Chapter Six

Year 1327

Bloodline

“The mother of my son is dead,” the prince said, his voice low and without inflection. His face was ruddy with fury, but it did not even reach his eyes. He was that good at learning from his father’s mistakes, who’d always allowed himself to be ruled by passions.

“Yes. The harem slave upon which you fathered your illegitimate son is dead. Jah, Thore, don’t make this a bigger to-do than it needs to be. I was not even aware that you were using my wives for your own pleasures. Such a saucy boy.” The king slapped the arm of throne in joviality. “I have many more to replace the woman you lost, son.”

“Father, my brother killed the mother of my child. Will you not allow me vengeance? Will you not even allow me that?”

“No. I won’t. And I’ll tell you why. Because Carros is allowed his little jealousies. Surely you must understand, what with him being sterile, that it is a topic of some delicacy?”

“You excuse his murder of one of your wives as just a product of his insecurities?” Thore demanded, his tone suddenly angry. His grey eyes flashed once and quieted, the beast within retreating back underneath the stormy waves of his ire.

Iger Vahrrakin, King of Jaecha, shrugged. “You know very well that I could care less if he killed them all. If you loved her, as ridiculous as that idea is, you should have better provided for her security. You know how your brother gets.”

“He is always killing your whores. How long do you think it will take before he starts killing your boys as well,” Thore spat, rising from the kneeling position he had assumed before his king and father. Iger straightened and his pudgy face grew hard.

“You will not speak of such slanderous notions, you stupid boy. If you start seeking revenge, do you really think I can keep the High Priest away from you? No! You aren’t even thinking about the problems you could cause me with him.”

Thore sneered. “If you were truly a king, you would have him executed. But you are weak, so I could care less of the troubles you might have with someone who should be your subordinate.” Iger rose, stepped forward and slapped his son a ringing blow across his cheek. Thore didn’t even flinch at the blow, but the king was so incensed that he did not notice his lack of effect.

“Now listen here. As the next king, you are going to have to learn that the church is far too powerful here for you to challenge the High Priest. And I am not going to allow my kingdom to fall into the hands of the church just because you cannot play nice.”

“Are you so stupid as to not see that your kingdom is already in their hands?”

“Do you want me to have you whipped?” the king shouted, his spittle landing on Thore’s face. The prince didn’t even lift his hand to wipe the offending saliva from his skin. “What a terrific example you would be for your people, my son, to see you whipped like a four year old slave who has stolen from his master. Do not make the mistake of thinking you are smarter than me. You need to learn to hide those brains, as I have.”

“Then you put on a convincing show, father, of stupidity,” Thore said, dangerously quiet as he backed from the dais. “You continue the charade even behind closed doors. Oh yes, you must be quite an actor.”

He vanished from the room before the king could call him back and beat him for his insubordination. Silence reigned for a short while, the spluttering of candles blown by the drafts roaming the castles the only sound. For a short while.

“Father,” a sing-song voice filtered from the behind and Iger flinched involuntarily, keeping his eyes forward, focused on the near-darkness of his great hall. His empty great hall, and the smoke that filled it and blurred the light from the candles that produced the gray film. His lungs burned.

“Come out here, Carros. Do not lurk in shadows.”

Carros chuckled like slate that echoed, bombarded through the rafters high above, and he stepped from behind the dais, his bulky frame entering Iger’s vision. The figure was clean but for the sticky shine that covered his boots. Iger focused on that, unable to look away. Then he lifted his eyes slowly, inexorably, to the unfamiliar splash of pure, coagulated red that ran along his second son’s forearm.

“Why are you bleeding, Carros?”

“My Lady was scared,” he said quietly, looking down and appearing the very picture of the proper, subordinate son that he had never been, nor ever would. His mentality, when he was like this, was of a boy. But he had never been that boy. Traces of a boy like that were hopelessly tangled in the wires of insanity and murder that created Carros’ soul. “She had steel. She was scared, it wasn’t her fault. My lady.” He bestowed a fond tone upon the title of the woman he was speaking of, and Iger felt a thrill of uneasiness slide through his bones. The woman had cut him, and he was in this state. Iger knew that the woman had to be dead. Carros would not stand for an injury unpunished; such was his mind.

An eye for an eye. A life for a cut.

“Carros, the Lady is the one you cannot touch,” he stated, praying that he had not murdered the woman who carried his third and final heir.

The look in the dark eyes of his younger son terrified him and that feeling shamed him. This boy was a mistake that he should have destroyed long ago. But he was weak; Thore was right but Thore was stupid. Thore was stupid because he was too smart to live. Only fools and liars could sit upon that throne and survive long enough to make the earth beneath him note his existence. Otherwise a king was a just a flicker. Nothing more.

“Not your Lady. My Lady. Your Lady is a whore. Mine is pure, and she is only mine.”

“I’m sure you believe that. Every woman I have has been had at least once. Do not attach yourself to her, Carros.” His tone was placating, gentle to counteract the crazed beast within the calm man before him. Smoke wreathed around Carros’ body, obscuring his gleaming black eyes with slivers of silver that glinted and seeped into the irises.

“You gave me a child. I want a woman, and I will have this one. Your perversions,” Carros said with a slow smile that was eerier for the gentleness it emulated, “are not mine.”

Iger narrowed his eyes, steeling himself to appear strong in front of someone who did not understand nor respond to strength. And yet it was all Iger could aspire to to keep the beast locked inside. Dormant. “You will take the child of the woman you killed and you will rid me of him. That is the only thing I ask of you. Then you can have this woman, whoever she is to inspire such…love.” He spat the last word out, not believing for a second that the “lady” was even alive. Perhaps his perversions were not his sons’, but his son had other, far worse perversions than he.

Carros took a long time to answer, his dark eyes flickering with an intelligence that wasn’t human. Iger looked at the twisted creature in front of him and saw the High Priest behind the façade. Would that Carros had never existed. Would that Thore would learn his place and stop lying with his father’s slaves.

“I will destroy the child. I will give him to Cyprus. Cyprus will enjoy him. You two are so much alike. I wonder if perhaps anyone would notice if he were to sit where you sit now?”

Iger straightened, struggling for the last vestiges of control. “It is treason to say such things. I allow you some lenience, but I will not hesitate to kill you both if it is for the good of the kingdom.” A lie. Iger did never approach his second son; away from Thore the man’s name was never mentioned. There was too much danger in that name. It conjured his presence. Iger felt his presence like a sickness in the gut, the soul, that made it spicy to taste when he gagged at the mere thought of Carros.

Carros sneered. “Jaecha has no need of kings. Jaecha is a living land. It will destroy you. And it will destroy Jah, who deserves to be destroyed.”

The heresy stiffened Iger with a sort of fascinated horror. “Leave.”

Carros bowed mockingly, disturbing the smoke that had begun to settle on his shoulders and in his leathers. “Yes, sire.” The smoke followed momentarily as the man went to the door, and then gave up to swirl within itself, creating a hole of twisting shadows where he had been.

“You will not return to the harem today,” Iger shouted after him. Carros’ boots scraped against the threshold of the room as he ground to a halt and slowly turned to face his father. The dark block of his body blocked what little light came from the torches in the hall.

“The boy will be gone by morning.”

The boy shivered in the chill of the flickering temple, his gray eyes frozen on the enormous altar in the front of the sanctuary. Shifting light created monsters out of candlebras and gold-leafed seats, but he did not move. He did not breathe.

“You enjoy the beauty,” a snakelike voice stated. Gasping, the boy turned around and looked up and up to the beautiful face of the robed man who had spoken. The boy said nothing. “I, too, enjoy beauty. You are quite beautiful.”

The man ran fingers over the boys black curls, pausing at the ear and then dipping under the jaw line to tip the lowering head back up. The man’s eyes were a jealous green.

“Would you like to live amongst this beauty?”

Very slowly, the boy shook his head. He wanted his mother.

The man laughed breathily, moving his head so that the light made fire of his white-blond hair. “It is a shame, then, that this is to be your new home.”

The boy protested meekly by tugging away from the man and running down the center of the room toward the altar, not at all sure where an escape might lie. Doors hid in those shadows, and he dared not venture into them for fear of disappearing forever into the abyss of dreams and emptiness. Where his mother had most certainly gone.

Light reflected off of the altar, illuminating rusted stains atop it’s marble surface like rivers on a map.

“Boy, no exit lies in that direction. You would do well to come back to me. You will love me if you give a little of yourself. You will love this new life if you prescribe voluntarily. I promise this.”

The boy turned around, unsure eyes settling on the priest and then darting away. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t speak. His mother had never let him.

“You are only thirteen, are you not? And have no father.”

The boy hesitantly nodded.

“Then you shall come to me, and I shall be your father,” the white-haired figure said. His voice was no longer so sinister to the boy’s ears. “Do you have a name, if not a father?”

The boy just as hesitantly shook his head. No. He had never had a name. Names were a luxury that few he had been raised around had.

“Then I shall name you Baervatte. It is a good name, under Jah. I wish you to come here, Baervatte. Come to love my touch.”

His feet moved of their own volition, and soon the priest’s soft fingers were trailing back down Baervatte’s face, tracing the line of his nose and the curve of his cherubic lips. They drifted to the collar of his poorly-sewn shirt and ran along his sharply protruding collarbone.

“Baervatte, you are to come with me. You will learn from me. You will learn everything you need to know to serve Jah through me. Do you love Jah? Are you a good boy, Baervatte?”

Baervatte nodded. Oh, he wanted to be a good boy. His mother had always said he was a good boy but a stupid boy. He would always be a good boy for his mother, and now his father.

The priest’s words echoed his thoughts. “Oh, you are an idiot, but a lovely one. Take my hand.” His long fingers reached for the boy’s, and the smaller hand slipped into and was dwarfed by the larger palm.

A/N: I have no idea what made me update this. First there was some writer’s block that I never got over, and then I was distracted by a bunch of other stories. I think it’s safe to say that I will always come back to this. I love the style I’m writing it in too much to abandon it. Sorry it’s been so long. Please review and tell me if it sounds too different from the other chapters. I have to get myself in a mindset to write like this, and sometimes it’s hard.

I couldn’t believe I was still getting reviews almost a year after I’d updated last. This is a big thanks to you.

A’Rinn is not in this chapter because having her in the scene was what was giving me writer’s block, if that makes sense. But she’s alive. She’ll be in the next chapter.