Chapter 1
The King Is Dead!
The night was dark. Very dark. Even if the moon had been full the clouds would have covered its light, but as it was, not even a hint of light shone from the sky above. Devner loved the night no matter how dark it got. It helped him think and kept him tuned into his forest.
It wasn’t really his, but the responsibility for it that the King had laid upon him often caused him to feel an ownership for the woods that in turn helped him be the steward that the King had learned to trust long ago. The only thing the King asked of him was that he inform him of his actions regarding the land. Never was there a command or even a suggestion given. Never was fault found when game was scarce or poacher activity increased, and never was reward given when game was abundant and poachers kept in check. Devner could not have asked for more from the King, or been happier in his work.
He stalked the night like one of the forest’s own predators, gliding silently down trails invisible to all but the most skilled of trackers. As much a part of the night as the owl that slid silently by overhead, or the mouse that crouched beneath the fallen log waiting for death to pass. Though equally at home in the forest during the day, his preference was for the night. It was then that he got a feel for the balance of prey and predator in his realm. Should that predator turn out to be an unwanted human guest, it was typically a simple task for him to stalk the stalker. He wasn’t above killing when necessary, but he found that by terrifying and releasing the poachers, the job of warning off others became much easier. The terrified men most often ended up in pubs and alehouses trying to restore their courage while spreading tales of the “ghost of the forest” to other men of like character.
At first some had taken it to be a challenge, and a few had even shown signs of being competent woodsmen, but competence is nothing when faced with the very embodiment of the real thing. Devner was the forest. Not so much a predator of the forest, but a more intrinsic part of the forest itself. He did not hunt game except to eat. He did not hunt hunters unless they trespassed, and at times he had been hunted himself. It was perhaps this last scenario that he loved the best. To evade the predator using only his wits and the skills of one being stalked, and finally in the end to lay the trap that led the hunter to the understanding that all the while he was being manipulated. Sometimes he became the hunter as he turned the tables.
Other times he left the hunter with the knowledge that he could have and the fear that this uncertainty brought the poacher was much deeper and colder.
On this darkest of nights, he was returning to the castle grounds after just such a game. A few months ago, he had been forced to take the life of a poacher in self-defense. After scouting the man for several nights, it appeared that he was there alone and only looking for game to feed himself. Devner had chosen the straightforward approach, and when the man returned to his camp, there was Devner tending the fire and cooking a venison stew.
He offered the man the rest of the butchered deer and asked only that the man leave the forest and promise never to return. The man agreed. They shared the meal, and afterward, as Devner bound the game in burlap, the man took his pack and prepared to leave. Devner was not sure why the man chose the path he did, but as he pretended to secure his pack, he reached inside and brought out a deadly-sharp hunting knife and launched himself at Devner from behind. His mistake was in thinking he was unseen. The predator hides and observes. The prey observes and hides. Devner was both. As the man descended on him, his own knife came out and up and it was over in an instant. Had he suspected such an action, he might have been able to spare the man his life, but caught in the instant, he only had the split-second to react to save his own.
The man had a brother. A very nasty brother. It was on this night that the brother chose to come hunting Devner, and Devner had led him on a long trail as evening approached, pretending merely to be making his rounds of the forest. Every time the man closed in, Devner wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
The “chase” went on for several hours before Devner appeared to be trapped at the edge of a ravine. As the man closed in, Devner slipped over the side to a ledge, seemingly to hide from his stalker. The trick was, that while not too difficult to drop down to the ledge, it was impossible to climb back up. The ledge ran along the side of the ravine with about a forty-foot drop below and a ten-foot sheer face above. While fairly wide at first, it narrowed until a man was barely able to walk on it and disappeared under an overhang.
The man saw Devner disappear over the side and quickly moved up to the edge and peered over just in time to see Devner crawl under the overhang. From above there was no angle to shoot an arrow at Devner under the ledge, so the man, eager to finish the job, hung and dropped over the ravine’s edge and quickly pulled his bow from off his back. Notching an arrow, he eased forward along the ledge until the overhang was in sight. The sun had set, but there was still enough light left for the man to see that the ledge was empty in front of him, yet clearly it ended under the overhang. He moved forward slowly until he was under the overhang himself and could go no further. At first, he thought Devner had fallen into the ravine but realized that he would certainly have heard the noise from the fall. Gradually it dawned on him that he had been tricked, and he quickly made his way back to the wider part of the ledge only to find that there was no way back up.
Above him Devner coiled the rope he had used to climb up and braided another rope. Knowing that the drop was about forty feet off the ledge, he made the rope twenty-five feet long. It was getting dark when he dropped the rope over the edge to the ledge below, pulled off his gloves and stored them in a small pouch to be washed later. He knew there was a small stubborn tree growing out of a crack in the wall by the ledge. It was only a couple feet long, but strong enough to tie the rope to. He wondered if the man had brought gloves or would even think to use them as he tied off the rope. The poison ivy vines would take some time to take effect, and by then the man would probably have a lot more on his mind. Hanging off the vine in the dark, he would still have about a ten-foot drop to the rocky floor below. In all likelihood he would twist an ankle in the fall, but Devner didn’t think that would slow him down any when he realized he had dropped right into a hornet’s nest. Sure enough, just as he turned to walk away, he heard a thump followed by a muffled curse which was quickly followed by a stream of not-so-muffled curses that rapidly dwindled into the distance. Too bad they were headed down the ravine in the direction of the dead end.
Now, as he approached the castle, Devner was still smiling from the night’s frivolity. He looked up and scanned the grounds surrounding the castle. A single candle glowed in the King’s chamber on the second floor of the castle. The doors from the balcony to the room stood open, but a curtain was drawn across the opening for privacy. A shadow moved across that curtain, barely visible from the dim light of the candle behind it and the darkness of the night outside. Something about that shadow bothered him. He knew the King well, and it was not his shadow. Neither was it the shadow of his wife, the Queen, for she was a small, petite woman and this shadow was as large as a full-grown man. The candle flickered, then flared up for an instant, and in that instant, he knew the shadow meant ill for the King. He dropped his bow and sprang forward, sprinting for the wall. The wall was stone, but not smooth, and his hands and feet quickly found holds as he clawed his way up to the balcony. Reaching up, he grabbed the stone railing and vaulted over it, rushing into the room. It was empty. Nothing stirred. He skirted the bed and almost tripped over the still form of the King. Kneeling, he pressed his hand against the King’s throat, searching for a pulse. Faintly it beat, even now slowing as the life drained from a wound in the Monarch’s side where a knife had been deeply-plunged. Devner snatched the knife out, grabbed the King’s shirt and was about to cut it off to press against the wound when the door burst open. He tried to finish his work of staunching the flow of blood, but the guards pounced upon him and knocked him away from the King. The knife fell to the floor, and in the light of the lanterns held aloft by the guards, he saw his own hunting knife on the floor before him.
