The Jester: Prologue
Episode 1: Margonne's Dagger
“What are you rascals up to?”
All six children arrayed around the display case flinched at the authoritative voice, the youngest of them scurrying to hide themselves. They had not exactly been forbidden to enter the palace’s museum-like Grand Gallery, but the youngsters lacked the adult supervision they had been told they needed. Having caught them admiring the treasures of House Ankara just the week before, the collection’s custodian had sternly reminded them of the rules.
“Father, you startled us!” the oldest of the light-haired children, twelve-year-old Carla, responded a little breathlessly. She was two years older than her brother, Alfons, and four years older than her younger brother, Lirens. Also present was Mardans, a product of one of their wayward father’s many flings, who grew up in the palace alongside the legitimate children. These two youngest brothers, Mardans and Lirens, poked their heads out from behind the case.
King Lorens II laughed heartily. After he had caught his breath, he said, “I’m sorry, children. I didn’t intend to surprise you.” After a moment and another chuckle, he added, “Well, maybe just a little.”
Alfons, his heir, stood as straight and tall as he could, declaring, “We were just admiring King Margonne’s Dagger, sir.” Several heads nodded in agreement.
Lorens, a tall, still handsome man with broad shoulders and graying hair hanging to his mid-back in a tail, stepped forward and peered into the case. It housed a long dagger with deep purple stones on its pommel and cross-guard, glittering in the early afternoon sunlight pouring through the Grand Gallery’s tall windows. Ornate script ran along its edges, reading, “I serve Margonne the Strong.” Below it on purple velvet lay its tooled, black-leather scabbard boasting a silver throat and finial and a sinuous golden dragon seeming to soar between them.
The king smiled with pride. “It’s been a while since I’ve stopped to look at anything in here. I must admit, this dagger is a beauty! It is one of the most precious heirlooms of our House.”
“Was it really Margonne’s war dagger, my lord?” asked the youngest child present, a cousin named Formosis, who was a year behind Loren’s youngest sons. He could not seem to stand still, bouncing on his toes and waving his arms. He and his older sister, Désira, had joined the expedition to the Grand Gallery when they had heard it could be risky. They had not wanted to appear any less courageous than their royal cousins.
“Hmm,” answered the king, considering how to answer his question. “If I recall my history correctly, Margonne carried it in the battle for Palisade—the Leitani called it Huqsela then—but he never used it. It was more formal and ceremonial. In fact, I think he thought it was a good luck charm because of who gave it to him.”
“So, who gave it to him, sire?” asked Désira after no one else spoke up. Just a few months younger than Carla, she begrudged having to associate with so many little kids. She would rather have spent her time with her older brother Amancuse’s friends. They were more fun.
“It was a gift from his true love, Qadira,” said the king. “You must ask your tutor to tell you that whole story.”
Young Mardans’ face screwed into a confused frown. In a small voice, he asked, “But wasn’t Margonne’s queen Carinéa of Aertella?”
Lorens nodded, a sadness appearing on his normally cheerful face. “Indeed, it was. Good for you for remembering! You can see Carinéa’s likeness in that painting there.” He pointed to a portrait across from the Gallery’s main doors of a beautiful blonde woman in a sky-blue silk gown, majestic snowcapped mountains rearing behind her. “You see, Margonne and Qadira never married because she did not survive the fight that fateful day. He mourned her loss until the end of his days. Though he married Carinéa to produce heirs for the kingdom—and from what I’ve heard, they grew to love each other in time—the king’s true love was always and forever Qadira. That is what they taught me when I was your age.”
“Wasn’t Qadira a Leitan?” asked Carla. “‘Qadira’ isn’t a Taurani name.”
“Yes, she was—a Red Hawk Wise Woman at that!” he answered. “I’ve often wondered what the kingdom would have been like if they had married and ruled this land together. Perhaps we and the Leitani would enjoy better relations.” After a moment, his eyes appeared to twinkle. “One thing is for certain: We would all have Leitan blood in us and probably have black hair!” The children laughed.
“Father, did you not wear his dagger at your coronation?” Alfons asked.
“I did,” he answered, “and so will you when you succeed me. It is a vital part of the regalia of Ankaran monarchs, linking us to the magnificent Margonne, the founder of our line. And it links us to Qadira, too, and what she had inscribed on the dagger. ‘I serve Margonne the Strong’ are not just some pretty words. The kings of this land serve Margonne, the kingdom the great man founded. The dagger helps us remember that.” He leveled his gaze at Alfons until the boy nodded his understanding.
Just then, through the Gallery’s open doors, they heard a man’s voice, high-pitched and nasal, invoking the gods of Osegra for help to secure Margonne’s treasures from the depredations of children’s grimy hands and flailing arms and legs. The king grinned and winked, putting a finger to his lips. The custodian entered the Gallery, still complaining that the palace children never listened to him, and he might need to take it to the king himself if they continued to flout his authority in such a blatant manner. His tirade stopped abruptly.
“You were saying, Rasmus?” asked the king.
The older man stood like a statue, mid-stride, his mouth gaping open, eyes wide in shock. He stared at Lorens, who leaned against a case, arms and legs crossed, his children and their cousins arrayed around him, all trying not to laugh. Rasmus began to stammer out an apology but thought better of it and kneeled on the floor, eyes downcast. “Forgive me, Lord King! I had no idea you were here with them!”
“Get off the floor, you old curmudgeon,” Lorens said, not unkindly. “As much as you don’t trust my children or those of House Tilanta around these treasures, they appear truly interested in them. They will not harm them, and if they do, they will face my wrath. Let them visit. Tell them the stories that go along with them. Answer their questions. You may eventually find they are almost human.”
He pushed off the case and strode toward the doors. “Come, children! You’ve had your lesson. And we should let Rasmus be. He probably needs a drink!”
Sixteen Years Later
On the day of the new moon, a cloudy one portending rain, the palace halls stood empty, awaiting the dawn still a few hours away. Guards watched vigilantly at the exterior doors, and a half-dozen of them patrolled the royal family’s corridor upstairs. The cook and her kitchen minions were enjoying their last hour of sleep before their daily toil began with reviving the oven fires, pumping water, and baking the day’s supply of bread. Even the cats and mice seem to have turned in from their nightly forays.
Yet, not all was still. On the second floor, a slim shadow detached itself from a larger one and flowed across a hallway, melding into another. If there had been an observer, perhaps a guard or an early rising servant, he might have considered it vaguely human-shaped but could not tell if it belonged to man or woman, old or young. Whatever its identity, the wraith-like form was quick and lithe, making the observer wonder if he had seen something move or had just imagined it. Had he blinked, he would have missed it altogether.
The dark figure kept moving, covered by especially deep shadows on one side of the hallway. Reaching a crossing corridor, he—if indeed it was a man—slipped without hesitation around the corner, coming to an unlit stairwell that took him to the ground level. A few shortened tapers flickered drunkenly in their sconces upon the walls. Some had already gone out. Taking advantage of the deep gray spaces between the dim pools of light, the form zigzagged across the open area, stopping at the intersection of another hall and merging with another shadow.
With deliberate care, he peeked around the corner. Like his route so far, this corridor was also silent and empty. A few sconces glowed along its length, many about to extinguish themselves in their own wax. The slim figure glided like a specter along the near wall to the hall’s halfway point and sat for a moment on his haunches, taking a quick look left and right. His objective, large double doors, their upper halves filled with glass panes, stood across from where he crouched. Dim as it was, the light glowed brighter there, and should a guard or servant enter the corridor, he would surely see the black-clad form.
Rolling, he shot across the hall and came to a crouch in front of the doors’ lock, an old, simple mechanism of a kind that had not foiled him since his early days on the streets of Kingsport decades ago. He had been a snot-nosed pickpocket then, cutting purses and occasionally smashing shop windows for a local kingpin. As he forced the lock with practiced ease and a minimum of noise, the thief—for so the dark silhouette was—fleetingly acknowledged to himself that he had been at his trade for a long time. In fact, his black knit cap covered dark hair streaked with gray. He supposed he could consider retirement after this score.
Opening the door only wide enough to slip through, the thief closed it noiselessly before rushing toward the far end of the long, vaulted room. It had many tall windows on one side, letting in too much light for his liking even on this black night. Fortunately for him, the place where his prize awaited lay in shadow. Once there, in front of a waist-high glass case, the thief removed a set of tools from a pouch at his waist and went to work without delay. In a minute or two, after a bit of scraping, which sounded startlingly loud in the silent room, there came a soft pop and a nearly imperceptible sigh.
Placing the glass disk with a slight clink on a nearby table, the thief removed the contents of the breached case, a dagger studded with purple gemstones, sliding it into its leather sheath. He swiftly wrapped it in black cloth and slipped the resulting bundle into a narrow pocket in the back of his jacket, securing its flap with a looped thong around a toggle. Almost forgetting his instructions, he pulled out a small sheet of parchment from a pants pocket at the last moment and tossed it through the hole in the glass. In an instant, the tools were returned to their pouch, and the thief left the room, retracing his route to the stairwell.
Rather than climbing the stairs back to the second floor, he took a darkened hallway under them. It led to the servants’ quarters and, by a connecting hallway, to the yard via the stables. He stopped his flight only once, flattening himself into the closest doorway when he heard a creak somewhere in the darkness before him. After a wait of what seemed like several minutes, assuming someone had turned over noisily on his bed, he stepped cautiously forward and soon resumed his quick pace. The stable boys were still snoring in the loft, and the horses barely stirred as he stole into the yard, up the corner of a nearby wall, and down an overhanging tree to a clean escape.
A little background:
The events narrated by Lorens II—the dagger's origin and the final major battle of Margonne’s conquest of Leitan at Palisade—occurred about a century and a half before the discussion in the Grand Gallery. Lorens II is the kingdom’s fourth ruler from House Ankara, the surname Margonne took after ascending the throne following the conquest. House Tilanta is the line of Royal Stewards descended from Margonne’s second son, Marcuse. The children, then, are third cousins.
The continent where these matters take place is Osegra, and its original inhabitants are Osegrans, among whom are the Leitani. More than a thousand years before Margonne’s conquest, the Taurani landed on Osegra’s shores, commencing a period of frequent conflict between the two peoples. The Taurani, more advanced in most respects, prevailed in these wars. During Lorens II’s day, the Taurani occupied four nations: The kingdoms of Aertella, Angeva, and Margonne and the nation of Satele, governed by the heads of its wealthiest families.
The only other detail needing explanation is perhaps the mention of Kingsport, the kingdom’s major port on the Great Southern Ocean, almost two hundred miles directly south of Palisade, the capital city. The White River connects them.
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A good start! I’m a big fan of stories within stories.
An intriguing start to the tale.