Opal of Light: An epic dragon fantasy (The Keeper Chronicles Book 1)

by Norma Hinkens

  “Where are they going?” Orlla asked.

  Arnulf grunted. “I fear Brufus is sending small groups of soldiers across the central marshlands and hiding them in the Angladior mountains, building up a large army undetected. Hamend will be expecting an attack from the north. A clever ruse to outmaneuver the Macobite army and throw them into disarray.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’ll wager you know more about it than you’ve divulged.”

  He grasped the lead rope on Orlla’s horse and urged his steed through the brush to where the soldiers had hidden Horace’s body. When he spotted bloody drag marks, he jumped down, pushed the undergrowth aside and knelt beside his fellow Kingsman. He checked for a pulse and then rose, face black as thunder. “Brufus will pay for this travesty.”

  He stared out at the road for a long time, as though waiting for more soldiers to appear on the horizon, purposing to avenge his fellow Kingsman, no doubt. Orlla watched him closely from her horse and threw a quick glance down at the lead rope lying loose on the ground. If only her hands weren’t bound, she could make a bid for freedom while he was still reeling from Horace’s death. For her part, Orlla was torn between relief that her chance of escaping had improved with the loss of one of the Kingsmen, and regret that a decent Macobite with a strong sense of loyalty to his sovereign had just lost his life to Pegonians—the same people who had ripped her mother from her all those years ago. Despite Horace’s churlish demeanor, she understood his motivation for arresting her—he too had been a Keeper of his kingdom in a manner of speaking.

  “Aren’t you going to bury him?” Orlla asked.

  Arnulf snapped back to attention, eyeing her with an air of hostility. “What is it to you? Your people killed him. You wanted him dead, didn’t you?”

  “They’re not my people,” Orlla insisted. “And I didn’t wish Horace dead. I didn’t consider him a bad man for fulfilling the obligations of his profession and allegiance to his king. He bore the weight of that responsibility on his shoulders, as do you.”

  Arnulf stared at her for a long moment and then sighed. “I have no spade to bury him with, and the road grows more dangerous with every passing minute. We must press on.” He gathered up the lead rope and mounted his horse once again, nudging it into motion.

  Night was falling by the time Lichtenburg came into view. Despite her fatigue, Orlla sat up a little taller in her saddle, surveying with unabashed curiosity the seat of power in Macobin, where the high court of the land sat in session, and King Hamend resided. Gray, stone houses stood shoulder-to-shoulder winding along the main thoroughfare that led to the center of town. Merchants driving laden carts jostled one another as they rumbled through the streets, returning to their homesteads. Ragged children called to them in passing to spare a penny, and the occasional scrawny dog cast a doleful glance their way. Raucous patrons spilled out of taverns, red-faced and singing off-key medleys to all within earshot. Passersby ogled Arnulf and Orlla as their horses clopped along the cobblestones. Orlla kept her bound hands hidden beneath her cloak as Arnulf had instructed her to. If she was outed as a Pegonian spy, she wouldn’t live to reach the court.

  Gradually, the streets they traversed grew murkier, and the people more destitute—some exhibiting a gauntness close to death. Orlla wrinkled her nose at the stench of refuse. Beggars bound in rags hung in the shadows at every street corner. “Lepers,” Arnulf said gruffly, when she peered curiously at them over her shoulder as they went by.

  She took a quick steadying breath and averted her eyes. She had read about leprosy in the annals at the Conservatory but had never seen anyone infected with the disease—never even seen a wrinkled face or a gray head of hair until a few short days ago. The stories of disfigurement and weeping sores she’d perused both shocked and horrified her, and she’d found it hard to believe that such a disease once existed. But, it turned out leprosy wasn’t a relic of history after all. Her lessons at the Conservatory had whittled the awful truth into a palatable lie. As she watched some of the ambling forms shuffle along the streets, she could clearly see that parts of their arms and legs, and even their faces, had been eaten away by the disease.

  All too soon, Arnulf pulled up outside a bleak, stone building with barred windows. Two guards, clutching halberds, stood to attention on either side of the front door. Arnulf dismounted and tied both horses to a hitching rail before helping Orlla down.

  One of the guards raised wiry gray brows at them. “Who goes there?”

  “A Kingsman,” Arnulf replied. “I have need of a cell for this woman who is to be brought before the court and tried as a Pegonian spy.”

  The guard nodded and pushed open the iron grated door.

  Arnulf gestured to Orlla to enter ahead of him. She stepped forward, and the second guard halted her and patted her down. She shivered at the humiliation of feeling his hands fishing around in her clothing, but she kept her mouth shut, knowing that any protest on her part would likely only instigate a more prolonged and thorough search.

  Inside, an angular thin-lipped clerk with a tuft of fluffy orange hair atop his head questioned Arnulf and made a few notes in a ledger before summoning another guard to escort Orlla to a cell. Arnulf gave a curt nod in her direction. “I will see you at your trial.”

  “You are making a grave mistake,” she replied. “I am innocent of the charges.”

  “That is for the court to decide. My duty here is done,” Without waiting for a response, Arnulf turned on his heel and abandoned her to her confinement.

  The prison guard clutched her arm and escorted her through another iron doorway and down a long, damp, stone corridor lined with gloomy cells and iron torch sconces. Glistening eyes looked up at her from filthy straw pallets as she passed by. Orlla wrinkled her nose at the stench of overripe chamber pots that permeated the air. The guard marched her all the way to the very last cell at the end of the corridor where a wild-haired woman sat hunched in the middle of the floor clutching her knees to her chest, making a low, eerie wail as she rocked back and forth.

  The guard pulled out a key from an oversized ring and unlocked the door before untying Orlla’s wrists and shoving her inside. The wild-haired woman scuttled backward onto a straw pallet, uttering a shriek that raised the hair on the back of Orlla’s neck. The guard locked the door, before disappearing down the gloomy corridor, his footsteps echoing off the walls.

  Orlla clutched the bars and yelled after him. “When am I to be tried?”

  The only response was a high-pitched cackle from behind her.

  Chapter 14

  Orlla released her grip on the bars and spun around to inspect her cell companion more closely. Matted tufts of wild gray hair stuck out in all directions. Her yellowed eyes rolled first one way and then the next, never quite focusing on Orlla, yet never quite letting her out of her sight. To add to the unsettling picture, the woman appeared to be crawling with lice and scraped incessantly at sores on her face with long, filthy fingernails. Disturbing as the woman’s appearance was, Orlla couldn’t help feeling sorry for her in her wretched state. What crime had this woman committed that condemned her to rot behind these prison bars? This was the very worst of what it meant to live beyond the blessing of the Opal of Light, succumbing to sickness of both mind and body. Orlla scrubbed a hand across her brow, pondering a thought. Was her dear father any better off, doomed to live on inside his prison of oblivion?

  Orlla edged closer to the woman, determined to confront her own cowardice. She eased herself down on the straw pallet and tentatively laid a hand on the woman’s shoulders, avoiding looking directly at her for fear of provoking another shrieking fit. The woman began rocking back and forth again, but after a few minutes she eased up and resorted to scratching her sores.

  Orlla waited to make sure she had calmed down sufficiently, and then turned to look at her. “I’m Orlla. What is your name?”

  The woman sniffed, eyeing an ominous stain on the filthy, straw-strewn floor. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
/>   Orlla gave a wry twist of her lips. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be here at all.”

  The woman’s shoulders heaved as she took a shaky breath, revealing an uneven ridge of yellowed teeth. “I am Elspeth.”

  “You are graced with a pretty name,” Orlla said. “How long have you been here?”

  Elspeth began to sway back and forth again, rapidly building up speed. “I told you, you shouldn’t have come here.”

  Orlla sighed in frustration. Elspeth’s eyes had glazed over, and she seemed to be chiding herself for something and forgotten all about Orlla. When the rocking didn’t relent, Orlla abandoned any further attempts to learn anything from her and instead curled up on one end of the pallet, placing her hands beneath her to shield her face from the scratchy straw that smelled overwhelmingly of urine. There was nothing to be done about her dire situation tonight, so she might as well try and get some rest after her harrowing ride. Tomorrow she would do everything in her power to persuade the court she was not a spy.

  She woke to the sound of someone rattling the door and yelling for the chamber pot. Groggily, she sat up and yawned, blinking herself awake. Every part of her ached from the uncomfortable position she had slept in. Beside her, Elspeth rocked furiously back and forth in the same spot she was in when Orlla had fallen asleep.

  “Want that scat bucket emptied or not?” a man yelled, banging on the bars.

  Taking a tentative breath and holding it, Orlla crossed the cell to retrieve the chamber pot and carried it over to the door where a coarse-bearded man in homespun pushing a cart with several large buckets waited.

  “Set it down,” he growled, shooing her away from the door with a three-fingered hand crisscrossed with deep scars.

  When Orlla had retreated to the straw pallet next to Elspeth, the man unlocked the door with a fair amount of huffing and puffing, retrieved the pot and dumped it into the bucket, before tossing it back inside the door. Orlla almost gagged at the foul stench that rose up from the fetid liquid as the man rumbled on down the corridor to the next cell.

  When she had halfway recovered, she smiled wanly at Elspeth. “Did you sleep at all?”

  Elspeth twisted her head and squinted past Orlla. “Are you a debtor too?”

  Shock coursed through Orlla’s veins as the words registered. Was Elspeth imprisoned in this miserable place because of some unpaid debt—King Hamend’s excessive taxes perhaps? Orlla shook her head. “No. I am wrongfully accused of a crime. What debt do you owe?”

  Elspeth clutched her knees tighter to her chest with painfully-thin arms. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

  Orlla reached for her hand and squeezed it gently, the ends of her hair brushing over Elspeth’s fingers. “You shouldn’t be here either.”

  Elspeth stopped swaying abruptly, a look of alarm gripping her. Her eyes glistened with a feverish undertone, but for the first time they met Orlla’s. Ever so slowly, she stretched out her hand and touched the white strands in Orlla’s hair. She let them run through her fingers, her lips moving silently, almost as though she were praying over them. Then, she dropped her head and began to jerk back and forth again, more agitated than before. “I told you not to come here, Enndolynn.”

  Orlla went rigid, her eyes widening with shock. Had she heard Elspeth right? Her pulse pummeled her temples as her dry lips tried to formulate some kind of response. She grasped Elspeth firmly by the shoulder, forcing her to turn around and look at her. “You … knew my mother?”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Elspeth repeated flatly, her body trembling uncontrollably.

  “Oy!” a rough voice yelled through the bars.

  Orlla glanced up to see a pinch-faced guard in gauntlets and greaves unlocking the door.

  “Time to go,” he grunted, jerking his chin at her.

  She cast one last, desperate look at Elspeth, but she was lost in some half-conscious state again, a discarded shell with nothing inside but dried-out snippets of memories. Orlla rose quietly, fear bleeding through her pores as she turned her attention to the guard. Today she would face the Macobite court, accused of spying for Pegonia, a crime punishable by death.

  The stone-faced guard shackled her wrists and herded her out into the corridor where another guard waited, one hand on the hilt of his sword as if supposing her as unstable as Elspeth. Orlla shot him a scathing look, but he only shifted his jaw and tightened his grip on his sword as he led her down the dimly-lit hallway, the pinch-faced guard bringing up the rear.

  The clerk who had checked her in clicked his tongue when he saw them approaching and flipped open his ledger, tracing down the page with a ragged fingernail. He dipped his pen in his ink pot and painstakingly wrote something next to her name before nodding at the guards. “The prisoner is released for trial.”

  The words struck Orlla’s heart like a stone from a slingshot, the pain of all she stood to lose burying itself deep inside her. She didn’t regret what she had done to save Samten, but now she must face the consequences. Her thoughts flitted to Erdhan, only compounding her heartache. He likely thought she was safe with her friend in the Angladior mountains by now. No doubt, he had put her out of his mind entirely, as she had meant for him to do—for his own sake. Catrain would surely hate her for what she believed she had done. By now, everyone in Wilefur would suppose she was a spy, and welcome the news that she’d been caught and put on trial. She didn’t hold it against them. She knew what it was to lose a family member to Pegonian slavers, as many in Macobin had.

  The guards marched her outside the prison and down a narrow alleyway. Orlla kept her head lowered to avoid the accusatory stares of the townsfolk as they went by. They continued on for a mile or so along cobblestone streets that zig-zagged through the town until they came to a flagstone square at the heart of Lichtenburg where the court was situated.

  Roughhewn stone steps led up to imposing wooden doors embossed with King Hamend’s seal—an eagle resting on the prongs of an eight-point buck. Orlla knew from her lessons in the Conservatory that it symbolized King Hamend’s strength and power, although from what she had seen of Macobin so far, his influence left much to be desired.

  The guards ushered her inside the main courtroom and passed her off to a stocky, red-faced bailiff who led her up the center aisle to face the judge. Spectators whispered unabashedly to one another as she went by. Their expressions were decidedly hostile, laced with an element of curiosity at the female Pegonian spy in their midst. A couple of women dabbed at reddened eyes and shot dark looks her way. Orlla realized with a sinking heart that these were probably the wives, mothers and sisters of soldiers slain by Brufus’s forces. There would be no room for clemency in their eyes unless she could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was not a spy. She gritted her teeth. Without betraying her country, her family, and her Keeper pledge, there was no way for her to do that.

  She sucked in a quick breath when she spotted Arnulf seated off to one side. He inclined his head slightly toward her and watched as she took her place next to the bald clerk at the front of the courtroom, hands shackled like a common criminal.

  The judge was a statuesque man with a pockmarked face, hawkish nose, and piercing green eyes that made Orlla shiver when he fastened his gaze on her. A jagged scar traversed the length of his angular jaw, heightening his daunting appearance. He hammered with his gavel on the desk in front of him and cleared his throat. “Let it be duly noted that the trial now underway will determine whether or not the stranger presented to the court today is a Pegonian spy.” He nodded to Arnulf who stood and approached the bench.

  “Your Honor, my fellow Kingsman and I were sojourning at The Leaky Cup when we encountered this woman who calls herself Orlla.” He motioned toward her and then returned his attention to the judge. “From the outset, her accent caught our attention. It was clear that she was not from these parts, nor any northern village in Macobin, as she claimed. Indeed, when pressed for the name of her village, she dismissed it as of no particular consequ
ence. Upon further questioning, she refused point blank to give us any information about it.”

  The judge peered down at Orlla with an irritated expression. “Do you wish to give the court the name of the village from which you hail?”

  Orlla pressed her lips together and gave a slight shake of her head. “I do not.”

  The judge raised an eyebrow and nodded to Arnulf. “Continue.”

  “Over the course of that same evening, my fellow Kingsman and I took note of several other peculiarities that made us suspect she may be employed as a spy for Brufus. She was heavy-handed in covering her tracks, even asking at one point why Brufus and Hamend were threatening war, as though feigning ignorance of the political situation would somehow prove she had grown up in the northern backwoods.”

  The judge sighed dramatically, a bored expression settling over his face. “Ignorance is hardly proof in itself that the woman is a spy. Have you no more damning evidence to present to the court?”

  Arnulf gave a small bow of acknowledgment before continuing. “We noted that the wood in her bow is unfamiliar and not from a native tree, and that the feathers in her arrows were not plucked from any bird that nests in Macobin. My fellow Kingsman, Horace, was mistrustful of her from the outset, and had his own theory about where she originally hailed from. He planned to give testimony here as a witness but, tragically, he was slain on the way here by four of Brufus’s men disguised as our own—furthering my suspicion that this woman belongs to a band of spies operating in the area.”

  The judge drew his brows together at the news. “Did these men attempt to rescue her?”

  “No, Your Honor. They did not see us. We were hiding from sight while my fellow Kingsman made their acquaintance. He took an arrow to the chest and died right there on the road. The men stripped him of his weapons and then dragged his body into the brush and continued south.”