Her name was Itchy Witchy, and her arse was always twitchy,
but her tits made the sailors forget to care.
The first mate tried to fit her, but her bush was full of critters,
and the captain made him cut off all his hair.
Vanx opened his eyes back in his mother’s humble abode. It was just like it had been when he was a boy. As he rose from his padded floor mat and yawned, she turned and smiled that wonderful smile and her golden eyes lit into sparkling jewels. That smile was love incarnate and he hoped it would always be with him.
In the back of his mind he knew he was either hallucinating or dreaming because his mother had died a dozen years past. Vanx forced that thought away, though, and decided to revel in the warmth of his vision.
On bare feet he ran to her. When his arms wrapped around her waist and he had to look up to see her loving face, he realized he was in his boyhood form.
The comfort and familiarity of the vision shifted and he was skipping along the flower-lined path to Master De Xava’s grove, which was in a copse of ancient iron oaks near the river. Vanx had part of a cheese wheel, some fresh-baked bread, some dried venison, and some green apples in a sack thrown over his shoulder. His mother always packed enough for both him and the lesson master.
The feeling was carefree and intensely joyful, as if the whole world would eventually bend to his will. Just before he entered the copse, a pair of young Zyths a few years older than Vanx stepped out of the afternoon shadows and surprised him. Before Vanx could catch the breath they scared out of his lungs, they started pelting him with rocks and insults. Fists and booted feet soon followed.
“You’re not Zythian,” one of them barked as they sat on Vanx’s chest. “You’ve dirty hair and green eyes. You’re one of them.”
“He’s a mud-bug’s shit pile, is what he is,” the other boy said. “And his mother is just a man-loving whore.”
“Tainted boy.”
“Half-born.”
“Stupid half-human.” And so it went for a good long while.
Vanx remembered hitting up into the jaw of the bronze-haired, yellow-eyed boy on top of him. He’d struck with all he had. He remembered feeling a hard-toed boot hit him in the temple and the explosion of light and pain that it caused. Then there was the horrendous beating that followed. He also remembered that the idea the two boys were right, that he wasn’t like any of the other children on the island, so distracted him that he hadn’t even cried.
Master De Xava carried him back to his glade and boiled up a brew of thatchle root, lichen extract, and cherry bark.
“It is the custom that you decide the punishment of your assaulters,” the thin, silver-haired teacher told him as Vanx sipped the pain-relieving tea.
“What would you have done to Zeezle and Dorlan Croyle for attacking you unprovoked?”
“But they’re right, Master,” Vanx said through swollen lips. “I’m not like them-or you. I’m not a Zythian.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” the old amber-eyed scholar asked. “The blood of Zyth and man do not mix well. Nearly all children of that sort of union die at birth, or shortly after. As far as I know, Vanx, you are the only one of your kind.” Master De Xava smiled kindly. “I’d say that makes you especially extraordinary.”
“I don’t want to have them punished for what they did, Master Xava,” Vanx said with a shrug. “I’d rather have the chance to face them one at a time on the practice yard. Or better yet at the center ring, at the Fairy Fest, before the council of Elders and all the clans.”
“What if one of them beats you? They are both bigger and older than you.”
“Then they will be shamed all the more for having both jumped me in the forest.”
The old man’s laughter was cut off a few moments later when Vanx continued. “…But neither will win, Master. Dorlan called my mother a whore. His insult will be returned tenfold. You can wager on it.”
The scene shifted a little bit. They were in the same forest glade, only it was many years later. Zeezle’s expression was hollow. There was none of the mirth in his eyes that Vanx had come to associate with his close friend. All that could be found in Zeezle’s dim amber orbs were tears of anguish. Dorlan, Zeezle’s brother, was dead. Killed when the notorious young dragon attacked the herd of big-horned billies that Dorlan was shepherding. Vanx knew that it would be a few more years before Zeezle found the portions of life’s joy that were charred away on Dorlan’s pyre. Zeezle’s passion, though, the grim subject of his work, and the focus of most of his attention, had been determined that day.
Suddenly Vanx was at a cozy candlelit table and Duchess Gallarain was purring in his ear. She licked his cheek with a huge, sandy tongue, and Vanx rolled awake instantly.
The young haulkatten was hovering over him and purring loudly. Around him, the horrific sounds of the injured men, and others shouting and bustling, came to his ears.
“You’re alive then?” Darbon asked with relief showing in his voice. He and Matty were crouched down near where Vanx was lying in the grass.
“He’s too pretty to die,” Matty said.
Darbon smirked at her but grinned when Matty looked at Vanx.
“What happened?” Vanx managed. “Where are Trevin and Gallarael?”
“They’re on their way to Dyntalla with half of the Crown Prince’s escort, no less,” Matty snorted.
Vanx tried to sit up, but instantly regretted the attempt. His head swam and his stomach clenched into a tight knot. A hot, pulsing throb began hammering at his temple in double taps. “Where are we?” he asked weakly.
“Shhh.” Matty patted his chest. “Lie still. The goose egg on the side of your head is as big as my nub.”
Darbon offered him a waterskin. “We’re out among the crows and corpses, waiting.” Darbon’s tone showed that he wasn’t pleased about it.
Vanx took a sip and was happy that it was wine he tasted. “Waiting for what?”
“Prince Russet’s return,” Darbon answered. “He and some men have gone off to find those who were following us. We are to all travel to Dyntalla together when they get back. Take it easy, and rest while you can.”
After a few more sips of wine, Vanx fell back into his half-conscious daze. He drifted off, contemplating the fact that the wild-haired warrior was the Crown Prince. He’d pictured the Prince of the Realm as being like the pompous young noble-boys he’d come across in the past. Prince Russet, though, was as bold and dangerous as they come. He dreamt this time of the night the duke’s men had hauled him out of the Golden Griffon’s common room and put him in chains.
He’d been playing the instrumental portion of “The Ballad of Lady Zepple”. He was lost in the pain-filled melody of the diminished chords and was about to start into the final verse. The room was crowded, and thick with pipe smoke, but the smell of roast boar and spilled ale dominated the senses. It was a scent that lingered in his nostrils long into his incarceration in Highlake Stronghold’s dungeon.
Most of the people in the dimly lit common room were dreamy-eyed, or lost in the melody behind closed lids. Only the barkeep, Vargoron, and his humongously fat wife weren’t enthralled by the tune. Vargoron was filling a trio of mugs held in one expert hand, while the slab of fat hanging below his wife’s upper arm swung back and forth as she wiped up a spill further down the bar. A pair of dwarves, ore seekers from the far eastern land of Karr, were swaying and sloshing in time. They’d been rude and unruly at first, but after Vanx played a few of the ditties he knew from their homeland they became enraptured in the music with everyone else.
Vargoron’s eyes darted nervously to the door, then to Vanx. Vanx had known what was happening. He could have bolted up the stairs and leapt out of a window. Twice before he’d used that sort of escape. Both times had been on Parydon Isle where the wives of the wealthy merchants offered him gold and jewels to share his bed. There, there were always so many people about that it was easy to fade into a crowd. It wasn’t the lack of people in the street that kept him on the dais, though.
It was the song.
To stop such a powerful thing in order to flee seemed unholy. As much as his instinct told him to, Vanx couldn’t just run away.
A half-dozen of them came through the front. By the way Varogon’s eyes darted back into the kitchen, Vanx knew there were more. He didn’t hurry the song, and before the men reached the raised platform where he sat they paused long enough to listen.
As Vanx finished the tune, the heart-wrenching crescendo had him swaying. He couldn’t help but wonder who would be waiting for Gallarain when she arrived at his room later in the night, for, as the song finished, and the magic of the music was gently broken, he had no doubt that it would not be him.
The duke’s men took away the lute to an eruption of boos. They wasted no time shackling his feet and hauling him bodily to the dungeon. As the heavy iron door clanged shut behind him, he woke again.
Vanx felt a sudden lurching motion and was jostled onto his side. Matty was there, and Darbon too. But something was wrong. They were in the back of a supply wagon and they were all in chains.
A crisp, cold burst of laughter came from somewhere nearby. The voice was unmistakable and it sent icy chills down Vanx’s spine. He fought the wrist manacles and peered up over the side of the wagon to see with his own eyes, hoping desperately that his ears were deceiving him.
“I didn’t have enough reason to take his head off before,” Duke Martin joked with the young Prince of the Realm. “But the mandatory penalty for escaping a sentence of slavery is death.”
“It is,” Russet Oakarm replied. “Yes, it is.”