The Spark That Ignites the Dawn

Chapter Five: All that is Done for Love

"I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page, and I could do anything I wanted." Jack Kerouac

Siegfried, Prince of Illychia and heir to said throne, had never been happier.

Such a statement was no mean feat; the boy had been given everything he had ever wanted, and more besides. Every birthday, a ball was thrown in his honour, starting from before he could walk. The ball would bring officials from all over the country, and even ambassadors from the adjoining countries of Catolia and Mwengwe, although admittedly, relations with Skyrholm, the northern bordering country of mages and savages, had been terse these past few years. An ambassador hadn't been sent from Skyrholm since he was eight. Regardless, Sig had been on state visits to almost every quarter in Illychia; from Prianska with the famous waterfalls and the rainbows spanning them, to Aelford, where the three main rivers— Turzinsk, Lenova and Sabisa— of the land converged, and the wastelands of Catamede and Helgraf, the south so warm the land would scorch. He knew he was the Crown Prince of a land he loved and lived for, a country he was proud of and would die to defend. And he lived in a beautiful palace of red slate and twisting towers, in the most beautiful city of them all: the affluent capital, Zratova.

He lived a very, very golden life.

But since meeting Vasilisa, he'd wanted something else.

He'd known, from the moment he could really know what's what, that he would marry for gain, for a country that needed alliances and heirs when relations with borders were terse. A Skyrholm princess was never spoken of— his father, the king, loathed any sort of magic, and the Skyr people worshipped it— but a marriage with a princess of Mwengwe was often talked of, and sometimes Catolia, too. He'd never looked for love, never considered anything more serious than the flirtations with some of the women that came to him, and was never tempted by the stares of some of the men, either. His father had loved the idea of his mother, until she was killed by magic. On that day, a part of his father died, too: the part that tolerated mages. He'd remarried— a woman who had pushed her way into his bed— and before Sig was ten, he had a stepmother. No stepsibling had ever materialised, however, much to the family's chagrin. Sig secretly didn't mind. He would be the model child, the model prince, with a model wife, and their own model children.

Until he met Vasilisa.

Or rather, his stepmother had tried to pawn him off, away from his father's side, to the north. Trouble was brewing, and the garrisons had begun to head north, preparing for the eventualities that war might break out. For too long, the northern quarter of Illychia had roamed a little wild. Once mage territory, the downfall of magic had left the land with scarce villages and heaps of snow.

It was time, their stepmother suggested, to reclaim the mage lands. She gave Sig the not-so-subtle challenge of stationing a garrison at the abandoned fort, once home to hundreds of mages.

'In the eventuality of war, we will need northern bases if Skyrholm is to attack,' she pointed out. His father readily agreed.

So, a month later, as summer was fading, Sig left his comfortable home and marched north with other infantry soldiers of the Imperial Army. The cold had not yet set in, but even the last dregs of summer's warmth was not enough to prevent the chill that seeped through his boots on the walk, or the shivering of the soldiers in their tents at night. As they drew farther north, the land noticeably changed. The villages they passed through spoke of children that roamed with wolves, of vodyanoi, blue-skinned men and women that lived in the depths of waters and preyed on those unawares, and of the Erlkonig, or Erlking— a powerful mage from Skyrholm that wreaked havoc in Illychia.