Mud trailed behind Caderyn as he sprinted through the gleaming halls of the ducal palace. Baffled servants shouted for the guards, having not recognized him on account of his appearance, which was scruffier and more bedraggled than usual. A near-brawl ensued as several men-at-arms intercepted him, delaying him for half a minute before they realized who he was.
Caderyn ignored their apologies and bounded up the stairs. His thunderous sprint took him beneath the grandest painting in the palace: a mythologized depiction of his father's great victory over the barbarians. Clad in red armor and a fluttering black cloak, the one-eyed Duke Lucan wielded a great spear which he used to skewer a barbarian warlord wearing rune-etched bones. The scene even depicted Caderyn's mother as well; Duchess Sarya stood off in the distance, her red curls flowing behind her, a bloody dagger in her hand.
A ridiculous piece of art, of course, but one that the barons' council had insisted upon placing in the palace to commemorate the great victory. Even as he trotted past, Caderyn couldn't help but chuckle at the absurd grandiosity of it.
Leaving behind the distorted version of history, he dashed down the hallway towards the great oak doors that led to his parents' bedchambers. The knights at the door gawked as he approached, then stepped aside. One let out a cough, clearly disgusted by the sweaty stench of the young man. In his haste to return with the cure for his mother's ailment, Caderyn had not bothered to clean up after his long ride home. Decorum and hygiene mattered little when his mother's life was at stake.
He shouldered through the door, then tore the little scroll from his belt and raised it high.
"The cure," he said, before realizing that the only person in the room was his mother.
Thanks to the poisoned crossbow bolt that had struck her nearly two weeks before, Duchess Sarya was unconscious, swathed in furs upon the bed, her lustrous red hair clinging to her sweaty face. Beside the bed was a table lined with various potions and treatments that had thus far failed to bring her out of the poison-induced slumber.
"Why is no one attending to her?" Caderyn growled, turning back to glare at the guards at the door.
"Because your father and brother received word that you were spotted at the gates, and they set off to intercept you. You must have just missed them, milord. And the healers are in the gardens, gathering herbs for their next treatment."
"Go fetch my father and Berent, then," Caderyn said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
One of the knights ran off while Caderyn crossed the room and took a seat on a cushioned chair beside the bed. Sighing, he stretched out his legs and laid the formula for the cure on the bed beside Sarya. For a moment he stared at the neat, precise handwriting that described the various flowers, mushrooms, and animal parts that would be necessary to save the duchess. During the ride south, he'd committed the ingredients and procedures to memory, lest he lose the precious scroll. The components had been etched onto his mind, just as a blacksmith would have etched his own personal mark upon a fine blade.
A pang of regret sank through his heart as he thought of Solveig, the Kovgaardian witch who had helped him. In exchange for taking part in a strange ritual to impregnate the young witch, she and her coven had agreed to give Caderyn the secret to saving the duchess. Though he'd only known the curvaceous witch for a short time, she had not left his thoughts during the journey south. Even when he'd been fleeing from wolves and dodging thick shards of hail, his heart had still clung to the warm, sensual memories of that witch.
The regret worsened as he thought of the child she'd eventually bear. The laws of her coven forbade Caderyn from ever meeting that child. He or she would grow up to become a witch, a shaman, or a warrior, completely bereft of a father's love. The coven or a friendly tribe would take care of the child, of course, but the thought of his absence from the child's life still stung.
"Blue," Sarya murmured, her chapped lips quivering. "A tree of blue flame."
Caderyn had seen that same tree himself in visions he'd suffered after being struck with the same poison that afflicted his mother. Those bizarre portents had driven him northward in search of a cure, to that very same tree and the shrine beneath it. In a strange way, the poison had in fact helped him uncover the answer to his mother's ailment. Without those strange dreams, he'd have never sought out that coven.
Solveig herself had haunted those dreams as well; he'd seen her beauty in his feverish hallucinations before ever meeting her in the flesh. The lingering desire nearly made him want to poison himself with another small dose, if only for the slim chance of seeing her again.
Urgent footsteps restored his mind to the matter at hand.
Berent was the first through the door, his lithe frame bounding across the room. His elegant red curls bounced and swayed as he dodged the muddy prints that Caderyn had left upon the floor. Although he'd been keeping watch over his mother, Berent was still dressed as if he were attending a fancy feast: a velvet vest, a silken tunic, fine trousers, and bejeweled boots. The man's ostentatious taste never failed to bring a faint grin to Caderyn's face.
"You smell like a stable," Berent said with a snort.
"A stable? I'd honestly thought I smelled worse."
Laughing, Caderyn rose to his feet.
Slower, heavier footsteps ripped the smile from his face.
Duke Lucan swept through the doorway, his dark cloak fluttering behind him. Unlike Berent, he was dressed in a more utilitarian fashion, with a simple red tabard, riding leggings, and sturdy boots that had seen better days. Upon his hip was a sword that rarely left his side. Covering one eye was a patch fashioned in the shape of a raven's wing. Sweat clung to his short, bristly, greying blonde hair. Though nearly in his sixties, Lucan's figure was still a formidable one, even if he lacked the youthful musculature of his oldest son.
The young man swallowed as his father's one good eye looked him up and down. Caderyn had been girding himself for this confrontation for days, even practicing aloud what he might say in order to defend himself.
Before his father could speak, Caderyn lifted the scroll.
"A cure," he murmured. "I stormed in here a few minutes ago, making a grand entrance, but none of you were here for it. I could step back out into the hall and repeat it, if you like."
To Caderyn's shock, the grizzled warrior-duke actually cracked a grin at his son's silly quip. He then charged across the room, his firm hands wrapping around his heir, pulling him into a crushing hug. Gasping, Caderyn flailed a bit, awkwardly returning the embrace.
By the blood of the saints, how long had it been since his father had hugged him?
"You smell like a dead pig," Lucan said with a snort, pulling away.
"Funny," Caderyn said, chuckling. "Berent said I smelled like a stable. I'm more inclined to agree with your assessment, father."
"Don't think that embrace means you're forgiven," Lucan said firmly, snatching up the scroll to look it over. "But I am glad you are home."
He handed the scroll to Berent.
"Get this to Ketrik and the alchemists at once. Have them start brewing this immediately."
The younger man took the scroll, gave Caderyn a rare, sheepish smile, then sprinted back out the door.
Lucan looked Caderyn up and down, taking note of the scar on his cheek, the scruffy beard, and the necklace of blue fangs around his neck.
"What's this?" the duke asked, tapping the rune-etched fangs.
The amulet had been a gift from Solveig, given to Caderyn as a memento to remember her by. She'd also crafted a matching amulet to give to their child, to serve as a connection between Caderyn and the child he could never meet.
"Supposedly dragon fangs," Caderyn said. "I won it in a game of dice."
"You found time to gamble on a quest to save your mother's life?" Lucan rolled his one good eye. "Some things never change."
Caderyn almost winced at that, then flopped back down onto the cushioned chair.
"And is that how you won the cure, too?" the duke asked.
His father was far more familiar with Kovgaardian customs than Caderyn was, given his friendship with Ketrik and other northern allies, and due to his past conflicts with the barbarians. Thus he likely already had a notion that Caderyn had sacrificed
something
in order to succeed on his quest.
After staring at his slumbering mother for a few moments, Caderyn finally looked up.
"Are you certain that you wish to know the answer to that, father?"
Lucan clenched his jaw and glanced back to his wife.
"Perhaps not."
The duke sat upon another bedside chair and took his wife's hand.
"Did any new crises ignite while I was gone?" Caderyn asked, after breathing a sigh of relief that his father was not about to press him for details.
"One of the Jadewall barons crossed the border four days ago. His men burned a mill and stole a small herd from Baron Aelred's lands. All of it stemmed from a grazing dispute from last year and the wretched scum took the opportunity of your mother's ailment to try to balance the scales. Duke Thandor has already censured the rogue baron and ordered him to return the cattle but..."
Lucan's hand tightened around Sarya's wrist.
"I fear that Thandor himself may try to use this to his advantage. The disputes over the river crossing tolls have only worsened over the past few years. A squabble over grazing rights could easily be used as justification to craft other grievances."
Brushing his finger over the scar that had been inflicted by the crossbow bolt, Caderyn frowned at his mother.
"Do you think Thandor had anything to do with this?"
"I don't know," Lucan said with a sigh. "It's too...clumsy. He's a clever bastard and likely could have found a more subtle method of attempting this."
"Unless he picked the less subtle way for that exact reason," said Caderyn. "A clumsy, obvious attack to throw us off the scent."
"That's exactly what several of our councilors said. But Berent was working on some other leads, some of which may prove promising."
As they waited for the alchemists to return, Lucan filled his son in on what else he'd missed. Fellhaven's barons along the border with Jadewall were in an uproar after the cattle raid, with many swearing vengeance and raising their levies, but Lucan had ordered them to stand down. Caderyn's sister Vienne had written several letters from her home in Utresk, swearing to raise her husband's forces to aid Fellhaven if Thandor was in fact plotting something. Caderyn had chuckled at that, knowing that the fiery Vienne must have loathed being so far away from the crisis.
