A Facet for the Gem (4 page)

He felt innumerable insect-bites of contempt from those he passed as he traveled to the sunlit courtyard of Korindelf’s castle. Then, a balm of elation followed when a familiar flash of gold caught his vision, reflected from within a tightly twisted branch of the large tree he visited when dispirited.

Legend held that it had been planted as a mere seed by the ancient being, Korine, shortly before his death. Founding the city as a haven for many against abounding enemies, he was said to have installed a high order of one hundred warriors, known as the Blessed Ones, to protect the people in his stead. But soon after, the One Hundred fell to an ambush from the shriekers, leaving the city vulnerable to invasion. It was when liberation had been won at the Battle of Korindelf that the tree sprang from the ground, offering a gift to the generations that would follow.

Stepping nearer, Morlen ached for the comfort it provided without fail, and began to speak to it, as he so frequently did. “Talking Tree, tell me about the Goldshard.”

At his request, the tree’s rough, gray bark crackled with a long opening across its face that parted into wooden lips, forming a broad mouth that recited the song he knew well:

“King of Korindelf may here retrieve

This offered Shard of Gold

And with it, gladly take his leave

For great power does it hold

It can change its keeper in any way

That he so desires

Granting youth enduring every day

Or all strength that he requires

But if you take it now, I warn

Though your kingdom it may aid

The kings to come may need it more

And will wish you had delayed

So then let him who needs it most

Withdraw it from my guard

And count himself above every host

While clutching this Goldshard.”

Its message resonated throughout the courtyard, and as it subsided Morlen stared upward, wishing to take the enticing Goldshard and transform into someone admirable, someone none could ever harm again. But, he could not do that. It was only for Korindelf’s king.

Nearing the citadel, Felkoth was emboldened at the sight of the mystic tree growing in a lushly decorated courtyard, and his eyes latched onto the golden object clasped tightly in one of its branches. He paid little attention to the unkempt boy who turned a captivated stare away from it to watch his arrival.

As he dismounted he was met by the king’s guards who stepped aside to permit him farther. He returned no greeting, however, as their pledge of loyalty was not to him. The great hall swam with sunlight that poured through windows cut into the thick stone, casting rays on the banners of Korindelf that displayed a wreath of white stars on a blue field. Across from the entrance sat the king’s granite throne and table, with a hearth carved several feet behind. Traditionally, after a battle, the king of Veldere and a contingent of Eaglemasters would join the men of Korindelf here for a shared feast of merriment and friendship. But not today, nor, he sensed, any day to come.

In the peak of the citadel rested the royal chamber in which, he surmised with loathing, the king now sat: the fool who had housed and wed his mother when she escaped from the Dead Plains. He strode through the great hall and into its rear stairwell, swiftly scaling its stone steps past corridors that led into the adjoining towers, and finally emerged in a hallway that stretched toward the king’s quarters.

Asking no invitation, he wrenched the door open and burst in, where the king faced him on an armchair yellowed with sweat, looking even more gray and frail than he remembered. Nottleforf, the wizard, stood at his side. “Father,” he announced, “at long last I’ve conquered our oldest enemy, even without the support of our allies.”

But, to Felkoth’s displeasure, he was not welcomed with praise. In fact, the king’s sallow eyes held him with resentment. “Yes,” he rasped, “I have just heard what took place between you and the Eaglemasters, though your story differs from the one they offered me.”

Felkoth’s attention fell on the wizard, who bent down to the king and said quietly, “I shall leave you now and carry out the task to which you appointed me.”

Then Nottleforf swept away toward the door, but Felkoth stopped him. “What part are you playing here?” he demanded, breaking free of all amiable pretense.

Nottleforf’s thick beard and silvery hair cut the air sharply as he turned to answer, and Felkoth was startled by the flare in his eyes. “I never play only one part,” he answered. “And neither do I have a tolerance for your lying tongue.”

“The Eaglemasters refused to comply with our plan of attack, yet I burned the stronghold of the South and laid waste to its surrounding lands without them—”

“And who holds the Dark Blade now?” Nottleforf interrupted. “Who commands the creatures it summons?”

Felkoth had no immediate words, trying to remain calm. “They are slain,” he said hoarsely. “All of them.”

Nottleforf looked at Felkoth sourly. “We shall see, young prince. We shall see.” Then his long cloak swished out of the room as he left, narrowly missing being caught in the door as it closed.

With the wizard gone, Felkoth glanced back at the king who, despite being ill, began to speak with a passion he had not displayed in a very long time. “Do you mean to say to me that Valdis, a man I have regarded as my own brother since boyhood, who has spent many lives and risked his own defending my kingdom, simply deserted us?” he snapped.

“Perhaps he was too vain to go to battle with bird stains between his legs,” Felkoth replied coolly.

In a surge of fury, the king leapt up and knocked him back a foot with a strike to the face. Felkoth merely stood quietly as the taste of blood filled his mouth.

“Nottleforf advised me to leave your army at the gate,” King Fendon fumed. “He said it would be a mistake to allow you inside, that there was something… not to be trusted in your victory. But the people have been terrified for so long under this specter of annihilation that whatever feeble incentive they had to farm, to build, to keep this kingdom from collapsing, vanished when that smoke rose near the blockade. This celebration of theirs is the only thing that gives them the heart to resume work tomorrow. And they know as well as I that you command the army on the field, but each man in its ranks serves me! So I will ask you again”—he panted, shivering slightly from Felkoth’s cemented focus—“what happened between you and the Eaglemasters?”

Felkoth spoke slowly, his eyes never leaving the king’s. “I have already told you. The men of Veldere betrayed us.”

“Liar!” the king shouted with a breaking voice. “Valdis sent word before you arrived here, which I and Nottleforf accepted. He said you disgraced them and spoke treason against me!”

“That is absurd,” Felkoth insisted, losing patience. “Do you not see what is happening? The wizard knows your life is near its end and that the time for my reign has come, so he works now to turn you against me because he wants the kingdom for himself.”

“Do you deny that you rebuked Valdis for honoring our alliance, which has lasted over nine hundred years? That you turned him away when we needed his army most?”

“Father, I…
we
do not need Valdis or his men. We are stronger than they are. We proved that by winning this war without them.”

“You fool.” Fendon sighed gravely. “This was about unifying both kingdoms in triumph after centuries of hardship. And you spat on our allies so that you could keep all the glory for yourself! But tell me, and let this be the last grief you set on me: Did you truly, in front of Valdis and all the Eaglemasters, name yourself Kordindelf’s king?”

“Father…” Felkoth persisted. “I confronted the challenge posed to us and left it in ashes behind me. What greater victory could have been achieved to secure the future of our kingdom?”

“You need worry no longer about the future of
my
kingdom. I tell you now it shall never be yours.” His expression slowly changed from one of anger to regret, regarding Felkoth as though he were the embodiment of all his life’s failures.

“When I decided to wed your mother,” the king went on wearily, “all of my counselors strongly advised against it. They said no one could have escaped the clutches of the South in such good health as she had. But, in my youthful ignorance, I was so driven by infatuation that I disregarded their warnings.

“Then, when you were born shortly thereafter, and as you grew, bearing no resemblance to me whatsoever, they said you were not my son. But, even then, I refused to pay heed to that suspicion, the one that has plagued me in my fading years. And now, as you stand before me, there is nothing of which I am more certain. You are not my son, neither by blood nor in spirit.”

Felkoth stammered as his prize became more distant. “I… I am your son. I have always been your sole heir.”

“I have commanded Nottleforf to bring me the Goldshard,” Fendon continued, noticing that Felkoth ceased blinking altogether as the words left his mouth. “I will use it to prolong my life, so that I can lead and protect Korindelf for decades to come.”

Panic began to grip Felkoth as his delicately cultivated goal came closer to being thwarted. “You cannot do this, Father,” he pleaded.

“You will never be king, Felkoth. I know that is the only end you have ever sought, and I know the horrors that Korindelf and all other lands would continue to face if you were to rule. And that is why it must never be.”

“But Father”— Felkoth searched for any saving words—“all I’ve ever asked is that you do not strip away what I’ve earned. I love you, and always have.”

The king laughed mockingly. “If only that were true,” he lamented. “But I know you, Felkoth. You love only power.” At that, he turned his back and walked away, the decision final.

Felkoth reeled from the blow, bitterly fathoming that he was to be denied what should have been given to him and no other. The numbness slowly melted, and he stood watching the king peer out over Korindelf on the wide balcony behind his chamber. Then, finally, he pivoted away and left without uttering a sound.

Pacing down the hallway, he knew what was rightfully his would be snatched away in mere moments. Soon he came upon his lieutenant, who awaited him near the stairwell.

“What news, my lord?” Nefandyr asked, his eyes bright with anticipation of good word.

What news indeed? With all the forces he had labored for years to amass, he could still be opposed, even defeated. There was only one way to seal his victory, and he could never let it slip away from reach. “Nefandyr,” said Felkoth in a deep exhale, “alert the men to wait for my signal. And then,” he trailed off, preparing for violent redemption, “take the city.”

Nefandyr bowed his head obediently. Then he asked, “My lord, what signal?”

“You will know when it is given.”

“Yes, my lord,” Nefandyr replied, making haste for the lower levels.

Then Felkoth, alone in the long, quiet hallway, drew the Dark Blade from its sheath under his robes, and began to speak purposefully, letting each word reverberate off of its cold, unnatural metal. “My beasts,” he called to those that remained in hiding at the end of his lengthy underground passage, which opened up just a mile outside the city gate. “The time has arrived for you to return to Korindelf, to taste the blood of free men once more, to fill your aching bellies and forget the cruel sting of hunger. Come now to the city, as you did centuries ago, and none will be able to deter you.” On hearing their new master’s call, the shriekers emerged by the thousands and hurtled toward Korindelf, licking their fangs in anticipation of the bounty ahead.

Having delivered his orders, Felkoth marched back through the hallway until coming again to the royal chamber’s closed door. He entered, and the king met him with a startled expression that turned to scorn. “Do not come to dissuade me now,” he admonished.

But Felkoth approached him nonetheless, closer now than he’d been before. “You want to know exactly what I’ve done?” he hissed with a growing smile. “Do you want to know how I won your war so easily? I rode alone into the heart of the Dead Plains, where no man of Korindelf has ever set foot. I rode where Mother told me to go before she died, where she said I would find my true father, her very own brother—can you imagine? The king of the South, high in his ancient keep, not quite the formidable adversary that myths and lore have made him over the years, I must say. A greasy fellow, really—unkempt, soiled in his own filth, but so pleased to finally receive one from his own lineage.

“We spoke briefly, as you might guess, exchanging pleasantries, reminiscing about lost relatives. Then I took his sword from him and ran it through his gut, watching him slip and fall in a pool of blood while the word ‘son’ still echoed from wall to wall. After that, I doused him and the rest of his tower with the casks of siege oil he kept in such ample supply, and burned it all to the ground.”

The king tried to make for the door, but Felkoth stepped directly in front of him. “I know you met the shriekers in battle when you were young, insulated by your many swordsmen who took the brunt of their assault. But oh, if you could hear their cries all around you, rising for miles upon miles in every direction. You speak of horrors the world has faced—the world does not know horror, Father. Not yet.”

“Guards!” the king yelled, voice brittle with fright, and Felkoth put a hand over his mouth, holding him as he trembled.

“Shhh,” Felkoth whispered gently. “Your friends aren’t coming, Father,” he assured, kissing the old man’s wrinkled, sweat-drenched brow while gazing past the balcony ahead. “Only mine.”

Morlen’s innards churned for a long while after being so close to Prince Felkoth, who undoubtedly went to claim the king’s endorsement as successor. The rippling of a cloak in his periphery alerted him to Nottleforf’s approach from the castle entrance, and the wizard’s unsettled look only confirmed his suspicions.

“What’s happening in there?” he asked, but before the wizard answered, one of Felkoth’s soldiers rushed to the citadel, tethering his horse so loosely in the courtyard it seemed he intended to be in and out quickly.