“Why are you here?” Shaella asked kindly, and then stood. “Can I have something brought for you? Food? Wine? Anything?”
He took her hand, and helped her down the three steps that formed the dais for the Lion’s throne. Her mind raced through the possibilities. His strange, suddenly fatherly manner, suggested that he wanted something. But what could Pael want that he couldn’t just take?
“No my dear, I need no refreshment.” He put a hand on each of her shoulders, and looked her in the eyes. “You have made me proud, Shaella.” He seemed as earnest as one could be, but Shaella wasn’t fooled by the act; at least not completely. “I wish to have you by my side when I take Xwarda on the morrow. I wish to share the victory with you, and I hope to make you as proud of me as I am of you.”
She would have thought that he just wanted her along to gain the advantage of intimidation and might that her dragon would bring, but she didn’t even have the collar on at the moment. It interfered with her use of the orb, allowing the dragon’s thoughts into hers and Gerard’s moments, so she had stopped wearing it. As it was, Pael could have just summoned the collar to himself, put it on, and taken control of the dragon. There was no question in her mind that Pael knew exactly where the collar was, but he hadn’t tried to take it.
She dared not believe in this sudden burst of fatherly tenderness. Her mother’s voice rang through her head, spewing a myriad curses at his lack of such an emotion, warning her not to be taken in by his act.
Shaella returned the loving gaze into Pael’s cold dark eyes, and searched them. Try as she might, she didn’t see, or sense any sign of deception or mockery. He seemed as sincere as one could be. She found that this moved her, and without a moment’s more thought on the matter, she agreed to join him in his conquest of Xwarda.
Starkle, the blue-skinned pixie man, woke Queen Willa just after the sun broke the horizon. In a hurried zigzagging flutter, flown at a respectable distance from the waking Queen’s bed, he spoke to her in his deep, excited voice.
“It is as he said, Highness, the necromancer didn’t lie. You have to see it for yourself. Hurry now.”
He had to zip out of the way of a thrown pillow.
“I am only the messenger!” he said indignantly after he had recovered.
“General Spyra, and the High Wizard, Targon, sent me. They await you at the Coast Road Gate. Hurry now, Majesty.”
“Would you excuse yourself so that I may dress, sir?” Queen Willa snapped sharply. A little tiny pixie man was still a man, and she was still a lady, no matter how serious the emergency.
“Of, of course Highness, forgive me.” Starkle bowed in midair, then erratically zipped across the room, and out the slightly cracked door.
“Milly!” Willa yelled coolly. “I know your ear is glued to the door! Someone had to open it for that little blue gnat!”
A middle aged woman, blushing furiously, eased into the room. Willa was hurriedly swapping her night clothes for a heavy pullover gown.
“Why wasn’t it you who awakened me?” the Queen asked. “Find my hooded cloak while you answer. No, the darker one.”
Milly hid her face in one of Willa’s large closets.
“Who can say the ways of the fairy folk Highness. Surely not I.” she called from inside.
Willa found a black leather belt and buckled it around the velvety lavender gown she had chosen, and then took the cloak Milly offered.
“It’s not the ways of pixies that concern me, Milly,” Willa said, while bunching her hair into a ponytail. “Pixies can’t turn door knobs by themselves.”
Willa’s grin showed that she was just teasing her maid servant. Suddenly, her face turned serious, and she looked sternly into Milly’s eyes.
“I want you to gather a pillow sack full of your dearest things, and then report to Lady Andra. Do it just as soon as I leave, and tell her I said to take you to the tunnel herself.”
A half hour later, Queen Willa came up from the endless switchbacks of stairs, up to the wide roadway-like top of the outer wall. It took a few moments for her to catch her breath and gather her bearings, long enough for her to locate the General and Master Targon.
In her cloak, with the hood up, no one bothered to acknowledge her, much less direct her. This was fine with her. She didn’t want to distract the men. Looking around at them, she decided that she could have come up to the top completely naked, and not a one of them would have been able to peal their eyes away from what was holding their attention.