The Destroyer (24 page)

“Prince Rilc of Loorma and Princess Jessmei of Nia!” The crowd erupted again as a brown-haired young man escorted Jessmei in. He was probably a little younger than she, and his face blushed at the attention he received from the audience. I didn’t concentrate on him much because Jessmei looked like a sparkling diamond. She wore a glittering tiara on her head that parted the silvery hair down her back in a white wave. Her dress was more of a gown; it hugged her chest but then flowed out with various shades of blue and white gauzy material, accented with a scattering of sparkling diamonds. She wore white gloves on her delicate hands and the material faded to a blue that matched her dress as the cloth ran up her arms. As she walked toward her seat she turned to look over at Paug and me, gifting us with a dazzling smile.

“Prince Nanos of Nia and Princess Estaver of Newvana!” The crowd applauded again as Jessmei’s older brother escorted a petite girl into the room. He was tall and dashing, with a charming smile, blonde hair swept back, and an ornately hilted short sword at his side. He wore a light brown suit with purple trim. The princess had curly black hair and beautiful skin the color of rich coffee. Her dress was a creamy yellow, and pink flowers wrapped around her dainty wrist.

“Please rise!” Herin shouted. The gathered audience did as he commanded.

“The King and Queen of Nia!” The roar was like thunder as people cheered, clapped, and stamped their feet against the stone floor of the hall.

The king and queen were very attractive together. Her hair was a light blonde that swept over the front of her shoulders in purple lashed braids. Her dress was a creamy orange color and seemed to be cut from sheer and soft material that caught the glimmer of the light from the chandeliers. Her crown was slightly larger than Jessmei’s tiara but she wore it just as elegantly.

The king wore a deep purple jacket with a pleated orange shirt that blossomed like a flower from his chest. Across his hip he wore a hand-and-a-half sword encrusted with gems and gold. His crown looked as if it was made of at least three pounds of exquisitely crafted gold. It must have been annoying to wear.

The king and queen approached their chairs and he offered her his hand so that she could sit comfortably. Then he motioned with his hands for all to sit.

“Thank you, my friends, for joining us tonight. Although the worries of our world can sometimes cause our shoulders to buckle, we cannot forget the friendship and love that has kept us persevering for so long.” He paused and looked around the room. “We have much to celebrate on the eve of our great task. So let us feast and enjoy each other’s company. I have gathered the finest entertainers to provide us with joy. I have also asked my chefs to prepare the best meal their imagination might dream up, so that we may honor our guests.” As he spoke, a small army of servants entered the hall from doors behind him. They each carried covered silver trays. “Please enjoy the finest my kingdom has to offer!” the king said, and he clapped his hands. The servants moved quickly to the tables and placed their trays down in front of us. Without any sort of cue, they all pulled back the lids at the exact same moment, displaying a large bowl of creamy orange soup that smelled wonderful. My mouth began to water. The young wife of the baron next to me gasped in delight at the presentation.

The servants seemed to vanish. Everyone looked to the king as he took the first sip. He nodded and the rest of the gathered began to eat.

“The Royal Minstrels and Dancing Troop of Nia!” Herin shouted again as thirty men and women skipped into the hall and posed in the middle of the semi-circle the tables made. Six of them held various musical instruments. I don’t remember where I had seen similarly designed instruments, but I recalled the familiar sound of each as they began to play.

The music was fantastic, and the dancers moved with beautiful grace and agility
.
I briefly thought of Iolarathe, but then I forced the memory away.

They danced and played for almost half of an hour. I looked over to Paug and saw the reflections of the dancing women’s skirts in his eyes. The audience clapped when they had finished. The dancers bowed and ran out the door as servants came to gather the used soup dishes.

Paug stood up and stretched as a few other people around us did the same.

“Now we can mingle for a few minutes, until the next bell rings.” He looked over to the king’s table.

“Oh.” I didn’t feel like standing, but I did it anyway. I followed Paug’s gaze and saw Nadea engaged in conversation with her father and the male envoy from Brilla. She looked over at me and quickly looked away when she noticed my attention. It seemed that she was still mad at me.

“Did I do well Kaiyer?” a female voice said in my memories.

“Yes. Excellent job.” I was suddenly in a field of corpses. Elven corpses, I realized as I bent down to inspect one’s face, twisted in death. The stench of their rotting bodies smelled as wonderful as a plate full of food after a long day of training.

“They didn’t suspect I would flank their ambush of your forces.” The voice belonged to the woman whose arm I had broken. She wore a beautiful smile and her eyes sparkled a bright shade of green. Her armor fit her body perfectly, its massive plates of riveted steel each weighing at least ten pounds. It had taken the smiths almost six months to craft it for her. Finely etched dragons and lizards ran across each surface of the grayish metal.

The bell brought me back to the present. I sat down and looked over to Paug.

“What will the next course be?” I shrugged before I realized he asked the question rhetorically.

I frowned when I tried to pull back the fuzzy memory of the woman in the dragon armor. These recollections seemed to be coming more often now. Maybe I would remember everything in the next few weeks. I remembered the message Malek left me and couldn't help but feel a sense of dread. I hoped I hadn’t forgotten my past for a reason.

The servants came out with more silver trays and repeated the presentation. This course consisted of a baked fish with small boiled eggs on the side. Next to the eggs and fish were a few thin stalks of a plant I had never seen and couldn't remember. The servants returned quickly with wine bottles and began to fill the glasses that were placed in front of us.

“May I present: The Actor and Bard, Esthat Usmay!” There was a startled round of applause as a gray-haired man stepped into the semi-circle and pulled out an instrument with a long neck and twenty-four strings attached across its length. He bowed to Jessmei's family and to the gathered audience before he started playing.

Although it was just one man, the variety of pitches and tones he produced with his instrument seemed more varied and interesting than the musical troop that had played before him. I found myself entranced by his fingers and body movements as he pulled the music out of the air and pushed it to us.

I felt Paug touch my shoulder and I looked over to him.

“Don’t forget to eat, my friend! You’ve been watching him for ten minutes without touching your food.” I smiled and tasted the fish. It was as delicious as it looked, it melted into my tongue in soft, buttery flakes with a delicate, herbal flavor. The small eggs also were very fine, smooth and creamy, although I didn’t expect them to be as salty as they were and I had to wash them down with a gulp of wine.

“Careful you don’t get food on your shirt,” Paug warned me. “You’ll have to stand up in front of everyone when the king knights you.” I looked down at my still clean tunic and sighed in relief. This whole ordeal seemed to be a complicated process and I needed to be careful at each step.

After the servants cleared this course we stood again to stretch. The Baron asked me about the life of a fighting man, how much I trained, where I was stationed, and what brought me to this gathering. Paug came to my aid and helped me answer each question in ways that the Baron seemed to approve of. Shortly, the next bell rang and we all sat down in our places.

“This should be salad,” Paug said with a wrinkled nose. “I don’t really like vegetables that much, but Grandfather makes me eat them. I have a feeling that I will like these though.”

Paug was right. The servants set down a small plate of raw mixed greens, with purple and orange fruit, drizzled with a lemon-flavored dressing. It was light and helped cleanse my palate as I ate it.

“May I present: The Mistress of Song. The Dove Herald herself, Tanya Gettil!” The audience gasped and applauded loudly as a pretty young girl walked into the semi-circle. A servant ran and set down a chair for her to sit upon. She carried an instrument that looked like a large wooden horseshoe. It had strings across it and seemed to be made out of gold and silver leaves.

“She is famous,” Paug whispered to me, "and only plays for royalty or for one hundred gold pieces an hour! She is supposed to have the most beautiful voice in the world.” He gazed at her dreamily as she started to sing. Her voice did sound amazing, like the sound of the waterfalls in my dreams. I looked over at Paug after she had been playing for a few minutes and poked him.

“Vegetables?” I said as I pointed at the greens with my fork and smiled.

“Ugh, you are just like Grandfather,” he said, his face scrunched up as he took a bite. Then he smiled and took another.

“Her voice makes everything good, right?” I said. He nodded.

“It is too bad this night has to end,” he sighed as he leaned back in his chair. “I hope I can remember this forever.”

“I agree my friend,” I said before I put the last bite of leaves into my mouth.

The young woman finished playing and bowed to us. All the gathered stood up to applaud her. She bowed again and took a seat at a table on our side of the hall, with the older man who had played before her.

“She is sitting here eating with us. Perhaps you should go talk to her?” I suggested to Paug.

“Oh no! I couldn’t do that.” His face looked white. “She is too beautiful.”

“So?”

“She would never want to talk to me. She is destined to marry someone great and powerful. I am just destined to be a village school teacher.” His face fell. “At least I got to see her play once.”

“I think you should go converse with her. Then you can say you got to see her play and you got to talk to her,” I said with a smile. The servants cleared off the finished course and I tried to avoid the Baron’s gaze. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore.

“She’ll reject me. Look at me. I’m not handsome, or brave, or powerful. I’m just a boy.”

“I think you should go talk to her,” I repeated. “But what do I know? I’ve been asleep for a long time.”

The bell rang again and we all sat, but instead of servants coming out, the king stood up and raised his hands, palms outward. The crowd instantly became quiet.

“I want to thank you all again for coming tonight, especially our friends from Loorma, Newvana, Brilla, and Gradar. Our families have stood together in peace for generations, and I could not see it any other way.” Heads around the hall nodded in approval. Paug mentioned that some of the countries here had only mild affection for each other. I wondered how much political skirmishing was going on behind the scenes to keep the wheels of their truce greased.

“But there is someone else here that I would like to personally thank.” He looked over to me. “Kaiyer, please stand and come forward.”

All eyes in the room turned to me as I slowly rose to my feet. My stomach flip-flopped a dozen times when I took the first few steps around the room. A memory suddenly hit my brain and I remembered a valley full of armored warriors.

A thousand pairs of eyes watched me as my horse approached the ranks of soldiers. They were devoted to me like I was one of the Dead Gods the Elvens worshiped. There could be no one else that would save them, deliver them from the Elvens.

I circled the last table and made my way to the raised stage. The king walked in front of his dinner table and drew his ornate sword. Its blade looked perfectly balanced, the gemstones on the hilt sparkled, reflecting bright jewel tones as they caught the light from above. He raised it before his face and held it easily. He was still on the raised platform, so that he might look around to the gathering and down at me.

“It brings me joy to personally thank someone such as you, a hero who has risked his life many times to protect my beloved family.” I heard mutterings around the room, people asking who I was, what exactly I had done, and about the family I came from.

Suddenly Maerc was at the king’s ear whispering urgently. The general looked at me when he had finished and glared. I had been paying attention to the susurration of the crowd and didn’t hear what he said. That had been foolish of me.

The king’s face paled and I could see his hands shake a tiny amount. He continued his speech.

“Because of these great achievements toward my family I would like to bestow upon you--“

There was a tearing and explosion behind me. I turned to see the doors to the Main Hall ripped open. One of the great pieces of wood teetered off of its top hinge. Four figures walked calmly into the room.

Elven figures.

I stepped aside and my vision began to blur. My heart surged with the power of the Earth in the stone and the blood flowed through me like a roaring river. It thumped like a battle drum and I couldn’t hear anything. Tears came to my eyes as I tried to fight with my hatred. I tasted blood in my mouth. I was biting my tongue. It healed quickly as I tried to cut through it with my teeth.

Half a dozen guards came charging forward with spears. The Elven in the lead held up his hands and yelled:

“Peace!” The guards slid to a halt. Other soldiers stood in front of the king and the lead table. “We come in peace, King of Nia. Tell your dogs to step back, or we’ll decide to change our minds.” The figure oozed confidence. The sound of his voice made me want to scream and kill everything around me, human or Elven.

“What do you want, Ancient?” the king yelled from across the hall.

“Instruct your guards to move back and allow me to approach. I will tell you then.”

“Don’t let them closer, sire, they could kill you before we would have the chance to protect you,” Maerc whispered into the king’s ear.