By Moonlight Wrought (Bt Moonlight Wrought) (57 page)

         “No, Missy.  That was a man I know.  He’s
the one that told us where you were.”  She looked confused.

         “Why didn’t he help me?  I made noise and
he heard it,” she said, tears filling her eyes and her voice breaking at
remembering her fear, and she slapped the bed in frustration.

         “I don’t think he knew it was you,” Dirk
said, hugging her close.  “He didn’t know until I told him that you were
missing.  Then he seemed upset and said that if he’d known, he would have saved
you.  He said he was coming to help us, but I guess he didn’t find us in time. 
But the Fiend was doing something against the King.  I suppose by causing all
the trouble.  That’s what the man wanted, to bring down the king.”

         “I don’t understand,” Melissa said, lying
back and closing her teary eyes.

         “Neither do I,” said Dirk.  “But don’t
worry.  He’s helped me before.  That’s the man who helped you carry me to my
room when the knights beat me up that time at Cinder’s place.  He won’t hurt
you, I promise.  The Fiends are all gone.” 

         At the mention of Cinder, Melissa began
to sob, but refused to tell Dirk why.  He still thought she was afraid of more
Fiends and he hugged her close.  Though it made her angry for him to think that
she was scared, since she prided herself on her fearlessness, Melissa let him believe
it.  She didn’t want to tell him the real reason she wept.  When she finally
fell off to sleep, Dirk returned to the hearth room. 

         “Well?” he asked Selric, “I guess it’s
time to get on.  I’ll take Tallow and Bear, if he’ll come, back to the store.”

         “All right.  We’ll probably get together
every week or so,” Selric said.  “We’ll have a party, or maybe a ball.  Who
knows?  Adventuring?”

         “No,” Dirk said quickly, his hand raised
and shaking his head adamantly.  “Not for quite a while.  I’ve had enough
adventure,” he said sadly.  Dirk and Tallow gathered their things and took a
wagon, with Bear in it, home.

         “I guess I can go home now,” Tallow said
quietly.

         “Yep, I guess so,” Dirk said.  He didn’t
want to ask her, and was glad when she volunteered.  “Will you still work for
me?”

         “At the store?” she asked excitedly.

         “Of course.  Where else?” he asked. 
Tallow shrugged with embarrassment.

         “Yes.  Yes I would like that, Dirk,” she
said.  “I was hoping I could.  I’ve learned so much, and the books are fascinating
and the numbers and keeping stock...”

         “Whoa,” Dirk said, “settle down, you can
keep the job.”  He put an arm around her and Tallow hugged him as tightly as
she could.

         “You’ve been so nice to me,” she said,
smiling.  “It was so sweet to move me in with you to protect me.  You’re
sweet.  Can I tell you I love you?”  Dirk blushed.

         “Hey!” Bear yelled.  “Knock it off.  If
anyone needs attention, it’s me.  Ouch, oh, I’m hurt.”

         “Well, you’ll have to find another girl,”
Tallow said with a grin, still hugging Dirk tightly.  “Dirk’s the only one who
gets my affection.”

         It was the next day when Melissa, Fiona,
and Aldren returned home.  It was tough for them all, especially Fiona.  She
had known the dead men a long time and had converted them to her religion. 
They were good friends and died protecting the only person Fiona had ever
loved.  To help with the loss of manpower, Bear agreed, when recovered, to move
in for the remainder of the winter and help protect their employer.  But in the
spring, it was time for him to hit the trade routes again, sooner if he
recovered and could replace his dogs, the gates once more open during good
weather since the Fiend had been dispatched.

         They would have moved out completely, but
Fiona’s temple was there, and she would not leave it.  But she did agree to
start looking for a place and when they found it, she would slowly move her
things; they would quit their jobs, and live off the money they had made on
their adventure into the moors.  Aldren stayed around and the girls even talked
of maybe taking him on one of their adventures.  He, like Melissa, loved horses
and he talked with her on the subject for hours, and they even took rides
together, distracting Melissa from her secret pains.  He did whatever it took
to help clear her mind of whatever saddened her so deeply.

         Fiona had done all she could for
Melissa’s leg, but the only way for her abdominal wound—the one given by the
Fiend’s blade—was time.  Aldren and Fiona constantly mothered her, and made
sure that she lay down at every opportunity in the early weeks, and always made
saw that she was not alone; for that was when she felt the most down.  Fiona’s
shoulder healed well enough in a month and she retained full use of her arm,
her steadfast prayers and use of divine magic kept her wound from affecting her
as deeply as Melissa’s.  Though Melissa limped for some time after and felt
pain in the original wound suffered at the hands of the Fiend and in alley for
the rest of her life, she was soon up and about.

         Selric and Alanna did not marry that
winter, as per the request of Lord Stormweather.  But she did stay in the
Marshal’s room until the family’s return.  Realizing the care she had shown for
him while ill, Mendric did warm considerably to her, and he was able to treat
her as she was, the fiancé of his only brother.  They even spent long hours
talking about this, or that, and he taught her much in the way of etiquette so
she could impress the Lord and Lady upon their return.  And at aristocratic
functions, Mendric often talked more with Alanna, than his own high class
companions.  Their relationship had taken a turn for the better.

         King Alhad Buchevelt sat in his vast
study, reading “Leadership Methods Through Mass Manipulation” by Acobar the
Malignant, famed tyrant who lived over seven hundred years earlier, when
Ponjess Thunderstaff came in carrying a box wrapped with a bright red ribbon.

         “What is that?” Alhad asked disdainfully,
his nose wrinkled at the apparent gift.

         “Your majesty,” Ponjess said bowing his head,
“this was found outside the gate.  It is addressed to you.”

         “Oh?” he said, his brows raised.  “Give
it to me.”  He took the gift from his advisor and looked it over.  A card was
attached to the top.  Alhad pulled the card from under the ribbon and read it
aloud.

         “Perhaps I should open…”

         “Nonsense,” the King said.

         “As you wish,” Ponjess sighed.

         “”This is a note to myself.  This note is
to remind me that I am only human, and as such I am mortal.  As king, it is my
duty to protect my people and I will do this above all other things, even if
these other things be favorable or profitable to me.  This note and the gift
attached are both to me, to remind me always that if I do not serve the people,
then I will not be their king.”  It is signed, “You know who, don’t you?””

         “What!” Alhad bellowed.  “What treachery
is this?  I want this culprit found and killed,” he screamed, his face red with
rage, spittle running from the corner of his mouth which he quickly wiped away
with his silk shirt sleeve.  “I want this...this threat examined.  Find out
whose handwriting this is and have him brought before me.”  He threw the card
at his tutor and hurriedly untied the ribbon.

         Ponjess glanced over the letter and
having copied his king’s hand thousands of times, knew exactly whose it was, or
at least whose writing it was modeled after.  Alhad opened the lid to the box
and looked inside.  With a gasp, he let it fall from his lap and the box struck
the floor:  a blackened, charred head rolled from it.  The skin was burned
tight to the large skull and most of the facial features such as the ears and
the nose had been burned away, but the lips were pulled back to reveal the
mouthful of teeth highlighted by the four large canines.

         “Who...who did this?  Who would dare do
this to me!  The King!” he screamed.  “Find out who’s writing that is.  Don’t
stand here looking at it all day.   Investigate!”

         Ponjess hesitated a moment, laughing only
on the inside, then decided to tell his liege, “My King, it is your hand, or a
very close forgery.”

         Selric walked alone down the street, as
he came to do later every night, heading for the same destination just before
sunset.  But tonight was the first night.  He walked into
The Unicorn’s Run
and though he had been in there alone many hundred times, it seemed so lonely
and empty that first night.  He sat in his seat and gently touched the chair on
which Cinder used to sit, the chair, indeed the table, where the guards now
forbade anyone else to rest.  Selric smiled then called for the most special
wine in the house, wine from Cinder’s bottle, kept behind the counter for
Selric and his friends only, and he drank a silent toast to her, and to his
dear friends.  He sat a few moments, then rose and walked out.

         He strolled down the street.  The sun was
warm as it neared the horizon, not a cloud in the late day sky.  Selric stopped
at the florist’s and picked up a bouquet of twenty violets and from there he
walked to the mausoleum.  This was not where the common dead were buried, but
the nobility.  Selric had arranged for Cinder to be put there, at least until,
and if, her mother or father came to take her.  He knew Cinder would ultimately
want to rest in a soft, warm meadow somewhere, but in the dead of winter, they
had no choice.

         Selric went in the door just as the sun
set, and he turned and walked slowly down the shining halls, his footsteps
echoing throughout the virtual catacomb.  He rounded the last corner and
approached her tomb, where he knelt and prayed to any god who would listen, to
be kind to her and watch over her wherever she was.  Selric rose to put the
flowers in the holder when he noticed that the single, delicate violet Alanna
had placed there a week earlier was still as fresh, soft, and sweet as if it
were growing in the earth.  He looked around, but this was no power of the
crypt, for other flowers sat withering in their cups.  No, it was something
else.  There was some other meaning to it, something about the life in that
flower, that cup.  Selric Arnesson Stormweather, second son of Andric
Stormweather, smiled that broad ear-to-ear smile, turned and headed home.

                                                                   
The End