Michael Mathias: Kings, Queens, Heroes, and Fools

Hyden was planning a grand quest. Since it was Phen who had done the bulk of research into the great blue dragon, Cobalt, and the treasure he had stolen from the pirate Barnacle Bones, Phen was trying to get Hyden, and the two High Wizards to let him go on the adventure. Hyden didn’t mind at all. In fact he liked the idea of Phen going, but there would be danger, and the boy was only an apprentice. Hyden wouldn’t dare disrespect Queen Willa’s wizards by assuming anything. Only if they agreed, would he add Phen to his growing roster of campaigners.

“What did they say?” Hyden asked the boy as he was getting dressed for the evening’s feast. Phen was a lowly apprentice and hadn’t been invited to the event, but it didn’t bother him. He didn’t really want to have to use manners and act serious all evening long.

Phen smirked in approval as he entered the room. Hyden had sensed him there before he had seen him. It was a simple awareness spell they had been working on, and Hyden had used it perfectly.

“Master Amill seems to think I could learn a lot on such an excursion,” Phen said. “Master Sholt, on the other hand, thinks that it will be too dangerous, and that I’ll just be underfoot.”

“When I was your age, my father had me harvesting hawkling eggs on cliffs higher than this tower,” Hyden said, a little miffed at the reasoning. “I’ll try and talk some sense into them this evening, Phen. Master Sholt is coming to the feast, is he not?”

“I believe so.” Phen seemed pleased that Hyden was going to speak for him. He had been worried that Hyden had only been pacifying him with his talk of taking him along on the quest for Barnacle Bones’s stolen booty. “We don’t need treasure, though, Hyden. Queen Willa’s got all the gold in Highwander already.”

Hyden laughed. “You can do better than that, Phen.”

“Why won’t you tell me what it is that we’re really after?” the boy asked with an ear to ear grin.

“I’ll tell you only this…” Hyden turned from the reflecting glass and looked seriously at the boy. Phen stifled a laugh. Hyden’s robe was bunched all wrong on one side.

“What is it?” Hyden turned back to the reflecting glass.

“Here,” Phen came over and straightened the fancy silver trimmed white robe. “Now what were you going to tell me?”

Hyden loved drawing stuff out with the boy. Phen’s impatience was entertaining, but he was in a hurry, so he told him what he wanted to know-at least part of it. “When the dragon, Claret, and I finished sealing the demon back into the Nethers, she told me…”

“I know, I know this part,” said Phen as if the balance of the world’s fate hung in what came next. “She told you about Cobalt the blue drake, and the pirate ship, but what is it we are really after? What’s in that booty that you want so badly, Hyden?”

Hyden laughed aloud at that. Phen was as sharp as a whip’s crack. It was one of the reasons he liked the boy so much. “Claret told me that among the treasures the dragon stole was a silver skull with eyes of jade, but if you tell a soul that that’s what we’re after, I’ll skin you and hang you from a banner pole.”

“The Silver Skull of Zorellin, but…”

“But nothing! You keep your mouth shut about it or I’ll have Talon pluck your eyes out.”

Just then Talon flew from his perch near the open window and landed on Phen’s outstretched arm. The hawkling was as tall as Phen’s arm was long, and he had taken a liking to the boy.

“Traitor,” Hyden said to his familiar. “I guess I have no choice but to convince your masters to let you come with me now that I’ve spilled the stew.”

“Spilled the stew?” Phen giggled. “You really are a bumpkin, Hyden. King Mikahl was right. I can’t believe you grew up in a place where people don’t ride horses and live inside dirt hills.”

“In the Giant Mountains, even in the spring and fall, you’d be glad to be inside a hill. And besides, the walls are made of stone, not dirt.” Hyden frowned into the mirror, not liking what he saw at all. “Blast this! It just doesn’t suit me.” He pulled the fancy wizard’s robe over his head, and then began stripping off the awful itchy woolen leggings that went with it. “Grab my kid-skin pants from the closet-the new black ones-and my old horsehide boots for me, would you Phen?”

“Sure.” Phen went into the other room and found the items. As he returned with them he asked, “Is it true, what they say you did to the High King and the Seaward Princess this afternoon?”

“I suppose that depends on what they say I did,” Hyden chuckled from behind the changing screen. “But if they say I lied to the pretty girl with promises of bear cubs, but showed her the High King’s sword instead, then yes, it’s true.”

Phen laughed deeply at that. “They’ll have you hanged for insolence or treason,” the boy managed between giggles.

“Nah, nah! High King Mikahl was my friend back when he was just Mik the Squire.” Hyden stepped from behind the blind in a pressed white shirt with ballooned sleeves that was tucked neatly into his leather pants. Unlike what the current fashion trends dictated, he wore the legs of his snug fitting pants over his boots instead of inside them. “Besides,” he continued. “I’m not from the kingdoms of men. I’m a human from the kingdom of giants. I am a free man here, and if I did have a king it would have to be King Aldar.”

“The cloak,” Phen offered his fashion advice. “Wear the black one with the silver flames along its edges.”

“That was Dahg Mahn’s cloak,” said Hyden. The idea of wearing it stopped him completely. For a long moment he just stood there contemplating. He rarely messed with the long missing wizard’s personal things. It just didn’t seem right. Yet to wear that cloak to this feast seemed to be the perfect thing to do. “All right then,” he nodded.

Phen was already up and bringing him the ancient garment. Hyden put the cloak over his shoulders, pinned it with a silver broach shaped like a diving hawk, then checked himself in the glass again.

He had mussed up his long black hair when he’d pulled the robes off. He started to brush it, but changed his mind and instead tied it back behind his head with a silver wire. He gave the mirror another look and decided that there was only one thing missing. He reached into his shirt and pulled forth the silver medallion that he always wore around his neck. The brilliant tear-shaped jewel mounted in it sparkled at his collar. Finally, Hyden decided, he was ready.

Talon cawed out his approval of the look.

Phen nodded as well. “Not so bad, for a bumpkin, I mean.”

“Keep an eye on that boy, Talon,” Hyden said to his hawkling with a grin. “He’s as sharp as a iron orb.”

As soon as the door closed behind Hyden, Phen sat Talon back on his stand and started rummaging through the piles of books at the study table. He would know everything he could about the Silver Skull of Zorellin by the end of the night. Little did he know, that was exactly what Hyden Hawk intended.

Later, at the gathering, Hyden gawked openly at the size of the arms on Princess Rosa’s two guardsmen. They were huge. Each bicep was as big as Hyden’s head. Both men wore spiked and studded boiled leather armor vests that weren’t just for show. Each of them carried long, well used swords at their hips too. Studded gauntlets and knee-high hard leather boots finished the uniform, save for their long blue cloaks with the orange setting sun of Seaward emblazoned on the back. As were most of the men of Seaward, these two were baldheaded, and covered with tattoos-one giant tattoo actually.

One of the guards had what looked like a bird’s beak that started between his eyes and bent backwards over his head. Hyden had seen the same style on a lot of Seawardsmen. Feathers started where his hairline should have been, and strange yellow eyes were inked in over his ears. The other had a simpler design of lightning streaks jagging back from his temples and forehead. The man reminded Hyden of Loudin the hunter. Loudin’s tattoos had been of tiger stripes, and he had been as fierce as any wildcat there ever was.