“You speak of me as if I weren’t even here,” Lord Gregory said, from the ground, inside his tattered tent where Wyndall had left him hours ago.
He thought he had died, and gone to one of the nine Hells, when he opened his eyes, and saw the yellow-eyed demon looking down at him. It was confusing, because he had always thought that the angels would have the gold and silver hair, not the devils. For some reason, the fat little crow that had wanted to eat his eyes had flown from his face to land on the demon’s companion’s shoulder. He couldn’t feel the pain in his body anymore, and they were speaking about him as if he weren’t even there, so all he could do was assume that he wasn’t alive anymore.
“Am I dead?” he finally asked, but before anyone could respond, his body answered for him. Slowly, his shoulder began to burn again from the poison. He felt it oozing through his veins like some thick, nauseating taint.
“You’re Lord Gregory, the Lion of the West,” the person, with the bird on his shoulder, said to him. He wasn’t sure if it was a question or not, but he answered anyway.
“I am Lord Alvin Gregory. Who are you?”
“I am Hyden, son of Harrap, of the Skyler Clan.” He gestured at the elf. “This is Vaegon.” As if it wasn’t obvious he added: “He’s an elf.”
“Then I’m not dead?” Lord Gregory tried to sit up, and found that it wasn’t hard to do. It surprised him. He coughed spasmodically though, when he got a lungful of the acrid smoky air. Looking around as he recovered himself, he realized that it was starting to get dark.
“You’re not dead yet,” Vaegon answered flatly. “But you’ve still got the poison in you.”
“That little black-eyed witch tried to kill you, but she was unlucky,” Hyden added.
“Witch? What are you talking about?” Lord Gregory asked.
“It was no witch,” Vaegon corrected, with a slightly annoyed smirk at Hyden’s ignorance. “It was an imp. A wizard’s pet most likely. The little devils aren’t good for much else.”
“Pael,” Gregory groaned, as the horror of the past few days came flooding back to him. The wizard had probably poisoned King Balton as well. On his death-bed, the King had told him as much, without actually saying the words.
He hoped that Wyndall wouldn’t fail him, otherwise his wife and Lord Ellrich would never get his warnings. Pael would probably kill them too.
“I must find a giant,” he blurted out.
If he wasn’t speaking to an elf and a mountain clansman with a baby bird on his shoulder, he might’ve felt foolish for saying such a crazy thing.
Rising to his feet, a wave of dizziness swept over him, but Hyden and Vaegon caught his elbows and steadied him.
“What you need is some squat weed,” Vaegon said. “The imp’s poison is still running through your body.”
“Maybe we can find some in one of the herb shops on the Ways.” Hyden looked at the cloud of dark smoke roiling around the base of the monolithic spire. “If the whole place hasn’t burned to the ground by the time we get there.”
“If not, I can swim the river, and pick some from the forest you humans call the Reyhall,” Vaegon told them. “For some reason, it only grows on the west side of the Leif Greyn flow.”
They helped the Lion Lord onto his horse and made their way along a trail of corpses and smoldering debris. The carnage only grew more abundant as they neared the Spire.
A couple of groups of sullen women and teary-eyed children, hurried past them as they went. The first group was guarded by Wildermont soldiers, the second, by a handful of poorly armed common folk, who had only taken up the weapons they carried to try to get their loved ones home. More groups were preparing to leave. A pair of young boys stood still as stone over a mangled woman, as if they were expecting her to get up at any moment to tend them.
“What madness is this?” Lord Gregory asked gruffly. The fever was on him again. His whole body was growing hot and his mental clarity was fading fast.
“The madness of men,” Vaegon answered flatly. He winced at his own coldness. A man, after all, had saved his life earlier this day. He decided he would try not to forget that fact again.
A shadowy shape, that might have been an iron skillet, shot across their path, hurled from a group of Valleyan folk, at a pair of bloody, limping men. Curses were thrown after it. The men just hurried away, with their heads hung low.