Callum pauses briefly before responding. “King Corvin wanted the Stone for his wife. It wasn’t widely known, but Queen Elinor was ill of health and no healer could figure out the cause. She was dying, and the king was desperate to find the Stone to heal her, but it was too late.”
I still. The Queen was highly regarded before and after her passing. No one who came through the camp had ever had a bad word or complaint about her. She didn’t deserve to die, but nor did the hundreds of others who died searching for the treasure.
“So what you’re saying is that the King grew tired of the search and decided others could do it for him?” I scoff.
“What I’m saying is that an attempt was tried, and when it didn’t work, he tried something else, which also didn’t work,” Callum replied defensively.
He walks back to the table, and leans on the back of his chair. “That’sneither here nor there. All I know is that I’m responsible for finding the Stone and I can’t fail this time either.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” He retorts.
“Why do you have to find the Stone now? Not to be blunt, but the Queen’s gone. Unless the Stone can resurrect a corpse, why is the King desperate to find the Stone now, after all these years?”
Callum stares at me before responding. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“And you aren’t good at giving answers,” I smile sweetly back.
Callum sighs. “We think the King is suffering from the same ailment that Queen Elinor died from.”
That is news to me, and I’m guessing is the source of Callum’s secrecy of all this.
“Where’s the Prince? His father is potentially dying and he’s doing what, exactly?”
The Prince of Ashven has been mysterious for as long as I could remember, being a usual source of gossip amongst people passing through the Traps. According to the rumors, he was rarely seen by the public and most people didn’t seem to remember his name, nevermind what he looked like. There were a lot of conspiracies behind it, but as far as I heard, no one knew the truth.
Callum probably does know the truth based on his high ranking position, but it’s clearly something he is not willing to share.
“Ah…the prince is…not here,” he finishes.
If the King died, the Prince would be next to rule Ashven. If he wasn’t capable of doing so…
“So you don’t want the kingdom falling to the deadbeat prince?” I guess.
“Something like that.” Callum pulls his chair out to sit and props his legs on the table. “Any other questions, Siren?”
He had called me that nickname last night, too. I don’t want to linger on how the nickname makes me feel warm inside, or what it might mean, so I ignore the sentiment for now.
“Where are you in the search? Do you have any leads?”
I’ll be the first to admit that I am a bit skeptical of this whole Eternity Stone thing. My parents always tried to find different relics that did this and that, and they never found any. This could turn out to be another crazy adventure,just with someone else.
“Not many. The King stole that journal from Guilmond when he was there visiting and had it translated. But it doesn’t reveal much besides what powers the relic holds.”
Guilmond is the kingdom directly north of Ashven, neither allies nor enemies to us. The two kingdoms are always in a precarious state with one another, never managing to make an alliance but never managing to break out in war, either.
Callum continues. “We always thought that the Stone was connected to Guilmond somehow. We’ve tried to trace it back through journals and other periodicals but there’s nothing concrete. That book mentions the burial of it, leading to the Golden Hunt, but obviously that led to nothing.
“A year or so after the Hunt ended, we started hearing rumors that Guilmond had actually lost the Stone decades ago. Having no other leads and with the failure of the Hunt and with the death of the Queen, our trail went cold. It wasn’t until a couple years ago when the Battle at Rantiff happened that we started to consider the idea that the Stone was found and back in play.”
I have a vague sense of recognition and I rack my brain trying to see if I had heard anything of the Battle of Rantiff while I was at the camp. If there was one thing that people loved to do in the camp, it was to gossip and spread news.
“That was the battle in Auros? Where Guilmond showed up on their shores and declared war for no reason?”
Auros is an island kingdom in the middle of the Lentia Ocean. They are known for being neutral in all political affairs and liked to be left alone. I remember the sailor who showed up at the camp for a week who was telling the story of Guilmond invading Auros, but I didn’t give it much thought at the time.
“Exactly. It was an odd strategic move for Guilmond to attack Auros out of nowhere. We were waiting to hear that Auros fell – it’s a much smaller kingdom than Guilmond and without having alliances there was no one coming to help them. They also didn’t trade or visit with the mainland, so it was also widely known that Auros had very few relics as not many Ancients lived there.”
