Lingering Shadows-Chapter 45

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Chapter 45

It felt like it had been only a few short moments when Artham started to return to consciousness. It still seemed like blackness all around him but what changed was the pain. His head throbbed violently and his whole body ached. His back burned and he couldn’t move his right arm when he tried to, and it sent a stab of agony up his arm when he did. A high pitched ringing echoed painfully in his head. 

At the moment it seemed like movement in general was a very bad idea.

His mind felt horribly foggy and it scared him. He tried to remember what in Aerwiar had done this to him, but he couldn’t remember and that scared him even more. 

He forced himself to open his eyes and try to look around him, but the light sent another explosion of pain through his head and when he closed his eyes now bright sparks flew wildly across the blackness. 

He couldn’t think where he was and a horrible feeling rose in the pit of his stomach that something was terribly, terribly wrong. 

After a few minutes he opened his eyes again. Everything was blurred and sparks still flew in his vision. 

The room was lit by a dim, flickering lamp, and he could hear someone breathing nearby. His heart raced.

Something was wrong, and he could barely move, he wasn’t thinking clearly or seeing clearly, and he didn’t know where he was. Apparently he had gotten hurt badly but he couldn’t remember why or when. 

He could move his left arm without much difficulty, so he closed his eyes and focused on breathing steadily as he reached out and tried to feel where he was. 

He felt a shelf beside him, and he spread his hand out and ran it along its surface, finding something hard. His fingers wrapped automatically around the hilt. 

A knife. He felt a small bit better with a weapon in his hands. 

But then a series of images exploded in his mind at the feel of it.

Himself, yanking a dagger from his sleeve and lunging at someone. 

Running through the dark woods, his sword drawn, slamming open a door and bursting into a full room. 

Esben leaning against the wall, pain painted across his face and clutching a bleeding wound on his leg. 

Someone on the ground underneath him, glaring at him with an expression of hatred, then something shiny and hard slamming up against his skull. 

The images were disjointed and fractured and Artham couldn’t tell if they had been real or just a nightmare, and he wanted them to just have been a nightmare because in them Esben had been hurt and afraid, and if they had been real it was terrifying to try to imagine where he was. 

But the awful pounding in his head had come from somewhere. Everything was still confused and mixed up in his mind but now he grabbed the dagger with a sense of urgency. 

He realized that he was breathing hard and he heard a chair scrape across the floor. He had already forgotten there was another person in the room. 

He heard their footsteps and forced himself to hold still. He slowly tried again and still couldn’t move his right arm without burning stabs of pain shooting up his I arm. 

Panic rose inside him as the footsteps got closer and he felt utterly defenseless. And then his muddled train of thought reached the place he had tried to keep away from without even realizing it. 

Esben. 

He opened his eyes and there was a dark, shadowy figure standing over him and stepping closer. A jolt of terror shot through him and he pushed himself up and lunged forward and to the side. 

He heard himself cry out when the figure lurched backwards and then he went over the edge of something and fell a couple of feet and crashed to the ground again. Every inch of him erupted in pain, screaming at him, protesting the abrupt motion and the jarring fall and his head hurt. 

His left hand pressed up against it and the pain shooting through his head had blown away every other thought.

The figure, who just happened to be a concerned Bonifer Squoon, had jerked back, shouting in surprise, landing hard on the ground and also managing to pull the large nightstand down on top of him. The glass of water on it shattered to the ground. 

The door opened and a young man stepped in, holding a large satchel. His eyes flew to Bonifer on the floor, looking extremely indignant as he tried to extricate himself from under the nightstand. 

“Mister Bonifer! Are you alright?” Thaerin, the young man who was Dr. Idrion’s apprentice placed the satchel on a table in the middle of the room and ran over, moving the nightstand back upright and taking Bonifer by the hand and starting to help him up. 

Then Thaerin glanced up and saw Artham on the floor leaning against the bed, a hand pressed to the thick bandage around his head, the hand of his injured arm tightly gripping the bed frame. 

“Artham!” Thaerin let go of Bonifer’s hand and with a grunt and a huff of annoyance Bonifer slowly pulled himself back up. 

Thaerin ran over to Artham and crouched next to him, gently taking his wrist and putting a hand to his shoulder. 

“Artham, can you hear me?”

The ringing in Artham’s ears had intensified but his panic subsided slightly when the person talking to him said his name. He nodded, but immediately realized that as a mistake. 

Thaerin turned around. There was a page by the door. 

“Go find Dr. Idrion,” he ordered in a calm voice, and then he turned back and helped Artham up so he was sitting on the edge of the bed. 

Artham looked up wildly, searching Thaerin’s face as his thoughts returned to his brother.

 “Who are you? Where’s my brother?”

A flicker of concern crossed Thaerin’s face and his expression turned much more serious. 

“Artham, calm down-”

 “Where’s Esben? Is he okay? Where’s my brother!?” Artham shouted. Thaerin had grabbed Artham’s wrists and now Artham tried to jerk his arm away and started trying to fight Thaerin in his panic, trying to get up. Thaerin’s eyes widened. 

“Artham stop it, you’re going to hurt yourself again!” 

“Where’s Esben!?” Artham demanded desperately. 

The door crashed open and Esben ran inside, pushing Thaerin to the side. 

“Artham, it's okay! It's okay! I’m here and I’m okay.” 

Artham reached out and grabbed Esben’s arm. His head was still spinning and no matter how hard he blinked his vision still wouldn’t clear. 

“What happened?” Artham asked. Slowly his heart stopped pounding and his mind stopped racing. 

Esben had a thin bandage around his wrists and when he had run in he had been limping. Esben sighed. 

“Nobody’s trying to hurt us anymore. We’re at the Keep, and you need to rest.” Esben shifted position and when he moved he held his left arm out stiffly. 

“And you’re okay?”

 “Yeah Artham, I’m fine. But you aren’t. How do you feel?” Esben paused. “And don't you dare say you’re fine because then you’re a flat out liar.”

Artham laughed hoarsely, slowly leaning back and letting his aching body relax. He groaned. 

“In that case I feel awful. Everything hurts. And why can’t I move my arm?”

 “Don’t try to!” Esben exclaimed, then looked down with a huff of annoyance at the thick bandage around his brother’s arm that had started to bleed through again. 

“Other than your head, that was the worst.”

 “How long was I out?” Artham murmured. 

“Two days,” Esben replied. 

“Two days!” Artham started to sit up again, it let himself fall back, wincing when he hit the slash across his back. 

“You need to rest now, okay? We can talk more when you wake up again,” Esben told him, rubbing Artham’s shoulder. Artham let out a slow breath and whispered his consent. He was too thoroughly exhausted to argue otherwise, and everything hurt too much for him to try to get up again.

After a few minutes of uneven breathing he was asleep again. 

Esben sighed and a wave of relief washed over him as he sat down in the chair by the bed. He had been so worried about Artham for the last two days, and for the first few hours after Dru and his friends and the Durgans he found them in the woods he had been horribly afraid that Artham was going to leave him too, despite Dr. Idrion’s assurances that he was doing everything that he could. The last two days of just waiting had been awful. 

Bonifer came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder comfortingly.

Dr. Idrion had been standing in the doorway for quite a while. 

“Thank you,  Esben,” he said in his quiet voice as he rummaged around in the large satchel Thaerin had brought in. “You handled that well, and considering the situation you were probably the only one who could have.”

 “Thanks,” Esben muttered, watching as Idrion started to unwrap the bandage around Artham’s right forearm. 

“Sorry I pushed you, Thaerin,” Esben remembered, turning to the young man as he swept up the broken glass from the ground.  

Thaerin nodded. “It was understandable, Your Majesty. No need to apologize.”

Esben turned back to his brother, watching him with concern. 

“He’s going to be okay, right?” he asked the doctor. 

“Yes, Your Majesty, considering that he regained consciousness and is now sleeping normally. You will want to stay nearby though, because of the probability that he will want assurance of your safety again when he wakes up.”

 “Okay. Thanks.” Esben sat for a long time, almost shaking with relief, just watching his brother. The last two days had definitely been two of the worst days of his life. Yesterday he had barely even had time to take a breath. Rumor had spread like wildfire through Ban Rona about what had happened and apparently had already reached Anniera, considering the dreaded pile of unopened letters that had arrived that morning, sitting on Esben’s desk. 

With Bonifer’s help he had managed to push off any council meetings for at least another week though. 

“Your Majesty?” A page peeked in the door. 

“Yes?”

 “Um, there’s someone-a girl-outside, asking for someone named Lander? Her name is Nia Helmer.”

Esben practically shot up out of his chair. 

“Oh! I completely forgot!” 

A few minutes later Esben had walked out to the grounds in front of the Kep. He had stopped a few times to try and figure out what he would say. 

The sun was shining and the snow had started to melt. 

Nia was waiting for him, sitting on one of the stone benches outside. 

“Um…hi, Nia,” Esben said, tentatively stepping closer. She turned around, her thick brown braid swinging over her shoulder. 

 “Hello…Lander. How are you?” 

“Uh, not good,” Esben said quickly. “Nia, I need to tell you something.” He stood next to the bench and took a deep breath of the cold air. 

“You look tired. Come sit down,” Nia said, moving to make room for him on the wide bench. 

Esben sat down, slowly because of his leg. He looked between Nia and the ground, wondering how in Aerwiar he was going to say it. Finally he sighed and put his head in his hands.

 “Nia I am so sorry, I’ve been lying to you. My name isn’t Lander, well, it is because that’s my middle name, but my name is Esben. I’m so sorry. It was really, really stupid of me to act like that and to lie to you and I never should have done that. I would understand if you never wanted to speak to me again, but I need to apologize and ask your forgiveness,” Esben let out all his words in a rush, barely pausing for breath, then leaning back with a heavy sigh. He dreaded what she would say next but letting the truth out gave him an enormous feeling of relief. 

“Thank you for your apology, Esben.” Nia said in her quiet, strong, beautiful voice. “I’ll admit that I was angry at you when I found out-”

 “You knew?” Esben asked. 

“Malik told me,” Nia said after a pause. Esben frowned, remembering. “But its worth a lot more that you told me after all of this, especially if you didn’t know I knew. And considering what happened to you and your brother I doubt you had a chance to tell me these last two days.” 

“Nia, I was on my way to tell you. I was going through the woods and that’s when it happened.”

Nia looked down. “Thank you for wanting to tell me, even if it did take a while. I’m still a little angry, but…I accept your apology and I forgive you.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “Now, please tell me why.” 

“What?” Esben looked at her in confusion. 

“From what I’ve seen of you…I don’t think you would have lied to me just for the fun of it.”

 “No! Definitely not,” Esben said emphatically.

 “And I think, considering everything, that I should know why.” 

Esben let out a long sigh. 

“You’re right. I-I didn’t tell you my real name…with everything going on with the Chiefs and Nibbik and the alliance and someone trying to kill me, it's a stupid reason but I was just so tired of being King. I wanted someone who was friends with me because of who I am, not because of my station. Which is kind of ridiculous since you didn’t even know my name. And I’m really, really sorry, Nia.”

Nia sat, looking out at the road,thinking for a while. 

“Thank you for explaining, Esben. That helps me understand a lot. 

“So you don't hate me?” Esben asked, looking at her with a mix of surprise and relief and worry. Nia laughed. 

“No, of course not. And I’m still going to be your friend, Esben.” 

“Really?” Esben’s face lit up and Nia laughed. “Thank you, Nia.”