More than Gold: Searching
I watched them go for a moment before turning my back on the alleyway. I had no ideas where to go to find the thief I was following, but I knew the place to start was to tell the king his kingdom was harboring a criminal. Having him on my side was much easier than doing it alone. For one, I didn’t have to escape the law because it would be on my side. I had learned my lesson well after the incident where I had to track down a criminal in foreign streets thinking I would be protected by Edelsburg law system. The only reason I avoided jail was because they had no evidence I had done anything wrong other than trespassing. But even though it was a waste in bail, I learned my lesson: it was easier going along with the law.
The castle was the easiest to find. It was the center of the labyrinth: the starting and ending point that all paths led to. The two guards gave me minimum hassle, but by the time I went in, I had no armor, weapons, or horse. The king’s hall rose up into a dome in the middle of the room while the outer circle remained at even height. It was where his servants stood and gold statues supported it up. Some had terrified looks on their faces and all were facing outward at the passage around the side of the room. The throne was the only thing not gold: birch wood with black velvet seat underneath a giant dragon skeleton overlooking the person on the seat.
“We’ll get him for you, Miss,” one of the guards said behind me. He walked around to the left of the room and vanished behind the gigantic skeleton. A door opened and shut leaving the room ringing with silence.
I walked over to the wall and leaned against it feeling the cold stone and trying not to stare into the eyes of a terrified pillar. Her hands were bound as well as her feet, and looked much more real than any other statue I had seen before. I reached out to touch it and that’s when I noticed the sound of sobs. I followed the wall to the right of the room, my ear as close to the stone as possible, backtracking when the sound got faint. The door opened on the other side of the room and shut loudly, the sound echoing throughout the domed space.
“He’s not seeing anyone today, Miss…Miss?”
My hand brushed behind a tapestry, past a seam, and onto wood. I lowered my hand and pushed the door. There was a tiny bit of give. I continued pushing and fell behind the tapestry, putting all of my weight into the door. In a creak, the door gave way and I slipped behind it listening as hard as I could to the guard’s reaction.
He called out a little while before running off and I knew that gave me a couple minutes to find out where I was and to get out. I sighed. In the first five minutes of my meeting and I’ve gotten myself into trouble. The corridor behind me was dark but not dusty, there were torch brackets on the wall every three feet or so, and a light at the end of the hall. Luckily the passage didn’t open up straight into the other room, and there was a thin paper-like material covering the hole that allowed enough light to see by into the dark passage.
Somehow in my panic, I had managed to find the source of the sobbing. A girl was lying on the bed her back up to the ceiling and completely engrossed in whatever she was crying about. Her feet were tied with rope, but her hands were free and clutching the pillow. There were no servants in the room but a quick check against the paper made it clear I wouldn’t get in without making a lot of noise.
The girl pushed herself out of bed with both her feet on the floor and took a shaky breath. She looked at me, but I knew she didn’t see anything and then hopped over to her vanity. I watched her utterly stumped on what to do as she brushed her hair until it shined. She had blonde hair.
I remember thinking: My God, why is everything here gold? before the door and a servant came in with a tray of water and food. The serving girl left it on the table and walked out, locking the door behind her. That’s when I decided to risk a confrontation. If she was being locked in, why should she rat me out? I kicked the paper with a loud rip and proceeded to pull it up so I could climb through.
The girl exclaimed and tried to jump back, but she ended up tripping herself on her bonds and fell backwards. There was a loud bang as she fell, and for a moment both of us stayed still staring at each other and straining for another noise.
“That happens a lot,” she said after minutes went by. Her voice reminded me of an hourglass and the smooth falling of sand. I reached to help her up.
“Thanks.” She hopped over to her bed and sat down. “Take a seat.”
“Sorry to intrude,” I said, blushing a bit. It hit me how absurd the situation was, but I had a goal in mind and this was the only way I could see of getting there. I took a seat on the vanity chair she had just left and turned to face her.
“Mind if I ask your name?” I asked.
“Princess Oriana d’Arani. Except I’m not really a princess anymore.”
“Oh, why do you say that?”
Oriana started crying again. “My father wants to have me gilded.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. I didn’t know what gilding was, except with gold onto a wooden object, but she was obviously upset and any response I could come up with was pretty heartless. Thankfully she relieved me of having to answer.
“What’s your name?”
“Carmen.”
She nodded. “How’d you get here? The passage used to be for servants so they could send messages into my room, but, well, this is sort of a prison now.”
“Well,” I paused gathering up my options: lie or truth. “I’m a bounty hunter and I’m looking for someone who wandered into your city. But I’ve gotten myself into a bit of a scrape…”
“Oh,” she said, “well, I can’t go very far from my room because of this rope, but I can tell you how to get to my father’s chambers. You could talk to him or Sir Argyris, he was my father’s right hand advisor and he’s very kind.”
“That’s probably not best,” I said, glancing towards the passage. “Tell me a little bit about this gilding.”
She took a deep breath. “About a hundred years ago, my ancestor, who was a baron at the time, was wandering through the desert and found a fountain in the sand. It just seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and at first, he was sure it was a mirage. However, the fountain stayed for three days without disappearing. He thanked God for this source of water and then started to refill his water skin before leading his camels to drink. But as he lowered the skin down to take the water, it turned to solid gold. He realized that touching the water made things into gold and struck by a sudden idea, he went back to get supplies. He carried with him gallons of water and shovels and with his family, built himself a house around the fountain. This house grew and became the Castle d’Arani and the family grew and attracted other people from nearby towns or those who were banished into the desert where they lived. There was no need for crime because people had all the money in the world. If there was a dispute, a guard was there to break it up. So the city has flourished for a century, digging farther into the ground and setting up wells for water. We grow our own food and generally, everyone is happy.”
“Interesting story, but you didn’t tell me about gilding.”
“I told you! Gilding is when the king takes anything he wants down into the Well Room and dips it into the waters turning it into gold. All the kings have done that, especially with criminals.” Oriana burst into tears. “And I don’t know why I’m being treated like a criminal.”
“Calm down,” I said, “it’ll work out.”
“You’ll help me?”
“I’m not promising anything,” I said mentally kicking myself, “but I’ll try.”
“Oh thank you,” she tried to get up and move towards me, but she succeeded in tripping and catching herself on her knees. “At least get me out of these bonds.”
“What sort of rope is that?” I asked.
“It was a gift from the King of Edelsburg,” she said. “Hydra rope, I think. The more you cut off, the more is in the box when you open it again and it ties like no other. You could have a bow, and no matter how hard you pull, it just won’t come undone.”
Hydra rope. I needed some of that.
“Anyway, the passages are all interconnected,” she continued. “If you go out the throne room and go past two tapestries, there’s another door behind the third one. It’s used more often, so if you push and run through it shouldn’t take too much effort. That one leads to all the other servant passages to anywhere in the castle. It used to lead to mine, but that was sealed off. Well, good luck.”
“Thank you.”
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 10:39 am and is filed under Fantasy, Fiction Prose, God Teacher, Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.