Enderal I Lords and Mages
Chapter 10 Away from Court674Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJXAUcC7ThM
6th of Storm of Fire, 479 in the 8th Age
Continent of Mordurel, Easterlands Region, Silverstag region
Five kilometers from Culhaven, Gilded Flowerbed Estate
Jhaenera Silverstag Point of View
The estate stood on the top of the cliff with water below and walls and a homestead of white marble. It had wings for servants and Household Guards in fifty of our Household Guards patrolled the walls around the property. It had hundreds of meters of flowers in every possible color. I remembered running through those fields with Myna many years ago. Serene had never been playful as a child. Since she was two she had followed me around shyly through much of her childhood. Eventually she grew out of that.
In the large bedroom of the east wing I laid my head back against the pillow as my lover and I had both achieved our moment of pleasure as we had made love. I felt his body partially press against my left side and his hand cup one of my breasts. He laid down his head right next to my shoulder. The only thing covering our naked bodies was the sheets. The fabric was out of pure silk from the Kyrosh Islands.
“I haven’t felt so good in months,” I mumbled, very pleased.
I felt him scoot himself a little closer. I closed my eyes and laid there in silence. It was a rare and deeply treasured moment to be alone with him in this manner. The next morning I woke up Torrylan wasn’t in bed with me. I realized it before I turned to look for him because I hadn’t felt his warm touch. With an unhappy pout on my face I rose to sit. The sheet slid down to exposed my abdomen and breasts.
The door slid open slowly and my mood perked up when Torrylan appeared. He wasn’t wearing his white armor with its gold ornaments. He wore a blue linen shirt and wool pants.
“Hey beautiful,” he greeted me. “I hoped…” he closed the door behind him. “…to be back before you woke up.”
“You failed,” I said bluntly, a smile sneaking onto my lips.
I jumped out of bed, exposing my naked body and stalked over to the large mirror.
“You wanna help me get dressed?” I offered. I flickered my eyebrows at him.
He smirked and came over, “There is a few other things I’d love to do with you, and they do not include you being clothed,” he told me playfully.
I turned my naked body to him and pulled my hands around his neck, pressed my body up against his and my lips hungrily against his as my hand found its way into his pants. We lost ourselves in our lovemaking for what felt like hours.
Later I had my breakfast on the balcony overlooking the Shimmering River that divided Easterland and Reikland the sun was a quarter up in the sky and I had a good breakfast of cheese, the best of manchet bread, boiled eggs a slice of apple pie and a selection of venison, pork, swan and rabbit and two dozen different spices. I wished I could have spent more time there, but I had to travel back to Culhaven to take a few of my companions and travel to meet a Nordling Warchief up in Northland. Going to meet some Nordling barbarians wasn’t exactly were my joy laid, but if Torrylan was with me I guess it wouldn’t be so bad. For a moment I thought of my husband and hoped he would be gone for as long as possible.
6th of Storm of Fire, 479 of the 8th Age
Continent of Mordurel, Easterlands Region
Daemon Drakefyre Point of View
Our small company was riding through a farming village. It was a normal village with houses, large fields of barley, corn and grain and in the center stood a tall tower of wood with a stone foundation. On the top was a banner attached and it flailed in the wind. It was grey with two blue chevrons over, heraldry of the Stallions. As was standard it had a Ballista in it. A weapon perfected for battling dragons.
We were still traveling with Poe and Bennis, plus their squires.
“Can I ask where you got that dragon tooth?” I asked, recalling the tooth I had seen back at the inn before crossing the first bridge.
“It is not much of a story,” Poe shrugged. “My father gave it to me many years ago when I was a lad. He had taken it from a dead dragon he hunted down with Lord Troutelyn. The beast was ravaging his lands so he hired wandering knights and mercenaries to slay it, not wasting his own men. Twenty men went, six came back. my father amongst them.”
“Mhm, hunting dragons are dangerous,” I said solemnly.
“The one they slew was a small one, a mere pup of seven meters. Yet it slew fourteen men,” stated Poe. “I consider myself lucky I have never fought one. What about you Daemon? How much is true from the tales of the Dragon Priestess?”
“Everything!” Sarah chirped in enthusiastically.
“Shush,” I told her before looking at Poe. I had caught Bennis’s eye as well. “Much of it. We slew the Priestess and her dragon in the Northlands. It was not just me though. It was my friend Selene that put the final steel in the Priestess’s chest, ending her. We had a dwarven mage and a Templar Paladin, but also a young Nordling acolyte. A small but skilled band.”
Poe whistled, adding, “As the expert amongst us, could that Ballista bring down a scaled beast?”
I looked to the tower.
“No. Well, an expert crew could probably, but I doubt those men are experts.”
Bennis the Golden Bastard chuckled.
“You won’t find experts in House Stallion,” he stated amused. “They’re too busy bedding every women in sight.”
I remembered the rhyme. ‘How many bastards has Lord Stallion, a thousand and one, a thousand for him, one for his wife.’ Born from a rumor that his wife had conceived a bastard of her own, that being his legitimate heir. Who knew if it really was true and if it was, how much? Peasants and townsfolk liked exaggerating. Probably gave their lives a little meaning.
“Who are they?” Sarah asked and pointed.
I looked in the direction she pointed and saw five plate clad men exit the inn. They had a Barbute helm with red and pink feathers on top and a Surcoat clad their armor. It was yellow with a red rose centered on it.
“Knights of the Red Rose,” I recognize, a glance leveled on Sarah. “A knightly order.”
“The most favorited by the Queen too,” Poe commented.
I saw how Sarah’s face lit up in awe. The poor orphan certainly loved knights, real proper knights, not wandering knights like me, Poe and Bennis.
“What are they doing milord?” She asked me.
“I don’t know. Perhaps they are hunting down heretics,” I theorized.
6th of Storm of Fire, 479 of the 8th Age
Continent of Mordurel, Easterlands Region, City of Oakenport, Oaken Citadel
Dawn Point of View
I heard the rain constantly smatter against the windows of my bedchambers as I laid in my bed reading a novel. It was a romance novel between a peasant and a princess, though I found it more amusing than romantic. The fact that princess would ever actually marry a peasant was laughably silly to me. I laughed when the princess kissed him halfway through the book. How unrealistic, I thought.
I heard a knock on my firm oak door. A moment later a maid came in from the room adjacent to mine, my personal maids slept there. I nodded and rose, dressed in my night gown. She opened my door and I saw a guard give her a parchment.
“This arrived for Lady Oakenshield,” he said before leaving.
My maid closed the door and walked over and handed it to me. First I guessed it was from my brother Ormond. He was a companion of Princess Jhaenera and part of her inner circle of friends. To my surprised I opened it to find it was from someone else entirely. I even remembered the name. Selene Costayne. I had helped Lord Haridirim Costayne find her some months past. According to the message she was the Lady of her House. I sat down on my bed as I read.
It started off by thanking me for my services in bringing her uncle’s message to her. She mentioned that her Steward claimed her uncle spoke highly of me and my, connections, she was quite straight to the point, which I found refreshing. I paused to wave the young maid off before reading on. Lady Costayne went on to bluntly remind me of the glories past of House Costayne on the throne of the Easterlands and how House Silverstag had brought the once great empire to ruin. Counting the Red Queen we have had eleven generations that slowly squandered our assets and armies. She attempted to remind me that my House served her ancestors nobly in the war and then, bluntly, declared that the time had come again. My eyebrows arched in surprised as she basically declared her intentions to reclaim the throne and wanted me at her side, less my House then just me. In elegant terms she promised me a seat on her Council.
I would grant her that I had wanted to see my House, or myself on or at least near the throne. Which House in the Easterlands had the balls to dare a coup, none I could put any weight behind. If my dream would come to pass in my youth it would be this, Selene Costayne that did it. But I couldn’t just throw myself in her arms and pray she had enough of a powerbase to win a war.
At the bottom of the message she asked me to write back and honestly give her noble families that might support her reconquest. It sounded like she had already expected that I would support her, to me amusement. She was either very confident or stupid and I wasn’t sure which it was yet. I could imagine two that would possible throw their support behind her, but only after she had arrived with an army. If they were promised a good position on her Council I imagined both Lords Blackling and Rayne, though, Lord Blackling might have trouble since he had four children in the inner circle of Princess Jhaenera, like my brother Ormond was.
“I’ll have to speak to father,” I said to myself. He was in the capital right now, sitting on his Council seat. I had no illusion that any letter would be read by only him. I had to wait for his return home. As I thought about it, I was certain that my uncle would have jumped at the chance to overthrow the Silverstags. Unfortunately he was dead. We had been informed recently that he had been killed fighting the Kyroshi in our far away colonies.
With a sigh I rose and placed my book on the bookshelf.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
