Chương 8: A Brief Report on the Hero's Progress

The Audience Chamber of Thornwall Palace had stood for four hundred years before the Grey line ever sat in it. The ceilings cleared forty feet. The doors were twelve feet wide. The floor was pale grey stone worn smooth by centuries of large feet, and the throne at the chamber's far end — commissioned by Humphrey Eddington Grey the First, who had been by all historical accounts even larger than his grandson — sat on a dais three steps up, each step the height of Nibbles' shoulder.

Someone on the household staff had placed a step stool at the base of the formal address position. Nibbles did not look at it as he entered. He had been in this chamber nine times. The step stool was always there. He had never mentioned it, and neither had anyone else. This was, he had always felt, one of the finer qualities of a well-run court. The chamber was crowded today. It usually was during a formal address.

Along the eastern gallery, three of the court ladies stood in quiet conversation, horses in deep pink silk dresses that pooled slightly on the stone floor, their gowns the careful work of Madame Thistlewick's shop on Merchant Row, the finest chinchilla seamstress in the district. Their heads turned as Nibbles crossed the room.

Near the small desk beside the southern pillar, a beaver in ink-stained robes sat with a ledger open before him and did not look up, which told Nibbles everything about what the beaver already knew. At the end of the chamber, on the dais, Humphrey Eddington Grey the Third sat in his throne. He was enormous and old, and the two things had settled into each other over many years. His robes were deep green, the color of good pasture, embroidered at the cuffs with the running wheat symbol of his house.

His tusks had been capped in gold at some point in the distant past and had yellowed since. His eyes, small and dark and extremely attentive, watched Nibbles cross the floor. To the king's left, Chancellor Stondall stood in his position. He was a rhinoceros, which meant he occupied roughly the space of a small cart. His robes were deep navy. His expression had been configured for watchful skepticism so long that it had stopped being an expression and become a face.

He held a sheaf of documents in one broad hand with the grip of someone who had been holding documents for thirty years and found them more reliable than most things. He was already watching Nibbles. He had been watching Nibbles for thirty-one days. Nibbles reached the address position. He clasped his paws before him. He looked up at the king.

"Your Majesty," said Nibbles.

"High Priest," said Humphrey Eddington Grey the Third. His voice was the sound of something very old and very large being patient.

"We have been looking forward to your report."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"The hero." The king's dark eyes settled on him.

"You have news."

"I do, Your Majesty." Chancellor Stondall turned one page in his documents. He did not look up. This was, Nibbles knew, not because he was reading. It was because Stondall had spent thirty years communicating skepticism through minor gestures and had become extraordinarily precise about it.

"The summoning was successful," Nibbles began.

"We know this," said Stondall. Controlled with no emotion. Simply as a statement of existing information.

"The hero arrived on the appointed date."

"Also known."

"The verification rite was performed and confirmed. The prophecy's conditions were met. The binding holds." Nibbles paused.

"The hero is genuine." Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! The king nodded slowly.

"This is good news."

"Yes, Your Majesty." A pause settled over the chamber. The beaver's pen had stopped. The court ladies had gone quiet in the gallery above.

"High Priest," said the king, gently.

"You have been sending reports for thirty-one days describing the hero as being in preparation."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Thirty-one days is a considerable preparation."

"It is, Your Majesty."

"We had begun to wonder," said Stondall, turning another page, "whether the preparation might benefit from some elaboration." Nibbles looked at the Chancellor. Stondall looked back at him with the expression of someone who had been waiting for this conversation since the morning after the summoning and had prepared accordingly. Nibbles looked back at the king. Humphrey Eddington Grey the Third was watching him with the patient dark eyes of someone who had been lied to before and had learned to wait.

Nibbles clasped his paws together. He breathed.

"Your Majesty," he said.

"The hero is—" He stopped. Forty years. Every difficult sermon, every hard truth delivered across the carved pulpit of the Church of the Eternal Summoning, every moment that had required him to stand in front of his Order and say something they did not want to hear. Forty years of the composure that holy service required, the composure that had never once, not in four decades, failed him.

"The hero is currently—" His voice squeaked. It was a small sound. Brief. Occupying perhaps a quarter of a second in the enormous chamber before vanishing into the forty-foot ceiling. But the acoustics of the room were excellent, and it was very quiet, with absolutely no possibility that anyone present had missed it. Nibbles stood on his step stool. The squeak hung in the air. Nobody spoke. Chancellor Stondall did not turn a page.

"The hero," said Nibbles, in a voice that had returned to its usual register through what appeared to be pure force of will, "is undead." The chamber was silent.

"He arrived in that condition," Nibbles continued.

"The world from which he was summoned suffered a catastrophic event before his arrival. He was unable to avoid it. The verification rite confirmed his identity beyond any doubt. The binding holds. He is the Unextinguished. He is the hero of the prophecy." A pause.

"He is also currently deceased and has been for approximately two months." Humphrey Eddington Grey the Third said nothing. He sat on his throne, on his three-step dais, in his deep green robes, and said nothing for a very long time. His dark eyes had not moved from Nibbles. His expression had not changed in any way that Nibbles could identify, which was somehow worse than if it had. Chancellor Stondall set his documents down on the edge of the dais. Quietly. Precisely. The urge to smile was almost uncontrollable.

He had told them. Had argued about this into the night, but this wasn't the time to say I told you so because the room was too large and the moment too serious, and there would be time for that later.

"The treasury," said the beaver accountant, from his desk by the southern pillar, without looking up from his ledger. His voice was very small in the large room.

"Is gone."

"Yes," said Nibbles.

"Twelve thousand gold pieces."

"Yes."

"The complete reserve."

"Yes." The beaver wrote something in his ledger. What he wrote was not clear from the address position, but his expression suggested it was not complimentary. Nibbles stood on his step stool and waited. The king breathed in a very long, slow breath.

"Is he," said Humphrey Eddington Grey the Third, at last, "going to be all right?" The question was so quiet and so genuine and so completely unexpected that Nibbles stood there for a moment without answering. Is he going to be all right? Not what do we do about the treasury? Not how do we explain this to the nobility? What does this mean for the kingdom? The king had heard that his prophesied hero was a two-month-old undead creature, and his first question was whether he would be all right.

Nibbles thought of the system screen. Of the dancing figures. Of Fenwick on his step stool in the church, and Fenwick in the harness in the Thornwood, and Fenwick in the grass with pine needles in his fur, watching a lizard try to stand back up. Of the sound the hero had made. Low and directionless, and the first thing with direction behind it.

"I believe so, Your Majesty," said Nibbles.

"In time. He is earning XP. He was at 51 this morning." The king nodded. He looked at the chamber ceiling for a moment, forty feet above them both.

"Keep us informed," said the king.

"More specifically than before."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"High Priest." Nibbles paused on the step stool.

"The prophecy has not failed," said the king.

"It has simply taken an unexpected form." He looked back down at Nibbles, those small dark eyes carrying something that had survived three generations of Grey kings and would survive this, too.

"We have waited one thousand years. We can wait a little longer." Nibbles descended from the step stool. Behind him, as he crossed the enormous floor, he heard Chancellor Stondall pick his documents back up. He did not turn around.