The Lord Son's Travels

The

Lord Son’s

Travels

Emma
Mickley

Chapter 1

No one was pleased to see Adrien Lord Son burst
into the room.
 
Of course none of
the Counselors were brave enough to verbally express these feelings; it was
never a good idea to offend any royalborn, even the Lord King’s younger
son.
 
Truth be told, he wasn’t very
popular anywhere in the kingdom, but Adrien was especially unwelcome at this
meeting.
  
For five hundred
years the royal family of Allè-dôn held absolute rule over all corners of the kingdom
with only one exception: the Chamber of the High Council.
 
Royals had never attended the private
meetings since the founding of the Council – or they never had until
today.

The Counselors and their
various assistants were still milling about in the reception room outside of
the formal meeting hall.
 
Their
drinks had been savored and emptied, and the choicest bits of gossip have all
ready made their rounds to the majority of interested ears, so the members of
the High Council were ready to enter into the chamber to take their seats and
begin their monthly formal assembly.
 
But just as the traditional bell was ringing the start of the session,
the servant on duty at the entry door raced in to breathlessly announce the arrival
of a royalborn, only seconds before the Lord Son himself entered into the room.

Adrien Lord Son ignored the frigid expressions
that greeted him as he searched for one familiar wrinkled face within the
multitude of grey-haired Counselors.
 
Finally with relief he spotted the man he needed to see.
 
Tarien, Counselor of the Foreign, was
the only one in the room allowed to display his exasperation at the unexpected
invasion.
 
Adrien had been his
favorite student when he was still a young boy, so Tarien still felt entitled to
speak his opinion, though that sweet quiet child had long ago grown to
adulthood.

“Lord Son!” he snapped. “What are you doing
here?
 
You know well enough no
royal is allowed in the Chamber!
 
And carrying a weapon yet?”
 
Adrien glanced down, abashed, as he belatedly realized that he was still
wearing his practice sword in its sheath as part of his military uniform.
 
He had come straight from the barracks
with his news, and had not remembered to change his costume first.
 
With great dignity the other Counselors
streamed past him into the formal chamber, leaving Tarien alone behind to deal
with the interloper.
 

“Forgive my intrusion, Lord Counselor,” Adrien
answered quickly.
 
“But I must
speak with you now.
 
Delay the
meeting a few moments so I can tell you what I have learned.”

“This is most inappropriate, Lord Son,” Tarien
answered with surprise.
 
“What news
could be so urgent?”

“News of war, Lord Counselor.”
 
He paused as his plans reassembled
themselves in his mind.
 
“No, I
will speak to the Council, they will have many questions I’m sure that I may
best answer directly.
 
Then I will
go to the Capital to speak with my father.”
 
Before Tarien could protest, he had already pushed open the
doors to the meeting hall and announced his intention to address the gathered
members of Council.

The assembly had already started at its
traditionally languid pace.
 
This
time when the Lord Son burst into the room, the Counselors felt no reason to
hold back their livid reactions.
 
He ignored their angry outbursts to merely wait patiently for their fury
to die back down again.
 
Even five
hundred years of tradition wouldn’t produce more than a token rebellion against
a royalborn, he knew from previous political experiences.

"This morning my scouts brought me an Outlander
they found near the border.
 
He told
me tales of horrors … of battles in our neighboring kingdoms.
 
Invading armies of strangers.”
 
This stopped the muttering still
encircling the table.
 
Stranger
was
a loaded word in Allè-dôn.
 
The
Eastlands were composed of nations in which immigration was an unnatural
idea.
 
People stayed put where they
were born, and those who traveled to new places were automatically assumed to
be trouble-makers.
  
Outlanders,
those born in neighboring lands, were bad enough.
 
Strangers came from nowhere, or at least places no one ever
heard of, and were always dangerous.
 
All eyes turned to the speaker.

"You heard this from an Outlander?
 
Can you believe him?" the
Counselor for the Nobles asked.

“I can believe his wounds.
 
I examined him myself, as did our finest
surgeon.
 
These wounds were like
nothing either of us had seen before.
 
I don’t know what kind of weapon would cause such injuries.”
 
The room fell silent for a moment of
contemplation.
 
Adrien had served
in the military all of his adulthood, rising quickly in rank from simple
soldier to high commander.
 
Even
the many people who didn’t like him personally acknowledged his expertise as
one of the best swordsmen in the kingdom.

“Before he died,” the Lord Son continued with
their full attention. “he told us that this army of strangers intended to bring
war to Allè-dôn.
 
We must send
assistance to our neighbors and stop this threat before it crosses our
borders.”

The council remained silent; the Counselors
squirmed in their seats as Adrien remained standing in the entryway, arms
folded and waiting for a decision.
 
The old men eyed each other, each hoping someone else would find
something to say.
 
True warfare was
rare in all of the kingdoms in the Eastlands; most disputes had been settled by
negotiation since the time of Legends.
 
None of them had ever imagined they would have to make decisions like
this in their lifetimes.

The Counselor for the Commoners finally
exclaimed.
 
"I believe your
information is false."

"If this information is true," the
Counselor for the Royals, the person responsible for delivering Council
recommendations to the Lord King said, "Which I doubt, what could the
effect be for Allè-dôn?
  
No
one, not even so-named strangers, would dare move against us.”

The Counselor for the Military answered with
booming confidence, nearly spilling his wine in a extravagant sweep of his arm,
"We are safe.
 
I see no risk
to our security."

"What of the security of those
nations?" Adrien argued. "These lands are our allies.
 
What if their kingdoms should fail?
Should we not at least contact them and offer our aid?"

“The Lord King has said nothing of this to me,”
the Counselor of the Royals declared. “I’m sure he would have shared his
awareness of any dangers with the Council immediately.”

“My father knows nothing of this yet,” Adrien admitted.
 
“I shall speak with him when I have
finished here.
 
He will wish to
hear the opinion of this Council before he commits to a decision, and it is
best that he make his decision quickly.”
 
This statement was an unusually careful one for Adrien.
 
He knew as well as they did that the
current Lord King never wanted to put enough effort into making his decisions
as to ever actually listen to the Council.
 
Whatever they decided was almost always claimed as the Lord
King’s personal opinion and immediately implemented. Adrien was not going to
draw attention to this.
  
In
the twenty years since he reached legal adulthood and began his public career,
a series of hard experiences and near-banishments had taught him never to
embarrass his father publicly if he could avoid it.

“We will wait until asked by the Lord King to
offer our opinion,” the Counselor for the Royals replied immediately, with barely
hidden relief at finding a convenient political out.
 
“That is the way of the Council.
 
Your mission would have been better served by attending to
the protocols, Lord Son,” he couldn’t resist adding the rebuke.
 
It was widely believed Adrien was the
only member of the royal family without the right to have anyone punished at
his own personal whim – the general feeling was that since he was so
easily irritated by politicians,
 
if he had that power half of the leadership of Allè-dôn would have been
hung by now.

“My mission is the protection of Allè-dôn,
Counselor,” the Lord Son snapped back.
 
“I believe this is more important that the niceties of who speaks to
whom in what order.
 
Or does the
Council prefer playing at politics over committing to real actions?”
   

Tarien had already risen to his feet and was
motioning calmly towards his fellow Council members.
 
“I suggest that we adjourn until such time as the Lord King
seeks our advice.
 
Lord Son, I
would speak with you privately.”
 
Adrien nodded, realizing his failure as the rest of the Counselors
gathered their belongings and retreated quickly from the room in a mass huff.

Tarien and Adrien were the last to leave the
room.
 
They walked silently side by
side from the Chamber.
 

"Counselor," Adrien paused in the
corridor outside the Chamber.
 
The
older man stopped and turned to his younger companion.
 
He was surprised to see the slow burn
of anger still in his eyes.
 
"You have knowledge you did not share in the Council," Adrien
stated flatly.
 
Tarien faltered for
a second, hand paused on its journey to Adrien's shoulder.
 

"Lord Son," he murmured softly.
 
He glanced around the deserted
hallway.
 
The Council Chamber was
placed in its own wing of the Capital, separated from the main building by a
stone corridor.
 
Even on a warm
spring afternoon it was chilly, barely supplied with a slightly warn carpet and
a few old paintings for decoration along its solemn length.
 
Only the members of the Council ever
came this way, and they cared very little for aesthetics as a rule.
 
As far as Tarien could ascertain they
were completely alone.
 
They had
lagged behind the other elders, who had already departed the corridor for the
main building and their separate ways.
 

"It is treason for me to lie to the
Council.
 
I would not betray your
father, Adrien."

“I do not accuse you of falsehood to my father,
Counselor,” Adrien replied calmly, “but you are withholding information.
 
What would you not say to the others in
the Chamber?”
 
The Counselor
stepped closer, engrossed in a study of the royal in front of him.
 
Within the dark grey depths of this
soldier's eyes was a hard earned wisdom Tarien had never thought to view in a
royalborn.
 
He had known about the
exploits of the younger of the Lord King's sons, heard the stories of his
bravery and skill, but had never connected them to the quiet boy he had tutored.

"Lord Son," he said more forcefully,
but in a lower, hoarse tone.
 
He
glanced around and noted a small niche in the stone wall several paces ahead of
them.
 
He motioned for Adrien to
follow him.
 
He noted the sudden change
in the Counselor’s attitude and tagged along eagerly.
 
The space was barely big enough for the two of them to share
with a low hanging lantern and a bulky oil portrait of a Counselor from
Adrien's time. Tarien felt the portrait's eyes boring into him with a pang of
guilt, but his decision was firm.

"Why did you not speak freely before the
Council?" Adrien demanded, his arms folded across his chest.
 
He leaned forward to the stooped old
Counselor.

"They do not want to hear what I have to
share," Tarien answered with a touch of scorn.

"The Chamber is not a wives’ gossip
clutch," the royal answered.
 
"It does not matter what they wish to hear.
 
It is the duty of the Council to hear
the truth and give the best advice.
 
If what you have to say affects the safety of Allè-dôn..."

"They'll not hear me, Adrien," the old
man insisted.
 
"They care
nothing for events more than a stone’s throw from their own comfortable
chairs.
 
You know the old saying;
our borders with Outland are thick and not easily crossed.
 
They do not understand that a threat to
any of our allies is a direct threat to us.
 
You spoke those words, did you not see their reaction?"