Chapter 69
The Horned King stared out of his window in his chambers, watching Avalina lunge her horse in the dirt several hundred yards outside the drawbridge.
Round and round and round, they threw up a dust cloud so thick that from this distance he could hardly see anything, save for the occasional shadow of black rushing through the cloud, or the small figure of the girl outlined inside it.
How they hadn't suffocated from that was rather intriguing. Its not like they had another place to work, anyhow.
Eventually, Avalina had taken the horse back to the stable, and the Horned King had nothing to watch any more.
He paced his chambers silently for a long while, thinking.
His wounds from the wolf attack were nearly completely healed. It had been nearly a fortnight since the incident, and the Invisibles had carefully removed most of the stitches, although light bandages covered where they had been.
He had had much time to think for once. The Invisibles had not bothered him once all day, and he had been left in peace.
For weeks now, something strange had been going on, and he didn't quite know what to make of it. This irritated him, because normally he always knew everything, often well before anyone else did, and not being able to figure something out irritated him extremely.
That odd feeling he would get in his chest whenever Avalina played for him had strengthened, rather than dimmed. And since he had met the horse. . .
He had tried to deny it multiple times. He had tried to stuff it away, deep inside himself, or better yet, eradicate it completely. But each time he thought he had succeeded, it would bloom up again inside him, like a fire that refused to die. It wasn't large, it was small enough to push to the side for a while. But it burned so hot he had no choice but to eventually pay attention to its flame.
There was no denying it.
But he still did not know what this might be, and it frustrated him each time he tried to figure it out.
He could not feel. He was heartless. He *should* not be feeling anything. But this odd sensation was definitely a something, he just could not figure out what. Emotions and their names were just a senseless, indistinguishable jumble now. Mortal sensations were all but completely lost to him.
Avalina had not spoken to him anymore than necessary since she had explained how she had met the horse. Things carried on in their old schedules, but something seemed. . .different. About her. She didn't seem to be quite as jumpy around him, and her stammering had lessened a great deal.
He didn't know whether to be pleased or irritated by this.
He noticed that he had not sent for the Creeper in weeks, and didn't quite know what to make of it. It meant he hadn't been angry in a while.
Which was a good thing. The Horned King disliked losing control of himself, and kept a good hold on his fury for the most part.
Summoning one of the Invisibles, he called for a map of all of Prydain and began to study it for the first time in several weeks.
Carefully, he took note of the geography of the land, and where the human settlements were. The villages and cities, rather. The no doubt hundreds of brush farmers that speckled the landscape were not marked, giving the illusion of vastly unpopulated areas, but he knew better.
Prydain as a whole was not a small country.
The cities, since they were so far apart from one another, were no doubt heavily populated. The villages would be smaller examples.
The rest of the country (The parts that were habitable, at least) were no doubt speckled as lavishly with brush farmers as pepper on an egg.
In short, the boy could be anywhere. It was the perfect equivalent of searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
For the first time, he realized that maybe not bothering to learn your enemy's name would be an unwise choice.
He had never called the boy anything except "Pig-Keeper," which was simply a spur-of-the-moment designation, seeing as he kept the oracle swine.
He never bothered asking for names, with the exception of Avalina, and now he realized that a name might not be so unnecessary after all.
There was no telling where that pig-keeper could be. The fact that he owned a magic pig. . .or rather, cared for a magic pig. . .the Horned King snarled slightly as he realized he didn't even know which one it was. . .was irrelevant. Nobody would know about the abilities the animal possessed. The Horned King had found out by mere chance, and he couldn't interrogate every single person in Prydain in the hopes that at least one of them knew something about the matter. Something as important as the pig would no doubt be kept under lock and key, and most, if not all of the populace would be ignorant to the animal's existence.
The only way to do it would be to search each village and city individually, and then comb the countryside, but as the Horned King had no soldiers or fighting force of any type, that was all but impossible. The Fates had thoroughly crippled him, with no pawns to carry out his orders with.
He had already pondered all of the options. He could make Avalina go and search them all out, holding her family over her head for leverage, but a lone peasant girl asking questions and snooping around for something she didn't even know about to begin with was simply a bad idea.
And even he didn't expect a girl her age to travel all of Prydain looking for the pig-keeper by herself.
The only other option would be to send the Creeper and the gwythaint to search everything out, but knowing that brainless idiot, he would no doubt get himself and the gwythaint spotted and the whole thing would be ruined. Word of his return would spread like wildfire, and the pig-keeper would have plenty of time to lay low.
The entire ordeal was rather aggravating.
Crossing the cities off the list of possible options, the Horned King sat down again to think.
The first time the gwythaints had caught the pig, it had not been so terribly far from the castle. Several miles, but not that far away.
The pig-keeper had broken into the castle and made his appearance only a few hours after the pig had arrived. That would mean that he had been with the pig when it was taken, otherwise he would not have known where to come and retrieve it.
'So,' the Horned King mused, staring down at the map, looking at the little dot by the blue splotch on the paper that signified where his castle and the lake was, 'He was either traveling at the time of the snatching, or he lived nearby.'
The boy's clothing was difficult for the Horned King to recall, but if his memory was correct, the pig-keeper had dressed in one of the many variations of your everyday peasants.
By these bits of information, the lich circled the three villages closest to his castle, and after consideration, a fourth one.
These villages were so far apart from each other, and so far away from the castle, it seemed doubtful the boy would be living in any of them, but he would have to start his search somewhere. He didn't even want to think about all the brush farmers that weren't even marked on the map.
His hands gripped the chair arms so tightly his claws left marks on the stone.
'Patience, patience,' he thought to himself, barely restraining his eyes from flashing red.
'He cannot hide from me.'
Going to the window again, he saw Avalina crossing the courtyard, before making a detour over to the stable that held the gwythaint.
He saw her converse with Creeper, and he bit back a soft growl as the goblin shoved the door to the stable open in a clear invitation inside.
He headed smoothly down through the castle and out into the courtyard, baring his fangs.
That gwythaint was aggressive. Even more so than it had been before its mate had died. It would attack anyone it did not recognize immediately and without fear, for it was a predator, and its job was to do anything the Horned King ordered of it. It wouldn't realize Avalina was supposed to be here.
His hands clenched tightly as he heard the creature roar from inside the stable, followed by Avalina's screaming. That goblin was going to get it if she was. . .
He felt her aura a split second before the girl rocketed out of the stable door and collided with him, and he instinctively grabbed her with one arm to keep himself from falling as he stumbled backwards, snarling in surprise and pain, his other arm held out for balance.
His old wounds from the wolf attack were making themselves known.
After they had both regained their balance, she had leaped away from him in horror, and he had let her go. He disliked being touched and it was obvious she felt the same way about him.
Now that he could see that she was alright, he had let his anger out. He hadn't saved that girl from her death two weeks ago just so she could get herself killed in his own courtyard!
Avalina had tried to defend the goblin from him, obviously he afraid he would hurt the creature.
To his own surprise, he had not choked the Creeper like he normally would have, instead letting him off with a warning glare. The realization that the animal was chained up, and therefore unable to hurt the girl, was probably the reason.
He was all set to forbid Avalina from going near the stable, but after a moment, changed his mind.
She loved animals a lot, he had observed, and since there was a rather noticeable shortage of life around here, he could understand why she would be drawn to anything that moved, even if they were dangerous.
She longed for something with life.
It was this that prompted him to take her into the stable and show her the gwythaint, not that he was expecting much. The creature had only ever let himself and the goblin approach it, and the Horned King could not even get within ten feet of the animal. Even for a predator that caused death itself, his aura was too much.
But she would be able to see it, at least.
The goblin had told the truth, it was chained securely to its perch, so that it would not have been able to reach Avalina earlier.
Glancing over at her, he saw her watching the gwythaint fearfully, and he frowned.
That would not do.
Being a predator, the animal fed off fear as much as it did meat, and it would intimidate you if it could.
After some prodding, her had gotten the girl to step up to the stall, but he could never have expected what happened next.
The animal had actually allowed Avalina to touch it, and not only that, but was perfectly content to let her fawn over it, spreading out its wings for her to admire, half-closing its eyes as her hands ran over its scales.
It may as well have been a dog looking for attention.
The Horned King could only stare in shock. He had never seen this happen in the entirety of his existence. It never happened. Even Creeper could not do that, and he was the animal's groom, but it was obvious the animal did not really care for him doing so.
But this. . .the gwythaint was actually leaning into Avalina's touch, allowing her to scratch it behind the horns and nearly enfolding her inside its massive wings.
It was actually being friendly.
No, it was being way more than just friendly.
It was exhibiting symptoms of maternal behavior towards the girl.
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