Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2013 20:59:52 -0500
From: redpatience@Safe-mail.net
Subject: Magpie and the Prince Part two

IV. Ten

	Irau was allowed to pull on his freezing cold breeches and coat,
but not to take back his ornaments nor any other possessions, much less
his, which the Captain of the Guard laughed at when he removed them.
	"Stone?" he exclaimed. "Stone arrows? Savages. No wonder the Aldeni
are nearly all dead. Or else became blood drinking cannibals. How can a man
hunt with this shit?"
	"We hunt well!" Irau hissed, "and eat better than you
Slave-Takers. It's you who are the savages!"
	"Says the slant-eyed boy, who is a whore and yet--calls himself a
prince--and wears cloth shoes," the Captain exclaimed. He and his
lieutenant laughed heartily.
	"Can you read, savage?" Irau hissed. His stomach twisted with pride
and anger; he didn't care if he got himself hurt or killed, he could no
longer accept this abuse.
	"I can," the Captain said, but Irau cut him off from any further
elaboration.
	"How many languages? How many scripts? How many songs have you
committed to memory? How many songs have you written? Can you recite the
verses of your own bards? Can you recite the verses of all the foreign
ones? Can you remember all the names of the kings of your enemies? I can!"
Irau spat on the man's boots. "Because the Aldeni are the keepers of
memory!"
	The captain merely spat on the boy's face, laughed, and had him
taken away.
	The prince ground his teeth together, and his nostrils flared in
barely suppressed rage. They gave him water and hot broth and bread and
locked him in a wagon-crate with the other survivors from the raid. One of
the prisoners had a crossbow bolt in his foot, and looked on the verge of
death. The other knew he would soon be put to thumbscrews and other
tortures, and it only heightened his anxious stroking of Irau's inner thigh
and muttering of mixed threats and promises under his filthy breath. After
quite enough of this, the boy slipped out a broken arrowhead he had hidden
in his coat sleeve, tore the man's hair back and thrust the point against
his jugular.
	"I'm hungry enough to drink blood," the boy hissed, "put your cock
near my teeth and see how long it takes me to find a vein."
	He spent the rest of the night in a staring-contest with the man,
but in spite of his best efforts he collapsed the moment he knew his
wagon-mate was asleep.
	Irau awoke a little after dawn. They had stopped at a crossroads
between fields of pumpkins. A scarecrow bent over a row of spent
cornstalks, crows hopping up and down on his shoulders. Mist hung in sheets
from the clouds, and far off to the south the boy saw the ridge of
mountains that the King's Highway followed. Ahead, he noticed that the
captain of the guard was speaking to another man on a horse. It seemed to
be a heated conversation.
	After a few shouts of protest, this stranger on a horse came back
to the prison wagon. Very handsome, dark skinned, he wore a pointed black
hood and wool cloak. Silver hoops hung from his ears, and though he was
perhaps only twenty-five, he had a crows feet of a much older man and scars
on his cheeks and jaw. A green enameled sword was strapped to his back and
he had a longspear over one shoulder. He looked Irau up and down with sad,
kindly eyes.
	"You are the prince of the Aldeni," he said in Irau's tongue.
	The boy gulped. "Yes."
	"This is him," the man said in the common speech, "he must come
with me."
	The captain came on foot. "He was found with them naked and being
defouled. No doubt he knows all about the rebels."
	"Fortunately, you have two other victims for your dungeons. You
don't need him," the stranger argued.
	The knight blocked the wagon door. "He is a prisoner of the King's
guard of Chaldicia. No authority can change save the King himself."
	Sighing, the stranger removed a scroll from the breast of his black
coat and unfurled it with a snap. Some marvelous hand had scrawled it in
blue ink and sealed it with a stamp of golden wax. It flapped in the breeze
as the captain read it haltingly and confused. Across the bottom, a
signature swept so grand that Irau felt hypnotized by its loops and dashes.
	"I am Ten Parasimha, Paladin of White Deer Tower, here on the
orders of its merciful wizard," the man said. "Stand in my way at the peril
of the realm."
	The knight would not move.
	Without drawing it, without moving his arm at all, the man's sword
appeared. The way a rainbow appears. The blade however, only touched a
scratched name on the scroll much smaller than the other writing.
	"The prime minister of Chaldicia has signed this warrant. Your
resistance is treason. Open this wagon or I will peel you like a pear."
	The guards hastily unlocked the wagon and helped the boy out and
onto the stranger's horse.
	They galloped off the second they had the satchel with the boy's
things, including his ornaments, and had wrapped him in a mantle they
appropriated from the spoils of the night before. Irau took back his arrows
with a scowl at the captain, and they burst off in a splash of mud.

	As they rode away to the west, Irau looked behind them to see two
identical horses, complete with Paladin and Aldeni prince, riding away from
the crossroads to the East and North. The Aldeni princes on those horses
pointed to each other at the exact moment Irau pointed at them.
	"What! What are those?" he asked, pointing.
	"I can't look back or I will break the spell. I imagine you mean
our doubles."
	"Doubles?"
	"An illusion to confuse our enemies. Not just the King's guard,"
the man said, "but your uglier enemies as well."
	"What do you mean?" the boy asked haltingly.
	"You know what I mean. I won't say more."
	They crashed through a stream and water flew up into the sunlight;
after they crossed this boundary, they slowed to a canter and took a drink
from the man's waterskin. They got off the horse for a moment to fill water
skins and take a few bites of cheese and some apple. Squatting there, by
the bank of the stream, Irau appraised the newest of his three
captors. There was a sadness in his grey eyes; what Irau's people called
the gaze that pierces mountains.
	"You know about the darkness," the boy said.
	"Yes, your grace. I'm afraid to say we caused the darkness," the
man said sadly.
	The boy's eyes narrowed.  He knew enough songs to judge that there
were many figures like the Paladin in tales. Ten's magic, his power, his
charm suddenly made sense; Irau would not be enchanted by such deception.
	"You are a dark magician," Irau said in an accusatory tone.
	"No," Ten assured, "we made the darkness to keep them from growing
stronger."
	"They move in darkness! You helped them! You doomed my people!"
Irau was backing away, now.
	"We are not your enemy!" Ten protested, "We brought the darkness
over the mountains to keep them from moving quicker. We frightened away as
many of the beasts and birds as we could, and hoped that people would
follow: they move in darkness, but they feed on creatures of light. Only a
few have moved beyond, and those only to follow you. Their master knows
what you carry."
	"Their master," the boy said darkly. "Your master. No difference."
	"You want to know why that boar never found you last night?" the
man asked sharply.
	Irau said nothing.
	Ten fetched his spear and let the butt fall to the ground. He
unsheathed the leather over the blade of his weapon and revealed the edge
covered in an unmistakable powdery coat of serpent's blood. Some black tar
and a hunk of fur still clung to the shaft.
	"It never found you because I found it first."

IV. Mysteries

	A drizzle came down warm and wet. Irau fell half asleep, half
entranced by the passing trees and the clip of the horse's shoes on
stone. Who then was this stranger, with his languages, illusions, sweet
voice, eyes to pierce mountains?

V. The Three-Legged Dog

	That night, they reached a three-way junction in the forest. A
tavern of five stories stood not far, its placard painted with a
three-legged dog. There were drunks puking in the dark and as they neared
the door, two whores, one a dwarf, cooed at them from the shadows. They
exclaimed how handsome Ten was and pressed their breasts together for him,
screeching with laughter.
	The place did not improve when they entered. Although packed with
bodies, few could be seen. Only the hearth fire gave any illumination, and
a single candle at the innkeep's window, which was covered in an iron
grate.
	"A room and meal," Ten said, slipping a silver piece under the
grate. Before he could continue the transaction, a man of no particular
strength or size thrust himself onto them with a knife, demanding a silver
piece or a bad time.
	Irau heard Ten sigh in exasperation. Then his hand floated in the
darkness, moving as slowly as if it were underwater and yet confounding the
eye with cat-like speed. Ten's thumb jabbed the man in the throat and
belly, and the boy heard two sucking noises. Their assailant collapsed on
the floor gasping for breath and unable to see.
	Ten leaned down after they had their key and whispered "stay close
to me," in Irau's ear.
	They pushed through the crowd with only minimal obstacles, passed
through dark warrens of rooms where whores and men and boys were all
engaged in various types of debauch, and finally arrived a door with a big
lock. Irau had never seen such a device, but immediately grasped its
purpose and beauty when the key clicked it open. Within, they found a
filthy straw bed, loaf of bread, a bowl of broth, and a tankard of ale.
	They had hardly spoken a word all day after their confrontation at
the stream, and now they ate and drank in silence, stealing odd glances
into one anothers' eyes. With no fire and only a single candle, Irau chose
to sat across from ten, weary but cautious. He chewed his bread and tried
to avoid looking up at the big window that opened onto the rooftop; he had
contemplated escaping by it since they entered.
	"You won't get away," Ten said softly.
	"What do you mean?" Irau said in mock ignorance, horrified at what
seemed to be a consistent ability for the Paladin to read his thoughts.
	"I know you distrust me," Ten said, dipping his bread into his
beer, "and I know why, so I don't blame you."
	"You don't know anything about what I've seen."
	"I've seen plenty."
	"Like what?" Irau said with a snort.
	"I know you wouldn't want to speak of the things you've seen," Ten
said softly, "and so I know you don't really expect me to do so, either."
	The boy chewed thoughtfully, feeling a little guilty about how
difficult he was being. He felt hotly frustrated with how the knight
outmaneuvered him at every turn, but he felt guilty nonetheless. What if
the Paladin truly was good, noble, and kind as he seemed?
	"It doesn't matter what you say to me," Ten said. "I won't trust
you."
	"I don't expect you to."
	"Good."
	They kept eating, and drinking, until they had finished all but a
small rind of bread and the drippings at the bottom of the bowl of broth.
	"Soon, my prince, you will enjoy proper food. Fresh vegetables and
sweet fruits. Fine white bread. Good wine."
	"In your White Deer Tower?" Irau whispered acidly.
	Ten lay down his canvas shelter on the bed to deter the inevitable
vermin in the mattress. They bedded down with their backs toward each other
against the cold, wrapped in their own mantles and cloaks. Irau lay there
uneasily, but it seemed that his captor had no interest in taking liberties
with him--at least not at the moment. After a while he noticed Ten's slow,
relaxed breathing. The boy dropped off as soon as he heard it.

	Irau had a nightmare. These days it was a common enough occurrence;
he could rarely remember them when he awoke, but he knew enough what they
were about. This time, as always, he jolted awake sweating and whimpering
and making stifled shouts. This time, however, instead of being pressed
into rough groin of an oak tree, Ten's muscular arm encircled him, his
strong hand pressed softly to the boy's chest. His other arm had reached
beneath the crook of the boy's neck to enfolded him completely. Irau could
not for a moment understand where he was, or who was holding him, and he
thought at first that he had been taken by the unspeakable. He whimpered
and felt tears flushing his eyes.
	"Shh, shh, my little hare," Ten whispered.
	His own mother used to call him that. As far as he knew, only the
Aldeni used this expression.
	He remained tense, and swallowed.
	"Why are you holding me?" Irau whispered.
	"You were crying for help," Ten said.
	 In spite of his misgivings, Irau relaxed. He didn't want to think
about it any more. It felt good. It felt safe. Nothing else mattered but
that.
	"Are you all right?" Ten asked.
	"Y-Yes," the boy said reluctantly.
	"Do you want me to let go?"
	"A little," Irau said. "No. It's all right."
	"I will prove myself to you, Prince of the Aldeni. And so will my
magician."