The Last Great Battle (NaNoWriMo story, on hold)

Chapter 4

Later that day

Royal Palace, Gipfel, Montara

Reanne’s Chambers

Reanne flopped face first on her bed as soon as she arrived in her chambers.

“Shoot me,” she said, her voice muffled by the bed linens.

“Oh really? What now, Highness?” Pelot asked as he directed the servants who were arriving with Reanne’s traveling trunks. As soon as they were all positioned, Reanne flipped over and lay on her back, perpendicular across the bed, with her feet dangling off the side.

“Did you see that scene down there?” She asked Pelot as soon as they were completely alone.

“Of course,” he laughed, “I believe all of the city saw it. What about it?”

Reanne sat up angrily, “What about it? He made a fool of himself and me! I am not marrying that man. I do not care what I have to do but I am not marrying him!” She flopped back down on the bed.

Pelot sighed and came to sit next to her on the edge of the bed. “Come on, Reanne, it is really not all that bad. I am sure that many marriages start out worse.”

Reanne pouted and then finally said quietly, “I don’t want just any marriage. I want something special. I want what my parents had. My mother told me the story of how they met many times when I was little; it was my favorite story. I want that; I want true love.” She sat up and looked Pelot in the eyes, “This feels weird, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it feel like there is something wrong with what is happening here?”

Pelot chewed on his cheek, “Suppose you feel this way just because it was Diane who arranged it. Don’t you think your judgment might be clouded by that fact?”

She looked him straight in the eye and shook her head, “No. No I do not.” Suddenly, she flew off of the bed and began tearing through the trunks. “Pelot, did you pack my spell books?”

Pelot rolled his eyes, “No. I did not pack the one thing you have not put down in ten years. Yes, of course, I packed them!”

“Well then stop sitting there and help me find them!” She cried while halfway in a trunk.

Pelot sighed and got up to help.

***

Meanwhile, after a long bath and a change of clothes, Harmony was wandering through another part of the castle in search of her favorite pastime, music. She had enquired directions to the music room from a passing servant but she still was not sure which one of the doors in this dark hallway belonged to the music room. Finally, with a sigh, she began knocking and opening doors in hopes of eventually finding the right room.

After searching for about twenty minutes, she finally opened a door to a dark room, littered with instruments that had been covered with white clothes.

“Hmm,” Harmony said to herself, “people must not use these very often then.” She walked straight to the line of windows on the opposite wall and swung the shutters open to let in light to the dark room. Then she found the piano and uncovered it with a swoop of the covering cloth, coughing on the dust cloud it raised. “Let’s hope it’s still in tune,” she said again to herself, uncovering the keyboard and stretching her fingers.

Her favorite melancholy tune, an ancient Glenecian ballad about a woman who loved a man who could not love her back, floated in the air, through the open door, and down the hallway where it caught the attention of Lord Roger.

At first he was deeply disturbed because no one had played the piano in the palace since his mother’s death three years ago. As he listened longer, he realized that he was indeed hearing a real person playing the piano and not experiencing a stress-induced hallucination of his mother. He followed the sound and it led him deep into his mother’s old chambers where he began to notice how he had let it fall into disrepair after the dowager duchess’ death because he could not bear to do anything with her possessions when she died and then after his grief subsided he was too busy putting down insurrections from the unruly northern mountain tribes to be bothered much by the state of his castle.