Chapter 2

Chapter 2

         Prince Leu gazed out the rain-spattered window looking down upon the city that would one day be his. Why must I be king? he wondered once again. He knew the answer of course; he was the only son of the king, it was his right and his curse. He could hear a soft mumbling in the background, but knew the words didn’t concern him. He had nothing to do with the goings-on of the castle, and he liked it that way.

         His attention was momentarily shifted by two drops of rain on the window that pulled together to form one. The new larger droplet of water streaked down the window leaving parts of itself behind. As he watched it he couldn’t help but wonder about the Syrans. He often found himself thinking about them, and it made him angry. Not because he hated them, but because he sympathized with them. It wasn’t fair what had been done to them, and he wanted nothing more than to fix it, but how he was to do it was a mystery. He thought back on everything he knew about the curse that had befallen them, but came up with nothing.

         “Leu!” he heard shouted from across the room and he turned to see what the matter was.

         “Yes, Father?” he said with a small amount of contempt in his voice. He loved his father, but he couldn’t help but remember that he was the cause of the Syran’s pain.

         “Pay attention, boy. We were just discussing Kasaff.” He said with a hint of annoyance.

         Leu sighed, of course he was talking about Kasaff. His father was no young man, approaching his fifty’s in fact, and was prone to bouts of paranoia. His latest bit of worry was that Kasaff would try to take them over. A few people wearing Kasaff’s colors of blue and gold had been seen around the borders of the city, but Leu thought nothing of it. His father, however, saw them as scouts coming before the army.

         Before his paranoia about Kasaff, it was Syra. He was absolutely convinced that they would find a way to cure themselves of the curse and strike back. Leu saw no chance of this happening, but used the argument that even were they to attack, there were so few of them left that it would be a suicide mission. Leu felt sudden anger toward his father. It was him who had ordered the curse upon them; it was him who had ruined their lives, and in many cases ended them. His emotions must have shown on his face, because his father looked at him curiously.

         “What’s wrong Leu?” he asked nervously.

         Leu took a moment to collect himself and then fired at his father, “How could you?” he asked, anger and hatred filling his voice.

         “How could I what?” his father replied in annoyance. He knew what, but he wouldn’t start this argument again.

         “The Syrans, Father, how could you do what you did? It was wrong to the point where it approaches evil, unnecessary, and in defiance of your own laws!” the whole council was now looking at Leu. He didn’t care. They had witnessed this argument before, and he was so angry at this point, he wanted the world to know what irked him.

         His father sighed, and answered with his usual answer, “It was war son, allowances must be made. They woul-”

         “A pointless war!” Leu interrupted. “A war over a patch of land no larger than a few acres!” They had wanted a small patch of land on the northern side of the river for farming, and the king had refused.

         “Our border has always been at the Imabo River, and it always will be!” his father snapped. “You forget that it was them that started the war, not us!”

         “But you could have stopped it!” Leu yelled back. The other members of the council were beginning to look around, trying to ignore what was happening before them. Leu continued, “If moving our border a few hundred feet would have prevented what happened, why didn’t you move it? We don’t even use our outer land, only what the city takes up!”

         “We will discuss this later!” his father shouted. Leu stood from his chair and walked for the door. He could feel the eyes of his father and the entire council boring into his back, but he continued walking, slamming the door behind him. He knew that it was a lie. They would not talk about it later. Their meals would be taken in their rooms tonight, and they would not see each other again until morning.

         Why won’t he just admit that he was wrong? Leu wondered as he walked back toward his own room. When he arrived he saw that his room wasn’t empty.

         “Sara, my love,” he said to the girl who sat on his bed with a book in her hands. She looked up at him with a smile.

         “Please don’t call me that My Prince,” her voice was serious, but her face showed a wide grin. She was a beautiful woman of about twenty-three, a year older than Leu himself, but her beauty made that acceptable. She was the castle’s curator, and she took her job very seriously. She claimed to have memorized the title and subject of the thousands of books in the library, a claim that Leu didn’t doubt. She was a lovely young woman with eyes like shining emeralds, and hair of deepest auburn. Being a prince, Leu wasn’t allowed to show it, but he was in love with her.

         “I’ve found something,” she said bluntly. Leu nearly leapt to her side. He had had her looking for any information about the spell his father had ordered used on the Syrans, and how it might be revoked. Perhaps she had found the answer. Sitting on the bed and looking over her shoulder, Leu Listened to what Sara had found until the early hours of the morning, and fell asleep leaning against her.

~~~

         “Leu?”

         Leu awoke groggily and reached up to hug Sara, but found that she was gone. His mind cleared, of course she was gone. Imagine what would happen if she were caught sleeping in the same bed as the prince. He looked around the room, she had left the book they had been perusing laying open on the table. He decided that he would have to go through it later, as he could remember very little of what she had said last night.

         “Leu?”

         Leu looked up at the door where the voice was coming from. It was his father’s voice. My father, Leu thought guardedly, What does he want so early? “I’m awake, Father.”

         The door opened slowly and the king peaked his head into the room. “Good morning, Son,” he stood there for a moment, obviously waiting for his son to get out of bed and greet him properly, but Leu just sat there in his bed, half covered with a blanket, rubbing his eyes. The silence went on for a few awkward moments before the king spoke again, “I said we would talk about it later, and I am here to talk about it.”

         It took Leu a moment to figure out what his father was talking about, but when he finally did he was astounded. He actually wants to talk about it? “Yes, of course,” he said warily. His father was up to something, he just couldn’t decide what.

         “I know how you feel,” his father started. Leu doubted this. It was only a year ago that he had ordered the curse be placed on the Syrans, and he had shown no regret at the time. What reason was there for him to regret it now? “They didn’t deserve what I gave them,” he admitted, “I was afraid. They were beginning to come over the wall. There were so many of them, they could have taken us. I did what I felt was necessary.” Leu could see a tear forming in his father’s eye, and was taken aback. Perhaps he did care.

         “Why didn’t you just give them the land?” Leu asked, trying to keep the coldness out of his voice.

         “I tried, but the council wouldn’t allow it. They said it would reflect poorly on my rule if I were to concede to their demands. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.” The small tear in the corner of his eye worked its way free and streaked down his cheek, a tiny flood overcoming a dam of resilience and iron will. “I turned the decision over to another, my advisor, Tala.” Leu knew Tala well, She was one of the people at the council meeting the day before, the woman who sat right beside the king. He didn’t trust her, but only because she had been the one who truly cursed the Syrans. He blamed his father for letting it happen, but the blame for actually casting the spell lay with Tala.

         Leu could remember it clearly. He had been in the room with her when she had done it. She wanted him to see, she wanted him to know what she was doing. She placed the stone that held the curse into the Igama Disperser that lay in a high tower of the city. It was a large machine that she built herself that could take the Igama magic that was normally only effective on a small area, such as a single person, and amplify it to encompass miles. She explained it as she was letting the Igama magic cycle through her. She told him how she was carefully controlling it’s flow inside her, taking the time it took for it to build momentum to achieve perfection. Weaving it perfectly so that when it was released, only the Syrans would suffer. After she had finished, she used another stone to bring up an image of the Syrans in the air in front of her. It showed many of them dead, and those that remained were a mess of blood and black patches of skin. He still had nightmares over what he had seen that day.

         Leu wondered about this for a moment, perhaps he had been wrong to blame his father all of this time, but the fact was that he was afraid of Tala, and what she was capable of. She had destroyed an entire city without a second thought, he was afraid to think what she could do to a single man.

         “You have to understand though,” his father continued, “Even if what I did was wrong, Syra is our enemy, even more so now that it has been done. If they had the chance to destroy us, they would take it in a heartbeat.”

         “But how, father? The few that are left are still feeling the effects of the curse, what could they possibly do?”

         “There are more ways to defeat an enemy than simply through numbers, we proved that ourselves.” The king stood up and made to leave the room, but his eye caught the book lying open on his son’s table, and he asked, “What is that?”

         Leu smiled, “It’s a way to ensure that this never happens again. We can destroy the stone father, there is a way, it says so in the book.” His father’s reaction was shocking; he swept the book off the table and threw it down on the ground.

         “And what if it happens again? Then what do we do?” he yelled at his wide-eyed son. “What do we do when Kasaff overtakes our border?” his hand was clenched into a fist.

         “Kasaff doesn’t care about us!” Leu shouted, aggravated at his father’s paranoia.

         The king walked haughtily toward the door and turned around to face his son, “If you even consider it, I will see to it that you are never king!” With that his father stepped out the door, slamming it behind him.

         Leu sat on his bed for a moment, staring at the door, shocked at what had transpired. After a moment he knew what he had to do. If his father would even consider using the stone again, he had only one choice, I must destroy it.