Bloodstone - Power of Youth (Book 3) (2 page)

~

Sallia followed in Unca’s footsteps. When she thought again that her parents were likely killed, her mind seemed to have seized up. Moments of lucidity seemed to come and go as she pushed herself to follow the wizard. When those came, the thoughts of her parents, dead, with their blood on the floors of the only home she had ever known, brought fresh tears.

After continually running from the road at the sound of horses, Unca led her onto a footpath. What was she to do? An old man as her servant? Unca was hardly suited as a lady-in-waiting. She had to smile at the unprompted vision of Unca in a gown, his tall, lanky frame sticking out of an undersized dress.

Her father recently had started saying that it might be a kindness that the old man retire, but he still needed Unca’s advice and couldn’t yet let him go. Here he walked in front of her, the dim magical ball of light barely keeping them on the footpath. How could he serve her in any way remotely deserving of her station? Perhaps they would hide for a few weeks and then the populace would rise up and displace Histron the Usurper.

They still half-crept in the darkness. Sallia, surprised by unbidden fits of sobbing, tried to keep her tears to herself. She felt like someone had ripped her chest open and removed everything except the ache of her parents’ loss. She stopped and again couldn’t resist the outstretched arms of the old man. Her crying seemed to be the only sounds in the forest. Unca just let her go on for a while. The crying seemed to be the only way she could cope with the enormity of situation.

She stood up straighter and smoothed her cloak once she regained control of her feelings. She felt the dampness of her tears as she ran her hands along the collar. When Unca told her he had a cottage, she didn’t like her father’s advisors keeping secrets from the court. But then, her father might have known. She’d never find out that or anything from her father or mother again. The thought brought more sobs and the wizard let her cry for another few moments. A mournful moon parted from a cloud and turned the pathway into speckles of dark and darker when Unca told her that they must continue on.

Sallia complied and fought to keep up with the wizard, who proved to be more nimble on his feet than she. He stayed silent for long periods of time, only pausing to warn her about an overhanging branch or an exposed tree root. All she could see was the back of the man’s cloak and the long whitish hair turning wild as they rushed through the forest.

What could she do while she waited for the people to rise up? Perhaps Unca had a large cottage with servants who could care of her. He must have or he wouldn’t have thought of taking her into the northern wilds of the Red Kingdom. Perhaps he had a castle hidden in the forest with soldiers ready to take back her kingdom. Sallia shook her head to rid herself of the fantasies that plagued her as they continued their flight.

Their journey eventually became an unending process of putting one foot in front of the other. Sallia refused to complain. A princess must not show weakness. The thought made her chin lift in the night. On and on she vowed to continue without a call to rest. She even began to regain control of her emotions.

She sensed that she was losing control of her legs and her arms. She began to shake as the forest turned from moonlit darkness to the murky blue of the approaching dawn. She stumbled into the back of Unca.

“I can’t go on.” Even princesses had to rest, she admitted to herself, as she clutched the old man’s shoulders. He stopped and held Sallia up as her legs buckled.

“You should have said something earlier.” The look in his eyes seemed so sincere. She realized she’d never really known the old wizard even though they had talked to each other often enough. She noticed an unexpected softness in his eyes that generally pierced her along with his boring witticisms. Perhaps escaping with him would prove to be a successful exit from the horrors of the castle.

“I’m a princess and we don’t complain.” She tried to lift her chin again and assume that diffident look that had been drilled into her since she could talk.

Unca shook his head. “That doesn’t mean we don’t stop to rest before we collapse, Princess. There’s a clearing just ahead. Hopefully there is a brook close by to whet our parched throats. We can stop at an out of the way inn to eat breakfast in an hour or two. The innkeeper is an old friend from days long ago. We’ll get dressed in some less conspicuous clothes and maybe get a couple of horses. Wouldn’t that be better?”

Sallia barely had the energy to nod her head. “Better,” she said.

As they reached the clearing, Unca led her underneath a pine tree. He spread out his cloak. “Roll up in this and sleep for a bit. I’ll find some water.”

The ground looked so inviting as Unca helped her down onto his cloak. He threw the long end over her and the last thing she remembered was his face looking down.

~

“It’s time to go,” Unca said trying to gently shake the sleep from the Princess. The sun was midway to its zenith and the wizard let the girl sleep as long as she could. His stomach protested the fact that he had waited too long before proceeding, but Unca knew the rest would do her a world of good.

She stirred. Her normally sallow cheeks glowed red in the warm sun. “It’s nearly noon!  I didn’t tell you to let me sleep in!”

Unca winced at the complaint. “You needed the sleep to rejuvenate your muscles, Princess. We’re still weeks away from the cottage and you can’t make it there if you waste all of your energy the first day. I do have some bad news.”

“Histron is on to us?”

Unca lifted an eyebrow. “The man won’t stop trying to find you and will continue to search until you’re captured.” He just caught himself from saying ‘dead’. “No. You will need to act the part of my daughter.”

Sallia snorted, “Granddaughter, you mean.”

The wizard sighed with the knowledge of the truth. The Princess turned twenty-one in two months. Much to the dead king’s chagrin, Sallia had spurned every suitor since she was sixteen. As the only child, she wanted to wed a prince her age plus have him meet her own personal specifications. Such a person couldn’t be found, for her specification changed with her moods.

“Perhaps my niece… Wait. You will be my grandniece. I will call you Sally and you may call me,” he cleared his throat, “Uncle.”

“Grand Uncle.” She nearly smiled.

Unca merely bowed. “The names are close enough to our own so if we make a mistake addressing one another it can be dismissed.”

“You’re a smart one,” Sallia said. She baited him as she had before at Foxhome. This time, there weren’t a gaggle of courtiers to snicker at his words and provide her with an audience. Unca generally had the presence of mind to counter her barbs better than anyone else. That, unfortunately, made her perpetually angry with him.

“Here.” Unca reached into a pocket of his trousers and pulled out some globes the size of large grapes. “Water that I have spelled in such a way so that we can take a drink as we walk. Alas, my skills are not sufficient to catch game as we run.” He merely shrugged. That would be the extent of his apology.

Sallia grabbed three or four of the globes and plopped them in her mouth. “These are rather fun. Why didn’t you do this in court?”

“I’m not a jester, Your Highness,” Unca said, retaining his dignity. “At any rate, I don’t accumulate power like I did when younger. Some days I think I am magically impotent.”

“Does—“ Sallia halted and swallowed with her eyes welling up, “Did Father know about this?”

“The King was not a man to hide secrets from, although, Duke Histron did a rather dishonorable, but effective, job doing so. I can still knock down trees and the like when needed, but only a few at a time. Then I need to recharge my magical power from the nexus.”

“Ah, the nexus.” Sallia knowingly nodded. “The source of all magical power in the world. I sometimes have a hard time believing that it exists.”

“You would. The talent to use the nexus has been bred out of the royal line of the Red Kingdom for centuries. Your light, nearly violet, eyes are a result of careful pairings through the generations. The lack of magical use has made the Bloodstone merely a symbol.”

“But it is just a symbol,” Sallia said.

“It is a symbol and more. I can feel its power, even through the leather pouch that protects it. Clutching it in my bare hand, I could recharge my powers in moments rather than days.”

Sallia just scoffed. “I don’t believe you.”

Unca shrugged. Her father had the same impression about the stone, but he never discounted the power of symbolism and the Bloodstone and the Red Kingdom were inseparable.
‘
The right to rule
,
’ the king had said often enough,
‘
is tied up with the ancient amule
t
.’

“Enough of this boring talk.” Unca helped her stand.

She picked up his cloak that had kept her warm and held it out for him. “Portable royal chambers. You may burden yourself with them, again.” Sallia had actually said something witty that didn’t require a reply. He smirked behind her back and followed her along the path.

A bit more than an hour later when the sun shone overhead, they exited the forest and took a track bordering the woods and tilled land stopping short of a ramshackle country inn. Four fancy horses stood at the hitching posts. Unca could see weapons and supplies tied to the steeds. Duke Histron had a faster reach than he thought.

~~~

Chapter Two

~

S
allia couldn’t help putting her hand to her mouth
when she saw the horses tied up to the inn’s hitching posts. Fear was a new emotion for her and she didn’t like it. She tried to follow Unca back into the copse that they had emerged from, but couldn’t move her body. Her head began to lighten and she felt herself swaying, about to topple.

“I, I,” Sallia said. Her dry mouth could form no words. Her scalp tightened as she lost strength and Unca picked her up. He carried her back into the woods and laid her on the grass of a tiny clearing.

“Forgive me, Sally,” Unca said, as he put her on the ground.

Out of the sight of the Duke’s horses, she regained her composure. “Address me as Princess Sallia or Your Highness.”

Unca’s face took on a sorrowful expression. “I’m afraid we just left Princess Sallia behind when you woke up. As soon as those horses leave, you are Sally and I am Uncle. These people know me by a different name, Bodkin. You are my niece.”

“Grandniece,” Sallia said.

Unca shook his head in resignation, “Grandniece, then. What happened back there? You froze up, but seem fine now.”

“Frozen with fear. My mouth turned to cotton and my head turned to air. I’ve never felt that way.” Even when her nurses and tutors had tried to intimidate her as a girl, she had always prevailed. Her father and mother never challenged her and now— Sallia felt like she had lost part of herself along with her parents. She began to choke up again with grief, but struggled to stifle sobs so close to the surface.

“I always felt it useful to think of something else. I generally think of a dog I had as a child. He’d always protect me from a stranger.”

“You, a powerful wizard?”

Unca broke into a grin — at least he still had all of his teeth. “I travel more than you might realize and have been in situations where it wouldn’t be wise to use my powers. I’ve learned to think my way through all of that once I had broken my own personal spell of fear. You have to keep thinking to remove yourself from your predicament. Once you stop thinking, you freeze up.”

“But you’re a ranking wizard.”

“Oh, there’s no magic to learning how to quench your fears, Sally,” Unca said.

Sallia had to restrain from correcting Unca as she continued to listen to advice like she’d never had before.

Unca continued to speak. “If you can think of the obstacle, unfrozen, it becomes a puzzle to solve. How can I get through this situation? How can I break it down into parts I can handle? The easiest solution is generally always to retreat, like we just did. You don’t run away, just pause for a bit. We still have to move forward. So we travel as someone else. Go somewhere unexpected. Those are some of the solutions of the puzzle to keep you alive.”

“My father said, ‘Never retreat,’ and I don’t remember him leaving a problem unsolved,” Sallia said.

“I’ve seen him do so plenty of times when the good of the Red Kingdom was at stake. But you wouldn’t have seen it. He wasn’t a coward. Retreating doesn’t necessarily indicate cowardice.” Unca shook his head as tears began to well up. “My last view of him was of your mother helping your father adjust his armor.” The wizard began to choke up. Her father must have been more than just a friend.

Sallia didn’t know what to say to that. Her father had died fighting Duke Histron rather than retreat. The thought made her begin to cry.

“I’m so unworthy,” she said as tears of her own began to trickle down her face. How could she break down in front of this man at every turn of the conversation? 

Yet something had snapped within her. Sallia could no longer just retreat into a shell, like she had done all her life. That was cowardice, not the retreat Unca had talked about. She would have to re-learn how to act and Unca, as old and addled as she had once thought, would have to be the person to teach her. She knew she’d never be the same again.

Unca cleared his throat. “We made a tactical retreat, like your father so often did. Not in fear, but to preserve his line. You are his only heir. He didn’t ask for you to take up a sword and die along with him. Your parents’ only thought was for you to flee to safety, Princess Sallia.”

“Sally,” she corrected and wiped away her tears.

Unca smiled. It surprised her how gentle the smile was. “Sally, then. You need to stay safe until the time comes for you to reclaim the throne. You will feel tinges of fear every day, for the Duke will not stop searching for you. Let the fear provide you with caution, but you must learn to keep your mind sharp. Remember that to reduce the fear, you can think of future moves to solve the puzzle of survival. It’s a good practice and one that we will be following until we reach my cottage.”

The Princess understood. She nodded, wordlessly and looked away. The sun still shone overhead and her stomach rumbled. Fear had momentarily driven away her appetite and now, with a change in attitude, it had returned. She smiled at the thought and took comfort that with Unca’s help she had overcome her fear; a non-magical spell and a non-magical solution from the Court Wizard. She had never expected that kind of depth from the old man.

She noticed a breeze began to shake the leaves and with it, a hint of smoke, not the aroma of cooking, but of something else.

Unca stood and looked in the direction of the inn, with an alarmed look on his face. “I’m afraid for my friends.” He left her sitting on the grass. “Stay.”

Sallia couldn’t sit. She leaned against a tree, feeling the rough bark through her thin clothes and worried. She had worried about herself before, but not for others. Now she felt the glimmers of emotional pain, hoping that the innkeeper wouldn’t be harmed for her sake and that Unca would return unscathed. Just then, he rushed into the clearing.

“Come, we have to put out the fire!” Unca took her hand and yanked her back on the path. In a few minutes, Sallia gagged as the wind blew smoke into their direction. A few turns of the path and she viewed the inn. The horses had gone and flames were beginning to lick up the side of the inn by the large chimney.

The wizard took off on a run. She’d never thought the old man could run so fast. She hadn’t exactly run since girlhood. By the time she reached the inn, Unca had gone to the well and began drawing up buckets of water.

“You do this and I’ll go in and douse the place. First let me change the color of your eyes. The charm won’t last more than a few weeks, but your distinctive violet eyes will now look hazel to any strangers who we meet.”  Sallia nearly commanded him to stop, but he grabbed two buckets and fled towards the fire before she had a chance to open her mouth.

Unca ran through the smoking door. Sallia heard the sound of water splashing and Unca returned, dragging a dripping-wet woman. Sallia had two more buckets ready and this time Unca brought out a sodden man. The innkeeper and his wife? He dashed out of the building with four buckets and helped Sallia draw water.

They kept at it for what seemed like hours. The two victims began to stir and the woman revived enough to help Sallia.

“Save our inn!” the woman said. “I’ll help you out as I can. Ness is still breathing, but they hit him harder in the head than me.”

Unca continued his rescue attempts and stopped for a moment trying to regain his breath. “I think we’ve got everything eight or ten feet up the wall, but I can only throw the water so high and I can’t reach the ceiling.”

Sallia squinted. She feared for Unca and for the inn. She would think for a minute. A thought popped into her head. “Make those little water grapes. Maybe apple-sized and we can throw them up higher.”

Unca’s eyes grew large. “That will work.” He looked at the woman. “Pol, I know a few magical spells and Sally here has seen me make some water balls. We’ll put those to work. Come on, Sally.”

They took the four buckets into the blackened inn. Sallia could see the fire beginning to reignite up high where Unca’s water hadn’t thoroughly quenched the flame. He made a little sign with his fingers and spoke a few words and the buckets were filled with apple-sized balls of water.

“Take good aim,” Unca said as he threw a globule of water that smashed against the embers that had begun to glow.

Sallia hadn’t done much precision throwing in her time — just crockery and such at servants. She took aim and found her talents lay elsewhere. Pol, on the other hand, nearly matched Unca with her accuracy and Unca took a few steps back and let Pol do the throwing. Sallia took the two empty buckets and went to fill them with more water. A strategic retreat. She smiled at the thought, now that she knew the worst was over.

“Where’s Pol?” Ness had come to and sat up in the dirt.

“She’s helping Un… Uncle fight the fire.”

Ness began to stand but sat back down, holding his head.

“You stay there and let them do the work,” Sallia said helping Ness lay back down putting his arm over his face, obviously still in pain.

She continued to fill up buckets and realized that her hands had blistered and were raw from the unaccustomed work. Pol came out and looked at Sallia’s hands.

“Sit on the porch. I’ll draw the last of the water. Bodkin needs to throw some of his amazing water balls up on the roof and the outside walls. We’ll be done in no time.” She looked at her husband, who now lay, propped up on his elbows. “And don’t you move, innkeeper!” Pol threw him a kiss as she took her buckets around the corner of the inn.

~

Unca couldn’t see any flames or embers on the outside. The flames, luckily, had never made it to the roof. If they had, the inn would be lost. He walked back in. Holes on either side of the main fireplace still smoked. The inn was filled with the acrid stench of a quenched campfire. He sat next to Ness, who had a rag around his head while Pol applied salve to Sallia’s raw hands.

He had never seen the princess in physical pain before and admired the way she had taken it. As for him, the eye change and all of the water globules thoroughly expended what power he had within.

“Good work, Sally,” he said. “I’ve never saved an inn before. I hope we’ll get a discount if we stay the night.”

Ness smiled and nodded. “Ask and it’s yours, Bodkin. Pol and I’d be charred up like the inn if you hadn’t come along. Those damned soldiers thought the princess would be driving up in a carriage to our little inn. How ridiculous is that?” He squinted and looked at Sally’s clothes. “Those are finely wrought things your niece is wearing.”

“Rags picked up in Foxhome, where the king and his court cast off clothing all of the time. I assume that’s correct, Sally?”

She nodded as Pol began to wrap up her hands. “My father, Uncle’s sister’s son, died a few weeks ago. He sold kitchen implements and weapons. I never had to work with him, so I could take my pick at the market.” With all of the day’s work, her garments now looked well-worn.

“Bodkin never told us of any kin.”

Unca smiled at Sallia’s inventiveness and piped up. “I’m sort of the black sheep of the family. They don’t deal with me and I don’t deal with them. Sally, here, is a special case. Her mother died giving her life and I’ve always had my eye on her. She sold the shop, but thieves took her money and I had to rescue her from their grasp. I’m taking her to my little cave in the hills out west to rest up before she decides what to do.”

Pol glanced at Ness and then put her hand on Sallia’s shoulder,  “You can work here. We’re fair employers and you’d never have to worry about a roof over your head or a warm meal.”

Sallia colored. “I’m, uh. I mean…” She looked at Unca with pleading eyes.

“Nothing to worry about, Pol. I promised Sally I’d show her the Red Kingdom like she’d never seen before and we’ll get that in while we travel.”

“You’ll never need to pay for a room here again, you two. No matter what happens,” Ness nodded his head and continued, “I’ll not turn you out. Now I do believe the kitchen was untouched and I’m hungry. What about you two?”

“I faint from hunger,” Unca said, smiling. His stomach now growled and he needed the nourishment. The sun was about to set and they only had water to drink all day. He didn’t want the innkeeper to know how truly hungry he was.

Pol went to the other unburned side of the inn and brought out a tray of bread and cheese while Ness pulled some ale and brought out four frothy mugs. Unca took some cheese and washed it down with ale. It tasted better than the fare at any royal banquet. He thought that the way Sallia attacked her food, she probably had the same impression.