Kairava sprinted across the palace grounds, desperate to reach the library before the sun got any higher, frantically practicing his apologies on the way.

  “I’m terribly sorry, sir.” he repeated nervously to himself, altering the pitch ever so slightly each time.

  A confused scullery maid stared after him as he passed at a breakneck speed.

  The library was built deep into the stone, down a flight of steps into flickering torchlit tunnels.

  A series of sliding metal shelves lined the walls of the tunnels and atop each slot countless tomes and scrolls floated encased in glass cases like fish frozen in blocks of ice. Great doors at intervals led to further chambers.

  His tutor regaled him daily on lessons of history, military strategy, and economics.

  His curriculum tailored, he suspected, to his father’s personal agenda of shaping him into a King-Regent worthy of protecting the Empire.

  There were fewer better qualified for the seemingly impossible task.

  Marsaius Khemner was a poet, philosopher, inventor, historian -- and sorceror, one of the finest minds the Southern provinces had ever produced, and he had graciously answered his father’s generous summons for the finest scholar in all the regency and beyond.

  Not that he could have easily refused.

  Kairava burst through the open doors of his master’s study, giving said master such a fright as to fling an armful of scrolls clattering across the stone floor of the quiet hall.

  “Ayehk!” Khemner cursed at him in Makurdan.

  The meaning something like “witless gourd.”

  The elderly man quickly went to work, bending down stiffly and beginning to reassemble the mess of parchment.

  “I’m terribly sorry, sir!” Kairava cried as he dove to the floor to begin helping.

  “You’re late again, boy.”

  Khemner didn’t even bother giving the prince a side-ways glance.

  “I never meant to offend, I just...”

  “Lost track of time like a witless fool at the lake again, hmm? Or perhaps you’ve been bothering about your fathers brand new canary, eh?”

  Kairava's eyes went wide with horror.

  “A pretty bird she is, eh?”

  “Master Khemner!”

  “Ah so this gets your attention, but not our readings of Draethenis?”

  “Draethenis is long and dry.”

  “As am I. Now if you’re good and ready, your highness, may we begin your lessons?” Khemner bowed sardonically.

  Kairava nodded solemnly and took a seat.

  “Hmph. I’m not your father, boy, or that ridiculous, pompous oaf you call a manservant. I don’t care what you do with your time. Go and invade another kingdom for all that I care. But don’t waste my time, or the books’ time again.”

  Khemner touched the shelf of scrolls, caressing, Kairava thought, for effect.

  “Scholarly pursuits require absolute dedication, boy!”

  “Yes, Magister Khemner.” He bowed low, and made use of the master mage’s proper title.

  The old Magister chuffed approvingly, and by then had gathered the pages up, and placed them onto a nearby table strewn with many others.

  “Excellent. Now, on to the lessons.” Khemner beamed.

  The prince didn’t mind the lessons with Khemner in truth.

  He took them sat cross-legged on a comfortable embroidered cushion, scrawling notes on a scroll with his stylus.

  But always the threat of daydreaming hung over him, and when it began to take him Khemner would impatiently bounce the spine of a leatherbound book against the back of the prince’s skull.

  Such was their daily back and forth.

  “I swear to you my boy, I’ll see to it you either become the greatest mind in all of Arcturas, or the king with the thickest skull. Really build up the bone density. Either way, it’ll be worth bragging about...”

  Khemner taught a lesson on dragons at the end of each day, and it was for this topic alone that Kairava had learned to endure the old crotchety Makurdan’s eccentricities.

  Khemner seemed to be an expert in just about everything, so rabid was the man’s hunger for knowledge, but he knew almost too much about dragons.

  Kairava had loved the man from the start.

  The prince’s stylus flew across the scroll, his eyes alight with a joy bordering on obsession.

  His notes were carefully categorized, a section on dragon’s chimeric biology, the ways in which the various different regencies of the Empire managed to tame and train such powerful creatures, the utilization of dragons and dragon fire in farming, in construction, and in travel for a royal court, and most especially, for war.

  War seemed to be featuring more and more prominently in the lessons of late, a realization that filled the prince with a steadily growing unease.

  ...

  Kairava arms ached, the flesh of his biceps pulsating with agony as he swung the blade with all his might, trying and failing repeatedly to cut clean through his quarry, a wooden training dummy.

  Kairava stopped for a moment to wipe his brow.

  “What is this, I wonder?” Said a voice from behind him.

  “It seems the prince rests.” An identical voice chimed in.

  “In the middle of battle?”

  “It appears so.”

  “This cannot be.”

  “Not if you want to stay alive on the battlefield, it can’t.”

  “The dance ends only when the song ends, and not a moment before!”

  “You rest when the fight is over, now get to it, again!” The voices said in unison.

  The prince’s fencing instructors were twins, and they always traveled as a pair.

  Graying well-kept beards hung nearly to their stomachs, and a head of hair was perpetually buried beneath black woven caps.

  They wore old dark leather jerkins pocketed in patches where they had been repaired and resown over and over again, aged uniforms from their days serving in his father’s armies.

  Two sets of knives were tucked into small, easily missed sheaths strapped to their left thighs, and a curved short sword hung at either’s hip.

  The blades immaculately polished and masterfully sharp.

  Neither had ever, to the prince’s knowledge, given him either of their names in all their many years as his teachers.

  Aloud he simply called them his fencing instructors, or The Twins, if he was feeling particularly brave.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Their war-scarred faces unmoved as he swung a wooden sword at the dummy for hour after grueling hour.

  Never giving a hint of approval.

  Only after this warm up could the real training begin.

  Both Twins took combat stances on the dusty training field, drawing from a rack of blunted swords and spears.

  There would be practice with the khanda sword first.

  A blade narrow at the base, broadening towards the point of the sword. Some of the practice khanda serrated with small metal thorns running down the length like teeth.

  All khanda swords however, were double-edged, and so he trained with a bare hand gripping the hilt just below the steel cross-guard. A single hand gauntleted for gripping and maneuvering the blade edge itself.

  It was the cavalry sword of an unsaddled lancer, a noble’s weapon of flowing swift strikes and constantly shifting footwork, leaps and jabs working in constant tandem.

  It was a dance, the Twins often said.

  A dance with Death.

  They worked also with spear and lance as was proper, but Kairava always felt far more comfortable with the sword.

  A satisfying pang of competency pushed him through the aching of his muscles, the heat and the sweat, and the ever watchful eyes of the steely-gazed masters of war, and so he struggled on.

  ...

  Time passed in the Raichan Palace with all the slowness of the grave.

  For weeks following her arrival at the Raichan Palace the king-regent paraded Ygrain before his court, forcing her to attend so many balls and feasts she thought might die of her contempt.

  Her hair was done by scores of handmaidens who yanked and pulled sharply at her messy curls, and wrenched her into dresses and gowns of every color and description.

  The king-regent pretended to smile and laugh and be charmed by his many guests as she stood quietly by his side, but she knew the truth.

  She had seen the empty slithering thing that killed without conscience, the creature that lay hidden behind his dark eyes, waiting to emerge.

  She spent the majority of these occasions tucked away in a solitary corner far away from the chittering crowds and imagined a thousand increasingly creative ways to take Kaiaan Raich’s life…

  The palace outside of these gatherings was an unusually still and quiet place.

  The servants rushed everywhere they went with darting nervous eyes, often disappearing into parts of the palace that seemed invisible from the noble quarters.

  The soldiers remained on their watches, only moving to switch shifts, and never dawdling off-duty on the palace grounds to drink or play cards.

  It was nothing at all like the great keeps back home, where the concept of a servant had been foreign to her.

  In the long halls and feasting dens of Eiren the serving of the food and drink was an honor given only to the swift and agile hands of children, for which they were often rewarded an ale or a fistful of small coins.

  And no one had dressed her since she was a babe, or done her hair.

  Save for her brother Trahern if he was feeling benevolent.

  Among what few people did seem to work at the Raichan Palace were a small host of maids assigned to care for her and clean much of the rest of this wing of the palace.

  Daily they worked, from top to bottom.

  A large gaggle of men, most in their middle age with the physiques of aging warriors, dour and silent, served most of the food and drink.

  And then on the outer wall she had seen them, men standing still as statues that were mirrors of those who had slaughtered her people before her eyes.

  The career soldiers of Kaiaan Raich’s army.

  For all the people and its riches the place still didn’t feel like a palace, or a prison.

  It felt like a ruin, dead and empty.

  ...

  Whenever Ygrain mustered the courage to leave her chambers on her own terms the quiet prince was never far behind her.

  Kairava she had learned his name was from a startled maid who knew enough of the Imperial tongue to answer her questions.

  He was her age and about a head shorter, and thin as a twig.

  His nose was large and stuck out sharply, and his black hair hung in well-groomed curls to his shoulders, and it didn’t suit him.

  The boy seemed to have a knack for finding places where he could melt into the background, blending in by factor of sheer stillness.

  However, she had learned his tricks after the first few weeks and from then on noticed him everywhere.

  Becoming accustomed to scanning her surroundings for a glancing image of his piercing blue eyes, the thing that most often gave him away, set sharply against any background.

  Always watching her.

  At the galas she would see him awkwardly leaning against some pillar, or tucked between a crowd of people, flailing to avoid conversation with the attentive courtiers, and often growing smaller and more silent as the night drew on.

  On her walks about the palace gardens in the early hours of the morning when the cool morning air and the scent of the wet leaves almost reminded her of the biting mountain chill of home, she would often hear the soft footfalls of his sandaled feet some ways behind her.

  Sometimes she would hide, or run springing back trying to grab the boy and beat him with lashing fists, cursing after him.

  Yet he always turned around with such sheer speed and launched himself away, getting away every time.

  Only to hear his soft footfalls from behind a few minutes later.

  ...

  Ygrain heard light sandaled steps on the cobbles close behind her yet again that morning.

  Ygrain whipped around on her heels, face already bristling red and splotchy with rage, coming face to face not with the prince, but a different boy entirely.

  A servant boy by his clothes.

  He was her age or younger she thought, and though he was smiling, it didn’t touch his dark eyes.

  It made her shiver.

  “Pardon me, princess, I didn’t mean to startle ya,” he said the title with a wink.

  He was standing only a few paces from her now.

  The boy was about a half a head shorter than Ygrain, but even at his young age the effect of constant labors had made his body press tightly against his clothes with muscle.

  He had a crooked sort of toothy smile that reminded her of a crocodile, which she had seen in an old bestiary. And his eyes were slitted like a snakes.

  “You don’t startle me, boy, but I don’t like being followed from behind,” Ygrain barely managed, taking a step away from him.

  Something in the way he spoke softly and moved slowly, carefully, made her subconscious mind well up with half-understood alarm.

  “Pardon me miss, I had no idea there was some other means of following, I’ll attempt it from the front in future,” he winked.

  The lad spoke in perfect Imperial, a rare thing for someone who was not of a noble birth.

  “What’s your name, boy?” she snapped, face still hot with anger, but cooling under her mounting and uncertain fear.

  “Boy am I?” he laughed a mirthless laugh,

  “The name is Gadhar, and you are the noble Lady Ygrain. So far away from home,” he bowed then, the gesture sweeping and excessive.

  “Be silent, I have no patience for your barbed words, unless you want to know just how un-ladylike I can be, Gadhar.” throwing venom on his name.

  He held his hands up in surrender.

  “I meant no offense milady, I am in much the same position. Quite far from home.”

  “My home was far from here to the south, on the sea. It used to be a nice place. That is until ruthless savages from across the water decided to burn it.”

  “I don’t recall asking.”

  He rolled his eyes but seemed committed to finishing.

  “They took everything we owned, killed anyone who resisted them, and then they started taking the people too. In the end, no one was left in my little corner of the world, nobody but me.”

  “A heartbreaking tale. Are you and I supposed to be the fisher-folk cowering in their hovels as the savages approach?”

  Gadhar narrowed his eyes. He stepped forward, barely contained violence clear in his sharp tone and stiff, jerky movements.

  “I’m saying you’re in a lot more danger here than you realize, your highness.” He smiled wolfishly.

  “The savages are about. And you’re all alone.”

  Ygrain was breathless as he came at her, too afraid to move.

  Just before they might have collided he harmlessly passed her by on the path.

  Ygrain allowed herself at last to utter a shuddering breath.

  ...

  It had been nearly a month since Ygrain arrived in this place, and she felt no closer to release.

  The days had become shorter as she slept more and more, managing the strength to get up in the morning less and less frequently for her walks about the palace gardens, an admittedly beautiful place.

  More than once as she lay there in the morning hours, open-eyed but unmoving underneath the cover of the thick wool blanket, she had heard soft footfalls briefly come tapping along the paved paths outside her door at a soft jog.

  They stood there for a time, as if in waiting, then departed once again.

  More slowly than they had arrived she could have sworn, as if someone was dragging their feet.

  Once, her curiosity overcame her burdensome spirit, and she crawled from the covers and hobbled to the window as the soft steps came again down the path.

  She moved a thick curtain with the end of her index finger, moving just enough fabric for a glance, and saw the prince walking the trail, eyes downcast, walking in an unconvincing attempt at casualness.

  Ygrain’s fingers clenched into a fist, tightly gripping the curtain.

  Angry loud thoughts flooded her mind.

  Had the boy been spying on her even now?

  Even here?

  Had her ennui been carefully accounted for and recorded for the regent’s pleasure?

  They had been watching and laughing as her spirit slowly broke.

  The door flew open just as Kairava moved to turn about, readying to leave.

  He jumped, eyes momentarily flashing with fear as the door to Ygrain’s chambers slammed loudly against the wall, and Ygrain herself came stomping out. Fully dressed, booted, and face twisted in a grimace of utter rage.

  The boy seemed to begin to speak, mouth opening slightly, and the back of Ygrain’s right hand hitting him across the cheekbone removed him of the notion.

  It sent him spinning to the floor, resting on his hands and knees.

  “You can tell your father about that too,” she said sharply to the boy, who was even now cupping his stinging face with a cooling hand.

  Ygrain watched him for a moment, looming over him, and expected to see a flash of that same Raich vileness she had grown to expect.

  A malicious darkness that crept out from behind the illusion of normalcy his eyes maintained, as his father had in those final moments when he had taken everything from her.

  Kairava looked up at her.

  His eyes were sunken, devoid of fight. He looked as if he expected another assault.

  Ygrain’s heart stung, and she tried desperately to fight a sudden wave of guilt.

  Their eyes locked and the princess had to admit that the prince’s eyes hardly looked like his father’s at all.

  Where Kaiaan’s were pools of fathomless dark that seemed to threaten to swallow the whites of his eyes, Kairava’s were pearlescent pools of liquid sapphire, sitting on soft, perfect beaches of white sand.

  They were eyes that seemed to hold little light. And yet she witnessed not a grain of hate in them.

  She blinked, surprised.

  He blinked, noticing her quietly staring.

  Ygrain looked away hurriedly, and trudged on the path to the palace gardens at a jogging speed. Cowl quickly thrown up over her head, presumably for warmth.

  Kairava watched after her, still rubbing his aching face.

  His lip had been split where a knuckle had kissed it, and his fingers came away flecked lightly with scarlet.

  The image of her yellow eyes, seeming to almost glow with intensity, glowing from within, chief among his thoughts.

  After a few good minutes Ygrain passed out of his sight down the trail to the gardens.

  He smiled, chalking the whole affair up to disorientation from the surprisingly strong backhand, and followed after her at a relaxed pace.