Chapter 5 – A Puddle and a Panic...
The second sun raged as it rose that second morning during the Bright Cycle, that age the Fay called the Envy Burn. The sunlight of two sister suns streamed though the palace courtroom's high windows and disturbed the sleeping revelers with a troubling new day of uncomfortable heat.
King Tiber groaned for the hammers that throbbed in his head. Slowly opening his eyes, he squinted to see a courtroom floor crowded with subjects claimed by the previous night's brandy and wine. He rubbed his head. He rubbed his stomach. And then, gazing at that tall statue that had the night before so cooled his palace, he roared upon his throne.
"The bell! The bell!" The king bellowed as his subjects stirred and moaned. "Someone hurry and ring the palace bell!"
Sentries bolted from their sleep and dashed from the courtroom. The palace bell tolled and shook the stone walls. Subjects pushed themselves off of the floor with dazed, wide eyes scanning their surroundings for the source of alarm - assassins who had arrived in the darkness, for foul Fay who lingered behind in the night to steal from sleeping men's pockets. They at first failed to see any danger. Still the bell tolled, clanging pain in their heads. They held one another's hands. They drifted to the meagre shelter of corners, the protection of shadows. And still, they could find no source for the alarm that so violently struck that palace's bell.
King Tiber's eyes glared, and he pointed to the foot of that tall statute that glistened beneath the light of two scorching, sister suns.
"She melts during the night!"
Counselor Wessex and Troy rushed to the statue to gauge the depth of that puddle spreading at the statue's feet. Water dripped from the statue's fine fingers. Streams drained from the ice queen's finely-chiseled robes. How long had they slept? How could so much of that statue have been lost so quickly? Was it some sort of wicked trick of the Fay?
"Stay back, my king," urged Counselor Troy.
Wessex reached towards the ice, something inside him so craving that statue's touch, tempting him to plunge his fingers into the ice and measure how badly the cooling queen disintegrated.
"There's a glowing, green cloud pulsating at the statue's heart," the king whispered from his throne. "I can see it easily now. It flickers and shifts like some kind of smoke. It must be the poison the tinker warned us about. It moves closer and closer to the surface even as I watch."
Wessex hurried to his king's side. "We must find the tinker."
Troy snarled. "And we must punish the Fay for this magic."
"Agreed," growled King Tiber. "The tinker fails in his most vital duty. He must fix this statue before it melts and poisons us all!"
The king stomped away from his throne as his royal guards, dressed in the flaming reds of the second sun, joined his side. Subjects stepped quickly aside as the king's phalanx of spear and armor marched into the village streets. The heat of the dual suns soon taxed them as they stepped beyond the cooling statue's influence, drenching them beneath their robes and plate armor as their tired legs pounded in search of the tinker. All the village shops appeared empty. Only the frightened faces of children peeked occasionally upon them from second story windows. Nothing stirred. The water pump's windmill did not turn, and no water coursed through any of the village fountains, abandoning the king and his troops to their thirst. Sheep and cattle roamed through the streets, their mews and calls alone disturbing the silence that lurked over the town. The strike of a blacksmith's hammer was nowhere heard. They heard no orders shouted to the baker's front door. Even the simple windchimes crafted by the tinker and the Fay remained silent, for the wind remained still, and nothing churned in that village that had teemed with life in those days before the second sun's rise.
"Hold your heads high, men!" The king shouted. "The tinker's shop is around the corner. We'll drag him and the Fay back to service their ice queen!"
Yet the tinker's workshop proved as empty as the rest of the village, its chambers emptied of tools, its benches cleared of any cog or spring. Dust already gathered upon the shelves once lined with blueprints and blowtorches. None of the Fay skittered about their waists. None of the king's men could locate a sliver of silver Fay hair. They scattered unfinished components across the floor. They emptied cans of paint and ripped through tarps. But they could find no trace of tinker or Fay, and the workshop's silence tormented them with worries of that poisonous cloud expanding within that ice queen.
"Where could any of them be?" The king kicked at empty buckets.
Wessex cleared his throat. "The second sun rises..."
"And don't you think I feel it beneath all these robes?" Anger flashed in the king's eyes.
Wessex took a step back. "Of course, but that second sun means that the Fay will have left the village. They are on their way to their subterranean tunnels by now."
"Of course," King Tiber grumbled. "Counselor Troy, take half of our numbers and pursue the Fay. Take all the hounds you can muster to track them, and I don't want to hear anything about a dog never before finding a Fay. They'll simply not retreat from this heat! They won't turn their backs so easily on that poisonous statue they've left behind in my court!"
They wasted no more time searching through that empty workshop. Hurrying again into the street, they knocked upon every door, barged through every barrier, waited for no invitation before searching the homes surrounding the workshop to find the tinker's hovel.
It was late into the morning by the time they arrived at the tinker's shack. They found the front door unlocked. They heard only silence as they stepped beyond the threshold.
"Maker save us," Wessex sighed as guards rushed passed him to cut down the body that swayed in the center of the hovel.
"Maker curse his soul," snarled the king. "The tinker's left us. The fool man's abandoned his duty and doomed us all."
The king's men severed the rope as quickly as their knives could slash, but they harbored no hope that they had arrived in time to save that tinker's life. The tinker's neck twisted in such a terrible angle. The stiff corpse added to the burden of their armor as they returned to the heat. The king ordered the tinker's body to be carried to the ramparts and tossed beyond the village's stone wall, there to be left to the rodents and crows.
King Tiber frowned as he watched his men cast the tinker's body beyond the ramparts. "They'll be no way to hold the poison back now."
"There is still a way." Wessex answered. "The tinker left us with a tool. He left us with means."
King Tiber nodded. His counselors were wise men. Tinker and Fay be damned. The poison trapped beneath the ice could yet be stayed. The cool wind of that ice queen would last through the long remainder of the Bright Cycle. Life would easily enough continue without those silver-haired imps and the haggard inventor they followed.
* * * * *