Freebie: Avalon - The Fallen King: Chapter 7

Chapter Seven -

“Why would Micah do this?” Edrick asked, both hands gripping the wooden arms of his throne hard enough to make them creak in protest. “Not only does he have a secret child, but apparently that child has been in the care of a former Prime Guardian and his Second, both of whom were supposedly killed over a decade ago. None of this makes any sense.”

“I don’t know but the question remains, who is the boy’s mother?” Winston asked.

“It can’t be Xerya,” Harlan said. “Micah would never do anything like that to Warrick. The two were practically brothers. There is not a soul in this world that could convince me he would betray him like that. Which means, the mother is still unaccounted for.”

“What about Evari?” Asari asked.

“It could be,” Edrick replied. “It wouldn’t surprise me considering how badly things devolved with them. That started to happen not long after the boy most likely would have been born. You think she could have tried to fight Micah when he wanted to send this child away? When she failed, they divorced?”

“We need to ask her directly,” Asari said. “Parthos, is there a clearer image of the boy in any of the news stories you’ve come across? I’d like to see his face a little better if possible.”

“I can try to find something more suitable, Your Highness,” he told her. He focused on his scrystone, his finger swiping across its surface for several minutes. After a while, he looked back up at her. “I’m sorry but there doesn’t appear to be anything better. Most of the images are worse quality than the one I showed before. I beg forgiveness, Your Highnesses.”

“I told you, Party,” Winston said. “No time for the pleasantries right now. You can drop all that stuff. Never was a fan of that crap anyway.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Parthos replied, then stiffened a little when he realized he did it again. “Uh…sorry Y-y…sorry.”

“Please see if you can have Evari and Alice brought here,” Asari said, looking at Parthos. “And you are excused, Aimie, if you have nothing else you care to speak on.”

“Not at the moment,” she responded. “Like I mentioned, the only thing the First King told me was that Warrick and Xerya would be proclaimed dead but were actually still alive. If I am completely honest, I don't really know why he mentioned anything to me at all or swore me to secrecy with a writ. It was all a bit strange at the time but the First King did strange things like that frequently so I didn’t think too much about it.”

“Yes, yes,” Edrick replied with a wave of his hand. “His skills with divination often made him eccentric, especially in the last few years. You may leave.”

The Prime Guardian bowed again, a bit deeper this time, turned on her heel, and then left the room. Once outside the Grand Chamber, she turned in the direction of the palace’s front doors and was out of sight a second or two later. Right on her heels was Parthos, who went in the opposite direction toward the wing of the palace where the royals and their families lived in luxurious suites.

The High Royals watched the senior aide and the Prime Guardian leave without saying anything, a thick silence falling over them that quickly went from awkward to uncomfortable. Even their familiars were silent. Edrick’s griffin had grown to his full height, which was impressive, but had curled up into a ball on the floor pretending to take a nap. Asari’s fairy was twirling the ends of her hair as she lounged on the queen’s shoulder. Harlan’s dragon familiar continued to slither through the air above them near the high, arched ceilings of the room. He had expanded to his full size as well and took up almost the entire space up there. Winston’s minotaur leaned against a throne, arms folded across his chest, eyeing the far side of the room with a contemplative look on his face.

“Whether the boy is a true heir to Micah’s throne, or some kind of imposter, remains to be seen,” Winston suddenly said. “What real proof do we have?”

“I’d say Jeks showing up to him and bowing is a pretty unavoidable fact,” Edrick responded. “We all know that a foci can only be inherited by blood relatives and Micah would never have passed it to anyone but his child. Since Alice didn’t absorb Jeks, it seems this boy is legitimate.”

“So you won’t even entertain the notion that he may be a fake?” Winston barked, his brow scrunching as a scowl twisted his features.

“It’s a useless waste of our time,” Edrick responded, ignoring his brother’s evident anger. “What we need to do now is mitigate the fallout of everything that’s just happened. The people of Avalon will want to know they have nothing to fear and we need to make sure they don’t. Micah’s death will cause a great deal of instability across the kingdom if we aren’t careful.”

“What are you saying?” Harlan asked. “Get to the point, brother.”

“I’m saying we need to be careful what we tell the citizens. Murder is an ugly word. It can implant some pretty ugly things if casually tossed around.” Edrick sat back, his hands finally relaxing.

“I disagree,” Asari interjected. “If we try to hide this and it gets out anyway, it will only give the public more cause for concern. We need to stay ahead of the situation, not hide behind walls erected with falsehoods."

Her brothers didn’t say anything to that but judging by Edrick’s teeth gnashing, he was frustrated by her dismissal of his idea.

“I think in this instance, Asari is correct,” Harlan said. Edrick shot him a dark look, his mouth open as if to protest but Harlan held up a finger. Edrick closed his mouth again, his teeth gnashing getting more pronounced. “Lying about what happened will further erode the public’s confidence in us. There is no way around that. And before you say anything else, understand that somehow it will get out. We can threaten the entire palace staff with life imprisonment if they dare say anything but let’s be real, someone will let too many details of the murder slip. It is nearly unavoidable.”

“What if we demand writs from everyone who knows the truth to not speak a word?” Winston asked. The others looked at him as if he just said he wanted to murder a thousand innocent people. “What? It’s an idea.”

“That’s a gristly solution and again, it won’t work,” Harlan replied. “There are hundreds of people that work in the palace and hundreds upon hundreds of others that interact with those people. We’d end up having to writ nearly everyone in the city before it was all said and done. Not to mention writs aren’t exactly conspicuous. It would look extremely strange if the entire palace staff, as well as hundreds of others, suddenly have writs tattooed to them.”

“Fine, fine,” Winston said, letting out an exasperated sigh. “We’ll need Parthos then. He can draft an official statement to the public.”

“What about the boy?” Asari inquired. “They’ll want to know about him.”

“Fortunately on that point, we know nothing and therefore cannot say anything about it. We’ll mention something about sending for him to learn more or some such thing. Parthos can make it sound all flowery and pretty,” Edrick commented. Then he looked up, squinting behind his bifocal spectacles at the door to the Grand Chamber. “Where is he anyway? Shouldn’t he be back by now?”

It took the aide another ten minutes before he came rushing back into the Grand Chamber with Evari and Alice in tow. The dark-haired and beautiful ex-wife of the First King had been crying and her cheeks were flushed red. Her hair was in disarray too but she still commanded a sense of regalness about herself as she walked toward the dais. Alice followed behind her mother, her face still working through the grief wracking her. When the mother and daughter pair stood just a couple feet away, they stopped and bowed respectfully.

“Your Highnesses,” Parthos said, his face pointed at the floor as he bowed too. “I present Lady Evari Pantheon and…”

“Yes, yes,” Winston said. “Really Parthos? We know who they are.”

“Yes, of course, Sire,” Parthos stammered. He stood up straight and then backed away so that Evari and Alice were in front.

“You may leave,” Harlan said to Parthos. A visible look of relief washed over the senior aide’s face and he quickly departed the room, making sure to close the door behind him.

“Evari,” Asari said, her eyes shining with unshed tears. She got off her throne and went to the woman, folding her into a gentle hug. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” Evari whispered back, wiping her eyes with a maroon handkerchief that had a phoenix crest on it. “It’s been…hard.”

“I know you two weren’t as close near the end,” Harlan started to say but when Evari’s eyes snapped up to his, the rest of his words died on his tongue. There weren’t many people in the kingdom with the sheer personality or willpower to make a King of Avalon back down.

“We may not have been married any longer but we still retained a friendship,” she stated.

“Yes, of course,” Harlan replied after a second or two to recover from her confidence-smashing gaze. “I only mean to ask…” He suddenly stumbled over his words, which for Harlan almost never happened. Seeing Evari eyeing him so shrewdly made his words suddenly lock up. “Uh…I’m actually not quite sure how to say this. Maybe ripping the bandage off quickly would be best?”

He looked to the others, pleading for a little help.

“There appears to be a second heir,” Edrick said, jumping in to bail Harlan out. Not because he was trying to be nice or anything like that, but because it was more painful watching him squirm than dealing with Evari. “Would you know anything about that? Or who Micah might have had a child with?”

Evari was quiet for a long time. A furrow appeared in between her brows and something like actual pain crossed her face. She put a hand up to her left temple and looked at them with blank incomprehension.

“I'm sorry, what?” she asked. The confusion looked even worse and so did the pain. She started to fidget with her dress, her fingers plucking and scratching at the fabric. “I…I…what?”

The fidgeting started to get worse and Alice grew concerned. She reached out to her mother, trying to see what was wrong with her. When the royals looked at her, one of her eyes looked almost completely bloodshot. A bead of red even formed at the corner and looked about to drop down her cheek, ready to create a trail of blood.

“Do you know…,” Edrick tried again, his voice hesitant and unsure as he watched the former queen struggling with some kind of invisible pain.

Evari suddenly took a turn for the worse and shrieked. She clamped a second hand to her other temple.

“Stop it!” Alice shouted. She put an arm around Evari, trying to hold her still but the woman was struggling and bucking in her grasp.

“No, no, no,” Evari said. “No other child. We only had Alice. Alice…” Her voice trailed off for a moment, and she looked as if some memory was trying to come back to her but it couldn’t quite make it. Then she became animated again. “Just Alice. Only Alice.”

Alice held her, trying to console her mother but Evari just kept repeating those words over and over again.

“Only Alice.”

“What is happening to her?” Winston asked.

“What’s happening is that these questions are hurting her,” Alice snarled. “Can’t you see that? She can’t handle this so leave her alone.”

Evari wasn’t getting better. Her condition, whatever it was, only worsened and eventually, the High Royals were forced to agree with their niece. Whatever was happening to their brother’s ex-wife, it was clearly magical in nature. If they continued to pry, they were going to do more damage than good.

“Take her to her apartment,” Asari said after doing what she could to ease the woman’s pain. “She needs rest. There is something there, I can almost feel it, but I cannot isolate it enough to remove it from her.”

Alice and her mother left but not before shooting a dark look at Edrick. He ignored it, mostly because he was well accustomed to it. The directness he often displayed with people left him quite unpopular with most people.

When they were gone, Asari looked at her brothers with something like horror on her face. Horror and disbelief.

“What?” Harlan asked. “What is it?”

“You know what was causing that reaction in her?” Winston asked.

“Yes,” Asari whispered, almost afraid to say it out loud. She looked back at the door to reassure herself they were alone again. “I believe this boy is not only Micah’s child but Evari’s as well. I am not sure without the boy in front of me.”

“Why would you think that?” Edrick asked. “If she was the boy’s mother I should hope she would…”

He stopped talking as the truth blossomed inside his head.

“No,” he said in a whisper, horror-stricken just as his sister had been. “He wouldn’t.”

Asari nodded her head.

“Micah used menteromancy on her?” he asked. “But he banned the use of that skill kingdom-wide.”

“Yes,” Asari replied. “He banned it exactly seventeen years ago. The same age as the boy I’d wager.”

“That would have to be an extremely powerful spell,” Winston said. “To wipe the memory of a woman’s child completely from her mind? He would have…”

“No,” Asari interrupted. “Not just her mind.”

She held up a hand to her own head and it glowed with soft light, her eyes closed. They opened a second later after confirming her suspicion.

“I am almost sure he wiped the memory of this boy from all our minds.”