The Medievals 1, page 16
part #1 of The Medievals Series
Tip-Tap-Tip.
The unseen creature moves closer, until Wendolyn can finally see it, approaching her foot.
It is a spider.
And it is as big as her hand. As Wendolyn's eyes narrow on the spider, she's sees that it is woolly, with eyes all around its head.
“Get back!” Wendolyn orders, her voice breaking as she says it.
The approaching spider stops.
“Go away!” Wendolyn tells the spider.
The spider begins moving away slowly, backing itself into the darkness. Wendolyn is surprised: it is as if the spider understands her commands. And obeys.
“Wait,” Wendolyn implores.
The spider stops its retreat.
“Come closer,” Wendolyn says, questioning the wisdom of her own request.
The spider inches toward Wendolyn, then stops at her foot.
“You can understand me? You understand what I am saying?”
Though the spider does not speak or nod, there is something in its look that suggests the spider understands Wendolyn. There is a connection she feels with this creature, although Wendolyn can not explain it.
But it is not simply this spider. In the past, Wendolyn has felt a unique relationship with other animals and insects. It is almost a kinship with the things in nature around her. The fallen deer in the woods that she somehow healed. The wolves that seemed to warm to her presence when she fished at the lake. The bugbear in the its burrow.
There is an unspoken bond she shares with these creatures.
KER-CLICK.
The lock on her door is worked from the other side. One of the saurians has come for her.
Before the torchlight enters the cell, Wendolyn whispers to the spider, “Stay here.”
Then, as the spider remains still, Wendolyn moves to the door, the saurian with the scar down its face waiting for her, ready to lead Wendolyn back to the Memory Chamber.
In the torchlit tunnel, Wendolyn watches as the Saurian locks her cell and replaces the key on the hook on the stone wall. And as she is dragged down the tunnel, away from her cell, her mind remains on that key.
Perhaps, Wendolyn thinks, there is an escape for her after all.
{Richard}
Richard rubs his neck, his skin itching at the spot where the Truscans hit him with a dart and put him to sleep as he hung upside-down in the Eternal Forest.
“Itches like hellfire, don’t it?” Loxley says, sitting across from him, his wrists and ankles also bound together by the hardened vine tendrils. “And you got a hurt in your head, right?”
Richard nods. “What is it?”
“That’s the sap of the Everroot. The tree people mix it with leaves and other such things to work up an unfriendly concoction that knocks you right out, then leaves you tender when you wake up. It’ll wear off.”
“How long?” Richard asks.
“For me, few minutes. I’m used to the stuff. You? Probably a few hours. Maybe a day,” the thief responds.
They are in a prison with walls formed of thatched vines, which feel as hard as steel against Richard’s back as he leans against them. The vines are like nothing Richard has ever seen, strong enough to restrain even El Cid, who is still passed out in one of the corners, snoring as if he’d swallowed a chicken.
Meanwhile, Ivanhoe is awake, but silent.
As the one-eyed Ivanhoe continues to prove, he is a man of few words. And the darkness that swirls behind his eye hints at the dark horns of the demons that haunt him.
Could it be true that Ivanhoe murdered his wife as Loxley claimed?
Fingers of daylight leak through the tight tangle of hardened vines, setting Loxley’s emerald eyes aglow in the dark, while the rest of his deep brown complexion blends into the shadows formed by his hood.
“What is Everroot?” Richard asks Loxley, realizing he has never heard of this ingredient.
“You’ve seen the large roots throughout this forest?” Loxley asks. Richard nods, and Loxley continues: “The milky sap of those roots has a poison in it. Around here, they pretty much use it for everything: tea, medicine, whatever you can think of."
“But it is poisonous?”
“Not to the Truscans. Only to us.”
“Is it deadly?” Richard worries.
“Depends what these tree people mix it with. You suck it straight from the root, yeah, you’re worm food. But the Truscans thin it with river water, among other things. This particular poison, I’m sensing some bone dust from a gryphon has been added. Tossed in for a bad headache.”
Indeed, Richard’s head aches, and his ears feel more sensitive to noises at the moment. Outside the weaved walls of the prison, the sounds of an untamed forest create a natural cadence that is quite different from the noises that Richard usually wakes up to outside his bedchamber in the castle.
Richard identifies the sounds as they hit his ears: water gurgling down a river; the scraping chirp of insect wings; a gentle wind fluting through the trees. These noises should be soothing and reassuring to Richard. But the soft sounds do not assuage his fears about what his captors plan to do with Richard and his fellow travelers now that they have been imprisoned.
“But do not the Truscans intend to kill us anyway?” Richard wonders aloud.
“Piffle,” Loxley says. “Tree people might be territorial, but they aren’t the killing kind.”
“How do you know all of this?” Richard asks.
“Any thief worth his bounty knows the rocks and roots of this forest. I know this place like the back of my hand. Rarely will the law follow one into the Beyond, but if they do, the advantage is mine.”
Richard considers Loxley for a moment. Within the confines of the castle walls, he has never met a man so casual with his principles, or so open about his criminality.
“Why are you a thief?” Richard asks Loxley, genuinely curious about what makes a man choose such a life.
“Why are you a prince?” Loxley questions with a shrug, as if it is the natural response.
Richard has to consider the strange question, thinking it a trick since the answer is seemingly obvious.
“I was born a prince.”
“And I, a thief,” Loxley says. “My father was a thief. And his father, and so on. And now we may all yawn.”
As Richard hears Loxley’s words, he remembers the conversation with his father on Mount Saurian: “You were born a Future King. You have it inside of you already. Just let it come.”
It was those words that sent him on this mission in the first place. To compete with the idea that it is Richard’s birth -- and not his actions -- that tells him who he is. For Richard, his story must be about more than just the day he was born.
“Arrruumff,” El Cid groans. “El Cid has pain in head like knife.”
The colossal man tries rubbing his neck as he wakes, but finds it difficult with his wrists tied together. The Spaniard sits up, his body so large that his head touches the thatched roof. He strains against the vines, his veins and muscles swelling, but to no avail.
“Once the Truscan vines harden, you might as well be fighting steel,” Loxley says.
“El Cid is stronger than a thousand men. Weeds can not hold him. And these tiny creatures will soon know his vengeance. Viva El Cid!”
With that call to action -- which seems to only worsen the giant’s headache as he winces -- El Cid again flexes the muscles in his arms and legs, the size of tree trunks. But strain as he might, El Cid can not break through the hardened vines. He exhales, defeated.
“That right?” Loxley asks mockingly. “‘Cause it kinda appears these diminutive tree-huggers got the better of you at the moment.”
“You question the greatest warrior that has ever lived?” El Cid asks indignantly.
“I do, yeah,” says Loxley.
Richard gets the sense that Loxley is just having a laugh as he preys on the ego of the long-haired giant. Loxley is both a jester and a thief.
“In Espana, all men fear El Cid. He is known as The Conqueror. Five Moorish Kings fell to their knees before El Cid, and armies of men were cut down by Tizona, El Cid’s sword of fire. Savage beasts whimper before El Cid. Even the winds fear him, for he can blow them back with a single breath.”
“Okay,” Loxley humors. “And yet, somehow you ended up in the King’s Dungeon. And now here. How’d that happen?”
Richard wonders this himself. For all of El Cid’s war stories, so far Richard has seen the Spaniard restrained more than free.
El Cid grunts his displeasure, Loxley getting beneath his skin.
“The same could be asked of the man who claims to be a gifted thief. Were you not found in that same dungeon?”
This question comes from Ivanhoe, speaking for the first time since Richard awoke in the prison. He sits in the corner, a plank of light cutting across his mouth and crimson beard, his eye-patch barely visible in the shadows, mud dried to his hair.
“You can be the best there is -- and still your twin sister will give you up for a bag of coins. There’s just no honor among thieves anymore,” Loxley says, suggesting that his own flesh and blood was responsible for putting him behind bars.
Then, Loxley quickly diverts away from the subject: “What say you, Animal Man? What is the scheme to get us out of here so we can get on with saving the girl?”
“Last night you intended to abandon us. Suddenly you care about the girl again?” Ivanhoe asks, suspicion beneath his words.
“That girl is a chest of gold for me,” Loxley says.
Richard is vexed by Loxley’s craven words.
“Is there not more to this life for you than gold coins?” Richard inquires.
Loxley smiles wryly.
“Says the boy who has never wanted for anything.," the thief retorts. "Have you ever even held a coin in your palm? Or entered a market for victuals? I wager not. Such currency is without meaning when your breadbasket is filled at the ring of a bell.”
Richard’s face reddens with embarrassment. Loxley has now turned his tongue on Richard, away from El Cid. And Loxley -- who is not entirely wrong in his accusation -- is now finding his way beneath Richard’s skin. Everything Richard needs is provided for him. Squires and functionaries see that his desires are met. His clothes laid out for him, his meals served.
Meanwhile, the thing he desires most -- a sense that he will be able to lead when the time comes -- nobody seems willing to give him.
In truth, the first time Richard ever stepped foot in the King’s Market was when he was encouraged to do so by Master Cheng. His tutor wished for Richard to become acquainted with his fellow man, for Richard to learn the common touch.
Richard was reluctant to engage in the exercise, but that day turned out to hold more meaning than he imagined possible. It was that day that he saw the girl with the violet eyes.
“But you must care for something more,” Richard presses Loxley.
The green-eyed thief considers the question, and Richard thinks he may be on the edge of a deeper truth to this roguish man.
Finally, Loxley says: “You’re right, Young Blood. I do care for something more. I care about saving my own neck.”
The giant interrupts: “El Cid believes a man who mourns only for himself will be mourned by no one.”
Loxley barks out a laugh. “Talk like that might put barmaids in your bed, Spaniard, but it never kept a knife out of anyone’s belly.”
Then, Loxley turns to Richard, saying, “Look, I get it. You want me to tell you sumpthin’ of virtue. Or maybe honor. You wanna hear that we’re all in this together, swinging our swords for some greater good. That’s what they feed your mind inside those castle walls, isn’t it?”
The thief’s words are an affront to what Richard has been taught, the way in which he sees the world. And they run counter to everything Master Cheng has taught Richard. He has been taught to serve his fellow man as he might serve himself. To live an unselfish life. To not seek personal gain at the expense of virtue.
Richard remembers Master Cheng’s teachings: You must train yourself to see your value for all people. It is what gives you purpose. Let it guide you.
“A man is nothing without his good name,” Richard argues, hoping to battle back Loxley’s words with his own.
“A man’s not much without his head either,” Loxley quips. “Pretty words. Not very useful though. I’ll take my arrows over a barrel of your ink any day.”
After Richard considers the thief’s words for a moment, Loxley adds: “Speaking of good names, what is it they call you again? The Poet Prince?”
“Do not call me that,” Richard protests, almost too quickly.
Richard is frustrated that he cannot seem to shake this distasteful sobriquet, even this far from the walls of the castle. It is a horsefly that continues to evade the reach of his swat.
Although he has not admitted this to anyone, Richard hopes that he earns a new nickname, one that suggests heroism and valor. He needs a name that signifies that he is a leader of men. That he is a man of action. Or, if not a new nickname, Richard hopes that he can make people forget his old one.
“Struck a nerve, I see,” Loxley taunts. "Here’s the God’s honest, kid. Out here in the Beyond, you’re just another sack of meat and bones, and the worms in the earth don’t distinguish between those with virtue and those without. So don’t torture yourself with high purpose, or be a slave to right and wrong. No need to suffer. Get yours while it lasts.”
Richard looks to Ivanhoe, who sits there quietly, allowing Loxley’s foul cynicism to hang there in the air unchallenged. Like Richard, Ivanhoe studied under Master Cheng. And as Richard’s father has told him, Ivanhoe was Master Cheng’s first pupil, and also his quickest learner when it came to the way of the sword. But if Master Cheng instructed Ivanhoe on the importance of virtue in the same way he taught Richard, it is strange that Ivanhoe is now unmoved to protest Loxley’s words.
In the widening light, Richard can now see the bovine horn around Ivanhoe’s neck, as well as his single eye that remains unhidden by a patch. That single eye seems to hold not conviction, nor courage. Instead, it seems to surrender to a brutal indifference. It is so very difficult for Richard to imagine that this ghost of a man was once the shining knight of Richard’s youth.
“Sir Ivanhoe,” Richard prompts. “Tell him. Tell the thief that he is wrong. That virtue is its own bounty, as Master Cheng instructs.”
For a long moment, Ivanhoe is silent. Then he angles his eye up from the horn.
“You would be wise not to look to me for answers,” Ivanhoe says, his words sounding as if they are emanating from a deep, empty cave. “And I am no longer a knight, young Prince. I do not merit the title you bestow upon me. Your father stripped me of that long ago. So enough of it.”
With that, Ivanhoe casts his eye downward, returning his attention to the horn around his neck.
Richard is saddened by Ivanhoe’s resignation. Ivanhoe is a man that has endured something so profoundly tragic that it has sapped him of his spirit. And Richard thinks that while Loxley suffers too little in this life, perhaps Ivanhoe suffers too greatly.
◆◆◆
The evening sun crouches low in the sky, its flickering light unsteady in the trees as it breaks through the mist hovering in the forest.
Richard and the others are being marched through the woods by the Truscans, having been escorted from the thatched holding cell, tethered by vines that grip their necks. Their destination has yet to be revealed by the reticent tree creatures, and so Richard imagines the worst: they are being marched to their deaths. Richard will die in these woods, his father and mother never knowing his true fate.
And the Descendant will be lost to the whim of an evil being.
But the mood of the forest does not match Richard’s own gloom. The mist and the fading daylight create a warm glow that seems to hug the soaring vermillion trees, which reach high into a dense ceiling of branches and needles. And the air is gilded by a pale yellow dust, a color that reminds Richard of the hay fed to the horses in the stables near the castle.
On several of the wide-trunked trees, Richard spots humongous purple soapworms the size of his legs, leaving their foamy trails on the bark. They are far bigger than the ones he has seen in the Realm, and Richard can only imagine how big and colorful the winged hoverfly will be that grows from the soapworm’s cocoon.
On the ground, everything around him is green and growing. The earth below his feet is softened by the moss with its white-golden flowers, their seeds held out in hopes of catching a passing wind. They resemble Lion’s Teeth, a low-growing wildflower that overwhelms the fields just beyond the walls of the castle in late spring.
Richard continues to be ushered through his enchanted surroundings, and he is captivated by vegetation the likes of which he has never seen before: wide-leafed plants that look like purple tongues; clusters of bushes with prickly undersides; stocky shrubs whose leaves seem to almost radiate with their own source of light.
Everything is lush, with droplets of moisture glistening off of the plants. The forest feels more alive than any place he has ever been. Master Cheng is a constant student of plants and trees, always hoping to discover the healing powers of rare vegetation. And Richard wishes, if circumstances allowed, that he could take samples of these plants back for his tutor to study.
Meanwhile, Richard notices that the mossy forest floor is carpeted by needles and leaves that have fallen from above, the history of these trees scattered upon the ground, years piled upon years.
Walking on the aged forest floor, Richard remembers his father’s words on how the secrets of Merlin’s staff and his descendants have been kept for so long: “Days and years and centuries piled atop the truth until the people were finally convinced that Merlin’s legacy and his magic died with him.” And this makes Richard wonder what secrets the ancient Eternal Forest might be hiding.
Strangely, just as this thought enters Richard’s mind, the Eternal Forest seems to take a deep breath in, sucking the gossamer mist from the air, revealing one of its secrets: a dark figure in a distant glade, exposed by the disappearing mist. It is the same figure he thought he saw behind Loxley as he guarded the camp. The same figure Richard thought was stalking them.
