A Story of Blood and Thorns

Chapter 4

This time, I make sure to cover my face.

After a week of traveling, I've found another village. Thankfully, although some would consider themselves not so thankful, this one is filthier than the last one. And larger.

One might classify this as a town.

I'm able to snag a cloak from a pile of them in a long-forgotten doorway. Nobody looks twice as I wander through the roads of the town.

People hurry back and forth under the stormy clouds, peering up at the sky in anticipation of the rain. Nobody talks. All that I hear is the rushing of feet, the occasional curse, money being exchanged for food, clothes, and happiness.

I pass by a building where music drifts out of it. It's soft, like a lullaby, then rises in a deafening crescendo. The sound carries out into the street. Several people around me spare a look to the building, then continue on their way. I glance back as I walk away. What type of person would sing in an otherwise silent town?

By the time the rain starts, I'm in an inn, paying for a room for two days. Two days is all I'm giving myself to plan my route to the capital. I also buy a map and a book to pass the time. Hopefully, I can learn more about this kingdom that I'm in.

Wiralith.

That's the name on the map, in big, shiny letters.

In the middle of the paper is a landmass with the same name. Two palaces, one in the north, one in the south, sit within the kingdom's border. All around is water, except for one side. A wall of thick trees separates Wiralith from another place.. Above the wall is another name.

Caelius.

Mountains stretch from the east of the kingdom upwards, disappearing under the map's border. There is one big town below the mountains and above the wall, but that's it. Nothing else seems to exist in Caelius.

Southwest of Wiralith is an island called The Outlands, with ruins strewn across it. To the Southeast, a kingdom called Siarid. To the Northeast, another island called the Badlands.

I set the map down and pick up the book. The History of Wiralith, it says on the front. An illegible name is scribbled underneath.

Rain pounds against the dirty window beside me as I settle down on the moth-eaten covers of the bed. I open the book, and the smell of old paper hits me.

The papers are yellow with age and they threaten to rip as I turn them over and over, reading over how the kingdom came to be.

Long ago, there was a single kingdom, I read. But a war cleaved the land in two. Caelius and Wiralith. In Caelius, the faeries and creatures of the ocean, air, and fire reside. In Wiralith, the humans stayed. Everyone was afraid of the other group, so King Stevan met with the leader of Caelius. They agreed to build a wall made of steel and wood between their lands, to keep each other in and the other out.

I slam the book down. Two lands. I grab for the map again, finding the wall again. I trace over the drawing, then follow a path to the capital. The same path that Isadora took me on. She never said how close we were to the wall.

The book's spine creaks as I open it again, this time to a page about the current king.

King Marcus is a gentle king. Wise beyond his years, he rules with grace and dignity. During the plague, he helped his citizens in every way that he could. But in the walls of the palace, his life has been tragic.

His mother and father, Queen Mary and King Ezra, died in a fire when he was young. The late king's advisor took over until Marcus turned 18, at which he took the throne.