Destiny (4 page)

Orlac would never be comfortable with Dorgryl sharing his head but he had begun to get used to it during the walk from the hillsides of Neame towards the capital. They had been walking for five days now and, he had to admit, Dorgryl’s expansive views were entertaining at least. His uncle had managed to make him laugh out loud several times, though they both agreed that in company this might have the effect of making him seem quite mad. But for now, travelling through the picturesque countryside of Cipres, he could almost say he was enjoying himself, and as long as Dorgryl continued to fuel his need for vengeance and leave the rest of his body alone, he was content for the time being.

Cipres needs a new queen,
Dorgryl suddenly said.

How about a new king?

It is a matriarchal society…always has been.

Is there no heiress?

Not that I’m aware of.

Then I presume we shall supply her.

Correct.

How?

Leave that to me.

And why will they accept her?

Because they are frightened and distracted and best, they are grieving.

Why would that make them accept a stranger?

You just walk, boy, and let me think now.

Orlac shrugged. He was more than happy in his own silence and he was glad of the fact that Dorgryl could not touch his private thoughts. They remained his own and a good thing too. Suddenly he felt obsessed with the need to know a woman. He had been alive for centuries and apart from that brief time of childhood he had spent the whole time fighting—pitting his wits and magics against others. This wonderful freedom—if you could call it that with another god’s spirit roaming one’s mind— was seductive. Dorgryl had spoken to him about the pleasures of life and Orlac realised how much he had missed. Just this time to walk through beautiful countryside was a treat. Dorgryl would sneer, he knew, and probably suggest that it was nothing in comparison to having a beautiful and compliant woman on her knees, your own hands buried in her hair as she pleasured you. So much to learn and experience.

A milestone at the grass verge told him it was barely a day’s walk to the city gates. Orlac smiled. Perhaps the right woman on her knees in front of him was not that far away now. He strode on towards Cipres.

On top of the battlements a soldier on lookout called to Gyl. ‘Rider approaching, sir. Very fast.’

Gyl looked out towards the southwest and squinted. Yes, he could see the rider; his man was right, the horse was at full pelt. As it drew closer he could see the flecks of foam on its flanks.

‘The Light strike me! What the hell is that rider doing wearing down the horse like that? I’ll have him flogged.’

The soldier next to him added that the horse bore the King’s insignia too. This confused Gyl. No simple messenger would wear the personal colours of Lorys. Only the King’s Guard was permitted and no member of the Guard would be sent on an errand unless it was of the highest and most urgent importance.

Gyl swore colourfully. ‘Bring the messenger directly to me.’ A soldier hurried off. ‘And someone get that horse seen to before it dies on us,’ he ordered.

He and Saxon had spent an hour or so together earlier, sipping a milky concoction which Cook liked to send up for the men on watch in the early hours of the chilled mornings. Moody and still piqued by the previous night’s strange activity, he had appreciated the Kloek’s company. He regarded Saxon as a father and so it was with good grace that he accepted the older man’s counselling. When Saxon explained everything it seemed to make so much more sense and yet every time he tried to wrap his mind around the fact that his mother had lain with a powerful sentient and given birth to triplets who would save the Kingdom of Tallinor from some madman called Orlac—it just seemed like utter claptrap. Hearing that Tor had been executed at this very palace and was now walking
around very much alive with clear designs on his mother, the Queen, made the whole story even more flawed. And looking at Saxon as he talked gently of their struggle made it still worse. The Kloek was a Paladin—whatever that meant—as was some dwarf still in the Great Forest and some falcon, no less!

It had taken all of Gyl’s resolve to remain seated and listen. But the more the Kloek explained, the more resigned he began to feel. Who could make up such a tale, he asked himself. By the time they parted company, Saxon had exacted a promise that Gyl would keep an open mind and accept that magic existed in their world and when wielded by the right hands—of people like Gynt and like his mother—great good could come of it.

Gyl knew Saxon would not lie and so knew he must put faith in what the Kloek advised. Even the amazing story of Saxon’s disfigurement and blindness and of being cured in the Heartwood was too fantastical to imagine, and yet he knew the Kloek expected him to accept it because it was the truth.

Gyl put his troubled thoughts aside as the messenger was virtually carried to where he stood. The man was exhausted and if it were not for the two soldiers holding him upright, he would have surely collapsed onto the flagstones.

The rider made a dazed salute to his Under Prime. ‘Sir, I bring baleful tidings.’

Gyl felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. This man was indeed from the Guard which meant the news was brought directly from the King.

‘Speak,’ he commanded.

The breathless man did not have a chance to reply.
They were interrupted by the Queen’s arrival on the battlements. Saxon followed.

‘I saw this man ride in. He bears the King’s colours. What news?’ Alyssa asked. ‘I’ve been expecting Lorys for hours…why is he so late?’

Gyl’s eyes flicked to Saxon. The message in that glance said enough.

‘Your highness,’ Saxon said gently. ‘Why don’t we —’

‘No, Saxon,’ she replied. ‘I want news from this rider. What is your name?’ she asked the trembling man, ignoring all warning glares from her son. Gyl was the man’s superior but she was his Queen and that left absolutely no one of higher rank on this rooftop. She would have news of her husband directly from this messenger’s lips.

The stricken man was still trying to get his breathing back to normal and he coughed. ‘I am Larkham, your majesty,’ he said, struggling to get down on one knee and pay her correct respect.

‘You may stand, Larkham. I can see you are in great need of rest. Please deliver your news of the King and his arrival.’

Incredibly, the man broke down. No one could believe the tears which consumed him to the point where he could not speak. It was the Queen who went to him and held his hand. Her own eyes were filled with tears now and her face pinched with fear.

‘Larkham, where is the King?’ she urged, low voiced.

‘He…he is dead,’ was all the man managed to say.

Herek escorted his King but this time took no joy in it. The blackened, ruined body of Lorys was shrouded in sacking and carried in a cart as they made their slow journey into Tal proper. The men travelled in a shocked silence. They had been like this since the King had been impaled by the lightning strike. Lorys had been dead even before he hit the ground, long before his loyal Prime could reach him.

With an enormous effort of will, Herek forced his mind from its confused, horrified state to consider what lay ahead. The bulk of responsibility would fall on his and Gyl’s shoulders as the realm would surely spiral into stunned stupefaction, capable of no activity other than grieving at their shocking news. He knew Queen Alyssa would have received the grim tidings by now. How much more punishment could a single person take? He felt his heart ache for Tallinor’s beautiful young Queen— it seemed her whole life was destined to be one of grief.

More importantly, the King had died without an heir. Tallinor faced very testing times. Herek was a soldier not a politician, but he quaked at the thought of how the question of sovereignty would be resolved now. As far as he could recall, Tallinor’s royal line had always been secured by a single male heir. What in the Light would happen now to their precious Kingdom?

Word had clearly not yet spread. Tal warmly welcomed its soldiers home, hardly glancing at the contents of the cart…just another footman perhaps who had passed away. And if they did notice the King’s fine stallion at the front, it did not register yet that the horse was riderless. Many would have presumed the King was arriving separately. The Company approached the palace gates, where it was clear that a far more sombre
welcome awaited. Herek took a deep breath and silently asked the Light to guide him through this difficult time.

Queen Alyssa, flanked by the Under Prime, who held her arm protectively, awaited them on the steps of the palace. Herek was quietly relieved to see the Kloek had returned from his wanderings. Saxon stood beside the Queen and would provide much needed support. The entire palace staff had gathered in the bailey and awaited their King in dread silence. Soldiers stood at full attention on the battlements where the colours of Tal flew at half mast. That alone would begin to filter into the minds of the populace and Tal’s people would begin to grasp that death had visited and claimed their sovereign.

Dignitaries and courtiers, heads bowed, awaited a little further back on the vast steps and Herek’s keen eye roved amongst them, picking up two strangers, standing with the musician, Sallementro. Unlesss his sight deceived him, one looked alarmingly like the physic, Torkyn Gynt —though that was surely fanciful. The other, her head bowed, he could not see in full, but in spite of seeming familiar in that brief glance she was definitely not known to him.

Herek looked back at the Queen. She appeared composed. Her chin held high, a look of defiance on her face as she dared that composure to fail her. It would not; he knew this. Herek recognised that same strength in her stance that he had witnessed many years previously when she had laid eyes on the corpse of another great love of her life. She had not cried then and she would not cry now in public. He admired her courage; was proud of the dignified figure she presented to her people. She would be the reason all of them would
find the strength to move on; Alyssa would be the catalyst which might push them through their grief to the future of Tallinor under a new monarch…but whom?

The cart he had led rolled to a halt and Herek stepped down from his horse and onto his knee in the presence of his Sovereign. His head held low, he heard her softly approach.

‘Your majesty,’ he said, angry to hear his voice catch slightly.

She touched his shoulder, bade him rise and then he was looking down at the tiny figure—already a former queen, he realised, as she would never be permitted to rule. Herek looked into sad, fathomless grey-green eyes and somehow conveyed his despair that he had brought his King, her husband, back in such a manner. No words were required.

The Under Prime was snapped to attention. People began to weep now around them but Alyssa remained composed.

‘At ease, Gyl,’ Herek said, glad to hear his voice was more steady now. He must take command of the situation. ‘Your highness, may we speak inside?’

She nodded. Bearers rushed out from the palace to lift the body from its cart but several soldiers growled. No one would bear the King’s body other than the King’s personal Guard. The confused servants looked to their Queen. Herek noted Gyl squeeze his mother’s arm gently. She nodded again at the servants who moved away. Gyl left her side to join the Guard. He would be one of those to carry their beloved King to his resting spot, for the time being, in the chapel. With Saxon close by, Queen Alyssa turned and climbed the stairs back into the palace, a grief-stricken retinue of people following.

In her private chambers, she held an audience with Herek whilst Gyl made arrangements in the chapel to lay out the man he did not know was his father. The only other person present was Saxon. Alyssa sat, stiff-backed, and after a tray of drinks had been served—which only Herek gratefully touched—she asked him the question he dreaded.

‘Tell me how my husband died?’

The Prime told her everything, spared her no detail in his precise, brief way, from the moment they had spotted the ravens in the field to the second his body had burst momentarily into flame. When he finished speaking the room was enveloped by a frigid silence. No one moved until the Queen finally nodded.

‘I saw that hand of lightning, Herek, which you speak of. It lit the entire sky.’

‘It was a fearful strike, your majesty.’

‘And you say Lorys felt doomed?’

‘That’s my interpretation, your highness. He spoke of being marked by the gods…shrouded. I sense this is why he risked sending a man out into the storm.’ Herek cleared his throat. ‘I am guessing it was his way of reaching out to you, my Queen.’

Alyssa bit the inside of her cheek. She would not permit herself to break down. She must be strong. People would count on her to show courage in the face of such adversity.

Saxon finally entered the conversation. ‘Arrangements must be made, your highness…er, for the King’s funeral. This is something you might consider entrusting to Gyl.’

He flicked a look towards Herek which suggested he would explain later. ‘After last night, your boy could use a chance to flex his authority and demonstrate his abilities.’

A strange, unreadable look flitted across the Queen’s face. ‘I fear the boy has far more responsibility settling on his shoulders than any of us could possibly imagine,’ she said. ‘Herek.’

‘Your highness?’ He was glad they were able to slip into familiar roles and duties, away from that sense of confusion.

‘Gather the nobles.’

‘As you command, your majesty, but should we not lay our King to rest first…if you’ll pardon my presumption?’

‘The question of succession is best dealt with immediately, Herek. I suspect it is already the main question on everyone’s lips.’

There was a soft knock at the door. Gyl entered with the Queen’s private aide, Rolynd.

Alyssa mustered a smile. ‘Just the people we need.’ They bowed. ‘Rolynd, I require you to assist Gyl, who will take charge of all proceedings surrounding the funeral, burial and feast for King Lorys.’