The Beacon: Casus Belli (2)
Episode 20: "Royal Reports"
After another quarter-hour of discussion, the king’s mood had not improved, and Adon despaired of convincing him that Mat’s gift could be useful against the emanations. Scarcely listening, Lorens played with his food as others talked, occasionally taking a bite but more often drinking his wine, immersed in his thoughts. When he noticed most of his guests had finished their meals, he excused himself, saying he had other duties to attend to.
Adon’s crew remained a short while longer while the younger men asked for and received seconds, and Adon and Artema finished their tea. Mast, the most chipper among them, told them about his visit to The Alehouse the night before and suggested they meet there for dinner—his treat. Not having other plans, they agreed and soon dispersed.
The last to leave, the Oldhams hung their heads as they followed the captain from the room. Looking back, he saw their dejection and turned to face them. They stopped but would not meet his eyes.
“Look at me, you two,” he growled. His rough manner startled them a little from their misery, and they raised sad faces toward him. “You have no need to lose heart over the king’s skepticism. You did not fail. I’m sure he was hoping for a ‘reasonable’ explanation for the emanations, and our truthful report discouraged him.”
Mia’s expression lightened, but Mat seemed unconvinced. “He thinks we’re fools to believe I have the ability to affect the emanations,” he snarled. “And I knew he would scoff at the idea of elves!”
“I didn’t say we believed in elves, just that the old books called Gilgal’s wife that!” Mia shot back. “Don’t blame me!”
“Mat, Mia, stop!” Adon said in his “father voice,” something he had not had to use in years. But it worked as it had when his children were young. The Oldhams froze and raised their heads to look at him. “Arguing will not help. You must understand: He is the king. I’ve worked with him for a long time, and I know how he thinks. He often mistrusts what others tell him, and he questions everything. It is something he does to avoid being duped into doing something foolish.” He shook his head. “It can be very frustrating, I know.”
After a moment, he sighed. “So, right now, we just need to give him time to mull over what he heard. He will certainly ask the queen for her opinion. He’ll talk to advisers he trusts. I have no doubt he’ll call in the Master of the College and perhaps even the Prophetess. So, as loyal subjects and servants, we will wait upon his decision. And if we get another chance to speak to him, we’ll use the opportunity to present stronger arguments.”
Mat nodded, mollified by Adon’s explanation. Yet, he still asked, “Do we have any stronger arguments?”
“I don’t know,” the captain said honestly, scratching his beard. “It would take one of those waves of evil rolling through Palisade to prove it to him conclusively, but I don’t want that. Not here. Too many people. Who knows what havoc one would cause? We’ve been lucky to avoid them so far. We’ll just have to keep thinking. Something will come to us.”
They resumed walking toward the more public areas of the palace. Automatically heading toward his own suite of rooms, Adon paused as they entered the immense Central Hall and looked around as if trying to recreate his first sight of it. Light flooded the hall from dozens of windows high in the east and west walls. From its center, grand staircases rose, gracefully curving right and left to ascend to upper stories. Straight stairways led down to working areas and the servants’ quarters. Immediately to the right, the massive doors of the Throne Room lay closed, with uniformed guards holding long pikes standing at attention before them. Directly across the polished stone floor, similar enormous doors stood open to a wide, ornate hallway leading to the Royal Ballroom, the Grand Gallery, and smaller chambers and dining rooms.
“I’m sorry,” Adon said, exasperated with himself. “It just occurred to me that you do not know how to get around the palace. I assume so much. I grew up here, more or less, so navigating this place is second nature to me. But I would bet that if I left you two here, you could not find your way back to your rooms, right?”
Both of the Oldhams nodded.
“All right,” the captain said. “We can fix that. I will give you a tour so you can get your bearings. You can access everything from this Central Hall, but we’ll start at the main door where the king met us last night.”
Over the next hour, he took them first to their rooms, where Mia changed into a pair of more practical shoes she had among her luggage, which had been delivered in her absence. Then they walked through the palace’s common areas, inside and out. Spending almost a half-hour in the Grand Gallery, they stared in awe at the treasures and portraits of the kings and queens of Margonne while uniformed guards looked on. A large painting of the renowned King Margonne commanded the wall directly opposite the Gallery’s doors, and it was flanked by portraits of his queen, Carinéa, on his right and the Leitan Red Hawk Wise Woman, Qadira, his first love, on his left. In a glass case under her feet lay the famed dagger of Margonne, Qadira’s gift to him before the decisive Battle of Palisade two hundred years before.
Mia caught Adon’s attention as he gazed at the portraits. “Could this be one of our ‘stronger arguments?’” she asked, pointing at Qadira. While the portrait—commissioned by Lorens’ grandfather, King Alfons, a half-century earlier—focused on Qadira, the artist had added a golden dragon flying in the distance behind her.
“Ah, you mean the legend of Qadira-Dragon,” Adon said, nodding in understanding. The tale held that Qadira was a Skin-Changer, a person who could enter the minds of animals and command them. Both Qadira and her cousin, Chogan, the wicked leader of the Leitani and also a Skin-Changer, had entered far-away dragons’ minds, and when they met over Palisade, the dragons fought a titanic aerial battle above the battlefield. In the end, Qadira’s smaller golden dragon defeated the old, black Chogan-Dragon, which fell to earth in spectacular ruin, killing many Leitani warriors in his death. Many thousands had witnessed the two dragons dueling in the sky that day. What most of them would have sworn was mythical in the morning proved to be real by evening.
“It could prove convincing,” the captain said after a moment of thought, “especially since Lorens’ own throne rests upon it. Good thinking!”
With spirits uplifted, they enjoyed the rest of Adon’s tour. It ended outside behind the palace, where they walked through the formal gardens and finally up some broad steps to a path paralleling the wall at the cliff’s edge. From that eminent vantage point, the Oldhams admired the view of Chalk Lake and the western plains, looking off toward the West Road as far as they could see.
For Adon, though, the path toward the northern end of the plateau kept drawing his eye. When Mia noticed and asked him about it, he returned a slight smile, saying, “Whenever I come here, nostalgia fills me. My father and mother agreed to marry while walking along this path. It’s especially poignant now that my mother’s health is failing. Her physician has warned us she may have only months to live. My father is heartbroken but keeps positive for her sake. It comforts me to think about happier times.”
He took a few breaths to dismiss his melancholy mood. “It is still early,” he said, “so I will take you to the Santinetta house for lunch. Not far away is the family’s grand mansion, used mostly for official functions, and I’m sure you would enjoy seeing it. But I wish you to experience our home, the little house my grandmother Tiena bought after she left the palace. She raised my father there, and my parents raised me there, too. I find it relaxes my old bones—and my mind and spirit, too.”
The three retraced their steps through the palace and continued out the main gate, where the guards snapped to attention, saluting the captain. Following the descending Royal Road for only one block, Adon turned left up a winding street lined with expensive homes that became smaller the further they went. When about a hundred yards from the street’s end, Adon opened a wrought-iron gate and ushered them to the porch of an immaculately maintained white clapboard cottage featuring a black door and shutters.
The captain knocked and opened the door, stepping inside. “Thesis! Are you home?” he called.
“I’m in the kitchen!” came the answer. “Lunch doesn’t prepare itself!”
Adon shook his head. “That boy never stops eating,” he muttered. He waved the Oldhams to join him as he snaked leftward through the front room’s furniture to enter the sunny kitchen.
A tall, lean young man with curly brown hair stood at the counter, chopping carrots. An already finished pile of cubed potatoes lay nearby. Upon seeing his father with the Oldhams in tow, he smiled. “I don’t nearly have enough here to feed all of you,” he said, wiping his hands on a towel. “Hello, I’m Thesis, and I reckon you are Mat and Mia Oldham, right?”
“Yes,” Mia said, stepping forward. “Would you like some help? Mat and I cook all the time at home.”
Thesis held up a hand. “Wait there. I have an apron or two to cover your fine clothes.” He opened a closet and pulled a couple of aprons off a hook. “I never refuse a sincere offer of help.”
The Oldham siblings pitched in, frying potatoes, grilling strips of meat, sautéing carrots, and preparing fruit and cheese. Adon set a table in the south-facing garden behind the house and prepared a pitcher of lemonade from a recipe his grandmother had often served her guests during the summer heat. Thesis found some still-good, day-old bread and some butter. Half an hour later, sitting back in their chairs, they were all satisfied with a delicious lunch.
“I’m glad you stopped by, Father,” Thesis said after a lengthy lull in the conversation while everyone enjoyed the slightly cooler early afternoon due to a mostly cloudy sky. “I have something interesting to show you. Excuse me while I fetch it.” He jogged inside, returning a minute later with a scroll tied with a black ribbon. He presented it to his father.
“Don’t open it yet,” he said as he sat down, rubbing his hands together. “Let me explain my thinking first. You see, the day you left for The Corner, the king sent me copies of the reports about the waves of evil. At first, I read through them and saw only what everyone else did—that the report from The Corner was the sole outlier. I kept thinking they must contain more helpful information, but nothing occurred to me.
“Then, a couple of days later, it hit me: Just about every report noted the date, the time, and the wave’s direction. Those details allowed me to link a handful of reports to the same occurrence of a wave. Others that I could not link said their wave came from the direction of a town or road or landmark. A few said simply ‘east.’ Many of them read ‘northeast.’ One even had ‘just east of north’! So, knowing the times, towns, and directions, I traced our best map of Margonne and plotted the waves’ courses as best I could.” He waved at the rolled paper in his father’s hand. “That is the result. Please open it now.”
He and the Oldhams cleared space on the table for the captain to lay the map out for all to see. Thesis had drawn the kingdom’s familiar borders in bold lines on the thin paper, as well as its cities, rivers, and major roads. Towns that had sent in reports he had labeled under blue dots, and he had designated a few landmarks with crude Xs. But what caught the eye were the red lines he had drawn from the blue dots.
“By the Shepherd!” Adon said, not able to contain the oath. “Good work, Thesis! Have you shown this to anyone? The king?”
Thesis beamed, appreciating the praise. “No, sir,” he said. “I wanted your opinion of it first.”
“It’s amazing!” his father pronounced. “Though the reports’ directions are vague, they are all accurate enough to all point to the same area! What’s up there in northeast Margonne? That’s near the source of the White River, right?”
His son nodded. “Yes, most of the lines converge between the White River and the Bear Hills. The reports can’t help us narrow the target further, but they give us a general area to search. ‘What’s up there?’ Don’t you remember your Leitan history?”
Adon had to think only momentarily before he began nodding, too. “That makes sense!” he exclaimed. “The old Leitan fortress!” He snapped his fingers as he tried to remember the name.
“Essela,” Mat said softly. “The old Leitan tower high in the Dragon’s Teeth Mountains.”
Thesis grinned. “The young man knows his geography! Yes, Essela, where the remnants of the defeated Leitan army retreated after Margonne smashed them in front of Palisade. Margonne sent Bodnar Thorne with an army after them, and when they arrived at Essela, the Leitani had already abandoned it and scattered into the mountains. It was already crumbling then and wouldn’t have protected the Leitani if they had tried to defend it. Duke Thorne left a garrison there for years and even made some repairs and improvements, but the Leitani never tried to retake it. But if my map is correct, the warrior-priest and his Leitani followers have reclaimed Essela.”
A note:
The Santinetta family’s intelligence agency was the brainchild of Adon’s grandmother, Tiena. In a moment of foolishness, she had accepted the amorous advances of Lorens II, a well-known womanizer, and she bore her only son, Mardans, before the year was out. Lorens acknowledged the boy, but his queen, Karasta, highly displeased that he was accorded all the benefits of a legitimate prince, finally convinced Lorens after twelve years to send Tiena and Mardans from the palace. Tiena purchased a little house nearby with her own funds. Having a quick mind and a knack for gathering information, she began collecting intelligence, which she passed on to the king and his heir, Alfons. Soon, she had recruited numerous agents and placed them around Margonne and the other nations of Osegra. She became quite wealthy in her own right by selling her intelligence to interested buyers. Mardans took over the agency in her old age, and while Adon was the heir to it, his son, Thesis, with talents similar to Tiena’s, ran its day-to-day operations.
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"...a Skin-Changer, a person who could enter the minds of animals and command them." I have a villain who is capable of exactly that in one of my stories.