The Age of Knights & Dames Read online

  I looked it up later just to be sure. To be in the reserves was like being benched during the game. You were there in case of emergency, a last call of sorts, doomed to sit and watch while the stars took the center stage. A couple hundred people had volunteered to help Dembroch, and the queen had called several of them into service. But not us. Not my friends. Not me.

  I took it in stride, or tried to. Though we hadn’t received a direct summons, we pined for the day in which we would be called. I still longed to go there, even if it took longer than expected. So, in the meantime, I started writing letters to Queen Coralee, promising to find her one day and save her kingdom.

  Yeah, that’s right, I liked her. Or the idea of her. I wanted to be her knight. And I felt sure that, if I kept writing to her, one day, she would call upon us. One day, Dembroch would need us.

  But, someday never came. Dembroch, and the queen for that matter, never called for us. Years passed. My friends and I grew older and, worst of all, we grew apart. We stopped talking about Dembroch, then we stopped talking all together. I started spending more time alone, filling my time waiting and hoping for the kingdom that would never call…

  Then, one day, out of the blue, near the end of high school, we received a package from Dembroch. I got the gang together and tore open the envelope to find—just a book. It was entitled The Knights and Dames of Dembroch. There was no letter, no explanation, just the book. I poured over it, suspecting a secret message or summons lay within, but there was nothing.

  A few days later, the worst happened. We received a letter from Dembroch. I gathered my friends once more. Within was not a summons, no, nor an explanation of why we had received the book. It was a dismissal. The queen renounced our titles and disbanded the order of defenders. There was no clarification, no reason, just a dismissal and request we send back our medals.

  I was so angry and ashamed. My friends laughed it off, admitting that they’d always thought this “Dembroch thing” was just a scam to get money from kids. Deep down, though, I knew it was real and I knew why we’d been removed from the order. My letters. I was positive that my letters, which had started innocently enough and perhaps turned into chaste little love letters to the queen, had spurred her to take our titles.

  With no other evidence to the contrary, I lived with that guilt. Because of my childhood crush, we were dames and knights no more. I tried to make it up to my friends. I wrote many more letters, begging the queen to take us back, or at least my friends, but we never heard another word. All the while, my friends and I drifted further apart. A few years later, we graduated high school. Clay and Jenn ran off to Seattle and got married. My sister and I remained strong, promising to stay together through thick and thin. And then, as if fate had turned against us, we too were torn apart.

  I remember it too well. Our parents arguing and shouting. The word ‘divorce’ being thrown out like a knife. The papers arriving. My stepmom moving out, dragging Meghan with her. The long talks with Meghan in the woods, consoling one another, promising that no matter what, we would stick together, brother and sister. And then, a few weeks later, when the divorce was finalized, Meghan’s mom decided to move to Seattle. Meghan and I met in the forest, and she begged me to come with her. At that point, Jenn and Clay had been married a few years. Meghan was a year away from graduation. Dad was kicking me out of the house to live on my own. There was nothing left for me in little, ol’ Midvale. Except Dembroch. What if they sent for us? No one would be left in Midvale to answer their call.

  “We’re not defenders anymore!” Meg had cried. “We haven’t been for years. You’re waiting for nothing.”

  But I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Sure, it had been more than a decade since we’d first volunteered, but someday, they would send for us.

  “I’ll stay,” I had said. “I’ll stand guard. I’ll wait for the summons and call you all back when it’s time.”

  She called me stupid, I called her a traitor. And in the end, Meghan stormed off and I was all alone in Midvale, pining for a kingdom that had never needed me, for a life I had wanted but been refused.

  As the days and weeks passed into months and years, I thought often of Dembroch and its queen, wondering what had happened to her. I wondered if and when they would call upon my friends and I. Surely it would be the next day. Or the next. Or the next…

  CHAPTER 3:

  The Clash at Cliffside Tower

  Fifteen years later, the defenders of Dembroch huddled in the tower, awaiting the worst. Swords were held with the loose grip of inexperience. Haphazard pieces of armor clung to their bodies as sweat moistened their foreheads.

  These men and women were most of the remaining members of the Reserves, volunteers from all walks of life, aspiring heroes, cowards, and charlatans. They hid in the Cliffside Tower, waiting for Sir Kenneth. Of these last Reserve defenders, Sir Kenneth alone had devised a final, desperate plan to save the kingdom and his fellow knights and dames. And though Sir Kenneth had come upon a great idea, it was ultimately ill-informed, shallow, and—to be blunt—stupid.

  Sir Kenneth was deep in the Horror Hollow. His brilliant plan? To retrieve the fortissium blade, a sleek sword of black, indestructible metal. All around him, the monsters of the hollow hissed as though warning him to not take the blade from the Storm Stone. The blade too resisted him, sending jolts of electricity through his fingers. But, at long last, he rent the sword from the stone. As he did, the stone’s dial was wrenched out of place and a blast of winter winds came out. The gales blew Sir Kenneth, sword in hand, out of the Horror Hollow. He found his feet and ran, headed for the skybridge. Around him, the mountainous terrain of Ryderwyle, normally green and lush, was quickly coated in snow and ice from the winter wrath unleashed. The monsters of Horror Hollow shrieked after him.

  Huffing and puffing, Sir Kenneth made it to the skybridge, the path connecting the mountain island of Ryderwyle to Dembroch’s main island over a channel of deep ocean. He sprinted across it. The fortissium blade was heavy in his grasp.

  Just then, when the knight was almost across the skybridge, the Dreadnaught arrived. It slammed into the bridge, smashing it to smithereens. Like dominos, the bridge began to collapse. Sir Kenneth leapt just as the structure crumbled beneath him. He crashed into the water. Salt bit at his wounds and the cold cut to his bone, but he did not stop. Sword still held tightly, he swam along the channel to a calm inlet. He scaled the cliffs and ran deep into the woods.

  Miraculously, Sir Kenneth made it back to Cliffside Tower. His fellow defenders cheered heartily at his arrival, but there was little time to celebrate. The Dreadnaught appeared right behind him, crashing through the trees. Sir Kenneth, too far away from the tower to beat the monster in a race, turned and stood his ground to face the beast. He bore his new sword offensively. The black metal glinted in the summer’s heat.

  The Dreadnaught kept charging. It roared. There was the buzz of a million ticks and clicks. And then, the sky turned black. Sir Kenneth’s bravery faltered ever so slightly.

  The monsters of Horror Hollow, repugnant beasts of fangs and fire and flight, had followed Sir Kenneth, the thief of their treasure. They bore down on him now, the Dreadnaught scuttling into the fray too, a million teeth aching to sink into the knight’s flesh.

  Sir Kenneth swung mightily with the fortissium blade, that indestructible sword that could cut through anything—should have cut through anything—and it glanced right off the monsters like water off a duck’s back.

  The knight did not get a second chance. He was swarmed by the monsters, lost in a sea of teeth and blood.

  It was the last anyone saw of Sir Kenneth. There were shrieks and squelches, rips and tears. A second later, a severed arm, still clutching the black-bladed sword, flew high into the sky, fell through the tower’s window, and landed with a splat in the upper room amongst the defenders. The blade was spattered in crimson blood. The fingers twitched.

  No one tried to grab it. It was all too clear: the sword
would not aid a thief, let alone these cowardly defenders.

  Beyond the tower walls, the world seemed to rumble. No one had to look to know what was coming.

  The monsters of the Horror Hollow landed on the tower’s top. They clawed through, breaking into the upper room. At the same time, the Dreadnaught assaulted the walls, breaking large chunks away. The defenders fought for all it was worth, but they were indeed ill-equipped and inexperienced. Some were gobbled up by the Dreadnaught, others were skewered by the monsters of the hollow. It was an extermination, and the cries of terror and agony were the stuff of nightmares.

  Across the island, in the kingdom’s castle, a new nightmare was unfolding. Free of her prison cell of the last twenty-five years, Sorgana the witch burst into the throne room. There, the queen was begging her last remaining citizens to stay in the kingdom.

  The witch cackled as she entered and, with a snap of her fingers and curt wave, sent the citizens flying to their deaths.

  “Witch!” the queen shouted. She made to draw her sword.

  But Queen Coralee was too slow. The witch had already spoken an incantation and a weave of thorns wrapped around the queen tight as a blanket. She fell, crying out as the thorns stabbed her sides.

  “How did you escape?” Queen Coralee cried.

  “I had a hearty meal,” the witch replied with a smack of her lips. “Magic lives in my veins as it lives in your island.”

  The queen seemed confused for a moment. “You do not manipulate Dembroch’s magic? You dare hold magic—your own magic—within you?”

  The witch giggled at the queen’s lack of vision. “It’s a power you would never dream of holding.”

  “How—why would you dare?”

  “Tales for another time, my queen,” the witch simpered. “Come with me, dear queen. Your kingdom cries for you.”

  The witch dragged the queen to the top of the castle’s tallest tower. There, on the open-air balcony under the Reliquary, they saw the unfolding calamity.

  All across the isles, the land itself seemed to be dying. Trees rotted and fell. Vineyards and grassy hills yellowed. Rumbles pulled the earth apart in deep fissures.

  But the true horror was at the Cliffside Tower on the northeast headland. The tower was burning. An inferno blazed from its top. Rivers of boiling blood spilled out of the upper room and down the broken walls. The Dreadnaught was still tearing away, snatching up bodies.

  “The defenders of Dembroch are dead,” the witch proclaimed. “With it dies your kingdom’s magic, and so too shall you.”

  She grabbed the queen by the head, squeezing her face. Savoring this perfect moment, Sorgana let the magic course through her. Her fingernails bore into the queen’s skin. She declared the incantation she’d been reciting for more years than she could count.

  The air seemed to be vacuumed from the world. The witch’s youthful beauty decayed away, revealing her true, hideous form, as her magic was put to the test. In her grasp, the queen writhed in agony, screaming wordlessly.

  Elsewhere, the last defender on Dembroch crawled across the inner room of the Cliffside Tower. She reached for the fortissium blade, which was pinned under a fellow dame’s burning body. When she tried to pull it out, it shocked her and refused to be wielded. She died that way, pulling on the sword, as the monsters of Horror Hollow mobbed her.

  The witch sensed this final death, felt the last breath as though she had been cheek-to-cheek with the dame. The kingdom felt it too as the mighty isles tremored.

  And just then, as the witch’s spell on the queen should have been completed and the witch should have been triumphant, it all stopped. The spell seemed to hit a wall, an unseen barrier. A blast of pain shot through the witch’s hands and up into her temples. She gasped and released the queen. A deep cut had split across her forehead. Blood dripped from the wound.

  Spitting with fury, the witch looked beyond the balcony’s edge. The Cliffside Tower was a firestorm. No person could have still been alive. The magic must have been—

  A flicker caught her eye. The witch spotted a different, smaller flame burning in the southeast. It was one of the magical flames and it was still alive.

  “No!” she cried furiously.

  She spun on the queen and was nearly skewered. The queen, unharmed by the botched spell and freed from thorns, had gotten to her feet, drawn her sword, and tried to stab the witch.

  “Dembroch will never fall,” the queen declared, pressing forward and swinging expertly. “So long as I am queen of these isles, and the defenders of Dembroch stand, this kingdom and its magic will never fall to you.”

  Queen Coralee swung again. Weakened from her attempted spell, the witch could only dance away. She circled the balcony, waiting for her energy to return, for her magic to flow once more at a level that would allow her protection and defense.

  “You have shown your hand too soon,” the queen said confidently. “Dembroch will not fall this day, if that is what you hoped. The poor defenders in the tower are not the last.”

  “You disbanded the order,” the witch seethed.

  “Their titles may be gone, but their duty and bonds still remain,” the queen corrected. “The last defenders eagerly wait on distant shores for their summons. They are the fiercest warriors. Beyond compare. They know Dembroch’s every secret, know every cavern and tree and blade of grass. They will know what happened on this day and they will come for your head, witch.”

  Sorgana did not seem intimidated by this. If anything, she looked ready for the challenge, happy to know why her spell had failed, and anxious to go about completing her plans.

  “Let them come,” she said gleefully. “I will slaughter them, and then your kingdom will truly fall.”

  Queen Coralee charged with her sword. The witch drew on what little strength and magic she had left to her devices. The castle quaked. The isles of Dembroch tremored. The Cliffside Tower burned. The defenders’ bodies burnt to ash. The blood of eighty-some souls saturated the tower’s grounds. And there, in the southeast Gate Grounds of the kingdom, one small, magical flame continued to burn.

  CHAPTER 4:

  The Summons

  He pushed through the crowds. His brow was slick with sweat and he longed to rest, but time was no friend to him.

  As he pushed past, people stared. Maybe it was his clothes. Maybe it was his bright green eyes. Maybe it was the blood. No one was brave enough to stop him, and he was in too much of a hurry to care.

  He made it—finally, he breathed, dark splotches passing through his eyesight—and hurried inside. The building was taller than any he’d ever seen and made of shining metal and glass. Inside, he begged to see her, insisted, shouted, but the gatekeeper would not allow it. He begrudgingly left the package, instructing the receptionist to give it to Lady Meghan at once.

  And he was off again, bulldozing through the crowds, breathing hard, wiping the blood from his eyes, hurrying every chance he could.

  But it was for naught. The next two recipients, Sir Clayton and Lady Jennifer, were also unreachable. He left their packages, trusting that fate would deliver them to the right hands, and hurried on, marching into the forest, heading south. He had to find the one who would listen. The one who would unite the last defenders. The one who could save Dembroch.

  ◆◆◆

  I was the last person anyone would call, even as a last resort. No one sought me out intentionally. That’s why it didn’t make any sense to find someone waiting just for me.

  I was halfway up the stairs to my condo—just a fancy name for my tiny, dingy, studio apartment on the fourth floor. Bangs were echoing down the stairwell. They were loud, incessant.

  “Sir Nicholas!” someone shouted, their cries so desperate, I thought someone had died.

  What was going on? I wondered. Was someone trying to break down a door? Were they calling for me?

  Fearing a drug-addled trespasser or loathsome landlord demanding rent, I slunk back down the steps. I must have made a noise, because
a head rose over the top of the stairs. It was a man, masked in shadow, but obviously big, burly, and angry. His eyes seemed to glow in the dim lighting.

  Upon seeing me, the man ran toward me, descending the flight at a rapid pace.

  I did the one thing I was good at in the face of danger: I shrunk on myself. I couldn’t even bring myself to turn or run, let alone prepare for battle. I cowered, fearing the worst.

  The person came to a stop a few steps above me. His breathing was labored. Dried blood covered his forehead and was smeared down his cheeks.

  “Sir Nicholas Hutchinson?” the man said, his voice aged, gruff, and twanging with a foreign accent one-part Scottish and another unknown to my ears.

  “Yes,” I said nervously, though I’d never been called a sir before. Plenty of other names, but never sir.

  I dared to look up.

  Towering over me was a man with deep set eyes so green they seemed to glow, bloody and blistered cheekbones sharp as mountain bluffs, scrapes and scuffs all over his body from a long journey, and bristles of white hair poking out of his scalp and ears. He wore mustard yellow clothes made of leather and felt. I thought I saw something shining on his chest, but I didn’t dare look anywhere but directly at him. He had the air of a man who had traveled too far for a glass of whiskey.

  “Sir, are you—?” I stammered, eyeing the dried blood smeared over his cheeks. “Do you need an ambulance?”

  Unexpectedly, the man swept into a deep, gracious bow.