ZIHAEN, The Shadow of the Revenaunt, Book 2

CHAPTER 13 - KING AND GROOM (Part 2)

At the same time Ghyll crowned his wife, Vasthul was already eighty miles to the west. He had to see someone there. Someone recommended as an illegal divinatrix. She would give him a prediction of Hardingraud's plans.

He progressed but slowly; his legs felt tired and stiff, his entrails painful, and walking was an effort. It was broad daylight, but around him, the gloomy pine forest was so dark that it seemed evening. He felt uneasy. A kind of oppression hung over him, a foreboding, without knowing why or what.

Impatiently he shook his head. Vasthul wasn't a man with a rich imagination. Guilt, the memory of his many victims; all that didn't enter his mind. It hadn't even when he was a child. He had never known his parents, and the woman who raised him was a nasty old hag. On his tenth birthday, she died of an overdose of alembin in her mead, an overdose that he himself had stirred gently through it. The heavy-handed peddler with whom he traveled around for a year became his second victim, after which he went to stay with a dissolute mage. With him, he first set his steps on the path of magic, but his apprenticeship came to an abrupt end when the man suffered a crippling stroke. First stripping their house of all valuable things, Vasthul disappeared without a thought for his helpless master.

Thus it went, until at sixteen he joined the Dar'khamorth. There his qualities came to fruition, and after ten years, he was already a neophyte. Now he found himself here, on an important mission for the great leader, the Exhumyst himself.

Suddenly he saw something white move through the trees. Moments later came a second and a third. Soon there were more. Mistwolves! They moved in a circle around him, an ever-tightening circle, and suddenly one howled. The sound echoed through the trees like the cry of a demented banshee. Vasthul smiled grimly. He stopped and raised his right arm to the sky. With his hand, he began a rotary movement and a fiery thread spun from both sides of his fist. When the two ends touched, the burning ward was complete. Slowly, it sank to the ground, until Vasthul stood in a fiery circle. The sorcerer moved his fingers and the circle spread out. The flames passed harmlessly over leaves and branches, but every mistwolf it touched caught fire and soon there wasn't a living monster left. Vasthul moved his arm quickly up and down and the spell dissolved into nothingness. Exhausted, he sank to his knees. A coughing overtook him and his entrails knotted themselves until he wanted to scream in pain. There he sat among the smoking wolf carcasses, with his hands clawing his bowels and the terrible cramp crippling his body.

The throne room filled slowly. Dukes, counts, barons, dressed in stark steel or costly garments; senior officers of Guard and fleet - whoever held his fief or office directly from the king had to repeat the oath of allegiance today.

Ghyll sat on the throne of his ancestors, with Kerianna at his side. He glanced at her and marveled at her glowing looks. Then he emptied his mind as Wyllander of Leudra stepped forward, the first of a seemingly endless row to swear allegiance. For every noble Ghyll had about a minute; otherwise the ceremony would have gone on until deep into the night. Many vassals came accompanied by their eldest sons, who according to tradition were presented to the king. Hundreds of sword hilts raised to his touch, hundreds of eyes looking up at him, hundreds of mouths pledging loyalty, all melted together in a foggy, formless mass.

The only new faces he remembered were Lorover Drat, the count of Oromander, and his son Lissander. Ghyll had heard their names mentioned before, and he understood that they were descended from an illegitimate branch of the royal family. He was fully prepared to accept them as distant relatives, but they didn't seem interested. Oromander was a man of late middle age, well groomed and affable, with a sonorous voice and a little too much smile. His son Lissander was an athletic young man who seemed very pleased with himself and irritated Ghyll to the bone. The count took the oath clearly, articulating carefully, and avoided any trace of familiarity.