Chapter Fourteen
Old Wounds
I walked deeper into the ruins of the lower levels of what had once been the crown palace. The ultraviolet light of my staff increased with my need for more light. I hadn’t been this way in a very long time, as it was; the way had gotten only more treacherous and unstable with the passage of years. Sadness threatened to overwhelm me, as I acknowledged that this was going to be the last time that I came this way. I felt that knowledge echo strongly within me.
Dust sheeted down on me from above, as I had to crawl up and over the fallen debris that littered the floor. The history and glory of my ancestors was fallen all around me. My people were fallen from power and yet for the first time in a very long time I now had a hope that things could once again be better.
These ancient shattered halls that I traveled through could never be repaired. Somberly I gave up on the dream of that very thing occurring one day. It was time to begin a new dream and to experience more things than just those I was used to from long force of habit and tradition.
I entered the great subterranean hall littered with stately fallen pillars. The whole place was about to collapse. Perhaps it had been unwise to come here at all, but I had wanted to say goodbye one last time so I had come anyway against my better judgment. Hopefully the ceiling would stay up for a few minutes longer.
I moved across the room of the shattered glory of past Kings, until I came to the end of the line, which was my father’s resting place. He had been one of the kindest and yet wisest of all those who ever ruled over the Sallaconese people. Staring at his tomb I wondered how and what he would advise me to do now.
I wished I knew. I let my head fall forward onto the dusty tomb. I may have been well over a thousand years in age, but in some ways I think no matter how old I lived to I would never be as wise as he had been.
He had been the best of fathers. He’d always found time to spend with each of his children despite the responsibilities of his position as leader of our people. As a boy and as a young man I had been a challenging offspring to maintain control of. I had often been found in fits of unreasoning rage or acts of unkindness.
Father hadn’t let me get away with any of it. I’d always had to pay the penalty of whatever punishment he thought best suited the crime I was guilty of, but he’d always shown me clearly that whatever punishment I was made to feel was a result of my own actions. Always he had taken great effort to show me another way around the situation than the one I had taken.
He’d always been positive, always encouraging, and most important of all, always loving. He had made me a better man than I was on my own. So many years removed from the excellence of his kindly wisdom had, I had thought at least, undone a lot of his patiently taught teaching. I had been wrong though.
I had just forged an alliance by blood with the same people that I had sworn to destroy, if ever I got the chance, because it had been my father’s wish for peace and reconciliation instead. I had denied the passion of my rage and instead I had been reasonable and done the bidding of my father’s wishes. I had refrained from senselessly crushing the beautiful mind of the woman that I now called my wife. I had shared with her and thus her people the prestige and honor of my people, because of my father’s wishes. I had left the room instead of fulfilling my desire to enjoy my new bride with a pent-up passion hundreds of years in the making. Of all these decisions I had made it could not be said that I had done them because I was a good man at heart. I wasn’t.
I was a killer, a man of rage, a man past caring, a man without love and yet I had acted as my father had taught and inspired me to be. But now what? What keys did his tutoring of me have yet in stock to show me the way I had yet to go in the uncharted depths of the life opening up before me?
I was going to have to trust God if anything positive was to be achieved, because among all the other things I was also a weak man. Even now I had to fight a war against letting my rage be released on both the enemy and the betrayers of my people. The people, who had allowed all this ruin that lay around me to befall us. I gritted my teeth and ground my forehead into the cold stone of my father’s tomb.
I also had to fight a war against returning to the room and the woman I had left behind, who was now mine to do with as I pleased. God help me!
How was such a man as I going to keep it all together and keep doing the right things, when all it seemed like that I yearned to do was the opposite of what should be done? My father would have been a better suited man to the task at hand than I was, yet it had fallen to me of all the great kings that lay resting in this room.
Why did it all have to come down to me the least of all those worthy to have ever ruled the Sallaconese people to deal with the delicate situation our people were faced with for continued survival? God must have a purpose to my selection for the job. He must or why else would my life have been continued on so as it had?
I would do the best I could and hope it was enough. The best strategy it seemed to me was to start gathering my people into one place in secrecy where they could be picked up as one group. That plan could backfire, as all my people could be killed easily in one group together, but it was going to be a risk that was going to have to be taken.
It was also a strategy that involved trusting the Vallians. God help us, if they failed us this time, as they had done so in the past! If they betrayed us again and I was still able I’d make sure they were done in along with my people down to the last one of them!
I shook my head sadly. Here I was next to my father’s tomb plotting vengeance on my new wife’s people, for a perceived future betrayal that had not happened yet and likely wouldn’t. It was not the way that this new blood bond between our peoples needed to start out. I stared down at the lit up engravings of my ring, as I reflected that it was not a blood bond yet between our two peoples.
What had made me do it? What had made me throw all the hatred and distrust away and give the woman that I hoped was still in my room one of the map keys to the Haven Worlds?
I admitted the answer to myself, even if I wouldn’t have to somebody else. It hadn’t been just because of my father’s deal with Tadias, it had also been because I simply couldn’t resist having the prize that was being offered.
I gave up on one of my wars, as I left the Hall of my father’s and headed back out through the ruins toward my room and the woman within. About an hour later, as I was nearing the room I heard a crumble of stones and the ruins around me shook slightly. I turned and looked back down the way I’d just come from. After a minute I saw a plume of dust drift out toward me.
The grandeur of the past was now forever buried. It was time to move into the future. With that knowledge firmly in hand I stepped into the room, only to see that she had been too nervous to take me up on the option of the bed and instead had fallen asleep with her head resting on her arms against the table.
Some long buried emotion came awake within me and I actually felt sorry for her for a moment. How strange her life must be to her right now. She had real courage and I saw a lot of my old mentor in her.
Should I move her to the bed?
I decided against it. I’d end up waking her and besides she didn’t have much longer yet to sleep before the night gave way to the day so I sat down in the other chair and watched her quietly, as she slept.
“You’re a good man.” Came a soft voice, I glanced around the room in concern, but I saw no one. I must have imagined the voice.
I went back to staring at my bride, as she slept and I reflected on how much I’d like to wrap one of the curly tangles of her red hair around one of my fingers. It was only the beginning of my reflections upon what I would like to do with her, but I sat where I was and acted out on none of them.
Ellanara’s eyes flew open and she sat up abruptly disregarding the stiffness of her limbs, as everything came flooding back to her. The first thing she saw was him! He’d been watching her sleep! She glanced away from his stoic features to the ring that was brightly flashing on her finger. Why was it flashing?
Then she remembered him saying about how the ring was tied into the heartbeat of the wearer. It had never done that for her brother or Eva, but apparently she wasn’t going to be so lucky. It wasn’t fair!
No matter how calm she appeared on the outside the ring would betray her, as a truth detector for what was going on inside of her!
She heard a deep chuckle and she looked back up at the man she now called husband. He spoke, “Salanicus. Husband sounds too formal.” He intoned deeply.
This was really insufferable having someone always knowing what you were thinking as you thought it. He was probably reading her thoughts even now! As if in response she saw the wisp of a smile briefly appear before he got up.
Ellanara glanced up and down his tall form nervously, as he stepped toward her. She kept forgetting just how big he was. His hand reached out and it was a struggle for her to stay still and not flinch, as his fingers twirled several tangles of her hair around a finger.
“I don’t like that!” She said firmly.
“Objection noted.” He said in his deep voice, but his fingers continued playing with her hair thus proving a point. He didn’t take orders.
“Please stop.” She asked softly looking down at the table and his fingers immediately withdrew from her hair and she learned a valuable lesson in how to deal with him.
“It’s time we headed back to our ship.” He said.
Our ship!
Ellanara glanced up ready to debate that in heated denial, but she stopped overcome by the intensity of his eyes daring her to say otherwise. She got up and followed him from the room without saying a word and out into the underground ruins and then into the light of the morning sun. Being out in the morning sun and away from the closed in feeling of the ruins was a welcome relief.
“Get up beside me. Stop walking back there like you don’t trust me.” Salanicus intoned deeply.
“Why? Don’t you trust me?” She fired back smartly.
He looked back at her, “Sure I do. About as far as I can throw you, which is surprisingly far. Want to see how far that is?”
Ellanara quickly stepped up beside him feeling very small next to his towering frame. This man would have made her father and brothers look small. Glancing down at her hand by her side and spying the glowing ring only served to echo the fact that she now belonged to this stranger. What was even stranger was that God had somehow orchestrated this. Why would He do such a thing to her? The question was pointless. He had and that was that.
Ellanara glanced up the long frame beside her and not for the first time since she’d been trapped in this arranged pairing she wondered how in the world it was ever going to work out between them. It was clear to her that there was a buried hostility towards her and her people within the big warrior by her side. He was so different than anything she was used to and yet God surely had her best interests at heart? She hoped so.
It seemed like an endless journey through the ruins, as much as the ruins themselves seemed endless. Ellanara glanced up at Salanicus, “It must’ve been terrible when all this happened to your people.”
He glanced down at her with a look that spoke volumes and she swallowed hard and took a step back, because of the sudden level of hostility she saw radiating out from him toward her. He continued on after a moment and she followed after him hesitantly.
A terrible thought occurred to her, “The Vallians weren’t the ones that attacked you were they?”
He stopped and turned to her and studied her for a long moment, “You really don’t know do you?”
“Know what?” She asked fearing to hear his answer, some part of her already knowing that she wasn’t going to like it.
“The Vallians, your ancestors betrayed us by not coming to our aid, as we had done countless times for them in the past. Instead they used the slaughter of my people, as a fortuitous time delay in order to jump world and flee with all their people back to the first world like cowards, while my people were hunted down almost to the last man and destroyed!”
Throughout his impassioned indictment of her people he had been backing her up across an open space, until she felt her back press up against a pillar and in a very real fear for her life she watched as he pressed closer to her.
“If the Vallians had stayed perhaps this wouldn’t be like what it is! At least they would have died with honor!” He spoke out harshly, as Ellanara looked up into his wrathful countenance already hearing the sound of her spine shattering, as he broke her in half over his knee.
In a desperate rush to stave off the inevitable Ellanara whispered out, “I didn’t know! I wouldn’t have come here if I did! I swear it!”
The intensity of his eyes diminished some. “I know you don’t.” He said.
He abruptly turned away from her and stood scowling, as he looked out over the ruins that stretched out across the valley that the grand city had once filled. Another horrible thought occurred to Ellanara and she gave voice to it, “Did you take me as your wife so that you could take out your revenge on me?
He turned back to face her, the scowl falling from off his face, “No I did not! It was my father’s wish. My father and your ancestor Tadias set this up. They wanted to end the division between our peoples and the best way to do that they felt was for our bloodlines to co-mingle. Tell me do you think that was a good plan?” He asked, as he came back to stand over top of her threateningly.
Ellanara swallowed hard and searched for what to say and when she did find it she spoke no more loudly than in a whisper, “It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m bound by what my father’s before me planned just as you are. My God has also bound me to the course I am committed to. I do not intend to disappoint either my God or the will of my ancestors no matter how I may feel about you and me. I’m sorry for what occurred in the past, but I’m powerless to change any of it. Any change I can hope to affect lies in the future and to that effect I will do my best to fulfill my role as your wife and queen just as I expect you, as a great warrior to help me save what’s left of my people.”
Ellanara had dropped her gaze downward knowing that she’d gone too far with her words and now she waited for the outburst that she felt was sure to follow, but it didn’t come. One of his powerful fingers reached out and gently tilted her jaw upward and her eyes skipped up to his to see what her fate would be.
His eyes had completely changed and for a moment she didn’t know what to think, only that he didn’t seem angry anymore. “Spoken like a Queen. Come we need to get to the ship. There is much to be done in the pursuit of saving both of our peoples.”
Ellanara blinked, as that was not what she had been expecting from the big warrior. He took her hand and pulled her along after him, as he strode off through the ruins at a pace that forced her to run to keep up with him.