The Royals

Chapter 47

Notti placed his feet flat on the floor and perched on the

edge of his chair.

'Relax, my boy. This could take some time.' He smiled, half sad, half delighted at old memories. When I was your age, this was considered the most important work any adult elf could perform. Only the most trusted members of the clan would be so honored to instruct young ones in the proper ways. It's not just a drilling of the Principals. It's also an understanding of why we have lived this way for so many generations despite large temptations to do otherwise."

Notti nodded and looked wise beyond his years - as he no doubt was. 'I'm ready.'

'Who created the earth?"

The younger elf looked puzzled. 'I'm not sure. The S-sisters care for it, but I don't th-think they created it. Because if they did, who created th-them?'

The boy's thoughtful answer surprised Jedrek. "You've observed more than I'd hoped. We don't believe the

Sisters created the world, but rather that they guide in knowing right from wrong, which includes our dealings with this mortal realm.' Notti's brow tightened as he considered this. "Then who

created the S-sisters?" "We don't know. We can only see the Sisters' influence and know that whoever created them must have been a supreme force for good."

Notti squirmed on his seat.

'An uncomfortable thought, not to know for certain,

don't you think?'

The boy nodded. 'But far better to admit our ignorance than purport to know that which is uncertain, and to behave with the arrogance of false knowledge." Notti smiled. He had no trouble with this concept,

having already weathered that which the elder warned

against. 'What do we know of the Sisters?'

'They c-control the f-four elements and the three r

races.' 'Close but not quite. Guide, they guide the elements

and the races. We always have freedom to choose to turn away."

'Then Alvaria chose to d-defy the S-sisters?' the boy asked in a whisper, as if he expected her to strike him dead. Jedrek answered him without hesitation. 'We believe

she did.'

'But why w-would she do it?'

'You might as well ask why there is evil in the world. There will always be those who fight to be above others simply because they are more talented or bigger or older or younger or stronger. Just as there will always be those

who seek to use their gifts - and often the very same gifts - to help their fellow mortals.'

Notti chewed the skin around his thumbnail in silence, but his eyes were far away.

'I think that's enough to absorb for one day.'

The boy jumped up from his chair. 'Yes, sir, thank you, sir.' He opened the door to find his mother on the other side.

'You are here. Good,' she said, but she was address

ing Jedrek. His few moments of tranquility vanished in that instant.

'What is it?'

'We've received word that Lady Lyda has been cap tured.' Jedrek froze at the news. It had not been his goal to see her harmed, though this was always the risk. One set the pieces into motion with benevolent purpose, and

one hoped. There wasn't always a difference between

the results of good and bad intentions. People bled.

People died.

He'd aimed to train the human to confront Alvaria. Perhaps the witch had divined his plan and twisted it to

her own ends. Perhaps ... 'It's not your fault,' she said.

'I will always bear the responsibility for my requests. Beyond that, I have learned to let the Sisters work as they

will. It is a difficult thing."

'Yes, it is,' she said.

Mother and son shared identical expressions, as if to say they both knew exactly how difficult.

Maarcus refused to join Abadan in his magical chamber. If the old stuffed hat needed him, he could b****y well come to him.

Instead, he sat transfixed by the fireplace while Harmon kept brewed tea at the ready.

The physician dreamed of the death of his son. The dream was familiar; indeed, for some years it had visited him nightly. Time passed and eventually other nightmares took its place, but he'd always known it would return one day.

It began and ended with his son. At sixteen, the junior Maarcus was an active boy with no patience for the sed entary studies of his regal age-mates. He didn't need fine weather or taunting for an excuse to sidestep his lessons. Nothing seemed to matter to him but the pleasures of the moment.

Maarcus the Sixth repeatedly apologized to his deceased wife. She'd given her life in birthing their only child, trust ing her husband to carry on. Instead, too distraught over losing her, he'd done a very poor job rearing their son.

Arguments and accusations from father to son were

constant and endless. 'What will become of you? How

can you hold up your head in the King's Court?' met scowls and foul language. Finally, his son pointed out the obvious. "How can you hold me to a standard higher than that of the Great King

himself?'

'Your lack of respect for His Majesty is appalling! How dare you speak of him so? He made the Ash Kingdom what it is today. He made us what we are.'

Chin outthrust in a face rouged in the current frivolous fashion, the young man said, 'His children will undo the Land and us both. We may as well enjoy our downfall.' The boy stomped from the room, lace ruffles swaying behind at every movement of arm and leg.

Maarcus did not call him back. He didn't have the

stomach.

It wasn't long after that he made two decisions. The first was to see his boy married to someone who might civilize him, and the second was to speak with the hated magician Abadan regarding the dying king's heirs.

The latter had turned out well enough, but the former he still wondered over. For even here his son had pre-empted him by finding an unsuitable girl. A pretty thing to look at, she was as poorly reared as the worst-mannered children at court. The girl was as easily swayed as a young seedling and with no more thought to the consequences. His son haughtily confirmed he had been seeing her for some months, and that in fact she carried the next Maarcus.

'How can you be sure the child is yours and no other's?' he'd asked. 'Simple,' the other had answered in a harsh tone the

father had never heard him use before. 'Otherwise, I will

kill both her and the baby - and she knows it.'

Such savagery did not reflect well on their lineage, but this too was something the king's physician was reluctantly learning to accept.

The wedding was a quieter affair than Maarcus the

Sixth had initially hoped for. Now, he simply wanted his

son and this girl wed before the rumors became jokes.

When the child was born, Maarcus was at least relieved to discover there was no question as to the boy's parent age. As he grew, he looked every inch a Maarcus. He smiled their lopsided grin. He even had the inconvenient immunity to magical ability.

He would make a good physician, Maarcus thought. But by the time the boy was three or four, he realized this would not be. Marriage and parenting had no effect on his son, just as it seemed to completely bypass the girl he married. When Maarcus suggested apprenticing the youngest Maarcus into a clan of elves, his father made no

objections. He seemed not to notice his absence at all. The physician's daughter-in-law yielded, but the loss of daily contact with her child seemed to drain her. She grew mournful, dropping away from her friends and refusing to eat. Her son's brief visits home revived her for a time, but she eventually chose poison.

Where she came by such a fast-acting potion, Maarcus would never discover. He knew only that her last act was an attempt to poison the physician himself. His son, too impatient to wait for his own wine to be

served, had snatched his father's glass. 'Live by the sword, die by the sword,' Abadan had commented much later. Maarcus had wanted to argue. To

his great shame he could not. Maarcus groaned in his sleep. He despised the dream, itemizing all his failures brought to bear in so short a time. That he had done well with his grandson was no more comforting than a cold fireplace, especially now that the young man's fate also seemed beyond the elder's reach.