“We were just headed back,” he motioned to the Coliseum. “I didn’t mean to cause a stir. Did the Grand Sovereign send you?”
“No,” she shook her head. “He sent others.” Kavya looked back anxiously, as if they might be behind her.
“Am I in trouble?” Epik asked.
It was an honest question that deserved an honest answer. But so far Epik had only felt threatened on the jousting pitch and not by the Grand Sovereign… or this girl.
Kavya ran her hand down Buster’s long nose, disinterested in Epik’s words. “The Grand Sovereign, he doesn’t think you are a threat. His judgment is clouded by prejudice and old age. He doesn’t sense magic the same way I do. He feels only the magic you possess—not your potential.”
“I’m not a threat,” Epik said honestly. “Tell him I’m not a threat.” He didn’t mean to command her, not to use his magic—the power of commands over questions.
She grimaced as the effects of the magic tried to take hold of her. But she shook them off. “I won’t tell him. The Grand Sovereign does not talk to me. He speaks to the other.”
“The other? The girl with yellow eyes?”
Kavya nodded. “Catarina. She is not so gifted as I, but she has magic. And she is far more cunning. She does the Grand Sovereign’s bidding.”
Buster snorted.
“You must go back now,” she said.
Epik nodded again, and by the time his head rocked forward twice, Kavya was gone. Only a Shadow remained.
In the afternoon sun when shadows should be negligible things tucked beneath a person, this Shadow had Epik’s full height. Looking closely, Epik saw it had a long nose, and it was much thinner than any halfling Epik had ever seen.
It reminded Epik of his father. But his father died. He had seen it. No, that wasn’t true. What had he seen? He had seen a Shadow and an unmarked grave.
When Epik looked down again, the Shadow was gone.
23
The Giver
He just vanished,” Myra said unabashedly.
“Yes, he did,” the Grand Sovereign murmured. A bemused expression crossed his face, and vanished as quickly as it arrived.
Myra turned to Gerdy, seated just behind her. Or was Mye an empress now? Gerdy wondered. Or Both? “Reminds me of when—”
“I wonder where he got off to,” Gerdy interjected before Myra could blunder on—whatever that look on the Grand Sovereign’s face meant, it couldn’t be good thing for Epik. She didn’t trust this man, not like Myra did. Didn’t he just send thousands of men to attack Dune All-En? And Myra had brushed that aside for a few gifts.
“Me too,” the Grand Sovereign muttered under his breath. He turned and found Myra’s servant, Catarina. “See if you can find him, will you? Don’t want our friend to get lost.”
Catarina nodded, but her yellow-eyes bored into Gerdy before she slipped away.
“Next we have a real treat,” the announcer boomed with an attempt to re-energize the crowd. “Sir Breuner, the Knight in Black, versus Sir Daggon.” A knight in many-colored armor galloped out of the tunnel. His arms and gauntlets were blue, his breastplate green, and across his thighs and knees was a deep crimson around a chestnut horse.
He lowered the visor of his yellow helmet and took his place at the end of the fence opposite the Knight in Black whose horse was a shadow gray, poised at the ready.
The joust began.
The crowd warmed to the spectacle—because it was just that, a spectacle. Sir Daggon’s saddle slipped down toward the horse’s belly, and the knight jousted sideways, his head nearly smashing into the tilt. To the oohs of the crowd, Sir Breuner’s lance missed Sir Daggon completely; it found only the space above the horse where the knight should have been.
Sir Daggon’s lance, however, did crash into its mark. Though no magic was spent, it did serve to please the unsettled crowd. By the second lance, most had forgotten all about the vanished halfling.
But not Gerdy. She watched carefully—everything and everyone. The Grand Sovereign’s attention returned to Myra and the match. It put Gerdy at ease for the moment, and she her attention to the pitch.
This time Sir Daggon forgot his lance completely. The squire at the end of the pitch ran after him but stumbled and fell to the ground.
Daggon shrugged apologetically to the crowd then stood up on his horse, jesting. The Knight in Black jabbed, Daggon somersaulted in the air. He landed in the saddle then motioned to the crowd to indicate his crown jewels had made it through unscathed.
The audience roared with laughter.
Sir Breuner, the Knight in Black, was perturbed by this. Daggon was making a mockery of the bout. Breuner’s emotions shone through his armor as he flung his down his lance in a rage. Then he jumped off his horse and drew a long sword and advanced on Sir Daggon.
Another spectacle.
With so much fun on the field, why was the Grand Sovereign’s attention elsewhere again? The old man closed his eyes and his whole face darkened momentarily. Gerdy’s stomach fluttered anew.
With Myra’s servant gone and Gerdy’s nowhere to be seen, Gerdy could just slip away unnoticed for a time. She would look for Epik and warn him. So, she slouched and eased her chair back. Checking one last time to ensure she hadn’t been noticed, she slipped from her chair and left the box. The guards outside paid her no mind.
It wasn’t difficult to get away from the Coliseum, away from the chanting and cheering of the crowd. But it was difficult to figure out why. Why had she left?
Really, why?
In Gerdy’s heart, she knew she wasn’t looking for Epik. No, it was the plea on the face of the woman at the market that haunted her. Gerdy veered in that direction.
The market was buttoned up; all the stalls were empty and bare. The carts that remained were locked. The fabrics and rugs on the lines crisscrossing the square were gone.
Not another soul walked the streets. Gerdy did come across a few dogs and a rather feisty looking cat, but no people. Everyone who was anyone was at the Coliseum, and everyone was anyone.
Gerdy found her way into the slums on the far side of the market where the houses were little more than scraps of wood or metal cobbled together. Most had no doors and were unfurnished, empty, save a dusty floor.
Here, there were no taverns. No places to gather. Home was the only place for them to go when the day was done.
Gerdy thought she heard something behind her, but turned and saw nothing.
I should get back, she thought.
Saying it aloud would make it true. “I should get back,” she whispered.
Still no effect. She took two more steps forward.
“I should get back,” she announced.
Something caught her eye. Gerdy turned, blinking against the sun fighting the haze overhead.
What is that?
A dilapidated hut, the roof caved in. People had begun to strip parts of it away to use on other homes. But it had one solid wall. And that wall was covered in pictures like the woman had at the market. Pictures of children, all with the same word written at the bottom: MISSING.
Some were faded and old; others were new. On the floor beneath them, a clutter of flowers and candles—a shrine to the missing.
Shaken, Gerdy finally started back toward the Coliseum with more questions than answers. She hurried back though silent streets and began to relax when sound of the crowd grew nearer. She wasn’t going to get caught. Not now.
She was crossing the empty market when a gnarled hand extended between seams of bound canvas, catching Gerdy’s wrist in one swift motion. A scream pierced the silence; it took Gerdy a moment to register that it had come from her lips.
Instinctively, she tried to wrench free, but couldn’t break her accoster’s hold.
“It’s okay darling,” a feeble voice said from behind the canvas. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Please, come into my shop.”
The grip loosened.
“You didn’t scare me,” Gerdy said. “You just… just s
urprised me.”
The pressure of the woman’s hand lingered; Gerdy massaged it with her other hand. She slipped into the stall, sucking in her belly to better fit through the narrow gap in the canvas. A sinking rush through her chest protested this decision, but Gerdy made it a point not to be scared of anything—even a sinister hand in an empty town square.
“Whatever you say, dear. You surprised me, too. No one comes to market during the tournaments.”
The stall had a musty odor of mold and mildew. And even though the sun beat on the haze outside, it was cold inside the tent. The only light was from feeble rays that occasionally penetrated the seams. Something was burning, a spicy scent struggled to mask the other, but there was no fire that Gerdy could see.
The woman eased into a rocking chair at the back of the stall. She wore a headdress and a blanket around her shoulders and was further cloaked by the shadows.
“Are these medicines?” Gerdy asked. The woman rocked. Gerdy put her hand close to a shelf of bottles. “Magical?”
“My dear,” the woman said, “isn’t all medicine magical in a way?”
“If you say so.”
“Isn’t life magic in a way?”
“Yes, I suppose.” Gerdy let her hand fall. The lingering sensation in her wrist had begun to creep up her forearm to her shoulder. “You said no one comes to market during the tournament, are they not allowed to? Is it against the law or something?”
“Nah,” the woman wheezed. “What need is there for laws when the people eat from the palm of your hand?”
“Right,” Gerdy said slowly, registering a truth; for the first time she agreed with the woman. Gerdy inched closer, searching for a glimpse of the old woman’s face. Well, she guessed the woman to be old. Her voice sounded it. “Do you have to be all covered up like that? I like to see a person when I’m talking to them.”
The woman’s laugh was raspy. “Untie that and open the stall if you like.”
Gerdy did.
She found exactly what she had expected. An old woman with deep-set wrinkles, and far more skin than she could use. She had two large moles, one on her forehead above her right eyebrow and the side opposite, just above her lip.
“You look familiar,” Gerdy said.
“That’s a first,” the woman said. “I saw you yesterday… with the new princess, correct?”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m not after the new princess,” the woman said, not unkindly.
“No,” Gerdy said. “It’s just, I didn’t see you yesterday. It’s something else. I can’t put my finger on it.”
“I saw you walking just earlier. You looked lost.”
“Not lost,” Gerdy said. “Yesterday, did you hear that woman, the one looking for her child?”
“How could I not? The whole square heard her.”
“Well, I just wondered—”
“You’re on the right track, dear. But I can’t help you with that. I can’t speak on it any further.”
“You haven’t helped me at all.”
The woman’s mouth went crooked in what might have been a smile. She rocked back and forth, without another word.
“I’ll just... I’ll just go then.” Gerdy let herself out of the stall. Her whole arm was tense and tingling. The sensation had spread to her chest and back. And by the time she reached the Coliseum, she was uncomfortable all over, feeling dizzy, her vision blurred.
Gerdy’s heart stopped when she met the lemon-eyed servant, also headed back into the box. Catarina skirted her without saying a word. Her calculating yellow stare said it all for her: Where have you been?
24
Lords
That evening in his room, Epik wished he could skip the feast. But Kavya wouldn’t hear of it. She practically forced his dinner jacket over his shoulders, no longer shy about seeing Epik in his undergarments.
Epik expected ridicule and torment, the scorn of the entire kingdom for his cowardice in the joust that day.
Like at the first feast, he was late to arrive, and most of the nobles were already seated or were mingling about the Great Hall. Again, the Grand Sovereign presided over the high table with Myra by his side.
Epik took his seat at the table with Gerdy, Todder, and Sir Wallack. “Where did you go?” Gerdy mouthed at him. “I have to tell you something.”
“I have to tell you something, too,” Epik thought about the Shadow and what Kavya had said about the kingdom.
He was about to say more when a voice boomed from behind him, “That was some feat you pulled today. I didn’t know you had that sort of magic in you.” Sir Dom towered over the table. He rested a thick hand on Epik’s shoulder, the embroidered trim of the knight’s green jacket scratched against Epik’s ear. “Why don’t you come sit with us tonight?”
He motioned to a round table across the room where the other knights were seated, all in their formal green.
“But don’t you normally sit up there?” Gerdy asked. She pointed at the high table.
“Not always. Tonight, I believe the Grand Sovereign is joined by his tech mages. They build little trinkets for the common folk to buy and use.”
Sure enough, the men and women seated there had the look of witches and wizards: scraggly white beards, warts, and age spots. But instead of robes, cloaks, and pointed hats, they wore formal business attire similar to Epiman’s before he was king.
“So, what do you say?” Sir Dom asked Epik.
Was this just a ploy to get him over to their table and make fun of him? Epik was sure it had to be. But could he really refuse? If nothing else, Epik could get away from Sir Wallack’s constant ridicule of Gerdy who had taken more than her fair share of his grief, especially considering Captain Todder was at the table and could barely handle a spoon, let alone a fork and knife.
Epik shrugged and slid out of his seat. “Sure.”
“Epik,” Gerdy motioned to him to prick his ears. She whispered so low that it was impossible that anyone but Epik could hear her. “Pick the lock on my room tonight. We need to talk.”
Epik nodded.
Sir Wallack rose and ambled up behind Epik. But Sir Dom stopped abruptly. “The table for retired knights is over there,” he said coolly, pointing to an empty table in the back of the hall.
“But—”
“Oh, that’s right. Knights don’t retire here in King’s Way.”
Sir Dom urged Epik forward with a flourish and a wicked grin.
Epik took a seat between Sir Dom and Sir Gallad who offered a greeting by way of a nod. Epik could see why red was Gallad’s color for the tournaments. His red beard and flaming auburn hair more than countered the green uniform.
“Nice move today,” he said with enthusiasm.
Epik nodded reluctantly. Is he serious? Epik thought about how silly he looked at this table. His assigned seat had a specially made chair which made him even with the other guests. This chair made Epik look like a child at the grownup table.
“Had you done that in the first two rounds, the match would have ended in a draw. And we’d both be in the winner’s bracket without a loss.”
“Oh,” Epik replied. He wasn’t sure what else to say. He was only vaguely aware of this tournament’s rules—all tournaments were different. And this was the first he’d ever heard of to joust with magic.
“After tomorrow’s bouts,” Sir Dom said, “you’ll move on to the loser’s bracket. It’s no big deal. Puck’s used to it.”
“Right, you’ll be with the rest of us losers,” Sir Puckett laughed.
“I’ll be there next week,” Sir Gallad chided.
“It’s a double elimination tournament,” Dom went on. “If you win the loser’s bracket then you face the winner of the winner’s bracket.”
“Dom just likes to pretend he’s not a foregone conclusion,” Gallad said, smiling.
“Honestly,” Sir Dom said cheerfully, “we didn’t know you had any magic. We were all surprised—and that’s a good thing. I could help you le
arn to harness it if you like.”
The man made Epik uncomfortable. He couldn’t trust him. He couldn’t trust anyone here. They were at war, weren’t they?
“Maybe,” Epik equivocated.
The rest of the knights laughed in a manly chorus. “I don’t think you’ll get a better offer than that.” Sir Gallad wiped an eye.
Sir Dom shrugged. “To each his own.”
The noise of their table interested some onlookers. Around the room, more eyes found their way to Epik. A queasy feeling twisted inside him. When Epik sought its source, he found the Grand Sovereign sitting at the head table, his eyes closed. A darkness twisted across his face.
25
And Ladies
Can you believe that?” Sir Wallack scoffed. “In my day, knights were treated with respect—even the elderly ones. Especially the elderly ones!”
The old knight drained his wine goblet.
“I don’t understand what they see in that halfling. Bit o’ magic and it’s like he’s the prince. He’s a sorry excuse for a knight or a magician if you ask me.”
“No one asked you,” Todder said sternly. “And I’d watch it. Epik has more friends at this table than you have in the realm.”
Gerdy smirked.
Sir Wallack looked at her, incredulous.
“There’s dwarf blood in you, isn’t there? I can tell you want to break that plate.”
Todder set his utensils forcefully on his own plate.
Sir Wallack, understanding the threat, stood and eyed the lone empty table at the back of the hall.
“You are all lost causes,” he said. “Every damn one of you. If anyone needs me, I’ll be there.” The knight jerked the basket of dinner rolls from the center of the table and stomped away.
“Hey! I hadn’t got a roll yet,” Todder said sadly.
“Here. You can have mine.” Gerdy handed it over.
There was much less conversation without Sir Wallack and Epik. Todder was keen to talk about the joust, and Gerdy obliged. She did keep a steady eye on Myra up with the Grand Sovereign and his guests, laughing, talking, eating. Myra’s golden hair bobbed enchantingly at everyone she spoke with.
Knowing is Halfling the Battle: An Arthurian Fantasy Romp (Epik Fantasy Book 2) Page 11
