John Fultz - Seven Princes

“You see, my dear?” the sorcerer told the panther. “I told you my birthright would be easily reclaimed.”

“So you did,” said the panther. “But what of my desires?” Now the cat was a pale-skinned lady sitting at his feet, her voluptuous body draped in strings of chromatic jewels. A thick mane of hair, gleaming white as silk, fell across her shoulders. Her eyes were as dark as his own.

Elhathym, the new King of Yaskatha, smiled at his lover.

“Patience,” he whispered. And he kissed her ruby lips, which tasted of royal blood.

In the twenty-sixth year of his reign madness came to the King of New Udurum. It did not fall upon him like a flood, but grew like a creeping fungus in the hollows of his mind. At first he hid the madness from his Queen, his children, and his subjects, but eventually he could no longer steady his shaking hands or hold the gaze of his advisors during council.

Udurum was a city of both Men and Giants. The power of King Vod had fostered an era of peace hi between the two races for almost three decades. Vod himself was both Man and Giant, and therefore the city’s perfect monarch. He was born as a Giant, grew into a sorcerer, and became a man to marry a human girl. He slew Omagh the Serpent-Father and rebuilt the fallen city of Giant-kind. Now, twenty-five years after he forged a path through the mountains and began the reconstruction of New Udurum, his children were grown and he felt the call of an old curse. This was the source of his madness.

The children of King Vod and Queen Shaira were neither Giant nor human, but a new breed all their own. His first son Fangodrel was pale of skin, with sable hair and the anguished soul of a poet. These were altogether human qualities. His second and third sons likewise stood no taller than average Men, but they carried the strength of Giants in their modest frames, and their skins were the color of tempered bronze. These were Tadarus and Vireon, whom many called his “true sons.” His daughter, youngest of the brood, was named Sharadza. She took after Queen Shaira, almost a mirror image of her mother, yet in her fifteenth year was already as tall as her brothers.

When Vod began ignoring his royal duties, his court began to grumble. Both Men and Giants feared his dissolution as an effective monarch. His uncle, the Giant called Fangodrim the Gray, tried to quell the fears of the court as best he could. But even he knew that Vod’s rule sat in peril.

When the chill of early fall began to invade the warmth of late summer, Vod called for his children. “Bring them all before me,” he told Fangodrim. A cadre of servants ran along the gigantic corridors of the palace in search of Vod’s offspring.

Sharadza sat beneath the spreading arms of a great oak, listening to the Storyteller. The leaves had turned from green to orange and red; the rest of the courtyard’s lush foliage was following suit. All the colors of the rainbow revealed themselves in this miniature version of the deep forest beyond the city walls. She was not permitted to exit the gates of New Udurum, not without the escort of her father, and he had not taken her into the forest since last season. Here, beneath trees grown safely within the palace grounds, she got a taste of those wild autumn colors, but in her heart she longed to walk among the colossal Uyga trees once again. The sun shone brightly through the turning leaves, but had lost its heat. The faintest breath of winter blew on the wind today. She sat on a stone bench as the old man finished his tale.

“So the God of the Sky had no choice but to recognize the Sea God as his equal. But still sometimes the Sky and Sea fight one another, and these battles Men call hurricanes. Doomed is the ship that ventures across the waves while these two deities are in dispute.” The old man turned his head to better meet the eyes of the Princess. “Are you troubled, Majesty?” he asked.

Sharadza had been distracted by the varicolored leaves blown upon the wind. Beyond the tops of the palace walls, gray clouds poured across the sky. Soon the season of storms would be upon them, and then the crystal purity of winter. She did not mind that chilliest of seasons, but fall was her favorite. Each tree seemed hung with fabulous jewels. She smiled at the old man. It really was not fair to invite him here and pay less than full attention to his stories.

“Forgive me, Fellow,” she said. “I am somewhat distracted these days.”

The old man smiled. He ran a hand through his short white beard and nodded. “You are growing up,” he sighed. “Mayhap you do not care for my stories any longer.”

“No, don’t think that,” she said, taking his wrinkled hand in hers. “I treasure your visits, I really do. You know so many tales that I could never find in the library.”

Old Fellow grinned. “Would you have another?” he asked.

Sharadza rose and walked about the oak tree, trailing her fingers along its rough bark. “Tell me what you know of my father,” she said. “Tell me about Old Udurum. Before I was born.”

“Ah,” said the Storyteller. “You had better ask the King for stories of his youth. He would tell them better than I.”

“But you know he won’t talk to me,” she said, blinking her green eyes at him. “I hardly see him… He’s always in a meeting, or in council, or off brooding in the forest with his Giant cousins. He forgets I even exist.”

“Nonsense, Majesty,” said Fellow, rising from his stone seat. His back was slightly bent, and he supported himself with a tall, roughly carved cane. His robes were a patchwork of motley, as if he wore all the shades of the fall leaves, a myriad of colors spread across the fabric of his flowing raiment. Yet Fellow wore such colors all year round. He had very little taste when it came to matters of style. She had given him gifts of silken tunics, delicate scarves woven in Shar Dni, and other garments worthy of a nobleman’s closet, but he refused to wear any of them. He would, however, accept whatever jewels or coins she managed to wheedle from her parents. Even Storytellers had to eat, and Fellow was little more than a vagabond. Yet he was so much more.

“Your father cherishes you, as does your kind mother,” said Fellow in the tone of an encouraging schoolmaster, which he was not. Sharadza’s tutors were never so informal with her, nor did she relish spending time with them the way she savored her every rendezvous with the Storyteller. He wandered the streets of the city between visits, telling his stories on street corners and in wine shops, earning his daily bread by weaving tales for the weary Men and Giants of Udurum.

“What do you know of him?” she asked, challenging Fellow to spill any secrets he might possess.

The old man licked his dry lips. “I know that he built New Udurum on the ruins of the old city, after the Lord of Serpents destroyed it.”

“Everyone knows that.”

“Yes, but did you know the young Vod was born a Giant but was raised by human parents?”

Sharadza nodded, sitting back down on the cold bench. Thunder rolled low in the distance, like the pounding of great breakers at the edge of a distant sea. She had heard rumors of her father’s human parents, but he never spoke of them to her.

“Oh, they did not know he was a Giant at first, just a very large baby,” said the Storyteller. “But they soon found out when he grew too fast.” His voice sank to a whisper. “They say his human father abandoned him, but his moarn, but hther never did. She died not long after the building of the new city.”

“She would have been my grandmother,” said Sharadza.

“Not entirely,” said Fellow, “for she was never related to your father by blood.”