The Sword Of Erren-dar (Book 2) (27 page)

 “Dead?” he repeated, as if unable to comprehend what he had
been told. “Dead? But….. but this cannot be?”

 “He died suddenly yesterday morning. And that is not all
the ill news I bring. Perhaps I had better start from the beginning.”

 “Perhaps you had,” agreed his lordship grimly.

 “As you know, my lord of Westrin ordered me to return to
Addania to find out if the Ravenshold Brigands had obeyed his order to return
to their fortress.  He had warned me to be discrete, so instead of announcing
my arrival by going to the palace barracks as I normally would, I took a room
at an inn near the city walls. It did not take long to discover that the regiment
had not returned to Ravenshold but was still present in Addania. My lord of
Westrin’s orders had, apparently, been countermanded by Prince Enrick, using his
father’s authority. I managed to speak to my second-in-command in secret and he
told me that the Prince had presented him with written orders delivered under the
King’s seal, which he could not disobey without committing treason. I need not
tell you that it went against the grain for him to disobey my lord of Westrin
but had he refused to comply, he would have been arrested and executed. The
Prince’s move was not exactly unexpected and as there was little that I could
do to mend matters, I was preparing to make my return journey to Sorne and
deliver my report, but I had not taken account of the Prince’s army of paid
spies. Apparently he had received word that I had returned to the city clandestinely
from Sorne. He is well aware of my loyalty to the House of Westrin, and
suspecting that I might stir up unrest with the Ravenshold Brigands,  he
dispatched a party of guards to the inn to put paid to my activities by
arresting me. It is fortunate that I am not without friends amongst their
number and I received a warning in the nick of time, that enabled me to elude
them. But I couldn’t get out of the city. The Prince seemed surprisingly
determined to get hold of me and not only closed the gates but began to comb
the city street by street.”

 “Where did you go?”

 For the first time during his recital, Seldro’s severe
expression almost lightened into a smile.

 “The barracks. The Ravensholders hid me in the loft above
the guardroom – the one place, apart from the Prince’s bedroom, that the palace
guards did not think to search. But it was while I was in hiding that news began
to filter through to the city that the lord of Westrin and the Prince and
Princess were all missing in the Forsaken Lands. At first I could hardly credit
what I was hearing. I knew they were hard on the heels of the fugitive and
expected to be only a day or so across the Harnor. I also knew that you would
be moving heaven and earth to find them, and you can imagine my frustration at
being stuck in an attic when I was itching to come and help you search for
them.” He paused, and the grim look returned to his face. “Then, a few days
later, your letter to the King arrived bringing the news that all of us, except
perhaps one, had dreaded to hear.”

 Pevorion stood up and resumed his favourite position by the
window.

 “Aye, Captain, that was the most difficult letter I have
ever written, or ever hope to write. How do you tell any man, much less your
King, that his son and daughter and a man who was as much his son as if he was
born to him, are all missing, feared dead. When they became overdue, I began to
worry, wondering why it was taking so long, wondering if I should have sent my
sons with them for extra protection. So I sent out a search party into the
Forsaken Lands and almost the first thing they encountered was Prince Eimer’s
horse, riderless, running wild through the forest near Greendell. My sons
discovered the tracks that the party had made on their outward journey, and
even though the trail was old, managed to follow it northwards for two days
until….until they found a scene of butchery in a clearing. Ferron, my best
huntsman, was lying decapitated on the ground in a pool of dried blood, clearly
killed by the Turog some days ago. Near him were two of the Ravensholders, also
slain by the Turog.” He struck his fist against his forehead in anger. “I
remember my stupid words to them, telling them with such misplaced confidence
that the Turog would not attack so large a party. This is all my fault, Seldro.
All the fault of my criminal over-confidence. How can I live with myself after
this?”

 “But no other bodies were found?”

 “Another guard was discovered some distance further north.
There were signs that this was the place they were ambushed. The Turog clearly
attacked in vastly superior numbers but no sign could be found of Vesarion or
the others. My sons said that the tracks showed that they were attacked by over
twenty of those beasts. They could not have survived so unequal a fight.”  He
turned towards the window once more in order to hide his face from the man
listening so intently to him, and said over his shoulder: “So, Captain Seldro,
I had to write the King a letter that I would rather have cut off my own hand
than write.”

 The Captain regarded him in pity, and it came almost as a
shock to find that when the bluff bear of a man finally faced him again, tears
were welling up in his eyes.

 “How did the King die?” he asked, his voice rough with
grief.

It was the question that Seldro had been dreading, for he
knew he must give an honest answer, and his honesty would bring with it great
pain.

“Forgive me, my lord,” said the Captain sorrowfully, “for
what I must tell you now. But….but they say that it was the news of his children’s
death that killed the King. He received your letter and as soon as he had read
it, I am told that he went white with shock and fell where he stood, the letter
still in his hand. Apparently, he spoke only one word before he died.”

 “What word?” asked Pevorion, the tears now pouring down his
bristly cheeks.

 “Vesarion.”

 Pevorion gripped the back of a chair to steady himself and
drew his sleeve across his eyes.

 “Oh, unhappy land that this has become,” he groaned broken-heartedly.
“First we lose Queen Triana, which caused grief enough, even though she was of
a great age, but now so soon afterwards we lose her son – the only one with the
power to restrain these foolish suspicions of Prince Enrick. The House of
Westrin, a long and noble line, is no more, and young Prince Eimer and his
lovely sister are lost to us. How much more grief can one nation bear? For how
much of this do I bear the blame?”

 “My lord, you must not blame yourself. No one knew that
there were so many of those filthy animals across the Harnor. No one could have
predicted the attack. This kingdom is going to need every good man before we
are done, if I read the future correctly.”

 His words steadied the older man.

“I fear you are right, Captain. Tell me, how did you
escape?”

 “Friends smuggled me out of the city, but before I left, I
heard one other thing. The new king, with almost indecent haste, has already
issued a declaration annexing the Barony of Westrin to the crown. He has
declared them all officially dead and has announced a day of national mourning.
The King’s state funeral will take place next week and a month after that, Enrick
is to be crowned king – although the coronation is a mere formality,” he
concluded bitterly. “He already sits on the throne and wields absolute power
with no one now to check him.”

 Pevorion, having gained control of his emotions, merely bowed
his head in acknowledgement.

 “One other thing, my lord,” said Seldro tentatively. “it is
not my place to advise you, but be wary of attending the King’s funeral. Prince
– I mean, King Enrick has many grudges to settle, real or imagined. I have
already sent word to my family in Ravenshold to take to the mountains in case
he tries to use them against me. I go to join them now, my lord, but should you
have need of me, send word to the innkeeper of the Running Boar in Ravenshold.
He knows were to find me.”

 He arose to leave but Pevorion crossed to him and
unexpectedly held out his hand.

 The younger man found his hand gripped in a vice-like, but
sincere, handshake.

 “I wish you luck, Captain.”

 “Thank you, sir,” Seldro replied feelingly. “I will need it
– I think we all will.”

  Vesarion and Sareth spent the afternoon following their
quarrel in very different ways. Sareth returned to the Rose Tower, stormed past
Eimer, who made the mistake of trying to speak to her, and mounted the stairs
to her room two at a time. When she finally reached her sanctuary, she locked
the door behind her and flinging herself on the bed, gave way to a torrent of
bitter tears.

 He had let her go so readily, making no attempt to persuade
her to keep to their engagement. She must now accept that she meant nothing to
him and never would. All the hopes she had cherished that their journey
together would cause some affection to grow in him, were now dead.

 As she lay on the blue counterpane, staring at the ceiling,
exhausted by the storm of grief, she recalled the old proverb that hope was a
flower that bloomed in the snow. But now the last few petals of that fragile
flower had been frozen by so much indifference that they had lost what little
life had remained in them. She did not know how to face him again. She did not
know how to face the rest of their journey together or, indeed, how to tell the
others what had happened. Even when Iska, alerted by Eimer that something was
wrong, knocked on her door asking if all was well with her, she could not
summon up the strength to reply. So she lay watching the shadows creep
stealthily across the ceiling, unaware that they signalled the passage of time,
as the sun, caring nothing for her distress, followed its appointed course
regardless. She saw only the hurts of her past, the wounds of the present and a
future so empty and bleak that it filled her with dread.

 The cause of all her tears, forgetting the fact that he had
just delivered a lecture on the evils of disappearing off into the forest
without telling anyone, strode away from the scene of the crime in a thoroughly
bad mood. If she had never wanted this engagement, he reasoned, determined to
justify himself, then why had she ever agreed to it in the first place? And
what was all this nonsense about not knowing one another? He had known her
since the very day she was born. He even had vague memories of being invited by
the proud parents to see the infant princess in her cradle. The thought brought
him to an abrupt halt. Perhaps that was the root of the problem. Perhaps he was
simply too old for her. He did a rapid mental calculation and worked out that
he was exactly nine years and eight months older than she was. Not such an
impossible gulf between adults but an unbridgeable chasm between children. He
remembered the little tomboy who insisted on following him around, getting
under his feet. He pictured her climbing trees in pursuit of stolen apples. He
smiled a little in recollection of the day she had fallen off the stable wall
straight into the midden. Probing deeper into his past, he could recollect
binding up cut knees and lying heroically to cover up her truancy from her
lessons.

 And all at once his anger left him. He sat down a little
wearily at the base of a tree and leaned his head back against the rough bark.
Above him the golden leaves stirred uneasily, giving him glimpses of the blue
sky above. He had never seen her so upset. Now that his irritation had left
him, he began to review their conversation calmly and realised that she had
been struggling to hold back tears, especially towards the end. He saw again
her hand holding out the ring to him, and remembered how it had trembled
slightly.

 Finally, he made the belated admission to himself that, for
whatever reason, he had hurt her.

 Yet she had called him cold and selfish and implied an
arrogance that he found unjust. She had accused him of merely wanting to
further the line of Westrin, of not caring whom he married. When he got to this
point in his train of thought, his reasoning fell to pieces and he became
uncertain as to what his exact motivation had been. When he had first read the
King’s proposal back in his mountain fastness, surrounded by the familiar
snow-capped peaks, he had sat down in his favourite chair by the fire, a glass
of wine in his hand, to make a cool, reasoned and logical decision as to what
constituted the best means of furthering the interests of his beloved barony.
He was untroubled by the presence of the object of his decision, unaware of the
detachment that his isolation from Addania had brought. He had accepted without
question the King’s assertion in his letter that his daughter was willing to
receive his proposal, without ever wondering why. If he had thought about it at
all, he would have assumed that she, too, had considered the advantages of the
match, not least of which was the opportunity to get away from Enrick. But now,
for the first time, he questioned all of those comfortable assumptions. Perhaps
she was right. Perhaps they had been too much apart in recent years and now
were strangers to one another. Certainly her behaviour since they had left
Addania had disconcerted him. Images of the last few weeks flashed across his
mind. Confusing. Fragmented. Contradictory. They gave him no clarity at all. He
saw her fierce concentration as she had fought the Turog in the forest glade.
He relived how her eyes had avoided his, when she had defied him by voting for
the mission to continue. Yet he heard her scream his name when the creatures in
the sand began to pull her down. He saw her hand stretched out to him for help
and remembered his own frantic fear when he couldn’t reach her. In his mind, he
heard her laughing at Gorm’s antics, that light, carefree laugh that was as
familiar to him as his own heartbeat. Finally, he saw her standing at the foot
of the stairs in the Rose Tower, the candlelight shining on her hair, and he
realised that she was right – he didn’t know her at all.