Death After Death

Three months after his last patient recovered and six months after the Queen recovered, Simon received two unexpected pieces of news. The first was that Elthena was pregnant, and the second was that she was banishing him from the kingdom.

“What?!” Simon blurted out. Either piece of news would have shocked him, but the two of them together completely bowled him over.

“You heard me,” she answered calmly. “As much as I might love you, you can’t be here when I start to show, my dearest Simon.”

“Why?” he asked, genuinely confused. “Everyone was pretty cool with the whole consort thing, but after the whole plague deal, I don’t think that anyone will object to me—”

“No one would object,” she agreed, interrupting him. “It’s worse than that. They’d demand that we marry.”

“What’s so wrong with that?” he asked. “I’d happily marry you. We could—”

“It’s out of the question,” she shot back.

“Because of the prophecy?” he asked.

“Because of the prophecy,” she agreed.

Simon sighed heavily. He’d expected this insanity to resurface again one day, but not like this. He’d never expected anything like this.

“I don’t accept this,” he said flatly, trying to stay calm.

“I didn’t expect you to,” she said, leaning forward to hug him, “But still, it must be done.”

“You can’t make me, you know,” he said. “I could fight your entire royal guard to keep them from escorting me out of the building.”

“And with enough of your dark powers, I expect you’d win,” she agreed, “and then I’d have no choice but to throw myself into the sea.”

That terrible turn of phrase hurt more than he could have thought possible, and he was quiet for several seconds as he let it pass. He knew that his Elthena was strong-willed, but he had no idea that she was a zealot about this. Instead of freaking out, he tried another tactic.

Simon spent the next half hour slowly going through everything they knew about the supposed curse. Simon reminded her that Brogan had broken free of his volcanic prison without any help from her and that there was no reason to expect that the whole thing was a myth at this point. Still, she would not be denied.

“What if I go kill the Basilisk that haunts your dead city,” he said, “Then will you see reason?”

“I would never dream of putting you in such danger!” she exclaimed. “No, this is for the best, I think. The city will be safe, you will be free to be a hero once more, and our child—”

“Our child will need a father as well as a mother,” he shot back.

“Oh, Simon,” she sighed, “I wish I could marry you. You’re a good man. Maybe even the best man I've ever known, but it's never going to happen; it can't.”

They argued on the topic until dinner, but he wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. There was no way he was letting this go. At least, he didn’t plan to. However, sometime between the custard and port wine they had for dessert, getting up for bed in the morning, Simon passed out hard. He remembered being really drowsy and going to bed early. What he didn’t remember was how he got on a ship because he could definitely feel the wood beneath him rocking gently from side to side.

That bitch! He thought as he groggily put it all together.

He instantly regretted it, of course. One did not call the mother of your children a bitch, even in your own head, but still, he was furious. Somehow, he should have expected this. She’d drugged him and sent him somewhere far away without so much as saying goodbye. He hadn't even seen it coming.

No, that was goodbye, he realized belatedly as he started to stir and realized he was bound and gagged. The hug, those tears. That was her goodbye. Suddenly, he felt terrible; all he’d felt in those last moments was anger.

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So, he forced himself to calm down as he came to grips with that decision. She had her reasons, and even if he disagreed with them violently, he understood them. He also understood that she couldn’t actually stop him from coming back. No matter where she sent him, the world was a finite place, and he’d already walked and mapped a good part of it. Three months? Six months? Depending on where it was she’d shipped him, he might even get back in time for the birth.

Slowly, his mode was improving, and by the time a sailor came down to check on him, he was resolved. He could fix this. He’d sail back to the other side of the world, slaughter the basilisk, and bring her its head as a baby shower gift.

“Now her majesty said ye’d be a might perturbed like when you woke up,” the young man said, “She said you could hurt us pretty bad, and we should make sure you’d calmed down first before we’d untied you, right?”

Simon nodded, not sure what else to do.

“The captain has a scroll to give you from her,” the sailor continued, reaching down to untie Simon’s gag. “Along with some other details, but you’ll want to speak with him about that.”

When Simon’s gag was removed, he flexed his jaw and contemplated what the sailor had done. She clearly hadn’t warned them that he was a warlock or that he possessed powers they could barely comprehend. She couldn’t have, though, or they would have killed him themselves, which meant that this man had just done the dumbest thing in his whole damn life. He could cut a bloody swath through this whole crew if he wanted. The only thing that held him back was his own morals. Still, for a moment, he thought about it. He couldn't help it.

So, he resisted and instead looked up at the man and said, “I’m good. We’re good. Just take me to the captain and tell me where the hell it is she sent me, anyway.”

The sailor smiled nervously at that and delayed a moment before he cut Simon’s bonds and released him. After that, the two went up on deck, where he found himself well out of sight of land, which meant they were at least half a day underway and well out to see.

The captain was a gruff man almost Simon’s age who took a look at him and then, uncharacteristically, smiled. “You know when Her Highness told me I’d be taken a mule onboard this ship, I almost refused, but when I heard it was for the Miracle Worker of Ionar, well, now how could I refuse that man whatever it was he wanted?”

“Mule?” Simon asked, confused.

“Aye,” he nodded. “In the hold along with the rest of your things. A right cranky old thing, too.”

“Ohhhh, Daisy,” Simon said as he suddenly figured out he wasn’t being called a stubborn old mule. Elthena had probably sent just about everything he might need with him. If she’d planned to send him away, she would have planned well. It was one more reason to love her.

“Aye,” the captain agreed. “That would be the one.”

The two of them talked for a while after that, and when they saw that he intended no violence, the sailors and their captain eventually loosened up around him. What did she tell them about me? He wondered.

Simon learned that he’d saved the life of the captain’s wife during the epidemic. The man was more than a little grateful for that and was happy to tell him exactly where they were going, even though he wasn’t supposed to until they were closer to their destination. He was even happy to alter plans slightly if Simon would rather go somewhere else.

“Within reason, you understand,” the captain explained. “The Queen would have my balls if I took you back to anywhere in Ionia so that ain’t happening.”

The ship was already on the way to the northern kingdoms, which was the right way as far as he was concerned. He told the man he’d think about it, but really, there were only a few port cities up that way, including one place that he definitely wasn’t going: Schwarzenbruck.

At least, that’s what he thought at first, but in the days that followed, as he was having a maudlin conversation with the ship's captain about the nature of life and death, the man said, “I really love the sea, I do. The only thing that bothers me about this life is the impermanence of it. You can’t see where you’ve come from or the way to get to where you’re going, and one day, when you catch a bad storm and sink beneath the waves, no one will even notice your passing except those you left behind at port. It's a tragic thing.”

Simon nodded along, sympathizing with that. If anyone knew impermanence, he did. However, when he lay awake in his hammock that night, he had a horrible thought. If what he’d done hadn’t been good enough to finish this level, then Elthena and the life they’d lived together would disappear in the blink of an eye. If he did, though, well, then he could come back in any other life he wanted. Hell, he thought. I could time my next arrival for the very day she sent me away and surprise her.

That would be clever, of course, but perhaps a bit too clever. More than anything, he thought about the grave for Freya that didn’t exist and how, no matter how many times he visited Crowvar or slew Varten, it would never appear.

That whole life, from the way he’d neglected her to the crude little ring he’d made to the way he hadn’t been able to save her, had never happened, and the fact that her missing tomb would never appear was a terrible testament to that.

That, more than anything, was what changed his mind. In the end, he was going to have to go back to Schwarzenbruck because that was the only place he could make sure these events were locked in just in case the worst happened.