Blackmount Chronicle: Firkin and the Prince
Night slipped up the sandstone steps of the royal palace and gardens complex in Camerill, unnoticed for the most part, save for the occasional passing comment exchanged between citizen-stewards and keepers-of-the-peace about an early autumn or the casual gathering of the clothes about one's shoulders that often precedes the realization that one has become properly cold. No one paid mind to what would have felt like an early sunset, had mind been paid as it ought. No one except Firkin, Keg to his friends.
Night was playing a trick, he ventured. Firkin's brow furrowed as he let the thought
bounce around a bit before settling it as fact with a smart nod to himself. Decision rendered. Night was being dodgy indeed, trying to sneak in a full hour ahead of schedule. Firkin often noticed when odd business was afoot, and he was quite accustomed to being ignored or gently ridiculed for bringing his noticings to the attention of his fellow guardsmen. Sedgewick would listen, patiently most likely, but Firkin wasn't foolish enough to entertain the idea that the listening was the result of any sort of belief on Sedgewick's part. The best kind of friend, Sedge, who would give even a crazy idea a fair hearing just out of respect for the idea's owner. Still he'd leaned too heavily on that charitable ear this month already with the story of the big wet footprint in the basement and the secret door in the palace wall and so many others, and Firkin, out of his own kind of respect, decided this time that something like the sun turning in for bed an hour early was probably not big enough news to trouble anybody with anyway. So Firkin simply stood and watched.
The grounds of the palace and gardens complex were calm. They always were, and the citizen-stewards' jobs looking after that calm were, if one discounted the inconvenience of the rotating hours, one of the easiest and most pleasant occupations in the whole of the county. He watched the shadows of ornamental trees creep palace-ward along the hand-trimmed lawns, like long fingers; watched the shade of the inmost hedge wall slide up the masonry of its opposite-facing wall. More than once, he overheard the sounds of conversation between Keepers disturb the velvety still that had settled on the place; the sonic dust of centuries of tranquil routine.
The lack of a breeze when evening always brought one almost sent him wandering off to
comment to someone about it, but he caught himself. Firkin sat down instead, and let his eyes
wander away from the foliage-shaped tendrils of shade wending across the lawn toward him and the palace, upwards to the horizon to watch the setting sun. Sun setting, he pondered, watching the deep orange orb become a half-cicle to melt to a bump to flatten out and boil away to just a red-orange glow like what he imagined it might look like if the sun became nothing more than a puddle on the horizon before seeping through the cracks in the earth to disappear completely.
And just then, while he was humbly congratulating himself on having cradled such a deeply poetic thought for a man of his limited education, was when he noticed the crack. The horizon, just to the left of where the sun had disappeared, was leaking sunshine. There was no canyon there for it to seep through; no mountains at all to the west of the capital to house such a breach if there were. Yet there on the horizon was an unmistakable gap in the even line of what had appeared until not long ago to be the edge of the visible world.
Firkin squinted at it. It didn't disappear. He didn't even hear the other man approach, such was his concentration on the mystery. It wasn't until the stranger standing behind him had cleared his throat that Firkin even noticed he was no longer alone in the weak garden twilight. "There's a storm gathering." The newcomer's voice was empty of any assessment of value. He may as well have been talking about Firkin's shoes for all the interest the words contained. Still, he had said it, and that deserved a reply. He guessed that the stranger was right. A storm on the horizon, if it were a broad enough one, might cause an early sunset. "Reckon it might be." He finally settled on saying, lacking anything substantive to add to what was, all facts considered, really all that properly needed saying of the phenomenon they were witnessing. He felt a little sheepish in the silence, and would've broken it to say something polite, or to introduce himself at least, but the other spoke first. "You see it too, don't you." Again a flat statement, shaped for all the world as a question.
Now of course he saw it, he'd just commented, hadn't he? It was a funny thing for someone to say, but perhaps this man was like Firkin, and so accustomed to being the only one to see things that he felt the need to ask. Well, Firkin was not a rude individual, and he was not about to make this man feel as others had made Firkin feel for pointing out the world's inconsistent bits, no sir! "I see it clear as day sir." Firkin replied promptly, and his new friend, rather than being cheered by the camaraderie, seemed to sink a little. "There is a darkness on the horizon. And I fear that no decent act may turn it back." The man said, sounding now to Firkin to be very depressed. Now this puzzled Firkin even more than the early sunset. He felt that his new friend was confiding in him, something few people ever did with Firkin, so he thought he ought to make an effort to understand what the confusing words had meant. "Yes indeed there is sir. But why decent? What does it matter if the act is decent or not, in turning back a storm?" He said after trying to reason it through himself and falling flat on how virtue could affect the weather.
This did not have the effect Firkin was looking for, his new friend tightening his jaw,
raising his eyes to the horizon, and saying only "Thank you friend, for the clarity. I know now what must be done." before leaving Firkin alone in the garden, now dark. He could just pick out, turning to see which way the stranger left in, that his path took him back towards the palace. It was dark, and Firkin had never seen the face of a man resolving to commit murder, let alone regicide, so he was left only with the impression of having failed somehow at giving comfort to a fellow soldier. When Guard Captain Ferroden Camerillis, eighth of his line to serve the crown as chief bodyguard, turned up face-down in a bog to the south of the capital the next morning, found with what might pass in some primitive cultures for axe embedded in his back, his job was given almost immediately to a hitherto unknown guardsman who went only by the name ToGrak who was never seen without his helmet and spoke with a very thick accent that made the flowing lilt of Camerill's native tongue sound as if it were a great effort to produce. Within a fortnight, ToGrak had dismissed the Citizen Stewards and banned from the palace complex all civilians. All in the name of security- the previous Captain of the Guard having after all been found murdered in cold blood by Separatists and Dissenters to the Crown.
Firkin knew only that he had lost his job, and would now need to seek work in the city,
perhaps as a potters' apprentice, or a baker's. As much as he liked the idea of earning his living making bread for people, Firkin knew that the good days of poetic thoughts in the palace garden were something he would come to miss dearly, as the whole tone of the country turned darkly toward the discovery of enemies among them, and the crafting of new anti-sedition laws to combat that threat. It would be some time before people had any interest in poetry again.
ToGrak liked this climate, he decided, as he pushed in the 3rd brick from the left relative to the green man on a nearby tapestry, allowing the secret passage down to the orcs' quarters in the basement to swing open. His meeting with Prince Kheftep, Herald of the Eye, had gone well, and there would be very little resistance to the increased guard partrols in the countryside that he had been keen on instating. Ascending the stairs before him were two of his grunts, arguing over something trivial, but dressed sharply in their new Camerill Royal Guard tabards. "Remember your helmets!" ToGrak barked at them under his breath as he passed them in the doorway. Seeing the trail of damp spots much larger than a human boot print in their wake, he added irritably "And wipe your feet!"
Night was playing a trick, he ventured. Firkin's brow furrowed as he let the thought
bounce around a bit before settling it as fact with a smart nod to himself. Decision rendered. Night was being dodgy indeed, trying to sneak in a full hour ahead of schedule. Firkin often noticed when odd business was afoot, and he was quite accustomed to being ignored or gently ridiculed for bringing his noticings to the attention of his fellow guardsmen. Sedgewick would listen, patiently most likely, but Firkin wasn't foolish enough to entertain the idea that the listening was the result of any sort of belief on Sedgewick's part. The best kind of friend, Sedge, who would give even a crazy idea a fair hearing just out of respect for the idea's owner. Still he'd leaned too heavily on that charitable ear this month already with the story of the big wet footprint in the basement and the secret door in the palace wall and so many others, and Firkin, out of his own kind of respect, decided this time that something like the sun turning in for bed an hour early was probably not big enough news to trouble anybody with anyway. So Firkin simply stood and watched.
The grounds of the palace and gardens complex were calm. They always were, and the citizen-stewards' jobs looking after that calm were, if one discounted the inconvenience of the rotating hours, one of the easiest and most pleasant occupations in the whole of the county. He watched the shadows of ornamental trees creep palace-ward along the hand-trimmed lawns, like long fingers; watched the shade of the inmost hedge wall slide up the masonry of its opposite-facing wall. More than once, he overheard the sounds of conversation between Keepers disturb the velvety still that had settled on the place; the sonic dust of centuries of tranquil routine.
The lack of a breeze when evening always brought one almost sent him wandering off to
comment to someone about it, but he caught himself. Firkin sat down instead, and let his eyes
wander away from the foliage-shaped tendrils of shade wending across the lawn toward him and the palace, upwards to the horizon to watch the setting sun. Sun setting, he pondered, watching the deep orange orb become a half-cicle to melt to a bump to flatten out and boil away to just a red-orange glow like what he imagined it might look like if the sun became nothing more than a puddle on the horizon before seeping through the cracks in the earth to disappear completely.
And just then, while he was humbly congratulating himself on having cradled such a deeply poetic thought for a man of his limited education, was when he noticed the crack. The horizon, just to the left of where the sun had disappeared, was leaking sunshine. There was no canyon there for it to seep through; no mountains at all to the west of the capital to house such a breach if there were. Yet there on the horizon was an unmistakable gap in the even line of what had appeared until not long ago to be the edge of the visible world.
Firkin squinted at it. It didn't disappear. He didn't even hear the other man approach, such was his concentration on the mystery. It wasn't until the stranger standing behind him had cleared his throat that Firkin even noticed he was no longer alone in the weak garden twilight. "There's a storm gathering." The newcomer's voice was empty of any assessment of value. He may as well have been talking about Firkin's shoes for all the interest the words contained. Still, he had said it, and that deserved a reply. He guessed that the stranger was right. A storm on the horizon, if it were a broad enough one, might cause an early sunset. "Reckon it might be." He finally settled on saying, lacking anything substantive to add to what was, all facts considered, really all that properly needed saying of the phenomenon they were witnessing. He felt a little sheepish in the silence, and would've broken it to say something polite, or to introduce himself at least, but the other spoke first. "You see it too, don't you." Again a flat statement, shaped for all the world as a question.
Now of course he saw it, he'd just commented, hadn't he? It was a funny thing for someone to say, but perhaps this man was like Firkin, and so accustomed to being the only one to see things that he felt the need to ask. Well, Firkin was not a rude individual, and he was not about to make this man feel as others had made Firkin feel for pointing out the world's inconsistent bits, no sir! "I see it clear as day sir." Firkin replied promptly, and his new friend, rather than being cheered by the camaraderie, seemed to sink a little. "There is a darkness on the horizon. And I fear that no decent act may turn it back." The man said, sounding now to Firkin to be very depressed. Now this puzzled Firkin even more than the early sunset. He felt that his new friend was confiding in him, something few people ever did with Firkin, so he thought he ought to make an effort to understand what the confusing words had meant. "Yes indeed there is sir. But why decent? What does it matter if the act is decent or not, in turning back a storm?" He said after trying to reason it through himself and falling flat on how virtue could affect the weather.
This did not have the effect Firkin was looking for, his new friend tightening his jaw,
raising his eyes to the horizon, and saying only "Thank you friend, for the clarity. I know now what must be done." before leaving Firkin alone in the garden, now dark. He could just pick out, turning to see which way the stranger left in, that his path took him back towards the palace. It was dark, and Firkin had never seen the face of a man resolving to commit murder, let alone regicide, so he was left only with the impression of having failed somehow at giving comfort to a fellow soldier. When Guard Captain Ferroden Camerillis, eighth of his line to serve the crown as chief bodyguard, turned up face-down in a bog to the south of the capital the next morning, found with what might pass in some primitive cultures for axe embedded in his back, his job was given almost immediately to a hitherto unknown guardsman who went only by the name ToGrak who was never seen without his helmet and spoke with a very thick accent that made the flowing lilt of Camerill's native tongue sound as if it were a great effort to produce. Within a fortnight, ToGrak had dismissed the Citizen Stewards and banned from the palace complex all civilians. All in the name of security- the previous Captain of the Guard having after all been found murdered in cold blood by Separatists and Dissenters to the Crown.
Firkin knew only that he had lost his job, and would now need to seek work in the city,
perhaps as a potters' apprentice, or a baker's. As much as he liked the idea of earning his living making bread for people, Firkin knew that the good days of poetic thoughts in the palace garden were something he would come to miss dearly, as the whole tone of the country turned darkly toward the discovery of enemies among them, and the crafting of new anti-sedition laws to combat that threat. It would be some time before people had any interest in poetry again.
ToGrak liked this climate, he decided, as he pushed in the 3rd brick from the left relative to the green man on a nearby tapestry, allowing the secret passage down to the orcs' quarters in the basement to swing open. His meeting with Prince Kheftep, Herald of the Eye, had gone well, and there would be very little resistance to the increased guard partrols in the countryside that he had been keen on instating. Ascending the stairs before him were two of his grunts, arguing over something trivial, but dressed sharply in their new Camerill Royal Guard tabards. "Remember your helmets!" ToGrak barked at them under his breath as he passed them in the doorway. Seeing the trail of damp spots much larger than a human boot print in their wake, he added irritably "And wipe your feet!"