The Azure Rider Ch. 07

Continuity correction: There's a segment of conversation between King Andebert Olbrecht and Orion in Chapter 5 where they ask each other, "how did you know Queen Estrilda?" Please assume that bit did not happen and that the two men are aware of the circumstances of each other's familiarity with Queen Estrilda, and that no further information was offered on that subject.

***

He looked very different.

That was the first thought that crossed Agatha's mind. His long, shoulder length chestnut hair had been sheared off into a close crop, his face looked gaunt and his eyes were hollowed. He looked less imposing without his brown cloak, more... human. He still looked as handsome as ever and Agatha hated how her heart missed a beat when she saw him. After everything he had done to her, after the lies, the betrayal and the violation of her flesh, she wanted him. No, her body wanted him. There was a difference between the two, she reminded herself.

Orion knelt in front of her and put his arms on either side of her ears, on the pinewood dresser.

"Have you come to gloat?" Agatha asked, ignoring the storm of ambivalent emotions inside her chest. Her voice sounded sad and tired in her estimation, reflecting none of the anger that she felt towards him.

Orion shook his head and stared at her with an unfathomable expression. He moved one of his hands and cupped her neck, his thumb caressing her jaw. Agatha slapped it away.

"What do you want?" she spat, her anger lending strength to her voice.

"I came to see you," Orion said, his voice low.

"I'm indeed fortunate that the mighty Azure Rider has decided to grow a conscience," Agatha mocked, her anger growing sharply with every passing heartbeat.

Orion smiled faintly. "I have missed you too," he murmured, and tried to touch her cheek. Agatha slapped his hand away and said quietly, "I'll kill you if you touch me again."

Orion sighed and moved his hands away from her. He rose fluidly and said, "there are some things that you need to know. Please take a seat."

Agatha rose and adjusted her chiffon robe self consciously. Her maids now garbed her in it every evening, irrespective of whether Fredenand paid her a visit or not, and with one shoulder bared, she felt woefully uncovered in it in front of Orion.

"You probably do not care, but I will be in deep trouble if another man is found lurking in my wing. I am being watched and I think it is best if you leave," she said, calmly armouring herself with the dignity and propriety that Georgina had inculcated in her this past month.

"Do not worry," Orion said shortly, "Georgina has assured us of privacy for a while. Sit down."

"Georgina...?"

"Speaking of her, please remember to ask her to expose your ears when she does your hair," Orion said critically, eyeing the loose fishtail braid that lay swept across one of her shoulders.

"I cannot understand a word of what you are saying," Agatha said firmly, now certain that had taken leave of his senses.

Orion pointed towards the bed in response and drew up a chair for himself. Agatha perched herself at the edge of her bed, pressing her legs primly against one another, confusion and curiosity momentarily overshadowing her anger. Orion took in her person with a preoccupied gaze once she was seated. Agatha twirled her fingers nervously on her lap and kept glancing towards the door of her chamber, terrified that a member of the Sacred Hand, or worse, Prince Fredenand would appear at the doorway any moment.

"You need to retain your strength if you intend to ride your dragon. The resistance from the wind is quite strong amongst the clouds. Eat more."

"Allow me to inform you of my current predicament," Agatha said cuttingly, her anger beginning to return at Orion's clear ignorance and asinine remark. "Elpis is bound at the top of the Southeastern tower and there's no hope of me ever riding her."

He was quiet for a while. Then he enquired abruptly, "how did you find Princess Sira?"

"I think you should leave," Agatha responded coldly. "I have worked very hard to redeem myself in Fredenand's eyes, and I would not like to fall out of grace with him. For as long as he is alive, anyway."

Orion rose from his chair and started pacing restlessly. Then he knelt in front of her and urgently said, "We do not have very long, but I need you to listen to me. You must not kill Fredenand. We will free Elpis and take you out on the night of the Prince's coronation. You are perhaps not aware but there's scores of guards posted at and near the southeastern tower, making a secret extraction nearly impossible at the moment. However, that will change on the night of the coronation. Guests will arrive from far and wide, from Lohenstraad, Luteri and from the lands beyond the sea, and the guards will be busy elsewhere, particularly as you have seemingly gained the Prince's favour and don't seem inclined to escape. I need you to continue this charade for two weeks, then we will come for you. Listen to Georgina in the meantime, do exactly as she says. She will tell you what to do on the night of the coronation."

"Who's we?" Agatha asked suspiciously.

Orion paused for a while, smiling a little. Then he said, "I will return with your father."

"My father is dead, Orion," Agatha said slowly. "Arthur De Clare was killed when-"

"Arthur De Clare did not father you," Orion said impatiently. "Your father is one of the fair folk, his name is Finthalion. Charming fellow," Orion grimaced, "as you'll see soon."

"Fair folk?" Agatha asked.

"He's an Elf."

Unconsciously, Agatha raised her hand to her ears, tracing out the nearly imperceptible point in the otherwise rounded shell. All her life, she had thought that the awkward shape of her ears was due to a congenital defect. Fragments of a conversation with Georgina floated back to Agatha. She had said that her mother had gained the favour of an Elf... an Elf that no one had quite seen...

Agatha stared down at Orion, her mind reeling from the revelation. "When did you know?"

"When I saw your ears," Orion said. He started speaking very fast. "That, and the fact that neither Arthur De Clare nor Estrilda had green eyes, but Finthalion did. Finthalion was smitten by your mother when we arrived here, and ironically we had come here looking for the Chain of Damnation. The Chain of Damnation had been lost in transport between the two Elven territories a long time ago. I met Finthalion during my time with the Elves, and a few years after my return to Lohenstraad he contacted me and said he would be setting out on a quest to find the Chain of Damnation and whether I would like to accompany him up to Regstone. Elves are naturally shy folk, Finthalion even more so, and I think he simply did not feel comfortable walking into a human kingdom without having a human friend to accompany him. I flew up to Deep North, at the edge of the Ancient Forest and met him, and from there we flew to Regstone, looking for it. Incidentally, he rides an Azure Dragon too; Imperial and Azure Dragons live in perfect harmony in the Land of the Fair Folk, and... suffice to say, Elpis is not the first Thistle Dragon to have ever existed. King Olbrecht was then the chief of the Ministerial Council. He invited us graciously inside the Castle, offered us lodging and displayed exemplary hospitality, assuring us that he would do everything in his power to help us find this Chain of Damnation. Little did we know that he had used it to secure Elpis in the Southeastern tower of the very same Castle we were in. My suspicion is that he had used a mage or a witch to cast an Invisibility Spell over Elpis when we were here. After a few weeks, I returned to Lohenstraad. I left Finthalion here. From what I heard later, Finthalion left Regstone soon afterwards and he travelled around the world, looking for the Chain, but he could not find it.

"The Chain of Damnation can only be opened by an Elf. Since you are half Elven, I had hoped you would be able to open it, but it seems that I am still woefully ignorant of the nature of Elven magic. I will set out for the land of Fair Folk now, and I will return with Fin. If he decides to let me live after this, that is." Orion ended his explanation with a grimace.

An endless string of questions sprang in Agatha's mind, and she decided to ask the easiest one. "How... won't anyone see Ice if you're here now?"

"Siegel is very talented," Orion grinned, a familiar twinkle returning to his eyes.

"What... I don't understand," Agatha said faintly. "There are two Elven territories?"

Orion rose and cupped Agatha's face in his hands. "I will explain everything when I return," he whispered, his nose nearly touching hers. "All I want you to do in the meantime is listen to Georgina, build your strength and not kill Fredenand. Please."

"I... okay," Agatha said faintly.

Orion kissed her lips, the tip of her nose, then her forehead. "You need to be brave for just a little longer," he whispered fiercely, then released her face and edged towards the open window behind him. "Remember the hair, it's important," he said, before climbing out of the window.

Agatha sat in stunned silence for a very, very long time.

***

The man with a thousand plans.

That was what Penelope used to call him, laughing at him whenever he orchestrated elaborate contingencies to prepare for possible eventualities where things would go wrong. Orion felt grim as Ice streaked through the darkness above the twinkling, bustling city of Regstone, feeling more like the man with a thousand terrible plans. Penelope had always ridiculed him for his cautious attention to detail, and it had been caution, or lack thereof, that had taken her away from him. But for all the cautious planning in the world, he had not been able to construct an eventuality where the Disputed Corridor could be recovered without handing Agatha over to the Vandan crown. The only recourse that would have allowed Agatha to escape the cruel fate he had sentenced her to involved informing Finthalion about King Olbrecht's transgressions and allowing him to take the due course of action, but that also meant relinquishing any hope of recovering the Disputed Corridor and wilfully allowing another famine to strike Lohenstraad. For a very long time, Orion had wanted to make that choice. But, much as he tried, he simply had not been able to. He doubted whether he would be able to explain his rationale to Finthalion. People who had not witnessed hunger a day of their lives had a very different way of looking at the world, and Orion had learnt the hard way that even the most compassionate of them were naturally deficient when it came to comprehending choices that were not graced with the same privilege.

And thus, he had slaved away, refining the details around a political subterfuge of machiavellian proportions, one that involved handing his woman over to Fredenand Olbrecht in exchange for the Disputed Corridor, and then rescuing her in secret without drawing suspicion to himself, thereby escaping culpability and saving a Treaty that was based on a bare faced lie.

Grimly, he remembered the first time he had noticed her ears; it was shortly after she had lost consciousness on the courtyard in front of the Armoury after wearing herself out in an attempt to save his men. When he had laid her inert form on his bed and tried to move the thick black cloud of hair out of the way so that he could place a pillow underneath her head, he had noticed the unmistakable sharpening of the outer shell at an imperceptible point - a feature that most humans would mistake as a congenital deformity, but Orion had seen it for what it truly was almost immediately.

His first thought had been to send for Finthalion and reunite him with his daughter and work out a solution which would enable the Thistle Dragon to bond with her Rider. But the threat of winter loomed darkly in front of them, and he knew better than anyone that trouble was brewing in the Vandan borders again. Vampires were migrating to Vandan at an unprecedented rate and their troops posted in the Disputed corridor reported an unnatural influx of enemy soldiers. All of his entreaties to King Egbert to sit for a mature discourse with King Olbrecht had fallen to deaf ears; the man, like all kings before him, had refused to consider a proposition that would injure his overly inflated, misplaced sense of pride.

It had been the continued reports of empty granaries that had been the feather that had broken the camel's back, and Orion had sent his informers on a quest to bring him information about the handmaid who had escaped with Princess Esmeralda De Clare twenty four years ago. Georgina had been located easily enough; she had been recruited by the Sacred Hand soon after she had entered the services of Queen Consort Estrilda, and convincing her to work for him had proved to be easy. Georgina's unyielding loyalty to a Queen who had been long dead had surprised Orion greatly at the moment, but after he had gotten acquainted with Agatha, her fiercely honorable and tenderly sweet disposition, even and especially at the face of great personal adversity had all but pointed at a similarly endowed parent. It lined up with his initial impression of Estrilda from their short acquaintance so many years ago.

Georgina had explained to him that she had been assisted by two members of the Sacred Hand in her journey across the Vandan borders with the infant Princess. But then, on a stormy night, their carriage had been ambushed by a band of robbers and Georgina had careened out into the night in a bid to save Agatha. She had left Agatha on the first doorstep that she had seen and had run away in the opposite direction to chase the robbers away from her. When she returned a few days later, she was unable to locate the neighbourhood where she had parted with Agatha, and had spent the intermediate years in absolute misery, eaten alive by the guilt of a mission not completed. The old woman had burst into tears when Orion had informed her that the Princess was alive and well.

After handing Agatha over to King Olbrecht, Orion had spent a month with very little occupation to distract him from the constant stream of unpleasant thoughts that pervaded his consciousness. He was a man of action and sitting idle, away from Council duties had only served to amplify his anger and helplessness, yet the charade had been crucial to the next part of his plan and he had had no choice but to stick to it. When Sir Alexander had returned from the Disputed Corridor, unknowingly he had furthered Orion's cause by squandering his reputation as far and wide as possible. Orion had learnt very early in life that contempt was the most easily engendered human response. Contempt bred underestimation, and underestimation often lulled his adversaries into a false sense of security. In this instance, the pretense of slow unraveling served two purposes. On one hand, it accounted for his continued absence from court and council meetings and allowed him to travel back and forth between Regstone and the land of Fair Folks while leaving the general impression that he was mourning in his tower or drinking himself unconscious in a tavern somewhere, one the other hand it lowered any threat he might have posed in the eyes of the innumerable Vandan informers that littered the court. In a way, Orion was grateful to Sir Alexander. The man's insistent slandering expedited the ruse of Orion's slow unraveling, while his general competence ensured that Orion would be able to take a hiatus from his duties without having the army fall apart at his wake. Orion had not corrected Sir Alexander when he had called him lovesick and irresponsible; after all, the most convincing of lies were based on a foundation of truth.

However, the most important part of his performance was yet to come, and Orion had plans to carry it out when King Olbrecht inevitably sent his Dragon Riders to Rubenstraad when Princess Esmeralda disappeared. In the meantime, Orion simply prayed that Sir Alexander and Sir Blaxton would not tear each other apart. Both men were pragmatic and competent on their own, however, they were no good when it came to working together, and for as long as Orion could remember, his main function as the General had been to act as a mediator between the two men.

Siegel had been a crucial part of his plan, for while Orion attended to rescuing Agatha, Siegel had constructed a fairly realistic apparition of Ice, presently occupying the top of his tower. Chamber maids were prohibited from entering his tower for the time being, and to every outsider, Orion was recuperating in his tower, willfully distancing himself from society. Jonathan was the only living soul who was aware of the entirety of his schemes.

When Orion had narrated Agatha's fate and the motive behind it to Siegel, (conveniently omitting his profoundly personal interest in her) Agatha's erstwhile lover had received the news with surprising equanimity. Orion had chosen to meet him alone at a great risk to his person as Siegel was an exemplary wizard who was more than capable of killing him in the blink of an eye, even with Eustace's ward blocking his way, but Orion was a good judge of character and he had reasoned that Agatha's unyielding loyalty to the boy must have been rooted in firm foundation, and by translation he must be of a reasonably mature, pragmatic disposition. His gamble had paid off and he had returned from the meeting unharmed and with the newly appointed Chief Wardmaker of the Castle in tow (intended to be a replacement for Eustace). Siegel, besides creating an apparition of Ice, had also created a ward for Ice in an impressively short time, one that would keep him invisible as long as he wore it. Orion had been pleased to discover that the shield of invisibility extended to him whenever he was atop Ice, which meant they were presently flying through the clouds unseen like a pair of ghosts. Orion hoped to postpone the inevitable rift that would surface between them, because Siegel Lancelot was skilled, intelligent, useful and most importantly, displayed a degree of sensibility and integrity that was rare at his age. He did not wonder at Agatha's favouritism towards the boy now that he had met him, and he was not eager to have Siegel as an enemy.

With every aspect of the plan in its place, Orion now turned himself towards the most difficult part of his journey: informing Finthalion that he had fathered a daughter and that Orion had bartered said daughter for a piece of land, handing her over to a man who was infamous for his cruelty.

'I don't want to die,' Ice hummed nervously. 'Two hundred is quite young for a dragon.'

Orion willed himself to relax and reminded Ice that Finthalion owed him his life. Surely he would not kill someone who had saved his life twice? Orion could not be too sure. While Elves were notorious for not meddling in the affairs of humans --they had stayed cruelly aloof when Malthus Vuldrethe had started butchering Azure Riders-- they were also quite well known for protecting their own kin with a fervour that humans seldom displayed.

'We could go to the other Elven territory,' Ice repeated for the thousandth time, 'any Elf can open the Chains of Damnation.'

'The other territory is too far away. We will not be able to return in time for the Prince's coronation,' Orion reminded him again.

And thus, they streaked in brooding silence through the pitch black darkness, with little to distract Orion from the memory of her haunted, emaciated frame. When he had given her away, he had been certain that Agatha would never forgive him for what he had done. What he had not foreseen was that he would not be able to forgive himself either.

***

Orion reached the edge of the Ancient Forest five days later. He disembarked from Ice well outside the wooded area, in the middle of the rolling prairie grasslands that stretched southward from the edge of the Forest, and started hiking towards the woods with long, purposeful strides. The Fair Folk lived further north, deep in the bowels of the Ancient Forest. Elves were social creatures, much as humans were, and the most densely populated city of the Elves, Ost-in-Edhil, was a further two days' walk from where Orion was located presently. Orion had learnt during his last sojourn with the Fair Folk that it was considered terrible manners for an outsider to fly directly into Ost-in-Edhil or any of the other Elven hamlets that littered the Ancient Forest. If lady luck favoured him, he would meet one of the Fair Folk inside the Ancient Forest by the next day, and then Orion would be allowed to travel on dragon-back into Ost-in-Edhil with his or her permission, but Orion understood that there was a slim chance of that happening, and had resigned himself to the prospect of hiking through the snow-covered woods for the better part of two days.