crowned thirteen years earlier, had made a grave error. He had determined that to begin his rule as the new king of Forris he would expand and reconstruct the castle of his father, the great King Alexo. He would reinvent Castle Bannister as his own and expand the city of Obengaard, which he would make larger and grander than anything else ever constructed in Forris. He didn’t intend to improve his castle or expand the city strictly for his own use, though. Instead, he envisioned a place with large courtyards and parks that could be used by his subjects for picnics and parties. He imagined rooms along the great halls that could be used by the Fories who might require shelter when traveling from one village to another.
The error that Zander made wasn’t in the design of the castle, though; it was how he went about building the expansion.
The new king had decided that the castle and city expansions should be built using Sovereign wood so that it would not only last for all eternity, but also so that the structure itself would contain the magical influence of the Sovereign Trees.
Although Zander was the king, it was the Trees of the Sovereign Forest that commanded the highest respect and were revered above all else. This was no different than the great Elder Bears of Tongar or the impressive Centaurs of Bore. In Forris, the trees were the great advisers in matters of state. It was customary that the trees would be consulted whenever there were big decisions to be made that would affect the kingdom as a whole. This was done out of respect for the trees, but also because the trees were the great historians of the land.
Since they had been the originators of the kingdom at the very beginning, they would advise the king on matters of varying degrees of importance. For instance, when King Alexo was contemplating whether a bridge should be built over the Tapi River to connect the villages of Gote and Mistre, the trees advised against it, citing a similar bridge in that same location that had once been washed away by flood nearly three hundred years earlier.
While King Zander did consult the trees about the building of his new castle, he failed to mention that he wished it to be built using Sovereign wood. And although the trees might not have objected, Zander would be required to make the request formally to the trees, who could sometimes take months before making their decision on a matter of such importance. This was Zander’s great error. The trees, being very particular about how and where Sovereign wood should be used, took great offense to this oversight. There were rules that must be followed and directions that must be handed down. Likely, they would have agreed and simply allowed Zander to cut the trees of the physically deceased, or use the wood of trees that had been abandoned by the spirits who had decided to take residence elsewhere. But no formal request had been made, and Zander, in his naivety and ignorance in such matters, cut the trees and built his castle.
****
On the day that construction had been completed, Zander was summoned to speak to the trees. At first he didn’t know what to make of the invitation because, as far as he knew, the trees had never summoned anyone to the Sovereign Forest before. Certainly, his father had never been summoned or Zander would have known such a thing. Kings made requests to speak with the trees—not the other way around. But when he returned that night, after a day full of celebrating the completion of the castle, he found that leaves had been stacked perfectly—one on top of the other—in front of his chamber door. And although he had never heard of anyone being summoned before, he certainly knew what this stack of leaves meant. He didn’t need to be told—he knew .
With darkness already arriving, he would go to the forest at the first light of day. He did not personally have the gift of night-sight, and although he could have summoned someone who did
Rachel Haimowitz and Heidi Belleau