The Medievals 1, page 7
part #1 of The Medievals Series
When he went to sleep, his Triumph Day had just ended, his body tired from the festivities. But his mind was still moving, powered by the questions of his future; what story people will tell about him after he is gone.
The tower bell had struck midnight before his mind finally quieted. Now the hour is early, spangles of dying moonlight marking the walls and tapestries of his bedchamber.
Richard sits up in bed. Rubs his eyes. At the entryway, there’s a scintilla of warm light glowing beneath the door, the candlelight seeping in from the hallway outside his room. He can see the shadows of a pair of boots: a night watchmen standing sentinel. Richard’s heartbeat calms as he realizes that he is only waking from a nightmare.
It is a nightmare that has visited him in many different forms. It begins in a forest of great age, limbs sagging with the weight of time and pendulous snow. There is the feeling of being hunted. But he is not the prey, nor the predator. Richard is only a spectator in this darkly lit dream. He is floating in the canopy, aware of the nocturnal fog as if he is part of it. And there is a red tinge to the world, the forest lit by a blood moon hanging low in the sky.
Down below, a girl races through the trees, the velvety fog licking at her backside. Judging by her face, fear is the horsewhip moving her legs. She breathes air as though she is stealing it. And her willowy body moves without certain direction or destination. She seems only to be running away from something.
Always, the dream feels real, the girl’s fear touching Richard’s bones. And always, Richard recognizes the girl -- from the King’s Market that day. She is without a name, but still her violet eyes have been etched onto the insides of his eyelids. And his memory still conjures up the birthmark on her shoulder. Why he remembers this girl so vividly, he does not know. They never spoke that day, only exchanged the briefest of looks as she brushed a strand of hair away from her face.
He has known the gaze of girls. More than one chambermaid has flirted with him. The daughters of foreign diplomats have danced with him at Royal Balls, their chests close enough that he can feel their warmth. In the company of these girls he often feels that the self is the sole constant companion, and that is how it shall always be.
But when thoughts of the girl with the violet eyes invade his mind, his heart takes new form. He imagines her as flesh surrounding a song, one that touched his ears before he was born. Such thoughts remind him of Master Cheng’s tale of the two lovers, their lives linked at birth by an invisible twine, destined to find one another in the course of their lifetimes.
But the only place Richard finds this girl is in his sleep. In his persistent nightmare. The thing chasing the girl is just a dark, shapeless being -- a loosened piece of night with a terrible and violent purpose. In some versions of the dream, darklings join in, raining down on her from the sky as they scream like banshees; in others, it is wolfdogs gnashing their teeth at her heels. Tonight, it was fiery saurians; likely entering his mind after the Triumph Day performance.
But there is always a black form moving through the landscape. An unstoppable force. And when the faceless demon reaches the girl, its single touch seems to steal her spirit, and she falls to the forest floor, lifeless. Her eyes go vacant, the violet appeal gone. And all that remains are two glass eggs to fill the hollows of her eyes.
This is the moment that Richard wakes from his nightmare. Always this moment. His eyes open in a panic, his shirt is soaked with sweat, and his body is overwhelmed by a sense of being powerless -- just as he experienced tonight. He wishes that, even in his sleep, he could save this girl. And he is haunted by his failure. If he were his father, he thinks, he could save her.
Richard looks to the table at his bedside, where he sees the rock he took from his climb up Mount Saurian. He left it there last night as he disrobed for bed, pulling it from his pocket and placing it on the table. Now in the fading light of the moon, it seems to burn with an emerald glow. And its coloring echoes the rough reptilian skin of the saurians in his dream.
He considers the stone, wondering what has compelled him to hold on to it. In the past, he has tucked away the odd keepsake -- the broken hilt of his first wooden practice sword, or the delicate shell that an insect had shed and left behind on his windowsill.
These items have no serious purpose but to let him reach back into his childhood, to mark time. But this green rock seems like it can be no more than a souvenir of disappointment; a reminder that he has yet to overcome Mount Saurian and meet the test of kings.
He grabs the saurian stone and hides it away in the drawer of his bedside table, putting it out of sight. Then he moves from the bed to the window, where he lets in the early morning air, cooled by the waves of the wrinkled ocean that lap against the eastern castle wall.
The breeze hits his damp nightshirt and he shivers. He pulls on a dressing gown, cinching it tight. Then, back at the stone windowsill, he closes his eyes and takes several deep breaths, hoping to expel from his mind any remains of the stubborn incubus.
Breathe in. Feel the air reach down into every finger and every toe, where it will clear away worry and fear. Now breathe out.
It is an exercise that Master Cheng has taught him, one that is carried out beneath the shade of the magnolia tree in the Sacred Garden. Master Cheng says it is a way to purge our darker thoughts.
Here, in front of the window, Richard takes one more deep breath.
Then he opens his eyes.
Brushing the curtains aside, he takes in the sweep of the great city in the predawn light. The glow behind the moon-glazed mountains tugs at the sky, beckoning the morning. In a few hours, the sloping fields far beyond the city walls will be filled with farmers tending to livestock, and the villages that cling to the rugged hillside will be alive with routine. The cobblestone streets just outside the castle’s curtain wall will be noisy with markets. And Richard will be able to hear the clunks and bangs of metal being forged at the local blacksmiths.
But right now, the world outside his window has been claimed by a silent sleep. It is an impossibly quiet image, and Richard feels a much needed stillness in his chest.
As Richard stands there, he convinces himself that no matter how real his unrelenting nightmare feels, it lives only in his mind. And if Richard is being honest with himself, the girl with the violet eyes lives only in his mind as well.
◆◆◆
“Stop.”
Richard steps away from the mock fight, obeying Master Cheng as he shifts out of his stance and lets his sword fall to his side. He groans, not sure what he did wrong this time as he stands in the middle of the training room.
“Find your starting position again,” Master Cheng instructs, his voice steady with a patience that never seems to abandon the aging preceptor.
Richard retreats to the outer edge of the practice circle. There, the dark wooden planks ring the smooth stone floor that serves as the centerpiece to the circular room. Sunlight dulled by clouds slips in through the narrow tower windows and silvers the area around him.
After a moment of thought, Richard grips the hilt of his sword tightly, moving his feet so that they are aligned with his shoulders, as he has been taught many times over. He winces at the slight pain that radiates from his knee as he bends, his injury from falling on Mount Saurian still not fully healed.
Once Richard is in position, he looks to Master Cheng and nods.
But Master Cheng shakes his head, silently indicating that Richard’s technique remains ill-considered.
“What is it?” Richard asks.
“I see the white in your knuckles. Do you not feel it?”
Richard nods, realizing his mistake. He is gripping the handle too tightly. It is a simple error -- one that Richard has made only because his focus has been weakened by a night of fractured sleep. He is glad that today is a solo lesson, and that the rest of the class is not here to see Richard make such foolish mistakes.
“You are not trusting your sword. You are grabbing the hilt, not holding it,” says Master Cheng. “You must think of it as water. Do you grab water?”
“No,” Richard says, familiar with this lesson.
“No, you do not. If you grab water, you sink. If you trust yourself to the water, you float.” Master Cheng holds up his thumb and first two fingers. “You grip the hilt with these three fingers.” Then, he holds up the other two fingers. “These two fingers remain loose, and your wrist, relaxed. This is how you trust yourself to your sword. And it is how you tell your opponent that fear is not your master. You must learn this, Richard.”
“I know it already, Master Cheng. I am just tired today.”
“Focus must be with you always. An enemy does not wait for you to be ready. You are sick, you are focused. You are hungry, you are focused. You are thinking of a girl, you are focused.”
Richard can feel the heat on his face as he wonders if his mentor can read his mind. He hopes the room’s shadows hide his reddened cheeks.
Master Cheng continues: “If I put a sword in your hand as you sleep, you must still grip it with proper technique. The weight of your weapon is part of you, it is not separate from you. Do you understand?”
Richard nods.
“Very good. Now, let us rejoin our training,” Master Cheng says as he holds out his sword, his right foot leading. “Starting position.”
Richard takes special care to grip the hilt of his sword in the exact way Master Cheng has instructed. He tries to empty his mind of all distractions, to strengthen his focus.
But just as Richard feels ready, a lanky boy enters the room, his breathing heavy with urgency. It is Thomas, one of the King’s many pages.
“Prince Richard, Master Cheng” he says, quickly bowing to both of them. “The King -- he must see you at once.”
◆◆◆
Richard’s father stands over the body of a man who lies unconscious on a table positioned at the center of the Throne Room.
The man’s stomach is covered in splashes of mud. And he bears a foul odor that stretches to Richard’s nose. Richard takes a hard look at the man, studying his ashen face, his silver-brown hair, his scarred arms. He has the appearance of a commoner, a man without rank or title. He is dressed in heavy animal fur meant for the cold, his clothes tattered at the fringes.
If Richard were to venture a guess, he would say this man is a trader, perhaps a farmer from a mountain village where the winter season reaches deep into the spring. Perhaps a village near the Northern Barrier.
But as Richard searches his memory, he has no recollection of this man.
“Can his life be saved?” his father asks Master Cheng.
Master Cheng has his ear at the man’s mouth, listening to the slow rhythms of his breathing. His breath sounds moist, and Richard can hear a faint rattling coming from deep inside the man’s throat. But his lips are chapped and raw, casualties of a harsh wind. The flesh of his ears are a light gray, almost blue.
Master Cheng feels the man’s forehead, then his fingers, his wrist. He turns and looks up at the King.
Shaking his head, Master Cheng says, “His life can no longer be measured in hours. He is more ghost than man now. ”
Upon hearing that the man on the table is dying, Richard looks again at the muddy stains on his stomach and realizes that the deep brown color is actually dried blood that must have soaked through his shirt from a fatal wound beneath. Richard can not remember seeing anything in his lifetime but the fresh blood of a scrape or a gash, a stark red that matches the tapestries in this very room. But this blood, dried onto the shirt, is stale and carmine. As Richard follows the blood stains across the man’s gut, he notices that the man’s pants are wet around his groin. He has pissed himself, and the inside of Richard’s nose burns at the foul odor he now recognizes.
“Father, who is this man?” Richard asks, his nose twitching.
His father does not answer immediately. Instead, he lets Richard’s question hang there in the air between them along with the floating dust, which is suspended in a beam of violet sunlight, its color transformed by the stained glass windows of the Throne Room.
As his father seems to consider his words, Richard surveys the expansive hall, feeling as though something is out of place; something is missing. It is an impressive room, embellished with the colored windows, stone columns, and hanging tapestries, which bear the lion crest.
And along the outer edges of the room, there are busts of the legends of the Realm, including the face of Sir Ivanhoe, once the King’s most trusted knight that Richard watched with awe as he competed in the King’s Arena when Richard was a young boy. As he matches eyes with the bust of the legendary knight, it strikes Richard that he does not know the fate of Ivanhoe, nor even whether he is alive or dead; and it seems odd that a hero’s tale would not have a memorable end.
Richard’s eyes continue to move around the majestic hall, which is meant for holding council or receiving dignitaries. It is also the room where his father was coronated, and his father before him. Richard can not enter this room without feeling the weight of his legacy; without warily eyeing the high-backed chair that sits at the front of the room, the throne of ivory armrests and gryphon bone adornments.
And as he looks to the imposing throne now, Richard realizes what is missing: the Throne Room guards. One is always stationed at either side of the throne. Always. As long as the clock tower gongs, his father says.
It is not simply unusual for the throne room guards to be absent. The King never grants private audiences. Surely this means that his father has requested the guards’ absence. But why would his father not want his trusted sentinels in attendance while the King is in the presence of this stranger?
“This man has come from the Cumbrian mountains,” his father explains, having found the necessary words. “He rode through the night and for the better part of a day, outrunning death so that he could come before me and warn his King of a great evil that has tread within the barriers of the Realm.”
“So you know this man?” Richard asks.
“Before today? No. He calls himself Thorne. He claims to be part of an ancient secret. His warning, spoken to me in the moments before you and Jun Cheng arrived, must be limited to the ears of only a chosen few.”
Limited to the ears of only a chosen few. This explains the absence of the guards, Richard thinks.
Then, he asks his father, “What is the great evil he warns of?”
But before Richard’s father can answer, the man on the table coughs, fresh blood spitting from his mouth. The sanguine ichor catches in the dying man’s beard, the red phlegm mixing with the brown and silver hairs on his chin.
One cough is followed by another, then by another, each one bringing the man further pain, and more blood. His lungs suddenly spasm, and his body unleashes a torrent of violent coughs that echo throughout the Throne Room. Within these walls of solemnity and ceremony, Richard has never heard such an unpleasant and prolonged noise take the Throne Room captive.
The spasm of coughs awakens the man, his eyes opening. But there is no life behind his eyelids. No fight remaining in his glazed expression. And the man seems unaware of his own existence, or what is left of it.
As the coughing ceases and the man’s body goes still on the table, something falls from the custodial grasp of his right hand.
It is a piece of bunched fabric, soiled and bloodied, that appears to have been torn away from someone’s clothing. Master Cheng retrieves the fabric from the floor, then hands it to the King, who treats the cloth with an unexplainable sense of importance as he tucks it into his pocket.
Richard looks back to the dying man as a final noise trails out of his mouth, like a delicate thread of air that holds a soul. Richard imagines it is a whispered prayer that has just narrowly escaped its fate of dying right there on the man’s lips. And that prayer -- whatever it is -- will now find its way to the ether.
Master Cheng puts his hands on the man’s stilled chest. Then, with an air of deference, he reaches to the man’s waxen face and closes the lids over his lifeless eyes.
Suddenly, the man is there but not there. Only seconds ago, there were four living men in the Throne Room. Now, there are three.
“He is gone,” Master Cheng informs his father.
As the finality of Master Cheng’s words settles over the room, it strikes Richard that he has never been present at the moment of death. He has seen the dead as they lie in their coffins at funerals, but he has never been at the side of someone at the instant life ended and the afterlife began. He has not thought often of what death might look like, but this moment lacks the peace Richard might have imagined. The death of this man was noisy, painful, and foul-smelling. It was unpoetic. And it has made Richard imagine what his own death might be like. What his final thought will be.
“Richard,” he hears his father say in a tone that suggests he has said his name thrice before to no response.
He turns to his father, pulled from his morbid reverie.
“We will leave Jun Cheng to care for this man’s body,” his father says, Master Cheng dutifully nodding. “I want you to come with me now, Richard. There is something I must show you.”
◆◆◆
Richard trails his father as they ascend the spiral stairs in the north wing, rushlight flickering on the stone walls.
For a time in his youth, Richard preferred this wing of the castle before all others. It has more stories within its walls than any other place within the Realm, for the north wing holds the Royal Library.
It is the place where, as a young boy, Richard came to lose himself, to seek an imagined life outside the castle walls that held him. Sitting among the book presses and the shelf-lined walls, the vaulted ceiling staring down at him, Richard would read adventures on the high seas; epic poems of mysticism and unrequited love; histories of far-off places where sandstorms or sea waves or lava flows could wipe out an entire people.
He would spend hours with his nose in a book; and over the years, his nose even became acquainted with the distinct smells of a book’s origins: if the pages smelled of vanilla, they came from the Silk Lands; of peat, they came from the mossy islands off the northeastern shores of the Realm; of cherries, from the dry valleys of Spain. Richard spent nearly as much time in the Royal Library as his own room.
