The wizard saw the king and the king spoke grim.
“It’s me, mighty wizard I need your help again.”
“I’ll aid you,” said the wizard. “But there will be a price.
I will take your newborn daughter, while the reaper takes your wife.”
“You’re to be deposed then?” Duke Martin asked Commander Aldine. Both men, along with Bear Fang Karcher and Coll, were informed upon waking that they were being held in royal detention. They would be allowed the run of the stronghold, but the city beyond its gates was forbidden to them. One of Prince Russet’s treacherous, austere guards had been assigned to shadow each of them. Just outside the door of the ornately furnished sitting room, three of the guards waited for their charges.
After they’d been informed of their incarceration, Kavin Karcher just laughed. He’d gone to the privy a good, long while ago. No one had seen the infamous trapper or his shadow guard since.
“Yes, my lord,” Commander Aldine answered nervously. “Just after the noon bell, I’m to report at the archbishop’s office.”
“There’s no reason for you to be so fidgety,” Coll said from the glossy oaken board where he was pouring three goblets of brandy wine. He paused and set the crystal decanter down, plucked a square of cheese from a healthy platter that had been brought for them, and spoke around it as he chewed. “Mjust manswer the questions mtruthfully, mCommader. You’ll be just fine.”
“Aye, and shorter by a head,” Aldine snapped. “What do I say if I’m asked about the attack on the caravan, or why Captain Moyle chose to camp half a league away from a patrolled area? What if I’m asked of certain activities that my lord had taken with that would-be-bandit, Lord Magrin?” He turned from Coll back to face Duke Martin. “What if I’m asked why some of your men rode with those bandits during the attack? What if I am asked about Gallarael?”
Coll strode over and sat the tray of goblets on the low foot table between the duke and the commander and then took one of the offerings for himself. He chose the high-backed chair to Duke Martin’s left, leaving Commander Aldine sitting alone on the three-cushioned divan across the table from them both.
Duke Martin leaned forward and took a goblet in one hand and a handful of the cubed pieces of cheese in the other. “Help yourself,” he said, and looked at Coll for a heartbeat.
Coll gave a smart nod, and then responded to the Commander’s questions.
“Well, it seems you understand what not to answer.” He took a long swig of his drink. “You can’t answer a question with a response that implicates your liege lord. You’re sworn not too. For instance, and you can answer this truthfully; have you seen the duke engaged in conversation with any unsavory bandit-types?”
“Well… uh… no,” Aldine answered. He leaned forward and took a bread roll from the platter and sandwiched it around a piece of thinly-sliced roast. “No, I haven’t.” He took a bite, chewed for a moment, and then swallowed. Pointing his little finger at Coll as he spoke, as if he were being clever, he went on. “But the rumors of the orders I was given are-”
“Stop!” Coll said sharply. “The question was about what you’ve seen, not what the castle gossip is about.”
“Mmm.” Aldine nodded as he finished chewing his morsel. “I think I understand, but what if they ask what I’ve heard people say?”
“Well, did you hear that Duchess Gallarain was sleeping with the one-legged dwarven jester when the mummers were up from Dabbldwyn?”
Aldine’s gaze shot to his liege lord. He was surprised to find a jovial crinkle at the sides of his eyes. “Do you not think I hear the rumors too, Commander?” the duke asked. “You’ve heard the one about Captain Moyle accidentally killing one of his men on the training yard while he was piss-pot drunk?”
“Of course, but that’s a tale spread to make the youngsters afraid of him. There’s not a bit of truth to it.”
“Ah, but that’s what a rumor is,” Coll interjected, “a story told with little or no truth to back it up. It does not matter if there are rumors that Duke Martin was engaged with bandits; there’s also a rumor that you’ve been sleeping with Duchess Gallarain and that it was you who wanted to kill the bard. I’m sure the archbishop will be asking you about that rumor, too.”
Commander Aldine finished chewing his last bite of food and swallowed hard. Licking his lips, he dared to take in the duke’s expression again; it was one of amusement.
“She’s a whore, Commander,” the duke chuckled. “Like it or not, it’s the truth.” He took a long pull from his goblet and sighed. “She was no maiden when we consummated our union, I assure you. If she hadn’t made a spectacle over this mud-blooded minstrel, I would have piked his head and gone about my business.”
There was a subtle but unmistakable emphasis on the phrase “piked his head”, and it caused the commander’s mouth to go dry.
“A curious bit to think about, that one-legged little freak is still in the bottom of my dungeon somewhere.” The duke chuckled disgustedly. “I wanted to pike him, but I was ashamed to display his malformed gourd over my gates. By the gods, what goes through that woman’s head, I’ll never know.”
It was then that Commander Aldine finally leaned forward, took the third goblet of brandy wine from the tray and sipped from it. Coll let out a sigh of relief so obvious that the commander stopped. It was too late; he had already swallowed a mouthful of the bitter-tasting drink.
“It’s done, then?” Duke Martin asked Coll as the commander’s eyes bulged and darted around frantically.
“It is, my lord,” Coll answered him. Then to Aldine, “Commander, if you’ll just lie back and relax, you will feel no pain as you pass.”
“Mwew-myou poisioned me,” Commander Aldine gasped and choked as a sound like crashing waves careened through his skull.
“No, Commander,” Coll said as he stood and pushed Aldine back into the divan with his booted foot and held him there. The commander’s goblet tipped in his hand, but Coll caught it before it fell. “That is a rumor,” he said, looking directly into Aldine’s frantic eyes. “Technically, you poisoned yourself when you drank from a goblet full of jade-tailed scorpion venom. In our current predicament, only a fool wouldn’t have expected such a thing to happen.”
Duke Martin belted out a laugh at that. “You haven’t been paying attention,” he said, pointing an accusing finger at Aldine. “The newest rumor out of Highlake is that you were laying with the Duchess and were jealous about her tryst with the Zyth.”
“Mwaaw.” Aldine tried to push up from beneath Coll’s foot but couldn’t manage it.
“Wait, Al, there’s more,” the duke continued. “You set up the ambush and paid your bandit cohorts to blame all of it on me so that you could rid your woman of her lover and her husband all in one fell swoop. They’ll find plenty of the missing items from the caravan raids among your things back at Highlake.”
“Gnooo,” the commander gurgled as a froth of bile formed at his lips.
“After all,” Coll added, “you’re the man who directly commanded the troops, not the duke. You’re the very man who ordered Captain Moyle to set camp in that unpatrolled area. You’re the one who got Gallarael killed and then killed yourself here in the sitting room because the guilt of accidentally killing your lover’s daughter overwhelmed you.”
The last thing Commander Aldine remembered was Coll sliding a small vile into his palm and closing his hand over it. After that, the world faded away into complete blackness.
“By the gods,” Duke Martin said when the commander finally went still. “I thought he’d never take a drink.”
“For a moment I thought he might be turning into a formidable adversary,” Coll commented as he pulled a folded coverlet from the back of the divan and covered the commander’s body with it to make it appear as if he were napping.
“It’s worse than I thought,” Quazar mumbled to himself. He was silently urging Duke Martin and his Darkean companion to leave the sitting room so that he could run in and save the commander. Had Coll not spoken the name of the poison he’d used there wouldn’t have been a chance at all. As it was, the chances of reviving him were fading quickly.
Quazar was watching them through a peephole from a hidden passage in the wall. The two appeared to be leaving the room. Quazar hoped they’d hurry. He didn’t want it on his conscience that he had just stood by and watched while a man’s soul departed on its journey to the hereafter. He didn’t have much choice, though. He had taken vows before the Council of the Royal Order before attaining the title of Master Wizard. The vows limited his ability to interfere with what the nobility of Parydon did, including stopping dukes from poisoning their own liegemen. He was, however, bound to try to save anyone who needed saving, especially a respected commander of kingdom men, so he waited impatiently and prepared his mind for what he would have to do if he had the chance to help the poisoned man.
Orphas told him, through the lode crystals that crowned the staves all wizards of the Royal Order possessed, that Aldine was the most likely to be truthful. Orphas had also conveyed his suspicions on Coll’s influence and the possibility of his being a servant of the dark. After carefully observing Coll and casting a few subtle spells of revealing, Quazar had confirmed his colleague’s suspicion. Coll was a Darkean. He had little in the way of power, but was as ambitious and evil-hearted as any Quazar had ever come across.
Duke Martin was under the influence of something greater than Coll, though. The two of them had been speaking of the Blood Stone’s power and how to obtain it before the commander had come into the room. The coldness of the way the two men had spoken, and the utter lack of compassion for the lives of those who serve them in their dark bidding, had held Quazar to the peephole. Quazar could tell that Coll was trying to use the duke’s ripe emotion, the shame of his wife’s escapades, to tempt him further down the path of pain and hate. The imminent death of his daughter, and the collapse of his plan to worm his way into the high nobility by marrying off Gallarael, had him seething to regain control of the world around him. What Coll couldn’t see was that there was already a deep emptiness in the duke’s heart. Duke Martin had crossed the point of no return long, long ago. Quazar considered that it might actually be Coll who was being led, not the other way around.
“… can’t believe he so rudely fell asleep like that,” Coll commented softly as he and the duke exited the sitting room.
“The dungeon is available for us to visit, is it not?” the duke asked the guard assigned to him. The man nodded with no change of expression that Quazar could see. “Good. I think I need a word or two with that thieving whore.”
Quazar fidgeted as Commander Aldine’s shadow guard peeked into the room. When the door to the sitting room finally closed, the wizard let out a sigh of relief. With a flourish of his hand and a spoken word, he disappeared from the cubby behind the wall and reappeared in the sitting room. He wasted no time starting what needed to be done. He just feared it was being done too late to save the commander from death.