Shortly before noon, they came across a patrol in the fog. Somehow, their scouts missed them, and when they returned from their scout to find a patrol questioning the rest of them, they were all obliged to go into the town with them. To do otherwise would only raise their suspicions further than they already were.
Sean’s slightly psychotic behavior didn’t help matters any. By now, he knew he was hallucinating, but he couldn’t do much about it. Talking to the patrol was very difficult; reaching ghosts moving among the horses whispered his name in hisses that built on their party’s stillness and confused what the soldiers were saying.
Sean dozed off in his saddle shortly after they were moving again, but his exhaustion didn’t drown out his nightmares, or daymares, as the case was, and despite the chill damp air, he began to sweat profusely.
Elias and Larry managed to get Sean to a room in the inn, taking full advantage of the weather and his heavy cloak to cover his herald. Once in the small room, they turned him over to Mattie. Elias pressed the white stone into her hand and left to make further arrangements for their stay. Sean was never exactly sure what she did to him, but essentially, she pushed him into a stupor, then she tried, with little success, to reduce his fever.
The fog, and their cloaks, may have covered their entrance, but it was inevitable that someone would notice the White Star emblem they all wore. Word filtered through the people like the fog moving through the streets, and they did much the same thing here that they’d done in the first town, without the need of any grand display of the flag.
Ferris was the only person to have seen it before, and though he had been marching under the White Star banner for several days now, watching the dismemberment of another well-established town was highly unsettling for him; it unsettled the rest of them too, though none of them wavered in their loyalty or their purpose.
With the development of a raging fever, Sean was obviously ill, so they were going to stay a second night. The innkeeper went out of his way to find accommodations for all of them, though it meant they were forced to double up and even take space in the attic. By morning, however, he informed them that he was closing the inn and leaving town.
Even after eighteen hours of sleep, Sean was still delirious, though more alert. He made black scarves for all of them and expected his men to wear them. In order to avoid a scene and to blend in, everyone complied with his wishes, so they strode into the town square all armored up and shrouded to the knees under sheer black scarves.
Sean thought it only logical, that, if he couldn’t convince his black ghosts to haunt someone else, then he would join them and return the favor. Delirium did not make for sound logic, but he wasn’t completely lost to his surroundings. He figured when the garrison commander turned out the troops to attempt to stop the exodus, he would be looking for the source of it – Sean – and he wasn’t about to run from a ghost, not when it might prove to be substantial after all.
Despite his men’s best efforts to get Sean out of town quickly and safely, he refused to mount. He went to various people around the square, lending a hand with such things as hitching a horse or lifting a basket. He was in the process of containing a small boy while his mother helped his father finish tying down their load, when the garrison emptied out into the square.
The commander was indeed looking for Sean. He had received reports of the new emblem when they arrived and hadn’t recognized its description or its significance at the time; Elias had given the patrol a fictitious name and errand. When he started to get reports of people shrouding themselves and leaving in unnatural numbers, he made the connection.
At first, covered with the scarves as they were, Sean and his men escaped notice, but there was no disguising the three ex-destriers they had with them. Once again, Ferris and Elias tried to hustle Sean away, but by now, his mood was evolving and he was spoiling for something substantial to fight. Even in his fevered mind, he could see they were outnumbered by at least ten to one, so he decided to share his nightmares. When Sean’s ghosts began clawing for the soldiers out of the fog, fear and panic spread through the troops and command broke down completely.
When the local destriers and their demons began to rampage out of control, Sean sent them all directly to his uncle completely intact; his hallucinations would have no affect on them. They were Ludwyn’s creations and they had nightmares of their own.
Minutes into the fight, the local people around them had fled as fast as they could move. Nine tenths of the soldiers had also fled, having been unable to raise a sword to the ghosts in their heads. As things crumbled into chaos around them, Manuel and his horse pushed Sean and Prince away from the fight, and between him and Leo, who rode the third Clydesdale, they succeeded in getting him out of the square, then out of the town where they all charged off upriver.
When they finally stopped, Ferris pulled Sean from the saddle then knocked him flat. That almost caused a riot, but Sean wouldn’t allow it. Having been able to work off some of his frustrations, and having received a solid punch in the face, helped bring him to his senses. “Settle down, everyone. I deserved that,” he said, as he mopped at his split lip. For the first time, he could tell the difference between his ghosts and the real people who rode with him. “I put all of you in danger and it was stupid of me.” He turned to Ferris. “Are we safe here?”
“We’re barely out of sight of the town,” he said. “I wouldn’t exactly call this safe.”
Sean climbed back into the saddle. “Then we move. There’s another garrison town farther up river. I want to head in that direction.” Once in motion again, Sean concentrated on his problem. He reasoned that, if half the people now being disrupted could use even one icon of magic, their sorrow and fear could be messing with their control of their magic, and all that uncontrolled magic might be flooding the magical plain – if there was such a thing. He tried to block the flood, but he couldn’t detect anything to block. Then again, he might be totally wrong.
As the day progressed, Sean’s fever climbed, and once again, his ghosts crowded in on him, seeming to push harder than before, though no fog held them this time. “Darrel, I need you to block me. Shield me like I did Clay.”
Darrel pulled closer to Sean and rested a hand on his head, but even the tactile contact didn’t help. “Sorry, I’m not strong enough.”
That meant Sean had to figure out a way to filter out what he had worked so hard to pick up such a short time ago, and he wasn’t too sure he could accomplish one without sacrificing the other. That was assuming his initial premise was correct. It was also assuming that he could muster the concentration to do it; he could scarcely think anymore.
Nothing improved. Sean continued to flinch away from shrouded ghosts that continued to float too close. By the time they stopped to make camp, he was cussing them, and himself, openly.
That evening, Jenny tried to help. “Try meditation,” she said. “Maybe if you can focus, you can tune them out.”
He had difficulty recognizing her among his ghosts, and picking out her words through their hissing was next to impossible, but he managed it and gave her suggestion a try. Meditation – Sean had never tried it before. He had never had the time, or the inclination to try, but he was getting desperate, and willing to try anything.
Having never done it before, Sean had no real knowledge about where to start. The task was not as easy as it sounded, especially under constant assault, most especially when it wasn’t an external assault that could be closed away behind his eyelids.
After three days of poor to no results, he had a breakthrough of sorts. Just as Mattie was pushing him into sleep, one voice echoed clearly in his mind. “What do I do now?” it was the voice of a young girl.
“Help me,” said Sean. “Help us all. We need you now more than ever.” He didn’t know who he spoke to, or if he’d reached anyone at all. At least they were distinguishable words and not just a deafening, strangling hiss.
Despite appearances, there was no real
progress; it was just a new evolution in his hallucinations. He got used to the ghosts constantly drifting by at the edge of his vision, whispering at the edge of his hearing. He could ignore them most of the time, but he still had to deal with them before he could see or speak with his companions. With Mattie forcing him to sleep at night, he appeared to be a little more balanced during the day, but his apparent hold was only an act, and Mattie was having no success with his raging fever. They agreed that they would take him to the first White House of Healers they could reach; perhaps the healers could help.
They reached the next garrison town three days later and made camp a few miles outside of town. Their scout reported a White House of Healers inside, but it wouldn’t do to enter the city after dark.
Sean waited until after Mattie had put him to sleep, then he pushed her magic off. He waited until the camp was quiet. He waited until the sentries were relaxed and looking elsewhere, then he took himself into town.
He wandered through the dark streets. He found the quiet town soothing, or at least calming. His ghosts were quiet now, which may or may not have had something to do with the hour. Everyone here was in their homes and asleep. Only the night watch was about and they were easy enough to avoid.
He found the governor’s house and made his way all around the compound. Some tiny part of him knew he was courting trouble, and somewhere inside his head, he knew that if his absence from the camp was discovered, his friends would automatically assume he had come here. That piece of him knew he should go, but he wanted to stay. The slim hope that he would find another commander like the one he had already found drew him on.
He found the garrison and put himself inside the front door. If this was a properly run military establishment, the place would never really sleep. He took some joy in dodging the men who moved from place to place as they went about their work.
Once he found the watch commander, he didn’t know what to do. He had not dressed before coming here, so all he had on were his jeans, his long silk undershirt and nothing else, not even his boots. He must have been using magic in order to go unnoticed; that long white shirt should have stood out like a spotlight despite his best efforts at hiding.
He found a dark corner and hunkered down. He ‘saw’ into the office and watched the commander at his desk. A man came in with some report or message, and Sean took the opportunity to paint the White Star on the back of the open door. When the man left, closing the door behind him, it was plainly visible to the commander. Sean watched him for several minutes. The commander sat there, staring at the closed door, utterly immobile, his hands gripping the edge of his desk as if the hold was all that held him in his chair.
Moved to maliciousness, Sean moved around the building and its adjoining barracks. He painted the symbol on the inside of every door he came across, then he went back out into the town and hung his banner at the gates as he had done in the other garrison towns.
Elias and Ferris found him wandering down the road some time close to dawn. Once again, he had shrouded himself in a long black scarf and he was talking to his ghosts.
When Sean saw them, he ran, and his running wasn’t just beating feet down the road. He left. It was fortunate for them that he had an attachment to Prince. Then again, ‘fortune’ might be considered relative under the circumstances.
The first place Sean went was back to the camp where he put his armor on, then saddled up Prince. Everyone else was breaking camp at that time too and they didn’t notice anything amiss with his activities. He acted no differently than he had any other morning lately; he even spoke with Larry for a moment.
By the time Elias and Ferris came pounding into camp, Sean was mounted. When he saw them coming, he left again. Making disjointed hops that covered in hours what would normally take days, he made his way northeast to the next garrison. He vaguely remembered stopping at a small village and buying something to eat.
Sean’s nightmare was no longer merely peopled with hissing ghosts, it was now back-dropped with a kaleidoscope of different garrison towns and villages. His banner was sprinkled haphazardly, wherever he went, sometimes boldly displayed, sometimes hidden. There were times when he wasn’t riding, but those were few and far between. He vaguely remembered buying food at nearly every stop, smiling at the ghost as he handed over gold for a loaf of bread or a flask of wine.
Days later, Sean opened his eyes to the rising sun in front of him; he distinctly remembered it because it was the first such occurrence and the pain stabbing into the back of his eyes nearly sent him out of his saddle. A vast river was to his left. He had no idea where he was and didn’t have the energy to care. All he knew was that millions of ghosts crowded around him and he had long since given up trying to avoid them.
Prince’s reins were looped up around his ears and he dropped his head to snatch at grass as he ambled along. Sean kept him moving, but with no signs of civilization to spur him, he left their pace up to Prince. The only reason they continued to follow the river was Prince’s self-preservation instincts. More than once Sean was aware of nearly tipping over Prince’s head when he clambered down the bank and dropped his head for a drink. If he had been sitting in any other style saddle, he would have been dumped into the river.
The Capital
There came a time when the motion stopped and hands pulled Sean from the saddle, then there was blessed nothing; no ghosts, no whispers, no stabbing sunlight.
Sean’s waking was slow and leisurely. He was warm, with a soft pillow under his head – his head, that didn’t have a headache anymore – his head, that was clear – the ghosts and voices were gone. He sat up and discovered that someone had changed his clothes. All he had on was a blue wool nightshirt that was tight across the shoulders; the buttons down the front had been left undone to compensate. The blanket he was covered with was an undyed linen material that had been quilted, but didn’t have any stuffing in the middle. Everything he looked at was sharp with details as he tried to figure out where he was.
He was in a tent the size of which he had only read about. The part that he could see was easily the size of his bedroom in New York, but he was certain there was more to it than what he could see. He slowly climbed to his feet and started to look for something to wear.
Thanks to cloth walls, Ferris, Manuel and Elias heard him moving around and they converged on him like an avalanche. While Manuel and Elias tackled him, Ferris tried to bind him and compel him at the same time. “You will stay here, you fool. Do you hear me? You will stay here. Stay! Here!”
With all of them on him at once, so soon after what had gone before, they had him caught. As soon as he regained the breath that had been knocked out of him, he said, “All right, all right, I’ll stay, I’ll stay. Where are we, anyway?”
“Are you…are you all right?” asked Elias.
Sean could see the worry in his eyes – eyes that might have more lines around them than he remembered. “I feel like I’ve been run through a ringer, but I’m fine otherwise. I think my ghosts are gone, or at least they aren’t knocking on my skull at the moment. Care to explain to me why the three of you are pinning me down?”
They let him up without quite letting him go.
He shrugged out of their grips. “I’m fine. I’m a little confused, but I’m fine. Now, where are my clothes?”
Mattie and Cordan were in the next ‘room’ and she had his clothes ready for him when they came in. After she handed them to him, she touched his face and neck. She sighed. “His fever’s broke,” she commented, then she turned away and began to put together a plate of cold meats and cheeses, while Sean pulled his pants up and changed his shirt before joining the others on the cushions that passed for furniture.
As Mattie handed him the plate, Elias asked the first question. “It’s been three weeks, Sean. Where have you been?”
“Three weeks? Um…”
“Mattie was able to track your progress,” said Ferris. “You were all over the place, but there was no way w
e could catch you. We crossed your trail eight days ago now on the south side of the Ruhin River, but we missed you. You’ve been here for three days now. We got here two days ago.”
“You never told me where here is,” said Sean.
“The capital city of Ruhin is right out there,” said Elias, pointing to the tent flap.
Curious, Sean went to see for himself, but he wasn’t at all prepared for what he saw when he stepped outside the tent. They were in the midst of a massive gathering that belted the city as far as he could see in both directions. Where he had pictured the people wandering the landscape aimlessly, it appeared as though the vast majority of them had come here instead. Not all of them were civilians either. He could easily pick out men in armor moving among the people, but they acted no different than anyone else, nor were they treated any differently, though they had to have been some of the garrison personnel.
The only constant was the fact that they all wore some type of black scarf or mark. Some of them had their scarves draped over their shoulders with a corner of it up over their head and down over their forehead so they could still see under it, and some had a scarf or cloth tied around their heads like a bandanna with long tails hanging down over one shoulder. He spotted a few that had no scarf at all; what they wore instead was a strip of black cloth around their right arm. Sean even spotted one man with his face painted black.
For an assemblage of so many people, Sean was struck by how quiet it was. No one yelled, even so far as across their own campfire. The loudest anyone spoke was perhaps a normal voice, but mostly they spoke in whispers or not at all. Even the children were quiet; they played at small sit-down games like pick-up-sticks or marbles or other such games, rather than running and laughing or squealing.
The Making of a Mage King: Prince in Hiding Page 20
