Freelands

II. NO SAINT

1.The Amulet

Harper walks on the other side of the tomb where his brother is standing. He looks down inside the tomb and sees his father laying dead inside what they call it "Icebed".

The Iceborn believe that when someone dies ,he actually falls asleep and rests from this tiring life, when they finally take enough rest they wake up again and continue their works. So important is to keep the dead body intact, that destroying is an ultimate offense to the dead and to the God.

Harper watches the body of a tall blonde man with blue eyes, master swordfighter and one of the most loved kings Hierydor has ever had. Now that man is laying there emotionless. The brothers stand silent over their father's corpse for a second, then Harper takes a brave attempt and asks his brother;

"Didn't Mother tell us he had a lot more days?"

"She did" Lance said.

"Then how could she be so wrong?" Harper says.

"You know diseases , Harper" Lance said in a strict way.

" His health detiorated very fast , no one expected this." He continued.

Lance draws his sight on the two monks waiting outside.

"Blessed ones!" He says with respect
"We are okay, you can leave" he says.

"Yes, my lord" the monks answered and exitted the underground.

After that, Lance grabs two golden grails and gives them to Harper...

"Please, fill those from the pond. Be carefull not to spill the water at the stairs." He asked him.

Harper takes the grails and goes upstairs to bring water.

While waiting, Lance takes a look at his fathers body, He notices the gold amulet he is wearing on his neck, The amulet of the Ice god, a possesion owned by all grand priests through the ages, by the time he sees the golden chain with the indigo stones hanging on his father's neck, he remembers the time he secretly wore it when his father wasn't around and the shocking things it was capable of. 

Suddenly, a big dillema was wandering in his head. 

With a quick sleight of hand he grabs it from the body of his father and wears it on his own neck, hoping his brother won't notice it when he gets down again.

Harper returns in the room, where they will seal their father's body, holding the two grails filled with Sacred water. 

As they gently pour water all around their father's king clothes, Harper notices a small folding on the clothe around the neck on his father.

"Let me fix this" He says.

Lance in order not to let his brother see the amulet is missing, he slaps his brother's arm and tells him in a really strict voice.

"Don't touch him, He is being cleaned! Don't make his body dirty!"

Harper pulls his arm in suprise and shouts at his brother.

"Are you an idiot?! He won't eat my hand if I touch him, He is dead Lance!"

Lance answers to his brother's words but keeps speaking whispering.

"We won't argue here about that." 

"Help me lift the ice stone and seal the bed!" He continues.

Harper doesn't answer he goes to the heavy ice piece and he and Lance rise it. Lance appears to lift it with ease, this massive ice shard, on the other hand Harper is struggling not to fall on his feet by the weight of the ice.
"Watch your hands, we leave it now." Lance warns Harper
"Fuck!" Harper shouts in pain.
As Lance left the ice , Harper didn't pull his fingers fast enough and the ice crushed the end of his fingers.
"Hey watch your mouth!" Lance replies strictly to Lance who is bleeding, thankfully his fingers are still in place but he is bleeding badly. Blood falls all around the sealed bed.

"Yeah, sorry father" Harper says with irony and walks his way outside the crypt to the palace, seeking monk Gere to treat his wound.
Lance doesn't go upstairs immediatly he stands and takes a quick peek to his father's amulet he stole. After a while he sits down and tries to clean up his brother's blood from the tomb.

Harper finds monk Gere in the palace hall.
"Gere! Can you fix this, please?"He says.

"Are you okay my lord?!"

Gere answers in stress seeing Harper bleeding.

"Its fine, the seal of the tomb just fell my hands."

"Follow me, my lord. We meed to treat the wound." 

Gere says and brings Harper to a small dim dark room with a big dark wooden bench with cabinets filled with herbs and strange liquids.

Lance sits to an old chair next to the bench. Gere takes a look at Harper's wound, a straight broad scratch all the way from the point finger to the pinky. Then Gere stands up and takes some small cylider white containers with herbs and starts to make a remedy to seal Harper's horrible wound. 

Harper, while waiting Gere to finish the medicine grabs one of the small containers that they were on the bench. He opens it and sees roots from various plants. Gere takes a look at Harper.
"It's always a pleasure to have you here, my lord." Gere says.

"No one from this blessed family was really interested on a herbalist's art, like you do." He continued.

"Hierydor is overgrown with all sorts of plants, they just have this wild beauty and with right handling they can do marvelous things, am I right?" Harper says.

"Very correct, my lord" Gere answers. He is feeling glad about Harper's interest.

"From medicines that can alliviate the worst pain to poisons that can kill the greatest Kings and anhiliatte entire armies. This is what they are capable of." He continues.

Gere finishes the remedy and walks to Harper. He spreads a dense black substance on the wound and ties his hand with a long piece of cloth.

"This will help the wound to heal. But you shouldn't hold a sword for a while." Gere says to Harper while patching him up.

"Didn't mean so!" Harper says and they both laugh.

" It's a shame for a man like your father to die like this." Gere says as he takes a chair to sit and rest his tired elder body.

"I'm baffled how yesterday, he could walk and talk pretty fine and suddenly he wakes up not able to stand or even say a word." He continued saying while taking a pipe , filling it with tobacco and lighting it up.

"Mother said that He is sick and he had time left, it's a common disease for older men." Harper answers.

"Lordess Freyria isn't wrong about that, my lord." Gere says.

"All I'm trying to tell you is that I think your father didn't have had a disease." He says in serious low tone voice, He doesn't want anyone else to hear them.

"Then what killed him, Gere?" Harper asked him with a worrying, curious voice.

"Poison kills the greatest Kings and the biggest armies, remember that." Gere answers him as he is standing up and leaves the pipe on the side of the counter.

He then touches Harper's scar on the eyebrown and says.

"And you know on a better hand that your father was no saint, my lord, he had a lot of secret enemies."

▪♤▪