Chapter 45
“And thus the worthy lord did die, in dragon fire under crimson sky, his final arrow piercing the dragon’s eye,” the bard sang. The melody came to an end, and he bowed to the nobles in the room, who gave him a round of applause.
The addition to the song that Lubald had managed to blind the dragon before his death was one of particular note. It was one thing to fight a dragon and distract it for a while; it was another thing entirely to actually injure the creature. Tom wished that he could actually interview someone who knew exactly what had happened. The reports that had come from his village were handled by the king’s bureaucracy, and the details that had filtered out to the public were limited.
He supposed that Sevin would know more, and he would have to question his friend when they met again.
The bard accepted his accolades for the performance before stepping back with the rest of the musicians. They began playing music again; not any particular dance song, just something pleasant to be heard in the background.
“It’s time to mingle,” Rowena informed him. “Come on, put a smile on. We’re sure to get some people coming up to us to congratulate us on the betrothal.”
“Right,” Tom agreed, and he forced his face to cooperate with her instructions. They wandered around the room.
Rowena introduced him to the various lords and ladies and merchants that were in attendance. The teenage couple were complimented relentlessly for their engagement, which Tom attempted to accept with aplomb. That he came across as awkward was somewhat inevitable, but most of the men and women he spoke with had a favorable opinion of him by the end of their conversation.
“Lighten up,” Rowena scolded him when they were between introductions. “Nobody here is actually planning to eat you alive, so stop acting like it.”
“Sorry, it’s just strange meeting so many important people,” Tom said.
“Tom, have you considered that you’re an important person now, and that maybe these people should be as worried about the impression they’re making on you as you are about meeting them?” she asked.
“That’s not, I mean,” Tom stammered, his modesty getting in the way of accepting Rowena’s point.
“You’re the only living Controller, Tom, and the founder of what everyone is starting to realize will be a very important organization,” Rowena reminded him. “Compared to that, what’s a baron or a count?”
Tom considered her words. She wasn’t wrong, he realized. He didn’t have a noble title yet; the king intended to raise him to become a count at some point before he wed Rowena. But at the moment, he controlled thirty cores, many of which had cities or villages attached to them, and all of which had profitable dungeons.
When he considered that, he realized that he had in actual fact control over the land that some of these nobles governed, while their own control over those areas was superficial at best. While he didn’t have a standing army, he would soon have a legion of adventurers who were … loyal to him was not the right way of describing the relationship between adventurer and guild. Closely affiliated was a better phrase.
“I’m not cut out for this,” Tom complained. “I’m just a kid from a village. My parents were slightly well to do, but I wasn’t raised like you were, Rowena, to be the center of attention.”
“That’s why I’ve been doing almost all of the talking for you, Tom,” she pointed out. “Don’t worry so much. You’ll get used to it as time passes. Once you’ve had a hundred conversations with the rich and the powerful, it will become less daunting. Until then, just follow my lead.”
“Thanks,” Tom said, and he meant it. She was proving instrumental in getting through the evening.
“Oh crap,” Rowena said suddenly, her eyes fixed on a middle aged couple who were approaching them. The man was wearing a black suit with a black cravat, and the woman a mourning dress with a black veil. “I didn’t think they’d be here.”
“Who are they?”
“Count and Countess Worth,” she answered. “Lubald’s mother and father.”
“Oh,” Tom said, and that was all they had time for before the couple arrived and the conversation began.
“Tobald, Mary, I am so sorry for your loss,” Rowena said. “It must be terrible to be around these people who are celebrating while you’re in mourning.”
“At least we can say that Lubald had an honorable death,” Tobald said, lifting his chin. “I am proud of my son today, and that’s not something I’ve been able to say for some time.”
“We were hoping that a bit of responsibility would be good for him,” Mary said. “He was … drifting as an adventurer. He had some martial skills and was rightly proud of them, but he lacked direction and drive. That is why we petitioned the king to give him some lands. It’s simply bad fortune that Lubald was given such a turbulent village. How did you ever grow up to be such a fine young man in such a dangerous area, Tom?”
Tom bit his lip. “Actually, when I was young, the only danger in Tilluth Valley was from the local dungeon, which was to say that it was extremely safe. The dungeon only spawned low level Burrowers. We had a militia that cleared it out every other week or so to keep them from coming to the surface.”
“Strange. In his last letter, Lubald claimed that the Dungeon wasn’t fully explored, and that it contained high level monsters. He sounded obsessed with delving its depths and reaching an even higher level to avenge the injuries that he’d suffered at the teeth of a Flame-Lynx,” Mary said.
“Ah, well, that’s actually a different dungeon,” Tom said. Bit his lip. “The truth is, I feel somewhat responsible for Lord Lubald’s death. As you know I’m a Controller, and I made some mistakes when my class first unlocked. It’s because of me that the Flame-Lynxes that injured your son began to spawn. In order to stop them from spawning, I had to create a new dungeon in Tilluth, and that’s the dungeon Lubald must have mentioned in his letters.”
“I see,” Mary said.
“Tom, if you’re blaming yourself for our son’s death, I’d like to ask you to stop,” Tobald said. “Whether you bear any responsibility for his earlier injury is a matter for some conjecture, but I would say that whatever part you played in that was several layers removed as well. You may have caused the monster which injured him to spawn, but you were not that monster.”
“Tobald has the right of it,” Mary agreed.
“As for the dragon; if Lubald had not been assigned to be Tilluth’s protector he wouldn’t have died protecting it. But many of the villagers would have died without his heroism,” Tobald continued. “If you were responsible for Lubald becoming a lord, then arguably your actions indirectly lead to his death. But I do not blame you for the actions of Resh the Violet Dragon. I would blame no man for the deaths that she caused.”
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“Thank you for saying that to him,” Rowena said.
“Well, that is not the reason we came over here tonight.” Tobald said. “I was actually hoping to hear some stories about your youth, Tom. You grew up in the village that our son gave his life to defend. You knew the people which Lubald gave his life protecting. While we’re quite certain that he acquitted himself well against he dragon and that his heroism was worthy of the family name, we’d like to know more about the people Lubald gave his life to save.”
“Oh,” Tom said. He considered for a moment. “Well, I mean, I was only a kid when I lived in Tilluth, so most of my stories are about other kids.”
“That’s fine,” Tobald assured him.
“I think it’s even better,” Mary said. “Lubald gave his life to save your friends, Tom. So we’d like to hear about them.”
“Okay,” Tom said, and he spent a moment thinking. “Well, my best friend growing up was Sevin. I mean, that’s his name. He came with me to the capital to join the royal knights, but he left with Antoine when the dragon came. He’s not really one of the ones that Lubald would have protected, but most of my stories are with him beside me. The truth is that he was probably a bad influence on me, because he kept thinking of pranks and getting me to go along with them. This one time, we found a beetle the size of our palms, and Sevin convinced me to hide it in one of the village girl’s desks at school, knowing that she hated bugs.”
“Is that so?” Mary asked.
“Yeah. I think Sevin had a crush on her at the time. He also got in trouble for dipping her pigtails in ink more than once. Anyway, we were caught out right away by the schoolmaster, a village elder named Lukan. But rather than getting upset with us, he asked us if we wouldn’t mind finding more beetles for him. Apparently he had an aphid problem in his garden and needed the bugs to solve it for him. So instead of getting in trouble for the prank, we got out of class for an entire week while we went around searching the orchards for bugs.”
The Worth couple politely chuckled at the story, and Tom, encouraged, launched into another one of his and Sevin’s pranks gone wrong. They spoke for some time, and Tom tried to mention many of the more prominent villagers, such as Harvold Tinnerman, the militia leader, and the other members of the village council, the shopkeepers, and more of Tom’s childhood friends.
They spoke for more than ten minutes before Tobald thanked him and said “We should probably stop keeping you all to ourselves, there are others who are beginning to resent us for monopolizing our time. They’re simply too abashed to say anything about it since we’re in mourning.”
“Tobald is correct,” Mary agreed. “However, before we leave you for the evening, I’d like to extend an invitation to you and your fiance, and whoever else you’d like to bring, to visit us at our estate, Tom. We’d really like to meet Sevin as well. And perhaps your parents? I believe they’re in the capital as well?”
“They’re at my estate, actually,” Tom said. “Well, Pa is. Ma is out on a business trip, although I think she’s getting home soon.”
“Well, regardless, we’d love to know more about Tilluth village,” Mary said. “But for tonight we’ll get out of your way.”
“Before I go, I would like to pass on a word of warning, Tom,” Tobald said, his voice changing, growing quieter and more serious. “Not everyone who is smiling and welcoming you to the ranks of high society wants to be your friend. A good number of the nobles in this room are highly resentful of you.”
“Resentful? Why?” Tom asked.
“You’ve exposed a number of secrets,” Tobald explained. “They were hidden in plain sight, but since the explosion of people awakening their classes in Caseville, the knowledge that nobles have been keeping to themselves to awaken their classes using private hunting lodges and other such conveniences are becoming less of an advantage. And this is completely besides your ability to awaken classes directly with that skill of yours. While I understand you have been mostly using it for the army, and nobody can fault you for that given the war with Velund on the horizon, I believe you should be aware that many view that skill with a great deal of concern. They believe in keeping Commoners common.”
“I see,” Tom said. “I didn’t realize that was an issue. What should I do about it?”
“Do? What can you do?” Tobald asked. “Tom, I’m not suggesting that you stop awakening the soldiers which need to train their classes to prepare for the oncoming conflict. Nor do I share the opinions of the others who believe that combat classes are the domain of the elite. I am simply trying to raise your awareness of the situation that you’re in, in case you were unaware of it.”
“For that matter, there are also the religious concerns,” Mary said.
“Ah, yes,” Tobald said. He frowned and looked embarrassed. “Perhaps you should explain that to him, since you know more about those nutters than I do.”
“Believing in a higher power doesn’t make you a nutter,” Mary chided, swatting her husband’s arm.
“Thinking that an apparition in the sky signals the end of the world might,” Tobald argued.
“The Eye of the Watcher was observed by hundreds, if not thousands of people,” Mary said. “It’s an established fact. The meaning behind its appearance is unknown and highly debated. You should be aware, Tom, that many, many people are associating that eye with you and your organization, however. And with the people that you summoned from Earth. There is a great deal of speculation in certain corners of society about what it means for the future. Whatever that eye was, whatever it belonged to, people are talking about it, even if you’ve put it out of your mind.”
“I see,” Tom said. “I’ve been reading the notes of one of the Ancient Kings, Mary, and he mentions that the eye has appeared in the sky in the past.”
“Is that so?” she asked, her voice raising in interest. “I would very much like to read those passages, if it is possible.”
“I’ll have to ask the king,” Tom said. “There are secrets in some of those documents that I’m not supposed to share.”
“I’ll ask him myself, in that case,” Mary said. “I’m one of those people who are searching for a meaning for the Eye of the Watcher, Tom, and any reference to its past is very interesting to me.”
“Right, well, I see him over there,” Tom said, motioning towards the direction where Fenard stood surrounded by a small retinue.
“I’ll ask him in private, later,” Mary assured him. “There’s another matter of lesser importance. Tom, were you aware that one of the summonees has been preaching the words of the Christian church lately?”
“Oh, yeah, sort of,” Tom said. “She asked for permission I think. Is there a problem?”
“The Christian god was known to us before, thanks to earlier summons, but I’m not certain that we’ve had a preacher from their lot come to this world before,” Mary explained. “That by itself isn’t a problem. The problem is that some people are associating her words with the Eye of the Watcher. From the little I know about Christians, I don’t believe that a giant eye in the sky is one of the ways their god has been known to manifest. Regardless, it’s giving her words an extra bit of weight.”
“I see,” Tom said. “Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Do you have any advice on how to deal with it? I could ask her to stop, but I can’t make her. She’s her own person, and as long as she’s not preaching treason she can pretty much say whatever she wants, can’t she?”
“As you say. If I think of any advice, I’ll send you a letter,” Mary assured him. “In the mean time, I’d like to thank you for sharing the wonderful stories about the land that our son gave his life to protect.”
“You’re welcome. And I’m sorry for your loss.”
The Worth couple made their farewells, and wandered away from Tom and Rowena. Once they were alone, Rowena gave a sigh and relaxed a little.
“Great job, Tom,” she said. “You handled that extremely well.”