Sacrifices Prologue:

Prologue I: Through the Eyes of a Friend

They sat in reverence as the soldier took his seat beside the fire. There were a dozen of them there, both Mystic and human, waiting to hear the tale of a prophecy fulfilled. The soldier sat up straight and proud, defying the decades of warfare and service his body had endured. His hair had long been gray, but his eyes sparkled blue as if he were a young boy at heart. After taking a few puffs from a pipe, he began what they had all gathered to hear.

“It seems like these days everyone is telling the tale of how the King of the Mystics and the Kanhai saved our people. They know how he sacrificed himself for the sake of their child and how she saved him from the brink of death. But no one knows the events half as well as I do. I was there. He could tell you what happened himself, but he doesn’t like to focus on the past. But I say, how can you move into the future without knowing where you’ve been? So I’ll start from the beginning, as I remember it.

I was a servant, first and foremost. I did what I was told. I was the whipping boy. But he cried with me when I was struck in discipline. He played with me and told me I was his best friend. He did not treat me as inferior. To him, I was his equal. And so as we grew older, I became accustomed to speaking to him freely, often telling him how to think or what strategy would best serve his purposes. He was to be king, after all.

Through my advisory to him, I assumed no self-gain. I am glad such burdens were laid upon his shoulders instead of my own. But I felt a pull, a responsibility to help him make the right decisions. And he heeded my thoughts.

But that ended the day his destiny caught up with him.

I wish I had been wiser then. I wish that my youth would have realized that one cannot fight Fate. When rumors of the Kanhai surfaced, he changed. He became obsessed with finding her. No one else would have noticed, of course. He was calm and diplomatic whenever someone spoke to him about the Kanhai. But they were not the ones he told his dreams to.

And dream about her, he did, although at the time neither of us were aware she was the fulfilment of the prophecy. All we knew was that he had a reoccurring dream of a girl. We both began to acknowledge that he had been dreaming about her far longer than when the rumors of the Kanhai had begun. In his dreams, she was gentle and kind. She had a normal life and it seemed she was a merchant's daughter. She acted on her faith and was strong to speak out against evils. I thought he might be dreaming of such a person because his heart wanted it, that he desired not a princess who flaunted her beauty and preened herself all day but a woman who knew the struggles of life and had a passion to serve others. Such qualities are needed in a queen, but that the Kanhai was the daughter of a merchant; the prophecies mentioned nothing of such a lowly stature, so I never associated the dreams with the prophecy.

But then the girl of his dreams appeared. She was exactly as he had described her to me; raven hair that cascaded down her back like the waves from the sea; violet eyes the color of fresh grapes, skin like olives oil. Yet she was younger than I expected. We were nearing our twentieth year and she was merely thirteen. And she had a father who didn't easily agree to the notion of his daughter going to live in the castle. She herself was against the idea. I thought my lord wanted to keep her near because she was a pretty thing and I was confused when he offered to have her become a servant instead of arranging for her to become a concubine since he obviously desired her. He baffled me further by swaying her to live at the abbey within the castle walls. See, she was in the process of becoming a nun in the city monastery and did not like the prospect of leaving the service. I understood, then, why my lord had not made her a concubine; he would have to seduce her away from her pious life. She agreed to the arrangement only because he was her ruler and because the laws of her God decreed that one should always obey their betters.

Frankly, I found her to be self-righteous, rude and willful. My sister, who lived in the abbey and befriended this girl, told me what this whelp said about my lord behind his back. The girl was an ungrateful twit, whining to want to go back into the city, whining that the abbey didn't serve the needs of the people. If she wasn't giving her demands to my lord, she was busily working in the gardens. And if she wasn’t there, she was devoting time to prayer and study. But in between doing all that she deemed to be her duties, she found the time to pull pranks with my sister against my lord. And he allowed it.

I couldn't understand why my friend could stand to be near such a haughty child. In fact, I was under the impression that she was beginning to get on his nerves when he one day ordered me to watch her. I thought he wanted me to put some fear into her, to show her who was in control. I was greatly mistaken.

He was furious with me. Had I been anyone other than his best friend, I knew he would have probably killed me. I was grateful for his restraint. After a day or two of leaving me in a cell, Ihe released me and apologized for keeping things from me. He told me he understood why I had done what I did. Then he informed me why he had been keeping the haughty tart around. She was the Kanhai.

My mind fought the notion that this whip of a girl was to one day be the Salvation of our kind. She was the human with a Mystic heart. I didn't want to believe it, but who was I to go against a prophecy. My lord told me he wanted to protect her from the Council. I didn't know why until he let me know, much later, that the Council had been pressuring him to speed up the fulfillment of the Prophecy.

I knew my lord was not ready to do that fulfillment, and neither was the Kanhai. But even Fate cannot be avoided for long.

Over the course of a year, my lord and the Kanhai developed a great respect for each other. I believe she was even taking my place as his confidant and closest friend. But that is to be expected when two people are drawn together in love.

He paused and looked off into the distance, as if trying to determine what to tell them next, "Much has happened since then. The days of my youth are long gone and the order of the world has changed. You must forgive me for not going on, but the hour is late. My daughter has been kind enough to write down the tales if you have want to read of them. Or if you can’t read, you should find someone to tell it to you. It’s a tale not to be missed!”

They all nodded in agreement. Many stood and left the tent to return to their normal lives, speaking to one another of the details they had thought were true or that they would definitely seek out a copy of the tale in print. But they were all thankful to have heard the experience of the soldier who was friend to their King.