The Lord Son's Travels (23 page)

Chapter 23

The
next morning at breakfast, Adrien received a message from the Elf King with a
time and place for meeting.
 
This
time Adrien met with the King by himself with only Berte acting as translator.
 
The King was informed of their new
discoveries and asked to send a representative to Court in Allè-dene to speak
to the Lord King and deliver a message from his wayward son.
 
Adrien sent along his cherished scabbard
as prove of his identity and settled into Thrush Valley to wait for a
response.
 

Time
passed.
 
The Lady Rachele called
often on Elenna during the day, convinced the two had become the best of
friends.
 
Elenna couldn’t find it
in her heart to disappoint the kind woman, and dealt with her harmless prattle
as well as she could.
 
When free she
spent many hours with Brendan and Adrien: talking, practicing, learning more of
the ways of the Eastlands, and enjoying the peacefulness of their stay.
 
One day she dressed covered head to toe
with her cloak, and she and Brendan explored the market of Thrush Valley as
undercover commoners.
 
Adrien had gifted
her with a few gold coins to spend on trinkets, which she did happily.
 
The monochrome displays of the
merchants still amazed her, though what the artists lacked in color choices,
they certainly made up for in patterns and material.
 
She had never felt a softer cotton or leather than in the
markets of the city.
 
She sampled
some honey candy, and ended up buying a pound to take with her when they
continued on their journey.
 
Brendan tried to scrounge a piece or two, but laughingly she played a
successful game of keepaway against the taller man.
 

In
the evenings she and Brendan would often ride across the countryside, exploring
the fields and smaller villages of the valley.
 
Once Lord Vance and Lady Rachele joined them, supplying the
histories of all the sights they met.
 
Vance was actually a gifted storyteller; weaving tales of fairies into
the rather dry history of his land.
 
His young wife giggled at all of his jokes and flirted tastefully,
giving the old man a wide contented grin all day.
 
Elenna and Brendan exchanged knowing smiles behind their
backs.
 
Now that the other guests
had departed, the travelers met with their hosts in the main reception room in
the evenings.
  
Several times
Lord Vance brought in a Bard to regal them with songs.
 
Elenna loved listening to the soft,
melodic tunes traditional across the Eastlands.
 
For several of the songs she asked for the words, writing
them down in what used to be her mineral geology folder.
 
She still spent a few hours here and
there paging through her book and wondering wistfully what was happening in her
world, if it still existed out there somewhere.
 
She still had no idea how this world related to her own;
some things such as the fairy tales they had in common, and most of the words
she now spoke were English-related, but with a very unusual accent.
 
She had thought about time travel as an
explanation, but in her limited knowledge, she would guess this culture as
roughly corresponding to the Middle Ages, and she couldn’t remember ever
hearing about these places in her history classes.
 
Allè-dôn especially seemed like a long-existent kingdom, one
that would surely be remembered five hundred or even a thousand years
later.
 
This made her think of
dimension travel; a concept that gave her a headache minutes after first
considering.
 

The
calendar had slipped away from her.
 
She wasn’t sure anymore how much time she had spent here in this new
world; she wondered about the people back home.
 
She had horrible thoughts of her parents and brothers
searching for her in the city; pictured tattered missing posters hanging from
telephone poles, and news stories on TV describing the mysterious
disappearance.
 
From what she knew,
she had vanished without leaving any clues behind.
 
She ached to send a message to say that she was alive and
well, if a little out of her league.
 

Time
had passed quickly in Thrush Valley; spring had reached its choicest part with flowers
blooming under day after day of gentle sun.
 
Brendan had told her the plan had been to return home to
Alle-don before the daily afternoon showers of summer would make their
debut.
 
This didn’t appear to be a
possibility anymore, she thought.
 
They had sent their message to the Lord King almost a full moon ago.
 
The Elf King had sent one of his best
message runners to Andrüe’s Court, who should hopefully bring a return post
within another fortnight.
 
All
hoped that the messenger would be accompanied by troops under the banner of the
Four Blades.
 

Almost
as soon as the message-bearer had left, Adrien started the daily habit of
wandering along the tops of the guard towers in the corners of the House,
gazing east towards the land of his birth.
 
As the time passed, he grew quieter and more unapproachable;
even Brendan felt abandoned by his friend.
 
Conversations from all comers were refused, or were abrupt
and uncommunicative.
 
Sometimes he
took Madoc and rode out on his own for a day or two, never announcing his
departure or destination.
 
Brendan
at first tried to draw out his friend, but after several refusals shrugged in
defeat and let him to his own thoughts.
 
Adrien's only consistent connection to their society was his daily
practices with Elenna.
 
Even then
he only spoke when necessary, coaching his student in a gruffer, softer tone
than she expected.
 
Even when she
made a mistake his response was mellow; his mind was never more than half on
her training.
 

When
not on the sparring field, Adrien ignored Elenna as much as the others, so she
was greatly surprised one morning at breakfast.
 
The others had finished and had left the room for their
morning activities. Adrien had remained in his customary seat, sipping his
coffee and gazing out the window.
 
Elenna was halfway out of her chair when he suddenly asked her if she
would join him for a ride that day.
 
She had not spoken with him nor seen him for several days previously
– he had been on one of his unknown retreats.
 
His expression when asking for her company was neutral; but
his eyes flickered in a way that made a refusal impossible.
 
Elenna agreed to join him in an hour in
the stables.
 

After
their horses were prepared, Elenna and Adrien rode forth across the city
through the busy morning streets to the main gate.
 
Here Adrien asked for directions to the village of
Rivermouth.
 
The guard almost
didn’t answer.
 
He gazed
suspiciously at the strange man, gauging his reason for the information.
 
Finally Adrien impatiently held up a
small mauve favor Lord Vance had given him, and the guard withdrew his
resistance.
 
He motioned northwest
into the hills surrounding the city.
 
Adrien thanked him, and without a word led his companion down the
road.
 

They
remained silent the entire journey.
 
Elenna focused on the scenery as they passed through villages and
countryside.
 
She offered no small
talk, though her curiosity for the reason for the ride was eating her up
inside.
 
Finally after the sun had
climbed most of the rise to its zenith, they rode over a small hill to face the
end of their journey.
 
The tiny
hamlet of Rivermouth lay ahead; a few cabins scattered near the shores of a
small lake, with a tiny stream flitting through town to end as a small
waterfall into the lake.
 
The woods
they had been traversing all morning also surrounded the village; the trees of
the edge almost touching the walls of the buildings.
 
Not a creature stirred within the limits.
 
Even the insects avoided the village, a
silence that ran a shiver down both travelers’ spines.

“This
is the town that was attacked?” Elenna asked, her voice low and cautious.

“One
of them.
 
Here there were no
survivors.”
 
Elenna grimaced.
 
She glanced around again, then felt the
handle of the sword in easy reach.
 
She had not said anything when they entered the stable that
morning and Adrien had simply handed her the blade and sword belt.
 
In this eerie quiet she was glad it was
there.

“Let’s
see what we can find,” she sighed, and spurred on her mount.
 
Adrien followed her closely down the
small worn road to the center of the village.
 
Elenna slowed down as they entered the village.
 
Her hackles rose as the scene became
clearer with each trot of their rides.
 
Elenna estimated that about fifty houses had once stood in a cluster
around the waterfall.
 
Most of the
buildings were now gutted with fire.
 
Charred wood pieces, some still smoking, littered the ground.
 
The walls built with river stone were
all that were left standing of the villager’s houses.
 
Overturned wagons, and the bloated stinking bodies of their
horses littered the streets.
 
Elenna caught a glimpse of a pale bare arm sticking out from a
half-demolished doorway and quickly turned away.
 
She bit her lip, glad that she had only pecked lightly at
her breakfast that morning.
 

Adrien
had dismounted, leaving Madoc to whinny uneasily in the middle of the deserted
road.
 
The warrior-trained horse
was as hyper-vigilant as the humans, watching sharply for any movement in the
desolation.
 
Adrien kept his sword
hand in front, ready to call for Arèal in an instant if needed.
 
Elenna kept her hand to her own weapon,
too.
 
She slipped down from her
horse's back in front of what appeared to be the main inn of the town.
 
Several bodies lay together in the dust
outside the front door; unbloodied knives still in hand.

“They
were protecting something,” Elenna murmured.
 
She moved to slip behind them to the entrance of the inn,
but Adrien laid a restraining hand on her shoulder.

“No,
Elenna, don’t go in there,” he muttered gently.
 
“They couldn’t help those that stayed inside.”
 
She gazed up to his face, then realized
what he meant by his warning.
 
Her
expression disintegrated to disgust and horror.
 
She eased back around the fallen warriors, casting her eyes
down for one more glance of pity.
 
A new perception caused her to stop and look closer.

“Adrien,
these wounds,” she exclaimed, kneeling down.
 
Her amazement overcame her repulsion.
 
She lifted her eyes level to his.
 
“They’re bite marks.”

Adrien
nodded in reply.
 
“Monsters,” he
offered somberly.
 
He turned away
as she flew to her feet.

“What
do you mean, monsters?”

“The
slaves of the Lord Skranteen.
  
Legends speak of their war against the first settlers of the Eastlands.
 
They have returned again.”

“This
was done by some sort of animal?” Elenna demanded in hope.

Adrien
shook his head.
 
“The monsters
can’t organize this type of mass invasion.
 
Some man or men are responsible, leading the monsters here
and encouraging their slaughter.
 
Whoever that Lord of the Southlands is, he must be involved with the
Lord Skranteen, Lady curse him.
 
The soldiers who found the village described the metal pellets we found
before, Elenna.
 
What kind of
weapon is that?”

She
sighed and swallowed deeply.
 
“There would be a metal tube of some kind the pellets would be projected
from.
 
I don’t know how large it
would be, but I would guess at least the length of your palm…”

“Such
as this?” Adrien asked.
 
He pulled
from inside his cloak a shiny metallic object. Elenna leaned over to examine
the instrument.
  
It was about
seven inches long, tubular, with a shaft at the end at right angles to the main
body for a handle.
 
The welding was
amateur, and the design flawed, but Adrien held in his hand a good
approximation of a pistol.