Chapter Twelve: An Ancient Tale Continues
Tranith Argan: Book 1
Ravesfel, the aged guardian of Tranith Argan showed up in Brindledown on a night when Felanar and Kara were home alone. What he told them shocked them: the assassins killed in Brookhollow were after Felanar! Now his tale continues as he explains why Felanar was the target.
Kara gasped and Felanar stirred uneasily in his chair. The wind picked up outside and howled a little past the house.
“Ravesfel,” said Felanar slowly, as he stared at the old man gravely, “I have never had reason to doubt you. Yet this story seems fantastic to me. Someone wanting me dead? Sending assassins after me? I have no enemies, and no one hates me that much. What purpose would be served by killing me?”
Ravesfel smiled bleakly at this and replied, “No enemies? I can understand why you would feel that way. A simple fisherman in a small, out-of-the-way village. What threat are you to anyone? One might well ask.” He paused for a moment. “Yet enemies you have, and one in particular, though you know it not. And your death is what he seeks, what he has sought for centuries.”
“You are speaking in riddles, Ravesfel.” Kara looked at him quizzically. “How could someone seek Felanar’s death for centuries?”
“Not him, as such, Kara, but what he represents. Do you know your history lessons well, girl?”
“Very well, though a bit more elven history than men’s.”
“It is men’s history that concerns us now. Do you know your history of the kings of Tranith Argan? Can you recite their names?”
“Yes,” she replied, “from Kal-Alorim The Golden, all the way down to Al-Supir The Indecisive.”
“Very good, you do know your history. There are many now for whom the kingship is a long-distant legend, and for whom the Regency is all that matters. Tell me, though, do you remember the history of what happened after Al-Supir, and why he was the last of the kings?”
Felanar spoke up. “When Vélakk rose up, the kingship was destroyed. The royal family was killed and left with no heirs.”
“More than ten centuries ago, yes, that is how it happened. Vélakk is not a name I speak easily. I prefer his original name of Toramin, but alas, he will never be known by that again. Nor does he deserve to be. Such is the way of a guardian who ceases to guard and seeks to rule.” His voice quivered in anger.
“For a long time afterward, people viewed me with suspicion, Felanar. Ravesfel, guardian of Tranith Argan, viewed as someone not to be trusted! Alas, who could blame them after Toramin turned traitor. Who was to say I would not do the same and claim the same throne he wanted?
“In any case, the centuries that followed were dark ones in these lands, as you know from your books. Argan was overrun by the armies Vélakk had secretly amassed. The lesser cities were overthrown and even Tranith Argan was besieged. It looked as though nothing would stand against Vélakk and he would achieve his goal of ruling all the lands. He miscalculated in one respect, however, and that is what held the day in the end. The kingship was destroyed, it was true, but even without a king the people rose up against him and fought bitterly and bravely. In the end Argan held, and Vélakk was pushed back. I helped establish the Regency and the east has held together ever since. The struggle has never ended, however, and Vélakk even now seeks to overrun all the lands.
“What you said earlier, Felanar, was not quite accurate, though in all the world I’m the only one who knows it, save Llarand and Heléste. And the enemy. Now has come the time to tell what I learned, and I begin with you. It is true the royal family had been killed, but it is not true no heirs remained. Vélakk had been thorough about eliminating the family in Argan and the Duchy of Irular Istan. He had his spies in place and they did their deeds swiftly and completely, down to the last baby. Or so they thought. For they forgot about one cousin of the king living in Delendor with his family. Rather, they thought this cousin had been accounted for through a false communication and felt no further investigation was necessary. The word came that all were dead, including the cousin, and so the deed was done.
“After hearing of the slaughter while at Delendor, this cousin went into hiding in the Golden Lakes region and plotted his return to power. Alas, he died in a fall while climbing one of the mountains, and all that remained of the royal family were his wife and children. The time of darkness now came and the half-century of anarchy as Vélakk besieged the land. The widow and her children could do nothing but hide out in the wilderness, the world being unaware of their existence. The royal family was dead, as everyone thought, including myself. Yet it lived on in darkness in the wilderness.”
“What became of this family, Ravesfel,” asked Kara. “If the royal family lived through them, surely they tried to come to power after the siege lifted.”
“So it would have been had not the legacy of The Indecisive lived on through this small family. By the time the siege of the land had lifted, and order was reestablished, the widow had died and now were left only the son and two daughters. The boy had little knowledge of the kingship other than what his mother had taught him. It wasn’t real to him, and he feared what had happened to his family would happen to him should he try to return. The Golden Lake district was all he had known, furthermore, and he had not the love of Argan that his forebears had. Bitter at his parents for leaving this world so soon, he blamed the kingship on their deaths. Instead of seeing a way to use the kingship to right the wrongs, he began to view it as a hateful thing, something that brought death, not life.
“He buried his past and started a new life in that region, never telling his children who he was. They grew up not knowing they were heirs to the throne. The centuries passed, and the family grew numerous in this region, being farmers and tradesmen and fishermen. All the while, hope for a king in Argan grew fainter. If only they knew that an entire branch of the royal family was a short distance away beyond Delendor! If only I had known…”
Felanar seemed surprised at this. “You mean you didn’t know about this? How did you hear the story then?”
Ravesfel looked at him steadily, “This is what I am coming to, Felanar. Yes, I was unaware of this family’s existence until fairly recently. About a quarter of a century ago, as I walked through the Royal archives looking for some history to teach the Regent, I came across a servant looking at the ancient texts. I would have thought nothing of it, except that he worked in the kitchen and would have little need for reading the history texts of the realm. If only I had heeded my instinct, but I let it go, and that was my first mistake. Still, I noted what text he was reading and a few days later went back and pulled out those scrolls.
“These were scrolls from the days of the last king, and they told of the time of slaughter. I had read this before, of course, and wondered why the kitchen servant cared about such history. He had been reading the genealogy of the kingly line when it was cut off. There were listed each one of the royal family that had been killed by Vélakk’s emissaries. Even that cousin living by the Golden Lakes was listed as killed, as we had all assumed. Yet there was a new paper here, one that had seemingly been hidden behind others. It had been stuck to the back of the scroll and thereby had escaped notice all that time long ago. Now with age, the brittleness of the paper gave it away and this servant had found something we had all missed. This new information indicated that the cousin had not been killed after all!
“I can’t begin to describe the joy that leapt into my heart at that moment! An heir to the throne might have lived after all. This is what we needed to give hope to the people again. To take back what Vélakk had stolen. I went to the Regent and told of my findings. He was not as interested as I had assumed he would be. Where were these royal descendants, he asked, and why had they not come forth long before? Surely, he said, they were long since gone. Thus it was that I made two critical errors. One, I neglected to follow up on that kitchen servant and find out what his interest was in those scrolls. Second, I let the words of the Regent lull me. I didn’t act with haste to find out the truth about that scroll, and there I did a grave disservice to the throne.”
Ravesfel accepted a new drink from Kara and he sipped and sighed, staring at the fire.
“Around that time came the Massacre of the Lakes. Do you know of it?”
Kara spoke up, “An army from Shanaar sailed down the river Falia and landed and attacked villages in the Golden Lakes region, one of the steady wave of attacks Vélakk has made over the centuries. People wondered why he chose to attack those villages and not press on to Delendor, but that is all I know.”
“Yes, Kara, that’s it in essence. It seemed strange to me as well. I was in Delendor at the time, investigating the findings of that scroll. It seemed as though it was correct, and a whole extended family now lived in the Golden Lakes region, never knowing they were members of the royal family. I was learning their whole history from records kept in the region and was preparing to make myself known to the descendants when word of the massacre reached me at Delendor. My heart sank. Was I too late to save the family again? Was this the meaning behind the kitchen servant’s interest in the scrolls? Was he an agent of Vélakk passing on vital information? I rushed over to the region. The villages were in flames, Kara. The label ‘massacre’ fit well, for that is what Vélakk was doing. I knew then that Vélakk had the same knowledge I did, and he had acted on it with greater swiftness than I had done. He was being thorough this time. Indeed, the lands had been ruined, and almost everyone had been killed.
“After many days of searching, and just as I was despairing, I found some survivors who had taken refuge in the hills. It was a husband and wife and an infant boy. The wife was pregnant, and the husband was wounded. They had fled their village with a band of others and headed for the hills, the enemy right on their heels. Before they could reach safety, the enemy caught up to them and after a great struggle many more villagers were killed, even as the enemy was also killed in the process. Only this one family was left when the last of the enemy were destroyed. But the husband was gravely wounded in the process and wouldn’t survive long. He had fought bravely to protect his family and had saved their lives at the cost of his own.
“To my knowledge, here truly was the last of the ancient royal family. I asked their lineage and it did, indeed, match. I used all my healing arts on the father but his wounds were too deep for my skills. Felanar, Kara, I sat in that cave with the rightful king of Tranith Argan, and I watched him slowly die of his wounds, never knowing his own true identity. My heart sank as I looked with pity on his pregnant widow and her infant son. Something had to be done, for I knew Vélakk might act again if he knew this family had escaped. I had to do something right this time, and see to it that this remnant of the family survived so that the kingship could flourish again someday.
“The Regent had acted coldly when he had heard about the possibility of an heir to the throne. What might he think of an heir in the flesh, though it be an infant? Would he act as coldly, or even more so, seeing a threat to his throne in this small boy? Would the boy be safe with agents of Vélakk around? All these thoughts went through my mind in that cave. Finally I made a decision that they would not go to Tranith Argan just yet. They certainly could not remain in that region. Their only hope lay in their being thought of as dead. If Vélakk came to hear of a survivor of the massacre, he would try again until he finally rid this world of the last of the royal family.
“So I decided to bring that widow and her boy to this region. I knew a family here who could be trusted and this would be out-of-the-way enough to throw off any scent. Indeed, the idea proved to be correct, as later events brought out, but I was in too much of a hurry to spirit them away here. The journey was hard and I made it harder with my insistence on haste. The widow had been through much and was still in grief over the loss of her husband. The trip down to Brindledown was too much for her. Though I feared for her life if we didn’t hasten, I fear that the haste itself was too much for her at that time. Shortly after our arrival here she went into labor and gave birth, but she died in the process.”
Kara looked at Felanar with puzzlement and turned to Ravesfel. “I’ve heard nothing of this event, and nothing happens in Brindledown without the tongues wagging.”
“I was cautious, even in my haste, for I wished no one to note our arrival. I wanted no news of this event, so we arrived in the dead of night. No one saw our arrival, and the local wife and husband alone helped in the birth. Now I was faced with a dilemma. The hopes of the royal line now depended on two infants, one just a newborn. They were both living under the threat of death if their existence were known by the enemy. No attention could be drawn to them until they were strong. Their identity had to remain completely hidden from the world.
“So instead of asking for assistance from the Brindledown couple, I now found myself asking for them to adopt the two children as their own, at least for a time. I told them nothing of their past, just that they were victims of the massacre and needed help. This Brindledown family was kind and generous, and most of all quiet. They would keep this information to themselves, at my request, and I could depend on them. We made up a story about a distant relative of theirs dying and needing them to raise their two infants. This was to allay the suspicions of their friends in the village, who would notice the arrival of two new infants.”
“What family was this, Ravesfel?” asked Felanar. “I know of none that fit this description.”
Ravesfel eyed him steadily for a moment. “Do you not? What about you, Kara?”
Kara shook her head.
“I’m not surprised. That couple kept their word and said nothing about this to anyone. Solid, dependable folk they were and worthy of my trust. Yet I think you know them, Kara, for I’ve told you something already that involves you. That widow, that victim of the massacre, who gave birth? She gave birth to you, Kara, and Felanar was the infant boy. I was describing your mother and father in the cave, your true parents. You two are the last of the royal line, descendants of the kings of Argan. Felanar, you are the rightful heir of the throne of Tranith Argan!”