A King, part one
Maya gathers new information from an old friend
The Great Fire continues with a new story about a King. He’s Maya’s old friend who knows some key information about what happened with Favian.
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A King
Part One
Tell me what happened?
From what I know, they attacked just after dawn and it was all over before mid-day. We used to send our soldiers out into the Mountains to train. The land is more diverse outside of the city, giving our soldiers more ways to fight than training on open plains. We never had any problems with the Kai before but they attacked us without warning and left without a trace. Or so we thought. We found all our soldiers in the dirt some weeks later.
Did anyone survive?
I wasn’t there. I was in a village to the north, close to our border with Baline. All of this I was told on my journey home. I didn’t hear about the massacre at all until a message from my court arrived telling me that my father was dead.
I can’t remember how my mother died but it must have been before that because the message told me that I was King. I left for Thorne that day and for Teron three days after that.
I went with a small consort of the few soldiers that remained and my wife and new-born child. We took the southern trail that seeps through the mountains, it was close enough to the base that the shadow of Losian mountain shielded us from the insufferable heat. It was one of the hottest summers that I can remember and even in the shade we walked slowly.
There were camps scattered up the mountain, peeking out of caves. I remember wondering if the Kai had moved to avoid the heat but that would have been days from where they attacked us and what use would they have to destroy our camps only to move so far south soon after.
In order to reach the tunnels that would take us to Teron, we had to pass under the three arches. Two of them are natural formations and the third we carved into the stone to reach inside where the tunnels begin. It was an old tactic in case of war. We could protect the entrance to the tunnels with our soldiers on the arches, waiting for the enemy with armed bows raised.
When we passed under the first arch, I heard a whistle and saw a flicker of movement above. By the time we looked up, the Kai had surrounded us.
We asked them what they wanted, but their dialect is too Balese, it’s too terse to fully comprehend. Maybe in close-conversation, like this, but when it’s shouted down a mountain, it’s hard to understand. We told them that, repeated our question and soon they sent someone down to meet us, protected from archers above. When they arrived, they threw empty water bags at our feet and signalled for us to fill them.
When I looked again to Losian, I saw that the streams had dried. The snow from the last winter had long since melted away. It’s not a problem we have in Thorne. We’re nested in a valley, so no matter how long the summer were to stretch we would never run out of water. Our land is protected. But the Kai move to find land that isn’t protected and in that summer those lands ran dry.
We were greatly out-numbered so we filled the bags with more than we could spare, hoping the road to Teron shouldn’t have taken us much longer.
As soon as they had what they wanted, there was a second finer whistle that sounded like a different bend in the breeze and they retreated as quickly as they came.
It didn’t make any sense.
When they found our soldiers, the supplies were left untouched. Our people were killed without mercy, and the food may have rot by the time we arrived but it was all there in the stores. None of it made any sense.
But what other option did we have to believe? It was either an attack from within our kingdom or one from outside of it. Any city of Baline lies too far to the North to ever give us any trouble, and it couldn’t have been a threat from Teron. We always had reason to trust you. No other groups would have made it out of the Mountains fast enough.
It didn’t make any sense but I suppose that was the point. I know now that it was done so that we’d call upon Teron for aid. Which we did. I went to Teron, talked with the King and I’ve never been home since.
But that’s not why you’re here, is it?
No.
Yes, you want to know what happened that night. I only remember parts. It’s all flashes of memories or a haze of an old dream. Even now, I have questions.
There were so many things that should have told me to retreat. But I can’t remember if I acted upon them. Perhaps that’s why he reacted the way he did. Or perhaps it was something else. I came to Teron to ask for help but it was as if they were already waiting for me, they weren’t waiting for my father but for me. He knew about my wife, about our daughter. He had people there waiting to tend to them. He knew.
Who?
Favian. We have a saying in Thorne: don’t trust those who ask for it. It was a saying that I never had any need for, until I met King Favian. I have never understood why one would question someone’s word. But when I met Favian and he smiled against the harsh stare of his eyes, I knew I shouldn’t trust him. My every instinct screamed against it but then I remembered you. I couldn’t turn my back on a life of friendship. But then again, I thought you were dead.
So did many people.
I guess we were all wrong. I had no army to defend me and no real reason to declare war against him other than our old saying. Everything about him was wrong. His clothes hung off of his body and I had thought him thin and weak but when he shook my hand his grip was too tight for a man half my size. In that moment I questioned whether or not I could beat him in a fight.
I’ve seen you break stone.
I know. It was nothing I could say exactly, it all just seemed like he had two faces, what you saw and what he was. And he knew.
He released my hand before I could hold onto the thought and told me to sit down. It was your chair. The one you had when we were children and you would have it moved around the table so that you could talk to everyone. Dinner would go on for hours while you made your way around the room with that chair that was three times your size. But you’d have it moved and whispers of your future reign would follow. You were supposed to do great things. We both were.
I think that chair’s broken now.
I think it burned. But I remember the chair and how odd it was that it was still there and you weren’t. I asked about you but he ignored it, instead he told me how sorry he was about what had happened to my soldiers and how I could trust that he would do anything he could to help.
Help with the Kai?
It wasn’t the Kai. It was him. He had made it seem like it was them, but I’ve thought for a long time about it, and the Kai don’t have the numbers to do what they did. Favian was trying to create a problem for him to fix. I saw straight through it. Well, I do now.
But then I must have had my suspicions that it wasn’t the Kai. But how could I have thought that it was Teron? Even with you gone, I knew your people. Our history of peace goes back hundreds of years, long before the nine wars; there was no way that this could have been your doing.
All of these questions bleed in my mind and I can’t think straight, because there was this man sitting across from me, lying. And I knew that. And so did he. I must not have acted, because here I am. I guess how do you explain to someone that you don’t trust them, without starting some kind of war?
Without an army, you don’t. You pretend.
But of course I wasn’t the only one pretending and I came late to the game. All these years that I spend thinking over those scraps from the past I wonder, how can I call myself a King if I failed my people this way?
How can I call myself a Queen if no one remembers?
Why would you say that? What do you want from me, pity? It’s your fault we don’t remember and it’s your fault that I’m here.
Favian did this, not me.
You didn’t stop it.
Neither did you. You had your suspicions, your thoughts and still you came here and you gave your time to him. That’s all he’s ever needed and you gave it.
If you had just chosen a different husband, none of this would have happened at all.
We both know that I asked someone else first.
Then I guess we’re both to blame.
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