Leslie Moore - Griffin's Daughter

“ Aye, Lord Magnes, I will!” Dari tugged on the horse’s bridle, clicking his tongue to encourage the animal to follow him to the stables. Magnes smiled as he watched the boy walk away with the horse ambling along in tow. He had always liked Dari, a good boy and a hard worker. He seemed to have a special way with horses, an instinct almost. It allowed him to get beneath the skin of his charges, to inhabit their minds, to think like they did. Magnes had no doubt that someday Dari would be Amsara’s Horsemaster.

Magnes Preseren was not an overly ambitious man. By accident of birth, he was the Heir to one of the richest duchies in the Empire, but he cared nothing about his position. Magnes’s true passions were twofold. He loved the very land itself, with a deep, emotional connection few others understood.

He also loved Livie, the raven-haired daughter of Amsara’s chief game warden-a respectable girl from a respectable family. She and Magnes had loved each other since they had first met as children. Whenever the warden came up to the castle, Livie would accompany him, and she and Magnes would quickly steal away and lose themselves in adventure. Eventually, she started coming to the castle on her own, to work in the kitchens until she reached the age where she could apprentice at her mother’s trade. As a young boy not yet burdened with the social restrictions of his station, Magnes could befriend a common girl, and no one would disapprove.

As the years passed, their innocent affections gradually transformed into adult passion with the maturing of their bodies and emotions. But with maturity had come the painful realization that their love could never be openly acknowledged, at least not without devastating consequences. Livie’s family might be respectable, but as the daughter of a commoner and servant, she would never be a suitable marriage prospect for Duke Teodorus’s Heir.

Unable to be together openly, they had carried on their love affair in secret, but the fear of a pregnancy had put a stop to any physical intimacy. Now, with Livie’s eighteenth birthday rapidly approaching, her father would be looking to find her a husband. Magnes felt unsure how he would cope with seeing her wed to another man, but what choice did he have? The grief of their predicament had been keeping him awake at night, tossing and turning with worry.

Magnes shivered with the memory of their most recent time together. They had been unable to control themselves and had made love, filled with all of the desperate passion of doomed lovers. He sighed, and with great effort, pushed the memory aside. Any decisions about his situation with Livie would have to wait for now. He had duchy business to attend to, and his father was expecting him.

Magnes left the stables and made his way across the yard towards the keep. All around him, the hustle and bustle of festival preparations proceeded at a frenetic pace. He had to weave his way through rows of trestle tables and dodge scurrying servants, their arms laden with baskets of linens, crockery, and tableware. His spirits, brought low by the impossibility of his situation with Livie, were soon lifted as the cheerful hubbub of the yard re-instilled within him the happiness of the season.

Anyone who didn’t know him by sight might easily mistake Magnes for a farmer. He usually dressed simply in a linen or cotton tunic, leather jerkin, breeches, and sturdy leather boots. This morning was no exception, for he had spent it, like he spent most mornings, riding over his father’s vast estate, overseeing the duke’s agricultural interests. He had been competently performing these duties since coming of age at fifteen. Gifted with an instinctive understanding of how the land, weather, and the turning of the seasons worked to produce the bounty upon which all of Amsara depended, Magnes desired very little else out of life.

Unfortunately, Fate and the gods had decreed that he be born a duke’s eldest child, and with that station came a birthright that he could not escape, no matter how much he might wish otherwise. So, in exchange for allowing him to run Amsara’s agricultural operations, the duke had insisted that Magnes train at arms and study the classic subjects usually included in a young nobleman’s education so that he would be prepared to take over as duke upon his father’s death.

Each time Magnes scooped up a hand-full of rich, black Amsaran soil and inhaled its heady aroma, redolent of the promise of growth, he imagined life as just a common-born man, free to marry the girl he loved.

The keep felt like an oasis of calm after the controlled chaos of the yard. A fire burned in the large hearth, for despite the growing warmth of the day, the stones of the keep’s thick walls still retained their nighttime chill. Old Ghost lay sprawled on the stones before the fire, snoring loudly. Magnes took the stairs two at a time up to the second floor where his father’s study was located. As he approached, he could see that the door stood partially open. The sound of voices, raised in anger, drifted through. Cautiously, he entered.

Magnes’s sister Thessalina was as unlike in physical appearance to their father as Magnes himself was akin. Whereas he shared their father’s same stocky build, square face, and curling brown hair, Thessalina was their deceased mother reborn. She stood a good two inches taller than both her kinsmen, with mahogany hair that hung in thick, lustrous waves to her waist, and a slender body honed to the peak of fitness by years of arms training.

Right now, she and Duke Teodorus were squared off in a shouting match, nose to nose. Thessalina appeared to be winning, for the duke threw up his hands in exasperation and turned away.

“ Uh…Is it safe to come in?” Magnes asked, a tentative smile playing across his lips. Both combatants turned as one to face him.

The duke irritably waved his arm. “Yes, yes, come in, son. Your sister and I were just having a small disagreement, that’s all.” Duke Teodorus turned hard eyes upon his daughter.

“ A small disagreement? Father! I would hardly call…”

“ Thessalina, please! We will discuss this later!”

“ I could come back in a little while, Father,” Magnes offered.

“ No, of course not. You have my morning report, and I want to hear it now.” The duke glared pointedly at the seething Thessalina, who narrowed her eyes and set her mouth in a hard line but kept it shut. The duke returned to his desk chair and sat. “Look at this mess,” he muttered, peering down at the ink splattered carpet. “I paid a lot of money for that carpet. Hmmm. Well. Talk to me, son.”

“ The orchards are in full flower, including all of the new apple trees we planted. We should have a record harvest this year, if all goes well.”

“ That was a smart move, increasing the number of trees and when the new ones mature, we’ll probably have to expand the mill to keep up.”

“ We should easily double our production over last year with just the old trees alone,” Magnes added, a touch of pride in his voice.

“ We’ll be able to increase our profit without raising our price. Well done, Son,” the duke said, nodding his head in approval. It had been Magnes’s idea to expand the very profitable cider business. Amsara was famed throughout the empire for the exceptional quality of its cider.

“ There’ll be no profits for anyone, ‘cept the arms makers if there’s a war on,” Thessalina interjected. “We should be discussing improvements to the fortifications and how soon we can raise and train our levies. We are a border duchy after all, Father, or have you forgotten?”

The duke shot his daughter a pained look. “There’ll be no war. The elf king has shown no interest in anything outside his borders. It’s been over a hundred years since the Empire and The Western Lands had any hostilities between ‘em, and that was Silverlock’s father started that business. So far, Silverlock himself has been nothing but peaceful, as was his brother before him.”