Beyond The Wall Page 8

  Chapter 8

  Orleena placed a rose on her mother’s tomb, she remembered how when she was young, locked in the tower. Her brother hated her, her father was a shadow made of gossip and whispers, her uncle a stranger that would appear, occasionally, with tokens from the outside world and Da Raloff kept her safe from it all. She would look out at the city and feel a wonder and admiration as the wooden houses defied the marsh and reached proud and tall towards the sky.

  Now everything was filthy.

  She loved her brother but he fool, she loved her father but he was still just a shadow, she loved her uncle but now he brought tokens from the foreign land that befouled the traditions she loved and knew were true. Da Raloff was as powerful as she ever was, but a sword and was not enough to protect her from this world. And now, when she looked upon what remained of the city she saw nothing but blood and rot.

  The two weeks following the court Orleena hid herself in her tower. Kara kept her distance, the pair would greet each other on the stair, but Orleena did not want speak and Kara seemed content with that.

  At court Orleena gave as much as she could to the few that gathered. Most of the people were busy rebuilding their lives and had no time to hear a girl hand out a weak justice and those that did no longer to cared much for the formalities of court. They knew what had happened in the Royal Court that day and most now scoffed at the mention of Roland’s justice. Orleena would have once had them beaten or thrown in the dungeon for such disrespect, but she could not now because, silently, she had already derided her own words.

  She looked at the frozen visage of her mother and wondered what might have been if that woman was here to guide her, but her mother was gone and no amount of roses would ever change that. Orleena was not a girl anymore, able to pretend her mother, escorted by a host of Saquaari, could emerge from the Abyss and give her the wisdom that always echoed the words her shepherd, Elor.

  It was just her, now, and the cold stone of the tomb.

  Orleena had sent the message to Olav at dawn that she was leaving. First, she would find Pa at The Rough then, when she heard the answers to her darkest questions she would decide her future. If she heard what she needed to hear, she may return home. If not, a new home must awaited her, somewhere away from her swamp. Rae had agreed to escort her across the swamp to Edgelight and then onto The Rough.

  Orleena kissed the stone woman on the forehead and said goodbye to her mother she wished she had known and exited into the grey light of early morning.

  The morning was spent finding what Orleena needed for the trip. Passing Kara’s door more times than was required, each time Orleena wondered if she could say goodbye to woman within. It was when her work was done and that she decided she must, Kara had been a good companion all these years and it did not deserve to be abandoned at the final moments.

  Orleena knocked on the door and Kara called for her to enter. The days of silence between the two became apparent to Orleena as she struggled for words.

  “I have come to say goodbye,” said Orleena from the doorway, “I am leaving the city, today, and I may not be returning. I wanted to say it has been a pleasure knowing you, Kara.”

  Kara put the book she had taken from the library onto the pile of others that littered her dressing table.

  “Where are you going?” asked Kara simply.

  “To see my father and then,” Orleena paused, “I am not sure.”

  “My father would welcome you, always, in Ulnsearth,” she said with a smile, “I have sent many letters about you and your kindness to me in this place. If you find yourself beneath the Crown be sure he knows of you.”

  Orleena smiled and nodded.

  “You are free to stay here as long you need,” Orleena said, “the servants will treat you just us well in my absence.”

  “Hallow’s Keep is a hard place,” said Kara rising from her chair and walked towards her window, “when I met Di Aliza he was so full of life, he was a man who knew who he was and wanted to be. As we came south, I started to notice him insisting on staying longer than needed at the courts, meeting with people who were barely had a name. The further south we travelled the more people he demanded to greet until one night I found myself dining with the head of a kitchen in the castle in Suther’s Arch. The man had very little to say, but the food was delicious.

  “My visor and I joked that Di Aliza didn’t want to return to Hallow’s Keep and that one night we would find his bed empty with a hastily drawn map to show us the final way to Hallow’s Keep. And now, that we are here, all I see is a man half of one I met in my courtyard. And I see a young woman who has lost herself.”

  “You know nothing of our ways,” said Orleena angrily, “I told you this when you first arrived, you will never understand us.”

  “Why do you defend them?” asked Kara quietly, “you act as though you a wrought with guilt and you make plans to flee this place. Yet, you still defend them.”

  “They are my family and I will defend each of them because I love them,” yelled Orleena losing her temper.

  “Do you defend your grandfather?” asked Kara softly.

  “Goodbye, Princess,” snarled Orleena forgetting herself and turned to leave.

  “Where is your grandmother?” asked Kara quickly and Orleena stopped, “I have asked about her in the Royal Keep, but no one will speak of her. Why?”

  “She left,” said Orleena turning back into the room, “she returned to Diana’rel, where she was born.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  “She found my grandfather wanting and so she left, marriage does not shackles us to each other like it does in your land,” said Orleena simply but the annoyance stayed in her voice.

  “Do you think your mother would have stayed?”

  “My mother was a Free Man, not an Arn, she understood our ways.”

  Kara looked out over the city, skipping her hand across the stone of the window sill. Orleena watched her from the doorway. Moments past as Orleena waited for another question or challenge from Kara.

  “The city will be cold without you,” Kara said quietly.

  “Say what you will,” insisted Orleena, “I want to hear it.”

  “I have so many words for you, Orleena,” said Kara, looking out the window, “but I am not your sister yet, it is not my place. For now I will just say, I hope you find something of worth at The Rough.”

  “Another day, then,” Orleena said with a nod.

  “Another day,” replied Kara with a nod.

  Orleena left the tower.

  The court was held in the hall of the courthouse, it was damaged but still stood. Beyond the open arches, fresh, wooden frames had sprung up within black and brown husks.

  When court was done the handful of people that had gathered started to scatter. Then through the doorway marched two Imperial Guards in clean, purple capes.

  “Princess Orleena, the Emperor has requested an audience with you,” said one.

  “Are you here to drag me in front of him?” snapped Orleena.

  “No, Princess, the Emperor says he will see you where you wish, whenever you choose, but he requests you do so before you leave the city.”

  “Who told him I was leaving?”

  “I do not know, I am just here to bring you this message.”

  “Get out,” yelled Orleena back and men walked from the hall.

  Orleena removed her robes and flung it at the clerk. She left the courthouse and stormed through the city. If her grandfather dared to summon her, she would not cower from him. She marched through the gate, the maze of halls and into the war room. Her grandfather was always in the war room.

  She threw the doors open, her grandfather standing over the large central table, some papers in his hand.

  “Please, leave us,” said her grandfather politely to a man dressed in armour next to him.

  The man nodded, as he passed Orleena he stopped.

  “I am serving with your father at The Rough, Princess. The s
iege is going well.”

  Orleena ignored him. After a short moment the man stiffened and walked out.

  “You’re leaving?” asked her grandfather.

  “How do you know?” shot Orleena.

  “Your brother was talking of taking the chair in your absence.”

  “That is between us.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “If this is why you called me then I am done with you.”

  “I will not have you leave.”

  Orleena laughed.

  “You are to be my new Chancellor and the city has no one else.”

  “I decline.”

  “Why?”

  “I will never serve a man I hate.”

  “Then go, I will make your brother Chancellor,” said her grandfather, “your brother who finds himself trapped in a cage while the city burns. He will be the man to rebuild Hallow’s Keep.”

  “You will ruin the city out of spite.”

  “This city is already a wreck.”

  “Because of you.”

  “It was ruined long before I took my hand to it,” he yelled back.

  “You’re a monster,” she screamed, “take you and your city to bottom of the swamp.”

  “And so it shall be. Me and every last one of those Free Men, buried in the muck. Forgotten and broken, and let it rest upon your head. I am what I need to be and you must be what you are. I am monster, Orleena, and someone needs to protect this city from my fury.”

  “I will not serve you.”

  “I do not want you to serve me,” he yelled, “if I wanted a servant I would pull any fool in here and bark orders at them all day. You need to serve the Free Men, as is your duty, and they need you to wrap me in chains and keep me in my war room.

  “Go, if you choose. Run into the swamp. Run as far and fast as you can, but know, that when you realise what is out there and you long again for your city and your tower, that there will be nothing left to return too.”

  “I will serve Uncle,” challenged Orleena walking into the room puffing herself up for the fight, “put the crown on Uncle’s head and I will stay. Renounce the throne, walk away and I will build the city again.”

  “Is that where you think the answers lies? Is that what you have learnt from your books?” he sneered, “do you think you know what it is to rule? If it was right for me and mine I would put the crown squarely on Di Aliza’s head, as is my right. As much as you think you know, Orleena, you do not know me.

  “Your uncle can not rule because he can not do what needs to be done. There is no law or justice in what I do, there is no book to teach what I must do. To rule is to protect those that swear and show loyalty to you and only you and worthless is the life and soul of anyone else. I did what had to be done in Lowtown and you can not understand that because it is not what you are.”

  “If you are so wise, Di Soven, do you think I would ever stand by you and hold you up Emperor. You’re worthless and dangerous.”

  “Understand, Orleena, you are nothing to me. I do not want your support or love or for you to hold me up as anything, I have an emperor’s crown to show the world who I am. It is the Free Men who need you to rebuild Hallow’s Keep and if you leave today then they are the ones who suffer, not I. I have my keep, I have my army, I have my coin and, most importantly, I have those who are loyal to me.”

  Orleena was quiet her mind full of anger and disgust.

  “Go then,” said grandfather quickly, “dance through the swamp, play amongst the trees, have adventures exploring the open seas or whatever it is you plan. Your brother will take care of your people while you hide from your duty.”

  “The Free Men of Hallow’s Keep deserve everything you bring,” she spat.

  Grandfather went to the door.

  “The city of Orleena is rebellion they have strung up a hundred Free Men on there walls and torture a hundred more in their dudgeons. I gave Di Aliza a cohort to deal with the men, he told me I should let the Lowlanders in peace, that we had no claim on their land to start with. You would agree with him, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” puzzled Orleena unaware of such events.

  “And that is why you can not understand me, Orleena. You do not understand what needs to be done,” he said quietly and then paused, “I am sending Di Aliza back to Kabrace, we need an alliance with the Kaborn before the Dun panic. The city needs to be rebuilt and you know you are the only who can. Do as you will.”

  Grandfather started to leave through the doors.

  “A force twice the size of Imperial Guard,” she said, “of my choosing, they will answer only to me. You will disband the Imperial Guard. You will stay in the Royal Keep at all times. My man will watch you every moment of every day and hold you in your place. These are my demands.”

  “I will have affairs that take me out of this keep.”

  “Not in my city. I will escort you, myself, from the keep to the outer gates. Do what you want outside these walls but you are not welcome in my city.”

  “I will keep a personal guard.”

  “No more than twenty.”

  “Agreed,” nodded Di Soven, “and you will tear down that inner wall. There is one and only one Hallow’s Keep.”

  “You are wretched creature, Di Soven.”

  “I do not care what you think of me.”

  Di Soven was gone from the door.

  Orleena looked at the huge leather map on the table and let her breath return to her. The realisation of horrid pact she just signed, slowly, became real to her. The time passed, as she lent against the table in the empty room, the blood that had rose in her face drained. She tried to make sense of it all, but she could not. Not yet. Her eyes started to move across the map in front of her.

  The red tokens splashed across the map like the blood on Uncle Frank’s armours. There were so many more than before. The Grey Throne of the Forged Empire still stuck as it always had been in the mountain city of Dragon’s Perch. It was safely fortified behind the devastating machines Orleena had studied in her Uncle’s gift.

  The Northern Men had pushed the Dun back past the forests of Lys’tool and Lay’tool and now battled on the plains of northern Dunway, threatening the farmland but still far from the capital of the White Spire. Strangely, the Golden Throne now sat within the White Spire, moved from the Heartland kingdom of Fel, where it had always sat.

  Orleena’s eyes jump to the Heartland. The Kaborn now had a firm hold on the Galla in the Heartland and was now bearing down on what remained. The Imperial Army and those of the western kingdoms pushed back to Elys and the Silver Marsh in the west of the Heartland.

  The Kaborn had also moved east and taking the kingdoms of Douruh, Pryce and Sia leaving the armies of the Stormlands isolated and at their mercy.

  Strangely, thought, a new colour had appeared the northeast holding Gart and Frys. A new throne coloured blue sat a top the city of Tarlnath. She had never learnt of those lands, so distant that even Da Raloff had never asked her to read the books on them.

  To the southeast, across the seas, the black of the bands pirates had taken the southern coast of the Stormlands from the Hold to the forests of the Yaal’tol in the east. In the Sparkling Isle, atop the city of Skull Landing, sat a Black Throne which she had also never seen before.

  Orleena lifted her eyes from the strange things she saw on the map and pushed them from her mind. She was focused, now, on her new task. She had a city to build. A city that would show to the world the greatness of her clan, the Free Men and Roland the Wild. And when she was finished, none would remember the disgrace her grandfather had brought.

  The End

  Pay What It’s Worth

  This is a ‘Pay What It’s Worth’ book.

  Please pay what it’s worth at: https://www.wilclayton.com/worth.

  Now that you have finished the book please do not forget to head over and pay what it’s worth. You can pay any value you choose from $1 to $100, whatever you believe is fair for t
he work you have just enjoyed.

  Also, you can sign up for my newsletter, RSS feed, give feedback or see my other updates at: https://www.wilclayton.com/

  Thank you,

  Wil Clayton