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| Chapter 2 | |||||||||||||
| I woke to find the tub, and bowl had disappeared and moving my head I discovered so had my old cloths, my head now rested on a second blanket. My boots had also gone; the soft moccasins were placed beside my bed. | |||||||||||||
| I sighed and put them on, finding them as comfortable as the other cloths I had been given. Footwear on I got up and started to stretch and pace around, I wasn't used to this much inactivity. I missed the woodlands of my home | |||||||||||||
| During my pacing, unknown to me, the door had opened and the Elven king stood there watching me. As soon as I noticed him I froze unsure of how to respond | |||||||||||||
| 'Don't go to your knees again fool,' he held his hand up as if to stop me as I was about to bow to him 'we need to discus your sentence, do I need a mage?' | |||||||||||||
| I shook my head as he carried in his own stool and a second one, for me it seemed | |||||||||||||
| He pointed to the second stool as he sat indicating for me to do also, I sat nervous but I managed to keep myself from falling as I sat� | |||||||||||||
| 'Do you have a name human?' he watched me with the cat like eyes that most Elven have | |||||||||||||
| 'Calrin' I answered unsure 'How should I address you sir' | |||||||||||||
| I decided to try to be pleasant as he was trying to be to me but I had a feeling he was hiding something. I sighed it was probably my execution date he was keeping from me | |||||||||||||
| 'My King, is the Elvin title, none of this Highness or Sire foolishness you humans seem to like, I am king so call me such' | |||||||||||||
| 'Calrin, I consulted the gods last night as to your future, and what they told me has me unsure. Normally you life would belong to the one to who committed crime against but because of your debt of honour with the centaurs I can not kill you, but what the gods order' | |||||||||||||
| He left the sentence hanging as he hung his head and beckoned to the door. Two guards entered and stood either side of me, I looked at each in turn fear kept me still the old Centaur entered carrying a wooden flask. He looked at me with an expression I couldn't reed, handed the flask to the king and left | |||||||||||||
| The king examined the flask and whatever it contained for a moment before nodding to one of the guards | |||||||||||||
| The guard reached down and with his knife cut a small lock of my mid brown hair and passed it to the king | |||||||||||||
| 'My King' I whispered as he sprinkled the hair into the flask, he looked up as I spoke 'when am I to die?' | |||||||||||||
| He smiled sadly at me while mixing my hair into whatever the flask contained | |||||||||||||
| 'You are not to die, the gods have said so, they instated me in the making of this' he lifted the flask to me 'I am to give you this, then leave you alone for three days then you are to serve as my son's protector from then until you die, that is the gods wish' he sounded a little disappointed | |||||||||||||
| He handed me the flask, I took it and examined the contents. due to the dark wood I couldn?t tell if it had any colour. I sipped it tasted strange, not like pond water as some herbal mixes can but I couldn?t recognise or place the taste, unusual was the only word o could think of to describe it contents | |||||||||||||
| On finishing I handed the cup back to the king as he watched me curiously | |||||||||||||
| 'I have no idea what it will do to you, Calrin, only that it will change you physically some how.' | |||||||||||||
| he got up to let one guard take his and my stool away, as I got up I almost fell I felt so dizzy. The second guard caught me as I stumbled and helped me to my bed, mumbled a thank you to him as, at the king?s order, he removed my collar. | |||||||||||||
| The king was the last to leave he watched me as I slowly fell unconscious. My last memory was of the king ordering a small bucket of water to be left for me | |||||||||||||
| The next tree days were like a living hell for me, when I was awake I was feverish and often hallucinations caused me to rave my sleep was plagued with nightmares, it had to be the worst time of my life and I was completely alone. | |||||||||||||
| I remembered childhood fevers and always Mother Anya, the old woman who with her husband had taken me in when my father died; she would always be at my bedside comforting me. And when, a year ago I almost cut my finger off chopping firewood it was she who treated the wound and teased me as to how much a fool I had been but with a mother's love shining in her eyes | |||||||||||||
| It hurt to be alone and a recurring theme in my nightmares was seeing Mother Anya and Papa Magnus stung up and dieing the lord standing over me laughing | |||||||||||||
| Finally the fever left me but the pain in my heart and the loneliness were still with me, almost blindly I reached for the bucket near by and drank deeply before falling in to a peaceful and dreamless sleep | |||||||||||||