In the days following the attack on the chateau, a strict lockdown was imposed on the city of Chaverne. It was early autumn by this point, and the thick green of the leaves had slowly begun to yellow and brown, and crops ready for harvest sat a sea of shimmering gold around the city.
Most weren’t told what actually happened. The Lavellan citizens and Sarkanian army knew it as an attempted assassination attempt on Caden Sarka by dissident Lavellan nobles, and in his false mercy Caden announced that those involved would be forgiven should they abandon their quest. It worked well; the Lavellan citizens were given reason to look upon Caden, who they barely knew except as Valen’s heir, as a man of just compassion.
Armand knew differently of course, but rather than spout those facts to Caden to deride and taunt him, he instead congratulated him, and seemed altogether more warm than before. When the highest nobles of their realms met together to eat, Armand spoke more as a friend than an enemy held captive in his own castle, and with his injured arm in a sling he seemed almost grateful to Caden for saving him. Jaqueline too seemed indebted, and spent considerably more time visiting her father after nearly losing him.
One day roughly two weeks after the incident, on what the Old Calendar called the 8th Harvest Dawn, Caden went to meet with Armand just after midday. Armand was sitting on one of the chateau’s balconies overlooking the wealthiest part of the city, and seemed lost in his own thoughts as he peered off into the snow-capped mountains in the distance. Caden was announced by a young page, and guards were posted in the room behind them as he walked past Armand and lay his hands on the wooden handrail.
“It’s a nice day, isn’t it?” Armand asked, gesturing, though Caden could not see it, to the nearly cloudless blue sky with his uninjured hand.
“I suppose so,” said Caden, though he seemed more interested in the mountains that broke the horizon.
“They’re like walls, aren’t they?” Armand asked rhetorically. “I sometimes feel closed in by them, and wonder if it would not be better to tear them down. But I feel they’re fitting in many ways, for they are a natural and physical token of a crown and kingship. They, like those crowns we sometimes wear, are nothing more than a symbol, a representation of false power to hide how powerless we really are. The mountains are the walls that block our physical ambitions, and the crown is the chain that binds our souls.”
“How poetic,” Caden replied. “But I’ve never worn a crown.”
Armand seemed surprised by this. “No even in private? To see what it would look like, to see how heavy it is?”
“It’s not mine yet.”
“You are certainly a loyal son. I wonder if mine would be so, if they were still here.”
Caden didn’t reply, and for a time there was a strange silence that must have made Armand feel uncomfortable for he broke it. “Why have you not crowned yourself yet, Caden?”
“There’s not been a time that’s felt… Right for it,” he admitted. “And I do not want to be crowned at war.”
“I think it’s safe to say that you’ve already won this war,” said Armand. “Though sometimes I wonder if it was not a waste of those things that wars cost.”
“I did not want to go to war. This war was my father’s, and he won it, and I’m now merely trying to find the peace again.”
“And now you come to finally do so, I assume?”
“You know the cost of peace, Armand. Hopefully you're willing to pay it.”
“I have, for some time, waited for your men to come to my chamber and force my hand to accept your demands. Yet, while I myself would have done such a thing, you have remained here for weeks waiting for my true approval. It is a match that I would never have endorsed if your father had not defeated me in battle and you had not occupied my palace, yet I can see that it is indeed a strong match, and that she would also agree to it. So yes, Caden, if the details of your offer remain the same, I accept them.”
Caden turned from the balcony then, and looked down upon Armand with clear white eyes. They were unnerving for a moment, but then the sun shone through them, and his gaze became warm. “You would remain king of Lavell until your death,” he assured. “Then Jaqueline and I would become rulers of a unified nation.”
“Good,” was all Armand said.
“Then as of this moment, Sarkana and Lavell are no longer at war.”
“Let it be the last time.”
The two men spent the next hour planning and attending a formal peace ceremony, and in the throne room Armand and Caden both signed and sealed a formal document in front of a small gathering of witnesses who included the leading nobles of both nations, Arian, and Jaqueline. When the signing was finished, the document was held up for all to see, and the attendees cheered and clapped, and some embraced each other. Only the Philosopher King and Ethelyn, whose presence only Caden missed, had been absent.
By mid-afternoon all of Chaverne knew of the peace, and the lockdown was formally lifted to the songs of the common folk and impromptu parties of music, dancing and feasting in the streets. The formal engagement of Caden to their beloved Lady Jaqueline was on everyone’s lips, and though some feared what would come in the future, they were too excited by the prospect of a grand wedding to let it ruin the festivities.
Caden and Jaqueline were congratulated by everyone. It was custom then for Caden and Jaqueline not to properly meet each other until the wedding, but he could see her handmaids and noble lady friends flustering around, and she smiled at him when she caught his gaze across the room. Caden himself was approached by at least two dozen people, including Arian who clapped him on the shoulder, and Wulfsurd who joked that he would finally have a real lady. Even Arthur Ashfield and Sir Anselm, who was still injured from the attack, came and joked with him for a time.
He and Anselm had barely seen each other since what had happened, but Anselm now took great pleasure in telling him how they had “killed a couple of the bastards” and saved the scullery maids by barricading a door and holding it against the common rogues for “over two hours”. Arthur was apologetic to the point of drunkenness, and Caden had to reassure him several times that it was his alerting of the guard that had potentially saved those who survived.
“Many in the kingsguard died that night,” Caden told him. “And I’m counting on you and Sir Anselm to help rebuild them.”
The congratulations were exhausting to Caden, as was the drinking and eating that followed. Food, hastily prepared in the chateau kitchens, and delivered from the city, was served on great platters as nobles who had not weeks ago tried to kill each other now ate together as friends. In the early evening, when Caden could take no more of it, he made his excuse to his brother and slipped away.
For a moment Caden felt overwhelmed, and out of sight of the guards he put his arm up against a wall and hid his face under it, and when the feelings of distorted panic and anxiety began to rise he repeatedly hit his head until they went away. He pulled back, a slight red mark on his forehead, and went towards one of the secondary stairs towards the rear of the chateau. Since his encounter with the assassins he could not walk to the main stairs without seeing the phantom bodies that lay there on the floor, as clear in his eyes as the night they were truly there. Similarly, he could still smell the sick copper of blood, and had increasingly made more ridiculous excuses to not take that route just so he could avoid its odour.
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When Caden reached the second floor he made his way towards his private chambers, only to find as he turned the final corner that anomalous man with black hair and golden eyes looking back at him. He was unguarded, and above his narrow chin his lips formed a smile. “Good evening, Caden,” he said, still wearing those dim silver robes.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” Caden told him somewhat harshly.
“I hear congratulations are in order.”
“I see she told you,” Caden replied as he approached the door and opened it. “Will you come inside?”
The two men stepped into Caden’s room, freshly cleaned by maids that could well have hidden something there meant to kill him. But nothing seemed out of place, and Caden knew that the chateau’s maids would have been accompanied by men whose job was to watch them.
Caden walked over towards his bed, and from around his hips he undid a belt that allowed him to wear a dagger in a sheathe, and put this sheathe on the top of his pillow. Behind him, he heard the Philosopher shut the door for privacy. “So what is it you want?” Caden asked him.
“To ask how you are doing,” said the Philosopher King. “And to ask what progress your men have made in their investigation.”
“None. We do not know who they are, or where they came from, or to what group they belong, or on whose orders they were acting. They could at any moment strike again, and we would be as blind to it as we were that night.”
“I had a few of my men inspect the recovered bodies,” said the Philosopher.
“So I heard. My surgeon Erleath was livid at the intrusion, though what could I do about it?” There was a hint of spite in Caden’s voice.
“Nevertheless, I have information that might help. A few of them were identified, through marks they bore and other means, by my herald. There is a place in the far side of the Black Mountains, an ancient city and a grand temple that worships mortality. We have reason to believe they were from this temple.”
“A temple that worships mortality?” Caden repeated, turning towards the Philosopher now with an expression of disbelief. “This temple, then, is my enemy? The ones you warned me of?”
The Philosopher shook his head, and Caden noticed he was freely examining his room as he answered. “Not these. This temple’s business is the deliverance of death in exchange for currency. They were merely hired mercenaries, though what I find most interesting is the fact that someone from these Southern Realms could hire them at all. Even from the far side of the Black Mountains they are difficult to reach, but to cross them completely and still do so? You have a dangerously competent foe.”
“You managed to cross them.”
The Philosopher smiled. “And I will again when I leave.”
“Why then do you allow a temple of hired assassins to remain in your empire?”
“When you go there you will see for yourself.”
Caden paused for what must have been nearly a minute, and when he finally spoke again his voice was full of confusion. “Why would I go to such a place?”
“Because when they discover who you are they will call you to them, and I doubt you have the power to resist such a call.”
“Why not? My willpower is considerable, a testament to what I’ve survived.”
“Because many such things cannot grow strong here. The mountains shield us from it in the north, but here you are its slaves. Like the roots torn away by the wind, or the clouds above blown away, it can take no great hold in these lands.”
“Do you speak of sorcery?” Caden asked him. “Why can’t it take hold?”
“No-one knows, not truly. Something in the south, across the sea.”
“... And that sea cannot be sailed,” Caden finished, repeating the knowledge known to all. The seas around the Southern Realms were notoriously dangerous, prone not only to storms but legends of great beasts. Boats never left the shallows of the coast, and it was too arduous to sail around the mountains.
“Quite so,” the Philosopher said with a smile. “But I have said what I came to, and I can see your exhaustion.”
Caden had been staring off for a moment, but when the Philosopher turned to leave he called out again. “Wait. If I am to hear these summons, why would I be too powerless to resist them? They cannot take hold here as you said.”
“You won’t be here then,” said the Philosopher. “When I leave to go north, you will be coming with me.”
Caden had wanted to answer, but was left speechless by the audacity of the Philosopher’s claim - which was equally an order that he could not ignore. Seeing this, the Philosopher stepped outside the room and closed the door behind him.
Go with him? What nonsense was this? He had a country to heal that was injured from war, and the nobles of two nations to appease. In addition he had to look to Kedora, to make sure they did not attack during their absence, or make plots to undermine the plans that Caden had now come so close to fulfilling. He could not just leave! He would not!
The evening sun lowered in the sky at Caden’s balcony until it finally disappeared over the horizon, and during that entire time Caden had been lost in his thoughts; so determined to resist that he was almost sulking like the boy he used to be. It was a knock on his door that finally broke him from his trance, and he when he looked to it he realized his room was dark.
“Who is it?” He asked.
“It’s me,” said a feminine voice. Once he heard the voice he knew who it belonged to, and he could feel her presence on the other side of that door.
“Come in,” he replied.
Ethelyn entered his quarters wearing a red dress and holding a lit candle, and after closing the door she placed it down on the dresser table where Caden was lighting a second. “Why are you here, alone in the dark?” She asked him, her voice surprisingly soft.
“Because it’s where I should be.”
“How do you mean?”
“Blackness is what I felt in the death you stole me from.”
Ethelyn shook her head. “Do you truly believe that to be the case?”
“Is it not true?”
The sorceress took a step back to find her preferred position in his room. “You don’t remember what is true, just as sometimes you do not remember what you dream.”
“I imagine you watch my dreams with great interest,” Caden said, his tone one that had a faint outline of suspicion; as though it was there, but he wasn’t sure if he truly believed it.
“I imagine you do the same,” she replied. “Congratulations on your betrothal.”
“You were there, weren’t you?”
“In my fashion.”
“In your fashion,” he repeated with the slightest scoff. “He said you were one of the only people I could trust, yet how can I trust someone my eyes will look at but not see? Who my mind will recall only when she wants it to?” He turned to her then, and walked up to her, and for a moment it looked like he was going to pin her back against the wall. “How much time do you spend watching me?” He asked in a whisper.
They were so close that they could have kissed, and for some time they almost did, though Caden could not approximate the real feeling behind it. Then, Ethelyn drew a folded but unsealed letter from her dress and when Caden saw it, he stepped back from her. “What is this?” He asked.
“I found it in the room of your betrothed,” she answered, and held it out to him carefully.
Caden looked at it with uncertainty, but took it anyway. He took it over to the candlelight and opened it by the light, where he proceeded to read:
‘Dearest Jaqueline,
Our correspondence this time will have to be short, and must regrettably not occur again for some time. I will not waste beautiful words on poetry, for you already know all I would have to say to you. I will instead save them, and compose another piece to give you next we meet in person.
All I can say is to please be patient, and to be assured that I have set in motion the events that we agreed upon. Soon all shall be made right again.
Please relay my respects to your father.
With dearest affections,
A.L’
When Caden looked up again, he was not sure what to think or to feel. A rage began to build in him like flames from embers, but aside from a slight shaking of his hands he remained frightfully composed. “Is this real?” He asked. “Or some joke?”
Ethelyn answered by taking the letter from him, and placing both her hands around one of his own. She told him, “I can feel your anger and frustration. You cannot let it control you, or you will lose.”
“Do not worry about me, Ethelyn. There are many intertwining fates, and people, and events beyond mortal control, that all seek my end, and the end of my father’s legacy. Whether they remain independent, or united in groups of conspiracy, there is only one truth that binds all of them… I lost once, but I will never lose again.”
Ethelyn looked away from him, for she could feel the determination in his words. It scared her, and for a moment she wondered whether she had made a grave mistake in bringing him back. Some men, she knew, were destined for a greatness that could not be understood even by the likes of the Philosopher King. What terrible greatness had she just unleashed upon the world?