“Silver, my foot! Do you hear yourself, Leonardo? What idiotic prater! Nothing good can ever come of an alliance with the devil. This must end here! You must never accept his entreaty again.” She moved to his side, placing her arm comfortingly around his now stooped shoulders. “Send the boy to him when Kettin returns and tell him that you wish no further contact with him. Tell him that it will threaten your treaties with your neighbors if they discover that you aided him. He will understand that. Surely he will be grateful that you were able to return the runaway to him, and then he will leave us alone,” she convinced herself as she spoke. “Don’t fool yourself, Leon. It is not possible to work with the likes of Colton, only for him. And he will chew you up and spit you out as soon as he would crush a bray beetle under his foot,” she responded.
The Duke accepted her ideas and took comfort in her embrace, each seeking strength from the other.
“Perhaps you are right, my dear. Perhaps you are right. I will give him what he wants this time and that will be the end of it!” he said with finality while reaching to unlatch the pane and gaze out of the opening once more.
As the Duke and his wife continued to ease each other’s concerns, the group of soldiers, led by Fobush, returned to the courtyard with their son and his retainers. Through the now open window of the study, the Duke distinctly heard the clatter of hooves on the cobblestones below, and he abruptly broke away from his wife and headed for the winding stairway. Dorothea followed closely in pursuit, her full skirts raising dust as they brushed over the floors, running to keep up with her husband and as anxious now as he was to reunite with their son.
When the couple emerged from the portico into the courtyard, Kettin was smiling and warmly greeting Fobush while he dismounted. Allowing his horse to be led away by a stableboy, he slapped his father’s Master at Arms sharply on the back. Fobush was unaccustomed to such friendly gestures on the part of the spoiled and arrogant son of the Duke, and his discomfort showed by the surprised expression on his face.
“We had such a wonderful trip back, Fobush, the weather being as kind to us as we could have hoped. I pray all is well here. How are mother and father?” he asked as if he were returning from a relaxing vacation.
“They are well, Sir Kettin. I know that your father has been anxiously awaiting your return. Perhaps we should go to him right away.”
“In time, good man. Let me get settled first. I have much to tell him. That excuse for a statesman, Baladar, was so disrespectful! If it were not for the fact that our return trip was so refreshing, I would be beside myself with annoyance,” he remarked, unaware of just how much his father, the Duke, wanted to talk to him.
“I believe that your father wants to see you immediately, my Lord. He has requested that I escort you to him as soon as you are ready,” he repeated more sternly, surprised at the nonchalance of the young lord in comparison to his father’s uneasy demeanor.
“May I not wash and freshen up first? What could be so important that my father wishes to greet me while I am still smelling like a commoner? Tell him that I will attend him as soon as I bathe and change,” he responded defiantly.
“You will do no such thing!” the Duke thundered from across the cobblestones. “You will come to my study immediately!” he commanded, struggling to master his unease.
The Duke glanced around furtively, searching for the boy his son was supposed to have brought back with him. Placing his arm across his son’s back, he led him forcefully, and rather harshly, toward the door that would take them to the privacy of his rooms, literally pushing him forward against his son’s reluctant will.
“Father, must you be so insistent? I have only just returned from a long journey and you do not even allow me the common courtesy of a bath first?” he asked, offended by having been treated like a child.
“There will be plenty of time for that later, Kettin. Now, come!” he replied, sharply shoving his son forward. As soon as the door had slammed tightly shut behind him, he raged, “Where is the boy? What did you do with him? I did not see him in your group. Did you send him with another? Where is he?”
“I do not know what you are talking about, father. What boy?” He seemed bewildered by the question.
“
What
boy? How can you ask such a stupid question? Why did I send you to Pardatha? To retrieve a runaway boy from Baladar’s court and to bring him back with you. Why else would I have sent you there?”
“You sent me to be your emissary and renew some old alliances. But I couldn’t do that, since Baladar treated me miserably. I did make a statement though, and I let him know just how angry you would be by the manner in which he—”
“What kind of foolishness is this? Are you a complete idiot? You dare speak to me of manners? I can assure you Colton dar Agonthea will not be polite when he finds out you have returned empty handed!” he barked, spitting with anger as he spoke.
“You must reinforce the mountain pass at once, Leonar, at once!” The Duke’s wife broke in. “Send another garrison. Send two!” She paced back and forth.
“What is the point? If the Dark Lord wants to reach me, do you think some soldiers will stop him?”
Kettin watched his parents without comprehension. He had no idea what they were talking about, but, he had a nagging feeling he had forgotten something. Something about a boy had been mentioned to him at one point or other. He just could not be certain what and when. It all seemed so vague, as if a fog was obscuring his recollection and preventing him from remembering clearly. All this talk about the Dark Lord and reinforcing the pass was baffling.
“I thought that I would at least be greeted warmly upon my return. What is going on here?” he interrupted, thoroughly confused.
“How can you have no idea what we are talking about?” his father asked, staring at him in bewilderment. “What manner of spell has been cast upon you that you could have forgotten everything we spoke about before you departed? Do you not recall at all the purpose of your visit to Pardatha?”
“I was to go and see Baladar and renew our alliance of mutual protection, as well as to advise him of the extent of our supply of polong oil we had to offer up for sale. Perhaps I was a bit remiss in executing your directives, but he was so rude to me and my men that I would have lost face in front of my entire retinue if I did not respond the way that I did. Baladar left the castle the night I arrived! He did not even do me the honor of supping with me. What was I supposed to do, father?” he inquired like a hurt, little boy.
“When you left Baladar, did you at least leave in a manner that will allow us to return if we need to? Can I mend the damage?” he asked.
A sheepish look replaced his son’s pained expression, as he began to describe the tragic events that took place on the eve of his departure from Pardatha.
“I imagine you could if you had to,” he stammered as he started to explain to his father. “I did have a slight skirmish with one of the guards called Dalek, which did come to blows. I did not initiate it, or at least I do not think that I did. You see, we were all drinking rather heavily. You know how good the Pardathan ale is? In any case, he was drunk and he attacked me, or so I remember, and I had no choice but to defend myself. No one else but he was killed,” Kettin explained, as if this were all just a minor mishap.
The Duke sat down heavily in his chair, raised his arms over his head and covered his ears with his hands. “Tell me no more. I cannot bear to hear another word,” he exclaimed, turning to Dorothea who was crying profusely by this time. “I must think. Begone!” he said to his son, flicking his wrist at him in dismissal. “Maybe I can find another job for you to do south of the Altamars next time. We are ruined! Ruined!” he wailed, as he bent his head into his lap, with his hands still covering his ears.
The Lady Dorothea led Kettin to the door of the room, brusquely tapping him on his back repeatedly with the broad of her palm, saying all the while, “Go, go, go! We will meet later after your father has had time to think. Quickly, Kettin, and close the door behind you.”
After he left, she slammed the heavy door shut, locking it with a twist of her fingers, and then she turned to her husband. Her face was pale. “Our options have been greatly reduced of late,” she said, pacing the floor and looking intently at the ground. “We must make some difficult decisions, my husband, and we have very little time. I will go to Baladar myself, if need be, and plead for forgiveness. But, what will you tell Colton’s ambassador when he returns?”
Leonardo reached inside his pocket and withdrew the leather pouch the ambassador had given him. He held it as if it were a deadly serpent and, with disgust, he tossed it into the burning fire in the study’s hearth. The Duke and the Duchess stood and watched it burst into flame.
“I was to use that when the boy was in my company. I will not need it presently. Why inform him now of my failure? If I had the boy, the emissary would not have needed to return. I could have brought him to the pass, and then merely exchanged him for a thank you.” He felt better now that he was rid of the purse. He had carried it with him for days, afraid to remove it from his pocket for too long a time, yet repulsed by its proximity to his skin all the while it was there.
He hesitated a moment longer, arose from his chair and said with a renewed animation, “But now, since he will surely come here when he does not hear from me, I will tell him the truth; that the boy he sent us to fetch was simply not there! That is what I will say. He was not there! After all, Kettin has no recollection of ever seeing him, and I am sure those who traveled with him had not seen hide nor hair of him either or I would have heard about it by now. Strong wizardry was certainly at work in Pardatha, and I will tell him that as well. It was not our fault. We are not magic wielders here. He will sympathize with that. We will question Kettin’s entire party first, of course.”
The Duke stood up, hopeful again, plotting what he knew to be a precarious and potentially perilous path, but he always felt better when he was plotting something that would require his cunning and guile in order to be implemented.
“He cannot fault us for something we could not control. It will do him no good to know that Kettin could not recall his purpose and therefore blundered as he did. What blame could he possibly assess upon you and me? We are innocent. It was his mistaken information that sent us there in the first place. It was his scout’s fault, or whoever told him the boy was there to begin with! I will just have to convince him of that and that is all there is to it!” he said, puffing out his chest with his new found confidence.
“Yes, dear, perhaps that will work,” she said patronizingly, patting him tenderly on his back, “but, will he believe you?”
Her husband, the rich and mighty Duke of Talamar, turned and looked upon his beloved wife with terror in his eyes once again, knowing that their fate was sealed. The smoke from the burning powder that Duke Leonardo had tossed into the fire had thickened in the hearth while they were speaking to one another and was now beginning to billow out of the confined space into the open room. The fire was quickly getting out of control.
Something must be clogging the flue
, he thought. As he moved toward the hearth, a black, snake-like tendril shot out from beneath the dense fumes and violently wrapped itself around his right ankle, bringing him awkwardly to his knees. Another slimy strand encircled his neck. He gagged on the floor.
His terrified wife ran toward the door only to be brought down by more of the fearsome tentacles, which girded her waist and dragged her toward the hearth. Her heels scraped noisily across the stone floor. The smoke continued to fill the room, blackening the walls and ceiling with its unctuous soot.
The Duke attempted to call for help, his horror mounting by the second, but as soon as he opened his mouth, the vile, black things filled it with their putrid essence. He was choking, his eyes bulging, while the devil’s spawn wrapped itself around his arms and legs, issuing from the fire in great numbers now, dragging him closer to their source.
The Duchess clawed frantically at her neck. She was soon encased in a cocoon of thrashing, gyrating horror which was constricting by the second, making even the slightest movement nearly impossible. The filaments continued to whip out from the fireplace, strangling them.
Beloved
, Dorothea mouthed to Leonardo, her breath all but gone.
The Duke, struggling to reach her, saw the terror in her eyes.
She does not deserve this!
He prayed to die, not so much to end his own suffering, but so he would not have to see her suffer anymore, wishing, in his last moments, only for the guilt and shame to dissipate. He rued the day the Dark Lord’s emissary first crossed into Talamar, remembering his terrifying sense of foreboding upon his departure. He knew in his heart, even then, that his fate was already sealed.
Was there nothing I could have done?
he wondered.
The study was thick with blackness, suffused with the stench of Colton, blanketed with evil nightmares. Duke Leonardo heard a banging at the door. It sounded far away. They were beyond salvation, now. The floor and walls, even the ceiling, were completely covered with writhing, undulating tentacles, slithering in all directions, black and putrid, performing a frenzied dance of death before their eyes.
Dorothea reached toward Leonardo painfully stretching her fingers forward. He struggled more violently to break free to reach her. Through the thick smoke, through the growing haze in his mind, he heard something. A seductive disembodied voice, suffused with a calm fury issued from the void, “I can tolerate failure and trickery in my enemies, in fact I encourage it. You might even say I enjoy it. But I will not tolerate deceit from those in my employ.” The voice grew steadily stronger as it continued. “You freely accepted my request, yet you think you can deceive me! Know this—no one can deceive me! No one!” The room echoed with the thunderous voice.
A sickly sweet smell pervaded the room. The Duke and his wife stared at one another with what little strength that they had left. An overwhelming feeling of adoration suddenly engulfed them both, coupled with dread like none they had ever experienced. The faceless voice elicited a wave of conflicting emotions that enhanced the pain and agony that they were feeling, but at the same time, caused them to take an odd pleasure in it, a masochistic gratification in their own suffering. They were almost prepared to thank the perpetrator of this horrendous deed, they had become so instantly enamored of him.