Steel and Shadow: An Epic Fantasy (10 page)

             
She sighed.

             
“Eric, I was a slave.  Some part of me still feels I am a pretender,” she said, looking down at the silk finery brought for her after Mira, as the princess was called now, was forced to tend her as a proper maid.

             
“So, you’re not just out here pining over your champion,” he asked teasingly after a moment.

             
“I fear what is yet to come.  What I might yet face.  What if mother never survived?  What if….  Will I still be welcome when people realize I’ve been the lowest of slaves in a Galdyn pen?  When they learned I was….violated when yet a child?  I do not feel…..”

             
“Amalia,” he said, putting an arm around her.  “Trust me.  All of Valdor will welcome you with open arms.  They will cheer that you survived the worst those dogs could throw at you.  They will cheer that a Valdoran princess returned with a princess of her own in tow as her slave.”

             
“She technically belongs to Koa,” she murmured, still thinking of how he looked back to her just before he had seemed to just vanish into the shadows after night fell, carrying the missives her brother had written for the mad king who had begun yet another war for whatever the reasons. 

             
“I doubt she would wish him as master, any more than he wishes her from what I saw of him.”

             
“Still…..”

             
“You’re as argumentative as Bella, too,” he teased.

             
“Let us just be still, Eric.  After all.  Your men need their rest,” she murmured, staring around her at the men in their bedrolls, knowing he had doubled the watch since her return.  Outside the camp, Jengus’ men were camped, with Talia.  The royals, too, had been kept with the mercenaries, save for Mira, who now served her as maid when needed.  Talia, however, did not seem to mind.

             
She was, Lia noted long since, a very passive person until she was compelled to heal.  Then, even the worst villain was offered her touch, she realized.  It was, she thought, a peculiar gift.  Still, it said much of the woman that she didn’t even try to resist healing even apparent enemies.

             
“So do you,” Eric told her.  “Come back to the tent.  You should rest, and cease to fret.  From what the commander says, Koa often comes and goes as he wills in such a manner.  I had heard of it myself, true, but seeing it…..”

             
She knew why Koa had walked away from camp now before departing.  He could have panicked his own allies had they seen him just…..melt away, and vanish as he did. He had not even truly done anything at the duke’s, but just his reputation was enough to make the men cow before him.  Even the duke had tiptoed around like a frightened child.  She could just imagine how they would have reacted had they actually seen him use his power.  She did not realize that they had seen far more than she knew.

             
“All right.  I am a bit tired.  I am just not used to being allowed to rest so early,” she said, and followed him to the tent where the princess was literally tethered before his tent like a pet.  The chains were attached to her hobbles, for even Eric didn’t trust her that much after hearing of her antics.  She huddled in her blanket, her proud smirk gone now as she whimpered in her sleep.  She was not yet used to deprivation.

             
At least, Lia thought, her captors had not raped her from the start.  Even Koa would not allow that.

She found that quite telling, too.

X

             
He reached the palace just after midnight.  He had crossed an entire kingdom, flitting through shadow and night like the breeze through the trees.  He finally entered the palace just a little after midnight, and opened his mind and senses to the world around him once again.  For when traveling, he had long since learned it was best to close them, or risk being overwhelmed by sensing too much, too fast.

             
As expected, not long after he reached the forbidden tower he picked out by the unusual number of guards around it despite being in the heart of the city, he also detected a vaguely familiar sense.  He had already suspected that by focusing on Lia, he might sense her mother by virtue of their own similarities.  He looked up, fixing his gaze on the nearest window slit, and surged up the wall like living shadow under the sliver of moon before he entered the silent tower.  He walked down a circular stair, went to the room where four surprisingly alert guards waited, and slipped behind them to drop them all in a sleep haze. 

             
Walking into the room after unlocking it, he noted the windowless room was lit by only a single lantern just then on the far wall of the room.

             
“’Tis late even for you, isn’t it, my lord,” a bitter voice asked from a stiff-backed chair near the bed that was little more than a bedroll on a rack.  He walked around the bed, and realized the woman was not even looking up.

             
She kept her head down, was completely naked, and had a tether around her ankle that chained her to the bed.

             
“Are you Queen Helena Marie Ericson,” he asked quietly, and her graying, red hair jerked up to show him surprisingly familiar features. 

             
She was younger than he would have guessed, but still showing the weathered visage of a woman weighted by burdens of the heart, as much as her years.  Her body was still firm, and looked fit, but it was plain she had been abused, and often.

             
“Who are you?”

             
“I came to aid you, lady,” he told her, kneeling to gently touch her ankle.  “Your son Eric, king of Valdor, and Princess Lia sent me.”

             
“L-Lia?  She is safe?  She is….?”

             
“I delivered her to her brother ere I came here.  Will you trust me, lady, I shall soon have you home, too,” he promised her.

             
“I pray to the true god you can, sir.  But however you got inside, ’twill be all but impossible to get out.  George Hastings has the only key to my…..”

             
She felt a curious chilling around her foot, and then the audible snap of the shackle that fell from her ankle even as she looked down, and saw her foot cloaked in darkness that seemed to recede back into the stranger’s hands.

             
“What….magic….?”

             
“I am a shadow, lady,” he told her.  “You need not fear.  I am sworn to serve Valdor through my friend, Sir Sanz.  I shall free you, and return you safely home.  You have my word,” he said as he rose, and held out his hand.

             
She started to take his hand, then snatched it back.  “Wait!”

             
“What is it,” he asked.

             
“I…..  I have a babe.  ’Tis George’s, too, of course,” she said miserably.  “Still, do I leave him here, he will only be yet another pawn to use against my son’s throne.”

             
“So we surmised.  As I already have one stop to make ere we depart, we shall make another, too, and take your son with us.  But you must trust me, and remain silent,” he told her, still holding out his hand.

             
“I…..I do.”

             
Then she reached out and firmly seized his hand.

             
“You swear my daughter is safe,” she asked as he led her to the open door, surprised not to see the guards.  Then spotted them dozing on the floor as she stepped outside.

             
“She is a strong, and kindly lass.  She offered me friendship even when most men shun me.”

             
“Aye, she was ever so,” the lady sighed.

             
“Now, hold tightly.  Your senses will reel, but do not cry out,” he told her.  “We must travel a bit….differently from hereon,” he said.

             
“What do you…..?”

             
She gasped, but held her tongue as the world turned dark and strangely cold, and features turned to grayish streaks that flowed like water around her until she squeezed her eyes closed until the vertigo faded, and she realized the world was solid again.

             
“The nursery, I believe,” he said, and walked forward to look down into the crib where a small boy not six months old lay with bright red curls.  He would soon see the child had bright blue eyes, though, rather than green like most Valdorans, and he was already as stocky as George, or William.
             
             

            “Douglas,” she murmured, and rushed to take him into her arms.  “My son.  My son,” she murmured, and held the child to her breast.

             
A sleeping nanny remained sleeping, and he walked over to find a dress from the woman’s wardrobe close to the queen’s size.

             
“Best you dress now, lady.  You cannot travel naked even where we go.  And I must first pause to deliver your son’s demands to King Hastings ere we depart.”

             
“I’d rather just slit his throat, or geld the bastard.  Not necessarily in that order,” she grumbled.

             
He smiled wanly.  “Still, we want the war to end, and for that, we regrettably need the fat fool alive for now.”

             
“Aye,” she said, putting her now waking son down to dress.  Koa noted he now showed him his wide, blue eyes.  Like his father.

             
“You know, this chubby babe is a two-edged sword, I think.”

             
“What do you mean?”

             
“Like as not, he was meant to be a threat to Valdor’s throne.  He could, however, just as easily also be one to Galdyn’s.”

             
“Aye,” she nodded.  “I see what you mean,” she said as  pulled on the modest, if simple dress from the nanny’s garments without complaint.  The woman was obviously heavier than her, but she didn’t mind.  She was just glad of the garment just then.

             
“Now, let us see George, and be gone.”

             
“Very well,” she said, and lifted Douglas back into her arms, holding him as if she had not seen him in weeks.  Considering how she was held, it was quite possible.

             
“You did not have any other babes,” he asked her kindly when he studied the way she held him.

             
“I had two daughters,” she told him mournfully.  “That sadistic bastard slew them before my eyes the moment they were born.  As he put it, Valdoran sluts were useless to him.  He needed a prince to steal Valdor.”

             
He frowned at that.  “Yet another sin to lay at his door,” he said quietly, and put his arms around her.  “Hold tightly.  I’ll pause just outside the king’s bedchamber.  He need not even see you gone as yet, which will buy us time while he reacts to King Eric’s demands ere he even realizes you are lost to him.”

             
“What of the men you entranced?  Won’t they cry out…?  When they wake?”

             
He noted her query was leading.

             
“They will not wake till morn.  By then, we shall be well away.”

             
A moment later, he strode into the king’s chamber after dropping his guards outside his door ere they even saw him coming, and leaving her to hide in the hall with the babe.  He woke the king boldly, ignoring the slave girl in his bed as he dropped a thick packet on the fat man’s belly as his eyes fluttered open to show bloodshot orbs from too much drinking, and other excess.

             
“George Hastings,” he intoned.  “With Lord Ericson’s compliments,” he growled, and simply vanished before his eyes.

             
Helena actually stifled a giggle at the shrill, girlish scream that came from the room as Koa appeared next to her, and smiled. 

             
“Time to depart, my lady,” he told her, and folded her in shadow once again.

             
George Hastings was on a rampage.  Ericson’s letters were nothing short of thinly veiled insults.  Insults laced heavily with demands.  Costly ones.  He demanded all of Kanlys as recompense for George violating the last truce.  He ordered public apologies, and an abdication from George himself.  He demanded personal recompense for the murder and theft of his family members, and he even claimed to hold his own family hostage, though George knew they were surely still secreted away in Kanlys’s wilds.

             
Yet last night….