Blood and Ashes

by N M Zoltack

  “I am all right. Better than all right. Watch!”

  Phillipe held his hand up over the ground. A rock nestled in the grass began to dance and shake.

  “Can you lift it up?” Marcellus asked.

  Phillipe furrowed his brow. “I can’t lift up all of that dirt!”

  “You’re causing the ground to shake? That causes the rock to move?” Vivian asked.

  Phillipe turned to look at her. “Ye… You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

  “You must not have seen enough—”

  “Are you the queen?” Phillipe asked. “You are, aren’t you? Queen Rosalynne.”

  “What are you going on about, son?” The Mayor of Rapid Falls, Damir Doubek, approached. “Princess Vivian! Er…” His gaze shifted to Marcellus. His confusion at seeing the two of them there together was rather plain.

  “I wish to allow some of my knights to stay and help rebuild the city,” Vivian explained.

  “Ah, yes, yes! Of course. That would be delightful, yes.” Damir wrung his hands. “Phillipe, go and fetch your mother, will you?”

  “But—”

  “Go now.”

  Phillipe walked away backward, staring at Vivian the entire while, but then he came rushing back. “Please, I want to fight with you! With you both! I can do it! I’m strong enough!”

  “Go and do as I asked,” Damir sputtered. He waited until Phillipe truly rushed away this time before continuing, “I assume he showed you what he can do? I was hoping… You coming here is most advantageous. I was thinking—”

  “I was the one who put the thought into your head,” Mileva, his younger wife, said as she approached. “We were wondering if he might be better served at the castle. Staying there might be safer for him.”

  Marcellus glanced at Vivian. The decision should fall to her.

  After a moment, she shook her head. "I appreciate his spirit, but magic is too much of an unknown. I do not know if any there can help him." She glanced around. "A dragon attacked here but left. You are fortunate. Most towns are defenseless against—"

  “Marcellus and his warriors helped with that,” Mileva said.

  "There was an earthquake," Damir said, a bit breathlessly and in a rush to the point that Marcellus wondered if he wished to get this out before his son returned from wherever he might be. "We get them from time to time, but after the dragon attack…"

  “We would be grateful for any assistance, even if we are to keep Phillipe here,” Mileva said.

  “I do not think the dragon will return,” Vivian stated. “Atlan Castle has been targeted by the dragons many times. I truly believe—”

  “Phillipe will stay,” Mileva declared.

  “But—” her husband started to argue.

  “He will stay,” she said firmly.

  “I’m going to stay?” Phillipe asked.

  Marcellus nodded. “I know that’s not what you want to hear—”

  “Can I show you some more first? You don’t have to leave right away, do you? Watch!” Phillipe rushed away, waving his arm for Marcellus to follow, but then the boy double backed and slid his hand into Vivian’s. “You too, Princess. My Princess. I can call you My Princess, can’t I?”

  Vivian grinned broadly and did not laugh at the sweet boy. “You can call me whatever you want.”

  “So I can just call you mine?” Phillipe asked.

  Marcellus laughed at the interaction. The poor boy was besotted with her, and mayhap he was not the only one.

  38

  Olympia Li

  The amount of ducking and weaving to get around people, the need to hide away, the excitement at soon seeing her twin…

  It had been days now since Aldwin the vicar had sneaked her into the castle, and Olympia was almost ready to throw the man out the window. He had shoved her into a room and bid her to stay there and brought her sustenance and water but never her brother, only ever excuses.

  “He is busy.”

  “He cannot come just yet.”

  “He has left the castle but will return shortly.”

  “He is with the queen right now.”

  A servant? A guard? A knight? An advisor? An advisor to Queen Rosalynne? The thought churned her stomach that her twin might have been unknowingly working for the enemy for all of these years. Rosalynne had not been the one to kill her parents, no, nor the one to take the throne away, but the crown she wore was rightfully Olympia’s. Olympia’s and her brother’s.

  Finally, when the door opened again, Olympia almost bounced on the old man, who nudged the door shut with his foot. “Where is he? Bring him here. Wake him from his bed at night. Bring me to his bedchambers. Whatever you must do—”

  “Forgive me, Olympia. I know how difficult this must have been on you for you to have been so very close to seeing him and then having been made to wait. You must understand that your twin and I… we have had not such a close relationship. While I have kept an eye on him this entire time, he did not know or suspect this at all, so to gain his trust, for him to follow me here…”

  Aldwin Lehr straightened to his full height, losing his stooped back positioning, and clapped his gnarled hands twice.

  The door opened, and in strolled a tall man, muscular, with dark hair and eyes.

  Olympia stared at him for a long moment. There was something vaguely familiar about him. She had seen him before, but when? Distantly, she recalled bumping into him on the battlefield when the dragons returned, but they had not spoken much to each other, and she had not thought to see if he might be her brother.

  She approached him and touched his hair. As straight as hers, not cut short. His eyes… yes, the coloring was as dark as her own. Her hair was as black as could be, but his was more a dark brown, but they were male and female. They were twins, yes, but they were not and could not be identical.

  His nose was larger than hers, to be expected, a bit wider at the bottom but narrower at the top, and his face shape was rectangular, not oval like hers.

  Her hands shook as she reached up to touch his face.

  He sidestepped her. “Vicar Albert Leeson, what is going on? Who is this woman?”

  Olympia scowled. The man’s words just now had her thinking—hoping—that he had spoken with her brother some and had prepared him for this meeting. What had the blasted man been up to all of these long days?

  “This is Olympia. Olympia, this is Ulric. Ulric Cooper.”

  “Ulric,” Olympia said, but then she grimaced. “That is not a name my parents—”

  “His true name…” Aldwin said. “Ulric, your true name is Oldrich.”

  Ulric took a step back toward the door. “I do not understand what you are talking about. Vicar, I do not—”

  Olympia held up her hand. “Please, Oldrich, do not be afraid. I can explain everything.”

  “I have never seen you before,” he hissed. “Why should I trust you?”

  “But you have. Maybe not while we were alive. That I do not know—”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” he spat out.

  She understood his anger. Her own frustration over the years had caused her to seek out isolation, and she wondered if that had been the same for her twin.

  Olympia reached toward him but did not touch him. “I can tell you everything if you will have an open mind and an open heart.”

  “How could we have seen each other before we were alive?”

  “We shared a womb, Oldrich,” she murmured.

  He staggered back a step, and she leaped forward, grabbing his wrist to prevent him from falling, which was unnecessary. His balance proved him to be a fighter.

  Somehow, the moment they touched, any doubt and worry and fear she might have had that the vicar had been lying to her all along vanished. She could sense in Oldrich that they truly were brother and sisters, twins.

  “We shared a womb,” she repeated, her eyes filling with tears. “We are twins, Oldrich, and there is more.”

  But that
was all she could get out as she promptly broke down, sobbing with pure joy.

  Perhaps she did not require the crown after all for her life to be fulfilled.

  39

  Ulric Cooper, Personal Guard to Queen Rosalynne

  Ulric yanked his hand free. “Twins? I don’t… How… I never saw you before.”

  “I was born here in this castle,” the strange woman said. “You and I both, but you were left here, and I, I was brought to Xalac—”

  “The island?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Why would we have to be separated if… if we are what… I don’t…”

  “What she says is true,” the vicar said.

  Ulric clenched his jaw. He could feel his face turn red from rising anger. He’d noticed the vicar more often as of late. Normally, the old man with his stooped back remained in the chapel more times than not. Now, Ulric realized the man must have been keeping an eye on him, but…

  Ulric narrowed his eyes. “Why aren’t you hunched over?”

  “My back is perfectly fine,” the vicar stated calmly.

  “But I’ve never seen you…”

  The vicar merely held out his hands. “I did not wish for you to.”

  Ulric’s head was beginning to ache. He turned back to the woman. Dark eyes, a small nose, long, black hair as straight as could be, wide, high cheekbones.

  Could she be his sister? Had he not been alone in this world all of this time?

  “Who were you on Xalac?” he muttered.

  “I was me. I went by Olympia Bai.”

  “Is Bai not our name?” he asked, growing more and more confused.

  “It is not. I…” She brought her fingers to her lips and inhaled a deep breath through her nose. “I was mostly by myself. I did not fit in there, and I think the others knew that.”

  “Who brought you there?”

  “A man named Dong Han.” She smiled warmly.

  "And he brought you there. Why?"

  “We were separated for a reason, Oldrich, you and I.”

  “It was for your protection,” the vicar said.

  “Why would we need protection that would require separation?” Ulric asked, baffled.

  “We are twenty years old,” she said, her tone soft. “What occurred twenty years ago?”

  Ulric furrowed his brow. “Twenty years ago…”

  Olympia stepped forward, but Ulric retreated. He was not afraid of her, but he… All of this was a bit too much for him to handle.

  “You said there was more,” Ulric grumbled. “State it plainly.”

  “You are angry. I understand that, and that is my fault.” Albert might not have a stooped back after all, but his hands remained gnarled as he brought one to his chest.

  “How?”

  “I could have told you all of this years ago, but I thought that having you grow up here in the castle was enough of a… challenge, I suppose, is as good of a word as any."

  “Why?” Ulric clenched his hands into tight fists of suppressed frustration.

  “You grew up around vultures, around serpents,” the vicar said, “and it might help you to understand better if you know my true name.”

  “You’ve been lying about your name? Why wouldn’t you? Everything is a lie, apparently,” Ulric muttered.

  “I am Aldwin Lehr,” the elderly man said with a grand flourish that belied his old age. “Still a vicar.”

  “Lehr…” Ulric shook his head. “I think you forget that I was a servant until just a short bit of time.”

  “A servant!” Olympia exclaimed. “You had him serve those people for all of these years?”

  "He has proven himself quite capable and has excelled all on his own without my slightest input," the vicar said. "I've watched and maybe had called away servants or guards or what have you so that Ulric might train with weapons. He seemed inclined to them as if he had known his birth had been a rather violent affair that needed avenging."

  That was when it all started to come together in Ulric’s mind.

  Twenty years ago… birth violent… avenging…

  Those people…

  Ulric’s gaze snapped to the woman’s face.

  She nodded slowly, her face glowing as she smiled. “Yes, Oldrich. I am Olympia Li, and you are Oldrich Li. We are—”

  “The Lis had no children,” Ulric protested, retreating until his back hit the wall.

  "Our mother, Queen Melitta, gave birth to you and to me, and we were spirited away by Aldwin and Dong before Jankin came, and… You know our history, don't you?"

  “No.” Ulric shook his head emphatically. “That’s not me.”

  “I know it’s a bit much for you, Oldrich—”

  “Do not call me that!”

  "But it is your birth name," she argued.

  "No, it is not!"

  He stalked out of there. The queen was having a meeting at the moment, which was why his services were not required. The alchemist Tatum Hill was a trusted ally.

  But the vicar, that woman… what motive did they have to tell such a peculiar tale and make such offensive accusations?

  Seeking a quiet place for a moment, Ulric sought out the library, and when he realized he was trying to find any tomes or scrolls on the Lis, he rushed out of there and rounded a corner. Without meaning to, he almost plowed into a servant and crashed into the wall. He apologized profusely, and the servant laughed easily and teased Ulric for being so clumsy now that he was no longer a servant.

  The servant departed, and Ulric turned to the wall. It had felt a bit different somehow, and he placed his fingers against the wall until he realized the wall could be pushed. He did so, and it swung open.

  Not a wall after all but a door that revealed a passageway.

  Confused, Ulric glanced up and down the empty corridor and then headed inside the passageway. The door closed behind him, but on this side, the door was more evident.

  Should he explore? Perhaps a walk would help him to think a bit more clearly. He had spent some time away from the castle, a few hours only, to seek out Tiberius from Atlan to bring him to the castle to learn of his mission, to go with the princess and prince to the town under siege by a magical man.

  Or a magical monster.

  His time alone had done nothing to help his plaguing thoughts then, and he doubted it would help now. Then, he had been consumed with thoughts of the queen. As much as he strove to accept that Rosalynne was to marry Marcellus for the sake of the kingdom, he could not in good faith deny his own desires and hopes and wants.

  Now, he was struggling to recall every little detail he had been told about his parents, and he came to the realization that he might well have lied to himself all of these years. He might have convinced himself that his parents had been servants before him. No one ever spoke to him about them. None of the older servants would say if they remembered them, and so he had wondered for a time if his mother had merely left him at the steps of the keep, and he had been taken in as a servant that way.

  If what that woman had said was true, that was not too far removed from the truth.

  For a time, the Fates alone knew how long, he wandered and paced. He kept his left hand along the stone wall, trying to ground himself back to reality because his thoughts were rather dark.

  His fingers jammed against a jutted-out portion of the wall, and he glowered at the stone as if it had personally and intentionally hurt him. He went to push the stone back into place and realized it was entirely loose. In fact, when he let go of it, the stone almost fell out, so he opted to remove it.

  And found a cavity.

  Filled with scrolls.

  Curious, Ulric removed them and scanned them. Noll had taught Ulric how to read. The prince had not been the best reader of all, but then Ulric had spent time enough in the library here and there that he had been able to learn even more by himself.

  Almost each of the scrolls all mentioned the Lis.

  Ulric carefully opened a rolled-up scroll. A portrait
. Given the rest of the scrolls as well as the crowns upon their dark heads, he knew he was looking at the Lis.

  He read enough of a different scroll to learn their names. King Yijun and Queen Melitta. Not much was ever said nowadays about them. He knew that shortly before King Jankin had died, a man had been executed for speaking highly of the Lis or something concerning them.

  The king had extremely short hair, lips that were both pale and full, bushy eyebrows, black eyes, a rectangular head, and a nose that widened toward the bottom.

  Melitta had a full, oval face and a sloped nose, dark eyes, a wide nose. Her hair was a light brown color.

  Olympia claimed to be their daughter. Ulric swallowed hard. He could see them both in her—her father’s lips, straight black hair like him as well. Her eyes were dark, like them both, her mother’s face shape and arched eyebrows.

  As for Ulric… he could see them in him as well. The man’s face shape and eyes and hair, hair coloring between the two, the man’s nose as well. Did he not favor the woman at all? Ah, perhaps he did as she had a thin upper lip but a fuller lower one. He touched a finger to his lips. Yes, his were indeed the same.

  Ulric’s hands trembled. When he had been younger, he had been a frustrated and furious boy, angry with the Fates, seeking to be larger, stronger, to work himself up to becoming a guard as he knew he would never be allowed to train to become a knight.

  He had done all that on his own. Even Albert Leeson—or Aldwin Lehr or whatever the vicar’s true name might be—had said Ulric had done it all by himself. He had been a servant to a leader of a militia to the personal guard of the queen.

  A woman he loved above all others.

  A woman he thought he could never have because of his humble upbringing.

  But if he accepted their words as truth, he was a prince. And not just any prince but a Li prince. He would have a claim on the throne himself.

  Why could he not then have a chance with Rosalynne after all?

  But what of Vincana? What of peace? And there remained the dragon to consider as well.

  Slowly, Ulric returned everything to where it had been, first rolling up the portrait. It was only as he left the same door that he had come through to enter the unknown passageway that he realized the Fates must have guided his feet. Even though for a time, he had ignored them, and then, he had turned to the Fate of Chaos. As he matured and shortly before he met and befriended Prince Noll, Ulric had started to turn to the Fate of Life.