Peril & Profit

by M. H. Johnson

  "Elissa," the king whispered. "My Elissa."

  The high mage Sorlin had closed his eyes, speaking aloud a number of harsh discordant syllables that seemed to echo in the air moments after he said them, and Sorn could feel the complex waves of energy resonating as subtle spells were cast. The man opened haunted eyes and nodded solemnly at the king. "This provender. It is indeed poisoned. It appears to be on the meat." He pointed to the trencher of meat soaked in gravy. "And since we each used forks to spear meat onto our bread, it seems unlikely that we have had any contact with the poison, but nonetheless I have sent for the healer."

  Sorn, however, suddenly found that he was beside himself with panic, the wry cocky confidence he felt so keenly as a bird giving way to an anxious dread he found near overwhelming. "Your Majesty! What is your concern for Elissa?"

  The king turned his horrified gaze to the crow. "She, she often comes to eat here at her whim in the evening hours. All the servants know this… know she has free rein of the palace, so she could easily have come back after I left to make herself a sandwich before returning to the gardens, or wherever else she may have chosen to wander… we have to find her! Sorlin! Alert the healer, and have my guard scour the castle!" The kings voice, at first a breathless whisper, finished with the fiery crack of command. Sorlin, perchance, was just opening his eyes from another meditative casting and nodded formally to his king.

  "I have just done so, Your Majesty. Fret not. We shall do what we can."

  Of the crow there was no sign, having flown off on the instant the king had made his concerns known.

  Sorn's mind tormented him with worry as he made his frantic flight through the palace proper, darting through the kitchens past many a startled cook, and finally to the palace gardens Elissa had shown him in passing what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  The thought of her beautiful smiling face, the amused, meaning-filled glances she had favored him with being gone forever filled Sorn’s wings with a furious energy, as if he could battle the very air for her life. He was haunted by the tender memory of her warm laughter echoing through his mind even now. To think that it had already been silenced by the cold stillness of death was a torment so bitter it felt like a blade tearing through his heart.

  Trying to keep his head together despite the desperate nature of the situation, knowing, indeed, that there was no guarantee that she was even here, Sorn grimly kept his panic at bay as he scanned the gardens for any sign of her.

  He saw no trace of her near flower nor tree. He quickly scanned the battlements, knowing she was sometimes held by a morbid fascination to gaze at the thousands of twinkling fires that comprised the enemy preparing to raze her city to the ground. Nothing. Save for a startled looking pair of guards, the battlements were bare.

  It seemed that there was no sign of her anywhere, and Sorn felt the first nudges of true panic worm away at the corners of his already worn psyche. He could feel the changes crying to take place within, as his body instinctively sought its strongest form to deal with the most terrible of threats. Grimly, he kept a grip on his aching impulse, knowing full well that no strength of scale or heat of flame would protect a girl in dire peril.

  A girl he found himself aching to protect, for all that he had met her but once. Inflamed by admiration, adoration, whatever was that spark that might one day, against all expectation, grow into that strange thing humans called love.

  Only in finding her as fast as possible could he hope to keep her safe.

  There! He felt a surge of triumph as he finally espied her prone form deep inside the thick hedge maze of rosebushes.

  He dove for her as fast as he could, a wave of panic threatening to drown him as he gazed upon her collapsed form, replaced immediately with a desperate sense of relief as he witnessed her body struggle to draw in what seemed an agonized breath. At that moment Sorn caught her look of terrified incomprehension as she struggled to breathe, and he turned into Sorn the man without a second thought.

  The look she gave him was one of pure panic, and she clutched his hovering hand with what would have been painful intensity had Sorn been like other men. "Sorn." She gasped. "Can't..."

  "It's okay," Sorn soothed, picking her up effortlessly, using his terrible strength to leap over each wall of the hedge maze as he made a mad dash for the kitchen entrance. Time seemed to blur in an endless moment as he made his way past a sea of surprised looking faces, arriving only a handful of seconds later before the king's very council chamber.

  Only the fact that the council chamber door was already open saved it from shattering before the force of his foot. For all that, his fiercely powerful frame was presently cradling Elissa's gasping form as tenderly as a mother’s worry, only relinquishing his hold the moment he was before the startled king himself.

  Sorn’s voice was ragged with a desperate urgency. "She's having trouble breathing! She needs a healer now! Where do I find one?"

  Surprised as he was, Elissa's father did not waste a second. "Salrie!" Snapped the king. It was then that Sorn noted the countenance of none other than the healer Salrie, the selfsame young woman who had healed his crewmates and supplied Sorn and his cousins with much-needed aid, and who was at that moment gently pushing a panicked and now helpless feeling Sorn out of the way.

  Only then did Sorn finally register the fact that the council chamber was now full of individuals, including several of the lords whom he had encountered outside, just a short while ago. For some reason, everyone save king and healer were staring at Sorn with looks of utter surprise, their eyes only pulling away as Salrie quickly spoke her assessment several seconds later.

  "I will not lie, it is grave, Your Majesty. Fortunately, I had already come prepared with all my medicaments at the behest of Lord Cantrose."

  That said, Salrie withdrew several vials from her leather satchel with a practiced speed, and, pausing only long enough to don bleached leather gloves, proceeded to rub a strong smelling paste over Elissa's wrists, torso, and most especially her neck. Elissa's expression was one of horrified incomprehension. Her panic-filled gaze tore at Sorn's heart. Her father's whispered pleas made it painfully clear how desperately he loved his daughter. Sorn ached for the man fiercely, even as he plumbed the darkest reaches of his own worst fears, seeing a girl he cared so much about already, suffocating before his eyes.

  "Relax, my king," Salrie soothed. "For as distressing as it is to view Elissa as she struggles, that she struggles for breath is the best sign yet."

  While saying this, she was methodically pouring several drops from a second bottle rather carefully into Elissa's mouth. With that, Elissa started gasping more freely, eventually coughing and crying choking sobs of panicked relief. Tears flowing freely from daughter and father both, Elissa was instantly surrounded by her father's protective embrace.

  "It's all right, my precious daughter. It's going to be okay. Oh my child… Shh. It's all right," the king soothed, gently stroking his daughter's back as she got over the worst of her terror. The desperately relieved king's words were so filled with love and an aching tenderness for the child he had almost lost, that not a single person seemed unmoved by the display.

  "Your Majesty," Salrie spoke gently. "The worst is past, and I believe your daughter shall make a full recovery, but I need to spend some time with her together with my sisters, as soon as we can."

  "Of course," the king said, nodding to Salrie solemnly over his daughter's huddled form, still wrapped protectively in his arms. "Sorlin?" The king said, with a look to his mage.

  "Fear not, Your Majesty. I have sent for them. They are already on their way."

  The king nodded. "I thank you, my friend. And you as well," he said, turning to the healer. "You have saved the life of my daughter, and I owe you a debt of gratitude. Ask any boon and you will have it, for you and yours will always be remembered with honor and respect by my family."

  Salrie, however, turned her head down. If anything, she appeared to feel shamed by the king's solemn pra
ise. "She was a young woman in need. I did as any healer worth her oath would do. Truly, Your Majesty, I am not worthy of your regard. Were you to know me better, you would be disappointed at how all too selfish and imperfect I truly am. Indeed, Your Majesty, I fear greatly to distress you further, but had she arrived even a handful of minutes later, there would have been near nothing that I could have done to save her."

  The king, however, only favored her with a heartfelt smile.

  "Salrie. Your humbleness merely emphasizes your grace in this. And as all healers would seek to bring succor and save the lives of those suffering, so it is fitting that the law protects you and your wisdom and holds you in high esteem already. And so I say it now, to you all. That should I ever here of a healer coming to harm by another, I shall spare no expense in hunting the wrongdoer down, and he shall have to answer to me. Personally."

  Several of the onlooking nobles nodded, others simply stood reverentially silent, perhaps in respect for this King's Oath, the first their present king had spoken in his long rule, or so Sorn heard several nobles quietly declaring.

  "And as for you, Salrie, it matters not to me your human frailties. We are all guilty of those. It is a part of what makes us who we are. What matters is that you have the strength of character to rise above them and do what needs to be done. As you have done. Tonight. For me and mine. And for which, dear lady, I still remain in your debt."

  He favored the still troubled looking Salrie with a further reassuring smile, before turning his eyes to Sorn.

  "I owe thanks to you as well for the life of my daughter, Sorn. For the third time in as many nights, my kingdom owes you a great debt." The king's words were solemn as he spoke, his eyes showing a heartfelt gratitude words could hardly convey.

  "Your Majesty…" Sorn was presently speechless with the relief still flooding through him. The agonized worry so great it had near consumed him with heartrending panic for the precious girl that had come so close to dying in his very arms had been transformed to a surge of relief so intoxicating that it had left him at a loss for words, and all artifice was forgotten. "It was my greatest desire to find her and save her. I couldn't bear to do anything less, no matter what the circumstances."

  The king nodded with solemn thanks, his hands still gently rubbing the back of his daughter, still curled in a protective ball, too overwhelmed and exhausted to face the world after so terrifying an ordeal.

  "Tell me this, my young friend. How did you manage to find her so quickly, only moments after the general alarm was raised?"

  "Oh, of course. First I flew over the gardens proper, quartering them, making sure she was not among them. Then I checked the battlements in case she was gazing at the Empire's forces. Only then did I think to check the hedge maze proper, and that is when I caught a glimpse of her form by the central apple tree. Then I simply picked her up and brought her here as fast and as gently as I could."

  Sorn only then realized what he had said by the gasps and wide-eyed stares directed his way.

  "You… flew," Sorlin said at last.

  "Err… ran really quickly?" an abashed Sorn suggested.

  A grave looking Sorlin, however, was having none of it. "No, Sorn. You specifically said that you had flown. And quartering the garden, so to speak, or scanning the hedge maze, are only things you would do or terms you would use from an aerial vantage point." He shook his head as if to himself. "We shall speak more of this later, young one."

  Sorlin then turned to face the king. "Your Majesty, what would you have me do at this point?"

  The king's eyes blazed and he seemed almost to shudder with his fury, though his grip on his daughter was still gentle for all that.

  "I want you to find this Vorstice, and bring him to me!" the king roared his outrage, ready to tear the subject of his wrath limb from bleeding limb.

  "Your Majesty," Sorn began, his pause indicated his momentary confusion, and the captain of the King’s Guard turned towards Sorn to clarify what he had missed.

  "The good Lord Cantrose came to inform us moments before that Vorstice has apparently escaped his quarters in the lord's section of the palace. This, despite his door being sealed from the outside. Furthermore, a careful perusal of his quarters had been made beforehand to assure that there were no secret cache of weapons or other devices that could be used to secure his freedom. Yet that being said, by the time Lord Cantrose and his cohorts came back with our healer, Vorstice had somehow escaped."

  The captain's words had a bite to them that left a red-faced Lord Cantrose, also present, all but flinching with chagrin.

  "To be fair," the captain allowed, "he is also responsible for Salrie's presence here, a most fortuitous event for a number of people, it seems."

  Sorn's eyes widened with dawning comprehension, and the overwhelming panic only recently abated was now being replaced with a near inconceivable rage that roared with a fury and intensity far greater than any anger he had previously known. Vorstice. His sick, cruel features twisted in a lascivious mocking smile as he described to Sorn his plans for the children of the nobility. Vorstice, scurrying in concealment by potion of invisibility or other means, creeping into the king's very own council chamber with the vicious intent of destroying the family that had for generations ruled Caverenoc with a wisdom and insight that spoke of compassion and understanding beyond their years. Vorstice, who as a final act of vile perfidy had attempted to fatally poison the girl whom Sorn even now ached to hold, stroke, and soothe, before making his escape. Vorstice, whom Sorn would see scream in an agony of torment, before consuming his very soul in the heat of his draconic flame.

  So Sorn swore to himself such an oath that he would never break, vowing to hunt down Vorstice and torment him until death seemed an unattainable dream, a desperate haven of relief from endless searing agony that Sorn would never, ever, grant him until he had devoured the man's very essence, consumed every scrap of his being.

  For all his overwhelming outrage, Sorn's voice, when he spoke, was cold.

  "Your Majesty, I request a boon of thee, would you but grant it."

  Though his words were coldly formal, Sorn's eyes blazed with a fierceness that seethed with a weight of its own, more than one noble stepping back despite himself from the intensity of his gaze. Perhaps on some primitive level, the crowd was beginning to realize that, exotic beauty aside, before them stood a being whose savagery was reigned in only by the slightest veneer of civilization. A being that none wanted to be in close proximity to, should that brittle shell give way.

  The king, however, met Sorn's gaze with an unflinching nod of his own, serene in the face of Sorn's barely contained wrath. "Ask, my friend, and it shall be granted, should it be within my power to confer it to thee."

  "I require your strongest armor, your thickest shield, and what weapons whose forging matches my own."

  The king nodded formally. "It is done. Captain, escort Sorn immediately to the armory. Nothing is barred to him. Not even the armaments of my ancestors, should he deem them worthy. Let the smith know this, then come back to me at once."

  Sorn nodded his head at this, too wrapped in his rage and remembered rank and power to realize some would view his lack of a bow a significant slight. The king however, appeared unperturbed. Whether it was gratitude alone, or perhaps his sensing that there was far more to Sorn than met the eye mattered not. The king simply met Sorn's nod with a tilt of his head, causing not a few gasps and whispered comments from those who looked on.

  "One thing more, Your Majesty," Sorn said, pausing a moment. "Vorstice likely had access to magics that rendered him invisible to the human eye. That is probably how he made his way here, and it is no doubt how he is even now making his way to his warehouses, to warn our enemy of our knowledge of their whereabouts and likely to instigate an immediate assault. My cousins, who are guarding the paths to the warehouses to prevent any cohort of Vorstice's from signaling the enemy soldiers therein, are unlikely to sense him, not expecting an invisible agent. A
s a result, I am afraid it is all too likely that the city of Caverenoc will be in a desperate battle before the night is through."

  The king nodded solemnly at this. "We feared as much, but we thank you for your confirmation of our thoughts. My men are even now gearing our soldiers to prepare for an assault."

  Sorn nodded. "Then I had best prepare with all haste so that I too may force the enemy to taste my steel." Underneath his cool demeanor, Sorn's words were laden with a twisting hot wrath. With a bleak smile, Sorn, in the company of the captain of the Royal Guard, made his way from the receiving room.

  Moments later, the king left the chamber as well in the company of the healer to bring his daughter to her quarters. Preoccupied with his doomed city and his almost fatally poisoned daughter, the king barely registered a soothing Salrie as she assured the king that her sister healers would know to meet her there. Yet shortly thereafter they did so, raising their hands as one before the respectful eyes of their king. In unison, they whispered soothing words reminiscent of the field, stream, and all wild things, and soon Elissa's sleeping form rested all the deeper, her breathing relaxed, at last completely free of obstruction and wheeze.

  As if a great burden had been lifted from the king’s chest as well, he breathed deeply, mind cleared sufficiently to focus on the grim task ahead.

  The guard captain's pace was quick, leading Sorn past the luxuriously appointed halls of the royal palace at near a sprint, heading back toward more Spartan chambers devoted primarily to military pursuits. Yet it was obvious with even a passing glance that the graceful, intricate murals gracing even these ceilings had been crafted with the same degree of refinement and skill as had the ones in the king's own richly appointed receiving chamber.

  The captain rapped his hand smartly on a thick oaken door which was opened immediately by a deferential apprentice, and Sorn could tell by the acrid fumes at once why this chamber and those thereafter were kept shut from the palace proper. For the fumes would have been an unwelcome addition to the halls of any receiving room or royal chamber.