Aydrian awoke in a cold sweat. He was lying on his back, staring up at the darkness, but the blackness stirred and images of dead Constance Pemblebury assaulted him, her pale arms reaching out for him in his mind.
Hovering behind her was a huge face, elongated and twisted in agony, and despite its contortions, Aydrian certainly recognized it, for he keenly remembered the horrified look on King Danube's face as the cold hand of death had closed over his heart that fateful day up on the trial stage in Ursal.
Had these two ghosts come to haunt him? The young king shook himself further awake and the images dissipated, leaving him alone in the dark. "Only a dream," he told himself.
Slowly, the young man composed himself enough to roll onto his side. He had killed. He had killed Danube, and Merwick, and Torrence, as well as the unfortunate driver and the other escorts. All had been murdered on his orders.
For the most part, Aydrian never considered such things, keeping his vision along the greater road that lay before him, his ascent to immortality, his elevation of himself above all others. He believed in that road, desperately so.
But the price... Aydrian winced as he considered the dead already left in his wake. Many had been deserving of their fate - like the pirates who had tried to double-cross him on the return from Pimaninicuit - but others perhaps not so deserving. And worse, Aydrian understood that the dead thus far would be but a minuscule fraction of those who would fall in the war that would inevitably engulf Honce-the-Bear, or in the conquest of Behren, or of Alpinador.
Aydrian rolled out of bed, propelled by the guilt and the sudden doubts.
He rushed out of the house he had procured in this small village north of Ursal and ran over to the grouping of wagons, which included his personal coach. He waved away the confused and concerned guards and climbed into the coach, closing the door behind him.
The moon was up. The lighting was just right.
Across from his seat, Aydrian pulled aside a small curtain, revealing the mirror he used for Oracle.
He sat back and stared, letting his thoughts flow freely within him. He felt the pangs of guilt and did not push them aside, though he did offer internal debate against them.
Conscience must be the guide of any true leader.
The thought came out of nowhere, and it startled Aydrian. He digested the notion, panic rising within him as he considered the implications.
And then he looked at the mirror, at the shadowy form that had taken its blurry shape in the lower left-hand corner.
Waves of guilt assaulted him; a silent plea arose within him beckoning him to abandon this road of certain war.
In that moment, it all made sense to him, and he grimaced, tormented, as he considered the cold body of Torrence Pemblebury lying beneath the dungeon stairs of Castle Ursal. In that moment, Aydrian felt adrift.
In that fleeting moment.
King Danube played in the arena of glory.
The second shadow appeared, taking greater shape in the mirror.
That last thought rang out again within the young king. Danube, too, had been king of Honce-the-Bear. Danube, too, had made decisions of life and death, and had gone to war. This was the game of humanity, the quest for glory, the quest for immortality - though few humans understood the truth of it, Aydrian knew.
And they were all going to die, after all, every one. Was Aydrian to assume responsibility for those who died in his ascent to the throne and to immortality? Was he to bask in guilt because he, above all others, had come to understand the truth and futility of the human condition, and had figured out a way to circumvent that seeming inevitability? The young king's breathing came faster, and he closed his eyes tight against the onslaught of terrible images as he absorbed it all, as he considered those who had died and those many more who surely would be slain along his road. He was robbing from them.
Days? Weeks? Months? Even years? the shadow in his mind asked him. How much was he truly taking from the pitiful mortals? And would they, to a man and woman, not take the same from him if ever they came to understand the truth of eternity and immortality, as did he? Aydrian opened his eyes and looked at the mirror, to see that only one shadow remained there, in the lower right-hand corner.
King Danube played in the arena of glory, he heard again in his thoughts.
He desired the same as you, but was not as strong as you. The reasoning seemed sound to Aydrian. What hubris Danube possessed to claim himself king of Honce-the-Bear! And if he did not have the strength to survive a challenge, then his overblown pride was certainly misplaced. Aydrian was possessed of more pride, perhaps, but he knew in his heart that he had the strength to back it.
Sometime later, the shaken young man stepped out of his coach and headed back to the procured house. He felt somewhat better; the demons of guilt had been put aside for a while.
He was surprised, when he opened the door to his sleeping chamber, to find Sadye sitting within. A single candle burned on the small table before her, illuminating her with its soft glow, the light seeming to flow right into her yellow-brown locks. She wore a simple nightshirt that only reached down to the midpoint of her shapely thighs, and her hair was unkempt.
Somehow that only made her more alluring.
"Where did you go?" she asked immediately, true concern evident in her voice.
Aydrian put one hand to his chest, his expression skeptical. "Me?"
"You are the only one here, Aydrian."
"I went out into the night air," he explained, walking past her to take a seat on the edge of his bed. "To be alone. To think."
"To think?"
Aydrian shrugged.
"Planning the strategy sessions?"
"No," he answered simply, staring off to the side, and when he looked back at Sadye a moment later, he saw true concern on her face, and true curiosity.
Again, he merely shrugged.
"We will enter the village of Pomfreth tomorrow," Sadye said to him, politely changing what was obviously an uncomfortable subject. "By all reports, the townsfolk are preparing a celebration in honor of their new king."
Aydrian managed a little smile at the news, and it was one of honest relief. "I am glad that they accept what has happened without opposing me," he explained. "It would not do my heart good to lay waste to a simple village."
"Marcalo believes that we must have one sizable fight at least before we reach Palmaris," Sadye said. "To show the rest of the common folk of the kingdom the futility of opposing the rule of Aydrian."
"Sometimes I believe that Marcalo De'Unnero just likes to fight," Aydrian replied. He took a good long look at Sadye to measure her reaction to that statement, then he just gave a helpless chuckle, and asked, "Why are you here?"
"I learned that you had wandered out. I was concerned," said the woman.
Aydrian started to ask about Marcalo, but then the former monk appeared suddenly at the open door, hardly dressed and looking none-too-pleased.
He stared at Aydrian, then even harder at Sadye, studying her intently.
Obviously uncomfortable, Sadye got up and straightened and lengthened her nightshirt modestly. "Aydrian left the building," she explained to the monk. "You should instruct him that such unexpected and unannounced forays into the night could bode evil for us all. He is the king, yet I fear that he has not yet come to understand what that means, or what he means, to the kingdom he rules."
Marcalo looked from Sadye to Aydrian as she gave her little speech, and he nodded and grunted a bit in agreement. But he wasn't being deflected that easily, Aydrian recognized. His concern at that time had less to do with Aydrian leaving to go outside than with Sadye leaving his bed to come to Aydrian's private room.
The fierce monk said nothing, though, just placed his arm behind Sadye as she walked out, ushering her all the more quickly.
Aydrian leaned over and blew out the candle, then sat alone in the darkness. He considered De'Unnero and Sadye for only a moment, and was far more amused than concerned.
Then he thought of the village they would enter in the morning, and he was indeed relieved at Sadye's words that the scouts believed that this one, too, would succumb to the rule of the new king without confrontation.
Yes, Duke Kalas and his minions could roll over any feeble force that the quiet villages north of Ursal might offer. But better for them all if the people continued to follow the lead of their nobles, strengthening Aydrian's hold even more upon the kingdom.
And better, Aydrian understood - though he did not openly admit it, even to himself - for his own peace of mind and his own contented slumber.
Duke Kalas and his Allheart Knights, all resplendent in the shining, meticulously crafted and fitted silvery armor, led the march into Pomfreth, as they had led the way into every village since the march from Ursal had begun. Not far to the east, the Ursal fleet, River Palace among them, cruised the Masur Delaval. And behind the ranks of the Allheart Brigade clustered ten thousand soldiers, all formed in tight ranks, showing the discipline of a trained army. In their center, atop a magnificent black stallion, sat King Aydrian, and his armor outshone that of the Allhearts. Specially made and fitted by a legendary smith, and enhanced by Aydrian with several magical gemstones, it offered better defenses for its wearer than any other suit of metal in all the world.
The Allheart armor was comprised of overlapping silvery plates, but Aydrian's was trimmed not only in silver, but with gold. Dark lodestones were set in a circular pattern about a gray hematite that was placed directly over Aydrian's heart. His helm was bowl-shaped, less ornamented than Duke Kalas' plumed helm, perhaps, but designed to give the great young warrior complete visibility. Lined in gold, it tapered down the back of Aydrian's head and neck, but in the front, it only covered halfway, to the bridge of his nose, with thin golden strips outlining his blue eyes as if they were the wide-cut strips of a bandit's mask.
To Aydrian's right sat Marcalo De'Unnero, dressed in the simple brown robes of an Abellican brother, his face locked in its seemingly perpetual scowl. He had brought quite a number of the younger brothers from St.
Honce along with him on the march, mostly to serve as replacements in the chapels where village priests didn't appreciate or embrace the change that he was bringing to the Church.
To Aydrian's left sat Sadye, her three-stringed lute slung across her back, the wind blowing her brown hair, which was growing quite long again, across her face.
In the distance to the north, they heard the cheering.
Sadye looked up at Aydrian, whose face showed a clear sign of relief.
Apparently the reports were true and he would be welcomed as an accepted king, not as an enemy conqueror.
They sat and waited a bit longer, until Duke Kalas and his entourage came galloping back out from the cluster of houses.
"Form up to march through," Aydrian told the commanders sitting astride their mounts in a line behind him. "You will camp north of Pomfreth this night. We march tomorrow at dawn."
The commanders broke ranks immediately and with practiced discipline.
With every town they encountered, there were two routes, march through or overrun, and thus far, the latter had not proven necessary. Still, Aydrian and all the others understood that the farther north they marched, the more likely they were to encounter resistance. And, of course, Palmaris lay at the end of this northern road, where Bishop Braumin would not likely prove so accommodating.
The seventy-five Allhearts galloped into formation beside and behind their king, and Aydrian nodded to De'Unnero and to Sadye, thus beginning the triumphant parade into Pomfreth.
All the peasants lined the main road through the small village, cheering wildly for "King Aydrian!" and waving towels at the young man as he paced his mount, the legendary Symphony - the horse his father had ridden to the Barbacan to defeat the demon dactyl - slowly through the town. He nodded to the people every so often, but mostly he watched the road before him, aloof and above them all. That was what they would expect of their king, De'Unnero and Kalas had explained to him. That was what the frightened rabble truly needed from their king. Aydrian was the foundation of their identity. He was not one of them, and was not anything that any of them thought they could become, but was, rather, their deity in the flesh. As king, he was the symbol of their nationality, and the man upon whom they relied to protect them, to provide for their basic needs, and to guide them to a better place, secularly and spiritually.
And so Aydrian kept his eyes mostly straight ahead, offering occasional glances and nods, and trying to appear as regal and dominating as possible.
"The parson?" he heard Sadye whisper at his side, talking behind him to Marcalo De'Unnero.
Following their gazes, the young king noted a man in the distance, behind the lines of waving peasants. He stood leaning on the white wooden door of the town's small Abellican chapel. He was not cheering. He was not smiling.
Aydrian glanced at De'Unnero. "He may need convincing," he quietly remarked.
"He may need burying," De'Unnero replied, and he veered his horse away from the royal entourage. He motioned for the crowd to part, then trotted his mount across the open ground to the chapel and the lone man.
Aydrian paid the scene no heed, confident that Marcalo De'Unnero would handle the situation as he saw fit. Aydrian had long ago decided that De'Unnero would set the tone concerning the conversion of the Abellican Church to his own conservative vision. However De'Unnero conducted the conquered Church was irrelevant to the young king, so long as that Church remained a loyal ally to him in his pursuit of the wider conquests.
Secretly, Aydrian hoped that De'Unnero would take the Abellican Church mercilessly and would bring it to a posture that evoked fear in the common man. Let the Church do the dirty work in keeping the common folk in line, leaving the way open for him to become a truly beloved king. Let De'Unnero become the tyrant that Aydrian clearly recognized was lurking in his heart; Aydrian would only shine all the brighter beside him.
His entourage remained behind as Aydrian paced Symphony to the center of the town square. Magnificent upon the magnificent stallion, the young king surveyed this newest group of his flock for some time, letting them bask in the sight of him while he took some measure of their enthusiasm.
What he sensed most of all, as in all the other towns, was fear. The common folk of Honce-the-Bear were afraid of change. Common folk took comfort in routines. How well Aydrian had learned this when first he had run away from the wicked elves, settling in with villagers in a nondescript and wretched little place named Festertool in Westerhonce. In their routine, ultimately boring, lives, those folk had taken solace in the emptiness. That was the way of commoners, Aydrian understood keenly, and all that he had to do to win their love was offer them security within their little corners of the kingdom - and to look resplendent upon his great horse.
"Good people of Pomfreth," he began, speaking loudly, his voice resonant.
He kept his line of vision just above the heads of the gathering, as he had learned, and he swept one arm out in a grand gesture. "You have heard of the passing of good King Danube, and no doubt the news has saddened you as it has saddened all of the court of Ursal."
"The king is dead!" cried one man from the back of the gathering, a man that Duke Kalas had planted in the town ahead of the army's approach, as he had done in every town.
"Long live the king!" came the appropriate responding cry in many voices, repeated over and over in a mounting cheer for King Aydrian.
Aydrian sat quiet and let the momentum gather, then play out to renewed silence.
"I march now, with the army of Ursal behind me, to comfort you and assure you all that there is no struggle within the kingdom," he explained.
"King Danube is dead, and I, as the son of Jilseponie, have rightfully and legally, by the late king's own words, assumed the throne of Honce- the-Bear. You see with me Duke Kalas and the Allhearts, and many of the nobles of the court of Ursal.
"Let the word spread throughout the land that a new and just king has ascended. Let the word spread from this town throughout the land that this King Aydrian is a friend to the folk of Honce-the-Bear, and that I will serve you as your king with the same love and affection of my worthy predecessor, King Danube!"
It was all he had to say. The folk erupted into great cheering, calling out the name of King Aydrian. All signs of nervousness and fear were flown now, in light of his assurances. He had told them exactly what they had desperately hoped to hear.
And now he could move on, confident that he had secured his kingdom just a little bit more.
The town's grandest house - which wasn't much of anything, really - was gladly turned over to Aydrian soon after, and he entered with Sadye by his side, both glancing toward the small chapel, into which Marcalo De'Unnero had disappeared with the parson.
"With each town taken, your relief grows more evident on your face,"
Sadye remarked, as soon as they were alone.
"Each town is farther removed from Ursal, and so more likely to offer resistance to the change."
"Resistance?" the woman asked doubtfully. "Against the army you carry in tow? Duke Kalas would burn Pomfreth to the ground so quickly that your march through would hardly be slowed. Aye, more quickly than the little speech you are required to give at every stop."
Aydrian's fast-souring expression stopped her abruptly. Sadye put a hand on one hip and leaned a bit, studying the young king.
"Or is that it?" she asked. "You fear having to kill people."
"Fear?" Aydrian echoed with the same tone of doubt Sadye had just used.
"No, I do not fear anything or anyone. Nor will I hesitate to trample anyone who gets in the way of this march I intend to make from one end of the world to the other. But I do wish to keep the slaughter at a minimum, you see. I take no pleasure in killing - that joy is reserved for those like your lover."
Sadye stiffened a bit at that remark, though neither she nor Aydrian were quite certain of which part of the comment had stung her - the statement that De'Unnero took pleasure in killing or the mere observation from Aydrian that De'Unnero was her lover.
"I do what I must do," Aydrian explained. "I walk a road of greater purpose and design than these peasants could understand - greater even than any of the nobles and generals can understand."
"Greater than Marcalo can understand?" Sadye asked.
"His purpose is narrower," Aydrian replied. "His purpose is determined by the weight he carries from his bitterness toward the Abellican Church. It takes less to satisfy him. The prize of St.-Mere-Abelle, of executing those who moved away from the vision he embraced for the Church, will suffice. So yes, greater than Marcalo can understand."
"Greater than Sadye can understand?" the woman asked, without missing a beat.
Aydrian's blue eyes, so much like those of his mother, bored into her, and a wry smile grew on his handsome and strong face.
Sadye shrugged, prompting an answer.
"No," Aydrian said with a shake of his head. "Sadye understands. She wants no less for herself. That is what drew you to Marcalo's arms, is it not? The search for something greater, something more exciting and more gratifying?"
Unsure of the young man's direction, Sadye put on a frown and assumed a more defensive posture, turning one shoulder toward Aydrian.
"What will Sadye do when Marcalo's vision pulls him to St.-Mere-Abelle, I wonder?" Aydrian teased. "Sovereign Sister Sadye?" He laughed as he finished, but Sadye did not find the preposterous title so very amusing at that moment.
"Where will Sadye look, I wonder?" Aydrian went on undaunted, and he walked around her, reaching out one hand to play with her hair as he moved behind her.
He pulled away quickly at the sound of someone approaching, and he was glad that he did when the door opened and Marcalo De'Unnero strode in.
"The town fell under our embrace easily," said the monk. "Though I do not trust the parson. He claimed allegiance, but if our enemies find their way to him..."
He stopped and looked hard at Aydrian, then at Sadye. "What is it?" he asked.
Sadye blew out a big sigh and managed a laugh. "Our young Aydrian became quite defensive when I observed that he was relieved to learn that there would be no fighting this day," she explained, and she hopped over to De'Unnero's side and wrapped her arm playfully about his waist.
De'Unnero gave a snort. "As we all should be relieved," he said seriously, "with every town that gladly throws its allegiance to Aydrian.
We will find battle soon enough - probably at the gates of Palmaris, if not before. The more of the kingdom that comes over willingly, the greater our claim of legitimacy against Prince Midalis."
"And against Fio Bou-raiy," Aydrian put in, eliciting a wicked smile from De'Unnero.
"I do believe that our friend Sadye is bored," Aydrian remarked offhandedly. "She spoils for a fight. Take care, Sadye," he warned.
"Boredom is the impetus to greater heights, 'tis true, but it can prove the enemy to those who do not truly understand the heights to which they aspire."
The irony of that statement in light of their private conversation, especially with De'Unnero nodding his agreement at her side, was not lost on Sadye. But she wouldn't give Aydrian the satisfaction of seeing it on her face, and so she just laughed absently and moved off, towing De'Unnero with her.
Aydrian watched her go, every step.
Ever was he the ambitious lad. Ever was he ready to conquer every challenge.