Day 53

The Tale of Enaerixer and Froadaelo

The trio were stirred awake by the clanging of keys on the metal gate that had trapped them in the cold, stone corner of the prison dungeon. Bones could be heard cracking as they rose and stretched off the uncomfortable rest they had had that night and the day before. Uncharacteristically, it was only Roo who had managed to get any real sleep. The guard captain escorted them to an antechamber off the great hall, ready for their trial. There was no one else to argue their corner, but Enaerixer and Froadaelo both had an innate knowledge of law and justice, and even though the laws are different in different kingdoms, the two felt confident that they would be able to use logic to persuade their judge to see the truth. Who their judge was, they had not yet been told.

Trumpets rang out from inside the great hall. A fanfare reserved for the presence of royalty. The huge, oak doors swung open and revealed the hall, transformed into a court room, where the King sat on a throne at the head of the room, surveying the accused, and emanating a lordly air about him. It was odd that he was here. Although people had been murdered, at the time it was not such an uncommon occurrence. Bandits and highwaymen lined every major road between settlements. Travellers were killed quite often, and a band of travelling performers would be at high risk of running foul of  thieves or monsters. It didn't seem fitting that a King would come to reside over the trial. That is, unless something else was amiss - something that had not yet been revealed.

Indeed that was the case. Roo was the one to notice it. He had detected the misery in the King's posture and, seeing the empty seats nearby came to the correct conclusion. It was a jump - the seats could have been vacant for any number of reasons - but the King's sadness revealed something more. His heirs had been killed. Every last one. And the King was old. His eyes gave away the fact that he was still coming to terms with being the last King in his line. After his time, there would be no one to take his place, and a lord from another family would sit in his empty throne, and reign over the kingdom.


The court was formally introduced to the trial, and this was when Enaerixer, Froadaelo and Roo learned that the King's last living son had gone into hiding after the assassinations of his brother, the prince who had been next in line to the throne; and his sister, the princess engaged to be wed with a prince from a neighbouring kingdom - the union of the two hoping to join the kingdoms under one banner, more than doubling the strength of each.


The trial was long and uninteresting as each side argued that they must have been responsible for the death of the prince and perhaps even the other two heirs, or that they obviously didn't have anything to do with it. Despite the three defendants protesting their innocence, the fact was that none of them could back up their story. After the play they had gone straight back to the inn feeling embarrassed and just wanting to forget the night and the play they had been part of. They had no alibis.


All hope would have been lost, if it had not been for the way in which the prince had been killed. It hadn't been made very clear in the trial, but, where most had assumed he had been struck down by steel, in fact it was a much slyer method that had ended his life. C'nin, being the one who specialised in brewing potions, had last night sneaked into where the prince's body lay lifeless, so that he might have a closer inspection of the corpse. What he found would prove the innocence of Enaerixer, Froadaelo and Roo. The poison used to suffocate the prince's soul was not one that any man or woman from the northern continent could create...