The Making of a Mage King: White Star (22 page)

“That is the man you found.” Sean poured himself another splash of wine and gulped it down. “Fortunately, there was enough of him left to identify. If we’re lucky, there will be enough of him left to be your son again when he wakes up.” Sean waved to where Laon and Manuel stood. “They don’t remember much of the ordeal and I never saw much reason to try to make them.”

Muscles jumped in Ramire’s jaw and he swallowed more than once before gulping his wine as well. “Where was he? I looked…”

Sean shook his head. “I don’t know exactly.” He waved his hand toward the east. “Off that direction, somewhere in the vicinity of two hundred miles, give or take.”

“We need to get him
in
somewhere,” said Elias, speaking softly, as if he were having trouble finding enough air to support his words.

“Yes… Of course…” Ramire nodded to one of the men with him and the man made a signal in the air. He stood. “I would prefer the infirmary. I have doctors.”

Sean nodded; he turned to stand visible to Cordan and held his hand up with two fingers extended.

Cordan sent two men forward. Sean handed Ludwyn’s reins to one of them and said for his ears only, “Tell Cordan that you are all to return to camp, but remain on alert. I’ll make a gate.”

“What about us?”
asked a whispered voice in his ear.

“Stay where you are,” replied Sean as if talking to his cuff while scraping his hair back with his fingers.

Cordan signaled to indicate he’d gotten the message, and Sean made the gate for them to file through.

When they were gone, Sean turned back to the table and poured himself another half glass of wine. He downed it quickly, then made the table go away and turned to the man hanging in the air.

Ramire’s men who had stood before the wall were gone, and the gate stood open.

Sean would have preferred to teleport directly to the infirmary, but the general was already uncomfortable enough with all the magic he had been using, so he popped a cough drop into his mouth, and then lifted Gérard in Prince’s saddle and mounted up behind him.

They walked back to the compound. Ramire’s men preceded them, Elias and Ramire walked on either side of Sean and his oblivious cargo. His own men followed close behind; Manuel retrieved the flag and held it high as they marched into the front courtyard of the castle.

Sean’s horses were left near the whipping post under the watchful eye of Carris, then Ramire led the way to the closest infirmary. Coincidentally, it wasn’t the one that had the badly wounded soldier Sean had healed earlier.
I wonder how the man is doing; perhaps I’ll find out later
.

In the nearest empty bed, Sean and the doctor began to cut away the leather that could now be seen to have been stitched onto him. Sean hadn’t noticed that about Laon; he had had a full helmet on, but then he had had nothing to do with disrobing him. Manuel had had a black scarf around his face, not this stitched leather mask. Different districts, different styles of god-awful punishment.

As the leather came away, the aftermath of the torture was plain to see, though the scars were fading quickly, leaving behind a wealth of accumulated dead skin and old scabs. After the leather was all removed, the doctor examined him closely, then turned to those who had brought him in for an explanation.

“I expect him to sleep for ten to twelve hours before beginning to wake,” said Sean.
Where is a chair when you need one?

“What’s wrong with him? What happened to him?” asked the doctor.

“He was a demon,” stated Sean. “Elias, why don’t you get reacquainted with your father. I’ll be staying here. Doctor, if you could get me some soap and water, I think I’ll give him a bath.” Now that the leather was gone, the stink was horrible.

“Seanad, you don’t think…” said Elias.

“No, I don’t, but I’d rather be here just in case,” replied Sean as he pulled his gloves off.

The two of them hung around for a while hoping that the inert man would stir, but though he breathed, he didn’t move.

When the requested water didn’t arrive, Sean created some and he and Laon rolled the limp man around while washing him as best they could, thankful the man had no hair to try to figure out how to wash.
I wonder if the sores caused by the leather had been part of his torture.
Did they hose them off once in a while when the stink got too bad?

They were just finishing when a young man came in toting two buckets of steaming water. He shook his head at himself. They had heated the water on the stove; of course, that would have taken some time. “Job’s done,” he said. “Let’s move him to another bed and you can take these linens.” He glanced at the inert body again. “He’ll probably want a real bath when he wakes up.”

Now there was little to do but wait. Hours ticked away. Sean dozed on the neighboring bed while Laon and Manuel stood guard, occasionally talking in whispers. Elias and his father drifted in and out, both of them anxious to know the outcome.

Sean could hear men training both near and far, and he could occasionally hear men marching or jogging in the hall. He could also think, and a dozen questions floated around in his head.
Why was this man in this place
?
Why did he have such a large force?
Have I been through this place or did I only go to the city?
I wish I could remember that ride
.
And Ramire, he was a Ludwyn commander, but where did his loyalties really lie?
What had been the order of events that made Gérard a demon and his father a general? Did Ludwyn know of Ramire’s connection to Elias, or was that just a coincidence?
The questions churned and looped until near sundown when Elias and his father came back yet again, this time with a thin stew.

“I’ve watered the horses,” commented Elias as they sat down around the bed to eat their meager supper. Sean nodded and allowed himself to study briefly the faces of the only father he had ever known and the man who was his father in turn, then he turned back to his bowl.

“You have more questions, don’t you?” asked Ramire, as he set his empty bowl aside. “You have no idea the pandemonium you caused when you blew through here. Your entrance was enough alarm all by itself; no one just walks into a place like this, well, not many anyway. Then that emblem of yours showed up; both infirmaries and half the barracks were full of wounded by the time the sun rose again.”

“Why?” Sean was appalled at the high casualty rate Ramire was hinting at. “I didn’t do that, did I?”

Ramire shook his head bitterly. “Because of…your uncle. I can only assume that you had already made other stops. He contacted me and told me that if even so much as one man attempted to desert, my son would pay the consequences.”

“Your son… So, you knew Gérard was…” Sean began, but Ramire waved him to silence and shook his head.

“I had no idea where or…” He looked over at the sleeping form on the bed, “…or what he was. All I knew was that Ludwyn had him. If I had known…this, many things would have been different.”

Sean could imagine what a commander of a force like this might do if he thought he could get away with it. “Ludwyn would have killed all of them.”

“I know that,” said Ramire, bitterly. “But maybe, just maybe my son and I would be among them and the agony would be over. I saw him snatched; he and my daughter were both taken at the same time. My wife collapsed and died then. We both knew what had happened; my wife had never been very strong, though she gave me three fine children. With her gone, and Elias god knows where, I had nothing left. I went after them. It took me nearly a month to reach the capital, and I don’t know how many horses I killed under me to do it. When I got there, Ludwyn was waiting for me. He knew I would come. He paraded them out like trophies. He gave me my daughter, kept my son, then he sent me here. Janine was able to deliver his message before she died. She had been… My son…” He couldn’t continue. Sean could see the pain on his face; the lines were already well etched.

“Why here, why this post? What happened to the previous commander?” asked Sean, trying to be gentle in the face of the man’s renewed grief, but he needed to know more.

Ramire stiffened and set aside his grief. “I don’t know what happened to the previous commander here. He was…eliminated. I didn’t ask questions. I suppose he needed a replacement; I had been a captain general of the border patrol under your grandfather until I retired shortly before he and your father were killed. I can’t even begin to understand his logic.”

“Did Ludwyn know that Elias was your son, too?” asked Sean, searching for some connection there as well.

“I don’t know; he never asked about him, never mentioned his name,” said Ramire.

He looks deflated.

“He knew,” said a quiet voice from the bed. Gérard was awake.

Sean, Elias and Ramire went quickly to the bed. “He kept asking me where my brother had gone. He wanted to know where he might be hiding. I’m glad that I didn’t know. I ended up telling him about every little nook I knew of and anything else I could think of. I’m sure that, because of me, he had men combing the entire country looking for you. I’m glad he didn’t find you.” Gérard closed his eyes weakly.

Elias took his brother’s hand. “Neither I, nor Ferris, had a say in where we went; Clayton chose our hiding place.”

“Good,” said Gérard, and with a sigh, he pushed himself to sit up. He looked around. “Where am I? What is this place?” Then he saw his father. “What happened to your hair, Dad? Elias?”

“It’s been seventeen years, Son,” said Ramire.

“Seventeen… I don’t remember that much time,” said Gérard.

“Don’t try,” said Sean. “It’s not worth it. It’s over now.” He turned back to Ramire. “One last question, sir: Where do your loyalties lie?”

“Humbly at your feet, my lord,” replied Ramire. He would have bowed low, but the bed was in his way. “I would be honored to command under the White Star. What are your orders?”

Gérard watched this exchange with ill-concealed amazement. His father was bowing down to a boy that had scarcely grown into his armor. “Who are you?” he asked.

“He’s your king,” said Elias, grinning. “He’s why I had to leave. Someday I’ll tell you about it.”

Gérard scrutinized his brother; his brain was still flitting through old and fragmented memories and current, incomplete events all jumbled together. “You still setting things on fire?” he asked.

Elias chuckled; Ramire looked pained, but he too grinned, while Sean laughed aloud. “Especially when he’s high,” he said, which won a guilty look from Elias and an utterly confused look from Gérard and Ramire.

Sean sighed. “I need to get back to camp before Mattie comes unglued. Dad, do you want to stay here or…what?”

Ramire spoke up, stricken. “I was hoping you would stay, my lord. I would like to present your army to you in the morning.”

“I’ll return, then. See you in the morning. Dad?”

“I’ll stay tonight. You can send me back to the palace in the morning.”

“Right,” said Sean. He strode out of the room, followed by Laon and Manuel. Outside the door, Sean turned to Manuel. “You stay with Elias,” he said, and Manuel merely nodded and resumed his position at the door.

Curious, Sean walked across the vast entry to the other infirmary. He wanted to see how his patient there had fared. An entire day had passed since the excitement of the morning, and by now everyone knew of the strange young man who had come in with the general, and the entire command staff knew of the happenings in the infirmary, even if they didn’t understand all of the particulars. It was, therefore, not surprising that the doctor in charge of the second infirmary knew who he was, too.

With a bow, the man eagerly showed Sean through his infirmary as if he had come there for an inspection. Sean didn’t know anything about medicine or hospitals, but the place looked clean and neat, and he knew that, at least, was important.

There were nine men here, all sleeping now. “Training accidents, my lord,” explained the doctor, speaking quietly so as not to wake them. “The instructors are careful, but accidents will happen.”

“They were fighting each other?” asked Sean.

“Yes, they were, but they’ll be back among the ranks by next week.”

Sean moved over by the man he had healed. He still looked pale, but it was an improvement over what he had seen before.

“He’s recovering nicely,” said the doctor. “I had almost given him up for dead.” Sean glowered at the man. “I couldn’t repair the artery in his leg; I couldn’t stop the bleeding enough. It’s a miracle he survived.”

“Try harder next time,” said Sean, and he left the man amidst his promises.
“It would be better for a soldier to bleed to death on the operating table than to die a much slower death from infection caused by loss of circulation,” he said over his shoulder.

Sean returned to the front courtyard before the sun had even begun to rise. His lazy day had made for a restless night; he had even tried thinking of Armelle, but that only made things worse and he didn’t want to wake her. After rousing Laon, he had informed the watch commander of his intentions, and left.