Torment

Aedric wrestles with his hatred for the Duke and his family as the time for the knighting ceremony nears

16.

Torment

 

He was in a cloud of conflicting emotions and jumbled thoughts as he dressed with the other recruits in their quarters in the Royal barracks.   His mind was a thunderstorm of indecision.   Aedric’s ears seemed to buzz as he desperately tried to focus himself and calm down.

 

The Harlequin girl had caused all of his pain!   She had been taken as a credible witness and as a result, his father and brothers had died, along with his mother soon afterwards!   She was the catalyst!   He found himself clenching his fists at the thought, but at the same moment, another voice countered his rage.

 

She had been a scared girl, who had hidden under a bed, not a scheming woman bent upon destroying the Faesidhe.  

 

What if what she saw was true?

 

Yet it couldn’t be!   His father would not have ordered his men to kill children - not even Drow children and especially not the half-Faesidhe daughter of the King and Queen of Northmarch!  

 

The girl had lied!

 

But what if she hadn’t?   She’d been so traumatized that she no longer spoke - surely this is the sign of truthfulness.

 

His father was the King of the Faesidhe!   Murdering children was beneath him!   The two girls had not really been children anyway - they were nearly women.   Perhaps they had died because of some secret plans they had schemed against the Faesidhe.  

Yes, that must be it!   A spy had learned of something the two girls were scheming; perhaps they were about to entice their parents to make war against the Faesidhe.

 

Yet they were only young women, and he had heard nothing of this when his people had been addressed by his father about his plans to destroy the Drow and end the threat.   ‘We will kill them all!’ his father had said over and over.   Only the Duke and Duchess and perhaps the Yeshian Archbishop, Zeatt, were adult Drow; the rest had been youth or children.  

 

His father was the King of the Faeshidhe!  He would not order children to be killed!   It was beneath him, or any King!

 

‘We will kill them all!’  He had said, and Aedric remembered the fire in his eyes when he had said that.  

He couldn’t have meant children… or women!  

 

But the Duchess and the Archbishop were Drow women.

ADULT women - scheming Dark Elven women!   Wasn’t it Duchess Dullerm who had schemed to get control of the human Duchy of Westmark?   Then she brought the half-blood Knight there and later her aunt, the Archbishop.   That was the reason for his father’s action.   She was evil and scheming; she meant to destroy the Faesidhe, slowly, by her dark magic.   She was evil and deserved to die!

 

Still, it had been her who had stayed the hand of the Duke when he had raised it to kill him.   He was the last son of the Faesidhe King - wouldn’t she have encouraged Duke Dullerm to end the royal family by plunging a dagger into his heart?   Yet she had passionately yelled at him to stop, as if the thought of the Duke killing him horrified her.  

 

No, that wasn’t right; she was evil, as was her husband!  He had seen his father’s head rolling around in his helm after the half-Drow had decapitated it.

 

‘For Leah!’ he had yelled.   For his daughter, who had died at the hands of the Faesidhe.   The Duke had sought revenge just as he did now.  

 

Were they any different in motive?   The Duke grieved for his daughter; Aedric grieved for his father.  

 

Who was right?   What was the truth?   What could he do?  

 

He found himself nearly panting as his thoughts raced around in deadly conflict.    Looking up out of his mental fog, he found himself entering with the other knights-in-training, into the great feasting hall of the Queen of Northmarch.

 

He blinked a few times, trying to clear the torment from his mind that had so consumed him so that he had no memory of the trip to the banqueting room.  

 

Gamel and Aaron were in the middle of a whispered conversation as they marched into the hall, but though they had apparently included him in their conversation, he had not heard a word they had said.   He only nodded to indicate he had heard something, and thankfully this seemed to fool them.  

 

Their group was the last to enter the feast, and as they walked across the huge room to a table near the front where they would be seated near the Queen’s table, suddenly a group of royal trumpeters positioned against two walls, raised their horns and blasted the room with a very majestic call.

 

In spite of the power and beauty of the notes they skillfully played, he cringed as the loud music went through him like hot iron.  

 

As the royal flourish from the trumpets ended, a crier positioned at a podium near the Queen, called in a booming voice, “My Lords and Ladies, lastly I present the Knights-in-training of the Duke Eleazar and Duchess Aurei from Westmark and Dullerm!”

 

A merry round of applause escorted them as they made their way across and seated themselves at the long table.   Most were waving at the crowd or at least were smiling, but Aedric had his head slightly lowered and like a whipped dog, took his seat at one end.

 

The room was full of young men, eagerly waiting for the knighting service that would follow the long feast.   Aedric continued to ignore the excited banter of Aaron and Gamel (who were seated next to him and across from him), and instead, he looked up at the royal platform.

 

In the center sat Eioldth and for a long moment he forgot his turmoil.   She was radiantly beautiful, seeming to be in age not much older than he was, though she was said to be nearly five centuries old.   Her long golden hair and crystal blue eyes only made him long for his life in the Great Forest again.  

For though Eioldth was the daughter of the King of the Losasidhe Elves of the north, their people were Faesidhe who had been banished by Aedric’s great grandfather from the Great Forest for their differing philosophies.  She was his distant cousin, the cousin of his grandfather.  

 

Though her people were outlaws from the Faesidhe, she was still of the same race.   But she had tainted herself by taking a human husband.   Northmarch seemed to always plague the Faesidhe.   His grandfather had actually met Duke Dullerm - before he held the title and went by Eleazar the Greyskin- when the half-Drow had dared enter the Great Forest.  

He had never told anyone- not even Aedric’s father-  why he had let the grey-skinned devil go free, but apparently it was something greatly distressing, for he was said to have always seemed troubled when someone mentioned it.

 

He had allowed the Drow infestation to begin in Westmark, but he had died while leading a band of royal soldiers against a small force of undead that the Necromancer’s Guild had sent into the forest to scout, while their great invasion force attempted to take King’s Reach - 87 years ago.  The heir to the Faesidhe throne - his father’s older brother- had also died in the raid.  

 

His father had quickly ascended to the throne and immediately reversed the Faesidhe policies toward the Drow in Westmark.   It had been into this atmosphere of hatred toward the Drow of Westmark that Aedric had been born and raised.

 

Now he sat staring up at a Faesidhe Queen who ruled the human Kingdom of Northmarch without an heir.   But seated to her right on the platform were Eioldth’s dearest and closest friends, and it was this group that turned his heart cold toward her.

 

For around the beautiful Eioldth sat the Drow from Westmark.   Next to her sat Duchess Aurei, chatting happily with the radiant Queen like young girls.   Archbishop Zeatt and her husband, the human master of the Blood Knights, Sir Alvis, sat next to the Duchess, then Duke Eleazar, talking to him. 

Then, of course, next to them, on down the table sat the daughters of the Duke and Duchess of Dullerm.   Aedric had never met any of them other than Snoe, but it was obvious who they were; two pretty, regal dark Elf young ladies and a little baby, who was cradled in one of her sister’s arms.   He had heard there was another daughter, but she was not present with her sisters.  

 

 Aedric didn’t see the ghostly Snoe with her sisters either, and this both relieved him and worried him at the same time.   Perhaps she had not yet spoken to her parents or her siblings.   But what if she wasn’t present because she was so traumatized at seeing his Coat-of-Arms?   Later on her parents would find out and then what would happen to him?

 

He sat there turning over and over these questions in his mind and didn’t even hear the Queen’s brief address to them.   The servants were serving the first course of the banquet feast and Aedric was as stressed as a taunt bowstring, when he caught the sight of something out of the corner of his eye.  

 

It was the albino girl, escorted into the feast by a tall short-haired Drow girl dressed not for a banquet but in chainmail and riding boots and wearing swords.   Snoe came into the banquet still wearing the same dress and apron she had worn at her armorer’s bench and as they entered both girls looked directly at him.  

The short-haired Drow girl asked her something and the girl nodded shyly which caused the other girl to frown slightly.  

Aedric fought the strong urge to jump up and run out of the hall and keep running until he reached the Great Forest.  

 

As he held his breath, he watched as Snoe and the other girl (who he surmised was her older sister) took seats at the end of the table.  

 

The older Drow girl seemed to glare at him with eyes that seemed to be glowing, but after a few moments she leaned over and said something to the albino girl.   Snoe looked at her and quickly shook her head in an apparent reply, grabbing the other girl’s arm as if to stress to her the passion of her answer.  

 

The girl nodded and then looked back at Aedric again with another glare.   Aedric looked down at his plate, where a servant had placed various wonderful things, but he felt sick at his stomach as he franticly tried to figure out what to do. 

 

Fear wrestled with rage for dominance over him, but neither emotion could gain the advantage, so he sat there frozen with indecision.  

What could he do?   Apologize to the girl who was responsible indirectly for his father and brothers’ deaths?  

Should he pretend he was sorry and smile and act carefree at the banquet while inside he generated venom for the Drow Duke and his family?

Yet the lingering question of the validity of the albino girl’s testimony kept him from even being certain of his own anger.  

 

A sudden change in the noise in the hall made him look up from his deep thoughts.   Everyone was glancing again at the double doors to the hall and all were watching a young man wearing the clerical garb of one of the monks of Yesh as he meekly came across the floor toward the Queen’s table.

 

The room was filled with amazed and excited whispers as the young man nodded and spoke to several on the platform with the Queen.   The Drow Archbishop stood up and came around the table to stand with him as he bowed before the Queen.

 

Eioldth stood and extended her hand, seeming extremely pleased to see him.   He couldn’t hear what the Drow cleric said to the Queen, but Eioldth raised her hands for silence as Matron Zeatt had the monk turn to face those assembled.

 

“Friends, I am very pleased to have a great surprise for this special occasion.   We are blessed with none other than Brother Keaven, founder of the Order of St. Kinnis, who so graciously agreed to come and speak to our Knights-In-Training before their knighting.   Brother Keaven, I welcome you to this banquet.”

 

The young man smiled somewhat shyly at the Queen and then turned to those assembled.

“Thank you, Your Majesty, for the honor of addressing these young men.”  He said in a voice gentle, yet loud and clear.