The Huntsman of Adamos (Quartet)- draft

CH ROYAL REQUIREMENTS

The Royal houses were almost ready for the required end of court season event, the Autumn Equinox Ball. In less than six to eight months, The Tear of Heaven’s Hope, carrying the remnant of Aetheria to safety, would begin it’s almost three-thousand-year long journey to Terrearth. Heavy early snows and raging winds had driven them from the work site. Fleur paced in frustration in the study of Lord Odini, as Oshay watched her with his stoic rust-colored eyes. Fleur was amazed at how much he looked like his great-grandfather except for the color of his eyes, which were from his mother.

Odini had been shocked when she had pushed him against a wall and held her face only inches from his to study his features with her clouded vision. He had quickly learned that his grandson was nonplussed by the oracle’s often bizarre behaviors, or her dressing like a juvenile male. After the day she was attacked in the market, he held her with the same respect as his grandson. He had watched her fighting, twisting and moving almost as if she were dancing, it was beautiful and deadly. After she fled with an errand runner, Oshay had incinerated the bodies in a flash of power that had shocked Odini with its intensity. Now Odini watched them arguing like siblings.

“It can’t be avoided, Fleur.”

She shook her head with a scowl. “I don’t like it. What if Yuri or Abe see you, Oshay, and recognize you as Shadz in our time?”

Orion held up his hands in apology. “I am sorry, Lady Fleur, I introduced him as my cousin, then he was sent a notice from the Royal Seneschal to present himself at the ball or be punished for being derelict on his duty as a royal, because he had never visited court before.”

“Lady Fleur, the only thing keeping the Royal guardsmen from arresting him and forcing his appearance before the king is the excuse that he had been at the monastery on Trios since the Xelusian Occupation, and the enormous bribe we paid to have it confirmed,” Lord Odini explained. “Attending court at least once per decade is a requirement of all young, single royals over the age of 400. Lord Adamos is fortunate that your petite size and ability to feign innocence will make it seem as though you have just come of age.”

Her eyes narrowed at him and she smirked mischievously, “Just how old do you think I am?”

Silence answered, then Oren answered with polite tact, “I am sure we would guess wrong, a soul's beauty is eternal.”

“I was married to the Guardian for over four hundred years and he died a century ago. I think I look pretty good for being grandmother,” She added coyly.

Oshay chuckled at their shocked look. He spoke in the strange dialect they both used sometimes. She tipped her head and answered in a cheeky tone. Oshay shook his head, said a few more words and Fleur huffed a laugh but nodded.

In Aetherian, she said, “Fine. Oren and I need to go to the metallurgists and the jewelers district again. We need to build a few things that don’t exist in this time. Tech you won’t be able to take with you or use after we leave.”

“What is it you wish to build, Lady Fleur?” Odini asked curiously.

Oshay grinned, answering, “Portals.”

“What good are doorways?” Orion, the youngest cousin, asked.

“Not just any doorways, Orion. Doorways that bend space through other dimensions to connect two points as if they were touching.” Fleur explained, holding the hem of her scarf with her hands far apart then bringing them together until the two pinched points touched. “In our time, we have figured out how to use directed portals through the underworlds to connect the places in the overworld. And even how to create temporary escape portals.” She turned to Oshay, grinning, “Are you ready to go to the Infernal Realm?”

“Aren’t I always?” Oshay answered with confidence.

The Lords of Odini all came to their feet at once.

“You can’t be serious,” Odini blurted out, “The Infernal Realm is a myth, they say only the damned can go there.”

Fleur smirked at them, “Not when you’re traveling with the false dark queen and her loyal black swordsman.” She waved her hand at them to sit and ignored their flabbergasted expression. “Anyway, we need enough to build portals between the worksite and both our houses and a second set of portals to safehouses away from the city, in case those who serve the Darkness move against us here in the King’s City.”

Oshay laid a parchment on the table. “This is what we will need. Do not fear, we have done this hundreds of times.”

A few days later, Fleur had built the strange doorways Yurieth saw in her memories. The “doorways” passed through the Infernal Realm dimension and onto the worksite of the Tear, the Winter Castle of Adamos, and the Southern Fjord Fortress of Odini. Yurieth or Regis had been with her on all of the trips.

As they finished and awaited the last portal connection to open, an infernal warrior approached with arms raised in truce. This was the place where the Aetherians believed the eternally condemned warriors who died without honor were sent. Fleur hated the dimension with its weird physics and suffering creatures. To the oracle it was a place of despair, a place her birthworld had called hell. Before Regis could pull his bow, he felt a wave of warmth and compassion pass over him. Glowing, Fleur walked up to the charred skeletal being. She spoke to it and it fell on its knees before her. The portal flared and Yurieth stepped out, he started to rush forward but Regis stopped him.

“Wait, Lady Fleur is comforting it somehow,” Regis said in a shaky breath.

“She’s shining it. Using her light to make it feel cared for, to remember being loved,” Yurieth answered then murmured, “I always thought this place was a myth.”

“All myths start as fact.” Regis quoted his father and all Yurieth could do was nod.

The damned one stared beyond the Oracle at the pair of Huntsmen for a long moment, then they watched it turn and wander away, up the shore of the molten river of liquid rock.

Fleur came back over, her eyes filled with tears. “She said she knew you, Yuri. That she was sorry she tried to kill you, that she killed those other huntsmen. That she had truly cared for you. She was just trying to save her sister whom she didn’t know was already lost.” Fleur was silent for a moment then she said softly, “Someday, the King will be here.” Turning, she bent to finish the strange brackets that secured the portals together, so they would lead seamlessly between the places in the overworld and not stop in this cursed realm.

As they stepped through into the courtyard of the Manor of Adamos in the King’s City, Regis asked, “Which king, my lady?”

Fleur looked at him with an inscrutable expressing and Yurieth caught a memory of the Infernal Warrior picking her up and giving her back to Kaleth before bowing to her. He didn’t understand it, but it reinforced her words. “The king who rules now, Regis... King Xerxes. Kaleth and I met him there.” She walked away from them with slumped shoulders.

“Before you ask, she speaks the truth.” Yurieth stared after her. There was something dark and tainted about the memory that he barely caught before she hid it from him. He tapped the hilt of his long knife, contemplatively.

Three days before the Equinox ball, the House of Adamos had visitors, a pair of the highest ranked royals. The third Queen named Eonae and Prince Xeus. They came to visit the queen’s distant cousin Yllumina and her new twins as was expected by tradition, but also to speak to the novice oracle and new ward of the House of Adamos. Their protectors, Guardian Regulus and Huntsman Regis were regular visitors to Lord Adamos, but Fleur felt a strange sense of concern radiating from them as she was formally introduced to them by the royal seneschal. It was as though they were pretending to have never met her before, so she went along with the ruse, bowing and pretending to be more blind and younger than she was. At a nudge from Yllimina, Fleur let Abrieth guide her to a seat.

The queen gave her the same feeling and Fleur realized it was the seneschal they did not trust. Fleur wondered what Mina and Adamos had told the queen of her, or if it was Regulus and Regis who had informed the queen of her presence. After an hour of mindless chatter about the upcoming ball and the new twins, the bored seneschal was summoned back to the palace and Fleur shined him to go. She was getting frustrated because she hated playing political games.

As soon as the twins’ nurse mothers took them away for their nap and they were completely alone with the queen and prince, the queen said conversationally, “So, Lady Fleur, your journey here? How was it?”

Fleur spoke plainly, “Your highness, please just ask me what you wish to know.”

Fleur could feel Queen Eonae’s surprise at her bluntness, then she smiled. “So, it is true the House of Adamos has three full oracles now. Tell me, young oracle, what do you see?”

“It is not what I see, but what I know. My queen, I have come from the far distant future to help my house save the remnant of Aetheria.” Fleur did not boast, simply stated it as if she had already finished the task.

The queen nodded slowly, because it was as Regulus had told her. Fleur and Mina’s minds touched briefly, and Mina nodded. But Fleur was worried about the prince who is barely 130.

“Prince Xeus, will you excuse us?” Fleur asked. “We must discuss difficult things.”

“Whatever you know and would tell me, my son should know as well.” The queen insisted.

Mina sent Fleur a mental shrug. Fleur’s mouth made a thin line, then she agreed. “Very well, my queen. In the coming year, the Xelusians will detonate a device that will collapse their star, reduce their system to dust and suck the remnant of their star and their homeworld into a pocket dimension. The shockwave will destroy Aetheria and all her sister worlds. None who remain here will survive. In my time we haven’t even found the remains of the previous civilization, because so much of the surface was stripped away. I am sorry, your highnesses, but the clock of your kingdom will run out before the next Autumn ball.”

“We will all die?” Xeus blurted out.

“Not all, my prince. The oracles who foresaw the cataclysm coming were correct to believe only those who flee this system will survive. In fact, they will travel farther than any Aetherian ever has, just to find safety. It will be your kingdom on the new world, and many millennia later, your grandchildren will re-establish our kingdom here after the planet heals,” she reassured him.

“But the new treaty, the upcoming negotiation...” the queen started.

“Is a deceit, dear cousin,” Mina interrupted, “I have already seen the weavings of darkness and deception. They are only waiting on Xerxes to die.”

The younger royal nodded solemnly. She could feel the two oracles spoke the truth and realized that her suspicions that the King’s advisers were misleading him were correct. King Xerxes was ancient in age, she was his third wife after his entire family was lost for a second time the day the Huntsmen and Guardians of Aetheria were assassinated. She felt the need to confide in them as she had only confided in her protector. “Speak to no one of this. My husband is ill, not in his body, but in his mind. He has become paranoid to irrational levels; he believes everyone is after his throne and power. I fear a day when it will no longer be safe for Xeus to remain in the palace. I also believe Xelusian spies have infiltrated the King’s inner circle. The same House that attack your summer residence, Yllumina. They were after something, some relic of blended magic, and they didn’t find it.”

Yllumina sat perfectly still and upright. “I know what they sought, it was never truly in their grasp.”

They sat in silence for few moments, then Yurieth felt compelled to speak. “Queen Eonae, Lady Fleur knew that Lord Crux was a Xelusian spy from the moment she met him. It is why we fought only against him and helped the royal guardsmen escape the ambush that had been laid. Perhaps she could sense out the other spies?”

Yurieth did not mention the dark creature Lord Crux had become, he did not want to terrify the young prince that such a creature might be in his father’s presence. Only Regulus, Regis, and the Lords of Odini beyond the House of Adamos knew of the shadow demon’s existence. He wondered what relic his mother spoke of, all the salvaged items from the Temple of the Oracles that was destroyed the day of his birth had been taken to the Isle of Angeles. And Crux had been set on capturing Fleur.

“Can you help us?” Queen Eonae asked Fleur. “Can you save us from this terrible fate?”

Fleur’s chin trembled for a moment and she blinked back her tears, it was such a desperate heartfelt plea, but Fleur gave the only answer she could. “My queen, my prince, we can do little against their influence. War will come because it did come. Aetheria will be destroyed because it was destroyed. But perhaps we can offer to shelter the prince in the guise of warrior training until the time of his departure arrives. Our house does have a Master Huntsman and a Master Protector to keep the young prince from being underfoot while the treaty negotiations are going on.”

“You should come with him, Eonae, if the King is descending into madness...” Yllumina starts.

Queen Eonae shook her head, interrupting, “I cannot, Yllumina. I am required to be Xerxes’ side and I cannot leave our people unshielded from his insanity, but my son...”

“Shall be asked to visit for the winter by his distant cousin, the youngest Oracle of the House of Adamos.” Fleur declared. “And if we announced Lord Abrieth and Princess Serapha’s betrothal, it will increase the need for the rambunctious young prince to be elsewhere while the treaty negotiations and a royal wedding between two worlds are planned. It will take a year at least, maybe three or four because as Queen, you would be required to oversee both.”

Queen Eonae eyed Fleur, appraising her carefully, “That is quite clever, Lady Fleur. You play the game well.”

“Not really, my queen, but I had a good teacher and learned that in political games, the more complex a task appears, the longer it can be made to take, regardless of the fact, that the task could be accomplished in days,” Fleur explained.

“Who was this wise teacher?” Eonae asked because Yllumina was smirking.

Fleur grinned, “One of my dearest friends, your future great-granddaughter, the Queen of Aetheria .”