Perilous Travels (The Southern Continent Series Book 2) (22 page)

They began the music then, Grange playing the first introductory notes as Grace waited, then added her voice.  The music was heartfelt, both of them moved intensely by the experiences of the previous half hour, and when they finished, they hugged wordlessly.

“I’m going to join the Queen now,” Grace said.  “You go see to your friend.  I’ll see you soon,” she said.  “Tell Bartar that I expect he’ll want to come to the palace tomorrow,” she said as she began to walk away with the guard, then disappeared from view.

Grange turned and jumped back onto the  arena floor, then began to sprint back towards the Yellow contingent.  He noted that the Red fighters shrank back away from him as he passed near their gathering.

“You all can go now,” he told them.  “The Melee is over, and the Queen has left,” he advised.  He paid them no further attention then, but ran onwards towards the Yellow team.  As he approached, he saw the other members of the Yellow squad start to clap for him, and they opened a corridor for him to pass through on his way to see Jadie, and then they clapped him on the back as he passed through.

Jadie lay on the ground, the knife handle still protruding from her leg, as blood continued to seep from the injury.  Her face was pale and drawn.

“Can you help her Grange?” Casey asked, kneeling behind him and placing her hands on his shoulders as she looked over his examination of the wound.

“I’m going to take this out of your leg,” he told her.  “It’s a jagged blade, so it’s going to hurt,” he warned her.

Make the blade soft
, a voice whispered.

“What?” Grange asked.

Turn the metal blade to rubber, to reduce the damage it does to the woman’s flesh
, the jewel explained impatiently.

No, not rubber, make it like her own flesh
, one of the jewels improvised suddenly. 

Not flesh, why not blood?
Another jewel offered. 

Or just air - make it change to air and leave the wound,
a third voice spoke.   They were talking over one another as they sought to advise him.  He found it amusing to think of the great powers of the jewels, suddenly squabbling among themselves about how he could use the power, and he found it to be a welcome, momentary distraction from the deadly chaos in the arena.

"That's good, thank you," Grange told them.   He looked down at the bloody wound, and considered the concept and how to translate it to the appropriate language. 

"Os gwelwch yn dda, pŵer, yn cymryd llafn hwn i ffwrdd, ac yn gwneud fy ffrind heal," he called upon the energy, then studied Jadie's leg intently.

The familiar glow of the energy grew for him to see, then the handle of the knife suddenly wavered as the metal blade beneath it dissolved into insubstantial air.  Grange snatched the handle as it toppled, then he saw the wound knit itself back together.

You were clever to ask the power to heal her too
, one of the jewels contritely whispered in his consciousness. 

"Grange!" Jadie's squealed in astonishment.  "I feel so much better!" she looked down at the wound as those who were crowded around her gasped and murmured in astonishment.  "It's healed!  I saw what you did when we were out at the farm, but I never dreamed you'd be able to do something like this!"

"Here," Grange stood up, then extended his hand to help his friend rise as well.

He looked up at the disappearing crowd in the stands.  "We ought to be going," he said to Jadie and Casey.   "I need to go to my embassy.   Someone must know why all this happened," he said in a low voice.

The trio joined with the others from the Yellow team in filing out of the arena, then walked together towards their own quarter of the city.  Others peeled off in various directions as they progressed, so that soon the three of them were alone.

"You saved the Queen and you saved Jadie today," Casey told him.  She grasped his hand between both of her own and squeezed it in gratitude.   "And you showed us some amazing things," she added.  “You’re even more extraordinary than I realized.”

He was changing, he realized.  He was growing comfortable with the use of the energy of the wizards.  His practicing with the wand, repeatedly filling it with power and then discharging it, had made calling the power feel like a mundane activity, when he knew it was anything but.  Yet even so, he found his knowledge of the ancient language was too incomplete for him to truly master the energy, to be able to call it to do anything he wanted – at times he had to grope for words, or find alternative ways to explain what he wanted.

Jadie suddenly threw herself at him, and then Casey changed the handholding into a hug as well, so that the three of them stood at the street corner where their paths diverged, and held on to one another.

“Why are you here, Grange?” Jadie asked.  “You seem to have the ability to go somewhere and be in charge.  Why are you just wasting time with us?”

“I’m not wasting time when I’m with friends,” he said sincerely.  “And I don’t want to be in charge of anything in particular,” he added.  “And I’m still learning what I can do.

“And you two have been a lot of fun to practice with,” he added.

“I wish my fiancé could hear you say that,” Casey told him.

“Fiance?  I didn’t know you even had a boyfriend!” Grange exclaimed.  “My heart is broken,” he laughed.

Casey pinched him in retaliation.  “That’s not nice.  Talking about a boyfriend while working out with swords never seemed important,” she told him, as the three of them broke apart.  “But my fiancé is convinced that you think Jadie and I are more than ‘fun’.  He thinks you want to date us yourself.”

“Do you?” Jadie asked.

Grange sputtered, until the two girls laughed.

“Don’t worry Grange, we’ve heard all the gossip about the girl in the palace; she talks about you all the time, apparently.  And your eyes light up when you see her, apparently,” Jadie stroked his arm sympathetically.

“Will we see you at the second day of the tournament tomorrow?” she asked.

“Will there still be a second day?” Grange asked.  “After the Queen halted the Melee, and then the attack at her tent, I’m not sure.”

“We’ll meet you here, and then go to the tournament together,” Casey told him.  “And we’ll find out together.”

The group went their separate ways, and Grange was back at the front door of the embassy minutes later, as the sky began to grow darker.

“Grange!  What are you doing here?  We thought you would be at the palace with the Queen!” Bartar said as soon as he saw Grange enter the building.  He hustled the wizard into his office and quickly shut the door, as Astel hurried into the room as well.

“She was safe, and her guards – the ones who were still alive – took her back to the palace,” Grange answered.  “And I think Grace went with her,” he added.

“We ought to take you to the palace as quickly as possible – tonight,” Bartar told him.

“Do you know what happened?  Whose fighters were those that attacked?” Grange asked.

“We don’t know.  Nobody knew.  We don’t know why the Queen stopped the Melee, or why the attack occurred at her box.   We thought you might have the answers,” the ambassador said.

“Are you up to going to the palace tonight?” he asked.

Grange thought about the palace and the queen, and then he thought about Shaylee, who Casey and Jadie knew about, and had said such intriguing things about.  “Yes, I think we should go,” he answered.  Shaylee had probably been at the arena watching the Melee, and had seen the conflict that arose.

“Astel, you stay here and watch things at the embassy,” Bartar told his page, and then he ushered Grange out the door and on the way to the harbor.

“We’re told that the palace docks are closed to all strangers tonight,” the ferryman said when Bartar tried to hire him to take them to the palace.

“They’ll make an exception for us.  This is the warrior who saved the Queen today,” Bartar insisted. 

“The Musician?  Ay, I recognize him – he stands out, doesn’t he?” the ferryman said.  “Alright, hop in, and we’ll try.

“I’ll charge you double though, just because of the risk in this,” he added as Bartar stepped down into the small boat.

The guards at the dock refused to allow the small boat to approach, until Grange made small balls of light hang in the air as illumination, intimidating the guards into allowing Bartar and him to land.

They hurried past the guards, up to the palace building, where they found more guards posted at the doors, men who looked tense at the arrival of the two foreigners, especially Grange, whose battle at the Melee had been widely gossiped about.

“We wish to see Clientes,” Bartar said calmly, asking for the Queens majordomo.

“The palace is closed to all visitors,” one of the guardsmen told them.

“This is the Musician, the one who saved the Queen’s life at the Melee,” Bartar said.

“We have strict orders, that no one is allowed in the palace for the night,” the guard answered.

Grange stood in confusion.  He hoped that Bartar might have an answer, a solution that would get them into the palace.

“If we could speak to the Queen’s wizard, Grace, the young lady who came to Kilau with us, I’m sure she would provide passage for us in to see how we can help in this crisis,” Bartar tried a different tack.

“We’re not going to send a message into the palace now.  The Queen is in counsel with her advisors,” the guard responded.

“I can talk to Grace,” Grange spoke up, feeling relief to be able to offer some tangible assistance at last.

He called upon the power, asking it to open communications between the two of them.

“Grace,” he called moments later, as the guards and Bartar stared at him, not informed of what he was doing.  “Grace, can you hear me?” he asked.

“Grange?” she replied a split second later.  “The whole room can hear you.”

“Sorry,” he said feeling slightly mortified.  “Bartar and I are at the palace gates, but the guards won’t let us in.  Can you tell them to let us enter; we want to know what’s going on, and see if we can help.”  Bartar and the guards could hear the conversation at his end as well as Grace’s companions could hear at her end.

There was a pause.

“The Queen is sending Clientes to fetch you.  Which door are you at?” Grace asked.

“He’s at the south conservatory door, my lady,” one of the guards spoke up.

“Eh, thank you,” Clientes replied.  “I’ll be there momentarily.”

The majordomo arrived in five minutes, and spirited the ambassador and wizard into the palace, then walked them through the halls to a meeting chamber that was brightly lit with many candles.  The Queen was present, as was Layreen, Shaylee’s mother, and Grace.  Also present was the trader Asloe, and his son, Persole, as well as a half dozen other advisors Grange didn’t recognize.

“What do we call a young man who is both a powerful wizard as well as a skilled warrior?” the queen asked as the two new entrants to the room stood in the doorway.

“Half the time, I call him Stupid,” Grace said, slightly louder than she had intended.

“We simply call him Grange, your majesty,” Bartar said after the momentary snickers subsided from Grace’s snide comment.

“I would like to call him a hero, for his valiant battle this afternoon in my box undoubtedly saved my life,” the Queen replied.  “But I am at a loss to understand who or what the attackers were, and why they were there.  We were just about to discuss that when your,” she paused, “message, came through to us.

“Did the attackers come looking for you or me?” the Queen asked, looking directly at Grange.

“It was really Grace who protected you, your majesty,” Grange answered.  “She created the dome over the two of you that shielded you from harm.  I was just fighting for my life,” he said truthfully, without revealing the one, crucial element of truth that he knew – that a demon had been among the attackers.

“Your majesty,” Asloe spoke up.  “I am very, very disturbed to say that those fighters were mine, but I have no idea of why they were in the vicinity of your box, or fought the way they did.”

“Why did you have a squad of armed men in the vicinity at all?” Clientes asked.

The question hung in the air, unanswered.

“Do you have an explanation?” the Queen asked.

“They were supposed to be for the Melee, in case we needed them,” Persole said in a low voice.  “They were supposed to be close to the Red flag, able to drop into the arena to help us if we had trouble,” he confessed his intended plan for cheating.

“They weren’t supposed to be near the royal box at all,” he emphasized.

“Why would they attack the way they did?” Bartar asked.

“I wonder if it was part of the opposition to my next trading trip?” Asloe answered.

“My trading post in the far south has been attacked, which is why I’m sending reinforcements, including the Musician.  I had a messenger come from the outpost and reported evil things happening there,” Asloe said.

“What types of evil?” Bartar asked.  “Can we talk to your messenger?”

“We can’t talk to him, Trale; your young warrior killed him today.  He was the one who rose up and attacked a second time at the end,” Asloe answered.