say something, anything, to ease his pain and her own guilt, but the words would not come out. She grew angry at herself for becoming one of those helpless, useless maidens the storytellers often created for their fables. Until now, Erini had secretly mocked those pitiful women.
At last, the king set his goblet down and rose. The princess straightened, expecting some announcement, some word from her betrothed as to their future-or even lack of it if that was his desire. To her surprise, Melicard turned and walked to the far end of the chamber, where another door stood. Melicard opened it and, without looking back or even saying a word, stepped out of the room.
Erini stared at the door as it closed behind him, not comprehending immediately what had happened. Only when a liveried servant stepped in from the first doorway did realization sink in.
“If you will come with me, your majesty, I have been commanded to show you to your quarters.” Through his manner, the servant verified her fears; Melicard was not returning. The king had read her disgust and pity and had been able to stomach it no longer.
She saw no one other than the servants who fed and cared for her and her two ladies-in-waiting. Galea and Madga pressed her for snippets of information about the king, but Erini would have none of that. After dismissing them politely, she had retired early, the combination of the journey and her trial here too much to bear.
Letting the sun now bathe her, heal her mental wounds, she silently swore an oath. I must make it up to him somehow! I must show I can care without pitying! Small wonder he acts the way he does if everyone reacts as I did! Melicard could not be faulted for his efforts, the princess decided guiltily. If his own flesh would not grow back, what was he supposed to do? Wear a mask of gold and silver? Leave his own, mangled features visible? In many ways, the elfwood face was the best solution, unnerving as it as. Even the king’s sorcerer had come up with nothing better after failing to heal his master’s wounds.
Her own fingers began to twitch at the thought and she clasped both hands together in order to fight the urge down. She would not succumb. There was nothing the princess could do that others more skilled, others who were trained, could not do better.
Erini repeated what had become a chant to her-she was a princess of Gordag-Ai and could never be a sorceress or witch. Never. She was destined to be a queen. No king would trust a witch for a wife. Her own people would not have.
Though she fought it down successfully, Erini shook so badly after that, that she rose and dressed herself, not daring to have Galea or Magda or any of Melicard’s people wonder what made her shake. By the time the princess was finished, the danger was past. Erini inspected herself in the vast mirror that overwhelmed the wall opposite her bed and, satisfied, dared to summon a servant. If she succeeded in nothing more today, she would at least eat a decent meal.
Neither Melicard nor the unsavory Counselor Quorin met her at breakfast. Galea and Magda joined her, but she made some pretext and left them as soon as she was finished. When none of the palace servants seemed to object, the princess began exploring, trying to understand more about Talak and its monarch through the vast building itself. Erini already knew much of the city-state’s “official” history, having been educated about her future kingdom most of her life, but there was more, so much more, beneath the surface of the facts that tutors had poured into her. All she had learned about her betrothed had availed her nothing in his actual presence. It was a mistake she did not intend to make a second time.
As lavishly decorated as the palace was, she soon discovered two things. One was that the vast majority of items had been gathered during the reigns of past kings, to the extent that whole wings had been built to house them. The second and more interesting point concerned those few treasures gathered or created during the years of Melicard’s rule. Most of the pieces were dark in nature and not a few of them dealt with the death and destruction of foes, especially dragons. Faces in portraits were always shadowed or, if they were fully revealed, were sinister and even hideous. It did not paint a pretty picture of her betrothed. Erini began to have doubts.
At a window overlooking an interior garden filled with hanging plants and blossoming flowers of all colors, she paused to relax. A noise at the far end of the garden made her look there. Her eyes narrowed at an curious sight. Far below, two guards were carrying a third man between them. As opposed to the tall, muscular soldiers, the unconscious figure in the middle was thin to the point of emaciation and as old as any soul the princess had ever seen. He wore a dark robe with a cowl on it, identifying him from Erini’s teachings as Melicard’s sorcerer Drayfitt. The history that the ancient spellcaster had lived through had always fascinated her, but not nearly so much as why Drayfitt now needed to be carried anywhere. She leaned closer.
Erini glanced back at the direction the trio had come from and noticed the small doorway buried beneath the vines of the far wall. The way to the sorcerer’s inner sanctum? Possibly, and, if so, it was also possible that his present condition was due to some spell gone awry.
“What’s going on here?” a voice that grated on her nerves snarled.
The two sentries paused and, readjusting their unconscious package, saluted Mal Quorin. He ignored protocol and repeated his question in the same vicious tone as before.
One of the guards, his face no longer visible to Erini, nervously replied, “His majesty gave us orders to seek out the sorcerer Drayfitt and find out why he had not reported to the king this morning. When we arrived, the guards on duty let us in, reporting that no one had entered or left since they had been stationed there.” The man hesitated before concluding quickly, “He was lying on the floor! We tried to wake him, but nothing worked, my lord!”
Quorin looked at both of them, evidently not satisfied. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“The demon is loose, my lord!” the other guard finally blurted. “Or, at least, it’s no longer in the chamber!”
Erini, listening intently and growing more shocked with each word, fully expected the counselor to vent his rage and power on the two hapless soldiers. Instead, he simply stood where he was, staring. Whether he stared at the sentries or into open space, the princess had no way of knowing. At last, the counselor reached forward and, in a move that stunned not only Erini but the soldiers as well, slapped Drayfitt sharply across the face. The elderly spellcaster’s head snapped to one side, but he did not wake. Quorin rubbed his hand.
“Be on your way, then. I want to know when he wakes.”
“My lord.”
Quorin watched calmly until the trio was out of sight and then whirled back in the direction of the vine- covered door. With tremendous, catlike strides, he covered the distance to his objective in mere seconds. The counselor put one hand on the handle and then, as if sensing he were being watched, turned around and glanced upward. Erini, however, anticipating such a move, was already flattened against a wall.
She counted more than twenty breaths before she dared to look. Mal Quorin was gone, evidently having decided he did not have the time to search for shadows. The princess debated going down to the mysterious door or following the guards and their package. Knowing that the counselor might be waiting for her, Erini chose the latter and tried to guess where the two men might enter. They had mentioned Melicard and his interest in the workings of the sorcerer. If nothing else, they would eventually return to their monarch with some type of report and that report would include Drayfitt’s odd condition.
A demon, by my ancestors! Do all the rumors about Melicard have some basis in fact? Am I engaged to a human monster? Have I been so wrong about him?
Drayfitt and the guards. They had to be inside by now. Where might they go? The chamber in which she had confronted Melicard? It was her only real choice. Taking a deep breath, the princess made her way to the central staircase and started down, walking with the air of one who is inspecting her new domain. Erini did not know what might happen if she actually stumbled across the trio, but that was a risk she was willing to take. Her only fear was running into Quorin or the king himself. The counselor was an annoyance; her betrothed… Erini was not quite ready to deal with him. There were things she wanted to think about before the two of them spoke again, especially if she had properly understood the conversation between Quorin and the two guards.
At the foot of the stairs, she confronted four sentries, who saluted in simultaneous fashion. Erini nodded imperiously and continued on. No one made a move to stop her wanderings. Once she was far enough away, the princess exhaled deeply, wondering if her heart would ever slow to normal again.
She was turning down the main hall when she spotted the two soldiers from the garden. Drayfitt was nowhere to be seen. The guards themselves were just marching up to the doorway of the chamber she had entered last night. The same sentries stood watch. After a brief consultation, the soldiers who had discovered Drayfitt were ushered inside.
