The Haven High Book Series (Wattys2017)

Chapter 12

Liam Nash sat in the Louis fourteenth chair, his large frame dwarfing the delicate seat, wishing he was anywhere but here. He had better things to do then answer a summons from a maniacal King, but here he sat waiting impatiently to be called into the court of Caits.

He'd approached the monarch months ago to enlist his aid. And if he knew then, what he knew now, he wondered if he would have even bothered to reach out to the unstable ruler?

Cleverly, he'd played on the king's insecurities to endear himself to the monarch, but he'd not anticipated the outcome. It was all the king could think about. He was obsessed with finding and killing a mere boy halfway around the world.

Nothing could have proven his weakness more than his exaggerated fear of an immature Halfling, who from all accounts, didn't even possess his full Cait form. In aligning himself with the current King of Caits, Liam had unwittingly thrown his lot in with a paranoid lunatic.

And it stood to reason, if he didn't need the Cait's ability to traverse the Umbra Road he'd be leaving the King to his own deranged devices.

But here he was at the mercy of the court of the European King of Caits. The seat of which could be found in Rome, Italy.

If you are not the King, a member of the royal family, or a soldier in his elite guard, then there is only one entrance you can use to access the King's court.

All others must enter through a magic portal affixed to the mouth of a famous sculpture that can be found in Rome.

The Bocca della Verità, which simply means Mouth of Truth, is a stone mask sculpture depicting a pre-Christian River God, and it can be found in the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin.

For centuries the mask had been associated with a rather macabre legend, one that made tourists flock to the location by the hundreds of thousands each year. The reason for its unshakable appeal since ancient times is: it was thought that if a liar puts their hand in the mouth of the sculpture and they did not speak the truth then they would lose their hand.

And at one time that had been true, the entrance had been spelled, however poorly, to ensure that anyone that entered and who wished to petition the king had to speak the truth or face certain death. Apparently the present King came from a long line of paranoid monarch's with some serious trust issues.

When it was discovered that the spell was affecting the human world the wizard who the ruler had commissioned to do the spell was ordered to fix his mistake. Da Vinci must have been having an off day when he originally created the entrance, but he soon put it to rights, and then conveniently put as much distance between him and the annoyed monarch by travelling to France for his remaining years.

Now in Italy and around the world the mask of the river god is considered a premiere tourist location much to the displeasure of the Cait Sith.

The entry hall sat in the alcove of a long corridor and up and down the hall cats of all description waited for their turn to speak before the King. Luxurious pillows were strewn all around, while house size cats rested comfortably waiting for their turn. Some even sat in their Cait forms on 13th to 16th century furniture and talked among themselves. Yet other waited in human form.

Even so, as far as he could tell he was the only non Cait Sith among them, which enlisted more than a few odd looks -- long lingering looks actually. Apparently Caits really don't care if it's considered rude to stare, they do it openly and unabashedly.

The court was built to impress or intimidate -- both of which were not feelings easily elicited from him, however, the opulence of his surroundings was undeniable. The corridor boasted marble columns, with travertine floors, frescos on every wall and out from that shot out arched wooden gables, but the pièce de résistance was a vaulted ceiling on which was painted the ancestral family tree of the current monarch, which he knew for a fact to be missing one name.