Rise of the Dragon Queen
Page 11
Motilda stood stock-still, breathless with shock, not breathing for fear had taken her breath. “N-no, Your Highness,” she muttered.
“Will you let me know if someone, anyone, inquires about this room?” Gregorich’s hands now had her fast in a most painful hold.
“Yes,” she whispered. Why wouldn’t he leave her alone, and why was he hurting her? Tears sprang to her eyes from the pain…and the horrifying realization that she could not resist Gregorich’s pressure much longer without breaking.
Their meeting was held an hour and a half before dinner. Quentin told the story of the key and of Gregorich Hapshamin wanting to get rid of Dalton and marry Silvia, as he had not the chance to speak of it earlier.
Silvia’s face fell. “I would never marry that flea-bitten scoundrel!” she exclaimed. Then she told them of the prince’s midnight adventure and the King’s secret visitor.
“So tonight the raven will visit Gregorich again?” Maura asked.
“So the prince says.” Silvia sighed. “Quentin, I hate to ask you, but would you be willing to do sentry duty on Hapshamin?"
“Yes, milady.” He cursed himself for not being nosy about everything his previous master had done when he was still under the evil spell. He vaguely remembered something about Gregorich talking to ravens in the past, but had not thought it important (or interesting) enough at the time to store away in his memory as he did with most other things.
Then Motilda stood and handed Silvia the leather-bound book, telling of how she came to find it. But she left out the tiny conversation she had only just had with the King, fearing reprimand of some sort or another from her new mistress. Silvia thanked her and dismissed everyone so she could dress for dinner.
She wore the long-sleeved purple velvet dress that Keelan had given her (despite the heat that the summer was swiftly bringing) as well as the bracelets. She plaited her hair high on her head, then wrapped the tail of the whole braid into a bun. This done, she picked out a white nuuisaket and pinned it on. Scented oils were dabbed upon her skin so that she smelled of lavender.
When she was finished dressing she took up the book Motilda had brought her. She read the first pages carefully, then jumped up to get Guide to Kieluna. She flipped through this book until she found the page she was looking for. A minute later she whispered, “Bot nol luz tuyan.” Let the ink show. And by the magic words, the rest of the pages were filled in beautiful, scrawling handwriting. Knowing she still had a little bit of time before dinner, she began reading.
It was Queen Madeline’s journal. Silvia read of her parents’ meeting, then marrying, and of her brother’s birth, and a little bit of his first few years of life. Then Gregorich Hapshamin came into the picture.
According to Madeline, she first heard of him by a rumor he had spread: He had told everyone that she was very ill and near death, even though she had never recalled meeting him. A gathering of the city was called, and she had shown herself, her husband, and their son to the people as proof of their health. This only quelled the rumor…until another one was started as soon as her husband went away on a trip to Wexford.
This one said that her son, Fyon, who was almost four, was a demon. Everyone in the city was riled by the story, crazy with fear that they had possibly lived under the rule of demons posing as humans. Fyon was supposedly born with the wings of a bat, the head of a bird, red glowing eyes, and a dragon’s tale, if one believed any of the stories. No one had thought to ask why or how this was supposed to have been found out, yet most Darkanians assumed it to be true. To rebut this story, Madeline had once again called a meeting of the city. This time she had Fyon stand naked before the raging crowd to show that he was perfectly normal. But it wasn’t a week later that people started commenting on the fact that Madeline had only showed the boy’s front side naked. Questions were raised of whether or not Fyon had, indeed, a tail, or a scar where one had been removed.
The journal entries presented a queen who was in despair and who was horrified at the accusing rumors against her family. When Zacharias returned from his trip and learned of what Madeline had done to prove their son was not a demon, he was outraged and humiliated…but not at her. This time it was he who went to confront the city’s gossip. He told them that anyone who believed the ridiculous rumors was a traitor to him and that if the rumors weren’t quelled for good, then he would personally take care of the ones who were spreading them. Anyone who gave information about the gossip-starters would be rewarded. After that, someone finally gave the King and Queen the name of the man who started the rumors: Gregorich Hapshamin.
Chapter Nine—A Reason to Fear Dinner
Four days later the man who had tattled was found in a nearby river; it was said that he had tried to swim while being drunk. According to some, before he died, the man had told of Gregorich boasting about what he would do if he were the king; this included lowering market prices and providing every citizen with proper weaponry to protect themselves against thieves and demons. Gregorich was then searched out and brought before Zacharias as a young man of twenty. His punishment for his treason was to be exiled or, if he chose to stay, to be put to the gallows for his crimes.
According to another source, Gregorich went into hiding among his followers. In less than a week, the informant had been found stabbed to death. No one liked to be told upon.
Fyon was sent away to stay with friends of Madeline and Zacharias. He stayed there for nearly six months, and when things finally seemed to calm down, they had him returned with a full escort of Royal Guards. Fyon was then four and a half years old and the first attempt on his life occurred shortly after.
Madeline and Fyon were sitting in the courtyard in the middle of the palace (the same place which now held statues dedicated to her life) when an arrow whizzed by the boy’s head, coming to rest in the soft dirt of one of the flowerbeds. Madeline had screamed and the Guards came to protect them and get them to safety. Her mother even went so far as to say the name of one of the Guards who had come to help them and it was a name Silvia recognized with a bit of surprise: George. The palace was searched thoroughly, for the archer had to have shot the arrow from up high somewhere in the palace; however nothing out of place was found, and no one suspicious had been seen.
Two months later, Fyon was found in his bedroom, next to his wooden rocking horse, beaten to a pulp. Madeline was sick with rage and distress but Zacharias was the one who stormed about the palace, demanding answers but receiving none. Their son’s bedchamber was moved beside their own bedroom, where it took nearly a month and a half for him to make a full recovery. Madeline had thought the bruises and lumps, which covered her child’s body, would never go away. He stopped talking for several months, and refused to look anyone but his parents in the face. The abominable experience of being nearly beaten to death by someone whom he had probably known (though would not point out) traumatized him greatly.
Zacharias, meanwhile, had put up a rather large reward (fifteen hundred lisks, to be exact) for Gregorich Hapshamin’s whereabouts and an extra thousand lisks to whomever captured him alive and brought him to the King. He knew it was Gregorich’s rumors which had started this unfounded hatred for his only child. But by then everyone was afraid of what would happen to him or her should they turn the man in, as he had gained many friends into his favor. Even the whisper of a rumor found people beaten or missing.
Four months later, just after his fifth birthday, Fyon was drowned by his nanny in the bathtub. George had happened to be outside the boy’s bedchambers when he heard the commotion and raced into the room after breaking down the door. He had immediately knocked the nanny unconscious and then picked the boy up out of the water and tried to bring him back to life. But the bath water stayed in the boy’s lungs and he could not be brought back from the dead. Moments later George entered the King’s chambers in the next room without knocking. Madeline and Zacharias had just finished making love and were only half-dressed when he came in, carrying their naked baby boy in
one arm and dragging the unconscious nanny behind him by her hair. Madeline collapsed where she stood, but Zacharias ran to his son and held him, covering the boy with a blanket from his marital bed. He screamed as the tears flowed down his face while George took the woman to the dungeon, where she was manacled to the cold wall.
A beautiful casket made of solid silver was prepared immediately, and several days later Fyon was placed in the Royal Vaults hidden out in the country.
The nanny was dead long before Fyon was buried. The day after she murdered his son the King constructed a wicked gallows. The whole city watched as the noose was put around her neck and a fire was lit beneath the trap door where she would fall. The flames roared and soon the oiled trapdoor caught fire. Before the trap door ever collapsed from her weight on the burning boards, her dress caught fire; it, too, had been soaked in oil. Many people turned their heads as the flesh began melting on her face. She had still been screaming when the trap door collapsed and no one was really sure whether she died from the fire or from the noose around her neck.
Madeline had gone into a deep depression after that and it made her physically sick…or so everyone had thought.
It turned out she was with child.
Silvia stopped reading, sobbing until her mouth thirsted for water. She calmed down a bit when she poured herself a dose of liquor from a decanter on one of the tables and threw it down her throat in one shot.
Silvia? Can you hear me?
She nearly jumped out of her skin as the voice sounded inside her mind; the shot glass fell to the floor but didn’t break on the bearskin it fell on to. Silvia picked it up and set it back on the decanter tray, grasping her sapphire in her free hand. “Yes, Zander, I can hear you well.”
I nearly forgot to tell you in time!
“Tell me what?” she asked, a sense of foreboding rising in her stomach like bile. She did not like the note of worry in his tone of voice.
Horace the carpenter invited me to afternoon tea a while ago, and I learned something very discouraging, Your Highness.
“And that is?”
Horace has three new household members who arrived just the other night with a very interesting story as to how and why they arrived in Darkania.
The sense of foreboding escalated to a higher scale as she said, “And that is?”
The home of their mistresses was attacked by a white figure that could change its shapes. There was a massacre, Silvia.
Silvia felt her stomach clench and fought the urge to throw up. Now she knew why she had had that feeling that something would happen at her home in her absence. Something had happened, and she immediately regretted leaving.
Four people were killed and several were injured. Horace has taken these people into his home, for one is part of his family. Would you want their names, milady?
“Do I have a choice?” The word ‘massacre’ reverberated in her mind.
No, you don’t: Jason, Jonathan and Hanovi. They came from your residence, milady.”
“My god,” she muttered in a small voice. “Is my mother—I mean Dessica…is she alive?”
From what all I gathered, I think she is. But do not hold me to that—I am not certain.
“Thank you for informing me of this Zander.” Her hands shook as she clutched the stone harder, her breath now coming in ragged gasps.
Well, that’s not all I had to tell you.
“It-it isn’t?”
Horace and his wife are coming to the palace for dinner tonight, remember? Now he will be bringing his guests.
“May the goddess Chin help me!” Her stomach did a frightful lurch.
You will need to be extra careful this evening, my Queen, lest they should recognize you.
Silvia quivered in fear, sweat forming on her brow. What would happen to her and her friends if Jonathan found her out? “Thank you, Zander,” she managed in a low tone.
It is no problem, milady. I only wish I had remembered to tell you earlier. I’m afraid my age is finally affecting what memory I have left.
“Zander, I am just glad I was informed before dinnertime. It is much appreciated.” By the gods, why had Quentin neglected to tell her of this? Her heart sunk as she realized that Keelan must also have known. Hadn’t he gone back to ‘rescue’ his brother? Had he caught him in the act, or did he even try to stop what was happening? She remembered laughing with them, feeling safe and secure. She thought of Keelan proposing marriage to her and wondered if he was ever going to tell her. In a way she felt betrayed. She wanted the truth…from both of them.
Still holding the stone, she called Keelan, Quentin, and Frero into the room and told them to bring Hans and Maura along. She said nothing of Motilda, for this was a little too personal. She didn’t want the girl to see her like this. She cleaned her eyes and nose, adjusted her nuuisaket, and moments later the servants were in her room, where she briefed them on what Zander had said. Maura started crying in Hans’ arms, wondering aloud who the poor deceased souls were. The older man glared at the brothers.
Silvia turned to Quentin, who had tears welled up in his eyes. “Tell me about the night you were freed. All of it.”
And so their story was told, in full, with no parts skipped or left out. Quentin let loose a torrent of tears as he relived the horror of his actions.
“You could never imagine how it feels to be trapped inside your own body, watching as you did horrible things, but unable to stop yourself. I do not ask for forgiveness because I deserve to be punished in the harshest of ways. I-I am so sorry, milady. I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to tell you!” His voice was full of shame and despair. “And you never would have let me help you had you known what I had done.”
The sight of him at first had infuriated Silvia, for it was her home that he had attacked. But she was a person of compassion and mercy, and knew how Quentin was tortured by his past actions. “Quentin, please, we know you did it, but you were under Gregorich’s enchantment. You cannot be blamed, for you were not yourself.” Ignoring the emotions that raged within, she went to him and hugged him tightly. “We forgive you, for you feel deep remorse for all that you have done in those lost years. It can’t be helped now.” She looked at her future husband with determination and sadness. Now she knew what he had to go through to get his brother back, and it touched her on a very deep level that he had to follow Quentin, making terrible discoveries etched in blood and flesh, in order to free him. And he had not told her any of the rancid details because he had wanted to spare her the pain and worry. How could she have been so angry at them? All they wanted to do was help her now, to make up for everything bad that had happened. Still, she wished they had at least considered telling her the bare details of it sooner.
When she let Quentin go, Hans approached him, his face unreadable. “I do not know why you did such a horrid thing, boy. I would gladly kill you now, had you not changed your ways when the spell was broken and proved yourself a considerable ally…You have proven your honesty and loyalty, not to mention your courage to us, and all for a young lady who was, such a short time ago, your enemy. I thank you for all you have done for our Silvia.” He paused and swallowed hard. “I trust you completely.” He embraced the ashamed man as if Quentin were his own child. He did not want to hug him—he wanted to hit Quentin as hard as he could. He wanted him to bleed for his sins against his Mistress. But he could also see how much Quentin was trying for Silvia, and how deep his guilt went.
Keelan changed the subject. “Silvia, how well do you know these three people who are Horace’s guests?”
“I know Jonathan pretty well, I suppose; he was the young lad who helped me when Rituel took me home the day he threw me. He saw me all the time in the stables. Hanovi, if I am not mistaken, did the laundry. But I haven’t a clue as to who Jason is.”
“Jason is Jonathan’s younger brother,” Keelan said softly.
Silvia’s stomach sank. “Jason was one of the twins…” She felt crestfallen at the news.
“Jonathan had a younger brother and sister who were twins,” Keelan explained. “They were eight years old.”
Hans looked a trifle bit angry. “You mean they lived on Mistress Dessica’s lands without her knowledge?”
“She knows of it now, so do not be too angered. It is in the past,” Keelan said.
“Yes, well we all know how the past tends to come back and bite your backside when you least expect it,” the older servant growled. “By the gods, man, look at our luck! We cannot afford to get on Gregorich’s bad side, and yet his other guests tonight may very well put us there without even meaning to…What bloody, rotten luck!” He broke off, coloring a bit at his own language.