"Admit it," grunted Jun through a mouthful of vegetable stew. "The bastard got the best of us."
"Yes, but..."
It was unlike Zander to struggle with articulating sentences, but this was the twelfth time he had been rendered speechless this evening. King scraped the sides of the wooden bowl with his spoon, suddenly feeling the pangs of an oncoming stomach ache. It confused him. Nothing he'd consumed this evening should have caused such pain. The table was covered with a number of hearty dishes, like roasted aubergine, parsnips and yams in a buttery herb sauce; a rich vegetable stew heaped with beef chunks; freshly baked multigrain bread and hunks of cheese; leafy salad topped with sliced red onion and tomato; and even a pyramid of egg tarts glazed in a sticky maple syrup. They had stainless steel goblets filled to the rim with a luscious red wine made from their own grapes and even a tapped keg of ale.
Each dish was handmade according to recipes of their own design, adapted from books Zan had found in the library. All of this was set upon a table that could easily sit twenty people of various sizes and heights, but only Jun and Zan were there, occupying two seats at the end closest to the fireplace. Jun was at the head of the table, as a king should be, and Zan was on the right.
Therein was the root of his ache, Jun figured.
A magical light illuminated the dining hall, along with sconces on the wall and two torches beside the door to the great hall. Three clones stood near the kitchens, their unnatural stillness making them closer to furniture than to attendants. Along the left side of the table was a row of windows about twice his size that overlooked the town and, far past the Wall, the horizon. He had chosen long ago to eat with his back to the scene, but Zan had insisted that a king always be at least half-aware of what was happening in his domain. Imagining the lifeless village in the midnight glow of the moon was enough to make his stomach groan.
Twelve years of laboring for an impossible mission, and now this mess.
Jun rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to see the tattoo on his arm. What did it mean? Just like the silence of the castle and the loneliness of the dinner table, the tattoo served as a constant memento of his ongoing failures.
"Zander, at this rate, do you ever think we'll succeed?" he heard himself whisper, voice raspy.
Setting down the wine goblet, the mage furrowed his brow and cast his eyes to the hearth, where a painting for an unknown kingdom among treacherous cliffs hung above the stone mantle. Beyond the castle of the picture was a city that blanketed the hills like blossoming flowers fading into the setting sun. It was an awe-inspiring piece.
"I don't know," Zan admitted. "We're doing our best to start our own dynasty and bring people to Prolozia, just as we were instructed to do."
An unspoken "but" hung in the space between them. Jun could tell that something was bother Zan. There were too many pauses in this conversation. He thought he knew the cause of the problem, and so it nagged at Jun. He picked up his used fork and flipped it through his fingers, trying to focus on something other than what had happened that morning. The string of events unfolding from that single mishap with Duran was foreboding. Jun could feel the trouble on the horizon. Unable to hold it in anymore, King slammed both hands against the tabletop, pushed back his wooden chair, and stood to face the night sky.
"I see nothing," he said aloud.
Zan made a sound of perplexion.
Jun gestured to the dark scene. "There is nothing out there. That's what you're worried about, right? Another attack? More marauders from distant lands?"
The hollowed look in Zan's eyes became abysmal as he spoke: "Junius, that barely scratches the surface of my concerns. What the bandit told me, and what I have feared for many years, seems to have come true." It seemed almost like Jun was being admonished for thinking too optimistically.
Cold. Jun suddenly felt unbearably cold. Not just because Zander used his full name. Embracing himself a little, King sauntered to the seat directly beside his trusted advisor. Though he was about to take a seat, he decided not to. The wine carafe was within reach, and the last thing he wanted to do was drown his overreacting brain in alcohol. Besides, Zan would chide his excessive consumption of wine again.
Jun plucked a tart from the pile and studied the yellow filling. "When we woke up twelve years ago in the middle of nothing, with naught but tattoos on our arms and a dossier with our names and supposed lineage and a mission imprinted in our minds, do you know what my first thought was?" Upon asking the question, he took a large bite of the dessert.
"No, what?" Zan was distant.
"That I was going to starve to death," answered the king before devouring the rest of the tart with a quick bite. He wiped his hands against his plain weskit, chewing loudly, and then he swallowed with a pleased sigh. "But you know what? We didn't, did we?"
"So, what you are trying to say is?"
Junius planted his hands against the table to lean forward. "We're going to survive this, Zan. Whatever, whoever comes our way, it doesn't matter. One day, we will have ourselves a court full of soldiers and beautiful women and bards. One day, we will have it all." For added dramatic effect, he even pretended to snatch something from the air then smiled.
While the motivational speech seemed to brighten the mage's mood, his words were as dour as before: "Your outlook on all this is why you're the king and not me. I hope you're right about this, Jun. Otherwise, we are in for a long, meaningless existence."
Later that evening, Jun stood on the balcony attached to his room. Chilly air rushed from the mountains like waves from the sea. The sky was clear and flecked with stars above the castle, but there was nothing but black clouds past the Wall of Thorns. Whorls of vapor rose from his mouth as he studied the twinkling constellations. The conclusion of their mission might just be as unattainable as those burning stars, he thought. Jun then lowered his gaze to the plains. On the horizon, land and sky blended into a nebulous nothingness.
Zan had once said that blurry distance was the true form of the future. The longer Jun spent nights alone on the balcony, wrapped in cool air, the more he concurred with the mage's observation. He laughed wryly at his performance earlier that evening. Inwardly, he feared that his name would forever be synonymous with failure. Was he doomed to go down in the annals of history as Junius Virgil Steele, the King of Nothing? Another sour chuckle escaped him, sounding as if he was choking on stale beer.
Turning his back to the night sky, Jun shut the balcony door, drew the curtains shut, and worked his way to the bed. In the darkness, he found himself thinking about the nightmare. He was already in it, looking at the platinum-haired woman with striking eyes. If she was still alive, he pondered, would she tell him of his origin? Would she help him figure out how to move on?
Junius sighed heavily, "Like that would ever happen."
Then he removed his pants, shirt, and undergarments before sliding in between the silken bed sheets.
**
The midnight hour was when Zander felt most alive. He was a nocturnal creature. Every evening, he released the cloning spell, allowing a glut of magical energy to return to his body. With strength restored, Zan was able to summon up more than enough motivation to keep working into the wee hours of the morning. Indefatigable, the mage scoured texts in the castle library, jotted down notes, practiced archived spells, and worked on making his own enchantments. Hours would pass in the blink of any eye as Zan raced from his tower to the library and back again. Stacks of literature that had been previously retrieved were always returned to their proper place before he took something else.
