Ashkyla, disguised as a page, knelt behind a suit of armor across the hall from the hunting room, watching and listening. The two kings sat across from each other, as if discussing a business deal. The room had animal heads and weapons mounted about the walls, exotic skins on the floor. Although she had never liked it much, there always seemed to be a fire crackling away in the hearth, and the scene seemed cozy and friendly.
There weren't any guards, although they generally followed the Royal family everywhere. It would have been rude with the other king there present. This also meant that there were less people to hide from, for which she was grateful, the first time she had been glad of the other King's presence.
"I've put off arranging a marriage for my Ashkyla too long, I really have." King Phillip broke the short silence. "Your sons are only a little older than she, something she would like. She's always been afraid of having to marry someone twice as old as she is, and so I'm sure one of the princes would be perfect. However, which one of them would she marry?" He was sitting comfortably in a couch with a good natured expression on his face.
"She will marry neither because she, like you will be dead long before her eighteenth birthday." Suddenly King Gandon rose and drew his sword, which had been hidden under his tunic. He snapped his fingers and soldiers dressed in green and gold seemed to melt out of the walls from behind curtains, statues, and pieces of furniture. "You see, I never meant to have your daughter enter our family, but for your country to enter my land. After I take your palace, so sadly unprotected after such a long interlude of peace, I will be ruler and though one of my sons will one day be the King here, you won't be his father-in-law."
Ashkyla gasped, and moved to run into the room, then seemed to think better of it, and began slowly backing away, as close to the wall as possible, with as an expression of first horror then deepest sadness, and finally hopelessness crossed her face.
"What? GUARDS!" King Phillip leapt up, but no one came.
"Do you think we are that stupid? Your guards were all served celebratory wine. It was poisoned." King Gandon laughed, a strangely evil sound.
King Phillip reached for one of the decoration swords from the wall, but the look in his eyes was far from battle-ready. "Then who were the men at the doors during dinner?" His voice quavered and the question seemed to be asking something else.
"My men in your men's uniforms. They will be moving to your wife's and daughter's rooms as soon as I give the signal, as soon as you are dead." With that, Gandon lunged at the other king, engaging him in battle.
It was obvious who would win. Phillip was barely fit, and hadn't practiced in years, and had only a blunt decoration sword he had most likely barely held before to protect him. King Gandon seemed skilled and his arm moved about easily from often practice with a sword fit to his hand. It was over quickly, a gouging sound, then a thud, and Gandon withdrew his sword from the dying body leaking blood onto the largest of the bear skin rugs.
"The kingdom is mine." Gandon's voice rang out of the room, followed by the sound of footsteps, soldiers were gathering around their leader. "You two, find the Queen, and you two the Princess. The rest of you give the signal."
Ashkyla's heart began to beat faster. She raced up the stairs, not caring who heard her now, too terrified to think. By the time she realized that her rooms where the worst place to go under the circumstances, she could already hear heavy booted feet climbing up the stairs behind her. She darted behind the door, waiting only the barest fraction of a moment for Kari, almost catching her cat's tail in her haste.
Para, very confused, turned to see her ward frantically scrambling with the door. "Your highness? What…"
"Para, father is dead. And they're going to kill me too." Panic made her voice high and squeaky as she locked the door and attempted to push a trunk in front of it.
Para had gone white and, without asking anything else, began looking about the room as if grasping for a plan. "You must hide." She grabbed the dress she had been planning to dress Ashkyla in.
Thinking quickly, almost as if she had been ready for this, she turned to Ashkyla. "There is a secret passage way to outside, to the garden, behind that tapestry. We will throw this dress into the inner moat below, as if you have jumped. I will tell you to run and you will yell that the only way is jump into the moat, and then you will go down the passage as fast as you can."
"But what about you?" Ashkyla had calmed down a little at least on the outside, her mask taking over.
"They aren't likely to kill me, but they will see which way you went if I follow." Para moved toward the tapestry and pulled it aside then tugged on it. A door slowly opened in the marble scraped open. "You must go, you must survive. I promise dear, I will see you again. Now go."
Ashkyla gaped for a moment, her mask coming apart at the seams from the sudden onslaught of emotion. Then down below they heard men shouting.
"Now men, now! Attack!" The footsteps came closer and closer, louder and louder.
Ashkyla grabbed her notebook, clinging to it, as the held the dress over the window, and screamed toward the door as if surprised.
"Run my lady, run!" Para shouted so the soldiers outside would hear.
"Where? The only exit is the window. The window! I will jump. Maybe I can swim…" With that, Ashkyla threw her dress and raced toward the tapestry.
Para dropped the wall hanging behind her, screaming 'no', and then moved toward the window as Ashkyla ran into the dark, downward sloping tunnel. When the tapestry dropped, most of the light was lost and Ashkyla wished she had brought a lamp. The silence and the dark seemed to press into her from all sides.
Ashkyla began to run, then slowed to a walk, breathing heavily, almost sobbing, and struggled to hold back the torrent of hopelessness inside of her. She looked ahead and saw the grayness brightening, just a little, as if there was light seeping through from far, far away. She wondered if the tunnel was longer than she had thought and suddenly realized that the gardens were on the other side of the castle from her rooms. Then there was a whoosh and she felt as if she was being pushed, then she was flying forward. It stopped as suddenly as it had started, except now the light was much brighter, and she could see where it came from – a bright dot far down the tunnel.
Magic? That was certainly the only explanation, but magic hadn't been seen for centuries. She shivered. How old was the palace then? And how old was this tunnel? Suddenly the light was right ahead, and the roof of the tunnel started to get lower. Ashkyla bent over, then stooped, and eventually had to crawl through the small opening. She emerged in a small area seemingly completely surrounded by tall bushes. There was a small crack right in front of her which Ashkyla slipped through, scratching herself on the branches. She looked around and realized she was on the edge of the garden and when she turned around she could barely make out where she had come from. She turned back to the garden and wondered what she should do, realizing that this was as far as her plan went.
It suddenly hit her that she was running from the life she had disliked so much, a life that she could now never go back to, toward a future that would be built as she got there instead of planned out by tradition and her father's councilors. Her parents were most likely either dead by now, or about to be, and Ashkyla was only escaping it temporarily as far as she could tell. She had to be self sufficient, one adjective a princess was never expected to be, one adjective she had never considered before.
She had almost fallen to misery when she felt warm fur on her ankle. Kari! Her heart lifted and she realized that despite everything counting against her, there was always the slim chance that she would survive and be able to make a new life for herself. She could be the heroine she had always dreamed about and safe her kingdom from the tyrant on the throne. It was a wistful dream though, and most likely wasn't about to come true, but now, more than any time in her life, there was that chance.
She pushed through a mind suddenly jumbled with thoughts let loose as her dreams and nightmares came true, as her world crumbled. Just don't think about it… just don't think. She locked upon the thought of the small side door, almost hidden in ivy that would be on the outer wall across from her. The same wall that was supposed to protect her was now keeping her inside this deadly scenario. She shook her head to rid it of that thought, and tried again to focus. Many times she had imagined escaping through that door into her fantasies, but had known there was no real future for her that way. Now it was her only future, her only hope, her only thought. She prayed it wasn't locked.
Ashkyla tried to slink through the shadows like she had seen Kari do, but even so, it was very lucky for her that no one was looking through the windows. As she neared the wall, she squinted through the twilight and began to fear she was mistaken as to where it was. The ivy covering the wall didn't seem to part, and although the door was covered in ivy, she had always been able to see it in the daytime. She reached the wall and began to walk along it, straining her eyes, trying to find a door.
Suddenly the night air was shattered by a scream, and sounds of chaos that had been ignored till now suddenly flooded in. Ashkyla looked up, and knew her mother was dead. At the same moment, she caught a glimpse of a bump in the ivy out of the corner of her eye. Her hysteria returned as she ran madly toward it, not caring if anyone saw her now. She pulled wildly on the door, ran through barely closing it behind her, was hardly aware of the cobblestones beneath her bare feet. Unconsciously she headed for the one place that she ever looked forward to approaching: the meadow behind the castle.
Ashkyla had always taken the long way, in a carriage, before, to better the royal family in the views of the public. Today she ran the route she had envisioned sadly in her mind as the route to happiness, directly back from the castle for about a fifth of a mile. However, Ashkyla had never before run very far, as it was terribly unprincess-like if there was no reason, and there barely ever was a reason. She slowed to a walk, panting, doggedly continuing onward. She didn't let herself think, could barely feel the silent tears streaming down her face.
She registered the feeling of grass under her feet and dully thought that they where getting cold. Suddenly she tripped, falling forward onto the ground, barely putting her arms out in time. She rolled over and fell onto something hard. A tree. The tree where she always sat during picnics, on a blanket, her back against the trunk, looking up into the leaves. The tree where her father had first, unofficially, proposed to her mother. The tree she always kept a leaf from after each picnic. The tree that was the basis of so many happy memories.
Ashkyla began to cry, to sob. In no way was this a dainty weep. All the feelings, all the thoughts, came flooding in, knocking down the tiny fence that had once been a rock wall between her mind and her emotion. Her parents were dead, her only family besides 2nd and 3rd cousins she hardly cared about. Para was most likely dead too, or demoted, or sent away. She had faked her own death, didn't really exist. She most likely would die anyway. Her country was taken over by another King and she couldn't even stand and watch, she had to run away. Even if she did run and manage to find food and shelter, there was nothing she could do. Her whole life had been spent in training to be a queen, unlike everyone else who had useful skills. She knew how to write and read, some math, and plenty of history, but not enough to become a teacher. She was fragile and weak, from a life of leisure and servants.
There were no advisors to tell her what to do, no power to change what bothered her with simply a plea to her father. The whole land was, or soon would be, in turmoil. For all of Ashkyla's secret indifference and free spirit, she couldn't survive without her royal title. Even the small bundle of fur that had just curled up in her lap was doing no good. Nothing could pierce through her grief. And for the next few minutes, nothing did.
Finally, exhausted, she cried herself to sleep; haunted by memories she would never come close to having again.