The Crown and the Sword

by Doug Niles

  I have won the field. My army has triumphed, and I returning to Palanthas. I am coming home to you, my bride.

  The missive had provoked a strange reaction—not the delirious joy she would have expected, nor even a tremulous sense of relief, the weight of concern for her husband’s fate lifted by the good news.

  Instead, she felt confused and frightened.

  She remembered her tears, her almost uncontrollable hysteria when Jaymes had departed for the war the morning after the wedding. She had locked herself in her rooms for days, seeing no one but her faithful maid, Marie, and her trusted counselor, the priestess Melissa du Juliette. The cleric had remained at her side, caring for her tirelessly, speaking softly, soothing the grieving young woman, until at last Selinda began to feel more like her old, confident self.

  Emerging at last from her self-imposed seclusion, she had found a palace, a city, a people she barely recognized. It was this altered awareness that finally brought home to her that, though her surroundings remained the same, she herself had undergone some deep, fundamental transformation. It was a frightening and disorienting awareness, so she had tried hard to figure out what had happened to change her so.

  At first she had prayed to every goddess she knew, hoping that the seed of her wedding night’s passion would take root within her womb and begin to grow into the baby she desperately desired.

  Within a few weeks, however, she had learned she was not yet pregnant, and with that realization had come a new sense of wonder, and mystery, and another dawning realization.

  Did she desire a child?

  No, not yet, she had decided, and with that decision had come more questions. Why had she fallen so giddily for this man she had known for years and had previously regarded with a certain wary respect. What had happened to her? What had changed her?

  And what would her future hold?

  “You fool!” shouted Ankhar, raising his fist over his stepmother’s wrinkled face. “You pledged me an undefeatable ally, and he was defeated at the very moment of my triumph!”

  “He was as mighty as they come!” shrieked Laka, not the least bit cowed. “You are the fool, to let him be trapped in the mountains! You should have driven him across the plains with the wand!”

  “Bah! He was killed by that army of stone! Who were they? Where did they come from all of a sudden?”

  Laka only glared at him. The half-giant’s hand trembled, but he could not bring himself to smash it downward. Instead, he whirled about and spotted the Thorn Knight watching him through narrowed eyes.

  They were in a bivouac of the retreating army, a sprawling encampment near the marshes that marked the border between Solamnia and Lemish. That land, dark and mysterious and peopled with monsters and goblins and other wretched beings, lay like a shroud on the southern horizon. For miles around the trio, the remnants of the half-giant’s horde were scattered in tents and bedrolls on the wet, miserable ground. Mosquitoes and other insects whined around their ears. All of the half-giant’s captains had found compelling reasons to avoid their commander on this dark and ill-omened night.

  “Why could you not foresee the danger?” Ankhar asked the wizard, his voice a low growl.

  “Who could have?” Hoarst replied, not illogically. “Those stone soldiers are unknown in all the history of the world.”

  “Fool!” the half-giant cursed, still trembling. Impulsively he slapped with his great hand, a blow that would have snapped the wizard’s neck had it landed where he aimed, right on the smug, almost contemptuous face.

  However, the Thorn Knight was no longer there; he had blinked himself magically out of sight a fraction of a breath before the powerful blow landed. Ankhar swung through a wide arc, striking only the air, staggering off balance to keep from falling.

  “Where did he go?” he demanded of the old hob-wench.

  Laka shrugged in that maddening way of hers. “Away,” she replied. “Perhaps he will return when you have calmed down.”

  The half-giant forced himself to draw a breath. He squinted, remembering. “You said that potion, the tea he drank to gain strength, would kill him eventually!”

  “It should have,” the shaman replied with a shrug. “But he has a well of strength I did not perceive. It seems my potion not only healed him for a time, but ended up by making him stronger.”

  “He is a dangerous man.”

  “A powerful enemy, to be sure. But also a powerful ally.”

  “Will he really come back?” Ankhar asked, discouraged. It occurred to him, a trifle belatedly, how much he had come to rely upon the Thorn Knight. Hoarst’s spells, and his knowledge, had been key elements in the army commander’s success, and he knew that he wouldn’t fare nearly as well without his magic.

  The half-giant slumped to the ground, ignoring the swampy wetness that instantly soaked through his breeches. Laka came over to him, placing a clawlike hand upon his beefy forearm.

  “If he has reason to come back, he will,” she said. “You have made him a very rich man, and he will remember that. For now, you must rest. Tomorrow we march into Lemish. There, my son, you will be master of all—King Ankhar!”

  “King of Lemish? Lord of a swamp and a forest? Master of a few crude villages? What good is that?” he demanded.

  “It is a new start,” she said. “A place for you to begin afresh, grow strong again, my bold son. For I had another dream, just this night.”

  “A dream? Of what?”

  “A dream that you will return to Solamnia. Your army will be mightier than ever, and the humans of the world will bow down to you and beg for mercy.”

  “A prophecy,” Ankhar said. He leaned back, stretching out on the ground, suddenly conscious of the weariness that seeped through every fiber of his bones. “I like this prophecy,” he remarked. “Tell me more.”

  But by the time Laka began to speak, he was already snoring.

  The great column of the Solamnic forces dispersed as it marched. A large contingent, representing all four armies, stayed in the vicinity of Solanthus, there to keep a wary eye on the border with Lemish, and to watch for any reappearance of Ankhar’s vanished—and vanquished—horde. General Rankin of the Sword Army, former captain of Solanthus, would be laid to rest in a great funeral in the city, but the lord marshal offered his regrets and explained that he would hurry on to Palanthas with Coryn the White.

  Detachments of the Rose Army headed south and west for Caergoth, while many of the Crown Knights made for the site of ruined Thelgaard, where rebuilding was already under way. The Kaolyn Axers turned their faces toward the high Garnet Mountains and the undermountain kingdom.

  Many men of the Vingaard plains simply bade farewell and returned to their homes and farms. Dram, with the very few survivors of his original company—the hill dwarves who had garrisoned the supply park, mostly—would ride to the New Compound.

  “It will take some time to settle the affairs of all those dwarves who died with the battery,” Dram explained to Jaymes, his expression stern, his eyes cold and unclouded by tears. “That’s the most important thing. It will be next year before we’re ready to start working again.”

  “I understand,” said the lord marshal. If he was anxious to accelerate the work on the compound, and to have a new battery of bombards to replace those lost on the ridge, he knew his able assistant too well to press the point.

  “Good luck,” was all he said as his oldest and most loyal follower rode toward the mountains on his sturdy pony. Dram didn’t look back.

  The Palanthian Legion led the way back to that glorious city. Jaymes Markham, accompanied by his Freemen, rode in the wake of the legion, marking slow progress as they escorted the wagon in which Coryn was resting and recovering. It took three weeks for the force to make its way across the plains, over the High Clerist’s Pass, and down into the city.

  They approached the high walls at a steady march and despite the great victory on the field, not in a triumphal procession. The troops were met at the gate by a g
reat crowd, but the people sensed their lord’s somber mood and refrained from cheers and applause. Instead they watched solemnly as, flanked by his two dozen Freemen, Jaymes Markham broke away from the great column of the Palanthian legion, following the enclosed ambulance through the city and up the inclined road leading onto Nobles Hill.

  Finally, the white wizard was brought to her own home, and a young priestess of the city—as close a friend of Coryn’s as of the princess—arrived to see to her convalescence.

  “The Lady Coryn is resting comfortably now,” reported that priestess, Melissa du Juliette, to Jaymes Markham as he paced in the anteroom of her manor. “The journey was hard on her, but Sir Templar’s magic did its job, keeping her alive. I anticipate she will make a slow but full recovery. Her robe protected her from the worst—and I think she cast some sort of defensive spell at the very last moment, before the blast surrounded her.”

  “Thank you,” Jaymes said. “Will you stay her with her?”

  “Of course. I presume you are headed to the palace … to call upon your wife? I think she would like to talk to you.”

  The question was a pointed one, and the lord marshal flushed. “Of course,” he replied. “I know she will want to see me.”

  Melissa du Juliette looked at him coldly. “I said nothing about her wanting to see you. I said she wanted to talk to you.”

  With that, she pushed shut the door to Coryn’s bedroom and left Jaymes Markham no choice but to walk away.

  “My Lord Marshal, it is a pleasure to see you, to welcome you back to Palanthas!” The Lord Regent Bakkard du Chagne himself bustled through the anteroom of the palace, rushing up to Jaymes and shaking his hand heartily.

  “Allow me to add my congratulations to his lordship’s,” added the Clerist Inquisitor Frost, close behind. “These creatures everyone is talking about—so they came and dragged away the elemental king! Simply splendid! The gods favored you on that day, my lord.”

  “If there is anything we can do to help, now that the enemy is defeated,” Sir Moorvan of the Kingfishers chimed in. “Please, let us know.”

  “Who told you the war was over?” Jaymes asked. “Ankhar and most of his troops got away. They have fallen back into Lemish, but unless we root them out of there, they will most certainly be back. There will be a pause in the fighting; that is all.”

  “Then, my Lord Marshal,” said Bakkard du Chagne. “Hadn’t you better get back to the field?”

  “Not for a while,” Jaymes replied. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must go to my wife.”

  He made his way through the dark halls of the palace and climbed the stairs to the lofty room where the Princess Selinda had moved her chambers, following the wedding. He was out of breath when he got there and somewhat surprised—even a little irritated—she had not yet materialized to greet him.

  He went to the chambers and as the master of his own rooms, opened the door without knocking. He found Selinda in the next room, the dining room, but she did not rush ardently into his arms as he expected.

  Instead, she regarded him ambiguously across the long table and finally came around somewhat closer but halted a few steps away.

  “So the war is won?” she asked. “Can this be true?”

  “It is won, at least for a time,” he said. “Ankhar is not slain, but I have the knights pursuing what’s left of his army to see where he goes and what should be done next. It will take another campaign, probably, to expunge them for good.”

  “What happened?” Selinda asked.

  “Well, we were able to drive them back from Solanthus—”

  “Not that … not ‘what happened in the war?’ ” she retorted harshly. She looked at him fiercely, and for the first time he saw the anger and anguish in her eyes. “I mean … with your courtship … me losing my head, like a silly schoolgirl … everything happening just the way you wanted it to—just when you wanted it to happen!”

  “I … I …” he began.

  “You know I mean—” She drew a deep breath, but her cold stare did not waver. “What treachery, what trick did you play? What did you do to me?”

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