Paladin's Prize

by Gaelen Foley

  “Uh, healer?” the bard choked out.

  She stared at him, aghast, when Petra suddenly shouted and pointed toward Novus.

  “Hurry, my lady, get rid of that thing! The portal’s closing!”

  * * *

  The king wasn’t going to make it all the way to the Building Baron’s offices, so Thaydor brought him into the tavern on the square. A few knights hurried in to be of service, but most of them, under Reynulf’s command, closed ranks outside the place, lining up to protect it.

  The aproned innkeeper hastily shooed his patrons off to one side of the pub and offered a cushioned bench, where Thaydor set the wounded king down.

  Baynard’s lined, dirty face was ashen, and blood was seeping from his back. Thaydor helped His Majesty recline on his side, but he dared not remove the blade. He knew from personal experience that that would only make the blood flow faster.

  “Take courage, sire. Just hold on. My wife is a healer. Try not to move too much.” He glanced at his men.

  Sirs Richeut, Gervais, and Ivan awaited his orders.

  “One of you, go to the Great Library! Tell my wife I need her here, now! But I want guards by her side at all times. And keep her away from the square. I don’t want her anywhere near those Urms. Bring her through the back door when you return.” He pointed at the pub’s back door, which was down the small aisle at the far end of the building. “Now, go!”

  “Don’t bother,” the king rasped even as Richeut went racing out the back door of the pub. “I don’t want to live. Not after all I’ve done.”

  “Sire! You mustn’t say that.”

  He shook his head weakly and beckoned to Thaydor. “Come closer.”

  He crouched down beside the man, waiting.

  “You really are a marvel, my lad. After all I did to you, you still came to my rescue.”

  “An oath of fealty is no light matter, Your Majesty.”

  “It was to me. I have failed you all.”

  “You will have time to fix it. As soon as my wife gets here, she will make you well again.”

  “Married. How nice. I am happy for you, lad. But no. I don’t deserve it. Let me go to my wife.”

  “Your Majesty—”

  “Don’t.” Baynard shook his head with a pained grimace. “Please. I was blind and stupid. Never saw through Eudo’s scheme until it was too late. Not even after what he did to you. Or had me do to you, I should say. I am sorry, paladin. If you could forgive me. I was not worthy of your service. I see that now. I’ve brought this kingdom to the brink of ruin, all for a woman I knew from the start would be my undoing.”

  “Sana’s dead, sir. If it’s any comfort.”

  “No. The fault was mine. An old man’s vanity.”

  Thaydor offered the king a sip of water, but Baynard shook his head painfully.

  “There is, however, one last service you could do for me,” he ground out.

  Thaydor leaned closer, instantly ready. “Yes, my liege?”

  “Take this for me.” The king pried the thick gold ring that bore the royal seal off his finger and dropped it in Thaydor’s hand.

  His fingers closed around it. “What shall I do with it, sire? Take it to Aisedor and explain to Their Majesties for you—”

  “Be quiet!” He started laughing wearily. “Put the damned thing on, lad.”

  “What?”

  “I am appointing you…my successor.”

  Thaydor stared blankly at him. “Sir?”

  “It is my right. I trust you will not shirk your duty.”

  Thaydor looked down at the ring and then stared at the king in disbelief, but made no move to put it on.

  The knights gazed at him, wide-eyed.

  “Well, you heard him,” Ivan murmured.

  “No!” Thaydor whispered.

  “You would not disobey your king’s command, would you, paladin? I want witnesses to hear me. People!” Baynard called weakly to the staring citizens crowded into one side of the pub.

  The innkeeper beckoned them closer, and they all leaned in.

  “Hear my dying wish,” His Majesty said, pausing to cough up a spume of blood. “You know I have neither son nor daughter to survive me. But by the ancient decree of the Charter, I exercise my privilege to appoint my own successor. And I hereby make Thaydor Clarenbeld your king. Noble bloodlines. Impeccable record of service. Years of experience. Proven sound judgment. Heed him. He’s the only one I know can be trusted,” he said, and just like that, he died.

  Thaydor stared at the old man’s stark, frozen face in astonishment.

  “The king is dead!” Gervais suddenly shouted, lifting his sword and turning to the people. “Long live the king!”

  Thaydor looked up at the crowd blankly.

  “Long live the king!” they cried in unison at him, and to his even greater shock, they went down on one knee around him.

  Thaydor shot to his feet, aghast. “No! Don’t do that! I-I haven’t agreed to this!”

  “Sire, you heard your lord’s dying wish. How can you refuse him?” Ivan countered, looking highly entertained by this turn of events.

  Thaydor scowled at him, bewildered.

  “The old man was wise—on occasion,” Gervais said. “Who else could govern Veraidel better than the Paladin of Ilios?”

  “Sir Thaydor, if I may,” the innkeeper ventured with a humble bow. “Your people need you. You’ve rescued us so many times before. And now, this. Look at all we’ve been through.” He gestured to the battle taking place outside the window.

  His heart sank. “I-I don’t know. I must seek to learn if it is…truly the will of Ilios.”

  “Why else would He have preserved you through all your quests if not for this?” some plump, cheeky townswoman piped up. “This has to be your destiny—Your Majesty!” She grinned to be the first to say it.

  In fact, they all started grinning, and then the smiles broke out into laughter and cheering.

  He was utterly nonplussed. “I, at least, need to discuss this with my wife!”

  “Oh, she’ll hate being queen,” Ivan jested.

  Thaydor shook his head in frustration. “I don’t have time for this right now! First, I need to rid this city of Urmugoths, and then we can see what might be best. Knights! One of you, attend me as armor-bearer.”

  “Yes, sire!”

  “Don’t call me that,” he muttered at his men as he stalked off.

  “Should His Majesty really be going into battle?” the townswoman protested. “I mean, if he’s the king now?”

  “Try to stop me,” he retorted, pausing. “And by the way, when my wife arrives from the library, tell her she’s too late to save His Majesty. And tell her guards I said to keep her out of trouble until I’m done here.”

  “Yes, sire!” the innkeeper said, bowing again.

  Thaydor gritted his teeth at the honorific and stomped out the back of the building, passing Wanted posters with his face on them as he went.

  * * *

  Jonty was dying. Jeremy might be dead, as well. Wrynne didn’t know.

  But while the knights and two remaining squires labored to dispatch the rest of the rocs, she concentrated on getting the fire thistle through the portal.

  It was narrowing by the second.

  Clamped between the branch and her staff, the fleur du mal strove mightily to infiltrate her mind. She could feel it prying into her awareness.

  Ilios, the noxious thing was not just sentient. It seemed to have some form of telepathy, no doubt the better to torment the condemned souls in its native homeland.

  The Infernal Plane waited.

  “Careful!” one of the knights warned from behind her.

  “Stay back!” she commanded. “I’ve almost got it…”

  She raised the two sticks gingerly and thrust the fire thistle through the hole. Just as she unclamped them to cast the fleur du mal back into its hellish homeland, the hot, sulfur-laden breeze pouring out of the Infernal Plane blew a puff of thistledown loose fr
om the seed head.

  She drew in her breath in horror as all the floating bits of thistledown flew into her.

  She bit back a scream and looked down at herself with a gasp. At once, she tried frantically to brush the seeds off, but their prickly fluff made them stick to her clothes, and when her hands touched them, they penetrated her skin.

  She whimpered, powerless, as she watched the pieces instantly dissolve into her flesh and disappear as if they’d never been.

  Panic spiraled through her. It happened so fast, she wondered if maybe she had imagined it. She didn’t feel any different.

  She didn’t feel evil. Just scared out of her mind.

  Barely a fraction of a second had passed when the portal zoomed shut with a thunderclap. Novus dropped onto his hands and knees. Berold went over to him to see if he was all right.

  She looked over her shoulder and realized all the rocs were dead.

  Dear, charming Jonty, however, was bleeding his guts out. Literally.

  She had to save him. Pulse pounding, she swallowed hard, feeling sick with the panic of it all.

  Maybe it’s all right. She was not sure if the others had seen.

  “My lady, quickly! The bard needs you!” Kai shouted.

  Gathering herself, Wrynne hurried over to help Jonty, while Novus lay panting on the ground, spent.

  “Stay with him,” she ordered Berold, but as she ran over, she cringed as she knelt down beside her friend.

  “Ow,” he attempted to jest, but his beautiful voice had turned to an agonized rasp, and his face was white with suffering.

  And blood loss.

  “Let me see it,” she whispered.

  “Darling, if I let go, my guts will fall out,” he ground out through the pain.

  “All right, then. Stay as you are. This will only take a moment. You’ll be fine soon. I promise.” She touched his shoulder to comfort him, then closed her eyes.

  She bowed her head, searching inside her for the Light.

  Her frantic state made it rather difficult to center herself, but she took a deep breath, let it out, and waited…

  Nothing happened.

  She tried again, concentrating harder.

  Still nothing. No Light. Not even a spark.

  No. To her horror, a black wall of cold, dark emptiness blocked her from connecting with any sort of Light that may have lived in her before.

  No, no, Ilios, no.

  “What’s wrong?” Kai asked her quickly.

  “Nothing! Just wait.” She tried harder. “I’m having a little…”

  “Hurry, my lady! He’s dying!”

  “I know! Ilios?” she wrenched out, lifting her gaze to the empty sky.

  The blue of it seemed so cold, so far away.

  Unreachable. Unpleasable.

  Like Thaydor. Her too-perfect husband.

  “Uh, Wrynne?” Jonty croaked.

  “It’s all right, I j-just need a moment,” she vowed, but not even she believed it now. It won’t come.

  Father, please!

  Petra drew in his breath, the first to realize. “My lady, did the fire thistle touch you?”

  “Shut up and let me concentrate!” she snapped at the lad.

  “Hurry, mistress! You have to heal him!” Kai insisted.

  “Aye, and then heal Jeremy! If he’s still alive,” Petra added.

  Sagard laid a firm hand on her shoulder. “My lady, answer the boy’s question. Did the fire thistle touch you?”

  “How dare you? Take your hands off me.” She shrugged off his touch and tried once more to heal Jonty.

  “Oh, Wrynne,” the bard said softly, mournfully, his green eyes welling with tender understanding.

  “No. I can do this.” She was shaking with horror. “If they’d just stop talking!”

  Kai shot to his feet and rushed off. “Wizard! Can you heal?”

  Novus sat up and shook off the grogginess. “What’s happened?”

  “I think milady got stung. Her healing power’s not working and the bard’s at death’s door. Come on!” Kai pulled him to his feet.

  Novus looked sharply at Wrynne.

  Her eyes welled with tears. “Help him. Please. I’ll do anything you ask.”

  He scowled at her words as he strode over to her and Jonty, who had just lost consciousness. “You shouldn’t make such offers to a wizard of Okteus, pet. Didn’t your paladin ever teach you that?”

  “Can you save him?” Sagard demanded.

  “Healing’s not my forte. But I think I’ve got something that will work…”

  Shrugging his shoulders as if to loosen them after the effort he had already poured out, Novus crouched down beside Jonty and began chanting more spells from the realm of shadows, moving his outstretched hands back and forth a few inches over the bard’s inert form.

  Shaking, Wrynne laid her hand on Jonty’s shoulder and tried to will whatever residue of healing power she still retained into him. Of all the times for her gift to fail her!

  Oh, Jonty, please, come back. I don’t know what I’ll do without you and all your silly jokes.

  She hadn’t known him very long, but in that short time, he had become like a brother to her.

  Novus’s strange brand of healing magic levitated Jonty off the ground. Wrynne watched in trepidation as a cloud of churning smoke hid him. Novus spoke verses in some arcane language, and suddenly, the bard dropped out of the cloud of smoke and plopped onto the ground, coughing.

  Wrynne leaned closer and looked at Jonty’s stomach. There wasn’t a scratch on him. Even the bloodstains had vanished. She gasped, looked at him, and laughed aloud through her tears.

  The others let out exclamations of grateful relief, except for Novus, who just knelt there, eyeing Wrynne in brooding suspicion. Avoiding his gaze, she hugged her friend with all her might.

  “What happened?” Jonty asked, sounding dazed.

  “You scared us half to death, that’s all,” she said with a sniffle.

  “Bloody hell.” He glanced around at all the roc carcasses around him and grimaced. “I’ll never eat chicken again. Not even Wrynne’s magic chicken, and especially not yours, Sagard.”

  If her healing gift could fail her, Wrynne didn’t know if she could even still work the Feed the Hungry spell, but she was so relieved that Jonty was all right that she cupped the bard’s face between her hands and kissed him soundly on the forehead.

  “There, there. I’m all right,” he insisted. “You healed me.”

  Her laughter broke off as she realized he must have been in shock from his wounds during their exchange. She just looked at him and then at Novus, whose piercing silver eyes seemed to see right through her.

  “Professor, sir,” Petra ventured, “what about our friend, Jeremy?”

  “What about me?” a cheerful voice replied.

  Wrynne looked up. “Jeremy?”

  “Jeremy!” his two companions cried in shock.

  The formerly unconscious squire was standing there with his hands propped on his waist, curiously watching the goings-on around Jonty. “Looks like you got everything well in hand without me, then.”

  His astounded friends jumped up, rushed over, and embraced him, clapping him on the back and checking him over for injuries, but he seemed unscathed.

  “You’re alive, man!”

  “We thought you were dead!”

  “Nah,” he scoffed with a wave of his hand. “This thick skull? Blasted bird must have knocked me out when he dropped me. Lucky, though—nice soft turf where I fell. So, what did I miss?”

  He looked around at everyone with an eager grin, but nobody had the heart to answer.

  The silence was grim.

  Novus rose to his feet, then offered Wrynne a hand up.

  She took it, but when she stood, he held her captive by her hand and searched her face for a long moment. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  His penetrating stare unnerved her. “Then why couldn’t you heal?”

>   “How should I know? I never said I was perfect.”

  “Did you see how many pieces of the fire thistle hit you?”

  “None of them did!” She yanked her hand out of his hold and turned away. “Now stop bothering me about it! Gods! Leave me alone! Just take me back to Thaydor. I want my husband. This company grows tiresome.”

  She snatched her staff from the ground and stalked off, angrily ignoring the worried looks her companions exchanged.

  Chapter 19

  Temptress

  The rout was complete. Thaydor and his men had retaken the city, and those few foes that still eluded the knights were on the run. Reynulf was seeing to them.

  Thaydor, flush with victory and flecked with Urm blood, strode into Lionsclaw Keep, ignoring the hails of all the people insisting he become their king. He looked askance at them as palace doors opened in succession before him.

  He just wanted his wife. In every way imaginable.

  He had accomplished his mission, and he wanted his reward. He’d received a message she had been brought here once Lord Eudo had been taken into custody, his bodyguards slain.

  “Not now,” he brushed off some dignitary who stepped toward him as he marched through the center of the great hall. Everybody in the kingdom seemed to want to talk to him or ask him questions, or even curry favor already, or set up some important meeting about one thing or another.

  He simply didn’t care about any of that until he laid eyes on Wrynne. He had to see her, make sure she was safe.

  A foreboding feeling had been gnawing at him all day. True, he tended to worry overmuch where she was concerned, doting husband that he was, but no matter. He’d be fine once he saw she was all right. This very violent day in the heart of his home city had merely rattled his protective side.

  By Ilios, he had never been happier to hear the cheer of victory go up among his men than when the last Urm in the square had fallen. They were not the brightest creatures, but even Urm mercenaries should have known that Eudo was inviting them to their doom.

  With the clash over, the city secured, and the feast already being planned, couriers were currently racing to every corner of the kingdom to tell the people that King Baynard was dead and had appointed the Golden Knight as his successor.