Curse of Kings (The Trials of Oland Born, Book 1) (9 page)

LAND WALKED UP THE STEPS AND STOOD IN FRONT
of the two tall black wooden doors. On the arch above them, three words were chiselled into the stone – two on top, one underneath. Most of their letters had been lost to weather and time. All that remained was an N in the first, an EW in the second and an S in the third. He walked back down and went over to the left-hand wing. Through two huge broken windows, he saw a vast, empty room with high ceilings and ornate floors. It appeared to have been blighted by fire.

Oland crossed the grass to the first room in the right-hand wing, a ghostly room, strewn with wrought-iron beds. Piecing this together with the letters he had read above the front door, he knew that he was at King Seward's Hospital. And he knew then that he was in Dallen.

Oland thought of peaceful King Seward, and how he had built the hospital with the best of intentions. Before the year was out, he was forced to close it. His supporter, the Dallen ruler, along with most of the Ault family and many of the doctors and nurses, were exiled to Decresian where King Seward was generous in providing them shelter and jobs. It was the succeeding ruler of Dallen who severed all ties between the territories and set up the patrolled border. Ever since, the passage of travellers from Decresian had been restricted. Only those deemed of benefit to Dallen were allowed entry. The Craven Lodge were strictly prohibited, on penalty of death. To compound the nations' tense relations, Villius Ren had managed to poach some of the Dallen men for his army.

To Oland's good fortune, King Seward's Hospital remained an oppressive spectre to the people of Dallen; he had shelter for the night, with little chance of being disturbed. As for The Craven Lodge, they were called craven for a reason. They would not dare to cross the border into Dallen. Oland knew the tortuous routes they took to bypass it on their journeys to other parts.

Oland pulled himself up on to the stone sill of the shattered window. He had never been in a hospital. The closest he had come to sickness was tending to The Craven Lodge when they had succumbed to the excesses of eating, drinking or fighting. He would rather have tended the plague-stricken. He jumped down into the fire-damaged room and, despite the easy passage of the outside air, was hit with the smell of rot, and rain, and animals. He knew that he was walking through the symbolic core of the Dallen uprising: the desecrated room that marked its darkest night, when a flaming torch was fired through the window and raged through a good king's dreams.

The interior was illuminated by the moon. Oland stood, mesmerised; through a huge crater in the stone floor grew a towering oak. Its boughs, rich with leaves, had thrust their way upward, wrapping around the banisters and breaking through the roof; outside the grounds were a wasteland, yet inside, where the dying had lain, was this extraordinary display of life.

Oland climbed to the first floor through the twisted limbs of the tree, grasping them for support as he jumped the remaining steps of the crumbling staircase. At the top, he walked around the balcony, opening and closing each of the doors that lined it, revealing rows of empty, dust-filled rooms. He made his way downstairs through a narrow back staircase, and found himself in the infirmary hall. At the end, Oland stopped at a large mahogany door. As he opened it, something scraped along the floor, revealing a quadrant of clean stone under a thick mantle of dust. He bent down and picked up a foot-long wooden plaque with holes in each corner, and rusted nails hanging from two of them. The plaque was missing the gold plate where a name would have been. Oland glanced around. He had no doubt that he was in a doctor's office. All around him, gauzy spider webs stretched from the ceiling to the desk, to the second door frame behind it, to the floor, to the chair, to the bed against the wall, to the glass bottles and candlesticks and weighing scales.

Oland broke through the webs and cleared a path to the desk, where he carefully laid the plaque, as if the mystery doctor would come back from the dead to reclaim it. But, when Oland looked at the shining doorknob of the door to the rear, he knew that whether or not ghosts existed, he was not the first visitor to King Seward's Hospital in the past one hundred years. Or, by all appearances, in the previous week. There were large boot prints on the floor behind the desk, and a square clearing where something had once stood, but had recently been removed.

Slowly, he opened the door into the adjoining room, a smaller empty space that had nothing but more footprints – a trail he had no desire to follow. He stayed where he was and, when he turned around, noticed a large map pinned to the wall. He felt a surge of hope as he approached it. It was a map of northern Envar. The territories were in pale green, their borders marked in broken lines of black.

The area shaded in brown marked the path of the plague. It ran from the east coast of Decresian, bypassing Dallen, then southwest into the neighbouring territory. Then it ran south through Galenore, and onwards to its furthest point: Gort, mid-west Envar, where the scryer lived. No part of Gort had survived the plague. The bermids had built towering nests there, but they had been unable to breed. Their only legacy were the empty shells of the nests that still stood tall.

Oland ran his finger from the top left-hand corner of the map to the bottom right, naming each town and village out loud, hoping that he would say the word Sabian by the time he reached the bottom right. But there was no Sabian. Oland folded up the map, nevertheless, and put it into his pocket. At least he now knew where to find Dallen Falls, and so Chancey the Gold.

He walked into the hallway and passed a small ward of beds that stirred a longing for sleep. But, when he thought of the sick, the dying and the dead, a chill crawled over him and he moved on. When he reached the foyer, he saw, for the first time, an inscription carved into the stone wall, preserved for almost a century.

 

To the people of Decresian, of Dallen, and beyond.

 

That no sickness, no fear and no death shall divide us.

Through suffering, may solace be found within these walls.

 

Through healing, joy.

Through open borders, may we find welcome.

Through compassion, peace.

 

In fondness and faith,

King Seward of Decresian

(in honour of his son, Prince Roxleigh)

 

Oland was struck by a great sadness. King Seward had lost his own beloved son to madness. What solace was there for him to find? Yet still he offered to others the chance to find theirs. Signed ‘In fondness and faith', like his grandson, King Micah.

There were men who sought to enrich the lives of others, and those who sought to enrich merely their own. Oland knew who he would rather be. He polished the inscription with his sleeve then made his way around the trunk of the towering oak, discovering a stairwell under which he could rest. But, as soon as he lay down, he felt wide awake to his quest, to his responsibility, and to whatever the next day held, and the day after, and the day after that.

Despite the bad blood he feared might be coursing through him, despite the fourteen-year shadow of The Craven Lodge, Oland Born vowed to become a man of whom King Micah could be proud. Like the oak tree above him, he had come to life in a dark, forbidding place, and battled now to reach the light.

HE FOLLOWING MORNING, WITH LITTLE SLEEP BEHIND
him, Oland woke to a space alight with morning sun. Specks of dust danced in the shafts. As he made his way into the main hall, birds of all colours were circling the top of the oak tree and through the roof the sky was a dense bright blue. As Oland turned away from the glare, through the silver spots that dotted his vision he saw a small shape moving between the lower branches. The monkey, Malben! Persistent Malben. And he was carrying Oland's bag on his back.

Oland laughed, and it sounded loud to him, perhaps because of the acoustics, perhaps because it was rare. Malben jumped on him. Oland took hold of the monkey and held him at arm's length. Malben tilted his head and Oland found himself doing the same. At close quarters, Oland could see that Malben's eyes, clear and shining, were not brown, but a dark shade of green. His golden grey fur stood in flyaway spikes, but was soft under Oland's hands. Malben held eye contact with him and Oland could swear his tiny mouth almost smiled.

“It's time to go,” said Oland. “As it is time for me to stop talking to a monkey.”

 

The journey to The Falls had to be taken on foot, so they cut through fields and skirted the edges of villages and towns. Oland had decided that the only thing he was prepared to steal was food, though Malben was the better thief. He mostly stayed hidden in Oland's bag and jumped to the trees whenever he could. Oland missed the comfort of the roof over his head every night. Now, every evening ended with a search for shelter, or the task of building it. He had been wakened by short torrential showers and followed by more of the grey thickening clouds that Terrence, the merchant of misery, had mentioned. As the days dragged on, Oland began to miss even the scant conversation with Arthur Rynish. Unlike food, company could not be stolen. At times, Oland talked to Malben. There were times when he felt he would talk back. They were the times Oland decided to rest.

 

*

 

A week passed before they reached Dallen Falls. Oland had imagined its full glory being unveiled in daylight. Instead, they arrived at nightfall, and he heard the thunderous water before he could see it. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw, against the dark grey of the sky, the giant black shadows of the cliffs, and the cascades that plunged down from them. Oland took out his tinderbox and, with a few strikes of steel against flint, the char-cloth ignited and he could light the lantern that Malben had found discarded on their journey.

One house stood by The Falls, clearly built from the stones of the cliffs beside it – grey and gold and white. Oland hadn't expected such a humble home for a man the Scryer of Gort had predicted would destroy Villius Ren.

The garden was overgrown, not with weeds, but with plants and flowers in bursts of bright colours. It was a curious sight beside such treacherous waters. Malben took to the trees. Oland went to the red wooden door of the house and knocked. There was no answer. He walked around the side. He shone his lantern into the small windows, but the rooms were empty. Then he heard a rattling sound coming from the back of the house. He followed it around and discovered another red door with splintered edges, held to its frame by a thick knotted coil of rope that had been loosened by the force of the wind. Oland knew that his knife was not strong enough to cut through it.

He looked towards The Falls. Suddenly, one of the cascades seemed to stop flowing. Oland kept watching, and the water flowed again. For almost an hour, Oland watched as all the way along The Falls, parts of the cascades stopped, then restarted, like keys played on a piano. When the spectacle was over, he sat down on the front step of the house, and watched as Malben swung back and forth through the trees.

“You lead a simple life, Mr Malben,” he said.

As he fell silent again, he saw that the cascade closest to them had stopped. Too curious to ignore it, he walked down. It was a breathtaking sight. Malben, seemingly terrified by the roaring torrents, let out a yelp and disappeared. Oland moved closer to the water, mesmerised by its force.

He heard the sound of cracking twigs not more than six feet away.

He waited. Again, he heard the sound.

“Is… somebody there?” said Oland.

“Yes.” It was a girl's voice, coming from behind a tree, where a light was glowing.

“Who are you?” said Oland, walking towards the tree and trying to look around it.

“Who are
you
?” said the girl. “
You're
the trespasser.”

“My name is Oland Born. I'm from the Kingdom of Decresian.”

“My name is Delphi.”

“What are you doing here in the dark?” said Oland.

She stepped out from behind the tree holding a lantern. Her dark eyes shone in the flame. She had flawless skin and choppy coal-black hair to the nape of her neck. The girls in Derrington had hair to their waists, and wore wool dresses to their ankles. Delphi wore loose grey trousers, with a black leather belt wrapped twice around her narrow waist and a grey top that slid off one shoulder. Over that, she wore a long, hooded oilskin cape that fell to the ground and almost covered her black boots.

“You're the girl from the arena!” said Oland. “The girl who was thrown out.”

“I am,” said Delphi. “No girls allowed.”

“So what were you doing there?” said Oland.

“What were
you
doing there?” said Delphi.

Oland realised that she had not recognised him, and for that he was grateful. When he thought of what he had done, he felt nothing but shame at the ease with which he had killed. “I… well, I was there to… watch,” he said.

“As was I,” said Delphi. Her eyes seemed to grow even darker.

“So…” she said. “Why have you come to Dallen?”

Oland hesitated. “Do you know Chancey the Gold?”

“I know of him,” said Delphi. “In that he lives at one side of The Falls. I live at the other.”

“Have you seen him?” said Oland.

“Many times,” said Delphi.

“Have you seen him today?” said Oland.

Delphi shook her head. “Why are you looking for him?”

“I'd rather not say,” said Oland. “Where has he gone?”

“I don't know,” said Delphi.

“Has he got any family?” said Oland.

She shook her head. “No. He has no one. He lives alone.”

“I… hadn't expected this,” said Oland. “I came here just assuming I would meet Chancey the Gold.”

“What made you think that?” said Delphi. “And, more importantly, how much time do you think you have on the border guards?”