Mantle: The Return of the Sha

by Gary Bregar

Balki came over to her horse and untied her feet from the stirrups. He then picked her up easily off the horse and set her to stand in front of a large rock.

  “Sit,” he said.

  She obeyed, and was now thinking that they had stopped for more than only a rest.

  “Welcome to Skite, Majesty.”

  She gave no response, and only sat looking up at him with contempt in her gaze.

  “You will be glad to know your place in all of this, I imagine,” he continued. “You need not contemplate any longer, Majesty, for your duties will be fulfilled momentarily.”

  He went to his saddlebag and pulled from it the box that he had stolen from the Throne Room at Bannister Castle. She had seen him take it just before he had abducted her, but that seemed so long ago now that she had nearly forgotten about the box altogether.

  “As I am sure that you must realize by now, any attempt at escape will be answered by the Dark Weed. If such a thing should happen, your death would not be a merciful one, I assure you.”

  He walked with the box held out in both hands. It was in no way fragile, but he handled it as if it were. He placed it on another rock in the clearing, not far from Bella, and then stood over it silently.

  He stood looking at the box for a long time before turning to Bella.

  “Majesty, do you know what lies inside this box?” he asked.

  Bella took her eyes away from his to look at the box lying on the rock.

  “I believe that it contains the Crown of Forris,” she said.

  Balki began to laugh. It wasn’t Balki’s laugh, though—it was that of the Other, and Bella shivered at the sound of it.

  “Oh, Majesty, you are quite mistaken. The Crown of Forris, if such a crown ever existed at all, has never been laid under the king’s throne. In fact, what lay inside this box is not the crown of a king, but the physical body of a king,” he said. “Not all of it, mind you—only the part that matters.”

  At this last remark, his expression changed to one of complete satisfaction, as if just saying the words had relieved him of some burden. Bella looked back at the box again, this time with gruesome images crossing her mind.

  “You…Majesty, Queen Bella of Forris, wife of Zander, will open this box.”

  She looked back to him and their eyes met. She could see nothing but hate and evil in his eyes now, and she could see that he was anxious for the box to be opened, hungry for it. He unbound her hands and then motioned impatiently for her to get up.

  She stood and walked over to the rock where the box lay. It was the first time that she had gotten a close look at it. It was perfectly square, nearly a foot to each corner and six inches in height. It was made of dark Sovereign wood and had engravings along each side that looked like family crests, although she did not recognize them. On the top of the box was a round iron latch that had two sunken grooves where one’s knuckles would be placed to turn it open. Above the latch were inscribed words that Bella could not understand, and below the latch was the engraved royal crest of Bannister. There were no visible seams that would show where it would actually open at.

  She only stood looking at it, until Balki interrupted the silence.

  “Go on—open it.”

  She crouched down to it and reached out her hand. She expected the box to be warm, given the unbearable heat of the day, but when she placed her hand on it, it was ice cold to the touch, and in her surprise she pulled away quickly. She looked over her shoulder to see the cold gaze of Balki standing over her and turned back to the box once again.

  As she placed her fingers on the latch, she had an unshakable feeling that something terrible would jump out at her. She brushed the feeling off and tried turning the latch.

  Nothing happened—the latch didn’t move.

  She tried once again, adding more pressure to it—still nothing.

  Balki came forward so that he was standing directly over her.

  “Open it!” he screamed.

  “I’m trying,” she said calmly. “It will not open—not for me.”

  “Yes! Yes, it will!” he was screaming. “The box will open for king or queen of Forris—you are queen!”

  Bella looked back down at the box and thought that she understood.

  “The writing…the inscription on the box. Is that what it says?” she asked.

  “You will open it!” he yelled.

  Bella understood all right. She understood that her life might have either just been saved, or ruined.

  “Whoever you are,” she said carefully, “you should understand that I am not the sovereign queen of Forris. I am queen only by marriage to Zander—nothing more. I do not share the blood that the magic of this box requires.”

  At first, there was only silence, and then Balki and the inflock together erupted in a singular scream that seemed to go on for an unnatural length of time. The horrible high-pitched gurgling scream continued to get louder until Bella was forced to cover her ears and squeeze her eyes shut tight.

  When his screaming stopped, Balki only stood looking down at her with deep anger in his face. She had fallen into a sitting position in front of the rock with the box on it, trying to anticipate what was to come next. Soon, he began pacing back and forth and, Bella thought, creating a new plan for her.

  ****

  Now reunited with their horses, Dorian, Lizabet, and Pike continued on through the Hidden Forest. They kept quiet now, not wanting to attract attention. This was difficult for all three of them, given the things that had transpired, particularly with Lizabet’s newfound abilities. But they understood that they had been lucky to have spotted the Locks before they could spot them. They would suffer through the silence of the forest so as not to tempt luck once more.

  However, when the true fear of the Hidden became evident, Dorian spoke up. It was a whisper only, but having walked in silence for such a long time, his voice seemed as loud as thunder to Lizabet.

  “We are lost,” he said to Lizabet, “and I think you know it as well.”

  “Yes, you’re right. Everything has begun to look the same. Why does the moss grow entirely around the trees, do you suppose?”

  “There is so little light that makes its way to the moss, I’m surprised that it grows at all,” Dorian replied.

  “What do you think we should do?” Lizabet asked. “I don’t want to worry Pike unless we have to, although I suspect that he knows we are lost, as well.”

  “The butterfly said that your voice could call the forest if we needed help, although I’m not sure what to make of that,” Dorian said.

  “I’m not sure either,” Lizabet replied, “but I would not risk raising my voice and attracting more Locks. I have no doubt that there are others in the forest.”

  Dorian considered this and finally said, “I suppose you can try speaking to a tree in a whisper.”

  He imagined her talking to a tree and nearly burst into laughter. He held his laughter in, though, and a sharp feeling of relief fell over him as though he had averted disaster. His heightened touch of intuition was working in him, and he felt like Lizabet was right—there were other Locks in the forest. They might not be so lucky next time if their position were given away.

  Lizabet walked over to the tree closest to her, and finding a patch of bark not completely covered in moss, she leaned against it so that her lips were close enough to the tree that it could be mistaken for a kiss. She had no idea what she should say, so she simply said the only thing that came to mind.

  “Can you help us find our way?”

  After a moment, she pulled her face away from the bark of the tree and they all stood in silence. Pike had stopped walking when they had, and was now watching Lizabet curiously. He had no idea what she was doing, or why.

  Nothing happened—nothing at all. They sat down on the elevated roots, thinking of what to do next. Walking in any given direction would mean only a slight chance that they might be moving in the right direction.

  After a long while, Lizabet looked at D
orian and asked, “What did the butterfly say to you exactly?”

  “As I told you, he said that you only needed to use your voice. It sounded as though it must be your voice,” Dorian replied.

  “Think carefully, though. Did the butterfly say voice?”

  Dorian sat thinking for a moment, and then suddenly his face lit up.

  “No—actually he said sound. He said that you need only to emit your sound. But what would that mean, if not your voice?”

  Lizabet pondered this for a moment before her face lit up as well. She knew what her sound was. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew all the same.

  One summer, for no particular reason at all, she had spent a good part of each day trying to imitate a song that her Aunt Roni whistled repeatedly while tending to her garden. She would repeat her aunt’s whistling until finally she could imitate the sounds as much as she thought possible.

  She stood from the root, closed her eyes, and began whistling while she projected a single thought,

  We are traveling to the Outlands.

  Please help us find our way through, I beg of you.

  We are traveling to the Outlands.

  Please help us find our way through.

  Help us to the Outlands…

  She let these thoughts run through her mind as she whistled the song of her beloved Aunt Roni, with her eyes kept closed. After only a few moments, she felt warmth wash over her, and opened her eyes. She could tell by Dorian’s expression that they felt the warmth on their skin as well. At that moment, she wasn’t entirely sure if the heat had risen in the forest around them, or just on their own flesh.

  What they witnessed next amazed them. The thin leafy hairs of the moss that grew from the bark of the trees closest to them began to stretch out, extending the length of a finger. The moss then laid down in one direction, pointing to the next tree over. Lizabet saw that the moss on that tree also began laying over, pointing to the next one, and so forth.

  The forest was giving them a guide—it was showing them the way.

  ****

  Balki had become so enraged that Bella could not open the box that she had thought several times that he might simply kill her and be done with it. But she realized that he would use her as a bargaining tool with her husband. As the true sovereign king of Forris, he was the only one who would be able to open it.

  Since the incident with the box, they had turned back out of the Outlands and traveled along the border to the Outland Post on the Forris side. She had no idea why he would risk backtracking to the post, but she was sure that asking would not help matters.

  They reached the Outland Post in late afternoon, stopping on a bluff that overlooked it. Balki would wait for dark before making his way.

  The air was very hot now, and every breath felt like ingesting fire. Balki had been sure to carry a proper amount of water, and was quick to offer it. He would not have her dying on him—not this close to the end.

  Bella could see the post clearly from the bluff and it seemed much larger than she had expected. She had imagined a single lookout tower and a few men who would be assigned to maintain it. This was much larger, but simple in its design. There was a main building that stood at the back, which was narrow and stood three levels. The entire complex was built of wood, and Bella suspected Sovereign wood. After all, Sovereign wood would be the ideal building material for a defensive post, since she suspected that it would not burn, although she didn’t know for certain that it wouldn’t. She had certainly never seen it burned, but why would she? No one in Forris would do such a horrible thing as burn Sovereign wood.

  The main building was surrounded by a wall that formed a courtyard in the center. Smaller buildings were set up around the inside of the wall, and the main building acted as part of the wall facing east. It looked as though it functioned as the soldiers’ dormitory as well as watchtower. Another gate was situated to the left of the main building, which led out the back of the post. The entire complex was set against a wide natural land bridge that led across a canyon. The ends of the canyon could be seen in both directions, but at quite a long distance from them.

  At the place where they had stopped before, when Balki had instructed her to open the box, she thought that they would have been able to easily travel further into Skite. Here, though, they would have no choice but to go through the Outland Post to reach the other side, unless they went back the way that they had just come. That way, she suspected, would take far too long for his liking, but she still wasn’t sure why he had come to post to begin with.

  She was surprised at the number of men that she saw at such a large post. It seemed nearly deserted and she only saw a few men scattered about. She determined that there were likely no more than a dozen visible, unless they were hunkered down in the main building for some reason. On the other hand, she thought, things may have come about so rapidly that they may not have reinforced the post yet. There would have been no reason for it.

  She sat on the soft dirt where Balki had set her, and watched him look out toward the post. She wondered if his assessment of the place was the same as hers. It would make no difference what he thought, really. His intentions did not include attacking the post—he needed only to go past it.

  But why come back to it at all? she continued to wonder. It didn’t make sense.

  Balki finally turned toward her and stared her in the eye. Bella felt anxious by the look, but she held her eyes on his, not wavering—not allowing him the satisfaction. He reached into his saddle bag and pulled from it a large piece of Harvester’s Bread.

  “Our time together is growing short, Majesty,” he said in his deep gurgling voice, with a smile forming on his face. It was the inflock speaking once again. He rarely gave Balki the freedom to speak anymore. “How our time together will end, is going to be entirely up to your husband, it seems. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, we must see how much your husband is willing to lose.”

  Bella continued to look him in the face.

  “You will never defeat Forris—my husband will never allow it,” she said in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. “He will see to it that you are struck down.”

  At this, the inflock began to laugh, and the high cracking pitch of it was terrible in Bella’s ears.

  “Oh, Majesty, how you amuse me!” he roared. “It is not me that he will lose to—it is not even the Skite soldiers that will come, who will defeat him. We are all servants of Lord Menagraff. It is he who will oversee the destruction of not only Forris, but Bore and Tongar, as well. This is not a speculation, Majesty—these things will happen, and in fairly short order.”

  “We shall see,” she said though a clever grin.

  Balki’s face had suddenly turned cold. “Yes, we shall,” the inflock said.

  ****

  She was awakened suddenly by the tip of Balki’s sword, poking her side. Bella hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but she had slept so little since her abduction that she couldn’t help it. The sun had fully set now, and she could see that Balki (and the Other) had chosen this particular time to coincide with the men’s supper. Although it was harder in the dark to see clearly through the distance, the torches on the walls of the post lit the area well enough. She could see only one guard on duty, the others having gone into the main building. It seemed that the situation was playing directly into the hands of Balki, and she wondered why such a circumstance would ever be allowed at such an important outpost.

  Nevertheless, the inflock was ready to move. He came around to her with the horse that she had been riding and stopped in front of her.

  “Will I need to restrain and cover you, Majesty?” he said politely in the Other’s voice.

  Bella only shook her head no. She did not want to be gagged from speaking and she certainly did not want the sack placed over her head again.

  “Good,” he said, “we will be making a brief, but necessary, stop at the Outland Post, and I can’t have you becoming a problem for me. I might be tempted to
kill you, and that would only complicate matters.”

  With her hands bound behind her back, Balki lifted her onto the horse with amazing ease. He tied her left ankle to the stirrup to prevent her from running, while she watched every move that he made, searching for some mistake that might give her hope for an escape. She found none.

  “I would leave you here,” Balki continued, “but I’m afraid the snakes would have devoured you before I could return. They are such pesky creatures, wouldn’t you agree, Majesty?

  She said nothing and he only gurgled a laugh.

  They rode toward the outpost and Bella wasn’t sure how much time had passed when they finally arrived at the front gate. The darkness felt thicker now, somehow holding more power than the light from the torches that hung on the outer walls. The light from the torches seemed to be sucked into the darkness—eaten by it. The darkness was so strong that Bella would have expected a chill in the air, but the heat was nearly unbearable, and the combination of the two made her dizzy at times.

  When they stopped in front of the gate, the guard called to them, “Who are you? State your name and business!”

  The inflock handed control (well, partial control, anyway) to Balki, who immediately cloaked himself before answering. He was in control enough to do that, but the inflock would be feeding him the words that he must say.

  “Sir, I am Jonathan Sherwood. My wife and I are traveling on business by order of the king,” the inflock said through Balki.

  Balki heard this come out of his mouth the same as the guard did, and he thought, I would warn you not to inquire as to which king.

  The guard disappeared from the window above them and a few moments later they heard the clacking of bolts as he opened the gate.

  As the gate was being opened, Balki turned to Bella and said, “You will not speak or give us away. If you do,” he said, with a smile forming, “I will begin your punishment by taking the life of the child that you carry.”