The Medievals 2 Page 10

  The feathered screen is almost seamless, and it blocks Mulan from reaching Waldron. And while Wendolyn expects Mulan to fall back to earth, the hundreds of birds flock around her, holding her there in the air. As she hangs there helplessly, the darklings wrap the feathered veil around her, trapping her and muffling her voice.

  “Let her go!” Wendolyn orders.

  But Waldron ignores Wendolyn’s request. “You have a great weight that sits upon your shoulder. That Thorne was a clever Caemon. So too, Merlin. To think that you have been wandering through life not realizing that you had history’s greatest secret written into your own skin.”

  The menacing voice of Waldron sends Wendolyn back to her bleak existence within his lair on the Island of Forgotten Souls, and her bones suddenly feel hollow.

  “You betrayed me, Wendolyn,” Waldron accuses, and Wendolyn eyes the staff in his hands, wondering if he will end her life this very moment. “But I will forgive you.”

  Waldron takes a single, measured step forward. His red eye pulses.

  “When I am finished with the humans, I will return for you. As promised, we can rule together. You will be my queen.”

  Wendolyn feels her soul wither in the chill of this terrifying vow.

  BWWAAHHH-OOONNNNG!

  Suddenly, a resonant horn blasts through the upper chambers of the forest. She turns to look over her shoulder, searching the trees for its source. Then, the horn blasts again. It is the sounding of an alarm. And it is coming from the Tree of Ten Thousand Roots not far away.

  Wendolyn turns back to Waldron, but he is no longer standing in the patch of light. Instead, only his red eye pokes through the shadows.

  “Now,” his voice echoes in the dark. “Mankind will truly know fear.”

  With his malediction hanging there in the air, the red glow of Waldron’s eye disappears fully into the shadows. He is gone. And the darklings follow with speed, dropping Mulan to the ground and then fleeing into the shadows with their master.

  As Wendolyn rushes to Mulan’s side, she looks up to see an army of Truscans swinging toward them through the trees. And on the ground, Richard and the others race to Wendolyn and Mulan.

  “Are you alright?” Richard asks. “What happened?”

  But all Wendolyn can manage is, “The staff. It is gone.”

  ◆◆◆

  “I warned you that this would happen, but you did not listen!” Ivanhoe barks, his anger as sharp as a blade and aimed directly at Wendolyn. “And now, you have given wind to the fire!”

  Wendolyn is with the others near the base of the Tree of Ten Thousand Roots, the Lady of the Lake floating in the river next to them.

  “It is not the Descendant’s fault,” Mulan says, defending Wendolyn. “I allowed myself to be distracted. I am to blame.”

  “And that is supposed to make me feel better?” Ivanhoe asks. “That staff created the beast that butchered my wife! And you thought it wise to put that power in the hands of a child?!”

  Ivanhoe stands there in the moonlight with his tangled red hair and the patch over his eye, and he spits his words at Mulan. He is still holding his battle axe after futilely attempting to chase down Waldron in the forest, and he is now unwittingly pointing it at Wendolyn.

  “She is not a child!” Richard argues.

  Meanwhile, the Blind Shen draws a saber from her back and points it at Ivanhoe.

  “Do not raise your weapon at the Descendant,” Mulan warns.

  “Stop!” the Lady of the Lake orders. “The Rune means to destroy you all. There is no time for this.”

  Richard nods. “She is right. We must stop Waldron before he reaches the Realm.”

  But Mulan protests: “There is no we. My only mission now is to get Wendolyn to safety.”

  “There is the matter of delivering her to the King and getting my coin,” Loxley says as he takes a step toward Wendolyn.

  “That will not happen,” Mulan challenges.

  The Blind Shen whips her other saber from her back and lines it with Loxley’s chest, holding both Ivanhoe and Loxley at bay with her Guan Dao sabers. And just as quickly, Loxley readies an arrow in his bow.

  “Easy there, woman. I can get a lot less charming in a hurry,” Loxley retorts.

  Wendolyn’s nerves tighten as a standoff plays out before her.

  “El Cid thinks this is not good for anybody,” the Spaniard assesses, removed from the tension between Ivanhoe, Loxley and Mulan.

  “El Cid is right. We cannot fight each other. This is foolishness,” Richard agrees.

  “No,” Mulan says, shaking her head. “I was a fool back in the Cloudlands when I agreed to let you come along to rescue the Descendant. I forgot how weak humans are.”

  “Careful, Shen,” Ivanhoe warns, raising his axe slightly.

  But Mulan does not back down. “Like the rest of your people, you confuse fighting for strength. Perhaps you deserve this fate.”

  Mulan’s words set off Ivanhoe’s pent-up rage, and he suddenly brings his axe down on Mulan’s blade. Mulan sweeps Loxley’s legs out from beneath him, sending him to the ground, and then she turns all of her focus on Ivanhoe.

  A fight is joined, and sparks fly as steel clangs against steel. While Mulan is faster, Ivanhoe’s anger seems to power his body, and it is not long before Ivanhoe looms over Mulan with a raised axe.

  But just before he can bring the axe down on Mulan, a thin vine wraps around Ivanhoe’s wrist, stopping him. Then, another vine winds around Ivanhoe’s neck, restraining him. Wendolyn turns to see King Lemlee wielding the other ends of the vines like reins subduing a wild horse.

  “Enough!” the aged Truscan shouts, and everyone is surprised by the command in the voice of the smallish creature.

  But as Mulan recovers, Ivanhoe starts to choke against the pressure of the vine around his neck. Wendolyn watches Ivanhoe’s face as it turns blue, then purple.

  “Release him!” Wendolyn pleads with King Lemlee.

  “Why?” he asks.

  “He will die if you do not.”

  “Look at this man,” the King instructs, gesturing to Ivanhoe. “All he has left is his rage. He is of no use to us, and he is of no use to himself.”

  Wendolyn studies Ivanhoe’s one good eye, the blood vessels bulging with strain. Within his eye, Wendolyn sees surrender. As if he has resigned himself to his own death long ago.

  As if life is a fate worse than death.

  But she refuses to watch this man die. And so, reaching out with her hand, Wendolyn imagines the vines breaking, snapping free of Ivanhoe’s neck. And as she thinks it, so it happens. The tendrils that choke Ivanhoe burst into pieces, and Ivanhoe falls to his knees, massaging his throat as he gasps for air.

  Wendolyn looks to her hand, which was able to manifest the actions of her thoughts with an invisible touch.

  “We are wasting time,” Richard says.

  “You are right,” Wendolyn says. “We must hurry if we are to stop Waldron.”

  Then, Wendolyn looks to the Lady of the Lake: “You brought us here from the Cloudlands through the portal. Can you also take us to the kingdom?”

  The Lady of the Lake nods. And as she touches the river, the waters around her begin to glow, creating the same portal that brought them here.

  {Richard}

  Richard stands before his father, soundless words filling the air between them.

  The last time Richard stood in this room with his father and mother, Richard had pleaded with them to permit him to join the search for the Descendant. And his father had forbade him from going: “Son, you have the heart of a lion. But the rest of you is not ready.” Now, with the soft moonlight of the nascent morning shaping the faces of his weary parents, roused from their beds at such an early hour, Richard awaits the reprimand he deserves for disobeying his father’s order.

  “I am sorry,” Richard says, breaking the silence and hoping his apology will blunt the edges of his father’s rebuke. “I was wrong to leave without telling you.”
/>
  As his father considers Richard’s apology, water drips down from Richard’s sleeve and splicks onto the floor at his feet.

  His clothes and hair are still soaked after having walked through the portal created by the Lady of the Lake, which took him almost instantly from the Tree of Ten Thousand Roots in the Eternal Forest to the waters that run through the moat that surrounds the walls of the castle. There, Richard and the others were met by the night watchmen, who brought Richard directly to his parents while Wendolyn and the others were escorted to the Great Hall and instructed to wait.

  “No,” his father finally replies. “I am the one who was wrong.”

  Richard is surprised by his father’s words, and even more surprised by his embrace, his father’s arms wrapping around Richard’s shoulders.

  “You are not angry with me?” Richard asks, his brow furrowing.

  “I was angry with you, yes,” his father admits, releasing his hold on Richard. “In the days following your disappearance, I found myself furious with you for defying my wishes, for subjugating your mother to such worry for her son.”

  Richard looks to his mother, who has tears of relief in her eyes, her fingers steepled over her mouth and nose.

  “Had you returned then, I am afraid to think how I would have behaved toward you,” his father confesses. “But, with credit to your mother, I came to realize that I should not have refused your request in the first place. I should have listened to you -- not through my ears, but yours. In my rush to judgment, I overlooked a simple truth: your bones are my bones.

  Richard's father pauses, looking to the ceiling, presumably in search of his next words.

  The King looks back to Richard and continues: "I, like you, was once the son of a King, and I too wanted to step from the shadow of my father, to prove myself worthy of my place in this world. But I suppose such a great distance from my youth had dimmed my understanding of your desires.”

  Richard’s spirit is buoyed by the empathy of his father, and it feels as though the contours of their relationship have shifted during their time apart.

  “And the people? What did you tell them regarding my absence?” Richard wonders aloud.

  “I told them just what you said. That you had traveled to the Lands of the East on the traditional diplomatic mission following the Prince’s Triumph Day.”

  Richard’s father gives him a wink.

  “How it is possible, I do not know: but a boy of sixteen can become a man of sixteen in a matter of only weeks,” his father proclaims, before looking to Richard’s mother. “Soraya, what has become of our son?”

  Queen Soraya finds a smile as she moves to Richard, gently brushing her hand against the blond whiskers on Richard’s cheek.

  “He left us clean and beardless, and now he returns with the sweet damages of courage,” she muses. Then, she adds, “I would say that his soul has awakened.”

  While Richard knows that his mother means only to hearten him, her use of the word ‘awakened’ sends his mind back to his purpose in this room: Waldron.

  “Father,” Richard says, the urgency of the moment finding his voice once again. “There is something urgent I must tell you.”

  ◆◆◆

  “And what does this Rune intend?” Constable Clyburn asks, his thick caterpillar eyebrows stitching together with curiosity.

  Richard stands at the front of the Council Room, having just informed his father and the White Hairs of the imminent danger.

  King Henry looks to Richard, nodding for him to answer the Constable’s question.

  “He means to destroy us all,” Richard tells the White Hairs, who are circled around the clawfoot table, concern etched into their faces.

  Sunlight now planks through the windows and glows yellow against the stone walls of the room, and Richard cannot help but think that the warmth of the morning sun is in stark contrast to the grim reality that looms before them.

  “And how would a single Rune and two saurians accomplish this?” the Constable asks incredulously.

  Master Cheng, standing on the other side of the King from Richard, responds to Clyburn: “Waldron’s method of war will be swift and unpredictable, and we must prepare our minds for this truth.”

  The words of Master Cheng hang heavy in the air, and Richard is reminded of the Eternal Voice from his Triumph Day performance in the King’s Arena. It is a wise voice that seems to hold an understanding of history within its timbre.

  The aging Borin clears his wheezy throat before saying, “Even with the Sorcerer’s Staff, the Rune would need an army to overcome the power of the Realm. Does he have one?”

  Richard watches as Borin’s lips animate the wrinkles that dig into the dark skin around his mouth. There is some truth to the old man’s question.

  While Waldron was able to overpower Mulan and Wendolyn to steal away the staff near the Tree of Ten Thousand Roots, he fled before the others arrived, which could lead Richard to believe that he is not indomitable on his own. With the Army of the Realm having thousands of soldiers in the service of King and country, it seems feasible to imagine Waldron’s defeat.

  “You still doubt the power of the Rune?” Vladeen asks with irritation, his pink eyes narrowing on Borin. “You were foolish to question the Rune’s abilities before, and yet now, after he has secured the staff for himself, you still wonder if he can visit doom upon us?”

  “I have faith the Army of the Realm will withstand any assault by this Rune,” Borin contends.

  “Blood will sully your faith before the day is done,” the Pale warns. “Your confidence springs from mankind’s victory over the Runes centuries ago. But before your Endless War, my people were slaughtered by the Runes, and the few of us that survived were cast out of the Cloudlands. I cannot say how, for I do not yet know, but be certain that the Rune will have the advantage.”

  Richard looks to his father, wondering how the King will bridge the divide between two of his trusted counselors. But before his father can speak, the argument is interrupted by a knock at the door as Thomas, the King’s page, enters.

  “Your Highness, you requested the presence of the others from the mission,” Thomas says, bowing deferentially.

  “Yes, send them in,” the King says with a welcoming gesture.

  Thomas nods and then opens the door wider, revealing Ivanhoe, El Cid, Loxley, Wendolyn and Mulan waiting in the hallway.

  They all remain soiled by the journey, with their clothes and hair damp, and their faces showing unshakable exhaustion. To the White Hairs, Richard’s fellow travelers must appear like flotsam washed ashore by a rough tide.

  “Ivanhoe, my old friend, you have the appearance of death warmed over,” the King greets him with a smile, reaching out a hand to clutch the shoulder of Ivanhoe, who is first through the doorway.

  Richard can still see the red lines around his neck where King Lemlee’s vines had choked him into submission.

  “Did you slay your saurian?” the King asks his former knight.

  Ivanhoe shakes his head, the warrant for his enemy’s life left unfulfilled.

  “Well, you have survived to fight him once more,” Richard’s father tries to encourage. “And it appears my confidence in you was not misplaced after all. You have returned with the Descendant, and you also kept my son safe. My deepest gratitude.”

  Looking at the King with his one eye, Ivanhoe shakes his head: “I did no such thing. You give me credit for the actions of the Prince. Without him, it is unlikely the Descendant would be standing here with us. Or that we would be standing here at all.”

  True to his character, Ivanhoe speaks these words of praise for Richard without sentiment, recounting Richard’s actions as matters of fact and seemingly nothing more. But this does not stop pride from swimming into Richard’s chest.

  Richard cannot help but be aware that this is the very room where he was made to feel unworthy of the quest he once offered to lead. And it is the room that the White Hairs had vaguely mocked his convictio
n with the whispered sobriquet of the Poet Prince.

  But Richard manages to suppress this sense of vindication, making sure that it does not touch his lips or eyes. Instead, Richard chooses a humble acknowledgment of Ivanhoe’s words, a measured nod befitting of his father’s manner.

  In turn, the King looks to Richard, his eyes holding a secret praise for his son.

  “If we’re handing out gratitude, I did save the Prince’s neck a time or two out there in the Beyond,” Loxley professes as he moves further into the room, seeking the King’s attention. With a twinkle in his emerald eyes, he adds, “But please, I ask for no glory. Such gestures are lost on me. Perhaps, if you must, just a few extra gold coins added to my promised reward?”

  “And a reward you shall have,” the King assures the thief, tolerating Loxley’s shameless play for more money.

  Then, as El Cid moves into the room, the giant Spaniard ducking his head low to fit through the doorway, the King’s attention finds Wendolyn as she also enters, with Mulan trailing her.

  “And you must be the Descendant,” King Henry surmises, bowing with a solemn air to Wendolyn, who blushes at the show of respect.

  “Father, this is Wendolyn,” Richard says with unmasked delight as he introduces her, giving his father the name of the girl that has lived behind his eyelids for so long.

  “Your Highness,” Wendolyn says, returning his deference with her own bow, which is unpracticed but genuine.

  Her expression suggests that she had never before expected to one day meet the King of the Realm.

  And as the Blind Shen steps forward, Richard moves to introduce her as well: “And this is--”

  “Mulan, from the Order of the Shen, the Keeper of the Magnolia,” Master Cheng says with disbelief, his knee finding the stone floor of the Council Room as he finishes Richard’s introduction.

  The sight of Mulan seems to shake Master Cheng’s composure, something that Richard has not witnessed from his tutor before. And then Richard remembers that the Blind Shen is a legend from Master Cheng’s homeland.