Dreams in Eldrim; Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Landry and the Princess



Just as Cody had suggested, Don and Erica had reached the gate to the inner courtyard in just a few moments, and pulled the chain that they found there.  In minutes, a guard had opened those gates, and led the two children inside once they'd told him what they were there for; taking them down a short corridor, to a large, open spot in the inner courtyard.  Don had never seen anything like that place, but the moment he saw it, he knew that it was an arena.

The arena was a vast, stone structure, as long as six houses, with stairs designed to function as seats, leading down to a pit in the middle.  In the center of that pit, there was a large combat ring; a good six or seven yards wide, with clearly-marked edges.  A number of well-armed people were standing around the ring, as two armed combatants fought right there in the center, and many people sat around the arena, watching the incredible spectacle of combat.

Erica had watched the competition as she and Don took seats right next to each other, though she'd seemed afraid that someone was going to be hurt through the whole thing.  Don, however, had been a lot more eager to see what kind of competition it was, and was astonished to find that the terms of the competition were both simple and dangerous.  Two amateur fighters would attack with their weapons, swinging, jabbing, blocking and parrying.  The weapons clearly had tar on the edges; having been blunted to the point where they were only minimally dangerous, but even so, getting hit with one wouldn't have been pleasant.

Because of that, a jerah master sat off to one side of the combat ring, whose job was, at a moment's notice, to use his jerah to pull the combatants back out of the arena, away from each other, if one of them got too close to injuring the other.  After that, the person who'd come closest to victory was proclaimed the winner and allowed to move on to the next match.

The matches were arranged in a type of tournament format, so no one got to lose more than once before their time in the competition was up.  That was, Don realized a little sadly, just like in real life.

Most of the time, the victor of the match wasn't difficult to determine.  The combatants were fast, but their movements could be followed easily enough, and the one who got closest to striking the other before they were separated was always declared the winner.  It was a fairly simple way to do things, and the only sure way to get accurate results about whose skills were better without involving any real, lethal combat.

As Don had watched the various matches in amazement, he'd noticed that the techniques and weapons used were extremely varied and well-practiced.  He didn't feel any of the sadness he'd experienced when he's seen the guards of his own hometown jabbing at the attacking orcs with very little technique or strategy.  The people in that ring were wielding a variety of weapons with comparable skill to the knights themselves.  However, there was one fighter who really caught his attention.

The fighter wore a long robe and hood with a mask over his face, so Don had no way of knowing anything at all about the person, except that he carried a long, heavy-looking sword on his back, wasn't much taller than Don himself, and fought, not with the sword, but a selection of knives that he produced from the folds of his robe, either wielding them expertly as weapons, or throwing them across the ring with incredible power and speed.  It was, Don realized as he watched, an extremely effective technique, because the fighter was victorious in every single battle.

In the last two fights, however, the masked fighter really had to work for victory, slowly cornering his enemy and finally drawing the sword from his back, as if the massive blade were almost weightless.  The speed with which the sword was swung by that small figure surprised everyone, including the jerah master, but fortunately, the sword stopped less than an inch from his opponent's neck; proving that the robed combatant had both skill and restraint, as well as incredible power.

Finally, the last match came, and it was one of the most intense and astonishing fights that Don had ever seen in his life.  Both combatants executed powerful attacks, planned out strategies for cornering their opponents, and finally, the robed fighter only got the upper hand by blocking an attack with his sword, while it was still in its sheath.  That surprised the other combatant so much, that the robed warrior was able to launch a more successful attack with the knives, then swing the sword around from the other direction.  At that point, the jerah master separated them, and the battle was over.  The robed figure had won.

However, as the jerah master made that announcement, the robed fighter stepped back into the ring and removed the robe and mask, which had concealed every contour of the powerful warrior's body.  When that happened, even Don was shocked by who’d been underneath that robe.

The robed fighter who'd won that fearsome fighting competition was a girl, and a pretty one at that.  She had blond hair, which was done up in a bun, and as soon as she'd cast aside her robe, she undid that hair, letting it fall over her shoulders like a golden waterfall.  It was, Don noticed, uncommonly long hair, and it would have gotten in the way in battle, if it hadn't been done up.

Underneath the robe, the girl wore a simple, cloth outfit that was dark purple and smoothly-woven, but otherwise, looked very much like the clothes that Don himself was wearing.  Her brown robe hadn't revealed any of that before, but once it was off, the girl's appearance had changed completely.

Immediately, the jerah master had rushed towards her, looking deeply concerned, but the girl shook her head, showing both sides of it to the jerah master in response, then held up her hands for him to examine, and said something to him, that nobody else there could hear.  The two seemed to argue for a minute, before the girl finally started shouting to the audience.

"I entered these fights under the name 'Sword's Heir, Jr.'" the girl shouted, "I did this to prove that I could be trusted by my father with combat duty.  I did it to prove that I'm not helpless!"

For a moment, Don was confused, but Erica seemed just as astonished as everyone else, so Don decided to address his questions to her.

"Who's that girl?" Don asked curiously, "What's going on?"

"Huh?" Erica said, still recovering from her own shock and astonishment, "Man, you really do come from the boonies, don't you?  That's Gram Laili Anteras."

"What?" Don asked in astonishment.  He didn't know who Laili Anteras was, but he knew what the significance was of having a third name.  A third name was a special title, which only a few people in Gram had, and having the third name of "Gram" meant that Laili was a firstborn heir of the royal family.

"You're kidding me." Don continued, amazed, "She's the princess?"

"Yeah." Erica replied, "She does things like this sometimes; running out to prove that she can be better than full-grown men at fighting, horseback riding, archery...  Pretty much anything that men like to brag about being the best at.  It's been a little disruptive in the past, and people are kind of divided on how to feel about her.  Half the people in Gelem think she adds character to the castle, and the other half think that she'd be better off training for when she becomes queen.”

“As the firstborn of the king, she's going to wind up ruling the whole county someday.” Erica continued, trying her best to explain what was going on, “Eventually, she'll get married, and her husband will serve beside her as the next king when her father dies.  That's just how it is.  She isn't too happy with the whole thing, though.  I think she'd rather be a knight than a leader; kind of like you."

Don continued thinking about that as the princess was hurried back inside the keep of the castle and the gates of the arena were opened again, allowing the spectators to file back out, to the outer courtyard town.  That was all that any of them would see of the princess on that day.



Don couldn't help but feel a little sad as he left the arena and the inner courtyard, where the competition had taken place, in spite of the incredible spectacle he'd just witnessed.  As much as he'd wanted to know more about the knights and the kind of training they needed, he was becoming very convinced that he wasn't ready to fight or compete with anyone on that level yet.  It made him feel pretty bad, since the princess had obviously gotten so much training already, and she didn't look much older than him.  In short, Don felt as if he was falling behind in his quest to become a knight.

The red-haired boy had almost no experience at all in fighting, horseback riding, or anything else that was knight-like.  The princess had been absolutely incredible, and Don still hadn't seen Landry in action, but he suspected that the young knight; who Cody had told him about, was even more skilled.

He knew that he would have lost easily to any of the combatants he'd seen that day.  He wasn't even sure about the basics of fighting, and until he got those down, there was, he knew, no point in challenging, or even meeting with Landry.

The first thing, Don decided at last, was to find a combat trainer somewhere, or at least some kind of sword or other weapon that could be used effectively in a fight.  However, as he was rolling those thoughts over in his mind, he wasn’t really keeping track of where he was going, or worrying about what other people thought of him, and his persistent silence was starting to get to Erica a little.

"Are you okay, Don?" the young girl asked, after the two of them had been walking together for a little while.

"Huh?" Don replied, finally snapping back to reality after a few moments, "Yeah, I guess.  I'm just thinking about..."

However, just then, a sound rang out through the courtyard town, which both Don and Erica had learned to dread.  It was the sound of bells ringing on the outskirts of the courtyard; the sound of a military emergency.  In that one instance, however, Don was glad to hear it.



Erica was amazed and more than a little scared, as Don ran towards the south gate with a smile on his face.  The south gate was where the alarm seemed to be coming from, and he was moving too fast for her to keep up, not that she could have followed him anyway, since his next move upon reaching the wall was to scale it as quickly as he could, scrambling up the protruding stones with the kind of agility that she still found absolutely amazing.

In some ways, Erica had felt abandoned when Don had run off on her, but then, he was still doing what he's done from the start; pursuing his dream.  It was the very thing about him that had inspired her so much to begin with.  She knew that she couldn't stay angry with him for doing what it took to reach his goal, because it was exactly what she wanted to do with her own life.



Quickly, Don reached the top of the wall and started looking out into the distance.  From where he was, he could just make out the shape of several horned figures along the horizon.  They looked large and powerful; like bulls walking upright, and they were definitely headed towards Gelem.

Hidden in the shadow of one of the lookout towers, while crouching on top of the courtyard wall, Don knew that very few people would probably be able to see him, and he had a perfect view of everything that was going on, on both sides of the wall.  He saw the monsters of some kind getting closer, and in just a moment more, the gates of the inner keep opened, and Don turned, to see the knights starting to emerge.

There were twenty knights in all, just like there had been during the battle at Troma, and Don was intrigued to see that the knight who was at the front of the team seemed younger than the others.  His helmet was on, but his visor was still up, so the boy from Troma caught a good glimpse of his face, and realized that that knight was barely any older than Bradley; the orchard-keeper's son had been.

Don couldn't prove it, of course, but he suspected that the knight in the front was Landry.  His nose was high-bridged, and his eyes were big and black.  His mouth was a little narrow, and it straightened into a frown as he rode towards the front gate of the courtyard.  The gate had opened to allow him to pass through, along with the other knights, who followed behind him.  In a moment, he'd clapped his visor down over his face and rode off to battle.

By that point, the monsters on the horizon had drawn much closer, and Don could see quite plainly that they were vicious creatures; walking upright like men.  They had large, bulky muscles and heads with horns like bulls.  He'd never seen anything like them before.

However, as he watched in amazement, Landry started to give orders to the other knights, encouraging them to follow his lead.  In another moment, he'd drawn a long spear from a loop, which it had hung in, at the edge of his saddle, then swung it around as easily as if it were a pocket-knife, catching two of the monstrous beasts in the legs as he rode by.

In just another second, Landry had turned, and swept the spear around behind him again, striking three more of the huge creatures.  Wherever his spear hit, the monsters fell off-balance and collapsed in a heap.  As they struggled to get up, Landry aimed that spear carefully downward towards them and started piercing them through the mouth with his full strength; one after another.

Don felt like cheering as he watched the whole thing.  The enemies seemed to be even stronger than the ones he'd seen in Troma, but Landry was leading the charge right through them, and for some reason, he didn't find the sight of the battle as hard to watch as the last one had been.

The other knights seemed to be just as inspired by Landry as Don was, because they were moving in, and trying to imitate his feat.  Many of them succeeded in knocking their enemies over, although hardly any of them managed to pierce all of the opponents they'd felled.  Several needed to be knocked down more than once before they were finally defeated.

As the battle against the monsters continued, however, Don couldn't help but notice that he was having trouble keeping track of everything that was happening on that battlefield.  He tried to focus, but his eyes kept darting to one part of the battle, then another.  He hadn't seen it as a problem when he'd been back home in Troma, but if he ever went into a real battle himself, he knew that he needed to be able to keep track of everything going on around him.

The battle went on after that, and Don kept struggling to focus his attention on multiple things at the same time for several minutes.  He thought that he might be close to managing it, when suddenly, the last monster was jabbed through the mouth, and the battle was over; just like that.

Don shook his head a little, to try to get his bearings back as the last of the monsters died, fading away into nothingness.  He'd been studying monsters for a while, though, so Don knew why some of them faded like that, instead of just rotting away like normal animals.  Some monsters were made from the bodies of men, beasts or plants, but when a monster was made from pure magick, like those beasts apparently had been, it faded into nothingness when it was killed, because it hadn't been made from anything physical to begin with.

The whole thing was still a little confusing to Don, but then, maybe he could learn more about that on his own pilgrimage across Gram.  He'd already seen enough at the castle, however.  He knew that he didn't need to meet with Landry in person anymore, to determine how far he still had to go.

Quickly, Don descended the wall again, returning to Gelem's outer courtyard, and was amazed, and a little embarrassed, to find that Erica was still there, and still watching him carefully.  Don wasn't sure what Erica really wanted, but she'd been reasonably friendly and helpful up to that point, so he wanted to talk to her at least once more, just to make certain that she'd be alright when he left Gelem.

"Listen..." Don said a little sadly, as he approached Erica again, "I'm gonna leave tomorrow morning, after I've had some sleep.  Will you be okay?"

Erica, however, didn't reply at first, hesitating for a while, and she looked pretty sad and alone when she finally spoke, though it wasn't really in reply to Don's question.

"I knew you were planning to leave really soon." Erica said, obviously feeling pretty bad as she spoke, "It's just that when you showed up at my school, I figured that you wanted to spend some time with the rest of us; at least a little bit, you know."

"I have to keep learning." Don replied, with a quick shake of his head, hoping that Erica wouldn't take his response the wrong way, "That's why I was looking for information about the knights.  It's the only reason."

Don's intention hadn't been to hurt Erica's feelings, but he got the distinct impression that he had.  His bluntness could obviously be a little trying to other people at times.

Erica, however, just shook her head for a few moments, and in another second, she was smiling again.

"You're really leaving, then?  Just like that, after about a day?"

"Yeah." Don replied, "I'm going to Arin.  I need to learn how to defend myself if I'm going to be a knight.  It might take me a few days to get there, but I should be able to make the trip if I just pack enough food and water."

Erica seemed to understand, and nodded briefly, but didn't say another word.  For Don, the whole thing was just uncomfortable, so after a few seconds, he decided that there wasn't much more he could really do for Erica, saying simply, "Well, good-bye."

However, just as the small boy was turning to go, Erica spoke up boldly.  She seemed to have decided that she had to say one last thing to him before he left, because she might not get another chance.

"Don, I have to tell you something.” Erica said, gathering her courage, “I always wanted to leave town too."

Don was really surprised when he heard Erica say that.  It certainly wasn’t something he’d expected to hear from her.  Still, a moment later, when he turned to reply to her, he already had a response planned.

"Why didn't you just leave, then?" he asked with a shrug, "I mean, you look like you could learn to climb if you really wanted to.  What's keeping you here?"

"I guess I just never had the heart to leave my family;” Erica admitted sadly, though she didn’t seem to want to look Don in the eye as she talked to him, “not even to do what I really wanted to with my life.  I always wanted to go to Teist and become a records-master, but I just...  I never dared to try to leave town.  I was afraid of what my parents would say.  When you told me how your dad...  How he never would have let you try to become a knight..."

For a few more moments, Erica paused, seemingly trying to find some way to express how she really felt, but at last, she just said "Thanks for telling me all that, anyway.  I'll try to climb, and I'm going to Teist.  I'm still scared that I'll be in danger, but...  Now I know what I have to do.  Thanks.  I never would have been able to make that choice if it hadn't been for you.  You never let your fears get in the way of what you want to do.  I needed to meet somebody like that."

When he heard that, however, Don smiled broadly.  It was definitely a compliment, and it had made him feel a lot better.  He had no intention of trying to talk her out of it, because, after all, it was her life, and if she decided to risk it for her dream, that was her right.  Nobody had the right to tell her she couldn't, least of all him.

A moment later, Don had said good-bye to his new friend, and there was hope in the young girl's face when the two parted ways.  Then, almost as soon as Don started moving north away from her, Erica walked right up to the rocks protruding from the castle’s outer wall, and started feeling them over, trying to find some way to pull herself up, along them.



That night, Don had pitched his tent just inside the town walls and fell asleep on the soft ground.  He slept peacefully in that spot until the light of the morning sun woke him up, and he got to his feet, stretching a little, to get his muscles into good working order again.

It took him a few minutes after that to finish packing up his tent and other equipment, and hide them under another nearby house; where no one else would think to look for them.  It was a sunny morning, so he enjoyed the walk to the nearest food center, where he bought some extra fruit, meat and bread for the journey.  Mere moments after that, he'd found a water fountain and refilled his canteen, then returned to where he'd left his belongings.

After packing everything up, Don wasted no time in climbing back to the top of the outer wall of the courtyard, and took one last look across town.  Although he hadn't really spent that long in Gelem Castle, Don had become attached to a few of the people who lived there, and he was even more intrigued by the knights and what they did for a living than he had been before.  Also, it had given him a better idea of what he had to do next.

Don had seen how Landry had charged through the ranks of the enemy almost twice as skillfully as the other knights.  There wasn't any doubt in his mind anymore that Landry was the kind of person he wanted to be like; the kind who really made a difference when the chips were down.

Of course, becoming that kind of person was bound to involve a long journey.  Don knew he still had a lot of weaknesses.  He was still a very young person and very inexperienced.  He knew next to nothing about life or about other people.  To him, the rest of Gram only existed as a description in a book.  Because of all that, he knew that he had to go out into the kingdom and keep learning.  That was the only way that he could be the kind of person he wanted to be.

Quickly, Don descended along the outside surface of Gelem's outer wall in a few quick hops, leaping almost silently from one stone to the next, until he reached the ground.  He wasn't sure whether he was quite ready to start that journey, but he knew that it was what he wanted to do next, no matter how hard and dangerous it was.

Soon, the Troma boy had headed off across the open field to the north, breaking into a brisk jog as he went.  He could feel his breath start to quicken as he sprinted across the fields north of Gelem Castle, and just like that, he decided that he was going to practice running, to see if he could get any better at it before he even reached Arin.  It was a choice that would probably put him in even greater danger in some ways, but he wanted to practice some kind of useful skill during his journey.  He wanted every second of his pilgrimage to mean something.  With that determination, he dashed away from Gelem Castle in the light of the morning sun, leaving both the mighty fortress and the knights themselves behind.