Kings, Queens, Heroes, and Fools wt-2 Read online

  Kings, Queens, Heroes, and Fools

  ( Wardstone trilogy - 2 )

  Michael Robb Mathias

  Michael Robb Mathias

  Kings, Queens, Heroes, and Fools

  .

  Chapter One

  Lord Alvin Gregory opened his eyes sometime in early winter. They’d been closed since summer began. The unfamiliar room was dark, but warm and earthy, tinged with the smell of fire smoke and roasted lamb. He tried to rise, but his body would not allow it. With the pain came the memory of the wounds he’d taken. From what? He shouldn’t be alive, he knew, but he could tell by the intensity of the pain he was in, that he was. He lay there for a long while before the hazy memory of a woman, elegant and beautiful, carried him back into sleep.

  The next time he opened his eyes he found a woman sitting next to him. She wasn’t the woman he had been dreaming of, but she was no less beautiful. It seemed that his waking had startled her, but a warm smile crept across her face soon enough and she went back to cleansing his skin with the damp cloth in her hand.

  She had long, straight jet black hair, and dark motherly eyes. The edges of which were just starting to show the lines of age. She was no noblewoman, her clothes were made from doeskin and plainly cut. He wasn’t back in his Westland stronghold at Lakebottom, he knew. He e He couldn’t sort through the fog in his brain to say where exactly he was though. It was a safe place, he sensed, but it was a long way from home.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  He tried to reply to the question, but his throat was thick with mucus and would not work for him.

  “It’s all right, Lion Lord,” she said. “I’ll fetch some broth and my mate.”

  Lord Gregory suffered the pain of turning his head so that he could watch her go and felt the chill of the icy-cold air that blew in when she opened and closed the door behind her.

  Lion Lord, she had called him. It stirred memories from the mix of his mind, but nothing complete enough to comprehend. He closed his eyes again and drifted.

  “He can remember nothing,” the woman said sometime later.

  Lord Gregory opened his eyes to find her and two men standing in the room.

  “Ah, he’s waking again,” the older of the two men said. He was seventy years old if he was a day. His long hair was streaked with silver and gray and the skin on his clean-shaven face was sun-darkened and wrinkled. The old man shrugged off a thickly furred cloak that had been made from several different animal skins. Grayish brown, black, and snow-white long-haired goat skins had been hem-hawed together. It looked warm though. Lord Gregory grew curious when the old man winced his way down to take a seat at the edge of the bed.

  “Lord Gregory,” the old man said. “Lion of the West. Lion Lord. Do these names mean anything to you?”

  “I know who I am,” Lord Gregory croaked. His own voice sounded unfamiliar to his ears. It was weak and hoarse and it reminded him of his injuries.

  “Good, good,” the old man said with a pat on Lord Gregory’s arm. “Do you know where you are?”

  Lord Gregory racked his cloudy brain and found the knowledge, but the name of the place escaped him. Then he wondered if it even had a name. He managed to get out two words: “Clan village,” but even though he knew that was correct, he knew it was incomplete.

  “Yes, yes, this is the village of the Skyler Clan. I am Halden Skyler, the Eldest, and this is my second son Harrap and his mate Karna. They have kept you while you were resting. Their son, my grandson, Hyden was amongst your group when the dark creature attacked. Do you remember?”

  Some of it came back to him. A fleeting feeling of hope bloomed. “Mikahl?” he croaked.

  “Aye,” Harrap joined the conversation. He was standing at the foot of the bed. “And an elf.” The word ‘elf’ was spoken with more than a little contempt.

  “A tattooed Seawardsman was with you as well,” the old man added from beside him. “You killed a Seawardsman at the festival. Do you remember that?”

  Summer’s Day, a great fight with another brawler; gamblers, wagering, thousands of people cheering them on, blood and knuckles and pain-these were the images that came to his mind.

  “I lost, I think.” Lord Gregory tried to grin.

  “Aye,” the old man looked to his son at the foot of the bed. His grin was full of satisfaction. “This lion will roar again. He just needs a little more time to lick his wounds.”

  “He’s not heard of the Dragon Queen and the fall of Westland yet. And…”

  A raised hand from the Eldest cut Harrap short. Harrap shook his head in frustration.

  “Lord Gregory’s mind’s not ready for all that yet, son. He’s been unconscious for more than a season. Filling his head with too much at once might hinder his recovery.” The Eldest turned to his son’s mate. “You’ve done well, Karna. Could you ask Tylen to come for a while each day to help our Westlander get his body used to moving around again.”

  She nodded that she would and hurried out the door. The old man’s gaze settled back on Lord Gregory. Their eyes met, and the old man’s look was serious, yet reassuring. “It will be no small task to get you walking again. We will see if you truly have the heart of a lion beating in that chest of yours.”

  “That his heart still beats at all, after being dropped from the sky by that evil beast, shows that he has a lion’s heart,” Harrap said.

  It didn’t escape Lord Gregory’s notice that Harrap had spoken of him, but not to him. Maybe his eyes had been closed, or maybe he’d been lying there so long that he didn’t seem like a person anymore to Harrap. Before he could think much more about it he slipped back into a deep and heavy slumber.

  The young man named Tylen came later that day. He and Lord Gregory spoke for a while of the legendary brawl from a few years earlier, when Lord Gregory beat a fighter called the Valleyan Stallion. He won his place on the Summer’s Day Spire that year. The great needle-like projection of polished black stone rose up out of the sacred Leif Greyn Valley and the names of each year’s winners were carved into its base. No one knew who built the Spire or why, but for as long as any man could remember, on the first day of summer each year, men from all across the realm gathered there to trade and compete in the spirit of fellowship and peace. The winners of events such as archery, brawling, hammer throw and various foot and horse races won a bit of immortality and heavy prize-purses of gold and silver, but it wasn’t the honor of having his name engraved into the Spire twice that drove the Lion Lord to battle again last year. He’d been there for far more important reasons.

  King Balton, the king of Westland, had been poisoned just before the festival. From his death bed he had ordered Lord Gregory to attend. The Lion Lord had done so, and was poisoned himself, beaten half to death, and left to watch helplessly while most of his men were killed by the Blacksword soldiers of Highwander. The whole festival had turned into a battlefield. It was all too much to think about.

  Tylen eventually took the covers off of the Lion Lord’s legs and manually worked his ankles and knee joints as his grandfather had instructed him to do. It was agonizing for the Westlander but, with clenched teeth and many curses, they got through it. When the young man was done he fetched the Lion Lord a strong drink of some horrible tasting liquid and helped him get it down.

  That night, Lord Gregory dreamed of the regal lady again. When he woke, her identity and the vision of her most beautiful face were fresh in his mind’s eye. She was his wife, the Lady Trella. She was his best friend, his lover, and he found that he missed her dearly.

  Later in the day, just before Tylen started his exercises, Lord Gregory asked for the Eldest. He was ready to hear what the
old man was keeping from him. Somehow he knew it involved his wife. In his dream she had been fleeing something and he couldn’t come to her aid. As he waited for Halden Skyler, he prayed to the gods that his wife was safe. He swore to get his legs working again so that he might find a way home to her.

  “There’s much to tell,” the old man said, as he took a padded stool and sat on it near the hearth. “Are you sure you’re ready to hear it all?”

  “Sooner or later I’ll hear it, sir,” Lord Gregory said. “I’d prefer to hear all of it now.”

  “Well then, as you know, us clansman are not kingdom men. We only ventured down from the mountains a few times a year. Two of my sons, Harrap and Condlin, made one such journey in the fall. They went to the city of High Crossing to purchase animals and other provisions like they do every year before winter sets in. Only this year the town was nearly empty.”

  This grabbed Lord Gregory’s attention.

  “Harrap and Condlin continued south to the city of Castlemont. I guess I should say where the city of Castlemont used to be.” The old man leaned forward on his stool, took up a poker and began prodding the fire back to life.

  “Used to be?” Lord Gregory asked.

  “What few folk they came across told them that the city was sacked by your new king and then was destroyed by his wizard. The ones that didn’t hide well enough were rounded up and herded to that slaver city by the sea.”

  “O’Dakahn,” Lord Gregory said. “But…but that’s impossible.”

  “Oh there’s much more to tell,” the Eldest said. “While your Westland king was herding the people of Wildermont to the south, and his army was making passage through the Wilder Mountains to attack the Red City, a dragon rider led an army out of the swamps and took Westland for herself.”

  “But-”

  The Eldest cut Lord Gregory’s protest off with a wave of his hand and a healthy harrumph. “Walking lizards from the marshes, the zard, Harrap called them. Huge man-like beasts that aren’t true giants, but wild half-breeds from beyond the Giant Mountains hold Westland under the Dragon Queen’s rule. They destroyed the bridge at Castlemont. That alone amazes me. I’ve seen that bridge with my own eyes and it would take powerful forces to tear it down. I wouldn’t believe these things had my own two sons not told me of them. They are good fathers, and good men. They have no reason to lie.”

  Lord Gregory had crossed the magnificent bridge that led from Wildermont over the Leif Greyn River into Westland at least half a hundred times in his day. A spectacle of archways wide enough for five, maybe six, wagons to cross abreast, it was the only land passage from the eastern kingdoms into Westland. If this Dragon Queen really existed, then she wasn’t planning on giving Westland up anytime soon. The fact that she had destroyed the only land access into Westland showed that she meant to isolate and defend the territory. He could only hope that his lady wife was alive and well. Surely his friend Lord Ellrich, or another of his peers, had seen to her safety.

  “What of your kinsman Hyden, and my countryman Mikahl?” Lord Gregory asked. Inside him the desire to get his legs working again so that he could go see if these things were true, was growing from a spark into a fire.

  Mikahl was the true king of Westland, though the boy didn’t know it yet. I may have told him, Lord Gregory said to himself, but he wasn’t sure. Mikahl had been raised a bastard, but King Balton brought him up well. Mikahl was Lord Gregory’s squire in his adolescent years, and the king’s squire up until King Balton was murdered. Mikahl was smart, well trained, and capable. Lord Gregory hoped he was still alive, and still had possession of his father’s sword, Ironspike.

  “Borg, the Southern Guardian, a true and noble giant, came out of the deep mountains in the early fall,” the eldest said. The reverence he held for the giant was clear. “He brought with him three horses and a tale as wild as the news of the Dragon Queen. Hyden, Mikahl, and the elf, met with King Aldar. What transpired at the meeting, I do not know.” Halden stirred the fire again and adjusted his old body on the stool. “The Seawardsman who was with them was killed in the Giant Mountains by the same beast that got you. Borg spoke of Mikahl’s bravery in the battle, and for Borg to make such compliments is no light matter. King Aldar sent them through the Evermore Forest to the kingdom of Highwander. Borg was very vague about why, but my grandson Hyden and his hawkling, and that… that elf went with him. They rode on the backs of King Aldar’s great wolves no less. Can you imagine crossing through the Evermore Forest on the back of a great wolf?”

  Lord Gregory couldn’t even imagine Mikahl fighting the hellcat, much less anything else. He knew that King Balton had sent Mikahl to the Giant King. It was the only place he knew that Prince Glendar and his wizard Pael might not hunt them down. It was why Lord Gregory had been with them in the mountains in the first place. He’d sworn to help Mikahl get to the Giant King. He was relieved to know that he would not live on as an oath-breaker; almost as much as he was relieved to know that Mikahl was probably alive. He wondered why King Aldar had sent them to Highwander. The Witch Queen’s Blacksword warriors were the ones who started the bloodshed at the Summer’s Day Festival. At least that’s the way Lord Gregory remembered it.

  He also remembered thinking that he was dead after sending his page Wyndall to take a message to Lady Trella. If Wyndall made it, Lady Trella would have been warned of the coming trouble. Hopefully big Lord Ellrich or Wyndall or someone else had helped her to survive. In a rush of angry passion, Lord Gregory tried to rise up from the bed only to end up howling as his soft, un-worked muscles gave fiery protest.

  At once, the old clansman was at the door yelling for young Tylen. The boy came and went, then returned with another cup of the horrible concoction they had been feeding him. The Eldest helped him drink it down and waited patiently until Lord Gregory slipped back into his deep dreaming slumber.

  Lord Gregory dreamt a memory of the big half-breed beasts he’d fought in Coldfrost. He, King Balton, and Lord Brach had led the men bravely against the huge brutal creatures. Then King Balton used the power of his sword, Ironspike, to create a magical boundary that the creatures couldn’t pass. Borg had spoken for King Aldar there in that frigid bloody place. The true giants wanted no part of the breed beasts, and in fact were pleased with the way King Balton had imprisoned them on the glacial island.

  In his dream, the true giant, Borg, fought alongside him, young Glendar, and King Balton against the creatures. They battled to free the Lady Trella from a prison of ice where huge hairy half-men were trying to tear apart her body.

  Lord Gregory woke in a cold sweat. His legs ached from the movements Tylen had put them through, but he wanted more of it. From that day forward his whole existence was about getting his legs back under him. It took half a month for him to be able to sit up on his own. He had Karna and Tylen place his food across the room. He crawled, slithered, crumpled and cried, but he didn’t give up, even though he went hungry many a mealtime. In the evenings, he worked his legs while lying in the bed, bringing his knees up as close to his chin as he could, one after the other, over and over again. He used a rock the size of his fist for a weight to exercise his arms, but gradually worked up to a head-sized chunk of granite. His arms regained muscle much faster than his legs, but he didn’t get discouraged.

  He talked to Harrap and Condlin about their journey into the ruined cities of Wildermont for many hours. He questioned them in great detail and learned that the half-breed giants had been released from Coldfrost and had helped tear down the great bridge between Westland and Wildermont before taking over rule of the Westland trade city called Locar. They were building great wooden watchtowers all along the Westland bank of the Leif Greyn River when the two clansmen had been in Castlemont. Some said King Jarrek had fled his kingdom. Others said that he had died by the hand of the wizard Pael.

  As hard as he tried, Lord Gregory couldn’t learn much more than that from the two men. They weren’t kingdom men. They’d been born and raised and lived here
in the mountains their whole life. Kingdom men seldom dared to venture here, and the things a kingdom man might notice about a place were lost to them.

  Harrap helped his nephew Tylen support Lord Gregory the first few times he tried to stand and walk. It was hard and painful and even comical at times, but finally, near midwinter, Lord Gregory took some steps on his own.

  “This lion might not yet be able to roar,” he told them. “But at least I can still growl.”

  He began using a cane that the Elder had carved for him out of a witch-wood bough. The handle was the head of a snarling lion and the base a wide lion’s paw. It was crude work, but heartfelt. Lord Gregory cherished it dearly.

  By the time spring was upon them, Lord Gregory was hobbling along fairly well. When he left his room the first time, he found that he had been living underground all winter. The clan folk all lived in stone rooms built right into the sloping walls of their little valley. Narrow passages that reminded Lord Gregory of mine tunnels led from the open valley into the homes. Giants and dwarves, Halden told him, had supposedly built the burrows long centuries ago.

  The clansmen didn’t own or ride horses, but on several occasions Lord Gregory rode on the dead Seawardsman’s mount. It wasn’t long after that he was feeling well enough to leave the Skyler Clan and their hospitality behind him. The desire to find his wife was gnawing at him like a starving dog at a bone.

  He would have rather taken Mikahl’s proud and well trained horse, Windfoot, but he left the steed because Borg had promised Mikahl that it would be there when he came for it.

  He waited until it was warm enough to get out of the mountains without freezing, and then, after a long respectful goodbye, he left the Skyler Clan behind. He pointed the horse south toward Wildermont, and with all the hope in the world, he set off to find his wife.