Chapter 7

Taryn

“Now is the best time to strike” Ser Arien clapped his fist on the table, raising his voice. The sound echoed in the room.

“We are in the middle of snowfall; the harvest is poor. If they are in trouble, so are we,” Ser Grander replied calmly, sitting on his wooden bench. She looked into Arien’s eyes as he retorted with a frowning look, dissatisfied with the answer.

Taryn took the glass cup from the table and sipped wine while his lords quarreled with each other.

Ser Grander continued to destroy every idea proposed by the men around her. The more proposals he discarded, the more enraged the lords were, and they raised their voices, fueling discontent.

The men continued to argue with each other, Taryn observed them silently with the cup near her lips, while with her index finger, she tapped on it; her elbow was resting on the armrest of her seat.

Sitting next to her, Ser Grander. He was one of her eldest lords and the only one she could trust blindly. Grander was like a father figure to her, after years of wandering, he was the first to welcome and protect them. He was the most loyal man she knew; Grander would never turn his back on her, something she was not entirely sure of about her other lords.

She drank some more wine, then laid the cup on the table. Torches weakly lighted the room lit along all sides while the large wooden door in front of her was closed and guarded by two guards armed with spears. Both wore a red band tied to their forearms, the colour of her house. The walls of stone were bare, devoid of any ornament or painting, the little lighting they had, came from the flames of the torches that roared, but, despite the fire of the torches, the room remained mostly in penumbra because of the dark sky outside.

Taryn turned to the large window to her left: the glass was divided into squares, divided into two large doors, colored purple, and the sides were engraved with some drawings and colorful runes. Despite the large windows in the room, there was no light, the sky was dark, completely black. The wind slammed furiously against the windows, the storm that was raging outside had been going on from the night before, and although it was not the time of year for storms like this, the whole area had been hit, forcing the commoners to remain locked in their homes. The sky seemed dark, like the middle of the night, but the day had just begun. She looked carefully out of the window, the snow being carried violently by the fury of the wind dancing at the time of music played by her mother.

If she had concentrated, she could see every single bow, she could feel the wind as if they both had a life of their own, as if they had a soul and tried to show it to her.

“Your Majesty?” Ser Grander called her. Taryn looked away from the purple window and placed it on the long oak table around which all his lords, or at least those who remained faithful to her late father, were seated.

“What do you think? What should we do?” Taryn took the cup and drank a little wine while looking at the map lying on the table.

It depicted all of the north, what was to be her kingdom, divided into the various regions that belonged to the lords, there were also marked borders. The North took all the northern portion of Mihdel and bordered the kingdom of Aeris and Haefest. That map was designed specifically for the ruler of Elder, it accurately marked every bit of land, river, lake, and forest in the kingdom. It also reported every single castle belonging to every lord, every village, and even the great capital of the kingdom, Eldhia.

It was all drawn there. The drawings were well-groomed, the fruit of the hard work of masters and scholars.

She observed the position of Eldhia, on which were placed wooden statuettes in the shape of a dog representing the forces of her uncle. Taryn had chosen such a representation because a dog befitted for the usurper.

She turned her gaze to the location of Ser Grander’s small castle on which the bear-shaped figurines representing her allied forces were placed. Taryn observed the details of each statuette and put her hand under her chin while silence fell in the room.

At the time, her forces were south of Elder, in the Grander castle near the western border, with Aeris. They had been there for at least three full moons. her army was hungry, and they were in the middle of a storm. They could not stay there much longer, and the other lords did not have enough food to feed the army, which was eager to move. Finally, after years, she had managed to rally her forces into a single army led by the commander-in-chief specially chosen by Taryn. But until then, the men couldn’t move except to go from one base camp to another, but Taryn knew her men wouldn’t be good for long. Like the queen herself, they trembled to take back what belonged to them, while her uncle was safe within the walls of Eldhia with an army that counted twice as her men and plenty of food for another ten years.

Everywhere he looked, Taryn saw her disadvantage. After twenty-five years, she was still at a disadvantage. The more time passed, the more she moved away from her throne, from her house, and everything that had belonged to her ancestors and had been taken from the greedy hands of his uncle.

She rubbed her chin with her fingers silently while observing the map. Her lords were waiting and staring at her. The room had an icy silence, only the fire crackling in the fireplace behind her and the wind slamming against the windows.

After a long silence, she looked up and put her hand with her palm open on the table. The wood was cold to the touch, she could feel the streaks of the wood worked. She looked at her lords one by one and then spoke.

“No matter when we attack, we won’t win. Eldhia’s defenses are strategic. The city was built to withstand any kind of attack.” Her voice was calm, that tranquility surprised her too.

“We attack with everything we have. If we attack all together...” one of the lords began to say.

“We will lose”, Taryn said quietly.

For as long as she could remember, the young queen had done nothing but wander with her protectors, then find safe refuge with Lord Grander and start passing from castle to castle, looking for allies to create an army. And now, almost twenty-five years later, she had allies and an army of the most loyal men she’d ever known, but that wasn’t enough.

“My uncle has twice as many of our men and high walls to protect him. No matter when we attack him, he will always win” Taryn snorted and, resting her fingers on the table, began to tap with her nails on the wood while in the room, the silence fell again.

Twelve men watched her waiting for her word or her order. Twelve great lords awaited the command of a little girl. Her infamous uncle would surely find that amusing.

“All strategies will never work with so few men. We won’t have a chance even in the open field and with the snow melted.” Taryn stood up and turned to the fireplace behind him, where the fire was crackling.

She watched the flames dance slowly, they hypnotized her so much that they made her motionless like a statue, it seemed that they were singing a melody that only she could hear.

“Your Majesty, we must take the city. Dark omens are making their way among the ancient priestesses. Dark times are approaching, we need the security of the capital’s walls” Ser Ucron had a serious tone.

Taryn turned to look at him, while her other lords nodded with approval. All except Grander.

“The ancient priestesses see dark omens even in a dog without a tail”, Grander said, altering himself. “They are witches, we don’t need witches!”

“We need more men!” Taryn blurted out. “Without a real and large army, we will always look like rebels! Without an army, we will not take any cities! We will never take back my father’s crown! We need allies!”

She slammed a fist on the ledge of the chimney, put his elbows there, crossed her fingers, and then leaned her forehead.

A strand of blue hair fell soft in front of her face. She shook her head, and other strands of blue and brown hair fell gently over her face, obscuring her view.

She looked at the fire, the only source of heat in the whole room. The flames attracted her, it was as if they sang them gently, like a mother.

Ser Robert spoke this time, “Most of the lords have joined your uncle. All this”, he said, pointing to the guests, “is what we have.” Then he pointed to the map.

Taryn turned to the wooden table, her forearm resting on the fireplace’s edge.

At that moment, her uncle was probably sitting in front of a fire, certainly in the rooms that once belonged to Taryn’s father and that should have been hers, while she was there, locked inside that little castle, away from her home and everything that belonged to her, without any chance of doing anything. She had her hands tied and a price on her head.

“We cannot attack the fortress blindly, if we make a mistake, my uncle could hurt Cleim.” Taryn closed her hand in a fist to the memory of her child, feeling a hole in her chest.

“Your Majesty, with all due respect, if your son had ended up in his hands, I doubt he was still alive,” one of the lords spoke quietly, perhaps out of fear of being heard.

“He’s still alive!” Taryn raised her voice, then closed her eyes.

With one hand, she stroked her belly, a gesture she had always made when Cleim was inside her, as she also used to talk to him; she had spent hours whispering to her growing belly, continuing to do so even when he was born. As a child, she spoke to him until he fell asleep and then watched him sleep blissfully in her arms, remembering her, with that sweet face, that of her beloved Athelstan. She could never take her eyes off him.

She could still remember the first time they had put him in her arms, his red face as he shouted with a tuft of red hair on his forehead. That was the best day of her life. She remembered every little detail of her baby’s birth and every moment she spent with him. She kept them in her mind, it was all she had left of him. From the night he disappeared, she clung to those memories for fear of losing them and not remembering Cleim’s sweet face.

She closed her eyes and felt a shooting pain in her belly as if someone was opening it with a hot iron. She stood still for a few minutes.

You’re wavering, she said to herself. She couldn’t do it. She could not afford to be weak to show her feelings to her lords. She had to be strong, the men hardly respected her and followed her just for the blood that flowed through her veins. According to them, the pure blood of their ancestors, blood that her uncle did not possess, could not afford to collapse in front of them.

She opened her eyes and sat back on her bench, observing her lords.

“My uncle knows that the only thing that prevents me from knocking down those damn walls is the fear of hurting Cleim.” Her lords looked at her. “We need allies. Powerful allies.”

The men began to mumble to each other in anger, exchanging opinions loudly: they did not like the idea of asking someone else for help, worse if a foreign king.

Taryn looked at each face while the lords continued arguing until one of them, Lord Taront, spoke.

“If I may, Your Majesty,” the Lord stood up “we are in a moment of peace, I believe that the alliance with another kingdom could be to our advantage.”

Lord Taront was the youngest of them all, he had become lord at the age of five. After his entire family was exterminated during one of the lords’ rebellions against his uncle’s usurper. An extraordinary and brilliant mind rewarded young age. Taryn was sure that Taront was worth more than all the other Lords together, but that also made him extremely dangerous.

She watched as he stood up, his olive complexion and clear eyes sparkling with the dim torchlight. He looked straight into her eyes without fear.

“A king would never offer an army without something in return”, another lord added, moving to his seat. “A part of the north, gold or submission,” he added more darkly.

“Not if an agreement is proposed”, Lord Taront stated with certainty.

“What kind of agreement?” Taryn asked, intrigued.

“Wedding.” The room burst.

The lords started talking to each other out loud, creating chaos. Taryn couldn’t understand anything. The lords looked like dogs weaving each other. She looked at Ser Grander, who immediately clapped his hand on the table and tried restoring the room’s silence.

“Silence!” he shouted when he could not silence the lords.

At the cry, the guests calmed down and stopped talking. Ser Grander looked at Taront. From that perspective, in Taryn’s eyes, it seemed to look at the old generation and the new. The young and the old. The old and the new thought. Could she trust Taront in the same way she trusted Grander?

“Are you proposing to surrender the crown of the north, young?” asked the old lord.

“Don’t give in. Share,” Taront firmly replied. “The five kingdoms are no longer at war as they once were, some are joining the crowns, enlarging their territories, ending the power struggle.”

The lords looked at him confused, while Taryn was intrigued by the young man. His reddish hair reminded him of Athelstan and, consequently Cleim. “I’m trying to say that a union with one of the kingdoms could be useful, even after taking over Eldhia and all of Elder.”

“Would you put an outsider to rule on Elder? That’s out of the question,” said one of the Lords in shock.

“It’s not a completely unhealthy idea,” Taryn intruded. Lord Taront tried to hide a smile while everyone else watched her in awe. “As the years go by, the periods of storms become longer and harder, which does not allow the harvests to produce, the full winter is so rigid that it does not allow any kind of blackmail, and those few months in which the cold decreases, the land is not arable because of snow. When this disappears, it happens only for a few months a year. People are already exhausted, and after a war, it will be even worse, there will be hunger and poverty. We need help.”

“Your Majesty, renouncing the crown is not a good idea. It would make all these years of resistance worthless.” Taryn turned his head to the right and looked at Grander.

“There is no talk of giving up the crown, it is about sharing it”, she said, looking at the man in the dark eyes.

“But... you are a woman”, Grander added.

“So what?” Taryn looked at him seriously. “Just because I’m a woman, I can’t share power?”

“This is not what...” the old man began again.

“Did you mean?” Grander waved on the bench, looking down at his fingers crossed on the table. Taryn turned to Taront. “ My Lord, what would your proposal be?” Then she waved her hand, giving him permission to speak.

Taront cleared his throat and nodded to the master, who got up and slowly approached the small table at the back of the room. Taront, meanwhile, had the wooden figurines moved. The old master fumbled on the table, making so much noise. Taryn began to clap a finger on the waiting table, the old man took an ancient map, rolled up, and approached the table, limping. He handed the map to Taront, who unrolled it all along the table.

The map represented the entire continent of Mihdel. All the great five kingdoms of which it was composed were marked with adjoining capitals. Each border was drawn along with rivers, lakes, forests, and even territories that man had not touched.

Did what was on the map really exist? Taryn never had a chance to visit the known world.

“Haefest has formed an alliance with Devian.” Taront pointed to the east with his finger, where the kingdom of Devian, washed by the sea, and then the center where Haefest was.

“Thanks to this union, Sierra has become one of the continent’s largest and most developed shopping centers, while Devian has become the most important port centre. Haefest moved all of his maritime trades to Devian, and the latter moved his land to Haefest”, explained Lord Taront.

“Therefore, an alliance with Devian or Haefest is excluded”, Taryn noted.

She looked at the map. Only Aeris and Locrand remain, she thought.

“The south and the west remain,” Ser Arien said as if he had read them in her mind.

“The Neyers rule Locrand,” Taryn said. “Only a fool would trust Kyros Neyer.”

“But there is already a kind of union between you and the Neyers, you should not marry Kyros, but his son, Athelstan,” Grander remarked.

“If there were Athelstan to rule, I would not worry, but Kyros, no. Kyros is a big problem. I’ve seen what he’s capable of, that man will never get his hands on the north.”

“Locrand is a very vast and rich kingdom, thanks to its position, it manages to have a vast commercial network not only by sea but also by land: it is one of the most productive kingdoms of Mihdel and provides sustenance to the islands around the continent, Majesty. Moreover, Cleim has the blood of Elder and Locrand. It is an already established union, he would still be entitled to the kingdom,” insisted Grander.

“I said no! That man must never approach Cleim. Question closed.”