Sins of the Father - Chapter Three

Aya looked around the room slowly. It was a very simple cabin. There was a small fireplace and a very old couch. To the left there was a small kitchen with nothing more than a counter and a large fire with what looked like a cauldron hanging above it. A tiny table with two chairs rested against the wall and there appeared to be a bedroom to the back. The ceiling was high and the wood, appearing to have once been a mahogony-like grain, now only appeared dirty and slightly rotten. Everything had a greyish tint, and it was very dirty.

“Your house?” she asked, looking back to him. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Where else would you have me take you?” he asked bluntly. “I'm sure the accomodations of the palace are more to your liking, but you are a fugitive, technically speaking.”

The girl looked down. She didn't mean to imply anything by it, she was just wondering why he had bothered with her at all. She stood silently and he looked down at her without speaking. Finally, he broke the silence. “You will sleep in my room.”

She looked up, turning an awful shade of red. “What?”

“I will be returning to my room in the palace. You will remain here,” he began to walk.

She didn't follow. “You're leaving me here alone?”

“Yes.”

“But... I don't know anything about this place. I can't cook with... with this. I can't live by myself here!” she ran after him. He turned and gave her a look of intense pity, not sympathy, but outright pity. She was pitiful and that was sad. “Please... I have to get home... please take me home.” Her narrow shoulders began to shake and she started to cry, a very soft and lonely sound. She stood there, a few feet from him, looking incredibly tiny in comparison, and she cried.

Servantus frowned and crossed his arms. “Pathetic,” he told her. “What kind of world is it that you come from where you can't even cook a meal?”

“I can cook,” she managed through soft sobs. “Just not here... not without help... don't leave me here.” She was scared. She was scared and she was God only knew how many miles from home. She didn't know a soul, save for the frightening prince and this strange man, and she had never felt so helpless and alone in her entire life. Strange as he was, Servantus was the only person she knew, and she wanted him to help her. It was understandable. The priest made a strange sound of annoyance and then sighed, resigning. This stupid girl... she was a burden, but he couldn't leave her alone. She was confused. She needed explanation, company, something to keep her from going insane.

“I will stay here tonight,” he finally conceded, brow wrinkling in something akin to pain. Why he had agreed he did not know, but he was regretting it already. She turned her large blue eyes upward as if you ask if it was true. He began to walk toward the bedroom again and she followed.

“Is this really your house?” she fiddled with the drawstring of her still-wet pajama pants. “It doesn't seem very... you.”

“How do you know what me is?” he asked her, checking the low, rather sorry looking bed for creatures. “You met me less than twenty degrees ago.”

“I don't know,” the girl glanced up. “You seem... more elegant. I picture lumberjacks and farmers in places like this, not somebody like you. You seem... royal.”

He avoided her gaze and continued to arrange the bed as he considered. She was right, of course, this was not his house. It had belonged to a friend who had died. “It is not my house,” Servantus agreed, straightening and moving for the door. “It belonged to a friend.”

“Belonged?” she inquired about the tense. Why not anymore?

“He no longer lives here,” he said simply, exiting the room.

Aya followed, her bare feet making an ugly sound on the dusty wooden floors. “Where are you going? Where are you going to sleep?”

“I am going to attend to some business. I will not be sleeping.”

“You said you would stay...”

“I will stay. I will be by the fire,” he continued to walk and she ceased her pursuit, returning slowly to the bedroom. It was the middle of the night. Actually, it was closer to morning than night at that point, so it really was useless to sleep. She laid down on the hard bed. The matress seemed to be made of straw. It was not very comfortable, but it was kind of him to allow her to have it for the night. She figured that by tomorrow he would want her gone, but she would try to rest well before then, difficult as it was.

Thoughts raced through her head at a mile a minute. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore them, but the events of the night replayed through her head continuously. The ring had done this. She looked down at her hand. Somehow it had made its way onto her finger without her noticing. She tried to pull it off to examine it, but it burned to touch, oddly, so she let it be and simply stared. It was completely ordinary. Beautiful, but nothing that would appear magical or strange. It was a ring. She hoped that when she woke up in the morning, she would be in her bed at home, and this would all be just a very strange nightmare.

Aya opened her eyes, looking around the room slowly. It was not her bedroom. She stared at the ceiling for a long time. The same gritty ceiling was above her. The same hard bed beneath her body. No such luck; she was still not at home. She went out into the main room slowly. Her pajamas were mostly dry, but were now rather disgusting. She was sore from the hard bed and tired from sleeping fitfully.

In front of the fire, Servantus wrote rapidly, not with a pen, but with a quill. Had he slept at all? He was, no doubt, awakened by her presence in the dungeon, and still hadn't slept. She watched him, looking closely at his profile. His skin was fair and pink and his eyes were perpetually narrow, though she could tell that if opened fully they would be rather large. His nose arched gracefully with a perfect straight angle bridge to tip, curving gently to his thin lips and strong but pointy chin. His brows rested only a few milimeters above his eyes, lowered and drawn together in concentration. His silver hair fell in a haphazard sort of way out of the loose, low ponytail that it had been gathered into.

“How long do you intend to stare at me?” he asked her, not looking up, not pausing a second in his rapid quilling. She jumped and turned red. She had been staring, but it was hard not to. Something about him enraptured her. She couldn't put her finger on it, but cold though he was, he radiated confidence and power. He wasn't hard on the eyes either.

“Um...” she said intelligently.

“Save yourself the trouble of thinking a reason. I am used to it at this point.”

Well, that was certainly vain of him, she thought, a bit annoyed.

“My education consisted of one teacher breathing down my neck all day and evening,” he added. Aya couldn't tell whether he said it because he knew she'd construed the comment as vain or simply because he felt like expounding. She guessed the latter, because he didn't seem like the type to care what one thought of him (though neither did he seem the type to go into depth about the details of his past).

Finally he looked up and she decided to ask a question. “What time is it?”

“Morning.”

She narrowed her eyes and then reconsidered her annoyance. He did not appear to have a clock. In fact, she hadn't seen a clock anywhere. Perhaps they didn't have clocks and really had such a vague sense of time. Or perhaps he was just too lazy to buy one.

“Where is this? Can you tell me anything more about this place? What about the magic you mentioned? Can you explain some of this to me.”

“You are in Luphoneous, to the west of the Great River and east of the Rashien Mountains. Our closest neighbor is Phaunelia, a country with whom we are at war. Kuron suspected you of being a spy for them. It would not be the first time a spy has entered the capital, so the suspicion is not ungrounded. However, anybody can see by looking at you that you are no spy. You're far too frail to undergo their training.”

“Why are you at war?” she asked.

“That is a long and complicated story,” he said curtly. “It is not of importance to you.”

“Tell me about the magic. I want to know everything.”

“Another complicated topic,” he sighed, but knew he would have to explain eventually. “Magic is a large part of the economy here. Most people are magical to some extent. The nobles generally have greater capacity for magic, though some peasants are unusually powerful and gain positions of power because of it. Magic is used for defense, for combat or healing, for divination and even for technology. There are different branches of magic and most people are born with a specific area to which they are suited, and the lower the class of the person, the less powerful and less specialized their magical power is. My particular area is divination, but I have had enough education and am powerful enough that I can apply my power to other areas, mainly defense and healing.”

“I'm assuming you're a noble, then? What's the difference?”

“No, I am not. I am a peasant by birth,” he stated and quickly moved on. “Nobles are those born of a few particular houses. They intermarry and keep their circle very exclusive, breeding power into their genetics through generations of selectiveness. The best mate the best and bring forth the best offspring. The nobles are generally associated with the politics of the royal family. Most of them are advisors or priests.

“Peasants are usually of lower power, but as I said before. They are usually lower workers. Some are laborers or farmers, but most are merchants. The people here are lighter and not as physically formidable as the people of Phaunelia, therefore they rely on magic and trade, though they are generally neither as powerful or as intelligent as the nobles.”

“You're a peasant?” she asked. “But...”

“I do not know the circumstances of my birth,” he interupted. “It is pointless to ask. All I know is that I was raised by the former High Priest and Priestess to follow in their footsteps because I was found to be unusually powerful, even for a noble.”

She noticed him smirk a little at the statement.

“Why are you and the prince so mean to eachother? Do you hate him?”

“He is pompous and takes pride in the fact that his position is higher than mine, despite the fact that he did nothing to earn it. He is a pathetic sorcerer and deals only in questionable branches of dark magic.”

“I see.” Aya mulled the information over in her head.

“Tell me how you got here,” he spoke first, for once. She blinked at him and he repeated. “What were you doing when you were taken? Was there anything unusual occuring?”

“It was my birthday,” she said. “I was lying down for bed, and one of my presents started glowing... the light covered me and then I ended up where those guys found me.”

“What present? What was it?” he asked, interested. He was assuming that she was from a distant place. For something to have taken her from there to Luphoneous, it would have to be incredibly powerful magically, and from her attitude, it seemed that such a thing did not exist on her world. That would mean that it had to be an artifact from elsewhere.

“This,” she held up the ring on her little finger. It was a tiny ring, even for someone with hands as small as hers. Servantus examined the thing at a distance at first, and then seized her hand and looked more closely. Something was written inside it, but he couldn't tell what it was. It appeared to be a rune or symbol of some sort. He tried to take it off, but a jolt shot through his hand and hers and they both recoiled quickly.

“Take it off, I need to see it more closely,” he ordered.

“I would love to, but I can't. It burns me whenever I try,” she rubbed her hand. She could touch the ring as long as it remained on her finger. She looked at the little stone and gasped in surprise. “There's something in here!”

“I know,” he said coldly. “Hence why I need to see it more closely.”

“I can make it out,” she said. “But it's not a character I've seen before... it's not Chinese and it's most certainly not English, but it's just one character or letter. Do you have a pencil, I can draw it for you?”

He assumed she meant a writing instrument and nodded, handing her a quill. Aya looked at it, shifting it so the light from the sun hit it clearly. Suddenly the gem glowed brilliant red and inside, the symbol that was faint turned a brilliant gold. She made a sound of surprise, but quickly drew out the character on the parchment before her.

“That's different,” she said, staring at the item. It had been perfectly clear blue before, and suddenly flared red. She shifted it out of the sunlight and the glow disappeared. Servantus picked the the parchment and looked at the symbol.

“Can you read it? Is this your language?”

“It is an ancient language, dead for thousands of years. Only scholars and priests know it...” he seemed to be unnerved. He grabbed her hand and held the jewel in the light, examining the character for himself. He didn't trust her interpretation of the strokes. “It is a word that means beginning and end, and...”

“And?” she asked, riveted.

“It is in my handwriting.”