TIR NA LIA - THE ROYAL PALACE
The chamber Caranthir had chosen sat deep within an unused wing of the palace, its windows shuttered, its air gone still and close the moment his hand traced the final ward into place along the door. No sound would pass beyond these walls tonight no whisper, no footstep, nothing that might reach ears other than the two men standing within it.
Eredin stood with his arms crossed, his dark armor catching the low light of a single suspended orb, his expression carrying none of the courtly ease he uses before the assembled nobility of the elves. Here, alone, he allowed himself to be himself. "It must be tonight," he said. "There will not come a finer hour than this one."
Caranthir inclined his head slightly, folding his hands before him, content for the moment to let his general speak his mind in full.
"The king granted the girl an audience last night," Eredin went on, pacing a slow line before the shuttered window, his voice was filled with contempt. "A stroll through his private garden, nothing more... as though centuries yet remained to him for the wooing of a reluctant bride. The very power our people have sought to reclaim for hundreds of years stands within the length of his own arm, Caranthir, breathing beneath his own roof, and still he hesitates, still he plays the courtly suitor rather than the sovereign our dying world requires... I know he hates humans, and he sees her as nothing more than an animal, but..." His lip curled in something between disgust and disbelief. "This is Avallac'h's doing as surely as it is his own failing. Both have grown soft with age and grief. I suspect our old friend carries no small tenderness for the girl herself.. which ought to surprise no one, given whose blood and whose face she carries."
"Indeed he does," Caranthir said. "He loved Lara Dorren once. It seems certain wounds, in elves such as him, never fully close, they merely wear new faces."
"And so the throne is left in the keeping of one unfit to hold it," Eredin said, coming to a halt before the room's cold hearth, his eyes catching the orb's pale glow. "Had the burden of rule fallen to me, I would have claimed her the very hour she crossed into our world.. bound her to our purpose by whatever means the moment demanded, for the sake of our people, our failing world, and every soul yet unborn who depends upon our resolve. Instead, our king offers her flowers, and idle conversation, as though courtship alone might mend six centuries of ruin.."
"Had it fallen to me," Caranthir said, quiet and precise, "I would have asked no leave of anyone to see it done."
Eredin's smile was thin and satisfied. "Tonight, then, while the feast draws every eye beneath one roof once more, my soldiers shall encircle the palace grounds quietly, as mere precaution, nothing to rouse suspicion before the hour demands it. You, Caranthir, shall remain close at hand to the girl throughout the evening's proceedings. Watch her as a hawk watches a hare. Should she attempt anything unbecoming of a guest, you shall see to it that nothing comes of the attempt. She will be seated near Avallac'h and Ge'els once more, as she was the night prior. The king himself I shall attend to personally.. a slow poison, subtle enough that suspicion will settle elsewhere long before its true nature is understood. Ge'els and the rest of the court will believe some fault lay in the feast's own fare, until he alone notices that only the king has fallen, and no other soul besides. I have already, with some care, allowed word to reach Ge'els of the girl's evident scorn for His Majesty. He will suspect her first. Avallac'h, second, given his long history and his known... fondness. And I.." Eredin's smile widened, cold and utterly certain, "..shall ascend to the throne that follows after, with the girl kept close beside me until she has given our people heirs worthy of the Elder Blood in full measure."
Caranthir studied him a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes. "The girl shall pose no difficulty, General, exactly as I have told you before. I observed her instruction under Avallac'h's own hand, and I tell you plainly.. she showed no meaningful progress in any of it. All of this falls into place rather more perfectly than even you might credit." He paused, folding his arms. "And yet I prefer, always, to hold a second design in reserve, should fortune turn her face from us. General... or ought I now say, my king?"
Eredin's smile did not so much as waver. "Nothing shall turn astray, Caranthir. All proceeds precisely as it must, because we were patient where the king was not, and thorough where he grew careless. That is the whole of it, and nothing more need be said."
.
.
Beyond the palace walls, in the winding avenues of the city, Geralt moved beneath a hood conjured from little more than a stolen cloak, drifting between buildings that offered him none of the cover he was accustomed to. There were no filthy alleys here, no reeking gutters, no crumbling brick to duck behind, every street gleamed pale and immaculate beneath the strange, ever-twilit sky, elegant beyond all reason or necessity. "As if I've wandered straight into Beauclair, shit... even Beauclair isn't this clean." he said under his breath, faintly. "Elves and their damned love of pretty things."
He kept moving, slowly, threading his way steadily closer to the palace at the city's heart, until the sheer number of armed guards stationed along its approach brought him to a full stop, pressed flat into the shadow of a pale archway. Dozens of them, spaced with unnerving military precision, eyes sharp, spears and drawn bows at constant readiness. "Why in every hell do they need this many... are they expecting something to happen?!" he said, jaw tightening. "Not slipping past that lot unseen. Need something to pull their eyes elsewhere..."
As if summoned by the very thought, the sky above the city tore open with a roar of flame.
A comet of fire slammed down into the heart of the district with a sound like the world itself cracking in half, carving a smoking crater clean through a grand plaza, obliterating in a single moment a towering statue and fountain that had, moments before, depicted some elven king in solemn, eternal repose.
For one breathless instant, silence gripped the entire street and then it broke into chaos. "what was that?!" a guard nearest the plaza cried out, already breaking rank toward the smoke and flame, his composed courtly bearing shattered entirely.
"The old king's monument!" another voice called, high with disbelief, as robed onlookers spilled from nearby doorways to stare, hands pressed to their mouths. "Eight hundred years it has stood untouched, and now..."
"Sorcery," a third guard snarled, already signaling frantically toward the palace gates, "or some manner of attack... sound the alarm!"
Every eye in the street, every guard stationed along the palace approach, turned as one toward the rising column of smoke and firelight, the ordered ranks breaking into shouted commands and hurried movement, spears lowering toward a threat none of them yet understood.
Geralt watched it all unfold from the shadow of his archway, and slowly, despite himself, a smile spread across his weathered face. "There he is," he said, low and deeply satisfied. "My distraction."
From within the smoking ruin of shattered street, flame still curling off his shoulders, his hair, his armor, Seb rose to his full height amid the wreckage, sword already drawn and burning bright in his grip, his eyes sweeping cold and level across the ring of elven guards now converging on him from every direction, blades and drawn bowstrings gleaming in the firelight.
"By the Sun and Stars.." one guard breathed, staring at the burning human standing unharmed in the heart of the crater, "he walked through the flame itself and lives.."
"A human," another spat, bow already drawn taut, "here, within our own city.."
Seb rolled his shoulders once, fire hissing faintly along his skin, and allowed himself a single smile as dozens of arrows and blades leveled themselves at his chest. "Evening," he said.
While all of the attention was fixed upon the burning man standing defiant in their sacred plaza, Geralt slipped from the shadow of his archway, unnoticed, unremarked, and melted through the palace's unguarded side gate, he was gone into the halls of the enemy, before a single soul thought to look his way.
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