Chapter 18 : Change and Chance
"They weren’t running on air, but on the rain itself. Each drop solidified beneath their feet—countless frozen needles, packed so tightly by the torrent that they formed fleeting stairways of ice."
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Places mentioned:
Castle Katella
A self-sufficient, city-like castle where the King and the Queen and the unmarried Valrinos live.
Tyrannoson:
One of the three kingdoms on the Central Continent, ruled by the Valrino family.
Spring
The capital city of Tyrannoson.
Linsaidea:
One of the three kingdoms on the Central Continent, northwest of Tyrannoson, across a narrow sea, the Rustless Sea, to Mandia. A nomadic, rather savage people that tame mammoths.
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Creatures (that can speak and have names) mentioned:
Leopoldo Valrino
The King of Tyrannoson, and the sixth monarch of the Valrino family.
Queen Evelyn
Leopold'o’s wife. Her brother is the King of Dovewing.
Yisreal Valrino
A son of the King. Leopoldo met the young Yisreal in the woods while hunting. Then the King brought him back to Castle Katella and announced him to be his son.
Chester Valrino
The first-born son of King Leopoldo and Queen Evelyn.
Leslie Valrino
The third son of the Queen. When Leopoldo first brought Yisreal back from hunting, the Queen was pregnant with Leslie.
Nicholas Valrino
The youngest son of the Queen.
Carwen Valrino
The youngest child and the only daughter of King Leopoldo and Queen Evelyn.
Lewis
Ivan’s apprentice, working at the Medical Tower.
Princess Lorien
The daughter of the King of Linsaidea. She arrives in Tyrannoson to fulfill a marriage promise between the two nations, a condition for the Tyrannoson army to pass through the Mammoth Plain to invade Mandia.
Mitheran
One of the two guards and mammoth riders for Princess Lorien.
Armoros
One of the two guards and mammoth riders for Princess Lorien.
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18
Lewis looked at the wall behind us. “We could have climbed out if that beast hasn’t eaten all the branches we could grab.”
“I’m not getting drowned in a poop flood.” I said, “Are you?”
“Do you have ropes or anything?”
I gave up the idea of squeezing past the poop through the entrance as everybody, thousands of people, were thinking the exact same thing.
Finally, the Valrinos displayed their regrets. The Queen ordered people to remove that “filth” but there was no room to move it to.
“Well, throw it to the back then!” The King said.
“We don’t have enough time for that, Father,” Leslie said. “The rain is coming down anytime and that back gate can’t shut water.”
“Your Grace!” An attendant of the king yelled squeezing through the crowd. “Your Grace! There’re too many people outside! Prince Chester said it’d take a while for him to clear the path!”
“Your Grace,” Mitheran stood up and said, “Armoros and I will go ride the mammoth out, so that people will be drawn away.”
“What if the beast steps on anyone?” Nicholas said.
“It won’t if people are informed.” Mitheran said.
The king nodded, “Pass the word around and to Chester.”
“My Princess,” Armoros reached his hand to Lorien and held her up from the seat. She briefly nodded to the King and Queen and avoided Yisreal’s stare as she followed them.
The message spread like waves from the inside out as Mitheran, Armoros, and Princess Lorien walked to us in the back row. The two guards climbed to the top of the outer wall and whistled. The mammoth moved its trunk, rolled them up, and laid them down on its back. They groped for the reins and stood up by pulling on them.
I came to Lorien, who only briefly glanced at me, waiting for the mammoth to take her. I suppressed the impulse to ask her anything about her conversation with Yisreal the other night. She glanced at me again, and I realized I’d been staring at her.
“Do you want to get on the mammoth?” she asked.
I was too excited to hear her speaking to me that my mind went blank. She turned to me when she got no response.
“Yes,” I said. I didn’t even know what I was saying.
“Stay closer,” she said.
I moved sideways toward her, leaving a forearm’s distance between us.
Instead, she closed the gap all the way until her shoulders pressed against my left arm. Just as my blood rushed to my head, the mammoth’s trunk rolled us up together, face to face—and instantly, I lost all sense of anything but her arms instinctively circling my waist and her body pressing against mine. We were off the ground, flying over the crowd, before landing safely on the mammoth’s back, which was flatter than I’d imagined.
“Who is this?” one of them—it sounded like Mitheran—said, and a mighty hand pulled me up by my back.
“Hold this,” Armoros said, raising his chin to point at the strap around the mammoth.
I carefully inched forward, squatted, and then prostrated myself over the back, reaching for the strap, while Lorien sat down beside me. The mammoth started moving backward toward the open gate, blocked by its own filth—skillfully, since it didn’t trample over the poop at all.
“Oh, I remember now,” Armoros said. “He’s the doctor.”
“Why did you take him?” Mitheran asked.
Lorien didn’t answer. I slowly adjusted my posture to sit up so I looked less ridiculous. I wondered what had happened after last night—which side was she on now?
“Hey, hey, doctor,” Armoros said from behind, “stop looking.”
“Says you,” Mitheran said.
“That’s different. I look at what I’ll get.”
Mitheran didn’t continue the topic. Armoros said, “I must say, you're the best doctor I could have imagined existing here. You completely healed Meredith. I thought she was going to die.”
Meredith—how could I possibly forget! Where was she lately? And where had Carwen been? Another six days had passed—tonight, she might kill again. Speaking of Meredith, Lorien frowned, as if she mattered to her in some way.
“I don’t trust that woman,” Mitheran said.
“Why?” Armoros sounded indignant.
“Why did she save her? Why would she do that?”
Exactly.
Armoros laughed, “Well, why would she save that thief?”
“Our girl is kind.”
“And Meredith isn’t?”
“No man is kind.”
“She’s a woman.”
“Still, she—”
Without warning, the mammoth lurched violently, nearly hurling us from its back. Before we could react, the beast reared up, trunk raised, and let out a panicked scream. The plan was to guide it through the front gates—but now it staggered backward, then, with a sudden surge, it charged toward the back gate instead.
“Armoros!” Mitheran yelled, pulling the reins hopelessly as the mammoth was determined to break into the closed metal gate.
Armoros didn’t seem to have a clue either, yet both of them turned to Princess Lorien as they prostrated over the mammoth’s back. “Stop this, now!”
Lorien was apparently frozen as the gate was about to break before our faces. I immediately lay belly-down as the three of them did, and with a frightening clank, the mammoth broke through.
The rain hadn’t yet fallen though the clouds had shrouded the sky, and the major source of light was lightning. It was in this irregular yet constant flashing that I saw the backstage of the arena.
There was a broad open field—not smaller than the main arena—with apparatuses whose purpose was hard to distinguish between training and torment. Some looked like gallows, some like scaffolds, some like crosses. There were heavy metal balls chained to poles, whips covered with thorns, and two shelves full of weapons: some wooden, some real blades, some sparkling new, some rusty but still sharp. The ground must have been abused, yet grass still sporadically covered every inch where it could breathe and grow.
I almost forgot where I was until Mitheran and Armoros were about to throw up—it was the blood. The smell of blood was trapped between the ground and the thick, gloomy clouds.
Around the open field, the backstage was separated into two sections: the right side for men, the left side for beasts. Four male lions in the front den, locked behind metal bars. Three bears next to them, and then a large tiger in the deep corner. I doubted that was all—a narrow alley by the tiger's cage seemed to lead to a deeper, larger den. These beasts looked frightened as soon as the mammoth broke in. Though their deep growls were buried in the wrath of thunder, their bodies recoiled and shivered—probably for the first time since they were born.
On the other side stood slaves who were curious enough to come forth. Though the mammoth astonished them, fear didn't seem to overcome them as much as it did the beasts. I almost saw a gleam of hope—the desperate hope that any change could be a chance.