Michael Mathias: Kings, Queens, Heroes, and Fools

“Very good, Phen,” Hyden said. “Now the masters have loaned us the very book that gives away what it is we are really after.”

“No, I sort of borrowed it,” Phen smiled. “You know, just until we get back. I left the Index of Known Forest Animals in its place. They’ll never know.”

“That was my favorite,” Hyden said.

“Aye,” Phen said, emulating Hyden’s response to almost everything. “But I also have in my sack The Index of Known Marine Creatures. I figured that, since we’re going on a ship, you’d want us to have it handy.”

“See, Phen, that’s exactly why you’re going with us.” Hyden put his arm across the growing boy’s shoulders in a brotherly fashion. “Have your masters freed you of all your other duties yet?”

“I’m yours to command, Sir Hyden Hawk,” Phen stepped away and bowed with a flourish and a grin. Only the excitement he had felt when the late Master Targon and Queen Willa had plucked him from the orphanage in Xwarda City and made him an apprentice could compare to the level of exhilaration he was feeling now.

“Good,” Hyden said. “I want you to use some of that energy to go find Brady Culvert at the East Gate Barracks, and also Dugak’s nephew-I can’t ever seem to remember his name. It’s…It’s-”

“Oarly,” Phen remembered.

“Yes, Oarly. I want you to tell the two of them to meet us at the Golden Griffin tonight at dark fall.” Hyden was starting to get excited as well. “Tell them that the meeting is mandatory, but the food and drinks are on me.”

“Aye,” Phen called as he tore out of the tower room to find them.

Lord Gregory sat atop his mount cursing his fortune. Before him, where he would have crossed the shallows to the western bank of the Leif Greyn River, was a stretch of raging rapids that churned and thrashed with the full force of the spring thaw behind it. He was left with two choices now. He could either backtrack up into the mountains and go west, crossing the hundreds of streams, trickles and creeks that combined to make the powerful flow before him, or he could go south into Wildermont and hope that Harrap and Condlin Skyler had been exaggerating the amount of death and destruction they had found there. Even as that thought formed in his mind he dismissed it. He knew that Harrap and Condlin had most likely told him exactly what they had seen and heard. He also knew that, if the bridge that crossed over into Westland was really destroyed, his decision here and now would determine how long it would take him to finally make it back home. If I even have a home left, he thought to himself. Had he been younger or even healthier, he would have already been working his way back up into the mountains. Maybe it was good that he was half crippled and weary of backtracking. If Westland really had been taken over, he knew he would find no welcome there, but still he had to go look for his wife. Finding her was all that he lived for.

He took a deep breath and spurred his horse southward along the eastern bank of the churning flow. He knew that there were a few smaller towns and a dozen villages south of Castlemont along the river-Low Crossing, Seareach, and others. The Leif Greyn River split at Seareach. Maybe he could find a boat there and take the Westland flow to Settsted stronghold. There he could at least learn of his friend and peer, Lord Ellrich’s fate.

Lord Ellrich’s stronghold held the main barracks for the river guard. If the zard had come up from the marsh, Settsted would have fallen first. Maybe he should try to find a boat to Southport instead. No king or queen or invader of any sort would destroy the trade center of the kingdom they were taking over. Southport was Westland’s biggest port. Shipping trade with all of the east, the Isle of Salazar and the other southern islands took place there. It was also a place where Lord Gregory could probably blend in with the populace.

A boat from Seareach to Southport then, he decided. He had enough gold in his saddlebags to buy his own ship. A chunk of raw gold ore the size of a man’s head was left in one of Mikahl’s packs, along with a fat sack of Westland coin. He’d taken the coins and with a dull axe, had broken a fist sized chunk off of the other. What he’d left behind was easily twice as much as he’d taken. Mikahl and Hyden would understand, he knew, so he didn’t feel guilty for helping himself.

A day later, he saw the tip of the Summer’s Day Spire jutting up over the ridge ahead of him. That afternoon, when he topped the ridge, he saw the whole flooded bulk of the Leif Greyn Valley. The Spire looked to be rising up out of a great lake.

“It’s cleansing itself,” he said aloud, and with some amazement. All of the dead bodies and burning wagons and deserted pavilions that he had seen as Vaegon the elf and Hyden Skyler helped him away from his routed camp were under water now. Hopefully the carnage was being washed down the river into O’Dakahn or the marshes.

It took the rest of that day, and two more, to get to the city of High Crossing. Normally it would have only taken a day, but he had been forced to skirt the flooded valley. At least the High Crossing bridge was still intact. It didn’t cross the Leif Greyn River, though. It spanned the Everflow River as it came out of the Evermore Forest to join with the Leif Greyn.

No toll-taker stepped out of the little house on the other side of the bridge when he crossed it. That alone confirmed most everything that Halden Skyler’s sons had told him. He didn’t have to look upon the nearly deserted rows of buildings that lined the streets beyond the bridge. He didn’t have to see and smell the bones and thawing remains of the corpses that had been haphazardly put into piles and burned before winter set in.

He felt eyes upon him as he rode through the empty town. Suddenly a sharp squeal filled the air and a thin filthy boy came chasing a healthy looking piglet into the road. The boy couldn’t have been ten years old, and he froze in place when he saw Lord Gregory coming. Tears of terror welled up in the boy’s eyes as he darted back into the evening shadows, his piglet forgotten. From somewhere in that direction came a woman’s hushed, but scolding voice. Lord Gregory, saddened by the sight, but uplifted to know that there were some survivors about, spurred his mount onward.

As he left the town of High Crossing behind him, the sun was starting to set. At an abandoned farm set a short distance from the road he holed up in a barn for the night. There was no telling what sort of pilferers and bandits were about. He didn’t want to spend the night out in the open. He thought about sleeping in one of the abandoned inns he had seen, but he would have had to leave his horse outside. What people remained here were desperate and would probably have the poor animal gutted and cooked in the blink of an eye.

As he lay in the barn struggling to find sleep, his heart grew heavier. Throughout the day the signs of war had become apparent, making him wonder just how bad off his homeland might be. Was Lady Trella even alive? He had to find out.

Westland couldn’t be as desolate as High Crossing, could it? It could, he decided, but he knew that it wasn’t. Instead of being empty and void of life, it was now full of skeeks and barbaric breed giants. The strand of hope he held for his Lady Trella was growing thinner, but he refused to let it go.

He could picture her in his mind as she had been when he’d left her at the stronghold in Lake Bottom: the yellow dress with the sky blue ribbons, the sparkling of her sapphire eyes as she kissed him goodbye.

King Balton had called on him. It was supposed to be a relatively short journey, a trip around Lion Lake to Lakeside Castle, then two weeks at the Summer’s Day competition, but when Lord Gregory arrived, King Balton was on his deathbed. He’d been poisoned and knew exactly who his murderer was. Secret orders were given, then at the festival all the hells broke loose.