Free The Path Of Destiny by Mike Shelton

were already planning and
positioning themselves for the day when a new king would need to be chosen.
    “Richard.” He looked him straight in the eye. “There is one
who is alive today who is of the direct royal line. Even more direct than me.”
    The royal line. Who? I know everyone! “But you have
no brothers, sisters, or children.”
    The King paused as he tapped his fingers on the arm of the
other chair. He gazed with intent into Richard’s eyes and said one word that
shattered Richard's world. “You!”
    Richard jumped back as if something had hit his chest. “But
how? What are you talking about, Edward? This is nonsense! Are you just trying
to keep me here by any means? Because this won’t work.” Richard stood up,
red-faced.
    “Sit down, Richard. Now!” he commanded, then softened his
features. Blue-grey eyes, almost the color of Richard’s, pierced his gaze.
“Your father, Alric, and I were brothers,” the King spoke in a whispered tone.
“In fact, your father was my older brother by almost twenty-one years.”
    “But he was so poor.” Richard could not believe what he was
hearing. His heart pounded and he felt dizzy and light-headed. His father was
only a poor bricklayer in the outskirts of the city.
    “Let me explain.” The King paused. “My father, King Charles,
banished your father for something he had once done. It was before I was born.
He even made him change his name from Montere to Williams. Your father left the
city for a while and cut off all ties with everyone he knew. When he came back
with his wife and son no one knew him for who he really was. He took the last
name of Williams, a common enough name in these parts. No one would ever know
him to be of the royal line if everything went according to my father's plan.”
    “What plan?” Richard wiped the sweat from his forehead.
    “If my daughter wouldn’t have died she would have been Queen
after me. You must wonder why I didn’t remarry and have more children. My
father told me on his deathbed in case something like this happened.”
    “Well . . . I . . .” Richard couldn’t find the right words
to say. The implications of what the King said were more than he could get his
mind around. Was he to be the next king? The thought seemed blasphemous.
    “The banishment of your father and his current family was
permanent, signed with the royal seal, in blood, and is kept in my personal
safe in the upper room of the castle. You were one year old at the time, so of
course you don't remember.”
    Richard’s thoughts of being king crumbled with King Edward’s
word of his entire family being banished. He shook his head in confusion.
    “My father was quick to restore the line. A little less than
a year later, I was born,” the King said, pointing a finger at himself. “What
my father, your grandfather, did was wrong, but I am not able to overturn his
oath and decree.”
    “I cannot believe this. How can this be right? Wouldn't
others know?” Richard thought about his poor father. No wonder he could do
nothing else but hide. “The pain he must have had to see us raised up in
poverty when we should have been in the palace.” And I treated him so
horribly for it!
    The King looked at Richard with compassion and continued.
“Stories were told at the time that King Charles’s eldest son had died in a war
out in a ship on the Blue Sea. My father mastered the tale himself. He told the
people he had sent your father off to fight in the war. No one else knew. Your
family moved to the Crystal Lake area for a few years. Alric DarSan Montere
became Alric Williams. He changed the way he dressed and talked, and picked up
new work.”
    King Edward paused for a moment to let it all sink in.
“After a few years your family returned to Anikari, living at the edge of the
city, and nobody knew who you were. Even though my father had banished him,
when my father died I found your father. I kept in secret contact with him
until your mother and then he