Out of the Faold (Whilst Old Legends Fade Synchronicles) (33 page)

When reports came to him that this small child had faced a demon, struck it down to protect her kin, he had teared up. She was a hero to them all. And she still had that strength, the confidence, in everything she did. She didn’t let it get to her head. She had returned the same silly child climbing trees and wrestling with his son, had never made any demands or expected anything from him. He gave her the respect she deserved, gave her a position as a councilor and friend. And now, he saw her as the young woman she was, beautiful yet still a child pla
ying in the field with the dog.

And she had just promised herself to him out of the love for her sister, to save her sister from a fate of marrying a man she didn’t want. With a great sadness, Fredrick realized that Pearl had simply traded places with Krisa. Once again, she battled a demon to help her friends. And he was the demon.

Pearl noticed him watching and waved with a big smile. She started to run toward the kennel to see him, but Fredrick walked away sadly. Pearl stood, in the middle of the field, wondering what happened.

She searched for him in the library. Pearl went through the narrow passage into the war room. She asked guards and housekeeping staff if they’d seen him. No one had. Well, no one told her they had. She spent the evening in the library waiting for him
, barely able to read her book.

Three days he avoided her. She was not permitted into the war room when he met with advisors and staff, which had never been off limits before. He didn’t appear in the library at all. He didn’t ask her or the Dorans to dinner. She gave up, wondering what she’d done to anger him. He’d asked so many times for her to marry him. It was his idea of a joke most of the time, to see how much he could make her blush. But she thought he would be happy, not be angry or hide from h
er. She just didn’t understand.

Pearl had stopped wearing her blue sacred robes. At that meeting with the Siri, when he looked at her for help, at any of the meetings, she stood as a symbol, a trophy, beside him. She was his power. She told him what to do, or helped him make decisions. He needed her to add validity to his claim as a strong King. She was god-
smiter
. She was with him and supported him. So she stopped wearing the robes. For him. To test him. To see if he looked at her as a woman, the way a man should want a woman, or if he just wanted her as her robe, as god-
smiter
. And maybe she had her answer. He had left her.

Darius clomped along the corridor in his big boots eating a tasty sweet Tomas had just given him. He licked the ho
ney off the side of the pastry.

“Doran!”

Darius stopped mid-stride, honey sliding down his thumb. He sighed loudly and turned to find the King watching him from a doorway.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said,
slumping his shoulders.

“Aren’t you supposed to be following Miss Glory?”

“I was, Your Majesty.”

“Come in, Darius.”

They walked into a small room set up with a plain desk, a few uncomfortable chairs and a single lantern.

“Is this where you’ve been hiding?” he asked the King.

“Hiding?” Fredrick enquired with a frown.

Darius nodded, licking the last of the honey off his fingers and swall
owing the last scrap of pastry.

“Mama said you were busy.”

“Oh, well I’ve been doing a lot of work here privately.”

“But Pearl said you were hiding from her.”

“Why would I hide from Pearl?” he asked, surprised.

“Are you afraid of her?” Darius asked seriously.

“No, are you?”

“A little bit,” he told him. “When I don’t pick up my toys or when she can’t find me.”

The King smiled and said, “I guess I am afraid of her a little.”

“She’s the best girl I know, though,” he said. “Sometimes when I think she’ll be mad she isn’t and just hugs me. She tells me the best stories and if I get hurt she kisses it all away. She’s like my mama. But Mama doesn’t get all dirty with me and wrestle pigs like Pearl does.”

The King agreed. “I also think she is the best girl. She sits and talks with me and tells me stories too. And if I’m worried about work she tells me what she thinks and it helps me decide what to do. When she gets mad at me she doesn’t stay mad long and then she smiles.”

Darius nodded. “So why are you afraid of her?”

The King couldn’t answer. Darius gave him a big grin, looking just like his father. “Ok, out you scoundrel. I have work to do.”

Darius jumped toward the door. “Father and the Marshalls are having sword practice later if you want to come. I’m going to practice too.”

“I might,” he told the boy, smiling. “Oh, and Darius, you will keep my secret office secret?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

“No!? Are you disobeying an order from your King?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Darius said apologetically. “Mama says no more secrets. She got really mad when I hid Krisa and left Glory for sweets and …I just can’t hide things anymore.”

“I see,” Fredrick said. “Well, you are very smart to fear your mother more than you fear the King.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Darius ran down the hallway in his hurry to inform Pearl that the King was, indeed, afraid of her.

“She stopped wearing your robes,” Vunn told Caris from over her shoulder. “Aren’t you afraid she is losing her faith?”

“No.”

“She has removed them to test her King. She has more faith in that man than she does in you.”

“I didn’t see your minions wearing your…shift.”

“As you may remember,” he snarled. “I wear the ancient garb of a powerful god.”

“You should change, since that isn’t your station any longer,” she told him, watching Pearl in the arch.

“They took my power from me. And you still think they are cute little harmless toys to play with.”

“You are the one playing with them,” she told him. “Pearl and that King are in the
throes
of an insane war of wills, neither knowing what the other really feels and you are keeping them apart then throwing them together and keeping them apart. What are you playing at?”

“They are making love without the skin,” he told her. “Next I’ll throw them together again, get them to the peak of release and toss them apart again. It will be very arousing to watch.”

He slid his hands around her waist and held tight. She asked, “And how do you know you will succeed? What is your goal? Simply arousal? That is easily achieved without playing with my darlings.”

“She took something from me I held
dear,” he breathed in her ear.

“Your knockers? That’s what this is about?”

“She took my power.”

“As I remember, all three of them did that to you. Why her?”

“Who controls the heart and mind of the King?”

“Pearl.”

“Who controls that…” and he spit out the word, “…boy?”

“Pearl.”

“Who controls the princess and the Siri witch?”

“Pearl.”

“She has the power to control everyone, whether they know it or not, whether she knows it or not,” he told her, running his tongue down her neck and lowering his hand. “So I get great pleasure from controlling her.”

“And if she won’t be controlled?”

“If she can withstand my control, you must end this,” he said nodding at the images through the arch. “They are too dangerous.”

She paused before asking, “Why do you hate the boy so much? He is an innocent.”

An image of Darius smiling at his mother appeared before them in the arch. The focus shifted to Coral. Caris looked back at Vunn.

“It’s her, isn’t it? You lusted for her and you didn’t get her.”

“I could have made her great,” he snarled. “That child should have been mine.”

“You couldn’t have made him anyway. And she already is great. And so is he.”

“It all could have been mine.”

“Well, it isn’t,” she told him stepping away from his wandering hands. “It’s mine.
You lost your world due to mis
management.”

“They took it from me,
”
he spat pulling her back to him, roughly squeezing her
soft flesh,
bruising her.

“You took it from you,” she told him.

He
dragged
her with him into the greyness
.

Darius had great fun at sword practice. He stripped his shirt off like the men and danced around the poor Marshall who had offered to be his target practice. With his scrawny arms and knobby knees sticking out the top of his boots he jumped around with a wooden stick smacking the Marshall who had to fight from the undignified position of either sitting or on his knees. It often turned into a tickling or wrestling m
atch when Darius got too close.

Krisa was allowed to attend, as she was now a Marshall. When she asked Darius if she had to remove her shirt like he did he had fits of giggles. Princes Tomas and Jimm attended as well, appearing bashful about sparring with the Marshalls until their father strode in challenging Amias to a good knock around. He wasn’t bad with a sword, but was out of practice.

“We have to do this more often,” he laughed, breathing heavily.

Kel took on Krisa. He was instru
cted by Amias not to be gentle. H
e needed to see what she’d been taught and what needed work. When she’d forced him to the ground four times and he pled for mercy Amias was pleased. He certainly got a good deal out of the bargain with the Siri. Pat was the only one who could keep up with Krisa until she swept him, too, and he landed on his backside. A
s he told it, that was typical.

Everyone switched partners frequently, Darius getting first pick, of course, and no one wanting to spar with Krisa. The small smile on her face was one of triumph and pride. Pat loved that look on her. She’d been so sad and troubled lately
. He was proud of his new wife.

A loud bang sounded at the end of the training field as the door hit the wall. There stood Pearl, arms crossed under her breasts, a scowl on her face. Darius, Jimm, Fredrick and Amias all looked at each other, wondering if it was he she was after. Both Darius and Fre
drick stepped forward, timidly.

She waved Darius away saying, “Go play.”

So it was him, Fredrick sighed inwardly, picking up his shirt and turning to Amias with a pleading look on his face.

“We are in the middle of practice,” Amias called out. “Can’t this wait?”

“No,” she barked.

“I tried,” Amias told him in low tones.

Fredrick walked off the training field. The men waited until he was gone to snicker. Kel startled Tomas with a smack against his backside for laughing at his father.

“If Glory was over there pointing her finger at you, you think you’d tell her what’s what?”

Tomas stared at him with big eyes, realizing Glory had him by the knockers as ti
ghtly as Pearl had his fathers.

“That’s right men,” Amias said, “They have more power in their pointing finger than we have in these swords. But we have to keep a brave face.”

Krisa hid her laughing face in her hands and peeked at Pat, who had gone scarlet. He had to admit the truth in the comment, but it was difficult to do with his wife standing there laughing at him.

Pearl didn’t say a word. She just stood looking at him. When he turned away to flap out his shirt and think of what to say, she let her eyes drift to his chest and back, which she’d never seen before except hidden under layers of clothing, shirt, vest, short coat, overcoat, formal jacket, always covered. He was well toned with a decent amount of softness for a man in his mid-forties. The hair on his chest showed the same grey intermixed with the darker. Her eyes snapped back up when he turned his head toward her.

“Why aren’t you in your robes?” he asked, his eyes narrowed.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have a good answer. Telling him they were being cleaned would sound ridiculous. But she couldn’t tell him the truth.

“Why are you hiding from me?”

“I’m not hiding,” he told her. “I’m right here.”

“No, you aren’t. You are turned away, ready to run.”

He sighed and turned around to face her. “Can I put my shirt on now? I was just trying to maintain my modesty.”

She nodded, embarrassed but refused to show it. Her eyes lingered on his stomach as he slid the shirt over his head and pulled his arms through. His perspiration still glistened o
n his face from their practice.

“I haven’t seen you in almost a week,” she told him. “Why are you avoiding me?”

“I didn’t know I was.”

“Now you are lying to me,” she said.