Chapter 12: Always regrets

 

  

He must be drunk, the old man at the tavern thought, hearing the herdsman talk about what he thought he saw down in the lower pastures.

“There’s no such thing as elves anymore,” one of the other patrons said, saying aloud what the old man thought, “At least, not in this neck of the woods.”

Or this pasture, or field, or wherever in Amlor might wander.

“There were elves here once,” the herdsman said. “They can still be here for all we know.”

“Someone would have seen them long before this,” a third man chimed in, a stranger with an accent that suggested he came from inland somewhere, not Land Gate, the old man thought, north of that, from the northern coast, where some claim strange things occurred routinely, and if a man like that didn’t believe elves still wandered this part of the world, how could a simple herdsman see one?

“Do you even know what an elf looks like?” the northerner asked the herdsman.

“I’ve seen the paintings on the walls of the castle,” the herdsman said.

“The castle?” the second man said, a squat man with blistered hands, maybe a blacksmith, the old man thought. “When does a fellow like you get to visit a place like that?”

“When I deliver meat to the kitchens there,” the herdsman said.

“And they let you through the front door?” the northerner said. “Now that’s a bigger fib than your elves are.”

“I was there, I saw the paintings, and I saw the elves in the pasture, too,” the herdsman said, looking besieged.

“Oh, someone buy the poor man some ale,” the blacksmith said.

“I will,” the northerner said, “just for his entertaining us with such an outrageous tale.”

 

***********

 

The King stared into the hearth. He was not alone – his guards stood nearby and near the door – but he felt alone, and never so much alone as now, thinking how his eldest son had betrayed him.

“An old man deserves better than this,” he thought.

Now more than ever did he regret his decision regarding the sword, passing it on to his eldest son when he as king had rights to it.

“Damn that wizard,” he thought, “always full of deceptions. If I didn’t need him so much, I would have his head on a spike in front of the castle.”

The wizard constantly believed he knew more than the king did, and mistook the king’s early, unnatural aging for dotage, when the opposite was true. His mind was as sharp as ever. He knew very well why Ely had returned, knowing the king would never grant him an army.

“He wants to sword,” the king thought. “He always has. But he can’t have it. Not while I live.”

Nor was the king blinded by his other son’s ambition. Ajax wanted the sword as much as Ely did and for much lesser reason. In seeking glory, Ajax would risk the world.

“In that the wizard is right,” the king thought. “Ajax is too much like me, or like what I once was.”

The overwhelming temptation haunted them both, more so with Ajax, who spent most of his waking life among the hills of Land Gate, and within reach of the Tower of Suna, where the sword sat, waiting.

Both sons knew the curse that the sword carried for the unwary hand, slow death even to the king who might have need of it, perhaps a quicker death for the hand not entitled to wield it.

How true the tales were, the king did not know. Yet he believed enough in them to have willingly surrendered his claim to the sword when the wizard asked.

“I do not want to be the greatest king who ever lived, the way Ajax does, perhaps Ely as well,” he thought. “I want to live a land of peace. I want to praise my ancestors, and hope that my life is worthy of a place beside them in the great hall.”

Even now, he suspected Ely and the wizard of conspiring to find a way to take the sword. Yes, the wizard feared the blade and its long history, but ultimately, even in his wisdom he would eventually come to see its need, and would want Ely’s hand on that hilt, not Ajax’s.

But to take it, the king would have to die, and Ely would have to be named king.

“Would they go so far as to kill me to accomplish that?” the king wondered. “Ajax would if he were heir. I suspect Ely would bear the curse before he would consider taking my life. He still respects the rule of law, even when I claim he doesn’t.”

So, what can be done to keep it from him other than what the gods have already decreed?

Nothing, the king concluded.

“I must sit by and wait for it all to happen,” he said. “I can put more guards on him, but he would overwhelm them easily, such is his skill. I do not want blood spilled over it. So, I will wait.”

All this for love?

The king grew heated over the memory of the wizard’s words, about the woman who had died delivering his two sons.

“Yes, I loved her,” the king thought. “And so, I understand Ely’s love as well, as much as I oppose it. A love spell? It is a spell we all endure one time or another. It is ill timed he should fall under it now, and with a queen who might well be in league with the witches in the south.”

And then, the king’s hands shook, his eyes taking on a distant gleam, a memory of a face, the recollection of the curse that had taken her from him, leaving him with two sons, but no future.

“I would have risked the curse of the sword if I thought that’s what I could have done to save her,” he thought, “just as Ely must do now.”

The king reached out, pulling down the cord that called for his servants.

“I need sleep,” he muttered. “I need sleep that lets me forget.”

 

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