The One Who Bequeaths, and the One Who Inherits
A silence too heavy to be called mere quiet held the great hall, pressing down as if it meant to crush whatever lay beneath it.
Intricate patterns were inlaid across the splendid marble floor, and from the ceiling hung two chandeliers blazing with gold. On any ordinary day it would have been a hall fit to display the majesty of the royal house. Now even that brilliance felt darkened, and faintly ill-omened.
Was it only that a handful of candles upon their stands labored to light so vast a space? Or was the gloom itself a sign of the dark fate that had fallen upon the kingdom?
At one side of the hall, upon a floor raised higher than the rest, an ornately adorned throne looked down over all of it.
"Well. Since then, have you learned anything further of the situation?"
The aging king, seated upon the throne, put the question to the man at his feet.
"We have yet to obtain any information of particular note, Your Majesty."
Crown Prince Roberje Arkesia knelt on one knee below the steps that rose to the throne and, head bowed, gave his answer.
He wore the white coat that marked his station, gold and silver embroidery worked across it, and trousers of purest white. It was as splendid a costume as ever, and yet even that finery was crushed beneath the weight in the air, and did nothing to set the prince apart.
"For the present we are drawing up a list of the officials and nobles who vanished after the incident, and dividing their duties anew among those who remain, so that we may answer the crisis as it stands. I sent several scouting parties of the royal army beyond the palace to learn what was happening outside. Most were stopped by those things before they could go any farther, and came back. A few pressed on regardless, and simply disappeared."
The face he wore as he made his report was as composed as it had always been. His voice could not entirely conceal how devastated he was.
"Roberje."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Speak freely. That is why I sent the others away."
At the king's command Roberje slowly rose from his knee, lifted his head, and looked up at him.
A deep dark lay across the king's face, and his expression could not be read.
"You said before that you would order the palace mages to watch the royal capital from the sky with sight-magic. Tell me what they reported to you once they had looked."
A heavy silence settled between them once more.
The crown prince bit his lip and hesitated a long while before he could bring himself to speak.
"According to their report... it is only what they saw with their own eyes, but half the people of the capital—perhaps more—may already have turned into those things."
At that despairing sentence, neither the man upon the throne nor the man looking up at it could easily find his voice.
"Half..."
The king forced the word out.
"The population of Erka is a hundred and fifty thousand. Half of that..."
He slumped back against the throne as if something in him had given way, and the face the shadow had hidden came into the light: silver hair cropped short, a full beard covering his chin and the line beneath his nose. The firm set of his jaw and the gravity in his eyes spoke of more than a dignified middle age. They showed the manner in which he had ruled, and the manner in which he had met his life. Yet even a countenance worthy of that throne looked drawn now, like a sick man's.
"...Lord Juten is cruel. If the reign of this old king did not please Him, He need only have punished this guilty old man."
The crown prince listened to the lament in silence.
"Why must He make sacrificial lambs of the innocent as well?"
With that last resentment toward the chief god, the king's lament ended, and silence wrapped the throne once more.
"The barrier over the capital."
He broke off, then went on.
"Is it working as it should?"
"Yes."
Crown Prince Roberje answered evenly.
"The moment we returned to the palace, I ordered the palace mages to raise at once both the barrier that guards the palace and the barrier that covers the whole of the capital, and to seal Erka. Since then the barrier has run without any particular trouble, but..."
He let the end of the answer trail away.
"It isn't enough. The mana to keep the barrier up."
"...Yes. If it were only the barrier protecting the palace, we could hold it for months. The problem is the barrier covering the entire capital. It was raised to defend Erka, and designed on the assumption that mana potions and the like would be supplied to the mages from within the city. Now that the palace is cut off from everywhere else, we are keeping the barrier alive on the potions stockpiled here, but..."
"How much longer can it hold?"
"Ten days. The chief mage puts it at ten days."
"Ten days."
The king let out a long, heavy sigh.
"Then in ten days those things will be loosed beyond the capital. Is that what you are telling me?"
This time the crown prince had no answer.
"If it comes to that, they will swallow every territory beyond the walls, and spread into the lands around us, and spread again... and the kingdom will become a land of the dead."
"Father."
"It will not come to that. The palace still has what remains of the royal army, and the court mages, and there must still be survivors inside the capital. We cannot yet see a clear way, but the officials are even now looking for a means to call those survivors into the palace and gather them."
The light that had gone dull and unfocused in the prince's eyes began to return.
"And it will not be long before the lords around the capital notice that something is wrong in Erka. Even if the barrier cracks for a moment, it repairs itself at once, so we can send word through the sky to the other nobles and lords nearby, work with them, and see this through."
"...Yes. If it comes to that, nothing could be better."
The king's tone had brightened, if only a little. Whether from resignation, or because he believed his son, it was hard to say.
"Then whom do you mean to ask for aid?"
"The first I have in mind is House Terelud, west of the capital. They are the strongest power in this region, and the present head, Lopez, is a friend of mine. He will help us. I am certain of it."
"House Terelud... Yes. Them, we can trust."
"Aside from them, we might also seek help from the Tower of Magical Studies, north of the capital. Where the masters of magic are gathered, we will surely find an answer."
"The magic tower... If we can win their cooperation, nothing in this situation would steady us more."
"Just as you say. And..."
The crown prince seemed to hesitate before he let the last name pass his lips.
"...Chancellor Terid will surely be seeking, from outside the capital, some way to save it."
"Terid..."
The king stroked his beard as he spoke.
"...A truly strange turn, wouldn't you say? When he left the capital on the pretext of investigating the anomaly in Pedina and did not attend the wedding, I thought it a discourtesy beyond pardon—even allowing for how things stood between House Herta and the royal house after the broken engagement..."
At the name Herta, the crown prince looked away, as if something in it discomforted him.
"And yet, in the end, his leaving has proved a gain. Had he attended the wedding, he would have been swept up in the disaster and died a wretched death, or else been shut inside Erka with the rest of us, with nothing to do but wait for help from outside."
At words he could not be sure the king meant in earnest, the crown prince could not settle on a face to wear, and held his silence with an uneasy look.
"In a sense, your breaking the engagement with the eldest daughter of House Herta has been a help. Had it been the wedding of the daughter Terid so cherishes, he would have come even if it cost him his arms and legs."
Roberje looked up at the king in surprise. Only one corner of that mouth had lifted, and the expression made it plain the remark was a barb.
"Father."
The crown prince spoke, forcing the discomfort down.
"There, there. It was a joke, so don't be angry. I've done nothing but put on a grave voice, and I was starting to itch."
Pale as he was, the king managed a faint smile.
"I think we've settled what needs discussing for now. Ease your shoulders and go rest. Yuria will have had a considerable fright. Stay by her and soothe her."
"But everyone is suffering through this crisis. I can't be the only one to—"
"And if you wedge yourself in among the men doing the work and add your voice, what changes? You are the one who leads them, not one who labors beside them. Spend your strength on needless things, and let your judgment cloud at the very moment you must show them the way forward, and wouldn't that be the greater failure of a leader's duty?"
The counsel he gave his son held both the gravity of a royal and a father's gentleness.
"If you understand, then withdraw. I ought to rest as well."
"...As you command."
The crown prince recovered his composure. With a calm face he knelt once more upon one knee, paid his respects, then turned and walked the length of the hall toward the far side.
Creak. Clack.
The sound of the door opening and shutting rode the stillness and rang through the hall.
When even the crown prince was gone, the king, left alone in the empty hall, looked up at the ceiling and sank into thought.
The smile of a moment before had already long since left his face.
So he sat, alone upon that solitary throne, and simply gazed into the empty air.
Until the candles burned down, and went out.