The night after the feast passed quickly, but Caden found no rest from it. The inner halls and rooms were filled with armoured guards, and a curfew prevented those who resided in the palace-fortress from leaving their rooms lest they had official business. In addition, Wulfsurd and Gray had each turned a portion of the palace into their own inner sanctuaries, guarded by men directly loyal to them. A stand-off occurred, and the warm night air was thick and humid with the tension of their rivalry. To prevent conflict from breaking out, Caden had the kingsguard prevent either of their men from leaving.
The night passed bloodlessly, but it was filled with questions that neither Caden nor his men could find answer to. There was no barrel of poison wine in the kitchen cellar, and no-one had seen who had placed the jug. Yet it had been placed perfectly; in the correct place at the correct time, to be delivered to its target with the accuracy of a surgeon’s knife. Hours were spent questioning those who may have been responsible, or known more than they claimed, but as the night ended nothing more had been learned.
Caden left the palace hall as the red light of dawn broke over the peaks of distant mountains. Armoured men in the courtyard stopped and acknowledged him, and with a jug in his hands he turned and walked until he reached a thick wooden door guarded by two more men. He opened this door and descended a set of stairs down into a dungeon made cool by its dark stone, and when he reached the bottom, he proceeded along a corridor until he reached another opened door at the far end.
On the other side of the door was a ward, with at least twenty beds and tables lined with instruments and other medical devices. Under Armand’s reign it had been a hospital to treat guards and important prisoners, but despite the cleanliness of the stone its walls were still stained with enough blood to reveal its more sinister purpose. Half of its beds were filled with sarkanian knights who were still wounded from battle, but it was a thin man in a grey robe who caught Caden’s attention.
Erleath, the personal physician of Caden’s father, stood over a feverish and unconscious man with a broken leg. Together with a woman of about eighteen, who had shoulder-length strawberry-blonde hair and wore a nurse’s white gown, Erleath seemed to be fashioning two splints and a steel cage to set the bone.
“Make the bindings as tight as possible,” the physician said, holding the splints against either side of the man’s raised leg as the woman wound a long, white cloth around it. “Not bad.”
Once done, the woman began enclosing the steel cage around the broken part of the leg, and wound screws tightly until steel rods firmly pressed the splints in place and prevented the bone from shifting.
“Will he live?” Caden asked, his voice causing Erleath to turn his head. “He looks as though he has a horrendous fever.”
“He should, my lord,” Erleath replied as he stood and gave Caden a bow. The woman, however, kept working on the steel cage, and Erleath gave her side a nudge with his elbow. “Sara!” He hissed to get her attention.
“What is it?” The woman asked. She turned, falling into a curtsey almost as quickly as her eyes fell upon her future king. “I-.. My apologies, my lord.”
“There’s no need for formalities,” Caden told them. “Erleath, I hoped I could ask for your help with an important matter?”
“Of course, sire,” Erleath replied, noticing then the jug that Caden held. “Shall we talk privately?”
“That would be best.”
Erleath turned to Sara. “Keep an eye on him. I’ll be back shortly,” he instructed her, then beckoned for Caden to follow him towards a side-room off the western wall of the ward. Caden followed him and gave Sara a smile as he passed her and she turned back to tend to the man.
The physician led them into a room that looked to be both an office and a laboratory. An operating table was the centrepiece of the room, but on the far wall and illuminated by candle was a desk for writing, and next to that a table on which various alchemical tools were resting. Caden didn’t know what most of the tools were, but he recognized glass bottles, coloured liquids, a mortar and pestle, and various local plants and herbs.
The door was closed behind them, and Erleath moved over to the desk as Caden followed. “This is about the attempted poisoning, I assume?” Erleath guessed, as Caden placed the jug down on the table by the mortar.
“It is. I need to know what poison this is, where it came from, and who is likely to have used it,” Caden explained.
“I can try my best,” Erleath said as he took the jug, and poured a small amount of the poisoned wine within into a clear glass bottle. “How is he?” He asked.
“Shaken, as we all would be,” Caden replied. “But otherwise fine. Somehow, I feel that if he did taste the wine, it would take no less than a barrel to kill him.”
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“If only poison could be fought with strength,” the doctor said, as he sniffed the rim of the glass bottle. “Is it true that the wine was seen to burn through a wooden floor?”
“Not completely, but yes,” Caden answered.
“Then it could have an acidic nature. Strange, then, that it is not eating through this glass, nor the ceramic jug in which it was held.”
“Acidic nature?”
“A burning nature,” Erleath explained, turning to look at Caden. Caden felt Erleath’s eyes look into his own. “How are you, Caden? After your unexpected recovery I attempted many times to visit and treat you, but I was always turned away.”
Caden closed his eyes, and his breath turned into an unintentional sigh. “I’m fine, Erleath.”
“Are you?” Erleath asked, a genuine concern in his voice. “I found no signs of life in you. I wrote a formal document declaring your death, just as I did your father. And yet… Here you are.”
“It seems there are things about medicine that not even the Grand University can teach,” Caden replied with white eyes open once again. “Nevertheless, I am here and healthy.”
“Your eyes do not look it. You have no loss of sight, or blindness?”
“None. If anything, my sight has improved.”
“Unusual. It seems Arfeyr favours you, Caden.”
“It seems.”
The room went silent then, and Erleath turned to continue his experiments on the poison. He combined some of it with several herbs to see what would result and tested its reaction against various other liquids he had stored in bottles. After around fifteen minutes, and seeming unsatisfied with the results of his work, the doctor stepped away. “I’ve never encountered this poison before,” he admitted.
“So, there is nothing to be learned from it?” Caden asked.
“Oh, there are many things. But none that will lead you to your villain,” Erleath answered. “What I can say Is that whatever plant this poison was derived from is unlikely to be found in the southern realms. My best guess is that it is some unknown and potent variant of nightshade, but I highly doubt you will find such nightshade in Lavell, Kedora or Sarkana. It could be from the Black Mountains, but I expect it comes from beyond them.”
Beyond the Black Mountains? Caden could think of no-one with the resources to get hold of such a plant. It took a month at the least to cross them, and travellers were so rare on the passes that no such traveller would go unnoticed. He could think of only one person who could source such a poison, and she had prevented Wulfsurd from drinking it. Was Harik not her intended target? Or perhaps there was some deeper plot that required a deeper deception?
“Thank you, Erleath,” Caden said. “You can continue to test the poison.”
He turned then and, without saying goodbye, walked towards the door. However, as his hand touched it, Erleath called his name. “Caden,” he said. “People want to know when your father will be buried. When will we send him home?”
Caden paused. “He’s preserved, is he not?”
“He is.”
There was a moment of silence then, and for a moment Erleath wondered if Caden was crying.
“It isn’t time yet,” Caden answered. “I did not want this war, Erleath. Yet despite that, my father pursued it, and even built the road to our victory with his own hands so that I could follow it. With so many others, he died to complete and preserve that road. I want him to be here when I reach the end, and it would be a sin to lay him to rest until his work is done.”
Erleath sighed. “And we will help you reach the end, sire.”
“Thank you, Erleath,” Caden said, then opened the door and left the room.
Outside the room, Erleath’s assistant Sara turned to look at Caden, and gave him a smile as she curtseyed. The man under her care was still sleeping, but no longer drenched in the feverish sweat. “You are embarking on a noble profession,” he told her. “If my life had taken a different turn, perhaps I would have liked to dedicate as much time to protecting life as a king must dedicate to taking it.”
“I’m sorry?” The woman asked, seeming genuinely confused. “My lord, perhaps it is not my place to tell a king his duty, but surely protecting life is precisely what he dedicates his time to? A good king, at least.”
Caden paused for a moment. “Perhaps,” was all he said, before he gave her a slight goodbye nod and then left the ward.
The morning was brighter when Caden reached the courtyard again, and there were only a few wispy strands of cloud to break the monotony of the blue sky. He took in a deep breath and began crossing the courtyard again back towards the chateau’s main doors. The guard was in the midst of changing shifts, and both the old and new greeted and saluted him as they left or entered their positions. He greeted them back, trying to build a rapport with the men who he would soon rule over officially, but weariness and low mood made him desire privacy and silence above all else.
Suddenly several mounted knights rode through the open portcullis and into the yard, accompanied by another figure in garb he had never seen before. Upon seeing their future king, the knights rode to him and one of them dismounted and gave him a salute of respect. “Sire,” the knight told him, “this man here is a foreign messenger. He wishes to speak with you.”
Caden glanced up at the foreigner. His horse was like any other, but the foreigner himself wore dark brigandine armour, and a black cloak was wrapped around him with a hood that covered his head. Beneath it the messenger’s face was covered by a mask of silver, fashioned into an expressionless face, and Caden could not find eyes beneath it. The messenger copied the sarkanian salute and gave a low nod of his head.
“How can I help you, sir? What is your name?” Caden asked him.
“I am called the Herald,” the messenger spoke, his voice and accent thick and exotic, and like nothing Caden or any of the other men in the yard had ever heard before. “I speak for the one they call the Philosopher King, ruler of all lands and seas. Your liege and master.”
Silence fell across the courtyard like a blanket, and after an unbearable amount of it Caden cleared his throat. “What message do you bring, Herald?” He asked.
“He grows close to this city, Caden of Sarkana. He and his guard are no more than an hour away, and I have come to alert you of his arrival.”
“Then we must meet him, and offer him escort into the city,” Caden replied as he turned to look at the dismounted knight. “Gather twenty knights and horses, I will ride out myself. Will you wait and accompany us, Sir Herald?”
The Herald nodded silently, the sunlight gleaming from his mask.