Robert Newcomb: The Fifth Sorceress

Still looking at the sky, his mind drifted to the Directorate as a whole. The Directorate of Wizards, endowed advisors to the reigning king of Eutracia. He envisioned each of their faces in turn. Wigg, Egloff, Tretiak, Slike, Killius, and Maaddar. The ancient heroes who had been responsible for bringing victory in the Sorceresses’ War of so long ago. They were all over three hundred years old, two of them now over four hundred, each protected from the ravages of old age by the esoteric enchantments they themselves had conjured near the end of the insurrection. The enchantments were effective only upon those with endowed blood, and had been instrumental in the final victory. Their use was reserved exclusively for the Directorate of Wizards and the reigning king if he so chose; not even the lesser rural wizards could avail themselves of the health-sustaining incantations known as time enchantments. That was as much as Tristan knew.

But what he did know as a certainty was that on his thirtieth birthday, Tristan’s father would abdicate and join the Directorate, making seven. Then Nicholas’ life, also, would be protected by the time enchantments, as well as by the powerful jewel called the Paragon that so augmented the exceptional power of the wizards of the Directorate. Tristan’s mother Morganna would therefore sadly but gracefully die before her husband, leaving him to a life of perpetuity with the Directorate.

And Tristan would rule.

He sighed. He had to admit that he loved them all, despite how much fun he made of it. But it did little to increase his desire to be king.

The Directorate’s first order of business after Tristan became king would be to try to influence him to take a queen, hoping for the birth of a son to succeed him in thirty years, whereupon Tristan would join the Directorate with his father. At the end of the Sorceresses’ War, the Directorate had selected a well-respected citizen of endowed blood to become the first Eutracian king, a new government had been formed, and the process had led on from there. By tradition, if the reigning king had no sons, another endowed citizen was selected, and the process began anew. And so it had gone for over three hundred years of peace and prosperity. It had always been the choice of the abdicating monarch to decide whether or not to join the Directorate, and thereby receive training in the craft and be protected by the time enchantments. Until Tristan’s father, none had chosen to do so, preferring to die of old age with their queens.

In addition to this precedent-setting decision, Nicholas had been the first and only king to preannounce the fact that his son would also join the Directorate when his time came. And although the young prince had questioned and protested the decision many times, he was told by the Directorate and his father only that this was the way it must be. He had heard a rumor once that the decision had been made at the exact moment of his birth, but anytime he had asked his parents or the wizards about it, they had given him no reply. Finally, he had stopped arguing and glumly accepted his fate.

As Tristan continued to watch the sky, his mind turned from affairs of state to affairs of the heart. Even though he didn’t have a wife—he should soon say “queen,” he reminded himself—there had nonetheless been many women in his life. He sighed. Far too many, according to his parents. Even his twin sister Shailiha, his most staunch defender of what some would call his recent disregard for his royal duties and responsibilities, had begun to criticize him about his romantic dalliances.

But the prince had always been kind to those women who hoped to capture his heart. Because of his good looks and royal position, the realm was positively overflowing with women who were more than willing to try. Sometimes, during his public appearances at court, he couldn’t decide which flapped faster, their batting eyelashes or the unfolded fans that each of them always seemed obligated to flutter while trying to cool the quick blush of their cheeks. Many, to the increasingly obvious chagrin of both his family and the Directorate, had ended up in his bed.

But he had never fallen in love.

None of the women he had encountered so far had moved him to the point of wanting more than a brief dalliance. It wasn’t that he was cold or uncaring toward them. He treated them kindly, and always ended his affairs like a gentleman. That was simply his nature. He laced his fingers behind his sore head, cushioning it from the saddle, and watched as a particularly interesting cumulus floated over. Reminding himself that at least there had been no scandalous pregnancies, he sighed.

Sadly, it was just that no woman had ever really made him ache in her absence to the point of distraction, or hunger in her presence to the point of pain. Deeper, in his heart of hearts, he truly hoped that one day it would be different. Secretly, he wished that he could be as happy as his sister. Shailiha was his elder, something that she was overly fond of teasing him about. He was equally fond of teasing her back, claiming that even though she had preceded him into this world by only eight minutes, one day he would be king and have dominion over her. But truthfully he wished his life were more like hers. She was very happily married to Frederick, commander of the Royal Guard, one of Tristan’s best friends. And she was now five and a half months pregnant, the entire royal family and court excitedly awaiting the blessed event. But most of all he envied the fact that she would never have to rule. He smirked upward at the afternoon sky. At least his parents, King Nicholas and Queen Morganna, had raised one heir that pleased them.

Then, sadly, there was also the matter of his studies and royal duties as prince.

He had been educated in all matter of things his entire life by the wizards in preparation for his succession of his father as king. And although the realm had been at peace for over three centuries and had acquired no foes since, he had also been scrupulously trained in the art of war by the Royal Guard. After the Sorceresses’ War, the Directorate had wisely vowed never to allow the nation’s guard down again. Operating under the assumption that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it, they had decreed that the history of the war be taught to each and every Eutracian schoolchild, and a term of service in the Royal Guard be mandatory for each able-bodied man in the kingdom, with the option of choosing it as a life’s career. Plaques and monuments, almost always of the finest marble, dotted the countryside at the sites of many of the most important battles of the war. They were at the same time both sad and greatly respected places, as most of them marked the scenes of the massacres of long-since dead wizards and their slaughtered troops. Therefore, by tradition, the Royal Guard stood vigilantly at the ready to defend the realm against any potential threat, training relentlessly toward that end. But Tristan was sure that during his reign, as had been true for so long now, he would never have to call upon them for any reason.

Especially the defense of the realm.

He yawned, running his fingers again back through the longish black hair and over the painful bump that had resulted from his leap back to the cliff. Once he was king, the wizards would probably make him cut his hair in a more appropriate style. And then, when he eventually joined the Directorate, they would have him grow the customary wizard’s tail of braided hair down the back of his neck. Depressed, he realized that all he had ever wanted was to have a normal life, but it had never been allowed him. Nor would it ever be.

The classroom training that had come to him from the wizards had been presented in many forms. Eutracian history and civics, basic laws of the realm, reading and writing the language, and so on. Following that had come studies in the kingdom’s culture: her music, literature, and the arts. Then had come the requisite training in the negotiation and arbitration of the endless requests and bickering between the dukes who represented the seven different duchies that made up the kingdom and contributed to her welfare with their taxes. Politics was not his strong suit, and he still had much to learn, with very little time remaining in which to learn it. He reflected glumly upon the wisdom of taking an entire day away from his studies to come up here, only to lie in the luxurious grass of a high mountain glade. The back of his head was now throbbing badly. Perhaps overall he had done himself more harm than good today.