The King's Might: A Legend of Averdan

Part One, Chapter One

PT ONE

HAMRAT

*****

ONE

In Which The First Prince Makes A Well-Meaning But Ill-Considered Decision

In the beginning of the rainy season, as was his wont, Jalith Silverhand left the palace of his father and his own Appointed Rooms to do a bit of holiday shopping.

It was a good time to do it. The weather was, for a few days only, humid and foggy and wet (as opposed to dry and clear and dry, which was usually more the case). He could bind his butter-gold hair in a scarf, use a wide-brimmed sun hat to hide his white face and prominent nose. A plain oilskin rain wrap hid the richness of his clothing. Frayed gloves, bought off one of the men in the scullery for a bottle of cactus beer, hid both his Appointed Scars and his signet ring.

He appraised himself momentarily in a horse trough beside a public stable, smiling slightly at the dirty and thoroughly ragamuffinly countenance that smiled back. A bite-sized piece of someone's barely masticated market day sausage bobbed in the trough right beside his reflection. He smiled at it too--a wan, half-wistful smile that might have drawn some attention from passers-by, had there been any to wonder.

No, indeed, he looked nothing like himself today. He was the happier for it.

He wrapped his scarf a little more tightly around his head and turned down a shortcut alley, past scrubwomen and orphans and a two-bit magician with a cart draped in multicolored and boldly lettered silks ('Fortunes Two For One on Market Day, No Refunds For Tempting Fate'). He flashed all of them his wan half-smile.

The scrubwomen grunted, the orphans told him to get stuffed, and the magician, with a tip of his threadbare green turban, recommended he seek accommodations with his own kind.

"My own kind," Jalith said, frowning. "Do I look...wealthy, to you?"

"Allking lor', no. Just pale, laddie. Like one of the hefenta Northmen--like the First Prince almost. You best be losin' some of that white skin in the summer months or you'll be out on a pike in front of the gates like the rest of 'em."

"The First Prince isn't such a bad sort," Jalith said, trying not to sound too indignant. He wasn't certain whether he succeeded or not--the magician eyed him a little too shrewdly from under his turban.

"That may be," he said, almost gently. "But he's Norchladil. Hefenta. The badness runs in the blood there. Would to the Allking lord our Lanon hadn't chosen him as his heir. It's fine while he lives, but when he dies--" the magician shook his head. "This ain't no country to be ruled by a Northerner, laddie, even one as clean-seeming as the First Prince. Never in the six thousand years this city has stood. Never."

The two men stood, silent for a moment, in the warm drizzling shelter of the alley. From inside the magician's covered cart, something growled.

"Scuse me," he said gruffly. "I've got to feed the herpsicore."

"Herpsicore," Jalith said numbly. "Right."

The magician disappeared into the depths of his cart. Jalith took a moment to collect himself, willing his face into an expression of placid indifference. He knew he was an unpopular choice as First Prince. Out of King Lanon's hundred candidates (some of them noble--some of them wealthy--all of them Southern and many born right here in the great desert city of Hamrat) he had been an unexpected and unwelcome front runner. He had, honestly, not even expected it himself.

So why did the little magician's words hurt him?

"No matter," he murmured to himself. There was shopping to do, there were sights to see. He was no less unpopular today than he had been three years ago, when Lanon had burned the Appointed Scars into his hands and sealed his choice as final. Hearing all this talk firsthand made it no more real.