Ch. 2 of Eahlah's Mark

Chapter 2

         “This is a strange occurrence,” Sajal stated later that night in the prince’s anteroom.
         “There hasn’t been a woman marked for at least five hundred years.” Loband wrung his hands, but with anxiety or excitement, Mykal couldn’t tell.
         “Yes, but what does it mean?” asked the prince. He certainly knew about the Sign, he’d seen it every day of his life in the Shrine where the city worshipped. He even knew the legend of the Sign. The fact that his two advisors were talking about it made him sure that there were implications that he wasn’t seeing.
         Sajal and Loband looked at each other but didn’t say anything.
         “Well?” Mykal asked, eyeing them impatiently.
         “You’ve heard about the rumors? Sightings of demonlings and the howls of the Cwn Annwn, just to name a few?” Sajal asked.
         “Yes, we sent Casius off to verify if he could.” What did the rumors have to do with the Sign of Peace, Mykal wondered to himself. “If he were here, I wouldn’t be under suspicion,” Mykal added bitterly. Casius could be gone for another few weeks, leaving Mykal to continue in this half stable life of prince and king. He wished now that he’d not sent Casius to investigate, except Casius was good at finding the truth. He’d been out for one last hunt with Casius before he left on the assignment. Casius had gone on to the mountains, where most of the rumors originated, and Mykal had come home to find his father murdered and he a prime suspect. Until Casius returned, he couldn’t prove otherwise.
         Sajal waved his comment away impatiently. “I know, we’ve been over this. Loband and I have done what was necessary to persuade the counsel to at least leave you alone until he returns.” Sajal took a deep breath, as if steadying himself for some thing unpleasant.
         Startled by a sudden possibility, Mykal asked, “Are the rumors true then?”
         This time Loband stepped forward. “There have been more and more of them. Even if specific ones aren’t true there are enough for me to admit that something strange is going on.”
         “Something strange?” He looked at both men again. Something about their faces told him that they knew what was going on, but for some reason had left him out. “I’m the crown prince, king eventually once my name is cleared, I will know what is going on,” Mykal stated with an obvious but unspoken threat in his tone of voice.
         “Sire, please.” Sajal stepped closer, his voice quiet and low, in an obvious effort to try and calm him. “We knew the murder and investigation against you were filling up your time.”
         “We only just came to these conclusions about the rumors,” Loband interjected.
         “What would these conclusions be?” Mykal asked.
         Sajal sighed impatiently. “We will have to go back and explain a few things. Before your father died, he was investigating some of the nobility for treason.”
         Treason from the nobility? This was new and something that he hadn’t even considered.
         “Who was he investigating? What sort of treason was it?”
         Sajal shrugged. “I have guesses only. King Chilter kept this from us as well. The only reason I knew of the investigations at all was from a coded report I found on your father’s desk shortly after he was murdered.” Sajal paused and grimaced, “The report is now missing. I’d intended to study it further to see if I could decipher any other clues from it but…” He spread his thin hands out helplessly.
         Would one of the nobles, seeing himself in danger of being discovered of his treason, have the audacity to eliminate a king? It was a possibility that Mykal would never have considered before. His peaceful life had been turned upside down by the murder of his father, but it didn’t stop there. The rumors circulating the kingdom were disturbing to him, but in the general populace it was causing havoc. When the rumors first started circulating there were two weeks straight where the merchants raised the price of their wares and the Committee for General Welfare had to go out every day and put a stop to it and that had only been the beginning.
Mykal rubbed his eyes where a headache was starting to commence. “What are your guesses?”
         “I deciphered one name from the report, Duke Folverin. I’ve been having him watched but nothing seems amiss.”
         Mykal sighed. He didn’t want to deal with all this now. Duke Folverin? It seemed so unlikely. Abruptly he remembered how this conversation had come about, the Sign. “How does Lady Eahlah’s birthmark fit into all this?”
         “Well, you know the story I’m sure,” Loband began.
         Mykal rolled his eyes. How could he not know when he worshipped in the
Shrine every three days? “Yes.”
         “Do you remember why we have the Sign?”
         “The woman who saved mankind from imminent destruction was marked by the gods.”
         “Yes, but why was she looking for the gods in the first place?”
         Mykal shook his head. What sort of question was this?
         “Let me go into a bit more detail. The human race had no gods when the woman went searching for them. They lived in an endless hell dominated by the Demon Lords. She went searching for them to save her people and she found them. The gods marked her to show that they were now under their protection.”
         Mykal nodded.
         Loband continued, “Usually the mark would reappeared when the gods saw some great trouble, to remind us that we are not alone.”
         “But Lady Eahlah is not of our faith.”
         “I’m confused by that as well. But the fact remains that we’ve had the disturbing rumors, treason and murder and now the Sign reappears. I fear there is something big and dark approaching.” Loband shuddered dramatically.