Through the Wildwood

by M. R. Mathias

  Dyntalla, he was beginning to suspect, was going to be a little different. It was less populated and farther away from the center of the Parydon kingdom seat than any other stronghold, including Highlake. Vanx decided that it might be farther away, but it was too large a place to be less populated. Duke Martin’s mountain stronghold was nothing compared to this. Vanx longed to question the knights about it, but thought better of doing so.

  Any one of these men riding guard might be their enemy.

  Who exactly was the enemy here? Coll? Duke Martin? A monstrous beast on a distant island? Hordes of ogres? He wondered where he would be taken at two bells after midnight. He looked at Matty, who was staring back at him with half-closed lids. Darbon’s head lay in her huge bosom, bobbing and jiggling as they rode. Vanx didn’t find any answers in her eyes, but he remembered the look she gave him earlier and it suddenly became clear why she didn’t want Darbon to be in the dungeons. No matter how well the knights said she would be treated, she was a whore, or had been. Vanx tried not to judge. The guards, the fat, slovenly noble bastards, merchants who’d lost themselves in their cups, and probably as before, Duke Martin himself, would venture down to her cell door and hang their wick in.

  Darbon would go mad for she wouldn’t be able to refuse them, not without being beaten, starved, or killed for not giving them what they wanted. Not even a good-hearted knight would be able to maintain a chivalrous stance against anything done to a one-handed, therefore marked, slave.

  “I’ll survive it,” Matty said quietly. Apparently his expression had revealed his thoughts. The setting sun threw their shadows far ahead of them. In its unkind light Vanx could see every day of Matty’s age, every grime-filled wrinkle and loosening sag of skin. “Just make sure Darbon goes with you tonight.” She stroked Darbon’s hair. “Demand it, Vanx. Demand that Darbon go with you, wherever it may be.”

  Vanx knew there was nothing he could say to ease her torment so he nodded that he would do what she wished. “I’ll try to have you along as well,” he added, hoping to give her a bit of hope.

  “No.” She smiled at his kindness but the look changed to a sinister grin. She patted her cleavage, indicating the razor-sharp dagger that was still nestled between her breasts.

  “I’m hoping Duke Martin stops in for a visit while you’re gone,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “He won’t be the same when he leaves, I assure you.” Her eyes fell back on Darbon’s sleeping face. Vanx could see the love in them, but he could also see the part of Matty that had brought her to where she was.

  “Besides all of that, where you’re going, I’ll just get in the way. Darbon can use a bow. Don’t forget how he spitted Captain Moyle’s throat.”

  “I remember.” Vanx nodded, but still hadn’t caught what she was getting at. “Where is it you think we’re going, Matty?”

  “Why, Dragon’s Isle of course,” she smirked. “Do you think old Quazar and Trevin have just been lazing about these past few days? I’d bet my other hand that you and Gallarael’s brother are getting on a ship.”

  The wizard saw the king and the king spoke grim.

  “It’s me, mighty wizard I need your help again.”

  “I’ll aid you,” said the wizard. “But there will be a price.

  I will take your newborn daughter, while the reaper takes your wife.”

  – The Weary Wizard

  “You’re to be deposed then?” Duke Martin asked Commander Aldine. Both men, along with Bear Fang Karcher and Coll, were informed upon waking that they were being held in royal detention. They would be allowed the run of the stronghold, but the city beyond its gates was forbidden to them. One of Prince Russet’s treacherous, austere guards had been assigned to shadow each of them. Just outside the door of the ornately furnished sitting room, three of the guards waited for their charges.

  After they’d been informed of their incarceration, Kavin Karcher just laughed. He’d gone to the privy a good, long while ago. No one had seen the infamous trapper or his shadow guard since.

  “Yes, my lord,” Commander Aldine answered nervously. “Just after the noon bell, I’m to report at the archbishop’s office.”

  “There’s no reason for you to be so fidgety,” Coll said from the glossy oaken board where he was pouring three goblets of brandy wine. He paused and set the crystal decanter down, plucked a square of cheese from a healthy platter that had been brought for them, and spoke around it as he chewed. “Mjust manswer the questions mtruthfully, mCommader. You’ll be just fine.”

  “Aye, and shorter by a head,” Aldine snapped. “What do I say if I’m asked about the attack on the caravan, or why Captain Moyle chose to camp half a league away from a patrolled area? What if I’m asked of certain activities that my lord had taken with that would-be-bandit, Lord Magrin?” He turned from Coll back to face Duke Martin. “What if I’m asked why some of your men rode with those bandits during the attack? What if I am asked about Gallarael?”

  Coll strode over and sat the tray of goblets on the low foot table between the duke and the commander and then took one of the offerings for himself. He chose the high-backed chair to Duke Martin’s left, leaving Commander Aldine sitting alone on the three-cushioned divan across the table from them both.

  Duke Martin leaned forward and took a goblet in one hand and a handful of the cubed pieces of cheese in the other. “Help yourself,” he said, and looked at Coll for a heartbeat.

  Coll gave a smart nod, and then responded to the Commander’s questions.

  “Well, it seems you understand what not to answer.” He took a long swig of his drink. “You can’t answer a question with a response that implicates your liege lord. You’re sworn not too. For instance, and you can answer this truthfully; have you seen the duke engaged in conversation with any unsavory bandit-types?”

  “Well… uh… no,” Aldine answered. He leaned forward and took a bread roll from the platter and sandwiched it around a piece of thinly-sliced roast. “No, I haven’t.” He took a bite, chewed for a moment, and then swallowed. Pointing his little finger at Coll as he spoke, as if he were being clever, he went on. “But the rumors of the orders I was given are—”

  “Stop!” Coll said sharply. “The question was about what you’ve seen, not what the castle gossip is about.”

  “Mmm.” Aldine nodded as he finished chewing his morsel. “I think I understand, but what if they ask what I’ve heard people say?”

  “Well, did you hear that Duchess Gallarain was sleeping with the one-legged dwarven jester when the mummers were up from Dabbldwyn?”

  Aldine’s gaze shot to his liege lord. He was surprised to find a jovial crinkle at the sides of his eyes. “Do you not think I hear the rumors too, Commander?” the duke asked. “You’ve heard the one about Captain Moyle accidentally killing one of his men on the training yard while he was piss-pot drunk?”

  “Of course, but that’s a tale spread to make the youngsters afraid of him. There’s not a bit of truth to it.”

  “Ah, but that’s what a rumor is,” Coll interjected, “a story told with little or no truth to back it up. It does not matter if there are rumors that Duke Martin was engaged with bandits; there’s also a rumor that you’ve been sleeping with Duchess Gallarain and that it was you who wanted to kill the bard. I’m sure the archbishop will be asking you about that rumor, too.”

  Commander Aldine finished chewing his last bite of food and swallowed hard. Licking his lips, he dared to take in the duke’s expression again; it was one of amusement.

  “She’s a whore, Commander,” the duke chuckled. “Like it or not, it’s the truth.” He took a long pull from his goblet and sighed. “She was no maiden when we consummated our union, I assure you. If she hadn’t made a spectacle over this mud-blooded minstrel, I would have piked his head and gone about my business.”

  There was a subtle but unmistakable emphasis on the phrase “piked his head”, and it caused the commander’s mouth to go dry.

  “A curious bit to thin
k about, that one-legged little freak is still in the bottom of my dungeon somewhere.” The duke chuckled disgustedly. “I wanted to pike him, but I was ashamed to display his malformed gourd over my gates. By the gods, what goes through that woman’s head, I’ll never know.”

  It was then that Commander Aldine finally leaned forward, took the third goblet of brandy wine from the tray and sipped from it. Coll let out a sigh of relief so obvious that the commander stopped. It was too late; he had already swallowed a mouthful of the bitter-tasting drink.

  “It’s done, then?” Duke Martin asked Coll as the commander’s eyes bulged and darted around frantically.

  “It is, my lord,” Coll answered him. Then to Aldine, “Commander, if you’ll just lie back and relax, you will feel no pain as you pass.”

  “Mwew—myou poisioned me,” Commander Aldine gasped and choked as a sound like crashing waves careened through his skull.

  “No, Commander,” Coll said as he stood and pushed Aldine back into the divan with his booted foot and held him there. The commander’s goblet tipped in his hand, but Coll caught it before it fell. “That is a rumor,” he said, looking directly into Aldine’s frantic eyes. “Technically, you poisoned yourself when you drank from a goblet full of jade-tailed scorpion venom. In our current predicament, only a fool wouldn’t have expected such a thing to happen.”

  Duke Martin belted out a laugh at that. “You haven’t been paying attention,” he said, pointing an accusing finger at Aldine. “The newest rumor out of Highlake is that you were laying with the Duchess and were jealous about her tryst with the Zyth.”

  “Mwaaw.” Aldine tried to push up from beneath Coll’s foot but couldn’t manage it.

  “Wait, Al, there’s more,” the duke continued. “You set up the ambush and paid your bandit cohorts to blame all of it on me so that you could rid your woman of her lover and her husband all in one fell swoop. They’ll find plenty of the missing items from the caravan raids among your things back at Highlake.”

  “Gnooo,” the commander gurgled as a froth of bile formed at his lips.

  “After all,” Coll added, “you’re the man who directly commanded the troops, not the duke. You’re the very man who ordered Captain Moyle to set camp in that unpatrolled area. You’re the one who got Gallarael killed and then killed yourself here in the sitting room because the guilt of accidentally killing your lover’s daughter overwhelmed you.”

  The last thing Commander Aldine remembered was Coll sliding a small vile into his palm and closing his hand over it. After that, the world faded away into complete blackness.

  “By the gods,” Duke Martin said when the commander finally went still. “I thought he’d never take a drink.”

  “For a moment I thought he might be turning into a formidable adversary,” Coll commented as he pulled a folded coverlet from the back of the divan and covered the commander’s body with it to make it appear as if he were napping.

  “It’s worse than I thought,” Quazar mumbled to himself. He was silently urging Duke Martin and his Darkean companion to leave the sitting room so that he could run in and save the commander. Had Coll not spoken the name of the poison he’d used there wouldn’t have been a chance at all. As it was, the chances of reviving him were fading quickly.

  Quazar was watching them through a peephole from a hidden passage in the wall. The two appeared to be leaving the room. Quazar hoped they’d hurry. He didn’t want it on his conscience that he had just stood by and watched while a man’s soul departed on its journey to the hereafter. He didn’t have much choice, though. He had taken vows before the Council of the Royal Order before attaining the title of Master Wizard. The vows limited his ability to interfere with what the nobility of Parydon did, including stopping dukes from poisoning their own liegemen. He was, however, bound to try to save anyone who needed saving, especially a respected commander of kingdom men, so he waited impatiently and prepared his mind for what he would have to do if he had the chance to help the poisoned man.

  Orphas told him, through the lode crystals that crowned the staves all wizards of the Royal Order possessed, that Aldine was the most likely to be truthful. Orphas had also conveyed his suspicions on Coll’s influence and the possibility of his being a servant of the dark. After carefully observing Coll and casting a few subtle spells of revealing, Quazar had confirmed his colleague’s suspicion. Coll was a Darkean. He had little in the way of power, but was as ambitious and evil-hearted as any Quazar had ever come across.

  Duke Martin was under the influence of something greater than Coll, though. The two of them had been speaking of the Blood Stone’s power and how to obtain it before the commander had come into the room. The coldness of the way the two men had spoken, and the utter lack of compassion for the lives of those who serve them in their dark bidding, had held Quazar to the peephole. Quazar could tell that Coll was trying to use the duke’s ripe emotion, the shame of his wife’s escapades, to tempt him further down the path of pain and hate. The imminent death of his daughter, and the collapse of his plan to worm his way into the high nobility by marrying off Gallarael, had him seething to regain control of the world around him. What Coll couldn’t see was that there was already a deep emptiness in the duke’s heart. Duke Martin had crossed the point of no return long, long ago. Quazar considered that it might actually be Coll who was being led, not the other way around.

  “… can’t believe he so rudely fell asleep like that,” Coll commented softly as he and the duke exited the sitting room.

  “The dungeon is available for us to visit, is it not?” the duke asked the guard assigned to him. The man nodded with no change of expression that Quazar could see. “Good. I think I need a word or two with that thieving whore.”

  Quazar fidgeted as Commander Aldine’s shadow guard peeked into the room. When the door to the sitting room finally closed, the wizard let out a sigh of relief. With a flourish of his hand and a spoken word, he disappeared from the cubby behind the wall and reappeared in the sitting room. He wasted no time starting what needed to be done. He just feared it was being done too late to save the commander from death.

  A dragon hoards its treasure.

  A dragon guards its haunts.

  Where does a dragon lay its head?

  Why anywhere it wants.

  – Dragon’s song

  They rolled through another gate, this one set into a wall so hidden by the structures built off of its face that it was barely discernible for what it was. The farmsteads and dirt-packed roads had become more frequent and gave way to stable yards, inns, and eventually a shabby, cobbled mercantile district. The glowing windows of the one- and two-story dwellings cast beams of steady yellow lantern light, making it hard for Vanx to see into the shadows. But it didn’t matter. This was where the poor and less fortunate lived, those who toiled for what little coin they had. The hawkers sold plums and apples that Vanx knew were on the verge of rotting. The tavern sold ale so watered that it barely had a scent at all, and the whores, he was certain, were dirty and pocked with sores.

  Just as Vanx expected, the world on the other side of the city gate wasn’t much different. People wore plain, roughspun garments just like the farmhands and plowmen at the city’s fringes. But there were others wearing imitation finery, the stuff the wealthier classes expected their servants to wear. Sweat-stained doublets belted over ill-fitting hose. Gowns with hems that were tattered and frayed. There was an occasional well-dressed merchant or land owner conversing with the more respectable whores on lamp-lit corners.

  The buildings here were more closely packed. The streets were cobbled and clean and nearly closed in overhead by the jutting balconies on the third and fourth levels.

  A well-lit balcony full of lace-pressed cleavage and multi-colored locks held women who giggled and called down to the guardsmen of the escort. Vanx saw that their faces were painted gaudily. These were the whores who didn’t walk the street. A few of the men called back promises, some in lewd detail, of what the
y would do later when they were free of duty. The other people on the streets averted their eyes and ignored the group as they passed. Their reaction, or lack of it, caused Vanx to wonder if carts full of people in chains were a common sight here.

  The road wound around a bend and the old Dyntalla Stronghold rose up before them. The dwellings and the spaces between them became wrought-iron fences with evenly spaced lantern-topped brick posts, probably the homes of minor nobility and the wealthier of the area’s families.

  The mercantile district here was free of hawkers. Uniformed men were posted so that one was always within sight. The fineries worn here were not imitation. The tavern rooms boasted minstrels and dancing, and by the smells and sounds spilling forth from their doors, they were serving more wine than ale.

  The stronghold itself loomed up before them, looking like so many of Parydon’s castles, all blocky and square at the lower levels, but surrounded by steeply pitched tile roofs and copper-sheeted tower peaks. It wasn’t gloriously illuminated like the palaces Vanx had seen on the Isle of Parydon, but then again this wasn’t another castle down the lane competing for vanity among its rivals. In Dyntalla, there was only one castle, and its iron-bound gates cranked open loudly for them like some hungry, mechanical maw.