CHOSEN (31 page)

“Governor Taldic will then refute those claims, if needed.”

“This is some kind of trick,” Ambrose said and sat back down, on the couch this time and wondered if he’d be able to get up again. Xavier came and stood over him.

“I don’t know what it is, honestly. I’m inclined to agree with you that there could be some nefarious purpose at work. However, there was enough doubt during the proceedings today that make accepting Alse’s demand more necessary than not, Your Majesty.”

Ambrose groaned. Anytime Xavier came out with the title it meant something. Sometimes it meant more than one thing at the same time. In general, it indicated Ambrose shouldn’t ignore him or refuse his request.

“For a moment only, then,” he said to his Lord Chancellor, who nodded easily enough.

“I’ll have Melgan come in, too. No need to make the Governor comfortable,” Xavier said and made Ambrose laugh. There was a history there between those two men, Melgan and Alse, that went back to childhood.

“Before you go, old man, I need a hand up out of this couch,” Ambrose said. He wasn’t kidding and with an amused smirk, Xavier came over and helped him up.

“You need to sleep.”

“Yes, well, the obvious eludes me.”

Xavier departed to retrieve the Governors. Ambrose sat at the side of Dynan’s bed again, on the stool this time to avoid the need of future assistance. He could get off the stool well enough and not collapse.

“Governor Alse wants to come look at you,” he said aloud to Dynan, not sure why he was, except to cover the noise of the machines. “One day, maybe you’ll get to deal with Rueben instead of his father, the bothersome old...And the feud or whatever you’d like to call this constant dispute between us will finally be over. Maybe.”

The door opened, and Shalis came in instead of Governor Alse. Her Lady in Waiting followed. “Good morning, Poppe. Dr. Geneal said I could come in.”

She had a glass in hand and held it out to him. “Shalis, Governor Alse is coming in and I don’t want you—”

“You can’t let him,” she said and set the glass down so the juice sloshed to the rim. “He said Dynan was going to die.”

“I know. This is official and you can’t be in here for it, and if you see the Governor in the hall, you may not speak to him, little girl. I know he upset you.”

Like her mother, Shalis had a temper, hardly more than a brief spring storm at this age. Governor Alse wouldn’t appreciate a ten-year-old berating him. Shalis considered the request, really not looking like she would listen. Also like her mother, she was difficult to read. She picked up the juice again and handed it over.

“I brought this for you. I want to talk to Dynan first.”

Ambrose considered an argument and decided it would be easier to say yes and delay Alse instead. “Just for a minute. Maybe you can berate him into waking up.”

She climbed onto the railing, and with Liselle behind her, started to do just that. “You need to stop worrying everyone so much and wake up,” she said to Dynan, while Ambrose took out his comboard to let Xavier know he should delay. “You’ve had enough time now. I want to go back home, Dynan.”

“Why don’t you try telling him how much you miss him,” Liselle said quietly, “instead of yelling at him.”

“I told him already and it didn’t work.”

One of the machines hummed and the tone of it changed. Ambrose rubbed his eyes as he glanced up at the monitor, looking at all the indicators of his son’s life the way he had every day since this started. Nothing was different about them, except the machines were making a different noise still, not an alarming noise, but operating as though on a different frequency.

And then he saw it – a blip on the brain scan that had been for days and days as flat as the floor.

“Did you see that?” Liselle asked. “Keep talking to him, Shalis.”

“Is it working?”

There was another tiny rise and fall of the data set, a mild scribble.

Ambrose crossed the room in three steps to the com system that would immediately alert the doctors that they were needed and then stood behind his daughter, grabbing her so tightly she squirmed. “Dynan, we’re right here.”

He let Shalis go some as he leaned over Dynan. Another blip rippled across the screen. The next second, Geneal Elger flew through the door, ignoring everyone else but Dynan, her eyes eating up the readings. Her face was tense, concentrated, but then she heard the noise and saw the blip.

An alarm went off.

Ambrose thought his heart might stop. “Geneal?”

“He’s trying to wake up.”

She started operating the control pads of various monitors, and the machines that regulated Dynan’s life, looking from him, to the screens and back again.

“He’s not really supposed to be able to do that,” she said while Ambrose was still trying to process the first part. “We have him sedated.”

She seemed at a loss for a moment, on the precipice of some doctoral opinion, her eyes shifting back and forth as though trying to recall an obscure fact. Ambrose was shaking when she turned to him.

“I need to take him off the support system. I can put him right back on,” she said quickly. “But we have to find out if his heart is trying to take over and if he’ll breathe on his own. The risk is minimal, the benefit huge.”

“All right,” he said in hardly a whisper, and then motioned to Shalis. “Come here.”

“She’s all right,” Geneal said and started the process of taking Dynan off the thing that had kept him alive for seven days. “You could keep talking to him.”

“I’m too scared,” she said and ran to Ambrose.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Geneal said with all the confidence of someone who believed without doubt in her words. “He’s going to be all right, even if taking him off doesn’t work right now. This is progress. I didn’t actually expect to see this for days. I’m all ready.”

For several excruciating moments it didn’t seem like anything changed at all, except for several indicators plummeting. Shalis buried her face more and Ambrose couldn’t help the sharp intake of breath. Geneal started giving Dynan injections.

“It’s a stimulant,” she said tensely and her teeth clenched together. “Come on. I know you can do this.”

The little blips on the monitor changed to larger blips and then everything started to climb upward. Geneal started waving them all over.

“Talk to him,” she said. “It’s working, Your Majesty. His heart is beating. There’s good lung function. He’s waking up. Talk to him.”

Her eyes lifted to the door and Ambrose saw for a second the two Governors standing there with Alse in front. “Is he dying?” the Governor asked and thought to come in, but Melgan was there too, with a hand flat into his chest.

“No, Governor,” Geneal said and moved out of the way so Ambrose could reach Dynan’s side. “He most certainly is not.”

The sound of running came and Roth shoved by Governor Alse to get into the room. “We found Dain.”

~*~

Chapter 24

The day outside was bright and inviting. Off in the distance, clouds obscured the jagged peaks of the Tarameik Mountains. Dynan looked through the viewscreen attached to the wall of his study at the pristine view, glancing up from the parchment he was trying to finish writing on Alurn Telaerin’s rule of the Kingdom, his fingertips covered in black ink.  No one wrote like this anymore, but for this project, it seemed appropriate.

As he dipped the pen into the ink well, Dynan wondered what Polen Forb would think of his conclusions and then didn’t know where the thought came from or the ensuing headache. He’d already spent too many weeks trying to sort it out, to no avail. None of his questions had answers. Dynan didn’t know anything, except to know he didn’t remember what happened.

Dain’s memory was worse. Dain remembered meeting Bronwyn Esrel and nothing else. Dynan was afraid to explain the extent of their relationship because of the pain he knew it would cause. Maybe it was better, since she was gone. Dain’s injuries were less severe but he was in more pain. He hardly had the strength to stay out of bed more than a few hours. He was sleeping now.

Dynan looked down through the opening of his shirt at the scar, a spidery, many-fingered thing that covered the left side of his chest. Everyone said it was a miracle he was alive. Dynan didn’t remember getting stabbed. When he thought about it, or tried to, the near constant pain in his head rose to a pitch that sent him back into bed or sometimes onto the floor.

He knew something drastic had happened to them both. He knew the information they were given about it was carefully monitored. Their friends were told not to talk about it and they didn’t.

Dynan set the engle pen down and decided he’d done enough. The only constant in his life was the amount of class work he was required to do. He’d been given extra time, considering he’d only been out of bed for the last two weeks out of almost two months of it, but it was still expected.

He looked at the viewscreen again, feeling the call to go to those mountaintops. He knew the meadow he kept seeing in his sleep, and in almost every waking hour now. He’d been there before, but now there was a sense that it was a different time. Dynan knew he had to go back and find something. He had no idea what.

He rolled the pages of parchment together after they dried enough and tied it up with a piece of string. He took the package to the door and thought for a second to attempt the delivery himself, but the guards stationed there, Ralion Blaise and Sheed Lasser, wouldn’t let him. They told him they would see that Master Cribe received the report.

“Is my father in?” Dynan asked, nodding across the hall to the King’s door.

“No,” Ralion said. “He’ll be up in a few hours.”

“Dinner?”

“Formal,” Ralion said. “He’ll have a few minutes.”

“I don’t know that I’ll be awake for it,” he said, and kept the rest to himself. Ambrose was as unavailable as ever. Another constant Dynan could have done without.

“I’ll tell him,” Ralion said and closed the door for him.

Dynan made a decision then, a rash and possibly dangerous one. He was tired of waiting and wanted to do something, anything to get rid of the nagging sensation of unfinished business that sometimes kept him awake at night. He went back to his room, and changed into warm clothes. At the last minute he strapped his sword on – he was going out by himself without a guard after all and the last time...

He didn’t want to continue the thought, but it came in anyway. The last time, his guard had died. Images flashed through his mind, coming to him in chewed up bits; Colin Fryn pulling him into an alley and then staring into the dark with lifeless eyes.

Despite his culpability in the death of his guard – and Dynan knew he was responsible – he couldn’t remember it, but he knew it – the pull of finding whatever this lost thing was irresistible. He had to go.

Dynan told himself nothing would happen this time. He wasn’t leaving the Palace grounds. It would be all right, but he kept the sword anyway.

The ceiling panel was less easily reached. The strength he needed to hoist himself up into the eaves wasn’t there. He ended up half jumping, half pulling, and half using the wall for leverage to get up there. He ended up knocking over the chair and leaving a mark on the paint. After all that noise, he slid the panel back in place, hoping Regan and Lors wouldn’t report him missing too soon.

Getting the rest of the way outside left him winded and cold in a snow bank. Winter kept its grip on the Palace and the mountains even though they were closer to spring. Dynan didn’t turn back, trudging through the piled up mounds to reach the barn. It was situated off in the far corner of the grounds with rolling, snow-covered fields behind it.

The barn was warm. The horses were in and already had their exercise for the day. There were a lot of stable hands to manage the fifty horses the King owned. At this hour of day, they were all of them at lunch.

Dynan found his horse, a giant Frielian stallion he’d gotten last year, snorting in his stall, prancing the moment Dynan reached the gate. His name was Galarin.

Dynan maneuvered the bridle on, but couldn’t manage the weight of a saddle. He didn’t need one, despite that his father insisted on it. Galarin was as well trained an animal Dynan had ever owned. He retrieved a couple thick horse blankets, one for the animal and one for him that he wrapped up in underneath his cloak.

It was fortunate that the large stable doors were on a keypad. Dynan questioned whether or not he’d have the stamina to make it all the way up into the mountain, but the moment the door was open, Galarin went through it out into the lane behind the barn. The stallion knew where they were going and headed off at a light cantor.

They came to the patch of woods behind the Palace, trotting along the main trail that someone kept clear of snow so that the King’s children might not kill themselves riding in the winter.

Dynan pulled back on the reins on the other side, standing on the edge of the wood line, listening. He thought he heard something, another horse maybe, and was afraid someone was following him, a guard probably, following the trail.

He kicked the horse into motion and he carried Dynan up beyond the second patch of woods, through the gorge between two humps of mountain, by the drop that would kill them both, closing on the meadow an hour later.

Dain tried to reach him. Dynan managed not to answer and not to give away any indication of where he was. It helped that Dain wasn’t trying too hard since a ship could still reach Dynan in very little time and stop the whole expedition.

Dain tried again just a few minutes later. Dynan could easily imagine his brother being told to use the ability his father constantly told them not to.

“I’m aware of the irony,” Dain said. “Where the hell are you? Have you lost your mind? Do you have any idea the state of panic you just threw the whole government into?”

Dynan tried not to let Dain see anything but it wasn’t possible.

“You’re riding? Riding a horse? What the—”