He had Walked Through Shadows with the elderly priestess all night long. It sounded, as he thought of it, like the worst kind of euphemism. He wondered what tales of his role would be in the tales told about this night in the years to come.
Every place that they traveled to had absolutely reeked of foul magic. Most times, it had been the same set of dark, twisted spells; they had been cast repeatedly throughout the outer halls of the palace. The mage hadn't known where he was going, and so had gone everywhere he could easily reach, it seemed. Each place Ashe had pulled the relatively older woman to had possessed the same taste in the air of oily, rotten fish and some kind of rancid… something. It was acidic. Almost tangy on the back of the tongue as he had breathed in wherever they had landed.
More than half of the locations they had landed in, there had been creatures waiting for them. Some they had avoided, and Walked to other places where the noise of battle, or the scents, sounds, traces of magic lingered.
As the night progressed the beasts they had encountered had been less focused, and more aimless. Almost meandering in their efforts. Not that they lacked strength or power. More that they lacked motivation to attack anyone and anything they came across. Priestess Caora Ord told Ashe she suspected something was wrong with the man who was using the Artifact.
In the beginning of the attack, he had been intent on tearing down the palace, and killing Myrl and everyone who followed the young king. By the time dawn had broken, the beasts had remained angry, vicious, and terrifyingly strong; they just lacked the direction and willpower to pursue their original goals. They had become traps, waiting in random places to close upon the unwary, rather than the rampaging beasts they had started the night as.
When he had heard and felt Myrl’s power intertwined with the loud, ripping magical noises the Crown, Ring, and Scepter made, Ashe had grabbed Caora and drew her along with him through a Shadow, and into the Halls outside the Royal Stables.
The transition between the two places had been rough, and oddly difficult, like walking upstream against fast flowing waters. He almost felt the cold himself, and when they stepped from a shadow, Caora had almost collapsed in exhaustion as her body tried to fight off the cold of the Void Between the Shadows. Her thin, parchment-like skin rhymed with white frost.
They had arrived just in time to see the mage fall. He had seen the curved blade that the Captain of the Gryphon’s Wings had slipped from the man’s back. He had fallen on Myrl, his long, curved dagger piercing the King’s side, one of his knees impacted on Myrl’s injured shin, and Ashe winced at the memory of that snapping noise.
There had been confusion, and it had almost escalated into a brawl, with every faction on hand being ready to come to blows in defense of the fallen king.
All but the priestess, who ran to the body of the mage, looking for the missing Artifact from her Temple, and the sea captain.
She had started barking orders at her crew to either help the king or to go find a doctor. She was like an angry little seal, in how rough her voice sounded in his ears. But, she had been one of three voices calling for reason and calm.
The High Priest, Raoh, had rushed over to where Myrl lay, bloody and unresponsive on the cold stone floor. He had begun the process of cataloging the injuries and tending to the king's wounds, when someone who had been trying to move the carcass of the mage had run into trouble.
The body wouldn’t move any further than it had once they had rolled its limp and lifeless form from where it had fallen onto Myrl. Detailing a selection of the freshest of the guards, Ashe had directed them to take the body away.
After a brief struggle, followed by a wet, tearing and rending sound, the long, lean body POPPED up from the floor where it had been determined until that moment to stay. Two of the four guards had been so surprised by the sudden movement they had dropped the limbs on which they had been pulling.
Once they had moved the body away, there lay on the cold gray floor a puddle of blood and viscera torn from the wizard’s torso. In the center of it all, glistening in gore, was the handle of Myrl’s knife, standing up as though it had been thrust into the stone of the floor.
The fierce little sea captain and several members of her crew and the palace guard were then using spear hafts and a scavenged cloak to make a litter to carry the king. Before he knew it was possible, Ashe was walking at the head of a column of warriors bearing the body of their king, and followed by two priests, one of whom was carrying a spear that shone like the Sun herself, the other cradling a tarnished, blackened Holy Artifact in her hands as though it were the deadliest of serpents.
Later, as his friend, Veda, tended to Myrl’s worst wounds, Ashe dealt with the panicked members of the aristocracy. as well as seeing to the care of all of the other wounded.
Elbana had not left the king’s side since he had been placed in his chambers. She was outwardly a picture of calm. Occasionally taking reports from runners, as well as directly from officers, as she stood in Myrl’s room by his bed.
Donchaminar lay across three large beds that had been pushed together in a wing of the Leech Hall. The kitchen staff, who he had apparently protected from several of the beasts, had carried his huge form all the way up from the chambers just outside the kitchens, where he had apparently fallen. Ashe had smiled when the Maester of the Leech Hall, Greylin Frake, had come complaining to him that he had been threatened by members of the kitchen staff.
The man had balked when they brought him Donchaminar’s injured frame. Frake had wanted to send the king’s chef to the stables to be tended by the stablemaster. The palace’s pastry chef, a sturdy woman named Moira with steel gray hair and arms like a soldier had picked the man up, and threatened to make sure he never ate another meal in the palace that wasn’t gruel if he didn’t tend to the Chef.
It may have been the threat of gruel, or the “bring picked up and shaken like a rat in a terrier’s mouth.” Who could say?
Ashe had fed the man some platitudes, and then told him that if Donchaminar didn’t receive the best treatment, that Lord Ashe himself would be feeding him that gruel.
At midday, Ashe had made a point of walking through a Shadow into the Leech Hall right behind Doctor Greylin Frake. Just to drive the message home.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
After taking her report, he had convinced Captain Kleinhoff to take her crew and return to her ship. She and her people would be rewarded for hunting down the Silver Cloud, as well as for their efforts in saving the King. Her eyes flashed when he said that last.
“Yes. I expect saving his majesty’s life is something the King will want to show me and my crew some proper respect for having achieved.” She then smartly turned on her boot heels, and marched out of the Royal Receiving Room where Lord Ashe had been seeing to the more pressing matters. Stopping at the door, she told him, “I’ll have that Parthique captain delivered to you within the next two hours.”
“Thank you, Captain.” He said, simply.
She stared at Ashe. Her appraisal of the much taller, gray skinned man was thorough. She nodded, turned and left the palace, her rebellious curls escaping from the back of her headwrap beneath her broad brimmed captain’s hat.
Ashe sighed. …she’s smarter than her father. She isn’t as good with people as he is, but she is going to cause Myrl more problems than her father will, if he cannot keep her in line… He thought.
Within two hours, the lower cells had another resident.
He stopped by the finer, apartment-like cell that held the envoy from Parthique, Odilien. He sat, and took tea, and discussed the tragic events of the last night, and probed slightly into what the political prisoner, for that was what he now was, might have known. The man was civil, and slightly charming, as he had been the day before. But also like the day before, he was more concerned with the state of his sister, Ocelia. Ocelia who had tried to use her Talent to kill the king.
Ocelia who still slept in a cell, her well being monitored by a Talented Doctor from the Leech Hall.
Ashe had promised to check in on Lady Ocelia’s, his sister’s, well being, and to report back as soon as he was able.
Checking back in on Myrl, Veda was certain his leg was infected, but wasn’t willing to just lop it off as some other doctors might. She would try cleaning it again with distilled spirits, and treating it with a medicine she thought would help.
Every word she said made Ashe painfully aware of how much he hated his lack of magical talent at healing. It had never been much of an interest to him, and that ate at his soul now that he was wanting.
He trusted Veda Kaule. She was the healer.
Near dinner, which he didn’t eat. Ashe was told that Myrl’s knife refused to be removed from where it lay on the stine floor. It was not embedded into the stone. The blade was not wedged into the masonry joints of the hall’s floor. But as the cleaning staff had worked to clean up the mess, the knife was now laying on the floor, and would not be moved.
After what should have been dinner, Lord Ashe had been stalking back to the King’s Chambers, when Lady Mairillia in what had to have once been one of her finest gowns and bejeweled like the night skies in high Summer, but was now a study in shredded and torn fabrics, some of which had been used to bind what looked like slashing wounds to her left shoulder. She now stood waiting for his arrival with enough of her personal maids, most looking tired and bedraggled themselves, and several Lesser Peers of the Realm, and THEIR tattered and tired maids, to bar all passage along this path. As they approached, Lord Ashe could count at least 5 minor Countesses huddled behind Lady Mairillia, in their finery.
Ashe stood before the small crowd of minor nobility.
He waited. Slowly, he let his eyes blink. Lady Mairillia, her vibrant green eyes held his without wavering in the slightest.
Finally, she broke the impasse, and curtsied very low, dropping her eyes as she did so. “My Lord Ashe, I and my retainers would like to know the condition of Our King.”
He could practically hear the capital letters, her pronunciation was so crisp.
“Lady Mairillia,” he had begun.
And she interrupted, without breaking her curtsy, nor looking up at him. “The Palace Guards outside of the Royal Wing will not allow us entry to see the King’s condition ourselves, so I must ask you, My Lord, how is King Myrl?”
“He sleeps, currently. His injuries are extensive. He killed the man who endangered the Kingdom, and created the horde of creatures that had been terrorizing the city.” Some of that was exaggeration. But some days, days like this one, a little lie would do more for the Kingdom than would the truest details.
Several sniffs came from her entourage. Someone murmured a prayer.
“He is being seen to by the best doctors the kingdom has, and we expect him to be back on his feet in no time at all. So, if you will forgive me, I need to be about my duties on the King’s behalf.” Inside, he was a churning quagmire of anger and despair; but for these young nobles, he remained as calm and collected as if reciting the monthly harbor reports.
All of them stood, and shuffled to either side of the hall to permit the tall gray man passage. All but Lady Mairillia, herself. Her large emerald eyes now a ruinous red rimmed cascade of tears, she stammered out, “How may we help?”
That brought him up short. Ashe had not expected any of these pretty little useless birds to ever turn their manicured hands to anything useful. He stared at Mairillia, and then to her friends and servants who lined either side of the hall.
“You lot,” he said, gesturing to those on the left side of the hallway. “Report to the Leech Hall, and tell them I sent you. You are to put yourselves at the disposal of Mistress Alia. She will have work for you.”
Before she could speak, Ashe held up a finger, silence.
Now pointing to those on the right side of the corridor, “The eight of you. Please report to Mistress Moira in the kitchens. Do whatever she tells you.”
Turning back to the young Lady, “You. Please report to Master Baison, the Herald. He is in the Great Hall. You tell him I sent you, and you will offer him your services. He is organizing the staff, and starting the clearing and cleaning of the palace and its grounds. This will include organizing the counting of bodies, and the searching for those who have gone missing. You will use your royal connections and influence to smooth all of these roads for the Royal Herald and his assistants, of which you are now one.”
Lady Mairillia took this all in, her face betraying not a single emotion. She again curtsied, and turned to leave. “Lady Mairillia…”
“Yes, my Lord Ashe?”
He gave her a slight bow. “I thank you for your support in these troubling times. Your parents will be sent a letter of gratitude from the King. And I know he will want to thank you, himself, once he is able.”
She gave a shy smile, and turned to her followers. “Well now,” her voice was suddenly as crisp as an Autumn Apple. “”Let’s be off! All of us!”
Later, still, he walked through a Shadow, and into the King’s Chambers once again.
Veda, kneeling on the bed over his charge, his pupil. The one child he had stopped to raise himself in almost a thousand years. She looked at him, and he knew. Her c=face carried all of the worst news that she was trying to not say.
He wasn’t getting better.
He was getting worse.
That little boy who he had taught to read so long ago now lay in a sweat soaked mass of sheet on his bed.
His leg was festering.
Veda took him aside. She told him everything he didn’t want to hear.
Taking the leg wouldn’t guarantee Myrl’s life, but it all came down to the single idea that keeping the leg would guarantee his death.
Ashe looked at his charge. Feverish. In pain.
He nodded to Veda.