XXVI – Queen of Hearts

Her belongings were scattered before her knees when Bolet offered her a cushion for her bottom and brought over a candlestick. Windar scanned the chamber and the first thing she picked up was the black brass box.

She traced the golden emblem upon the lid with her fingertip: the ancient coat of arms of the Kingdom of Old Minister, when the raven that represented them did not have its wing outstretched nor was it set against a crimson background.

It had been so long since she had seen it, and yet she still loathed it, along with the weight of the four generations of Alfredo’s descendants she bore upon her shoulders.

She opened the clasp with her thumbnail.

She already knew that within, lined with black velvet, lay anchored, from smallest to largest, the silver royal rings of the men of her family, yet she desired to ensure they were worth saving.

She beheld the smallest one, her brother’s, two years her junior, and remembered his death with sadness, at the age of seven.

The one in the middle had belonged to the king’s eldest son; it reminded her of the year of mourning they observed after the rightful heir to the throne died drunk during a duel in a tavern brawl.

'What would have become of this kingdom in his hands?' she pondered, gazing with disdain upon the final ring that remained within the casket ere she closed it and set it aside.

'You should keep it for posterity,' Bolet advised her.

'We shall rewrite history as we please, and there are things better left untold,' she said, lifting a papyrus. 'Like this, see? This is my mother’s handwriting and this is mine. What is the point of clinging to nostalgia?'

Windar loved her mother, and the feeling was mutual.

Thanks to her, two years after taking her first steps, she was reading several ancient languages fluently because she wanted the princess to become more than merely a fair visage to adorn the realm.

As for her father, she hated him as much as he hated her, and they ceased to speak to one another the day she told him of her wish to become a sorceress.

This occurred a year after the plague had smitten the realm and reaped, among so many victims, the life of the youngest of the Hugnorks.

To safeguard the fields and bless the townsfolk after such a tragedy, there had come to Old Minister a red-haired sorcerer: Clarens.

Hailing from Cartos, he was travelling through the kingdoms whilst passing on his wisdom to his son and his two apprentices.

The four of them were in one of the chambers when they encountered Windar.

She was entranced by the rites they were performing and had even requested of the burly, red-haired sorcerer—who bore a gentle countenance and a warm smile—that he carve for her a necklace like the one he wore, fashioned of white wood with a snake consuming its own tail.

Unaware of the nobility of her blood, yet struck by her evident curiosity and the energy she radiated, the powerful Clarens, with an almost imperceptible movement, pointed his index finger towards the princess.

Electrifying joy coursed through young Windar’s body as a masterful, four-pointed, bluish snowflake took shape upon her belly.

She was the first Naamclënt with Alfredo’s blood on record, and the wise man from the northern lands wished to take her on as an apprentice.

Her excitement—being but ten years of age—moved her to present herself before her father without protocol or concealing her joy, and he, in answer, with that heavy ring, gouged her cheek.

Thus, it was in that deep furrow running across her face that the seed of it all was sown.

'Those were better times that will return,' she remarked, letting her mind wander in memory as she travelled back to her childhood amidst old letters and ribbons.

With a wistful half-smile, she let out a soft sigh through her nose, imagining that she kept alive the two things that had sparked her interest since childhood and which she felt were intertwined within her being.

On the one hand, magic—which, even behind Wendor’s back, she had managed to experience at the hands of the court sorcerer.

On the other, the fervent desire to aid the kingdom, for though she was aware of her lineage, she felt part of them, an equal, yet with the inherent duty to watch over their welfare.

The affection the folk showed her was sincere, and she earned it through the sweat of her brow, hastening out in the pouring rain to succour any in need, regardless of becoming muddy or falling ill, with the humble gesture of recalling every inhabitant’s name.

And because of her father’s heavy-handed way of governing, she secretly meddled in politics and the stewardship of the realm’s coffers.

She searched among the rolled papyri to her right and found an old map, from a time when Old Minister was a modest kingdom inhabited by a handful of merchants and villagers.

'It is incredible that such misery could fit in the hand of a single blind man,' she said, and could feel the hollowness that the memory of hunger left in her stomach.

Before the death of Alfredo, Móntria and Tloston, which made up the Raven Empire, were divided into ten equal parts.

To his two sons, Hugnork and Munork, baptised in honour of Odín’s ravens, and to his counsellors with whom he had achieved the conquest. The equity of the division ensured that they would rule under the laws that he, as Odín’s chosen one, had laid down.

But men have their price, and greed proved greater than the will of the gods.

Ten years thereafter, amid wars and treaties, the lands of the north and east passed into alien hands until only the thrones of Old Minister in Móntria and Welst in Tloston remained occupied by the direct descendants of the Raven King.

Because of that history of betrayals, regardless of famine or plague, King Wendor Hugnork, father of Windar, preferred to bury his citizens one by one. He systematically rejected any treaty without even reading the proposal, regarding as enemies any kingdom not ruled by a descendant of Alfredo.

He wished to set history right, but before his eldest son died, he suffered his first snub.

In Welst, King Munork’s firstborn daughter had but lately been born, and Wendor sought to persuade him to wed her to his heir, yet his first cousin took ill favour to the fact that she was a girl.

He delivered the babe into the keeping of the priestesses of the north, that they might consecrate her when she came to years of discretion, and he confined his wife within the castle’s attic.

His second attempt came about the time of his cousin’s second marriage. Wendor proposed that he promise Windar to his firstborn son. He intended nothing more than to unite the families in the hope that they would produce blood pure enough for Alfredo to be reincarnated and reconquer the lost lands.

Windar smiled at the intricate tangle of memories in which her life was woven.

'Lerg’s wife, my arse,' she said to herself upon finding the treaty Wendor had sent to his cousin.

The King of Welst was on the verge of accepting it; the reputation for trouble that preceded the heir to the throne of Old Minister guaranteed that his future son, united with the Princess of Móntria, would claim both crowns sooner rather than later.

But to make amends for a shameful scandal involving the Queen of Weftein, he had to agree to the union between Lerg—who was born eight years later—and the princess, whom many claimed was also his daughter.

Although that marriage never took place, the young woman perished in a tragic accident when her horse bolted.

And Prince Munork took Loretha to wife, one of the maids who had tended his mother, who had suffered the same fate as the former queen and shared a cell in the attic.

It was ironic how Narg, without realising it, had come close to repeating history. She had made sure to prevent it, but there was one thing she had to acknowledge: he was an excellent king who loved his people as much as she did.

'Narg has done well,' she said with a touch of melancholy. 'It is a pity he is so faithful to his god. He could have been part of the salvation.'

'You have grown fond of him, have you not?' asked Bolet with a provocative half-smile.

'Affection will not save us from the whims of the gods,' she replied rhetorically, and without looking, picked up the object to her right.

In her hands the wedding dress crumpled as it had upon the morning of the third day after the summer solstice, six months after the crown prince’s decease, when she awoke to find it hanging at the foot of her bed for her to don that very night.

Wendor had turned her into a mere strategic pawn, and she confirmed that her hatred for him for having outlived her two brothers was greater than the ideal of keeping Alfredo’s traitors away from the throne.

Thus, whilst the fourteen-year-old princess with golden hair and green eyes was being prepared to be handed over as a sacrificial animal, the Old Minister-Korkolat treaty was being concluded in the throne room.

The Raven King signed the formal adoption of his north-western neighbour’s youngest prince to ensure that the Hugnork surname would prevail.

It suited the King of Korkolat: his eldest son would inherit his throne, and he could steer the fate of the younger son, who, until then, had aspired to remain in the shadows of his brother.

On that day, not only did the raven upon Old Minister’s coat of arms transform, spreading its wing to symbolise the embrace of another family and replacing the eternal black background with Korkolat’s red, but the destiny of Móntria also set out upon a sunnier path.