Shala walked the passages of the castle solemnly, her heart filled with dread, her paces quickening to satisfy her mind from the fear of arriving too late.
All the castle staff gave her but a glance, as if already knowing, as if already looking at her as the Queen. Ascendency would take a heavy price.
Before the west wing two lines of the household guard stood solemn watch, backs to the wall, armoured from head to toe, their presence restricting all at this point but Shala and the disciples of Evrelyn. Captain Merohan, the foremost of the household guard escorted her into the infirmary, beckoning her through the doors with a quiet, ‘Your Highness.’
Inside many people lay bedridden, most taken by the same disease as her father. Such a ravaging thing it was, called Pilgrim’s Malice, and true to the name it was a foreign traveller that first brought it to Attoras where the people had no resistance to it. It took its time, but untreated it decayed a person until and onto death. Only her father’s case had progressed so suddenly, resulting in a freakish onset of symptoms and a dire prognosis.
At the first signs of sickness her father was merely confined to his room, but was soon taken to the infirmary as he worsened, where the disciples could watch over him at all times.
The infirmary was the pride of the House of Evrelyn, home of the Kingly hands of healing. The folk of the land knew that if they could make it into the infirmary they could be saved from many a malady, or wounds or aches if that was their predicament.
Here the King or his daughter, or some of their disciples who shared in the power, were ready to attend to the tragedies befalling the people. Many who would be shunned as plague carriers were welcomed here, and here they had a fighting chance - yet there was no saving the King and Shala was left to wonder on the misfortune of a man falling sick by his own good-heartedness.
The infirmary was spread in many different rooms, but the hacking cough of the disease permeated through the halls. The lights were dimmed and the windows covered, because the disease made eyes sensitive. It brought darkness in all ways.
There was not even one patient she recognized since her last visit she realized despondently, they change that swiftly, and not necessarily because they are cured...All except for this one man that lay next to her father’s room, a large man they brought in many days ago from the town streets, fighting for his life, his sun-touched skin covered with feverish sweat at the best of times. He held better than most, but by the look of him Shala was not hopeful for him.
She entered her father's room, finding Joshua, a leading disciple, at his bedside. In the gloom he nodded once at the Princess, and then left. The King, with all his power and familiar to the dreams of healing like no other among the living, could not tend to himself, lest he create a corruption within his own body.
Shala was powerful in her own right and with the help of their disciples they snatched many back from death’s door. Regardless, her father was beyond their ability, the disease having taken to him like no other before.
Shala dealt with the mystery in suspicion and confusion, for the disease could not touch her. She wandered these halls daily; held their hands and comforted the dying, and even got a spatter of blood-cough on her. Never did she show symptoms and not once did she feel weak or sick, save for the effect of the misery of this place. Not once since its dawn had the infirmary struggled with a single disease as it did now. It left them rather answerless.
She sat down where Joshua had sat, pulling the chair slightly closer to the bed.
‘I am here Father,’ she announced quietly to the man lying there, deep in sleep, teetering on the edge of death, his wheezing breath the only sign of life. All the parts of her that had prepared to simply accept this moment failed and the many things she wanted to tell him simply fell away. She pushed the chair out from underneath her and went on her knees, folding her hands upright on the edge of the bed, and closed her eyes.
She prayed to the Benevolence:
‘O Blessed Father, hear now my prayer, soft and whispering. To you to Whom all burdens can be proffered, I beg of great favour. From the Crimson City and the realm of dreams, there where you rest eternally. Stretch out your blessed hand, far across the land; over mountain and river and manmade nuisance, and heal where I cannot. I petition on behalf of this man…’
She sobbed.
‘… my father, the King. Her voice became lost and she had to stop until she could speak again. She breathed and swallowed. ‘A greater man there is not, and he is not old enough to depart. Spare him, for there is no better warrior, no braver heart and no kinder touch. He is a leader of men, whose crown and sceptre keeps the people honourable and steadfast. Do not let his Kingdom fall so easily! He cannot depart when so many are in need of him, but above all - Please, please, do not take him away from me!’
She opened her eyes, and a moment later wetted her hands in the bowl next to her father's bed, a bowl filled with the Seluin waters of the mountain. Knowing it was vain she cast her magic on him again, the waters providing the substance of the spell, in a last effort to defeat the disease. There came no change. Dreading that this may be her last gestures, she checked his pillow, and threw another blanket over his legs. Rummaging through the bedside dresser, she sought the little book that would have one healer know to another what medications or herbs have been administered to the King recently. She had one quick glance at the latest entry to know there was nothing she could improve on.
As she slid the booklet back into the drawer she spotted a curious piece of torn parchment revealed in the mess of the other items. She would not have given it a second glance had she not seen her father's script on it, his hasty handwriting still inclined to tall and elegant strokes:
And the dragon said to me, ‘I have written the truth upon your mind and in your heart.’
Those who walk the mountain walk with us no more...I should've seen it back
then... To them who listen, I admit, Evrelyn is spent.
Here, I sign the death of my House, but not yet the end of all things.
Yet even then and now there will be no rest for the tears I must cry for the fate of my lineage.
That was all of it. Nothing more. Nothing the two of them had ever discussed, and it was written in a defeated tenor she did not associate with her father. It was to her almost as cryptic as it would be to the next person. She could not, and would not, pay much attention to it now. She could not even begin to guess to what purpose her father had written this note, and wondered if he had at all intended for Shala to find it. He predicts me to fail? Has it to do with his request? She let the thought falter.
For a long while she simply sat at his side, the waiting taking its toll on her.
She could not say how much time passed. She heard his breath become still and then she did what she had to do, what her father had asked her to do but a few days ago.
‘I will die,’ he had said then, still able to speak coherently at the time, ‘and you must preserve what is left of me for the Dream of Embers.’
If Shala hadn’t sat right next to him, there would be no chance of her hearing his rasping voice, strained and hoarse.
‘You will not die and I will not put a spell on you that will seal your death so that there is no return!’ Shala spoke harshly.
‘You must!’ he said, and then coughed painfully in his excitement. ‘If the spell is not wrought in time my soul will be gone from this world and then one day you must go to Nem Nemuris and strengthen the Dream. No my child, I can still do it, rather let it be me. I would ask one of the disciples and leave you out of this deed, but you are the only one powerful enough to do it, and worthy besides, my own blood!’
Shala would have protested still had her father but the strength to continue in debate, but there was already little left of him. Now at death she had nothing else to do than honour his wish. Again she dipped her hands in the bowl of water.
With resignation and great pain she held her hands out over her father’s body, shutting
her eyes, and then cast the spell. A web of light spun from her hands, branching quickly as light would if caught suddenly by a dozen different mirrors. Slowly then it flowed and eased onto her father, soaking into his skin. She looked down on him.
He looked better, his skin more pearly now than pale, the mottled areas gone and the wrinkles of his face fading miraculously. But he was completely quiet now, the low breathing gone, his chest still. It was done. ‘I love you Father.’ She kissed him on the brow, the skin already cold.
And Shala let fall her head on the bed, covering her face with her arms, and she cried inconsolably.