The Tale of Sir Ramics

The Queen's Knight

The farmers are the first to see the knight, out in their fields.  One runs for another, words traveling faster than feet, and they all find work closer to the road, watching with barely concealed curiosity, and trepidation, and awe.  The walls of the city are in sight, their gold-painted crenellations glittering in the sun, when one grows bold enough to approach, hurrying up to the knight with an uneven gait.

"Please, sir knight, do you have news of the south?  Do you have news of Teffe?  My cousin is there, with her husband and four children—does it yet stand?  Please, tell me you know!"

The knight looks at the man, at his twisted foot that prevented him joining the guard, standing here with his hat in his hands and his eyes an innocent plea.  Teffe fell long ago.  The soldiers cleared it, before they knew the dangers to themselves.  The goats were eating the corpses when the knight passed through.

The knight looks at the man, and slowly shakes a helmeted head.

The man chokes back a sob, clutching his hat to his chest, and doesn't stop the knight from continuing on.

A knight is returning, the black knight is returning, the knight of the red hand—returning!  The rumors fly through the city before the knight reaches the gates, and the way is clear, the people barely holding back all along the path, whispers coursing between them as an unsubtle river, a flicker here and there as one starts forward only to be pulled back—by themselves or another varies.

The knight passes unheeding between them, approaching the castle doors.  One guard is young, a nervous tremor to his hand as he hurries to follow his elder's lead and open the doors, nearly dropping the heavy thing—but the guard recovers, and the knight's pace never falters, passing through into the vaulted halls of white-painted stone, armored steps echoing from the walls.

Whispered steps mark the passage of servants, ever just out of sight, as the knight enters the main hall: and there, wreathed in the glow of the Celestial Bloom, that astral beauty portrayed all in stained glass taking the whole of the far wall, is the queen.  The knight walks forward, pace finally slowing, and kneels still a distance from the throne, head bowed in reverence.

"My dear knight," says the queen, her voice as soft as dusk, "surely you've not been injured?  What brings you here?  Has the plague been vanquished?"

The knight straightens without rising, and can only offer a slow shake of the head.

"No injuries?  My smiths might aid you—"

Another slow shake.

"What brings you, sir knight?" the queen asks, her dark eyes deep with concern.

Slowly, the knight draws a sword, and lays it gently on the ground between them, and touches it not again.

"You're not leaving my service?"  Sorrow fills her voice now.

The knight clutches a fist to armored chest, just above the heart, head shaking once—quickly, sharply.  Never.  A gesture to the sword, a shake of the head, a hesitation—a glance to the red-painted vambrace on the knight's left arm, and the knight mimes wrapping a bandage around it.

"You...renounce the sword?"

A nod.

"To...you have no injuries...to mend others?"

Another, more emphatic.

"There..."  The queen sinks back in her throne, the light from the window glinting once from her golden circlet before she's embraced by shadows.  "There is no cure, sir knight."

The knight's head droops to gaze at the ground.

"By the sword, you might protect us.  You know the danger they are.  Polarias works day and night to secure our water."  A dark-skinned hand slips beneath the knight's chin, raising that helmet of black and gold to meet the queen's eyes, having moved silently from her throne to stand before the knight now.  "This is the only way."