The Age of Knights & Dames

by Patrick Harris

  “That you did,” the Watchmaker grumbled back. “And I ignored you then. Keep up that talk, and you’ll wish we’d left you on Ryderwyle a while longer.”

  Meanwhile, Meg eyed my slung arm.

  “You alright, Nick?” she asked. When I nodded, she gestured at the wall of flames. “Any way through this?”

  “Just tried a torch,” I explained. “No go.”

  “Should have held onto the fortissium blade a little longer,” she mumbled. She glanced at the wall again, and a spark seemed to light in her eyes. A verse formed on her lips.

  “Lady Meghan,” Page Trey said warningly. “It wouldn’t advise it.”

  Meg looked hurt.

  “What?” she asked. “It’s worth a shot.”

  “Magic is a strain even under perfect conditions. To try such complicated tasks right now…,” Page Trey said. “We need you in the fight, Lady Meghan. Do not expend your talents on this wall. We must do as the mage mused and return all six flames to the castle through safer methods.”

  Put out, Meg backed away from the wall of fire and glanced over all of our flames.

  “I only see five.”

  I motioned to the castle.

  “I have another one inside. The queen is in there too.”

  “And a whole lot of zombies,” Jenn said.

  “And a witch,” Clay added.

  “Speaking of the witch,” I said, “she’s the queen’s sister.”

  Only the seer and Watchmaker seemed unimpressed by this revelation as everyone else gasped. Master Malleator swore curses at his queen.

  “She’s here to bring about the queen’s—” I began.

  “Curse,” Clay interjected.

  “What?” I gawked. “How do you know that?”

  He held up a pocket watch. Exposed gears ground noisily. The tick-tock wasn’t quite right.

  “I read the witch’s watch,” Clay explained.

  “Wait, what curse are we talking about?” Meg interjected.

  Clay and I quickly explained that the queen was cursed, and the whole kingdom was in danger as a result.

  Only the Watchmaker and seer seemed to know what we were talking about. Master Malleator whispered harshly to Page Trey. He looked pretty angry that the queen had kept such a secret from him.

  “You have something to share?” the Watchmaker asked the combat master.

  The muscles in Master Malleator’s jaw flexed. “Only that this kingdom has been led to ruin by the queen we elected to oversee us. This is why we have rules for royalty, Watchmaker. Rules that must be followed. For the good of Dembroch.”

  “Saving your queen will be for the good of Dembroch,” the Watchmaker replied. “Her curse affects all of us and the island we stand on. We crowned her. She calls Dembroch home. The queen is the land, Master Malleator. You save her or you let Dembroch crumble into the sea.”

  “Perhaps it would be better to save our own skins,” the master shot back. “Head for open water. Let the queen fend for herself. It is her own doing, after all.”

  The Watchmaker loomed over the combat master.

  “Don’t test me, Malleator,” the Watchmaker said, his voice booming. “You swore a duty to this kingdom, and God as my witness, you’ll fulfil it. Or we will make you.”

  At last, this seemed to kick some sense into Master Malleator. He nodded brusquely and asked Clay to continue.

  “Like I said,” Clay said, eyeing the master nervously, “the witch was left behind when Queen Coralee was brought here to Dembroch to forestall her curse. After that, Sorgana lost her place in the world. She questioned who she was and everything she had learned. A mentor took her under his wing and helped her find her true ancestry: that she was the rightful daughter of Morgan Le Fay, who had cursed King Arthur and all of his lineage. The witch embraced this, rejected her adoptive family, and taught herself magic in the first steps to be more like her birth mother. With the aid of her mentor, she dedicated herself to extending her life unnaturally and seeking Queen Coralee and Dembroch. Revenge wore heavy on her heart. Her mentor was also the one who told her all about the kingdom and how it worked. That’s how she knew to have her Dreadnaught eat the watches, to focus on the flames, to kill the defenders…”

  “Well done, boy,” the Watchmaker acknowledged.

  “Who’s this mentor?” Meg asked with a frown.

  “I can’t tell,” Clay said. “He’s his own gear, different from the rest, but he didn’t follow her to Dembroch and I don’t know who he is.”

  “Doesn’t matter right now,” I said. “What is the witch planning to do to the queen?”

  “To kill her,” Clay said simply. “The witch believes that Queen Coralee stole her youth and her chances to be something greater. As she consumed the youth of innocent creatures to remain young all these centuries, the witch wants to absorb Queen Coralee’s youth. Then she’ll be young again and have a second life to be the daughter of a sorceress in word and deed.”

  “How?” Meg asked. “How can you steal someone’s youth?”

  Jenn gaped at us. “Is she going to…eat the queen?”

  Clay shook his head. “No. It’s more complicated than when she ate the turtles. It takes a spell. A complex one. Her mentor made it.”

  “What is it?” Meg asked.

  Clay shrugged apologetically.

  “The watch shows motives, not exact details,” the Watchmaker said.

  “I think I know,” I offered. “Look at the wall of flames in front of us. They’re black. And we can’t touch it or get too close. And there was black flame just like it in the seer’s home. It had black sparks shooting out. It was really similar to—”

  “Our flames,” Jenn said. Then she gasped. “The witch is making her own flames.”

  “But they’re dark ones,” I said.

  “Made from the same traits?” Meg asked.

  “Murkier,” Jenn corrected. “Our actions wouldn’t have made these black ones.”

  “Darker traits,” I said, nodding in agreement. “From darker acts. We made ours from peace, joy, patience, and all of that. She spent the last day mentally terrorizing the people left in the kingdom, hurting them and torturing them. She kidnapped the seer’s daughter and got the seer to run away.”

  “She killed the Bridgemaster,” Clay interjected.

  The seer let out a sad, empathetic groan.

  “I think she started one in the catacombs,” Jenn said. “After she killed the librarian.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “She made all these flames with acts of hatred, anger, terror… You name it. Six flames of evil magic to corrupt the kingdom and power a spell to suck the youth from the queen.”

  “How did she make them so fast?” Meg wondered. “It took us every minute of these last two days, and she gets her flames in a few hours?”

  “The path of righteousness is narrow and the gate is small,” the seer said quietly. “The road to destruction is broad and free of obstacles.”

  My friends and I exchanged quick glances. Only Jenn seemed to see what the seer meant.

  “We can stop it,” I said adamantly. “If we can get our flames to the Aerary, it overpowers the witch. It restores the timelessness. It fixes everything. We just have to get there.”

  “But we can’t get into the castle,” Clay interjected.

  “There has to be a way,” Jenn said.

  “And we have to do it fast,” I added. “The queen’s curse hits when she turns thirty.”

  “She’s thirty?” Meg shouted.

  I nodded. “That’ll happen, like the mage predicted, when the sun is highest in the sky.”

  “Highest in the dark,” Page Trey corrected, casting an eye to the dark clouds. “I’d say we have half an hour at best.”

  Meg glanced at her wristwatch. “He’s right. It’s a few minutes past eleven-thirty.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, seeing everyone’s concern at the tight timetable. “We just have to get inside the castle. Anyone know of a door or u
nderground passage or secret way around the flames?”

  Meg’s eyes got big.

  “I know,” she said. “In the Gate Grounds, there are invisible gates. They lead everywhere, all over the island. One of them leads into the catacombs of the castle.”

  “How do we find it?” I asked.

  At this, Meg’s shoulders slumped.

  “There’s too many doors,” she said. “A group this size, it’ll take us forever to get through there, holding out the flames. Even if I used the magic and made a trail to the door, one of us will fall through the wrong one before we find it.”

  Page Trey grunted in agreement, thumbing his sword.

  “Invisible, you said?” Jenn asked. “I know someone who can see the invisible.”

  Jenn explained the situation—she and the seer shared the Sight, which allowed them to see the invisible, among other things. When the seer seemed timid, Jenn offered a hand. The seer took it and, after a brief shiver, agreed to help. Clay stared at them for a moment as though expecting the power of the Sight to transfer into his eyes as well, but nothing happened to him.

  “We’ll find the door, get your daughter, and get you out of there,” Jenn promised the seer.

  “It won’t be easy,” Meg said. “There’s at least a hundred dead guys left in there.”

  “I know someone who can help,” Clay said, nudging the Watchmaker.

  “I’m ready for a fight,” the Watchmaker said enthusiastically, flipping his axe in his hand. “There’s a knight or two who got on my nerves right before they died.”

  “You won’t be alone in this fight,” said Page Trey. “We may not be able to forge you into warriors in such a short time, but we can certainly fight for you.”

  He glanced at his master. After a pause, Master Malleator nodded.

  “I may not agree with the queen or her choices, but I will not let my home and kingdom fall,” he said.

  From his belt, he pulled a long, sharp sword and held it out to me. Page Trey did the same, wielding daggers and swords for us to use.

  I felt a surge of hope. We had weapons, smarts, and some supernatural powers. At the very least, we stood a chance.

  CHAPTER 48:

  What We Signed Up For

  Our motley crew, eight strong, headed east for the Gate Grounds, conversing with one another nervously. Page Trey, his master, and the Watchmaker admired each other’s weapons.

  Limping from the pain in her leg, feeling faint from all the blood loss, Jenn clung to Clay’s hand while her other held the seer’s. Together, she and the seer shared in the Sight.

  Jenn had never seen such strange, wonderful things. All around her, she saw invisible spectrums of color. Her compatriots exuded lights that seemed tied to their emotions. The trees and ground let out quivers of visible energy. And when Jenn looked long enough at something—one of her friends, a tree, her own feet—her sight fractured so that she could see the object’s immediate past and future. She saw a tree falling and then regenerating out of rot, Meg racing across the fallen forest with her torch and then barreling into an invisible door, the Watchmaker skewering dragons and then fighting skeletons, her own feet moving backward and then racing forward along the ground. It was maddening and yet beautiful all at once.

  Until she looked at her husband.

  She’d been avoiding looking at him, for fear that some immediate future would show why he was not atop the tallest tower when it fell, that he had met some gruesome death. But she had to look at him eventually, and there was no better time to face the future than the present.

  In the span of a second, Jenn saw Clay’s past and future. She saw dragons and the Dreadnaught and the black fortissium blade. She saw him lighting his flame triumphantly, a past so bright it was almost blinding. But then she saw the Aerary. Clay hanging over the edge. Black fire and green magic. Death looming over him, grim and sure. A fracture running through him like a break in a mirror, one half tearing apart and the other disappearing over the edge.

  She blinked and it was gone. Her heart was gripped with fear.

  “Now you see,” the seer said. “The Sight is a gift…and a terrible burden.”

  Jenn’s head spun. Was Clay headed for death? Was it possible to save him? Would the same path lead to victory? But what if the path to save Dembroch was what led to his death? Her heart sank. Was this her fate? To finally stand up to fear of the future only to have it strip away her husband?

  Clay caught her looking at him. His face fell with concern.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice that same tone it had been for the past twenty years as he’d seen his wife fall beyond the veils of depression and misery while he struggled and failed to help her. She hesitated for a moment, unwilling to tell him, fearing that speaking it aloud would ensure his fate. But this mentality—going alone, bearing the burdens of woe—was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

  “The Sight,” she said. “You…I think you…”

  “Get hurt?” Clay offered.

  Her silence gave him the answer. He clenched his jaw.

  “There may be a way to…protect you,” Jenn said, tears forming in her eyes.

  Clay gave her a confident smile.

  “We’ll find a way,” he said. He squeezed her hand warmly. “We’ve found our way back to one another. And if we can do that against all the odds, we can save Dembroch. This future you see. It won’t stop us. No promise or curse or falling kingdom will keep us apart. So long as one of us is breathing, Dembroch won’t fall. I promise.”

  The flames on their backs flickered. A spark flew into Clay. His eyes flashed for a moment.

  Jenn’s heart fell. Clay’s words had locked another promise into place, and it seemed to seal his life both to the fate of Dembroch and their ability to maintain contact with one another. It was as the mage had predicted, Jenn realized: Clay walked two paths, two promises, and time would tell which would win out. But Jenn saw the look of resolve on her husband’s face and it gave her hope.

  However, what Jenn did not know was the resolve upon Clay’s face was not obstinance in the face of his fate, but acceptance of it. Having been slave to fear and desolation before Dembroch, Clay understood the death sentence upon him and faced it boldly. If he must die so his wife would live, so that Dembroch would persist, he would lay his life down.

  Jenn, Clay, and the seer walked on, their minds marveling over futures and fates, promises and curses, and the witch that could undermine it all.

  At the front of the group, I caught up with my sister, Meg. She seemed like a totally different person. The vibe coming off her was relaxed and peaceful, yet determined and vigilant.

  “You’ve changed,” Meg said before I could make a comment.

  I chuckled. “So have you. You’re using magic now?”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Nick,” she started. “I…I just wanted to tell you… I’m sorry. For a lot of stuff, really. I was terrible to you and Jenn and Clay. I just…I forgot myself, you know. A long time ago. It was the only way I could get through back then. I couldn’t care, I couldn’t depend on anyone. I couldn’t be Meghan. I had to be Meg. And seeing you three back at the diner, being here…it was the last place I wanted to be. I just wanted to get away from this place, from these people, from…you.”

  “What?” I breathed. “But—”

  Meg grit her jaw and blinked furiously. “Being your sister was the best days of my life,” she said. “We had each other through everything. And we had Dembroch. Until…we didn’t.” She sighed. “I thought you didn’t want me as a sister anymore, that no one wanted me. So I left it all behind and, even when I was with you again in the diner, I refused to let it back in. Then, being on Dembroch…it made me look in the mirror and I didn’t like what I saw. What I’d become. I just wanted to run.” She sighed heavily. “I don’t even know what I was running back to. Work? Structure? The prison I’d built for myself?”

  A chill ran down my back.
I remembered the mage’s quest for me: to free the sister. All this time, I’d been sure it was the queen. But had I been wrong? The most broken heart of the kingdom had been mine, so perhaps the sister I needed to free was…Meg.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice cracking. “I shouldn’t have let you leave like that all those years ago. I let my best friend walk away when you left. And just to wait around in Midvale for nothing. Really…I am sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she replied. “I forgive you. When I was in the Gate Grounds, I realized I was wrong.”

  “So was I.”

  “Maybe we both were,” she considered. “But I forgive you, Nick.”

  “And I forgive you,” Meg,” I replied.

  She bumped me in the shoulder and gave a genuine smile.

  “Call me Meghan,” she said.

  I beamed at her. We shared the silence like kindred spirits, brother and sister once more. The prison of Meg seemed to fall away as my sister, Meghan, emerged.

  “So this curse,” Meghan said. “What is it exactly?”

  “By the time she turns thirty-years-old, she’s doomed to lose her land, royalty, people, all that. Anyone who aligns with her could die.”

  Meghan’s hand flew to her collar bone, gasping.

  “All of us could die? Just by siding with her? Just like that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The curse just snuffs us out?”

  “Not directly,” I said, trying to recall what the queen had said. “It comes for us indirectly, ensuring our fates by other means. If it can’t get us to abandon her, the curse will have manipulated events to ensure our demise. Blood loss. Dismemberment. You know, the good ol’ stuff.”

  Meghan played with the collar of her shirt, mind on the witch’s mark carved into her skin. Her heart raced.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “Yup,” I said. “Definitely me.”

  “Because you love her?”

  My cheeks burnt, which was answer enough for Meghan.

  I gave her a look. “Some quest, huh?”

  Meghan chuckled lightly. “Not quite what we signed up for back in Midvale.”