The General's Legacy

Chapter Seven: The Storm (final part 3)

Booming explosive sounds that were not thunder had shaken the windows of the orchestra house. The glow of the palace fire filled the sky with a false dawn. The musicians had stopped playing. Cory and Sebastian looked at each other.
"What was that?" Sebastian asked as if Cory would have an answer.
The rain battered the windows for several moments and then everyone seemed to decide home was the best place to be.

When Cory and Sebastian eventually escaped the orchestra house and reached the once lush palace lawn the collapse of the main hall greeted them. A breathless, weeping voice behind them spoke.
"They're all dead. All of them. And the dead... are walking."
Cory turned around first.
Suki, Mrs Samshaw's assistant, eyes red, face pale and tear streaked.
"It... it... was Pragius, only different. He..." She swallowed not knowing how to make the words come out.
The rain hissed into clouds of steam as it fell on the flames.
"He killed the king, just grabbed him by the throat. It was like all the flesh drained out of him."
Sebastian looked at her like she was an infected wound, his lips curled in revulsion.
"You're not making any sense. What do you mean ALL dead and walking. The king killed? By Pragius?"
Suki started again. The conversation she heard as she came through the door, the moment she saw the thing that was Pragius turn to kill the king when she dropped the tray and ran from the palace. Right up until now when she came out of her hiding place in the bushes by the burning lodge.
"Pragius using magic," Sebastian ranted "a burnt walking skeleton with a crown, a cloak and a book. Turning everyone into the walking dead. Impossible. How? It can't be."
"Where is the captain of the guard, why isn't he here?" Cory demanded.
"He... he was in the palace, with the rest of them. I was serving at the annual dinner for the commanders and captains."
"Oh..." the word that came next was normally used by soldiers in the tavern.
Cory hunted the burning palace with his eyes as if guidance he needed was there in the fire somewhere.
"Oh God..." he said looking skywards with the rain forcing him to close his eyes. He stood for many short breaths, thoughts as tumultuous as the waters in a waterfall plunge pool, still searching for guidance, an answer.
One answer came to mind.
"Where are you going?" Sebastian's eyes were wide.
"To get help from the castle."
"What am I supposed to do?"
"Get what guards you can together. Get them guarding road junctions and bridges."
"I don't know how to command soldiers, you're the general."
"Me?"
"You were training for it and in case you hadn't noticed... Cory... the next nearest thing Valendo had to a general just burnt in the fire before getting up following... our brother. I CAN'T DO THIS!"
Pain and anger fuelled his voice and the soldier's tavern word came again from Cory's mouth, then he yelled.
"WELL WHY DON'T YOU JUST GO TO CHURCH... AND PRAY THEN."
Stumbling, then running from the palace, Cory slipped in the mud that was once a lawn.

*

Sunny's hooves beat the ground, rain still falling. Water, tears or maybe both streaming out of Cory's eyes.
There were few things Cory kept in the castle, just things his grandfather had given him. Like the letter.
This, the horse under him and the cloths on his back were the only things in the world he had left.

The letter lay open on the table in Garon's old office. Cory worked with a knife to loosen and remove a stone in the wall. Taking the key he found there he unlocked the long narrow chest under the box bench beneath the window.
Reading the letter again he took from the chest another key and a smooth brown cubic stone set with a second smaller green stone. He walked through the castle and up the south west tower, conquered so many times and yet the door at the top had always remained an enigma. Unlike the other wooden doors in the castle, this door was just like the one at the base of the castle that gave access out to the rope bridge leading to the waterfall. It was cold, almost black and made of iron. The key unlocked it and he entered expectantly surveying the room. Engraved on the floor was a circle as wide as he was tall with four lines radiating out from a socket to the edge. The segments were filled with small multi-coloured pieces of tile. He put the stone in the socket and stepped backwards out of the circle.
Nothing happened.
As instructed by the letter, Cory left the room locking it behind him feeling none the wiser.