"Ensure Varis's messengers are intercepted," Aldrich whispered."And prepare the raven for the north.I must confer with our...ally."
Silas nodded silently and vanished into the corridors.Aldrich rose, pacing to the arched window overlooking the courtyard.Below, guards patrolled in doubled shifts, their torches flickering against the encroaching dusk.The kingdom teetered, yes, but it was his to command.The coup had been masterful: Proudlock's betrayal had removed Thorgrin, the shepherd-king whose druidic pretensions had offended the old bloodlines.Gwendolyn's capture had silenced the court.People still claimed they loved their queen, but memories fade.It was Guwayne's escape that had gnawed at him most—a loose thread that could unravel everything.If the boy lived, he could become a symbol, a rallying cry for the dispossessed.Now he was dead it opened the pathway to success, to glory and riches.Why couldn’t these fools understand that?They were focusing on the small things that didn't matter.He had led them to where they were today.They had to trust him.Or he would snuff them out, like he had so many others.Proudlock, for instance.
Aldrich retreated to his private chambers, a suite once belonging to the royal family, now adorned with his family's banners.“Fools,” he muttered, lighting a candle and reaching for his quill and parchment.
The door opened behind him.
“Know your place!”he barked, “Knock before you enter the king’s chambers or I’ll make sure you have nothing to knock with.”
“The king’s chamber?”A mocking deep voice growled behind him, making him spin round in his chair.Aldrich’s stomach clenched at the sight of Khan Vargul’s massive frame in the doorway.He stood up, desperately trying to retain his composure, not to show any weakness.
“What the hell are you doing here!”he hissed.“Close the door.You could ruin everything…” He stopped himself from calling the warlord an idiot.
Vargul's face split into a smile, revealing large, discolored teeth.He stepped inside, shutting the door behind him, and surveyed the chamber and its contents with an appraising eye."Thought I'd have a look at the spoils for myself."
“If people see you here and recognize you…”
"Relax.You whine and worry like a child."He turned his huge head back to Aldrich and stepped up to him, looking down on the lord."My hordes grow restless.They want action."
Aldrich suppressed a grimace."Patience, I was just penning you a message.”He indicated the blank parchment behind him.Vargul’s eyes didn’t move from his own.“The realm stabilizes.Your payment ships north as we speak—gold from the royal vaults, and the first consignment of captives from the dissenting villages."
Vargul’s laugh was a guttural bark."Gold and slaves?Bah!You promised lands.My warriors tire of snow and scraps.The clans murmur of betrayal.Send more—weapons, horses—or I march south myself and take what I want."He looked around the room again.
The threat was veiled but clear.Aldrich's fingers balled into fists."You overstep.Our pact holds: aid in the coup, and you claim the northern marches once the throne is secure.But haste invites failure.The Shield weakens, beasts roam—"
"Ah, the beasts," Vargul interrupted, his eyes gleaming with sly amusement."Your disturbances.My shamans whisper of older things stirring.Fractures in the ice, shadows that hunger.But I know more than you think, Aldrich.My scouts range far.They speak of a boy—a princeling—set ashore on distant isles, alive and scheming.Guwayne, yes?The heir you claimed lost.If he rallies forces..."
Aldrich's blood ran cold, his composure cracking for the first time that day.How could Vargul know?"Lies," Aldrich hissed, though doubt gnawed at him."The prince is dead.Stolk, the captain of the vessel he was on, saw him go into the water.No man could have survived.Your spies deceive you."
Vargul leaned closer, his face inches from Aldrich’s."Deceive?Or see what you blind nobles ignore?The boy lives—I smell it in the winds.Send tribute, or I share this 'knowledge' with your rivals.Varis, perhaps?He hungers for your seat.Double the gold, and include maps of the southern passes.My hordes could...assist in quelling your peasant uprisings.For a price."
He turned and strode out the door, slamming it behind him, cutting off Aldrich’s retort.He pounded his fist on the desk, the candle flame guttering.Vargul’s threats were a dagger at his throat.What if what he said about Guwayne was true?It couldn’t be.How could he know what his own scouts and spies could not?Stolk had revealed all before he had perished under the rack.His men had ways of extracting truth.
But what if he had been mistaken...?Not only would that mean the prince was still alive, still a thorn in his side, but it would also make him look a fool.It could fracture the cabal further, embolden Varis to strike.
And Vargul’s demands...the treasury bled already from bribing guards and mercenaries.If the barbarian turned, his horde could sweep south, turning ally to invader.Aldrich paced, his mind a whirlwind.He must verify Vargul’s claims.
A knock at the door shattered his reverie.He spun round again.“Who this time?”he snarled.Silas entered, his face pale, clutching a sheaf of parchments sealed with wax from various holds."My lord, urgent missives from the outlying lords.The disturbances...they worsen.They talk of other things, too…"
“Give them here!”Aldrich snatched the parchments, ripping off the seals without looking at them.His face hardened as he scanned the hurriedly scrawled sentences in the candlelight.The reports painted a tapestry of chaos: In the western fields, crops withered overnight, ground splitting into fissures that belched acrid smoke, glowing with unnatural violet light.Villagers fled as crystalline beasts emerged from the rifts, slaughtering livestock and vanishing like mist.In the east, tremors shook ancient fortresses, walls crumbling without siege, while winds howled with voices that drove men mad, whispering of unmaking and shadows.One missive from a border keep described a storm that rained shards of ice like daggers, embedding in earth and flesh alike, spreading a crystalline plague that turned living things to statues.
"What sorcery is this?"Aldrich muttered, crumpling a parchment.The Shield's breaches had allowed beasts before, but these phenomena defied explanation.The nobles would blame him, the peasants see it as divine wrath against the usurpers.If uncontrolled, it could ignite full rebellion.
Silas shifted uneasily.
"Get out!"Aldrich snapped, and Silas raced out, shutting the door, leaving Aldrich alone, his brow furrowed with concern.He stepped to the window, his eyes narrowed, the pressure coiling like a serpent in his chest.His plans, so meticulously laid, now broken under the weight of internal strife, Vargul’s greed and now these inexplicable horrors.He must act swiftly, crush the dissent, verify the boy's fate, and appease the barbarian before the horde forgot who was really in charge and ransacked the whole realm.He looked back at the parchments behind him, wondering if forces beyond his ken were aligning against him.Was something greater happening, and this whole coup was merely a sideshow?
Whatever it was, he felt that it was gathering pace, and he was standing at its epicenter, his grip on power slipping like sand through clenched fists.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The dank, darkness of the dungeons in Castle Larkridge had woven itself into Gwendolyn's very bones, a ceaseless erosion that mirrored the slow unraveling of her kingdom above.She sat on the edge of her rough-hewn bench, the chains at her wrists clinking softly with each measured breath, a reminder of her captivity that had become as familiar as her own heartbeat.Her clothes were filthy and ragged.Her lank, greasy hair hung limp and lifeless, yet her eyes burned with an unyielding light—one that no chain could dim, no noble's treachery could extinguish.
It had been ten days since the coup's iron claws had closed around King's Court, ten days of angry interrogations and futile demands for Prince Guwayne's whereabouts.Gwendolyn had given them nothing, and she knew that the nobles' patience frayed like old rope.The scraps of news she was getting told of a Ring that bled, and in that bleeding, she sensed the cracks in her captors' facade.
A heavy tread echoed down the corridor, and her eyes went to the gloomy corridor outside, awaiting the next futile bout of questioning or the next disgusting meal.Sir Kellan, chained across the narrow aisle in his own cell, straightened against his wall, his bruised face hardening.The surviving Shield Guard—now dwindled to eighteen, fever and injuries claiming another in the night—stirred in their shadows, eyes glinting like wolves in the torchlight.The door at the corridor's end groaned open on rusted hinges, admitting not the usual pair of brutish interrogators, but a procession: two armored mercenaries flanking a figure in fine velvet, his cloak embroidered with the coiled serpent of House Aldrich.Lord Aldrich himself, his hooked nose casting a predatory shadow in the flickering light, his gray-streaked hair slicked back as if to ward off the dungeon's grime.
He paused before her cell, his cold eyes appraising her like a merchant valuing flawed goods.The guards at his heels shifted uneasily, their hands resting on sword hilts, but Aldrich waved them back with a languid gesture."Leave us," he commanded.They retreated to the corridor's mouth, far enough to grant illusionary privacy, close enough to intervene if she lunged—which she had no strength left to do, though her spirit screamed otherwise.
