M. Mathias: Through the Wildwood

“Barely alive?” Gallarain gasped. “What do you mean?”

“She’s not conscious, my lady, but alive.” Orphas looked at her with sympathetic eyes. “Apparently she is in good hands, for her spirit is calm and at peace.”

Orphas took a deep breath and sighed. With a flick of his hand a pair of lanterns hanging from wall hooks flared to life. The room was crowded with tables loaded with vials, racks, and beakers, some containing colorful liquids, some with stoppers wired tightly shut. There were sagging shelves full of books and unthinkable things floating in jars of liquid. Only the wall with the old iron-banded door set in one side of it was empty, but it was scorched black with a dizzying set of arcane symbols drawn into the soot by a fingertip. A crude, man-sized archway had been drawn there among the ruins.

To Duchess Gallarain, the blackness looked impossibly darker inside the archway, as if it led into the sky of a moonless, starless night.

“Tell me what you overheard,” Orphas commanded in a soft voice. “And try not to worry. Trevin is surely with her, keeping her safe. If he weren’t, her spirit would be uneasy at best.” His confident tone and steady gaze settled her enough that she could remember what he wanted to know.

She pulled up a stool, gave a look of distaste at the thick coating of dust on its surface, but sat down anyway. With a groan of frustration she started speaking in a quick, furious clip.

“He had the caravan attacked to kill Vanx Malic. The man who returned somehow survived the ordeal and is accusing some men he recognized. He said trolls came down on them all and only a few survived.” She paused, but only long enough to draw a breath. “Now he’s sending his commander to make sure that the tale of his murderous plot stays secret. I–I — I was behind that old tapestry, the one hiding the narrow passage that opens up on that little cubby in the linen pantry. He didn’t know I overheard.” She looked down at hands that were wringing of their own accord. “It was all I could do to keep from storming out of my hiding place to tell him that he had killed his own daughter.”

“But she’s not his daughter,” Orphas said quietly. The look on his face was curious and distant. It was as if he were seeing something in his mind, or with his vacant eyes, that no one else could see.

His appearance distracted Gallarain to a moment of confused silence.

“Is there any possible way the duke might have learned that Gallarael wasn’t of his loins?” Orphas finally asked, as his eyes refocused.

“None!” Gallarain answered defensively. “The night I spent with Ravier Oakarm was the night before I married Humbrick. Humbrick was too eager to consummate our union to even notice that he wasn’t my first.”

“But her eyes, my lady, and her features? The duke’s lineage favors dark hair and dark eyes on the women’s side. Gallarael has neither, nor is she thin and willowy.”

“There’s no doubt she favors the women of my ancestry, but there’s nothing about her that resembles the king, or his sisters. The worst part is that Humbrick has designs to marry her to Prince Russet. They are brother and sister, Orphas; it cannot happen.”

“No, it can’t,” Orphas nodded his agreement. “But they, the king’s mother and sisters, all know that she is the king’s daughter. They would never allow it to happen. I doubt they would ever put her in jeopardy by letting the cat out of the sack, so to speak.”

“Father Orphas, Humbrick didn’t know that I sent her on my errand, I’m sure of it.” She was wringing her hands again. “He may be a monster and a fool, but he loves Gal.” She frowned. “It’s the only good quality he has.”

“Well, he has to be stopped from unwittingly ordering her death. The men he has been gathering are the sort who won’t care who she says she is if they come upon her on the trail.” He looked at the duchess, his eyes dire and serious. “You will come into the temple and stay among the acolytes until this has been rectified. When the duke is confronted, your life will probably be in danger.”

“Have you seen the way he glares at me now?” she blurted. “There’s already murder in his eyes.”

“Those dark desires will surely manifest themselves into action when he learns that you sent Gallarael to save the slave who caused him so much shame.”

A tear trailed down Duchess Gallarain’s cheek. “Oh, by the gods, I never meant for that man to come to so much grief. Now, Gallarael is hurt and in danger-and-and-and-” Suddenly her worry consumed her and she broke down.

Orphas conjured up a soft lace kerchief. He came around the table and gently pressed it into her hands. She buried her face in it and sniffled loudly. Even through her anxiety she could tell that the wizard chose his next words carefully.

“Humbrick Martin will surely come to an ill-fated end once the king learns about all his murderous deceit and how his hand has been so deeply involved in the robbery of caravans in the past. He is a traitor for taking the kingdom’s coin to fund soldiers to protect the passage, while funding bandits to pick it clean. The grief coming his way is not your fault, my dear.”

He went to pat her on the solider but she jerked around and looked at him as if he were mad. “I wasn’t talking about that idiot,” she snapped sharply. “I was talking about the grief I’ve brought on Vanx Malic. He is innocent, just a bard I seduced in a tavern. Now he’s been enslaved and murdered for naught but his desire for me.” She put her face in the kerchief and sobbed again. “And Gallarael, by the gods, what have I done?”

Orphas put his arm around her. She leaned into him, thankful for the gesture. After a long bit of snuffling she looked up at the wizard with pleading eyes.

“You’ll save Gallarael, won’t you?” she asked. “I care not for the fate of myself or my lout of a husband, but Gallarael must survive this.” More tears fell from her red-rimmed eyes. “Tell me you’ll save her, Orphas. Tell me.”

Master Wizard, posing as a priest or not, there was no way a gentleman could do anything else other than tell her that he would. Knowing this, she didn’t even listen for an answer.

“What is it, priest? I have no time for folly,” Duke Martin barked from his throne-like perch in the counsel hall. The duke’s sharp nose and closely spaced eyes contrasted with his round, chubby face. The man was built like a barrel keg with stilted legs, just tall enough to make him not seem fat. Orphas had the extreme displeasure of seeing the duke naked once in the bathing chambers the men of the stronghold shared. The duke was really an obese man with long, spindly limbs, like a four-legged spider, or an overly hairy troll.

“I have urgent information for you, my lord,” Orphas said, trying to appear nervous. It wasn’t that hard. Along with High Commander Aldine, and an advisor named Coll, who Orphas suspected of being a dabbler in the dark arts, the counsel hall contained a half-dozen hardened trackers. These were the men who lived and hunted outside the protective walls of the stronghold, men that only entered the gates to trade and carouse or claim the bounty for an ogre head they brought in. They would be gone for weeks on end out among the treacherous beasts of the wild. Orphas knew they were here because they were about to be contracted to hunt down and kill the witnesses to the duke’s treachery. He was pleased that he hadn’t arrived too late, but the news he bore was volatile at best. Pretending to be nervous wasn’t hard at all.

“Out with it then,” the duke barked. “What is this information that is so important you dare to demand an audience?”

“Uh, my lord, you may want to hear what I have to say in private,” Orphas said. “It is of a delicate nature.”