Empress Aurora Trilogy Quest For the Kingdom Parts I, II, and III Revised With Index (Quest For the Kingdom Set) (43 page)

Marcus wished
heartily that he could consult Logos. But he could not draw the sword from its
scabbard without attracting the notice of the guards.

Arvid,
however, was speaking.

“It is my
custom to execute at once those who invade our realm. For if they are not
dispatched at once, I fear they will discover the secret of Jytte, and that is
a risk I dare not take. Yet, I am a just man, and you have shown courage in
your defense. I would hate to put such a brave man to death, and he the son of
a warrior whose name I have heard, even in our tiny realm.

“For it is
necessary at times for our people to venture outside of our homeland to
purchase supplies that we lack in Jytte’s Land, and many are the tales that our
young men bring back on their return. And the valor of General Maximus is known
even beyond the borders of your Empire.”

And Arvid
extended a bow to Marcus. He heard a hiss, and turned his head with the speed
of a lighting bolt to where Ylva stood glaring with venom at the band of
friends.

“What troubles
you?” the Thene inquired of the angry girl whose chest heaved in indignation.

“It is our
law, O great Thene, to take the lives of those who trespass on our sacred
ground. And you would excuse these invaders? Is that not weak?” Ylva spat the
words out from between tightly clenched teeth.

Truly, Marcus
thought, never have I seen a maid so vicious as this one! I believe she
wants
to see our execution and relishes the thought of blood spilled.

“Weak?”

The Thene rose
from his chair with a sudden abruptness that took them all by surprise. Ylva
instinctively sprung back and bowed low.

“I intended no
insult,” she said with downcast eyes.

But her lips
turned up at the corners in what Marcus was certain was a sneer.

Arvid gave her
a long, measuring look of such icy displeasure that even Ylva paled, the sneer
abruptly vanishing from her face.

“Perhaps,” the
Thene intoned, his eyes fastened on the girl’s face, “you have forgotten that
we take the lives of trespassers only to protect our land, and not for the
pleasure of the kill. I perceive bloodlust upon you: and I like it not,” he
frowned.

Ylva said
nothing, but coolly returned his searching gaze with an innocent stare. Arvid
looked into her green eyes, no longer sparkling with triumph at her prize, but
glittering in anger at the thwarting of her schemes. Then he slowly nodded his
head.

“Yes,” he
muttered, “it is there. I wish you to leave my presence now, and consider your
ways with care. Jytte would be most grieved at the cruelty I see in your
heart.”

Ylva blinked
her eyes rapidly; then tightened her lips until they were a narrow red line.
Still she stood, as though defying Arvid. But the Thene would brook no
defiance.

“Go!” he
bellowed in a voice that made Marcus jump involuntarily.

Ylva dared not
resist any longer. She bowed her head to Arvid, and turned her back to him as
she left his presence. Before she was out of the room, however, Marcus caught
her giving a sidelong glance at the guard who had ushered them into the room.
It was a provocative look, as she smiled at him, lowered her eyes, then raised
them to his and puckered her full lips in a pout. The guard responded with a
cold smile and a hot light in his eyes; then cast his own eyes down so as to
escape detection by Arvid.

Ylva risked a
backward glance of derision as she flounced out of the room. When she left,
Marcus felt that the place seemed at once larger, yet cold and pale, as though
Ylva had taken all the heat and color with her…

Arvid turned
with a majestic air back to Marcus and his friends.

“Tell me more
of your father, and of what manner of man is his son,” Arvid said to Marcus.
“For I admire men of courage, and love to hear of their feats of bravery.”

Marcus was
only too happy to speak of Valerius, and to relate his mighty deeds. With
gladness he spoke for nearly an hour of his father’s exploits, both on and off
the field of battle. As Marcus told the story of a weary Valerius at the Battle
of Heinbern, facing a horde of invading barbarians, fierce in their savagery,
spurring his men on to fight the enemy who outnumbered them, Arvid listened
with gleaming eyes to every word.

Marcus shared
the time when a bear had wandered out of the forests to the north and surprised
his camp in the early morning, only to be met with a sword hurled with unerring
aim by Valerius, piercing its heart, before it could charge the men. Arvid
laughed aloud at the tale, and clapped his hands in sheer delight.

“A brave man,
indeed,” the Thene crowed. “We, too, have our heroes, our valiant ones. They
have fought many battles, and have slain the bear and the wolf.”

He turned to
the group of companions who listened wonderingly to the exchange between Arvid
and their friend.

He studied
them intently for a long moment. Then he appeared to have come to a decision.

“It is few who
have found leniency with me, once they have trespassed on the sacred land of
Jytte. And those who have been granted mercy may never leave. Thus, I extend
mercy to you now, but on condition that you stay and join our people.”

Marcus and
Felix looked at one another, then at the Thene.

“It is with
regret,” Marcus stated, “that we cannot accept that condition. For we must
leave this land and continue our journey.”

“But you
cannot leave, I tell you,” Arvid insisted. “You must stay or die.”

A little sob
escaped from Elena’s lips, but Kyrene put a steadying arm about her. Marcus did
not glance at them, but looked at Arvid alone.

“And I tell
you that we must leave and continue our journey; for to stay would be to risk
the life of my father, whom you so greatly admire.”

Arvid wrinkled
his brow at this statement. His black eyes bored into those of Marcus,
searching their depths for any hint of treachery.

“How can that
be?” he asked in a voice suddenly cold with suspicion.

“I am not at
liberty to tell you. But if I do not return to Valerium my father faces certain
death,” and the voice of Marcus broke slightly as he replied.

Arvid spied
the pain in the young man’s voice, and in an altered tone he addressed Marcus
once more.

“Does your
father ail?” he inquired. “Are you on a quest to seek a cure?”

“Suffice it to
say that my father is in grave peril, and I alone can save him,” Marcus
responded, with finality in his tone.

Arvid pondered
this answer for a long time. Marcus wondered if he had brought the sentence of
death upon them all. Yet, he must be honest if he were to please Dominio. Please,
he prayed silently, preserve our lives so that I may save my parents.

At last Arvid
spoke.

“I need time
to consider the right course of action,” he declared. “For now I bid you get
some rest, and we will meet again when I have decided whether to spare your
lives, or to take them.”

The guard led
them out of the chamber of the Thene. Marcus was curious about the man after
witnessing the exchange of smiles between him and Ylva. The guard was tall and
lean, yet Marcus detected a hint of well-toned muscles under his long robe. He
wore no armor, and Marcus suspected that for all the courtesy of the Thene,
this was a primitive people who worked no metal.

As if sensing
Marcus’ rapt attention, the guard turned abruptly and looked directly at him
with a hostility that made Marcus’ heart stop a beat. The man raised an eyebrow
as if challenging the prisoner. His hair was the same red-gold tint as Ylva’s,
but where her eyes glistened like emeralds, this man’s eyes reminded Marcus of
the pale blue glint on an ice-covered pond catching the reflection of a winter
sky. He shivered inwardly.

The guard
turned his back on him and led them down the staircase, past the other levels
they had glimpsed. They were once more in the large hall, and the warmth from
the fires blazing over rings of stones felt welcoming to their cold, tired
bodies. But it was not to the hall that their captor was taking them.

He led them to
a narrow door at the far end of the hall. This he opened, revealing a narrow
stone passage that descended into the ground and led away from the hall itself.
He took a torch from a bracket in the wall and struck a flint against it,
striking a spark that burst into flame. Down the passage he led them into a
spacious chamber hewn out of rock.

Here no warmth
penetrated, and the cold was a shock after the cheerful fires in the great
hall. The guard snickered in an evil way when he witnessed Kyrene stamp her
feet and Elena rub her hands for warmth. The girls recoiled from his snicker,
and he leered, clearly enjoying their discomfort. He grabbed the hands of Elena
and stroked them.

“Permit me to
warm you,” he whispered as he drew close to the girl.

“Keep your
hands off a lady!” Felix shouted, as he lunged for the guard, in the same
instant that Elena snatched her hands from him.

The guard
struck Felix across the face. Felix would have been hurled to the floor had
Marcus not caught him before he fell.

“Be silent,
prisoner!” the guard exclaimed. “I am Halvor, son of Holger, and I do as I
will.”

He turned back
to Elena who met his eyes with her own flashing fire and fists clenched
upraised. He drew back as if reconsidering, then drew himself erect and stood
back from her. 

“Be it as you
will, wench. But I wager you will be glad enough for me to hold your hands when
the Thene sentences you to death!”

With this
pronouncement he left them abruptly, slamming the door of the chamber behind
him.

They looked at
one another in a sobriety that bordered on despair.

“What shall we
do?” Felix asked.

“Do? There is
nothing we
can
do,” Marcus answered. “Except to consult Logos. And
pray.”

Free at last
from prying eyes, Marcus drew the Sword from its scabbard. All gasped when they
beheld it, for in this dark place it shimmered in its silver purity and
appeared to have a light of its own.

“First,”
Marcus addressed his friends, “let us join hands, that we may be bound
together.”

They came
together in a circle and clasped hands, even Elena who was not actually a follower
of Alexandros. Standing together with their heads bowed, they consulted the
Sword Logos, who guided them into all truth.

“Logos,”
Marcus prayed, “please show us the way out of this trouble we have landed in.”

While Marcus
was yet speaking, words in delicate script appeared on the blade of Logos.
Eagerly they clustered close together to read it.

“Everyone who
drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I
will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will
become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

The script
gradually faded as they stared at the words. They looked blankly at one
another.

“Well, let us
commit this to memory, shall we?” Felix remarked brightly, although his face
looked as perplexed and uncomprehending as the rest of them.

“Of course, we
shall,” Marcus agreed.

There was a
deep silence. No one spoke. No one looked at the others. All eyes were fastened
on the floor.

“But, what
does it
mean
?” Dag asked, speaking for all of them. “How will it aid
us?”

Felix shrugged
his shoulders and raised an eyebrow as he looked to Marcus, and Marcus ran his
fingers through his crop of wavy dark hair.

“I do not
know,” Marcus replied. “But we shall commit it to memory, for Logos would not
have revealed it unless it was to be of use.”

So they
started at that very moment to commit to memory the words Logos had written.

It was
impossible to mark the passage of time because the chamber was so dark. Had it
not been for the torch left by Halvor they would have had no light at all. They
could not say whether three hours had passed or four or more.

To lift their
spirits, they prayed together and drew much comfort from their prayers to
Dominio, and from the words they gave to one another. They had grown much since
they first met Kyrene and she had astounded them with the prophecies she spoke
over them. Now it was not unusual for any of them to prophesy, and this they
did to reassure and encourage each other.

“Dag,” Felix
said to the great Trekur Lender, “a new day has dawned and the day is growing
brighter still. The old has passed away, and new beginnings lie ahead.”

Dag bowed his
head and was quiet. Marcus wondered if he thought of his former love Fanchon
and her desertion, or the rejection of his own village because of Dag’s new
belief in Alexandros.

Now it was
Marcus’ turn for a word to give.

“Elena,” he
turned to the pretty slave girl, “it is time to choose: light or darkness, life
or death. If you turn from your own way, Dominio will bless and keep you. But
if you go your own way, He cannot protect you from the decisions you make, that
may bring their own evil consequences.”

It was, Marcus
thought, a heavy word. Elena stared at him but said nothing. Then she shivered
involuntarily, whether from the words of Marcus or from the cold he could not
say: she kept her own counsel and was silent.

Marcus noticed
Kyrene looking at Elena thoughtfully. There was something Elena was keeping
from them, Marcus felt, and knew that Kyrene felt it also.

A slight
commotion at the door drew their attention. Another guard, this one unknown to
them, had drawn the bolt and was entering the room laden with trays that he
attempted to juggle without spilling anything. One tray held mugs filled with
water, the other held bread and lightly salted fish of an unknown species.

Felix leaped
up to assist the guard, who gave him a cheery thanks in the Common Tongue.
Marcus was instantly struck at the contrast between this guard and Halvor.
Where Halvor was cold, this man smiled at each of them in turn. Halvor was
insolent to Kyrene and Elena; this guard treated them with deferential respect.

Marcus
wondered if the guard were talkative enough to give information and decided to
try.

“Thank you for
your kind service,” he addressed the guard.

“We are very
hungry and the food is welcome.”

The guard
bowed deeply; then glanced furtively behind him at the closed door.

“Whatever I
can do to make your imprisonment easier, that I shall do,” he said in a tone of
utmost sincerity.

Kyrene was so
moved at his words that she burst into tears. The guard drew a kerchief from
the pocket of his robe and presented it to her, and she apologized as she wiped
her eyes.

“I am sorry,”
she said, “but your compassion touched me deeply. Is it true that we shall be
executed?”

The guard
lowered his voice and drew closer to them. He cast a glance behind him, to
confirm there was no one in the passage outside to hear his words.

“I cannot
say,” he replied. “But I know that few escape from this land that trespass on
it. That is the law, and few have ever been granted mercy and been spared their
lives once they have entered Jytte‘s Land.”

“But why?”
Felix asked, his voice rising slightly in his frustration. “What is this secret
that Arvid says must not be revealed? The only thing I have seen in this
country is water, water, water! Whether it is snow, or ice, or skrells, it is
still only water!”

“Ah, there you
have it!” the guard answered him. “It is a special water, and make no mistake
about it!”

“Special?”
Marcus queried. “How is it special? And who are you, and why do you tell us
what no one else is willing to tell?”

The guard
looked steadily at Marcus as though measuring him. Whatever he saw must have
won his trust, for he drew even closer to the little band of friends and
lowered his voice to a whisper.

“My name is
Gunnar, son of Gunvor. Understand that for what I am about to tell you, I would
be sentenced to death if it were discovered. So, it is to be secret,
understood?”

They all
nodded their heads. None dared speak in an effort to be as quiet as possible.

“All right,
then,” Gunnar continued. “I must be quick before they wonder where I am.

“Have you seen
that statue of Jytte in the chamber of the Thene?”

“The one with
water flowing from the hands?” Marcus asked.

“The very
same,” Gunnar nodded. “Well, Jytte is a kind of mother goddess they worship,
and she it is who guards the sacred waters.”

“Sacred
waters?” Felix interrupted. “What are those?”

Gunnar
answered with increasingly rapid speech, and many backward glances at the door.

“Long ago the
ancestors of the Thene traveled to this land for there were too many to support
them in their own country, and they needed to find more ground for their
flocks. When they came to the valley, they saw all those pools of water, and
streams, and reasoned it would be a good place to raise crops and keep their
herds tended. But the real value that they did not recognize at first lay not
in the pools and streams, but in the skrells.”

“The skrells?”
Kyrene asked. “What is special about the skrells?”

“The skrells
come from deep underground,” Gunnar explained, “and they are hot, not cold.
When the tribesmen came here and saw those they reasoned that the heat would
make bathing more comfortable than cold water. So, they traced the skrells to
their source in a spring that bursts out of the rocks, and one and all bathed
in it.

“At first all
seemed as usual, but as time passed, they became aware of a strange thing; a
strange thing indeed!

“The young
said that the hot springs invigorated them, and refreshed them after a hard day
working in the fields. But the old said that after bathing in the springs
several times that the pain left their bones, and they could bend their knees
with the suppleness of the young.

“You see, the
skrells are healing springs,” Gunnar concluded.

“Healing
springs?” Felix repeated.

Marcus
suddenly gasped as the full realization hit him.

“Yes, Felix,
healing
springs
!” he breathed. “Springs that restores vigor to the young and
suppleness of limb to the old.”

He looked
Felix in the eye and stared until Felix’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped as
comprehension smote him.

“The Fountain
of Youth,” Felix breathed.