Serpent's Lair (The Forgotten: Book 1) Read online

  *

  A knock sounded at Lord Telvani’s door and he called out for the person to enter. One of the manservants appeared and bowed low to him. He had had to teach them all how to display the proper respect once more after the Queen’s own sad lack of enforcing it.

  The man straightened and spoke. “Your presence has been requested in the throne room, my lord, by one of the emissaries from Treymayne, Lord Masterson.”

  Masterson was one of the Triumvirate of the Ieldran of Treymayne, their equivalent of the three most important people on their council. Rather than employ the use of a monarch to have the final say, these three people’s vote counted more than the rest should there ever be anything that required them to intervene in order to come to a decision. He was not someone Telvani could make excuses not to see.

  Telvani sighed. He had been in such a good mood too. “Very well, I shall receive him shortly.” He gathered his royal cloak around him and set a circlet on his head. It wasn’t one of the royal crowns - the Council had not let him take one of those - but he had procured a lesser one so that those with whom he interacted would see that he was the ruling party here.

  When he was settled onto his throne in a fitting manner, he waved for the guards to open the large doors to the throne room to allow the emissary to enter. Lord Masterson strode in and stood before him, inclining his head slightly.

  “Lord Telvani,” he greeted him and jumped right into the matter at hand, “The Ieldran is becoming concerned with the length of time that Their Majesties have been ill. They believe that it is time to consult with the Kiani Stones to determine a course of action and they have sent several healer mages to look at the King and Queen in order to help speed up their recovery.”

  Telvani thought he heard the hint of something not being said. Like perhaps that Treymayne was not entirely comfortable with how he was running things. The Kiani Stones were at the King and Queen’s castle, just outside the city. It was also where their bodies were currently under his mage’s supervision. He himself had concentrated his operations in the old palace in the heart of the capitol of Naoham in order to keep as many people away from the Monarchs as possible as well as be more involved in the goings-on. The Queen enjoyed letting the Council run things for the most part while she focused on her pet projects, but Telvani liked to get his hands dirty with every aspect of politics.

  He could see no way to get out of it. “Very well,” he said after a few moments. Treymayne had come up with an impressive army in the wake of Nathair’s attempt to overthrow them, and they remained diligent in their upkeep of their safety despite the Queen’s new peace with them. “I shall arrange a ceremony for this afternoon in order to properly consult with the stones, and you may send your mages here. I will have a representative from my staff currently overseeing the Monarchs’ recoveries depart immediately to meet with them. They can discuss the illness and what your mages might be able to offer in the way of aid here, without risking infecting your people. Is this acceptable?”

  Lord Masterson bowed again, “It behooves us as your allies to offer you what help we can, we shall offer it in the manner you have requested.”

  He didn’t leave.

  “Was there something else?”

  “Yes,” Lord Masterson said slowly, “we have gotten reports about talents being asked to come forward and join together. Forgive us if we are a bit suspicious of this.”

  Lord Telvani gave him his most winning smile. “I can assure you that any talents coming forward are doing so of their own free will and are doing it for the purpose of finding the Princess and a cure for the King and Queen. We have absolutely no desire to create any turmoil between our two countries now that we have finally allied ourselves. I give you my word.”

  Hours later, Lord Telvani looked out over the vast swarm of people that had gathered for the Kiani Stone ceremony. News had apparently traveled fast. He had announced that he would be calling upon their wisdom in order to find a way to help the King and Queen and it seemed that everyone in the city had attended. He, of course, knew that the stones no longer embodied the essence of the Three. When the crisis with Nuko had been alleviated they had told Layna and Gryffon that they would be leaving the world. He supposed there was a remote possibility that they would get the same sort of cryptic response that Treymayne had when the stones were positioned at the source of the river and the Three’s essences answered. But he doubted they would get any answer at all.

  It was too bad that Treymayne hadn’t insisted on keeping the stones, but seeing as how Layna had actually bonded with them, and both countries felt as though Gelendan was in greater need of healing, they had allowed her to move them into her palace gardens. If Treymayne had just kept them, he wouldn’t have to bother with asking and then worry about getting some sort of cryptic response. But, a cryptic response could be interpreted any way he wanted it to be, he supposed, especially backed up by his many ‘experts’. Therefore, he wasn’t overly worried by the possibility.

  He stepped out of the tent that had been set up for the occasion and a loud cheer went up through the assembled crowd. He smiled thinly. Raising his arms for silence, he waited patiently while the people quieted, first falling silent in the front where they could see him, and then finally all the way to the back. They stood expectantly, waiting for him to initiate the ceremony.

  He walked forward slowly to the statue into which the Kiani Stones had embedded themselves, and held out his hands towards them in a gesture of askance. The stones shimmered and danced in the light of the statue, which even now seemed to burn with an eternal flame.

  “Great dragons of the past,” he addressed them, not as the gods that they had once been worshiped as - the Three - but as the beings of infinite wisdom and power which had revealed themselves to Layna and humbly told her that they only wanted to help guide other races, not rule them, “In the wake of Nuko’s final extermination and with the country on the brink of entering into a golden age of peace and prosperity, unseen since before the Dark King’s era, a terrible incident has occurred which we request your assistance in remediating. The King and Queen, while ushering us into the new age have been struck down with illness and their precious babe and our Princess has been stolen. Please advise us.”

  The stones did nothing for a long moment and Telvani watched them smugly. Though it made him feel rather foolish to have gone through the ceremony for nothing, and to be speaking to rocks, it was worth it to be able to debase their reputation and turn people against the Queen’s views. Though even she had not claimed that they would answer if asked a question, and in fact, was trying to make the people understand that they wouldn’t, she didn’t seem able to comprehend that you couldn’t just change the people’s faith like that. Rather than accept the truth of the stories she was trying to portray, the details that most of the people latched onto were thing like the fact that the Three used to answer via the Kiani Stones. Treymayne had been receiving wisdom down the Great River for hundreds of years which was now known to be from the Kiani Stones, so the people just assumed that they would still be working like this. The fact that they did not answer a question of this importance would undoubtedly lead many to the assumption that they did not want the King and Queen to be cured rather than the truth that the dragons simply were no longer connected to the stones in the way they once were.

  When he felt as though he had waited a sufficient amount of time, he addressed the throng of people once more. “The Three have apparently decided that this is something we shall have to deal with on our own. We will have to stop relying on the Gods’ intervention and start making our own fates. By working together, we will come up with a cure for our beloved Queen and her King, and we will find our missing Princess! We have not made it through the darkness of the Dark King’s reign and the recent bloodshed of King Nathair to now lie down and crumble before this misfortune. We shall persevere! Many have come forward already to help with this
cause, but more still are needed. Until we find a cure, the more minds we having working on the problem, the faster we will come up with a solution.”

  He said a few more words of encouragement, and pointing out where the talented could present themselves. The culmination of the project would arrive before he would ever get to use any of them, but they would make themselves useful in the future. This first phase in his plan was only the beginning.

  As he turned from the statue, he caught Lord Masterson’s eye. The man had a haunted look about him and Telvani moved to ask what was the matter.

  “I didn’t believe it was true, that the gods had left us. So many years of sending prayers on the river and being answered…”

  Telvani bit back a smug smile, forcing his face into a sympathetic facade instead. “Thanks to Queen Layna.”