Chapter 8

“My orders to remove all the Power-tinged debris from the right flank of Albion was a deception?” North asked, his hand clinched in anger.

Queen Adrianna Victorious, General Tungar, and North remained in the room after the others were dismissed. One of the royal bodyguards opened the door from the hallway and declared an “all clear” before shutting the door again. The queen declared they could now speak freely.

The general looked North in the eye, “Who ordered you to scour the mountain? Soreng Ard?”

“Yes, and it was ten days of nerves and gore up to our elbows,” North said with a shudder.

“Did you find anything?” the general continued.

“We found all sorts of crap, all of it broken and useless. Power stones, arcane weapons, and several of those odd belts the Umgats wore that weren’t Powered but reacted to Power. None of it was remarkable or usable for that matter. The final battle pulverized near everything of the Butcher and his army. At least on the right flank,” North added.

The general looked at the queen and she sighed in return. She said, “North, when I struck down the Butcher, I ran Valorous through the left seam in his chest armor, I forced a ball of naked Power through the sword into his body. The ball should have cooked his innards to a crisp of ash, but he was not near to human. Instead, there was a series of explosions, like a bucket of water being tipped into molten metal in a forge. I have a burn scar on my right side that rises from just below the ribcage to my armpit and part of my triceps. I was armored.”

She dropped her arm. “The Butcher was wearing power stones the likes of which I had never seen. They were larger than mine and sparkled with flakes within like opal instead of the usual pure stones we use. He had six egg-shaped stones on his person. We destroyed three in the battle, one was recovered intact, and one was found chipped and dead. One stone is missing. Soreng Ard, Ramid Tungar, and my personal guard were the only ones who knew.”

She went silent and the general took up the tale. “Adrianna Victorious walked down Albion refusing all care. She collapsed at the base camp, relinquishing command. Soreng Ard took responsibility for Mt. Albion, and I took responsibility for the camp and the discharging of the army; we were the only two generals left, and the only surviving lord of military rank was tasked with getting our Queen to medical aid and recovery.

“Soreng took offense that I held the two recovered Butcher stones. I thought little of it at the time because the disarray after the final battle was overwhelming. He had the pit dug and I witnessed the burning of the body.”

“I was witness too,” North said. “Then the general took me aside and ordered to scour the right side of the mountain. It took me ten days.”

Tungar digested that nugget before continuing. “Whatever Soreng did for the next seven days, he was unsuccessful in finding the last stone. As I decommissioned regiment by regiment of the second, third, and fifth, somewhere around the seventh day, Soreng snuck into my quarters and stole the two stones. Then he got greedy and attempted to pillage the paymaster’s wagon with help from someone on the inside, where he got caught. He managed to get the wagon, but he was forced to drop both the live and the dead stones when a mage warrior attacked him from behind. Soreng made his escape although he abandoned the armored wagon in his gambit to flee. He struck down his own men and then declared he would take his revenge by cleaving off the head of Adrianna Victorious.”

“Soreng is not a strong mage warrior, North,” the Queen said. “He wants that last stone, the missing one. He believes the stone will give him the Power of the Butcher, which we believe is delusional. The stone is still on Albion, and we must retrieve it.”

“What of the stone we have?” North asked. “What is its nature?”

The queen crossed her arms and looked at the shelves to her left before answering. “The stone holds unusual Power and if you are a human Power user, the stone is off-putting. It is physically slippery in one’s hand. The more powerful you are, the more repulsive the Butcher’s stone is. All its imagined use could be, probably, is Soreng’s imagination. We can’t be sure.”

“Where’s the stone?”

Adrianna Victorious gave him a wicked little smile. “I traded it with the two gods the first night at the Cat’s Whisker.”

“So, the gods disabled Derron’s wards at the tavern because of you, not them,” North said. “If Derron learns of this, he’s going to be thoroughly pissed.”

“The live stone was a threat to the Court of the Crimson King, North, and the gods were the only ones who I could trust to take possession of it. Besides, I got a trade for it.”

North looked at the two of them in silence as they refused to speak further. Finally, he asked, “With all respect for the Crown, may I inquire what you got in the trade.”

The queen blushed. “The wound I took in battle was more damaging than anyone but those of us in this room and my physician knows. Leonide, my husband, did not impregnate me. Many know he tried, but fate was unkind. The gods repaired the damage to the ovaries, Fallopian tubes and uterus, AND guaranteed conception with a chosen donor.”

“A worthy trade, indeed,” North said with a small bow. “Thank you for your trust in my discretion.”

“You were there, North, and I don’t know what you witnessed,” she replied.

North snapped his finger. “Gartin felt the disturbance of the exchange. She came to my room after work that night. She’s the one that ascertained the content of the trade. You assign me great powers of observation and deduction, my Liege, and I hope to live up to your expectations. Of matters concerning your person, that is an object of gossip, and I will not go there.”

“Spoken well as a Personal Sword should,” the general interrupted. “Still, we have wandered off topic. There’s a Butcher’s stone somewhere on this mountain.” He pointed to the map and shrugged. “Soreng Ard wants it, and I failed to locate it. Both the Albion mount and the stone need to be secured. The dilemma is how shall we accomplish either of these tasks.”

North bent over the map, studying the details of Mt. Albion closely. The mountain was middling in height and the top was not a cone, but more of a table. The front side, divided into a left and right flank because of the battle, was easily scalable. The left rear was also fairly easy to access, but the right rear was more vertical and considered too difficult to climb.

North tapped the map with his finger. “If the mountain has been searched like I scoured the right flank, then the stone can only be in the right rear, hidden in the nook and crannies of the stone face.”