Tangled Engagements (The Memory Stones Series Book 4) Read online

  “We’re going to a place near the harbor; they say it’s safe since the fighting is over. Do you think it really is over?” Mason asked.

  “I’m sure it is,” Theus confirmed. It was evident that Mason didn’t know of Theus’s involvement with the leadership of the conflict. Theus didn’t desire to tell him; he was enjoying being thought of as something like an ordinary person, on his way to an ordinary dinner.

  Together, they walked towards the waterfront. They passed a bakery, and Theus remembered visiting the shop on his first day in Great Forks. He had bought a fruit tart from the shop, the first sophisticated baked good he had ever tasted after his upbringing and simple fare on the family farm.

  They skirted around the cordon of guards who provided a ring around the Southsand forces. Theus could see the steady movement of soldiers who were leaving their temporary refuge to return to the war ships that had carried the invaders all the way from the southern city to Great Forks. Under the terms of the armistice that Theus had helped to negotiate, the Southsand forces were allowed to retreat from the city, but had to do so within twenty-four hours. By marching away so late in the day, they were making evident their intent to meet the deadline.

  When Theus and Mason arrived at the riverside tavern, they found Trey and Glory already seated at a small table outside the building, enjoying the fresh air and last of the sunlight.

  “Theus!” Glory exclaimed when she spotted the pair. She leaped up and ran to him, then crushed him with another painful, tight hug, as she laid her head on his shoulder.

  “Trey was telling the truth! You’re really back,” she exclaimed.

  “Well, of course I’m telling the truth!” the weaver apprentice said indignantly. “Could you ever doubt me?”

  “I doubt you every time you tell me you’re going to pay for lunch next time,” Glory quickly answered. She looked up at Theus and winked.

  “Shall we sit down?” Mason suggested. “I’m ready to eat.”

  The group circled around the table and took their seats, then ordered wine and a platter of slices of bread and cheese and meat.

  “I walked past your house,” Theus told Glory. “It looked like it was in good shape.”

  “Mother and I ran away as soon as the word of the invasion reached the city. She’s still out in the country, staying with my aunt’s family. I came back to the city to find out what was happening, after things seemed to calm down. We didn’t see any smoke from fires all day today, so we thought it was safe, and I’m here to make sure. I’ll have to go back and rejoin her tonight – probably tomorrow morning, actually,” the girl answered, looking up at the darkening sky.

  “There was a magician in the war, fighting for the invaders, and they were winning because of him, until a new magician showed up and beat him with even more powerful magic,” Mason spoke up, as the wine arrived.

  “Whoever even believed in magicians before today?” Trey asked.

  “Everyone says this is real. I’ve talked to soldiers who said they were there in the Gray Temple Square and saw it happen. They took the good magician to Warrell’s house after the battle; he was wounded or something,” Trey offered the rumor he had heard.

  All eyes turned to look at Theus.

  “You must be glad you’re not staying there anymore,” Mason volunteered gingerly. “You wouldn’t want to be around any magician who might decide to turn you into a block of stone or worse.”

  “I know it must hurt to not be with her anymore,” Glory said more gently, without mentioning Coriae’s name out loud. “But you did come back to the city, and I’m glad you’re here. I remember when you left you said you thought you might not ever come back to Great Forks again,” she reminisced.

  “Lord Warrell might as well be the king of Great Forks now,” Mason reflected. “The governor ran away, the guard have all turned to Warrell, along with a few members of the Council, and the magician is at his house. He and the magician negotiated the retreat of the invaders.”

  “Maybe he will be the king of Great Forks; his ancestors were royalty, back when our city was free from Stoke,” Trey mused.

  Theus sat back and listened in amusement and relief, and with interest. He was relieved to know that his friends had no idea of all that he had done – his role as the magician and the negotiator in the peace settlement, among other things. But he was also interested in the talk of the Warrell family being of an ancient royal lineage in Great Forks. Clearly, he had been among them enough to recognize the refined and sophisticated nature of the family, but he’d never heard any reference to an ancient royal heritage. It reminded him of his own family’s astonishing royalty, which seemed more unbelievable the further in time he got away from the announcement by the god Limber.

  If Coriae was a descendant of royalty, it made all the more natural sense – to him – that he and she might belong together. Natural, yet unbelievable.

  And yet, Great Forks was the third city he’d been in within a month’s time that had seen the emergence of new, or potentially new, leadership. Thera had been crowned queen in Limber, Alsman had taken control of the palace in Greenfalls, and now Lord Warrell was governing Great Forks. The world was undergoing momentous changes.

  “What do you think Theus?” a question interrupted his wool-gathering. He looked around, and saw all eyes upon him. He had missed something.

  “I’m sorry, what did you ask?” he asked.

  “I said, will you try to get your old job with Falstaff back?” Glory repeated her question.

  Theus grinned at the thought. He would find the chance to work with memory stones to be satisfying in many ways, but he knew he wasn’t going to settle in with Falstaff ever again.

  “I don’t plan to,” he answered. “I hope I can go back to my family someday soon.”

  “That’s too bad. We hoped you would settle in, now that the silliness with the guards is over. They never did catch whoever killed Monsant, you know,” Trey offered.

  Theus’s mind flipped to his memory of what Coriae’s memory stone had revealed – that the lovely girl had been the murderer. With all that was going on throughout the lands of the kingdom, Theus doubted there would be many resources available to expend on trying to pick up the cold trail of the murder. Coriae was likely to be in the clear, free of danger from a court battle over her guilt. Theus, with mixed feelings, was satisfied. Coriae had fought to defend herself from Monsant, he believed, and the death of the evil royal was therefore justified, yet still a murder.

  He sat quietly for the next few minutes as his friends discussed what their lives would be like for the next few days as the city recovered from the trauma of the invasion. Work, life, and families were all disrupted, and would need time to settle into new rhythms. They drank wine and ate their food, and Theus relaxed in the casual setting as night fell over the city.

  “What about you Theus, what are you going to do?” Mason asked.

  “I’ll leave sometime soon, and maybe go visit other friends,” he cagily avoided answering. He wasn’t going to admit that he knew his destiny called for him to travel to Southsand to chase after Donal and fight the black magician once again.

  “But right now,” he yawned, “I think I’m going to go find a bed for the night.”

  He was tired, and his wounds hurt. He needed to apply more medicine to them back at the Warrell mansion. And he wanted to return to Coriae.

  “You can stay at my house again,” Glory offered.

  There was a moment of awkward silence at the table.

  “He probably has to go back to his camp with the other soldiers from Greenfalls, don’t you Theus?” Trey offered an excuse. Theus nodded his head in agreement.

  “I’ll walk you home if you like,” Theus tried to make amends to Glory.

  And so the dinner party came to an end, with handshakes, hugs, and hopes to get together again in the future, before Theus and Glory began to walk through the dark streets.

  “You didn’t say a lot,” Glory car
efully observed, as they strolled towards her home. “I don’t really know anything about you, anything more than I did when you left Great Forks months ago.”

  “I’ve lived a strange life,” he told her thoughtfully. He could trust Glory with a story that was true, or mostly true at least. She was a good friend, one who had gone out of her way to care for him. “I lived in Southsand for a few days, right after I left Great Forks,” he explained. “I was caught on a ship and made a slave, until I escaped.”

  “Oh Theus, that’s awful!” Glory uttered sympathetically.

  “That was before the last time I came back here, when I stayed with you,” he clarified. “After I left here, I went back to Southsand to help a friend, and I helped her escape from captivity.

  “And will you believe? Now she is being courted by Forgon!” he laughed as he recited the small gossip.

  “You and the Warrells!” Glory exclaimed. “Will you ever stop being involved with that family?”

  Theus looked at Glory, not wanting to hurt her feelings. If he admitted that he was on the verge of once more courting Coriae, he suspected Glory would be hurt. He’d remain quiet on the subject, he decided.

  “There’s no denying that Forgon is a good person,” he shifted the topic. “And Amelia is a good girl. If they chose to care for one another, I couldn’t be happier for each of them,” he told Glory. He believed his statement too, despite the different in age, Forgon would be able to treat Amelia properly – Theus couldn’t imagine Coriae’s brother ever doing anything but the right thing.

  They reached the door of Glory’s home, and Theus waited until she had the door unlocked. “You’re safely home now,” he smiled at her in the darkness, as she fumbled to light a candle. He thought of the recent time when he had used his white magical powers in Eiren’s apartment to illuminate her room while she had fumbled to create light. With his exhaustion from the battle against Donal, he had no desire to reach for his powers, and so he waited.

  He was probably smarter to not reveal his powers to Glory in any event, he thought. Even though he had actually absorbed the spell knowledge of white magic while in her very home, he expected she would react much as Eiren had, with distrust, and perhaps even hostility.

  “There!” Glory exclaimed as she successfully struck a spark that lit the candle wick, creating a small, warm glow in front of the girl’s face. She looked so enchanting Theus thought, and he wondered why she didn’t have beaus chasing after her. Her personality was a bit abrupt, and close to abrasive at times, but he knew she had a soul that was golden and to be cherished.

  “If you’re safely home now, I’ll be on my way,” he told her reluctantly. A part of him wanted to linger with her, but a greater part was ready to return to the comfortable bed in the Warrells’ mansion.

  “Thank you Theus,” she put the candlestick in a holder, then hugged him tightly and kissed his cheek. “I hope I’ll see you again before you go?”

  “I hope so too,” he equivocated, without knowing his exact schedule for the near future. He might well have an opportunity to see his friends again, when he felt healthier, and before he left the city.

  He left the door and slowly walked down the path to the street, his eyes adjusting to the dark once again, after the light from the candle. As he started to turn in the direction to return to the Warrell home, he heard Glory scream his name, a scream that was abruptly cut off.

  He turned and dashed back to the house as quickly as his wounded leg would allow, and burst in through the front door.

  In the light of the steady candle, Theus saw Glory laying reclined partially on the floor and partially on a chair, as she held a hand to her bloody nose. A pair of rough-looking men stood over her.

  Without asking or thinking or doing anything but reacting, Theus spun his staff around and swung it at the head of the closer of the two assailants. He struck the man forcefully, then reversed the motion of the staff and lifted the end with great force, so that it rose up and caught the second man under the chin. The end of the staff struck the man so hard that his teeth audibly cracked against each other as his head snapped backwards and he dropped to the ground.

  Theus glanced at Glory, and say the bloody stream dripping from her nose, and he felt so angry that he swept his staff down violently upon the heads of the two assailants. For just a split second, he took joy in delivering the needless violence.

  “Theus, stop! They’re already unconscious,” Glory shouted at him.

  Theus put his staff aside, then lifted Glory to her feet. With an arm around her shoulder, he took her back through the dark interior of the home to the kitchen, where he helped her to sit at the table. He fumbled with a cloth and the pail of cool water on the counter, then pressed the wet cloth against her injured nose.

  “I’ll go get the candle and be right back,” he assured her. He limped back to the front room and paused to look at the two bodies on the floor; when he bent to examine them, he discovered that they were both dead.

  He had killed them, and he’d done it in anger. He felt a sense of numb shock overwhelm his conscious as he realized he had engaged in unnecessary violence against the men. They were robbers at best, and possibly worse, but once he had struck them unconscious, he knew he should have done no more.

  Shaken, he picked up the candle, and carried it back to the kitchen, then sat with Glory. He took the cloth from her and dropped it in the pail of water again, then used it to daub at his friend’s face as she sat with her eyes closed.

  “There, I think you’re all cleaned up,” Theus told her.

  “I didn’t know they were here; they were probably just looters going through empty houses, and we happened in on them. I heard something in the bedroom just as you left, and then a second later they rushed into the front room and demanded all my money. I screamed, they hit me, and then you were here to save me,” she summed up.

  “I need to dispose of them,” Theus told Glory as he rose from his seat. “You stay here, and I’ll take care of this, then return,” he promised.

  “What do you mean, ‘dispose of them’?” Glory asked in a quavering voice.

  “I’ll get them out of your house; that’s all you need to know,” Theus abruptly wanted to end the conversation. He turned and limped out of the kitchen, then stood over the bodies. There was no blood, he was glad to see; there would be no stains on the floor or the small rug between the pieces of furniture.

  The first body he lifted was heavy. He placed it over his good shoulder, and slowly walked it down the dark street, until a culvert carried a ditch full of water beneath the road. Moments after Theus arrived, there was a splash as the body began a slow journey towards the harbor. Ten minutes later, a second body splashed, then Theus huffed and puffed on his way back to Glory’s house.

  “Everything’s taken care of,” he told his still-trembling friend as he sat down with her in the kitchen once again.

  “Theus, I’m going to go back and join my mother at my aunt’s house, first thing in the morning, but tonight,” she paused, “I can’t sleep here in this house alone tonight, not after this. Will you stay here with me?” she asked in a voice that was pleading.

  Theus hesitated. The proper answer was obviously yes, yet he thought of the bed and medicine and Coriae’s presence that were all awaiting him back at the Warrell mansion.

  But he had to do the right thing. “Of course,” he agreed. “As a matter of fact, let’s look around to see how they got in, then we can get some sleep.”

  A quick inspection of the small home, revealed that the back door had been forced in. Together, with much grunting, the wounded Theus and Glory moved a dish cupboard in front of the closed door, then Glory gave Theus a set of covers, showed him her mother’s bed, and they bid awkward goodnights to each other.

  Theus fell asleep quickly, but suffered uneasy sleep, punctuated by multiple dreams featuring Donal chasing him with magic, while something larger and darker loomed over the magician’s shoulder. He felt reli
eved when Glory awoke him in the morning.

  “Thank you for spending the night,” she told him. “I slept soundly, just because I knew you were here.

  “I’d say I slept better than you,” she added as she studied his face. “You don’t look very well-rested.”

  “I had troubling dreams,” Theus said as he swung his legs out of the bed. Together, they straightened up the house in a cursory way, then walked out, as Glory locked the door behind them.

  “I’ll come back next time with my mother, and my father should meet us here. Maybe my uncle will come too, and we can get the door fixed,” Glory observed as the pair walked down the road in the morning light.

  “I’m so glad we got to see you Theus, and thank you for saving my life last night! There may have been heroes in the war with the Southsand invaders, but you were my hero!” she told him when they reached a crossroads.

  “I’m going to go this way, to reach my family’s farm,” she pointed south. “Will I see you again sometime soon?” she asked.

  “It’s hard to say,” Theus hedged. With his potential opportunity to rekindle his romance with Coriae, the prospect of him returning to Great Forks didn’t seem as remote. But only after his other challenging assignments had been successfully met.

  Glory hugged him tightly, and he returning the embrace with the same sense of friendship and devotion. They looked at one another with evident affection, then said good bye, and went their separate ways.

  Theus tried to hurry as best he was able. His wounds still hurt, and he felt the exhaustion from such poor sleep. In addition, his soul remained unsettled. He hoped he would be able to quietly arrive back at the Warrells’ mansion and rest. He would have to explain to Coriae why he had been absent overnight of course, and he would ask if he could have more ointment prepared for his wounds.

  Then after he slept, he would hopefully be in a better state for learning how the Southsand evacuation from the city was proceeding.