by Clark Graham
Emily and the Shadow King
By Clark Graham
© Clark Graham 2012
All Rights Reserved
Cover art by David Graham
To Cheyanne; who gave me the idea behind the story.
Emily and the Shadow King
A Pleasant Spring Day
The King’s Army Returns
Fire and Fear
A lonely Journey
The Camp of the Dwarves
War plans by the firelight
A Watcher in the Woods
Taken Prisoner
Beginning a Long Walk
Crossing the Plains
The River and Rest
Stormy Night
Crossing the River
The Night Journey
An Encounter on the Road
Entrance to the Lair
Into the Inner Chamber
The Reunion
A Night in the Palace
The Encounter on the Coastal Road
A Parting of Ways
A Pleasant Spring Day
Emily picked flowers next to the lane, her light brown hair ruffled by the light breeze. The young girl smiled as she went about her task. The overnight rain had washed the yard so everything looked and smelled fresh on this beautiful spring day. Wild flowers of pink and white pushed up between the blades of green grass that grew next to the wet gray cobblestone rocks. The cobblestone lane led to the castle whose walls and ramparts were just barely visible in the distance. Emily had heard the clickety clop of the hooves of knight’s horses going to and from the castle on various errands from the King. She had even seen King Gustaff once. King Gustaff was called the Gentle King and his people loved him.
The day she saw him, he was riding in his coach. There were eight knights, four in the front and four in the back of the King’s majestic white coach that was being pulled by six large pure black horses. The edges of the King’s coach were trimmed in gold, and the seat was red crushed velvet. He was in his noble purple rode that had white leopard skin around the edges. There was a blue clad driver and footman. The King had looked over at Emily as she had stood in wide- eyed awe of the noble man, then he smiled and waved. The footman stood on the back and gave her a quick glance, but could not motion to her as he was supposed to stand still. She could tell that even he, while being stone faced, wanted to say something quite pleasant to her. She ran down the dirt path into their little cottage to tell her mother what had happened. Later that night she had waited for the King’s return so she could see him again, but it had grown very late and she could no longer keep her eyes open so she headed off to bed.
On this day, it was all just a pleasant memory. She took the bouquet into the cottage to give to her mother. Her mother smiled and thanked her. The mother was a just an older version of Emily, with the same hair, the same smile, and the same calm and happy demeanor. As she found a proper sized vase she put the flowers in it. Her mother put a little water into the vase and placed the flowers on the table in the center of the room. Her father had built the cottage right on top of the well, so he would not have to go out, during the winter, and break ice to get fresh water. He even fashioned a bowl out of a large rock and placed it next to the well’s side, so when you drew water you could fill the bowl. The cottage was white and had round windows to let in breezes, during the summer time, to cool their home down.
Emily went back outside, to the back of the house where the forest and her father's farmland met. There was an old knotty pine tree that had been struck by lightning, years ago, and it had the center of it burned out. She called it her secret place. She crawled under the roots where there was a hole just big enough for her to get to the center of the tree. In there she had a seat. It was a board that her father had given her to lay across the edges of the inside of the tree. She could also climb to the top and stick just her head out so she could see the world around her go by.
Just then her mother called her in for supper. She crawled out from under the root of the tree and was careful to brush off her blue dress so her father would not fuss at her for being dirty. She then headed in the house and washed up for dinner. Her mother had made some sliced ham and paddle cake. Paddle cake was made from bread that was sweetened with molasses and made about the same size as the paddle her mother would use to slide the dough deep into the wood fired oven. When the bread was done, she would use the same paddle to get it out of the oven and she would always serve it warm. Emily helped her mother set the table as her father came in from working in the fields and washed himself up. He was a strong man, but his skin was prematurely wrinkled from working in the sun all his life. He looked hard, with his dark hair, but if you looked close, you could see the laugh lines in his face. After he was cleaned up and ready, they would sit and eat and talk about how their day had gone. When dinner was over and the table cleared and dishes washed, they sat around the fire. There was still a chill in the air during these early spring days and they would light the fire just long enough to warm the cottage before going to bed. Father would read from a book he had purchased when he had taken his crops to market.
That night, when she snuggled under her quilt on her bed, Emily dreamed about Kings and Queens of lands far away, and princes that took young maidens to wife, like the stories that her father read from the book that he had bought.
She woke with a start early the next morning when she heard the hoofs of many horses. She clambered out of bed and looked out her window. She saw line upon line of soldiers marching. They each had the Red Lion emblazoned on their tunics. It was the King’s symbol. Their silver colored helmets glistened in the morning sun. Each man carried a spear and had a sword strapped to their side. Each man stepped at exactly the same time that the others did. The foot soldiers were followed by the knights on their powerful horses. Each horse was either brown or black. Bred for power in the King’s stables, Emily imagined what it would be like to ride one of those noble beasts. The knights also had a red lion on their tunic and a silver colored helmet. She wondered where this powerful army was heading all arrayed for battle. Emily could feel a deep foreboding as she saw the men marching. She wondered if there was a war that they were going to. Surely such a powerful army would win any battle that they were going to fight. She got dressed quickly and ran outside to watch the army go by. In the line of men she spotted the King. He wasn’t in his carriage this time but he was on a brown horse and had a helmet with a crown on it. Beside him rode his knights, eight in all. ‘These must be the same ones she had seen before.’ He did not smile this time as he looked at her. His faced showed both sadness and concern. He gave his head a slight bow to acknowledge her, and then looked straight ahead at the road
The King’s Army Returns
All through the day, Emily played in the front of her family's cottage. She wanted to see what was happening. When lunchtime came, her mother let her eat her lunch out in the yard, so she wouldn’t miss anything. Everyone in a while, a horseman would go by riding very fast. They looked like messengers to Emily as they were not carrying swords or spears, but packets wrapped in a leather pouch. Some messengers were going to the castle, others away from the castle. That night, after supper, Emily could still hear the hooves of an occasional messenger as they rushed on their errand. She didn’t sleep well.
In the morning, after breakfast she once again stood by the road, the messengers had stopped going back and forth so she went inside as it was starting to drizzle. She was playing with her dolls when she heard the pounding of hooves against the cobblestones. She looked out the window and saw the King and his guards headed towards the castle. They had the horses in a fast gallop. There were only five knights around the King this time. They looked
tired and sad as they travelled along. One of them looked wounded as there was a red bandage around his shoulder.
Soon there were many knights headed toward the castle. She noticed that they were not like the knights she had seen going down the road on one of the King’s errands, but these were tired and sad knights that hunched over in their saddles and did not sit upright like they normally did. She looked closer and saw that some of their banners were torn and there were drops of red blood coming out, every once in a while, between the plates of the knights armor. Some of the shields they were carrying were smashed and some were dented. Emily feared for them, as she saw the sadness in their posture. She also feared for herself as these were the men that were supposed to protect her. She ran outside. The clouds were billowing up in the distance and starting to block out the sun. Pretty soon, no more knights were riding down the road, but foot soldiers, their spears aimed high to the sky as they carried them against their shoulders. The red lion, the King’s emblem, was blazoned on their tunics. Emily noticed that some of the tunics were torn or ripped, some were missing all together. They too had sad faces as they marched along.
Next there came a stream of wagons. Each wagon had two horses pulling it and a large number of wounded men of arms sitting against the wooden sides of the wagon. Her mother, on seeing the wounded men, drew water and filled a pitcher and took it out to them. She begged the teamster, who was driving the horses, to stop and he did. She gave each man in turn a drink of the water.
One of the last men, a badly wounded knight, grabbed her arm and said “You are not safe here. We have lost a battle on the plains of Duras Nor and even now the army of the Shadow King comes after us. We flee to the castle, and you must also. Do not stay, you are not safe.”
Fire and Fear
Emily's mother was very upset by this news of the defeat of the King's army, so she set out immediately to find her husband. "It is time to leave for the castle," she told Emily on her way out the door. "Pack your things and be ready, for we will go when we come back."
Emily packed some clothes in the shoulder pack. She found the flint the family had, just in case they needed a fire along the way, and put it in her pack. She then drew water to put in the leather flask that her father had given her after one of his visits to the castle to sell produce. It held a lot of water and she could draw the straps on the end to seal the flask so that no water came back out. After she finished packing she sat at the table waiting for her mother and father to come back. Soon it started to get dark, and she began to worry. Her parents were still not there. Emily went outside to see if they were coming, and what she saw scared her. There were fires all over the hillside, casting shadows in the darkening horizon. Everywhere there had been a farmhouse in the distance, there was now a fire. Emily gasped. Her heart was racing and she was very afraid. She could see someone approaching. She hoped that it was her mother and father, but as they got nearer, she could see that it was soldiers, mean looking soldiers with long swords and helmets made of leather on their heads. They were carrying torches.
Emily ran and grabbed her water flask and her shoulder pack from the table and then ran back outside to hide herself in the secret place tree. She pushed in the pack and flask first and then crawled in after them. She put her hands over her mouth so she would not make any sounds and sat there shaking.
Suddenly, the whole area around was brightly lit up, dispelling the darkness. It was a massive fire causing it to suddenly be bright. Emily climbed up and peeked over the top of the trees edge. 'Oh no,' she thought, ‘the house is burning!’ She let out a gasp, but quickly covered her mouth with her hands again, as she could see one of the soldiers stop and look around. Emily quickly ducked back down into the inside of the tree.
She sat there and cried softly as the flames rose into the darkness of the night sky. Just then she heard a man's voice say, "I hear crying."
Emily gasped and held her hands to her mouth even harder, to stop all sound.
"You do not," said another man's gruff angry voice.
"I could have sworn I heard a gasp earlier, and just now I thought I heard crying," insisted the first voice.
"Go find out who's there then and put them with the other farmers that we captured. We will take that one to the Shadow King's lair also. The more the merrier, as far as I'm concerned," said the gruff voice.
Emily could hear the man's footsteps as he walked around the tree. She sat as still as she could, trying not to make even the smallest sound.
Finally the man sighed, "Ain't nobody here after all."
The gruff sounding voice laughed, "I told you so, come on now, we got more farmhouses to burn."
Emily could hear the men's footsteps fade as they walked away. Still, she didn't move a muscle for the longest time, and made no noise. After several hours, her tired and scared body got the best of her, so she curled up and went to sleep inside the secret place.
It was the chirping of birds and the sun shining that woke her up to the start of a new day. She had taken her extra clothes out of her backpack to cover herself like a blanket, during the night because she had been so cold, but now it was yet another spring day. At first she wasn't sure what happened or why she had been allowed to sleep in her secret place tree. She was thinking that the events during the night had all just been a very bad dream. She stretched the stiffness out of her bones. She began to smell smoke, so she climbed up to the edge of the tree to peek out.
She sat there horrified as she looked upon the rubble of her home. The gray stone walls had been blackened and the roof was gone. All the windows had burned away, leaving only the charred frames behind. The beautiful door that her father had built himself was just black ashes on the ground, leaving a gaping hole where it once was. Emily climbed down to the bottom of her tree, curled up into a ball and cried and cried.
After a time Emily got up. Her face was red and puffy and her eyes hurt. She wiped away the tears with the sleeve of her blue dress, and the grabbed her flask and pack and crawled out from her secret place tree. She took a long drink from the flask and then tied it back up. She was starting to get hungry, but there was nothing to eat. She walked out into her mother's garden. The soldiers had stripped most of it bare, but there were some peas and small carrots they had missed, so she ate them. It was not a good meal, but it was better than nothing.
Emily didn't know where to go. She couldn't stay there, because the Shadow King's army was all around her. She could see the castle in the distance, but there was fire and smoke all around it, so she knew that it was under attack.
The children from around the area would look at the mountain and say, "Don't go near there, or the Dwarves will get you. They will make you work in their mines."
It would scare her, so one day she asked her mother if there were such things as Dwarves and do they steal little children to work in their mines. All her mother would say was, "They don't bother us, and we don't bother them."
Emily thought, 'They will have to feed me, if I am put to work in the mines." She was so hungry she didn't care about the working in the mines part, as long as they fed her. So she decided to head into the mountains.
A Lonely Journey
The sun shone warmly on Emily’s shoulders as she put her flask into her pack and started walking toward the mountain. She walked past her father's green and growing wheat fields into the forest beyond, the walk on a foot path ended when the fields did, after that it was one rocky hillside after another. She tripped a couple of times and skinned her knees. She was walking over and around boulders. It was an area that was impossible to farm for all the rocks. There was scrub brush growing in and around the rocks and boulders. This made her going even harder. Some of the brush wood would catch her dress and tear at the hem.
Her feet were getting sore and she could feel blisters forming. A deep dark forest was on the horizon and she feared to go into it so she sat down and rubbed her feet. She was wondering if it was a good idea to continue on. The sun was g
etting unseasonably hot and she had never even known that there was a forest between her and the mountain. She sat there for the longest time, tired and discouraged. Then she started to see people walking in the distance. They were far away and she could not make them out, but she was sure that the only ones around would be the Shadow King's warriors, so she grabbed her things and ran down the hill and into the forest. The trees were very close together and she could not run anymore, but she kept walking deeper and deeper into the woods to get away from whoever was in the foothills.
As she walked in the dark woods, unseen branches were scratching her as she walked by, so she started putting her arm in front of her to prevent her face getting scratched. A few times she found her way completely blocked by trees, so she would have to backtrack and go around. She could no longer see the mountain so she was getting hopelessly lost. She walked by a strange looking tree, that she was sure she had seen before. She was so frustrated at this point that she sat down and would not move any more that entire day.
As the night came on, Emily got more and more frightened. She didn't know where to go or what to do. She could not leave the woods because she was lost. Even if she did, the soldiers would get her, like they had her parents. She was so hungry that her stomach ached. So she put her back to two trees that were very close together. She then put all of her extra clothes over her for protection against the cold night. After drinking some water, she settled in.
Emily tried to sleep but there was an owl over her head that kept making a "Who Who” noise. It was like he was asking Emily who she was. Bats, which Emily had never seen before, flow between the trees, chasing insects. Some type of insect was biting Emily and when she was not ducking bats, or listening to owls, she was scratching itches.
