life to us—I will make you my King by marriage, Bladeborn. I love you, and although you hail from a foreign land, you are the man I trust more than any. You have returned the joy of living to me. For many years, I have prayed for a sign. I will not turn away, now that I see it. You are that sign…that hope.”

  She drew near him, her tears now gone, and he took her into his arms. Until that morning Bladeborn had tried to hold back his feelings for her, yet now he realized he had fallen deeply in love with Deocarla.

  Several days later, Queen Deocarla lay next to Bladeborn and said, “My warrior, I am certain you are the most virile man in all the Realms.” She ran her finger across Bladeborn’s chest.

  Bladeborn was surprised out of his reverie by the Queen’s assessment of him. But then he remembered the curse of infertility across the lands.

  “Deocarla, I could see myself having a child with you. It would please me. Our paths would be forever entwined then, more so, even, than now.”

  “You would make an excellent father, my Bladeborn. And you must not think of us as anything other than forever entwined, for that would displease me.”

  Bladeborn looked at her askance and she smiled. He realized that she was gently teasing him.

  The following day, after a lavish luncheon, Deocarla mentioned that she had arranged a surprise for Bladeborn. She took him to the armory, where he was to be fitted with a fine suit of armor. To make such a suit would take many days and be very costly. But the three elderly master smiths of the First Realm and their middle-aged apprentices were to be paid with funds from Deocarla’s personal treasury.

  The steel plates and chain shirt would be by far the best armor Bladeborn had worn in his life. Yet the most precious part of his new armor was the leathery undercoat, made from a limited stock in all the Six Realms. The rare, extremely durable substance was known as teak hide, taken from a pit dragon many years earlier when such beasts still darkened the face of the world. The teak shirt was carefully fitted to Bladeborn’s frame and sewn by Deocarla’s best seamstress.

  Queen Deocarla commented on the faded, elaborate tattoo upon Bladeborn’s chest as he donned the new hide shirt for the first time.

  She whispered softly in his ear, smiling, “The mark you bear looks like a symbol of infernal magic, my champion. Are you not some changeling, sent to dazzle me with the ways of sorcery?”

  “You know my vow to aid the Realm, my Queen,” Bladeborn replied to her softly. “I am not a changeling, but change I will bring…”

  Queen Deocarla laughed again, and Bladeborn knew it was because of his prideful boast. He had guided her out of a long melancholy, and making her happy had become very important to him.

  The steel breastplate was measured, hammered, and re-hammered over the course of a week.

  Seeing Bladeborn try on the breastplate, with the chain shirt and hide beneath, Queen Deocarla said, “I don’t know whether to doubt your future or fear it—but I feel better than I have in many years, Man of the North. You wear the armor well.”

  Galeb the armor smith said, “It isn’t finished yet, My Queen, but we work as fast as we can.”

  Bladeborn told her that in his armor suit, he would kill a hundred Rhinolon before next winter, and she said that she would give him his weight in gold if he did so. Bladeborn guessed Deocarla had been joking. He had heard that nearly all the gold in the Kingdom was gone, payment to the Rhinolon for various ransoms over the ages. How she could afford the armor suit was understandable…but the jest about the gold was unrealistic.

  While Bladeborn was looking over the designs of certain parts of the armored suit, Nightslayer said:

  ~~The finger joints and wrist connections are of good quality, Swordsman. But the tempering alloys are being mixed incorrectly for heat generated by their coal. I think the master smith knows this, yet he is trying to hurry. Have the Queen’s armor smiths plan them in a different way, so they don’t have to re-make them~~

  Bladeborn agreed. “You’re right, Nightslayer. There must be a better way to do this.”

  After discussing the changes Bladebo
rn wished to make, one of the armor smiths, Galeb, became enthusiastic about the prospect of trying something different. He called over his associate from the forge.

  “Yury!” Galeb said, “Look at this formulation for the alloy! “The outlander’s design is revolutionary!”

  “Galeb, it means more work for us!” answered Yury, who was another master smith.

  “Aren’t you two tired enough as it is?” Balok, the head of the metalsmiths yelled. “Now you two are arguing again! Shut up and get to work before the Queen hears of all this!”

  For that month, parts of the armor suit’s articulations would be changed, using guidance from Nightslayer. The First Realm’s armor smiths were consistently surprised by the unusual requests for the suit’s modification and improvement. The cost of the suit was higher, but the Queen paid for the changes even after Yury asked twice that they be paid more for their work.

  Balok, the lead armor smith, finally began to put all his knowledge into play, which seemed to satisfy Nightslayer.

  ~~Their work is much improved, Bladeborn. I think you can tell this~~

  “I can,” Bladeborn agreed. “It made me very glad today when Yury said they are putting their souls into the suit.”

  ~~They can say such things, but then there is the doing of it. Continue visiting them each day~~

  The Breastplate was the first new piece completed. While wearing the breastplate, Bladeborn went to the practice hall where most of the men in the Realms tested their strength.

  The other Knights and many of the men-at-arms trained daily so they would be ready if the Rhinolon broke into the Realm. They left Bladeborn to himself and rebuffed his attempts at conversation.

  Bladeborn’s new routine was to train by day and spend each evening with the Queen.

  At dinner one evening Deocarla informed him: “The rites and rituals underlying the magic spell that cloaks the Valleys and the tunnels below have been forgotten, owed to the untimely death of the last Court Wizard who held the power over such things.”

  Bladeborn, had tried to understand the illusion which hid the Valleys from the Rhinolon. He asked Deocarla several more questions about it. Nightslayer filled in some of the details.

  ~~Such spells fade over time if not renewed. Action will soon be needed, or the Six Valleys will fall to the Rhinolon~~

  “Quiet, Nightslayer,” Bladeborn thought to the Sword, “I am conversing with the Queen.”

  Deocarla went on, “This magic was passed down by other magicians many years earlier. My brother, King Rosen of the Sixth Valley, is one of the few that remembers the Court Wizard who was the last of the line with knowledge of the spell.”

  “But the spell still holds?” Bladeborn asked.

  “Yes,” Deocarla responded. “It also covers many passes between the Valleys. Despite the death of the last great Court Wizard, the spell still exists and yet protects the Six Valleys from the Rhinolon Shaman that would use magic to locate us.”

  Bladeborn wondered, “So, how is it that people of the Realms are captured by the Rhinolon, then?”

  Deocarla responded, “Sometimes war bands of Rhinolon find their way into our land and catch us unaware. It happened a few years ago to the Royal Family of the Third Realm. One of my distant relatives with his wife and all their attendants were captured and carted off to Onager, the Northern Rhinolon capital.”

  “How could that have happened” Bladeborn exclaimed.

  “No one knows for sure.” Deocarla said sadly. “But a lone messenger came back from the Rhinolon city, demanding fifty thousand gold coin in ransom. Nearly everyone in the Six Realms contributed to pay it.”

  “Did the Royal family of the Third Realm come home?”

  Bladeborn asked.

  The Queen paused for a bit as if lost in thought. She looked down, and said nothing.

  “The Rhinolon didn’t keep their bargain, did they,” Bladeborn said.

  “One more man came back…” Queen Deocarla said, wiping away a tear. “He returned… carrying the severed head of the Third Realm’s King… and demanding another fifty thousand gold.”

  Bladeborn tightened his jaw in frustration and leaned over to put his hand on the Queen’s.

  “I am sorry,” Bladeborn said. “I didn’t mean to upset you…”

  Deocarla, trying to keep her composure, said “If there is any way to stop such madness, I will authorize… No, demand…that it be done. A mere child rules the Third Realm now, one who has no memory of his parents, the King and Queen… who were my beloved cousins.”

  The Queen suddenly arose from the table at which they had dined, and Bladeborn moved to try to comfort her.

  “You have suffered so much,” Bladeborn said sympathetically.

  The Queen wiped away a tear and waved him away, saying, “I must go for the night.”

  “Tell me we’ll have dinner tomorrow,” Bladeborn asked.

  She nodded, “We shall… but for now I must take my leave,” Queen Deocarla left Bladeborn in the small dining room, and he winced slightly at having caused her to recall memories that pained her so.

  ~~Control your emotions, and be resolved to bring war to the Rhinolon~~

  “I am resolved, Nightslayer!” Bladeborn realized his fists were clenched in anger.

  Bladeborn had spent the day training with the few Knights of the First Realm who would speak with him.

  He found most of them aloof, at best.

  “The Knights and these men are not very open to me,” Bladeborn said to the Sword. “What do you make of that, Nightslayer?”

  ~~Jealousy. Mistrust of an outsider. Fear of the unknown. Traits commonly found among normal men~~

  Bladeborn knew the Sword was right, and he could find no way to change it at that time.

  That evening, when his dinner with Deocarla was through, Bladeborn asked the Queen more about the illusion that hid the Six Realms.

  “You say there is powerful magic that hides the Realms. Perhaps in war we can use this to our advantage? If there is no way for the Rhinolon to track us in these mountains we can strike at them from here and return to safety.”

  “Strike the Rhinolon?” Queen Deocarla asked. “To what end?”

  “Perhaps we can slow the Northward advance of the Rhinolon somehow,” Bladeborn said.

  “We don’t have an army,” the Queen said. “All we have are a few Knights and their men-at-arms.”

  “You said earlier that each Realm contains such forces,” Bladeborn replied. “If they will all unite, there is your army. Sitting in these caves waiting is not a good plan.”

  She kissed him lightly on the cheek, and said laughing, “Your plan shows true faith! I love you so, Man of the North…you have taught me to have hope!”

  She arose suddenly and went to her writing desk. From a drawer she withdrew a small, bejeweled box. She took the box to Bladeborn and showed him the two rings inside. They were chains of small, linked, heart-shaped rubies.

  “What rings are these, my love?” Bladeborn asked.

  “Let me tell you,” Deocarla said, almost giddy. “These are called ‘Heartrings.’ I never thought that I would have occasion to use them. They were a gift from the last Court Wizard to my mother. She never got the chance to place one on the hand of my Father… He died defending the Realms…”

  “I am sorry,” Bladeborn said.

  “I am all right, Bladeborn,” she said although her voice quavered. “Listen… these rings have the power to allow the two who wear them to know if the other lives… If you wear one and I wear one, I will always know that you are safe when you are away from me. If you…died…I would know right away…”

  “My Queen, how can I accept such a gift?” Bladeborn asked. “What if the rings gave a false report? What if—”

  “They cannot be false,” Queen Deocarla stated. “The Old Court Wizard had magical knowledge passed down from the entire history of the Realms. They would never give a false reading.”

  She placed one ring on his ring
finger, and the other on hers, and said, “If the chain of rubies ever breaks I will know you have gone to the Judge of the Dead. I swear I will NEVER remove mine, my love. We are bound now, you and I.”

  “And I will never remove mine,” Bladeborn assured her.

  Deocarla seemed to be greatly relieved, “Now I will always know that you are safe, even when you are far away!”

  Bladeborn made a promise to her, “Despite these Heartrings, if I am ever far from your side, I will write every opportunity I get.”

  At that, they placed their hands palm to palm, then embraced.

  Lord Esket, Queen Deocarla’s bodyguard was not with her most evenings. If he was, he stayed out of conversation. But when Bladeborn and the Queen walked the Realm together and visited with its people, Lord Esket was always present.

  On one such occasion, an alarmed man whom Bladeborn had never seen before approached Bladeborn and Deocarla and threw himself at their feet.

  “My Queen!” the man said, “My wife is ill, but we cannot afford the medicine she needs! She will die without it!”

  Bladeborn moved to help the poor man up, “That is terrible! I may be able to heal her! Let us go and…”

  Lord Esket had done nothing but follow them. But now, stepping between Bladeborn and the Queen, he began to draw his sword, saying to the man, “Get away from us, wart-dog! You still owe me one hundred fifty coin!”

  At that, Deocarla quickly held up her hand to Lord Esket, who snapped his Sword back into its scabbard. Deocarla said to the man, “Take this coin good man, there is enough there for all the medicine you need.”

  “Thank you, my Queen! Thank you!” the man said, bowing and looking nervously at Esket.

  “But I may be able to heal your wife,” Bladeborn declared.

  “N-no,” the man said. “With this coin, I can buy the medicine she needs…My family is forever in your debt, my Queen.”

  As the man backed away in fealty, Deocarla laughed, “That is a rare occurrence. Most of my people have enough to live on, but some have bad luck.”

  Lord Esket sneered, “That man is a known drunkard, Deocarla. You lower yourself to allow him to continue in this kingdom. Banish him, I say.”