The Ravenous Siege (Epic of Haven Trilogy Book 2) Page 9

  The woman retreated back into her cell, stunned at the sight she beheld. Her eyes flickered curiously, reflecting the sapphire glow.

  Cal watched her reaction in careful estimation, still trying to determine if they could trust her. He hoped that Deryn would discern her true intentions, or at least know whether or not they should help her.

  "Cal! Cal, are you alright?" Wielund shouted as he rounded the rickety stairs of the tower. "What is going on up there? I see light. What kind of-" Wielund stopped mid-thought. His words were frozen upon his tongue, for his eyes now beheld the tiny, blue-winged Sprite.

  Cal met Deryn's gaze, and the Sprite nodded with a humble yet bemused smile, giving Cal the permission he did not wholly need. "It's all right, Wielund, it's-" Cal tried to say.

  "What in the damnable dark is that?" Wielund said in wide-eyed amazement.

  "I believe the proper question is, 'who is that?'" the small, blue warrior retorted in feigned annoyance. "For I am Deryn, sentinel of the house of Iolanthe who is queen of the-"

  "Sprites," the violet-eyed woman whispered from the back of her prison cell.

  Wielund jolted and turned his head, remembering in a wave of lucidity what it was that brought them to this tower in the first place. "The weeping woman," Wielund whispered.

  Deryn and Cal followed suit, and the three of them stared at the golden-haired woman in the far corner of the tower cell.

  "Yes, my lady," Deryn said, flying slightly closer to her. "A Sprite, indeed."

  "You are one of them?" she said in utter amazement, rushing to the iron bars that held her captive. "The fruit of the trees? There are still your kind in this darkening world?" The woman knelt to her knees in a show of worshipful reverence; tears streamed once again from her pearl-colored face.

  "Cal," Wielund gulped as he took in the magical, rather unfathomable sights of both Deryn the Sprite and this beautiful woman locked in a cell of rotting iron. "Cal, what is happening here, my friend? What in the name of the THREE who is SEVEN is happening?"

  Deryn eyed the young smithy, calculating the intention of his heart before choosing to speak. The blue-winged sentinel flew closer now, meeting the gaze of Wielund with his own bright, blue eyes. "Do not be afraid, Wielund." He spoke with a soft confidence. "For it is in the name of the THREE who is SEVEN, our Great Father, that I am here."

  Wielund did not understand the full measure or meaning of the Sprite's words, but his worried mind felt instantly at peace at the hearing of them. He nodded his agreement, then looked for Cal's approval. Cal smiled widely, knowing full well that Wielund's reaction to the Sprite must have been similar to his own on that fateful day there under the Hilgari. He nodded back to the smithy and turned his gaze back to the woman and her cell. As he considered her imprisonment, his smile quickly disappeared. For as his Sprite friend came closer to the iron bars of the rotting prison cell, his blue light began to reveal more and more details of this forgotten place. Cal's face registered the complete shock he felt catching in his chest as he noticed the crude carvings that were chiseled into the surrounding walls of the prison hold. He turned his head franticly, scanning the whole of the room as he spun in amazed horror at the words that littered the walls of this forgotten place.

  Wielund did not understand what could have so quickly changed the playful smile of the groomsman to this face of dread. "What it is, Cal?" he said as he turned to see what his friend had become so concerned with.

  Cal squeezed through an opening between the fractured cells so as to get as close as he might to the words his attention had become fixed upon. Deryn quickly and instinctively flew ahead of him, his muted brilliance lighting the way for them both to see. Cal found the ancient writing that had been scratched here inside this forgotten cell, and his fingers traced their time-worn etchings.

  "What is it, Cal? What does it say?" Wielund asked worriedly.

  "Seek the light," the violet-eyed woman said without emotion.

  "You know these words?" Cal shot back, excitement overcoming his fears. "Do you know what they mean, or who it was that wrote them?"

  "Of course I do. All of my people know who it was that wrote them," she replied. "I have come here since I was but a little child. My father and his father would speak of the prisoners of Enguerrand … the tree men, they called them." She walked to the wall of her unbroken cell, letting her fingers find the carved symbol there where she had known it would be. "Come and see for yourselves," she called out to the three of them.

  Deryn flew with great haste back through the bars and into her cell, lighting the wall near her with his illuminated presence.

  "What is it, Deryn, what do you see?" Cal asked as he squeezed his way back through the iron bars, stopping at the locked door to the cell of the violet-eyed woman. His eyes went wide in disbelief. He stared, looking straight ahead with his jaw agape in child-like wonder.

  "Is that … ?" Wielund asked. "That … that's the sigil of the Priest King! That's ... how ... how can that be?" He too was now caught up in the unbelievable excitement of the discovery.

  "No, my friend. That is not the sigil of the Priest King," Cal said in slow, deliberate words. "Look here ... do you see it? There is no flint upon this tree."

  "I don't understand then, why would someone carve the sigil and leave it incomplete?" Wielund asked, confused by the very notion of it all.

  "It's not incomplete. This is not Jhames' sigil, Wielund. I do believe this is the marker of King Illium the light seeker himself," Cal replied.

  "What? That can't ... it can't possibly be his sigil! Illium set sail nearly seventy years ago, how could he ..." Wielund's words began to trail off as the realization of the moment settled in his mind.

  "My father told me that the tree men had sailed here long ago from the east, in search of a great magic, a 'true light', as they called it. But when the sorceress could not sway their intentions, she imprisoned the seven of them here in Enguerrand." The violet-eyed woman offered her story to the three who listened with enraptured discovery.

  "The King Illium? Here?" Wielund exclaimed. "Did you ever see him?"

  "I do not know any of the tree men's names, nor their faces. They were gone from this wretched tower long before I took my first breath of this darkened world," she told him, bemused at the silliness of his presumption. "But this place, and their stories, have always both fascinated and terrified me."

  "What happened to them then, the tree men?" Cal asked her.

  "No one knows, or at least none of my people know," she told him sadly, her slender fingers tracing the etched words and sigils.

  "Your people?" Cal asked her. "Where are your people, and why have they not come for you? Why have they not brought you fire to see by? Do they not know what frightens you?"

  She studied him there, this groomsman who could see in the darkness without aid of flame, this friend of Sprites … and her heart trusted him. There, within the iron prison of Enguerrand, the weeping woman with the violet eyes found hope in the Bright Fame before her.

  "My name is Astyræ, daughter of Aius the fallen. My people are the last of Dardanos, the brave few who did not succumb to the power and un-light of the sorceress."

  "Is that why you are in here, my lady?" Cal asked, his mind still reeling with all the possibilities of this incredible discovery. "The sorceress?"

  She thought about it for a brief moment, then sighed before answering. "Well, not exactly. It was not her hands that bound me in chains, nor her power that forced my heart to get so lost. But her malevolence, her insatiable greed, I still name at the root of it all."

  She stared back at him with those intoxicating eyes, and the wonders of king and kingdom blurred into the shadows of his mind. Getting lost is not as hard as I always hoped it would be, Cal thought.

  Deryn interrupted the moment as he came and rested upon Cal's shoulder. "She is beautiful, and I do believe that she is good and worthy of our rescue. But mind that you do not find yourself too captivated, my young friend. Do
n't be made prisoner to her beauty," he whispered into his ear.

  Cal half-smiled in embarrassed amusement, breaking his gaze and averting his eyes to the floor.

  "So this tower ... this um … Enguerrand?" Wielund said, breaking the awkward quietness. "Is this your people's tower? Or does it belong to the sorceress?"

  "Ha!" Astyræ laughed a disgruntled blurt of a laugh. "Nogcwren has no need of prison towers these dark days. There are very few left in this part of the world that have not taken her offer and are not now subject to her vile will."

  "Nogcwren!" Cal said with a quiet realization.

  "So you do know her?" Astyræ asked rather angrily. "Has she poisoned your mind too?"

  "What? No! No, I have never ... I've only heard her name from the Sprite Queen herself," Cal answered, fumbling over his words. "I only know of her, and that knowledge is limited at best."

  Astyræ stood there at the back of her prison cell, debating in her own heart whether or not this groomsman with the kind face and the winsome presence was safe indeed.

  "Honest," Cal pleaded.

  She let out a surrendering sigh and came forward, holding on to the rusted bars once again. Her soft complexion and golden hair made her seem so out-of-place behind the corrupted black of this dying fortress.

  "I will free you … if you like?" Cal asked her a bit timidly.

  "Free me?" Astyræ said playfully. "How do you dare to know if I deserve to be behind these rotting bars? How do you know that I won't be a danger to you if you free me of this prison?"

  He held her gaze for a moment, and then cautiously placed his calloused hands over top of her slender fingers. "I cannot say for certain that you are not dangerous; perhaps you are. But I have looked into your violet eyes, and I see the goodness of your heart there."

  "Did you not see the yellow there as well, groomsman? Did you not see the guilt of my treachery, the crime for which I have been imprisoned?" she retorted, a bit angered at his assumptions of her.

  "I did not, lady Astyræ. Though I do not doubt that it is indeed there ... I did not see it," Cal said with mercy on his words and confidence in his voice. He took Gwarwyn and placed the tip of the sword in the keyhole of the rusted, iron lock, and with one swift move he put the whole of his weight onto the fabled blade of the dragon slayer and sprung the lock free.

  Chapter Ten

  "WHAT?" JHAMES ROARED AS HE pounded his white-knuckled fist upon the writing table. The high, stone walls of the Priest King's chamber reverberated with the angry echoes of exasperated outrage. "What makes you think, Arborist, that I would give special attention to one of the Citadel's prisoners, one of our bright city's traitors, mind you, just because he happens to be one of your pupils?" The words seethed out of Jhames' lips in a mix of perplexed shock and satisfied amusement.

  "Your Brightness," Engelmann said with as much wisdom and restraint as he could muster, "if our city is surrounded by this ... this enemy, as you have yourself admitted, then would it not make the wisest sense to put our most able-bodied men in a position to defend what you have worked so hard to establish? Instead, you and the Chancellor foolishly lock them in the prison holds over such petty offenses."

  "You tell me," the Priest King said, "what business you have in the running of this city? What business do you have worrying about the affairs of king and kingdom, when your own charge is failing right in front of us all?"

  Engelmann ran his leathery, dark hand through his mossy beard, thinking hard on both the words and the intent of this frightened leader of the city. "Of running cities and ruling kingdoms, I know very little. But of the hearts of men, all men, even those who riot in your well-kept streets and rot in your iron-barred prison ... I do have wisdom to offer. Perhaps," the old Arborist said, waving his long, gnarled finger, "if you spent less time worrying about what is or is not my business, and more time actually listening to advisors who could help you, you would have a chance to save this great city of ours."

  "You are but a dying gaggle of scrub pines, the lot of you! Nothing more than tumbleweeds," Jhames cursed. "I name you and your incompetent brothers responsible for the demise of the great tree. Perhaps if you had spent less time with pupils and more time tending to your true charge ..." Jhames stood up from the table, letting his sentence hang limp in the frustration of the moment. His face had grown weary with the lines of sleepless nights, and his long white hair desperately clung to the dying remains of formality and poise.

  He walked towards the large, glass window, looking out over the great garden that had once been the crowning jewel of the hallowed granite face of Mount Aureole. Here, on this day, with but a single branch remaining, the identity of this once bright and proud people was most inevitably coming to a dark ending. "When that last branch fails us, Arborist, when our city is plunged into the madness of night and subjected to the vile foes that wait to destroy us, where will your wisdom be then? Useless!"

  "That is precisely why you must win the hearts and loyalty of your citizens now, Your Brightness!" Engelmann exclaimed. "Fear will not hold sway over the panicked rages of the riotous crowd, and it will not defend against the enemy that preys upon us all. Only hope has the strength enough to do that."

  Jhames just stared at the old, green-haired Arborist. The lamplight flickered in the wisps of the windy drafts that found their way in through the large, leaded window frame.

  "You can talk of hope all the way to your grave, Arborist. You can see just how much good it will do you. But make no mistake, when that last branch fails, so will your privilege to speak so freely and foolishly to me." The Priest King's eyes narrowed as he spoke. Though his words were cold and forceful, his expression betrayed a wounded pride and an uncertain fear that he no longer had the energy to hide.

  "It would seem to me that my privilege has long since failed here within the walls of this Citadel, for what use are words of compassion or wisdom on the ears of those too foolish to hear them?" Engelmann shot back.

  Offended rage boiled and bubbled beneath the surface of the Priest King's decorum. His face contorted into a wild-eyed snarl for the briefest of moments before he shook himself and let out an incensed breath. Without so much as a word, he nodded to his chamber guards to escort the insolent, old Arborist out of his presence.

  Engelmann watched the men approach him, but neither of them dared to place a hand on this once-revered enigma of a person. He looked them over, then smiled a sad smile, raising his leathery hands to show that he did not plan to resist his removal. "Do not worry, my boys. I know full well when my privilege has run its final course." Though he lamented the folly of Jhames, his eyes were filled with a kindness still, and he did not wish to wage war on the very souls that he hoped to save.

  "Take this to heart, Your Brightness," Engelmann said as he was gracefully escorted towards the tall, wooden doors. "The darkness that is coming—that is, in truth, already here—it will not give heed nor thought for privilege or office, crown or king. As the light of the great tree leaves this city, so does any confidence in man-made defenses and fear-won loyalties." He leaned back into the room, pointedly gazing at the Priest King. "You are not safe behind these walls."

  Engelmann left the office chamber by his own strength, fueled by a burning fury in the deepest parts of his chest. His anger was not merely focused on the ineptitude of this city's stewards, nor on the failure to release his young friend and pupil; no, his anger was directed at the arrogance of prideful men in powerful positions whose mulish ears refused the simple wisdom of humble voices. The doors of the annex closed heavily behind him as Engelmann stepped out into the chilly air of the faint amber morning. The winds of this world seemed to take on a more and more unpredictable nature with each felled branch of the tree, and the once temperate climate of Haven had taken on a bit of a northern bite of cold here in these dimly lit days. The Arborist began to make his way towards his home there in the great hall, but stopped short when he heard the bright, brass sounds of the Capital guard's trumpe
ts waking the heavy, silent air with hurried notes.

  The horns rang again and again in quick and deliberate succession. "This announcement must be urgent, indeed, I wonder if…" Engelmann's words fell short as he saw one of the mounted guardsmen, riding with maddened haste straight towards the entrance to the Priest King's office. The green and silver of the rider's tunic had been soiled with spots of rusted red and tattered with swaths of burnt black.

  "What has happened, son?" Engelmann shouted to the rider as he shakily did his best to dismount the lathered beast. "What in the name of the THREE who is SEVEN has happened?"

  The young man, who could not have been any older than Michael, looked dutifully at the old Arborist; it was clear in his eyes that he still held a deep respect for the mysterious keeper of the tree.

  "They ... they are … dead, sir. I mean, master Arborist," the rider stammered awkwardly.

  "Do not trouble yourself with formalities at a time like this," Engelmann said. "Tell me now, what has happened? Who is dead?"

  "The ... the woodcutters, sir," the rider reported.

  "The woodcutters?" Engelmann coaxed, puzzled at the rider's response. "Which woodcutters?"

  "All of them, sir," the young man replied as he swallowed back his fear. A deep anxiety seemed to overtake his features as he allowed the memory to surface in his thoughts.

  "All of them," Engelmann half-spoke, half-whispered in stunned amazement.

  "Yes sir, all of them," the rider said. His eyes lowered and his words caught in his throat as he recounted the tale. "Something ... something unnatural, something huge and dark … it flung their bodies and the carcasses of their horses over the North Wall and into the borough." The rider looked up at the Arborist. "Only ... only the bodies were on fire, lit and burning in a blaze of some evil, green flame."