The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 13a - The High Prince and the Hostess

...The Blood of the Phyros made men immortal, but it also made them wild... Many immortals slew friends or lovers in rages, later to take their own lives in grief and madness. Others embraced the rage, and when all lovers and friends had fled or perished, lived only for battle and rapine.... It was the excesses of these monsters that ultimately led to the Cleansing....

— From Arkendia's Iron Age, by Timus of Prand    

Chapter Thirteen

Mother Ganner followed two purple-liveried servants through the north wing of her lodge for an audience with the newly-arrived prince. Krato's Moon must've come early for a prince to stay in Gallows Ferry. He'd taken over the north wing with his army of servants. Yet his people were civil, paying twice the fee for his rooms and twice again to the lodgers he expelled. In the few hours since his arrival, his servants had transformed the place under a multitude of carpets and tapestries and scented candelabra so that she hardly recognized it. Even the door at which she waited to be announced had been nailed over with cloth of gold, as if no surface should meet his royal gaze unless it be a comfort to the eye.

Two stolid guards waited on her in the dimness of the foyer. Her chins quivered with fear, which made her curse herself for a fool. She hadn't forgotten the pain of Bannus's blow, and the likelihood he'd kill her if he saw her again. But it was her own house, wasn't it? No matter if it were a prince beyond that door, she was queen here.

"His Highness will see you," a guard said.

The words stole her breath like a plunge in cold water. She followed the guard into what had been a bunkhouse, but now was transformed with resplendent furniture and wine-purple tapestries into a lush parlor. The air was heavy with sweet, soothing scents. Light-headedness came and went, and things around her took on a strangely sparkling clarity. She feared for a moment she might be fainting.

Another guard led her through a wall of hangings to a brightly lit alcove where she found the prince upon a carven audience chair. A candelabrum stood on a gold-leaf table behind him, beside a glittering crystal liquor service.

At first he seemed no man at all, but a god—some separate race as far above men as mountains above mounds—for he wore naught but gold and violet, and his skin seemed flushed with lavender as though his blood were truly the purple of the gods. Yet his stature was not great. She surely out-weighed him. Nor was he tall or physically powerful; rather he was thin, almost waif-like in face and body, with fragile features and exceedingly fine white hair that fell straight to his shoulders.

The power of his presence came instead from a sense of calm which suffused the space around him like a perfume in a pleasant room. The calm violet eyes especially drew her. They did not judge her, nor prejudge anything, it seemed, but rather beheld each thing anew, seeing past the temporary to the eternal. He seemed to her somehow outside of time as she knew it, and things moved more slowly, and calmly, where he was. It calmed her nerves simply being near him — so much, she noticed, that her trembling ceased altogether.

She bowed low. "Your Majesty, I'm sorry to bother you, but it ain't for me I come."

"Yet it seems you have some cause, for your cheek is injured," he replied, his voice as calm as his eyes.

She stared at the golden carpet at his feet, unable to look up. Words tumbled from her lips as if he'd uncorked her heart with those eyes. "There's a girl here works for me, Highness. She disappeared since you arrived, and I'm powerful worried for her. I don't ask for much, but if Your Majesty could see to sending her back to me I'd be obliged and your humble servant."

"Send her back? Good lady, do you believe I or my servants have delayed her?"

She glanced up, uncertain whether he took offense at her assumptions. She wrung her big hands before her, then hid them behind for they seemed suddenly ugly and profane in his presence. "I know you arrived before Sir Bannus did, but I guess he must be with you, Majesty, and — he...."