Chapter 31
Everyone Under Your Rule
Stellon
I’d barely finished bathing and changing clothes when the first of the regional lords arrived at Seaspire.
One after another, they were announced, having obviously leaned on their own Evanescers to make the trip to Seaspire so quickly.
Something very urgent was going on.
My minister of security knocked on the door of my suite, his face twisted in clear dismay.
“I know it is late, Your Majesty, but they are demanding an audience, I cannot get them to leave.”
“Very well, don’t fret,” I said. “Deliver the message that I will see them shortly in the throne room.”
Leaving my chambers, I sent a mental message to Pharis, who’d gone to his old room to clean up while Raewyn rested in a guest suite.
You ready for this, brother?
Not really, but the Three Pillars will handle it.
His response came through just as he turned the corner and shot a grin at me.
“I do hope Mareth’s already waiting down there with a man-eating lion or something,” he said aloud.
“It might take an entire pride, based on the reports of hysteria I’m receiving,” I said. “The Kingdom’s cracking at the seams. Let’s get this over with.”
We entered the throne room through the back door. Our sister was indeed there already, though sadly without any large predators to assist our cause.
“What did you two break this time?” she asked in a facetious tone. “Judging from the sound out there in the hall, it’s the whole Kingdom.”
“Not yet,” Pharis told her. “But just wait.”
Once I was seated with my brother and sister standing at either side of the throne, I motioned for the footmen to open the doors.
A rabble of angry people spilled inside. It looked like the overlord of each region was present along with many of the minor lords from their territories. Some of them had brought their bond-mates as well.
I gestured for the closest of them to step forward and speak. It was Lord Espen of Westerly.
“Your Majesty, an Earthwife from a village near my castle paid me a visit tonight,” he began. He was so upset that spittle flew from his mouth when he spoke.
“She told me the Elves have been cursed. All of us. She said from now on it could take a thousand years for Elven couples to conceive, and most will only be able to produce a single child.”
Other angry voices joined his, not waiting for their own turn to address me.
“I was told the same,” Lord Solan yelled.
“I wanted a houseful of children,” his wife said in a plaintive tone.
“An Earthwife visited me tonight as well,” Lord Lalor of Windros said. “My Glenna is already an only child. Does this mean I will have no grandchildren? My line will die off along with my name?”
Another man, Lord Hyland, stepped forward. “I got the same news from the Earthwife of Warrentown. This cannot be coincidence. But is it true? She said it was because of your actions, Your Majesty.”
A roar of anxious chatter filled the room.
I stood and used my hands to press down on the air in front of me, calling for calm.
“I know you’re alarmed, but the truth of this remains to be seen,” I told the group.
As Pharis had said, only time would tell whether Caitriona had lied about the Elven fertility curse or whether it was real.
But I owed it to my people to be honest with them and do what I could to try to fix things.
“The Earthwives might be lying, trying to scare us. For the time being, we must assume that it’s real. I did witness a large group of them performing a sacrifice ritual tonight… and I was given the same information.”
Dismayed groans and cries of distress echoed throughout the room. The questions were flying so fast, it was difficult to determine who they were coming from.
“Why is this happening?”
“Can the curse be broken?”
“We are doomed.”
“Why was the King there?”
Once again, I called for calm.
“Please, everyone. Quiet please. If the curse is real—and as I said, we have to assume that it is—it does indeed have something to do with me. As you know, the Earthwives have never been fond of Elves as a whole, but I offended them, and I fear that’s what led to this.”
After a pause, I said, “That’s why I’m stepping down from the throne.”
Caitriona had said, “everyone under your rule,” when telling us what she and her Earthwife sisters had done. Hopefully if I was no longer ruling them, the curse wouldn’t affect our entire population.
The simultaneous gasps made it feel like all the air was sucked out of the throne room at once.
“What’s more,” I went on, “from this point forward, each regional lord will regain full control of his own region. The Sixlands will go back to the way it was before my father claimed rule over the continent for himself.”
The sounds in the room changed, becoming much more approving. I’d just told these men they were kings again, no longer subservient to a Supreme Ruler.
Probably not what they’d expected when they’d come here tonight.
“And what of Marinus?” someone called out. “Who will rule this region?”
As the Randalins had already been overlords of Marinus, my father had made this region the power seat of the Kingdom when he’d claimed sovereign rule over all Avrandar and the Sixlands.
“The Randalins will maintain control here,” I told them. “My brother Pharis will reign over Marinus from Castle Stormcrest.”
A couple of the regional leaders, Lord Lalor of Windros and Lord Sillery of Nordaris, nodded immediate approval. A minor lord from Marinus looked a bit less happy.
Lord Hyland of Nordica, whose daughter I’d thrown over for Raewyn the night before our planned wedding, still looked very unhappy indeed.
He spoke up. “And how do we know your abdication of the throne will be enough to lift the witches’ curse?”
Looking around at his fellow kings, he asked, “Wouldn’t it be safer for the former King Stellon to be executed, so that the curse may die with him?”
Pharis stepped to the front of the dais, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“The first one of you ungrateful dogs who tries it will be the first to die,” he growled. “As King of Marinus, I alone will decide my brother’s fate. If you don’t want war with my ‘Dark Court,’ then you’ll leave it at that.”