The Lord Son's Travels (8 page)

"If
this is a stupid joke, I will be very unhappy," she declared
somberly.
 
"Who put you up to
this?"

"There
are no jokes here, I assure you, my Lady," Brendan replied, his face as
unsure as hers.
 
Her matter of
speech was hard to understand though she spoke their language.
 
"We are as confused as you.
 
Are you from the Eastlands?"

"I’ve
never heard of the Eastlands," she returned, sinking back down in the
grass.
 
The men followed her lead,
settling a cautious few feet in front of her.
 
She gently stroked the fine material of Adrien's cloak, lost
in her thoughts.
 
Finally she
turned back.
 

"This
might be a dumb question," she said.
 
"I sure hope it is.
 
Have you ever heard of President Obama?"
 
Her heart fluttered as they
glanced at each other in obvious uncertainty.

"What
is that?" Adrien asked, confirming her fears.
 
She searched around again wildly, hoping some recognizable
building would suddenly pop out of the heights of the woods.
 
All remained alien though.
 
She sighed,
praying
that these men were as friendly and well-intentioned as they seemed.

"So
who are you?" she demanded.
 
"What are your names?"
 
The renegades shared another questioning glance.
 
There were no Bards alive who could
pretend to the confusion and fear this woman was trying her best not to
show.
 
An honest answer would be
better than an uneasy lie.

"I
am Lord Brendan ä Wellect." he said.
 
She nodded, and turned to his companion.

"Adrien
Lord Son," he said, and waited for her recognition.
 
In his life as the son of the Lord
King, he had done his best to keep his face from notoriety.
 
He was the only member of the royal
family who did not have his likeness engraved on a official gold coin of the
realm.
 
But all of the citizens,
and he assumed all of the residents of the border kingdoms too, knew his name
and title.
 
His announcement didn't
lead to any startled response from her, though.
 
She merely continued the introductions.

"Elenna
Davidson," she said.
 
She
noted the additional confusion that crossed their faces and wondered why.

"David's
son?" Brendan muttered, giving her a clue to the source of the puzzlement.

"Just
call me Elenna," she said, sighing.
 
She glanced behind her.
 
Her
hair, which she had hurriedly pulled into
a
pony-tail that morning, swished across her back.

"For
the love of the Lady," Brendan whispered.
 
"Adrien, her hair!"
 
The royalborn had seen it too.
 
He could only gaze in amazement.

"What?"
demanded Elenna.
 
"Doesn't
anyone here have red hair?"
 
A
glance at their expressions answered her question.

"Are
you royalborn, my lady?" Adrien asked, eyes fixated on the long auburn
curls trailing down her back.

She shook
her head.
 
"Only if the
lawyers have taken control.
 
Dad's
a state prosecutor.
 
Why?"

"Only
the royalborn may wear red," Brendan said, finally pulling his eyes from
her locks.
 
"That is the way
of all the nations of the Eastlands."

"So
everyone will think I'm royalty?" Elenna responded, dumbfounded.
 
She shook her head.
 
"Great.
 
Well, at least I got that going for me.”
 
This time she was able to rise up and
stand with certainty.
 
“I need to
move on before whoever dumped me here comes back, and I need to find someone
who can help me find my way home.
 
Where is the nearest city?"

"A
few days’ ride yonder," Adrien replied, pointing to the west.
 
By now the sun had almost completed its
day's work and was about to slink down to its bed below the horizon.
 
Elenna squared her jaw and swung her
pack over her shoulder.

"Then
I'm going to get moving," she said.
 
"Thanks for your help."
 
She marched across the grass to the road to hustle confidently if a
little shakily down the center.
 
Brendan glanced at Adrien for confirmation, then raced to
catch
up with her.

"My
lady," he panted, "We take that road too.
 
Travel with us.
 
This road is too dangerous for a woman alone."

"I'm
fine," she replied, keeping up her pace.
 
She didn't face him, and forced him to continue jogging at
her side to keep up the conversation.

Brendan
continued, "You have no supplies, and you don't know the land.
 
At least stay with us until the
dawn."
 
She slowed at the
logic in his answer.
 
The last
fifteen minutes, she thought somberly, might prove to be quite important in her
life.
 
Part of her wanted to keep
running until the world looked right again.
 
The logical part of her brain thought of the long lonely
road she faced through unfamiliar lands.
 
These men seemed friendly enough, she argued with herself.
 
If they were going to try anything,
they would have taken the opportunity with her lying out cold in the grass.
 

Turning
to watch the blond man's expression, she demanded, "You aren't going to
give me any trouble are you?"
 
He shook his head earnestly, his eyes twinkling at her bravado.
 
She sent a fleeting look at the dark
road ahead, then back to the place where Adrien was already setting up
camp.
 
"Okay," she agreed
reluctantly. “But remember I can take care of myself.
 
Behave.”

Brendan
nodded, amused by her spunk.
 
He
glanced to Adrien, who gave the tiniest shrug and started emptying the
saddlebags.
 
They would lose some
travel time, he reasoned, but she had created some mysteries he would like to
see solved.
 
And he agreed with his
friend that it would not be just to leave her where they had found her,
mealless and defenseless in the night. Adrien resolved that in the morning, she
would best be served with a few supplies and directions to the farm they had
passed a few days previously.
 
And
they could return with pleased consciences to their quest.

She
watched as the men went about their tasks for setting up camp for the night.
Though her fatigue and confusion were palpable, her eyes followed both men
carefully as they prepared the evening meal.
 
Both Adrien and Brendan concentrated on their own efforts
and left her to her own observations.
 
All of them had thoughts aplenty to keep them occupied as a joint of
meat roasted above the fire.
 
She
still wore Adrien’s cape, which she kept stroking absent-mindedly as she
eventually relaxed her vigilance and lost herself in her thoughts.
 
The strange black bag they found her
with she kept close at her side; any movement by the men in its direction
earned them renewed suspicious attention.
 
The Allè-dônians each decided independently that whatever it contained
was valuable, and they would most likely never learn its contents.

"Where
are you traveling to?" she finally spoke up at a lull in the
preparations.
 
Brendan looked up
from the cook pot and smiled, glad their mystery guest had decided to
interact.
 
He wondered if perhaps
she had suffered an injury, causing all of this bizarre behavior they had
observed.
 
Her speech, her clothing,
even her walk was foreign; odder than he would expect even from a stranger
.
 
The auburn hair contradicted
this plausible idea.
 
Whoever this
woman was, he thought, or at least hoped, she didn't mean the challenge those
auburn tresses issued to all that saw her.
  
He wondered how involved she was in this plot they had
come to investigate, knowing full well that these ideas were mulling in the
mind of his friend, too.

Adrien
tended the fire, consciously avoiding any sight of the enigma that had suddenly
entered all of his plans.
 
The
rules of color had been followed since the time of Legends, very rarely needing
any enforcement.
 
Certain colors
were allowed to only certain groups, depending on the customs of each
particular kingdom. White belonged to the Kingdom of the Dead.
 
Red, the color of the blood that gave
all men life, was universally found only on the bodies of those in line to the
succession for a throne or their closest family members.
 
Adräe was rarely found in any other
color.
 
For tradition, and his
mother's sake, Adrien usually wore a small red favor on his uniform, but rarely
anything else to signify his place in the royal line.
 
The concept that a common person could wear red was anathema
to all of their traditions and rules.
 
To have apparently been born with the royal color was an even greater
offense.
 
If Elenna had appeared in
town, the first person who noticed her hair would have probably been the one to
take her to the executioner as a threat to the crown and the cherished beliefs
of their world.
 
If she was some
kind of trap, it was a complex, over-handed one.
 
He was more likely to believe she was truly lost from her own
place and completely unconnected with their mission.
 
But he had no idea where her home could be, or comprehend
how she had arrived here.

Adrien
finally spoke.
 
He didn't look up
from the wood he was chopping, but tossed his words over his shoulder in her
direction.
 
"We are soldiers
from Allè-dôn, the land sharing the border behind us.
 
We travel to Brannon on business for the royal
house."
 
Brendan grimaced
slightly at the truth of his words.
 
He wasn't yet ready to trust so much to this stranger.
 
Elenna nodded thoughtfully.

"All
right, I guessed you were military men.
 
I suppose I don’t need to know the details.”

Adrien
nodded.
 
"We prefer not to
discuss our duties."

"That's
fine," Elenna replied with a shrug.
 
"I have enough on my mind to worry about anyway.
 
Do you have a map I can look at?"
 
Adrien nodded, pleased that she seem to
hold little interest in their reasons for their journey.
  
He crossed their campsite to the
half-empty saddlebag and removed the parchment drawing he had first shown
Brendan.
 
Both men pretended to go
back to work, but really they watched as she poured over it, holding it first
close than far from her eyes and muttering out loud the names she saw.

"Do
you recognize anything?" Brendan asked, giving in to his curiosity and
coming to lean over her shoulder.
 
Adrien remained on the other side of the fire.

"No,"
she frowned.
 
"I don't
recognize the terrain at all.
 
This
must be Europe or someplace I don't know." Subconsciously she bit her
tongue as she studied the wavy lines of the rivers of the land.
 
"I can't grasp the size of this
place.
 
How long would it take for
you to ride non-stop all the way across these lands?"

Brendan
pondered this.
 
"With fresh
horses and unlimited supplies, I'd say about five weeks,” he finally
responded.
 
Adrien nodded his
agreement at the figure. This frustrated Elenna, who returned to glare at the
drawing.
 

"Okay,
then this isn't just some county somewhere.
 
These must be major mountain ranges and rivers, and they
don't look anything like ones in my land.
 
How on Earth did I get here?"
 
They stared at each other, no one volunteering an answer to that question.

Brendan
finally broke the silence.
 
"Our meal is ready," he announced.
  
"Come join us."
 
Elenna nodded, settling down cross-legged as close as she
could to the hissing fire.
 
The
nights were still cool this close to the beginning of spring, and she kept
Adrien’s cloak drawn closely around her shoulders.
 
Brendan ladled out a few pieces of meat from the steaming
cooking pot onto a plate and added to it some dry crusty bread from his
pack.
 
He offered it to the woman,
who accepted the plate gratefully with a quick smile.
 
Adrien still remained at the edge of their circle,
gazing
out into the rapidly darkening distance.