One Year Later

‘By the authority vested in me, Queen Marguen of Vasier, I grant thee title and privilege. Sir Bradfrey, the new Duke De La Castell. Uniter of faiths, protector of the north, and conqueror of the wicked.’ Her speech then concluded with a half-cocked slap to the kneeled Sir Bradfrey, which left the young queen a ring short and ill-composed for the mutual laugher between her and the newly appointed duke. ‘Now rise, before I use my good hand.’

It was a precession of thousands, a human moat that encircled the city square from stage to inner walls. The waves of cheers erupted into a flurry of ribbon and rose peddles. A sense of pride washed into the rows of bleachers as each noble house felt compelled by the emotional swell. There was a mixture of pride and sadness, as mothers of tears and sorrow rose in applause beside the empty wreath-draped seats assigned as tribute to their fallen sons. Monuments to their sacrifice and the great many widows they left behind.

While upon the elevated podium, behind the queen and her newly appointed duke, sat the reinstated royal council, with one notable replacement: the hefty-bodied Weddle displaced the dishonored and absent Davos. The new religious adviser was now the moral guidance that enhanced rather than placated the diverse court of both old and young blood. Where pagans, gypsies and cross-worshipers stood on equal footing by the merit of their actions and allegiance to the crown.

Though despite the overwhelming showing, their precession was in part overshadowed by one notable exclusion. It was an absence that plagued Sir Bradfrey’s gleeful demeanor. Not in offence, but to the realization of the numbness that followed his success. As though his life’s achievements were a mirage in the desert of his soul. A void that reminded him that there had to be something more than the glitz and glamour of ceremony. More than the honor of Castell’s banner draped high and numerous beside the royal insignia and the authority it granted. All of which fell short to the one name he felt more deserving of such praise.

‘Where is she?’ whispered Queen Marguen.

‘On a spiritual journey. Home,’ said Sir Bradfrey. His mind then set to the west …

To the barren fields of grass-fed herds that roamed among the Pragian ruins. A place far into the hills, where the rocky creek bed intersected forests from distant memories, the endless stream fed by the drizzled tears of the rainy cave. Where one young prodigy tiptoed through knee-high water, Maneesh’s carry sack slung loosely over her shoulder. Bellamy’s cross was around her neck as she felt the pebbles from the jagged edges. The memories of young nimbleness brought Anneliese to a hop-skip rhythm.

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Until the disturbed water created a flurry of freighted eels, whose scales emanated a colorful array of light as they skirted through the maze of stalagmites. Like shooting stars, their light shimmered up from the rippled water, which upon oxidization, burst a flare-like brightness. With their ever-brightening light, a cascade of fireworks bounced from wall to wall, until extinguished within the starlit sky of the cave roof, which appeared a placid lake reflection upon suspended water. It was as though gravity had inverted, and she was staring down into the rock cave pool.

When as suddenly as the eels dispersed, the humidity ratcheted up. Streams of hot-steam clouds threaded upwards through porous rock. The flooded floor drained into a moist-laden sediment, which then fed the inverted ceiling waterbed, with the excess cascading down a waterfall from the far side walls, only to be absorbed into the ground as part of a perpetual cycle.

As she passed through the constant wall of water, she was met by a persistent updraft of warm air that blow-dried her as she passed into a sizable enclave, where the thick-fissured walls fed veins of flowing water and sparkling eels. Their light illuminated the mounds of white, glistening sands – Coble’s stockpile that adjoined an old wooden table full of rusted instruments and mossy overgrowth.

It was here that Anneliese threw Maneesh’s carry sack, which was now a rather empty piece of luggage until it was pulled inside out to reveal a well-packed bulge of goodies. The most important of which was Coble’s old red leather journal. This, once placed upon the moldy table, started a chemical reaction that fizzled and sterilized the overgrowth to restore anew the lesser-known workspace and instruments that made Coble the renowned enchanter and innovator.

Yet as she turned through the red leather back journal, the previously crowded pages of her childhood appeared as coded, interspersed letters. Page after page was indecipherable. Until she stumbled upon a mixed page of distinctly different scribble. Random ingredients, many crossed out. Others underlined or circled.

Then it hit as she flicked back to the first barely legible page, where the once-coded letters became words that with enough back and forth became sentences. Then before her eyes, they became a complete scripture – a phenomenon limited to this one section of free thought and experimentation.

‘Mithridatium,’ said Anneliese as she came to recognize the slowly emerging title: The cure for everything, in partnership with Charles Bellamy. The script read with a warm embrace as a puff of steam loafed out from the waterfall entrance. The last breath of existence before Coble’s ascension into eternity.

‘Thank you for believing in me,’ said Anneliese as one star of the night sky shone a little brighter. Her heart came to beat a little slower. The scars of a painful childhood were swept away with Coble’s passing spirit, to leave in its stead the uncomfortable task of rediscovery, and the sense of wonder for what lay beyond.