Kingdom in Distress Read online

well as her industrious people, there were many persons of considerable influence who bore him great respect.

  Still, their childless marriage brought the King and Queen much sorrow.

  Kingdom of Hope

  One evening, late in the springtime of the sixteenth year of King Edward's reign, he and Queen Katherine were walking along a beautiful hiking trail on the King's private reserve. The trail was carefully attended by a small army of gardeners, who would spend the early morning hours planting and pruning, in order to ensure that only the most beautiful and sweetly fragrant flowers were allowed to persist along the trail's edge. Tree branches were carefully trimmed back, and roots that threatened to disrupt the carefully arranged flagstones on the trail were removed. It was a favorite place for the King and Queen to walk when they wished to have a few moments of privacy to themselves, to enjoy the beauty of Daventry, the experience tinged only by a sense of gentle melancholy at their lack of children. The royal couple had taken their supper in a small clearing in the forest, which included a scenic, crystal-clear pond, which was handsomely adorned by a fountain of carved marble.

  As he was wont to do, King Edward tossed a copper half-penny into the pond, and quietly wished for children.

  “Look, my love;” King Edward beckoned to his Queen, who gracefully stood from their picnic bench and smoothly made her way to his side. Though verging upon middle-age, Katherine was still lovely; her face lined only with the subtlest of crows' feet at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Her long, chestnut-brown hair descended down to her broad and shapely hips, completely unmarred by gray; the King found himself marveling at her appearance, and it brought a broader smile to his face. “The coin did land upon the outstretched palm of yonder carven child,” he said, speaking softly. “The people say that this is a blessing: if your offering lands in the outstretched hand of the statue in a giving pond, your wish shall most certainly come true!”

  “Fair even, my love,” Queen Katherine responded, and there was a sparkle evident in her eyes, as she beheld her beloved husband's mood lifting. “Let us now head home, for tomorrow the day is long, and we might yet bring the evening to a close on a contented note.”

  “Verily, we shall!” declared the King, and after offering his Queen his arm, he picked up their picnic basket, and proceeded to lead her back onto the colorful and fragrant forest path.

  They had not trod its green and earthy surface for more than thirty feet, when the aroma of the flowers was arrested by the sudden scent of lavender, smooth and even, which assailed their majesties intensely as though it were coming from every flower in the reserve. A translucent cloud of violet smoke was suddenly seen to ebb and swirl about their ankles, little more than a mist. There was little time more than what was required for the good Queen Katherine to give a small and startled cry, whereupon a man in green robes appeared, standing in the midst of the fragrant cloud where before there had been no-one. He had high aquiline features, handsome but sharp, and looking somehow cruel, though not in any sense malignant; more in the same fashion as that in which the beak of a falcon might look capable of great wickedness.

  In one hand, he gripped a long staff of oak wood, carved with a series of indecipherable runes, the shapes of which King Edward did not recognize; they seemed to almost flow along the plain wood of the staff. In his other hand he carried the skull of a deer, from whose nostrils and empty eye-sockets, the oddly silken cloud of smooth, violet vapors emerged. The skull was itself carved with several arcane signs, and as with those on the staff, they could be seen to move themselves, slowly, albeit only if not stared at directly. Both royals found themselves all but mesmerized by the display, out of that sense of curiosity common to all those for whom the practice of magic is unfamiliar.

  “My King,” the man (clearly a sorcerer of some kind, though the King recognized nothing else about him) spoke smoothly and evenly, in a deep voice that seemed altogether too much for his slim, almost willowy form. Strange are the ways of magicians, King Edward reflected almost absently. “I am the Magus Deveureaux.”

  “Magus Deveureaux;” the King spoke sternly, though taking care not to offend this sorcerer, who seemed as though he might be a being of some considerable power. “Prithee explain your intrusion, for these are my private lands, and you have given my Queen a most unkind fright.”

  “A thousand apologies, your Majesty,” intoned Magus Deveureaux, whereupon he did bow before the Queen, in all seeming sincerity. “I wished only to beg an audience, and under the circumstances, I feared that waiting for the appointed hour might well be unseemly, for I bring you news of some urgency.”

  “Speak, then,” said the King, still wary but appreciative of the man's apologetic demeanor. His appearance was not entirely sinister but magic was, after all, a strange and otherworldly thing, and who knew to what eerie extents such a mystic might have to stoop in order to wield the powers he so evidently possessed? It was all well beyond the King's understanding and he knew it, thus he made no presumptions in advance.

  “My liege,” the sorcerer continued, his eyes seeming to gleam a dull golden hue in the light of the evening, “Long have I known, as have many throughout Daventry that your lack of children is a source of great suffering to you. It is clear that you are healthy and rightful, and your people love you, thus they speak no ill of you.”

  “Such is true,” said the Queen, having recovered, though she eyed Deveureaux with a greater suspicion than that of her husband, as was her cautious way. “They are good people, the folk of Daventry; they love a regent for their virtues, and forgive them their shortcomings. I am proud to be the Queen of such a people.”

  “Aha!” Magus Deveureaux beamed, looking for the first time outright kindly, and he snapped his fingers as though in some moment of great triumph or revelation. “Shortcomings, you say but what shortcoming of yours is this? Surely, the Gods themselves have frowned upon you most unfairly or perhaps, it is that you are possessed with such greatness between the two of you that no single offspring could possibly survive to contain it—as your people wont to say? Whatever is the case your great and noble majesties, upon being made aware of your predicament, I decided to dedicate myself to a cure and at long last, I have it! An elixir which, upon being imbibed by the queen once a night for a fortnight, will allow her upon the fourteenth night to conceive a child who will be born healthy and strong.”

  “Truly, you say?” King Edward cried, thinking at once of his half-penny toss—it was too good to be true, surely, and Queen Katherine did cast her husband a cautioning stare... but, what if it were true, against all odds? The world was after all, during the time of King Edward, still full of strange and wondrous things. The King was willing to try anything at this point. “What, good Magus, would you ask of me in return for your miracle potion?”

  Magus Deveureaux extended a clean and well-kept hand, and in his palm there suddenly appeared a large, clear crystal vial, its transparent sides tinged with the faintest hint of a soft, sky blue. It contained a golden liquid, and was sealed with a white cork set thickly with a green wax. “The cure is yours, my King; all that I ask, upon such time as it may be confirmed to have worked as promised is a single item from the possessions of your household, an item of my choosing, for while the possessions of a king are of great utility to one who dabbles in the subtler arts, such as myself, there are those which absorb the regal essence of your appointed station the more intensely, and these would be of greater value to me, for such qualities are of no particular use to you.”

  The King agreed, readily; even the Queen looked hopeful, for though she was the more cautious of the two, she saw little harm in parting with a simple household possession, and the prospect of bearing her husband an heir and perhaps more children still—for the Magus had said that this was a cure, was too great a thing to deny any chance thereof. At his wife's approving look, the King reached out and took the elixir from the hand of Magus Deveureaux, along with an illuminated list of instructions, which the sorcere
r did proceed to conjure up next. Marvelous stuff, the arcane arts, thought Edward. The King and Queen were then counseled by Deveureaux to ensure that they did follow those instructions to the letter, lest the cure have no effect. He assured them however, that the sweet-scented, golden substance which he did name the “milk of the Sun” would under no circumstances have any harmful effect upon the Queen's person.

  “Majesties I am truly thankful, as all of Daventry shall certainly soon be, of this I assure you.” The Magus smiled, his expression still seeming kindly. “I do humbly beg your pardon for this intrusion, and when next you do see me, it shall be upon a visitation of a more appropriate time, and in more appropriate environs.” The sorcerer bowed before the King and Queen who did thank him profusely, whereupon he vanished as suddenly as he had arrived. The lavender mist sank quickly into the ground, causing some slight discoloration but no longer filling the air so intensely with its fragrance and, surrounded by the beauty to which they were accustomed, it was hard for King Edward and Queen Katherine to refrain from hoping that the sorcerer's elixir would work.

  Within the hour, their royal