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“Eldor.”

The heir to the world’s throne did not so much as blink at the utterance of his name. He detested the voice that had spoken it.

“Eldor, you really ought to smile. It’s the turn of the millennium, and we’ve a crowd to please. Come, smile for your people. Smile for your father.”

Eldor did not smile. This king was no father of his.

Xor looked intently at the son who would not meet his gaze. “Would you have me proclaim your glorious voyage, then present the cheering throngs with a pouting prince?”

“I would not go on this voyage.”

“Don’t be difficult.”

“Send my brother. He is the one who wants to lead it, the one who lives to serve the empire. He would do you proud, and he would be proud of himself for the conquest.”

Xor flattened his lower lip into a grimace of distaste, creasing his dark brows. “I have never been proud of Garendor. I have always been proud of you, even when you are pouty and difficult.”

Garendor sat to the left of the king, mayhap out of earshot, mayhap not.

“You have never been fair to him,” Eldor reproached.

Xor ignored the complaint. He did not even look to his left to acknowledge the underling prince. “Look,” he leant closer toward his favored son, sweeping his arm in a gesture from the royal terrace to the multitudes below. “The people of Zoll Zora are all clamoring for their high prince. I will have you go on this voyage, Eldor. I will have you lead this voyage.”

“If anything does lie across the sea, I will not conquer and destroy it.”

“But you will go, at least? You will at least find it, explore it?”

Eldor tensed his jaw. Part of him was dying to go across the sea, if only to be that much farther away from the king and the city of darkness.

“Good,” Xor concluded, well accustomed—as a king—to taking silence as assent. “That is well that you would go across the sea. I would not force you; I love you too much to do that. But if you were to refuse and so displease me, I would of course take it out on your mother.”

The mere mention of his mother, by that vile mouth, evoked in Eldor a rush of vicarious pain. His ebon eyes darted up to the queen at her nearby balcony, as if in hopes that his watchful gaze might be enough to protect her. Their gazes met. Queen Vana braved a smile, as demure and impossibly graceful as ever, reassuring her son that she was well. Beneath the swaths of mauve silk draped across her slender frame, the marks upon her skin attested otherwise.

“She is beautiful, isn’t she. You have her eyes, you know, those eyes like pools of liquid onyx,” Xor remarked, following his son’s worried gaze and smiling at his queen, thereupon causing her own fainthearted smile to disappear. “Just like the day I first laid eyes on her. I have been careful not to lay a hand to that exquisite face. I must say, her wardrobe attendants do quite a fine job of hiding my handiwork everywhere else.”

“I will go,” Eldor declared. “I will go across the sea.”

“Of course you will.”

The king rose from his throne, stepping forward to approach the terrace balustrade, his dark robes trailing behind him like a solid, silken shadow. He raised his arms high, and the shadow of dark silk expanded as if threatening to engulf the world. As he indeed already had.

A reverent hush befell the crowds below.

“My people!” Xor called down to them, lowering his arms once he’d summoned their breathless attention. “Today we celebrate the turn of the millennium, the dawn of a new age. And the discovery of a new world.”

From the crowd there rose a susurrus of whispers.

“It lies across the sea. It has not yet been discovered, but I have every confidence that it awaits us there. The time has finally come for us to venture past these shores, now that the empire is equipped with strong ships and strong leaders. And the one to lead this voyage beyond the sea…”

Xor turned and extended his hand to the high prince, welcoming his son to join him at the forefront of the terrace. Eldor rose and moved forward, though he refused to place his hand in the king’s proffered palm.

With the self-assurance of a king and the tact of a father, Xor instead placed his denied hand firmly against the small of Eldor’s back. “… Your high prince, Eldor.”

The proclamation came as no surprise, but the crowd responded with obligatory applause.

Eldor cut it short with the raising of his own arm, turning as he reached behind him, toward the seat to the left of the king’s empty throne. “Alongside my brother. Garendor, high general of the imperial army, and prince of Zoll Zora.”

The gesture was met with a cold ice-blue stare, expressing deep indignation and ingratitude. Garendor spurned what he took as condescension. Years spent in this man’s tall, dark shadow had bred much resentment in him, and very little sense of brotherhood.

He, too, denied the hand extended to him and instead moved to the opposite side of his father. He acknowledged his own applause with a stunted smile and a slight bow of the head. He knew that the king did not want him at the forefront of the terrace, in a position of applauded honor—but he would much sooner stand beside the father who disfavored him than the brother who tried in vain to make up for it.

“Indeed,” Xor spoke, placing his hands on his two sons’ strong shoulders. “The prince and the general will both speed across the sea and return with news of whole new worlds to conquer.”

There was a feast that night, among the palace lords and highest soldiers. Once he had had his modest fill, and once the king was momentarily distracted, Eldor took up a wedge of bread and slipped away from the table, wending his way to the courtyard. He found his mother there, upon a low stone bench beneath a silvery-barked tree in the middle of the gardens.

She smiled, feebly but brightly, at the sight of her beloved son. “You did not have to come.”

Eldor mirrored the smile, softly on his lips and deeply in his ebon eyes. “I knew I’d find you here, and that you would be hungry.”

She took the bread and thanked him, her smile slightly widening as he sat himself beside her. She had removed her silken sash; the scars and bruises that had been hidden from the noon sun were now bare beneath a more forgiving moon. By its light, her skin took on the pallor of polished marble, and the marks upon it took on muted shades of claret and cerise in the place of daylight’s painfully raw reds and lurid purples. But this new, poetic color scheme did not blind Eldor to the pain these marks had caused her.

“A new wound,” he murmured, noting a deep gash down the length of her upper arm, crossing nearly from her shoulder to her elbow.

“It’s not so terrible as it looks,” she insisted, lowering her liquid eyes. “It’s been a couple of days, and it’s already healing well.”

“And once it heals, there will be new ones. Always new ones,” Eldor foretold, his square jaw firmly tensed at the sickening thought. “Why does he do this to you?”

She looked upon her eldest son, into his dark, earnest eyes overflowing with love and shared pain. “You always ask me that.”

“And you never answer,” he replied, taking the sash at her side and dousing a swatch of it with some water from his flask. He tenderly pressed the cool, damp cloth against her injured arm. “But I know there is no answer. Nothing could justify this.”

“A king does not need to be just. He makes his own justice, and he carries it out with a cruel hand and a cold-blooded heart.”

“That monster has no heart.”

Vana pursed her lips awhile as she watched him tend her wound, then parted them reluctantly to murmur wistful words. “He does. He was a good man, once.”

Eldor kept his gaze fixed on the gash, tending it gently, steadily. “Even if I could believe that, I know that he could never be good again. Not after all that he has done to you.”

“Many things can change a man.”

“But can so many things redeem him?”

The battered queen sighed, not quite able to answer.

Her son kept to the wound. “How, through all of this, can you have sympathy for him?”

“Everyone deserves our sympathy,” she replied. “People like him most of all.”

Eldor upraised his eyes now and considered his mother: her aura of strength and frailty, her skin of beaten ivory, her black eyes that bespoke a world of painful wisdom and wizening pain. The years had brought faint streaks of silver to her sable hair, but little else betrayed her age. She was still the most beautiful woman in all of Zoll Zora, as he knew she’d been rumored to be long before he was born. That had not changed. The cruel king’s beastly efforts to mar that beauty had instead, it seemed, intensified and deepened it.

Eldor nodded toward the bread that lay untouched, still, at her side. She smiled, and he watched her as she ate it, slowly and noiselessly, with all the delicate grace of a queen and none of the self-pitying hunger of an abused wife.

“If only it were the queen who ruled the empire, and could bend the despicable king to her will,” he lamented. “The whole world would be so much better off for it.”

Vana laughed, a laugh that echoed in the leaves and contradicted the entire sad, dark world. “Soon, Eldor,” she spoke, laying her hand against his cheek, the residue of her laughter playing about her pretty lips in the form of a promising smile. “The world will be in very good hands.”

For once this night, he could not meet her loving gaze. He did not want the throne; the throne of an empire that had plunged the world into such darkness, such pervasive, powerful darkness, that he was not sure if any future king could pull the world back out of it.

“You must remember that, Eldor,” she urged him, reading her son’s mind like an open tome. “My beloved son. The empire will be yours one day. I am sure that something beautiful lies across the sea. No matter what your father decrees in his time, when all is said and done, the future of that beautiful place will lie in your hands.”

He brought himself to meet her gaze, at that.

She took his hands in hers and clasped them tightly, enlacing her lissome fingers over his. “These strong, noble hands. These hands could do a world of good.”

He looked down at their entwined hands, then up again into her eyes. “Even amidst a world of darkness?”

Vana beamed, letting go of his hands and leaning in to kiss his forehead. “Especially.”

He walked with her back to her chambers, and bid her goodnight.

Eldor did not want to go back to the feast; and so he did not. He instead left the palace and wound his way through the tenebrous streets of Zoll Zora, determined to save an innocent young girl or two from being raped by the king’s most lecherous soldiers. That was how he spent most of his evenings. On any given night in the city of darkness, there was no shortage of rapes to be prevented. Rape was, after all, not a crime. Murder was outlawed to preserve the general order. But nothing about rape disrupted the general order of things in Zoll Zora.

For several years now, Eldor had been battling evil on the streets in this way, as he could not yet outlaw it from the throne. Ever since he had come of an age to recognize how deeply his own principles differed from those of his king, he had done everything that he could to uphold them. It was not much, but he knew that it was much better than nothing.

Xor knew of it, by now. It was no secret that the high prince was a silly, self-righteous savior of the weak. Xor knew it, and permitted it, convinced that it was just a brief post-adolescent phase.

That was what baffled Olbe Morowyn.

Closest to the king of all the palace lords, his most trusted advisor and friend, Olbe had a designated seat beside the king at the head of the table. On certain occasions, Xor would invite his beloved firstborn to take that seat instead. This irked Olbe considerably. But it did not matter much, for Eldor always declined that seat of honor. And in any event, at the moment, Eldor was not here.

“Where has Eldor gone?” Olbe asked his king.

“Gone to prepare, I presume. Tomorrow is a most momentous day for him.”

“And for Garendor.”

Xor’s mouth twitched. “The boy is callow and stupid. He is constantly seething with envy and rage, and it does not become him. Look at him; he is even angry with his bread.”

Seated nearby at the table, Garendor was currently wrestling with the heel of a particularly tough and crusty loaf.

“Perhaps, my king, there is a reason for his rage,” Olbe suggested.

“I don’t think that loaf ever did him wrong.”

Olbe looked in earnest at his king. “I would urge you to be mindful of him. For appearances’ sake, if nothing else. The way you disregard him, we would not want the kingdom to suspect that he is not your…”

“More wine,” Xor interposed, lifting his goblet to the waiting slave behind him.

“…for that would be a shameful thing.”

“The boy is a shameful thing.”

Olbe’s oaken eyes darkened. “Garendor is a great warrior and a devoted servant of the empire, my king. His rage is what makes him a bold, fearsome fighter, and his loyalty is even fiercer than his anger. I must say that, at times… I see a much stronger king in him than in his brother.”

Xor’s lip lifted into a smug, silent snigger. “Eldor is fit to lead an empire. Garendor is fit to lead an army of brainless, brutish soldiers into battle.”

“You are quite hard on him, my king.”

“And what of it?”

“Truth be told, I sympathize with him.”

“Sympathy, Olbe, makes men weak. And weakness is despicable,” the king now advised his advisor. “See that you never breathe that word to me again.”

Garendor had meanwhile given up on the unyielding bread and left the table.

He moved with deliberate haste into the bowels of the palace, till he came upon the chambers of the lowest palace lords. He reached the door that he’d been seeking, and rapped upon it thrice, quite loudly in case the room’s tenant was sleeping.

He waited. No one came to the door for some time. He furiously pounded on it twice again. Ghergol was an old man, and quite a heavy sleeper, but surely he understood that this was a most momentous night. Surely he should have known better than to fall asleep before Garendor could have the chance to speak with him, on the eve of the greatest and farthest voyage on which any prince of the empire had ever been sent.

He waited several moments longer. Then, with half a mind to kick the heavy door in—knowing he was more than capable—he instead turned angrily upon his heel to leave.

“Garendor.”

Ghergol had rounded a corner and was approaching from the other side.

“There you are!” Garendor exclaimed, a broad grin spanning his face as he took the aged man by his shoulders. “I had hoped to speak with you, before I leave tomorrow.”

“Of course. Come,” Ghergol replied calmly, removing a small brazen key from his robes and opening the door to his humble chambers. He moved immediately to the far end of the room to fetch a flagon of wine and two earthen tumblers, his snowy beard sweeping the low oaken table as he went to pour the drinks.

“I’ve had enough to drink tonight,” Garendor demurred.

“No,” Ghergol protested, shoving the cup right up beneath the young man’s nose. “You’ve not. This is a night to celebrate unlike any other.”

Garendor acquiesced, and ended up draining his drink more quickly than his host did.

“Tomorrow, you embark upon the most momentous voyage of your life,” Ghergol announced. “The most momentous voyage in the history of the empire, no less.”

“I am excited,” Garendor breathed, his febrile eyes evincing it.

“As you should be. But in this excitement, I trust that you would not forget your ambitions.”

“I could not forget them. I was born with them, and I will take them to my grave.”

“You will not take them to your grave,” Ghergol objected. “Because, my dear boy, by that time you will have achieved them.”

Garendor’s teeth flashed in a smile of promised triumph.

They spoke for hours of his ambitions, of their shared visions of triumph and glory.

“And so, my good boy,” Ghergol spoke once they had between them downed the whole flagon of wine, and sat across from one another, empty cups in hand, eyes all aglow with excitement, “you will outshine your brother. You will prove strong even when he is soft—and believe me, that pathetic excuse for a prince grows weaker and softer every day. But you will be strong, and hard, and ruthless. The men will love you for it; they will see that you are the more faithful servant of the empire, the better warrior, the stronger future king.”

Garendor nodded, but an unspoken question hung yet in the air.

Ghergol sensed and addressed it. “And your father, as well,” he shortly added. “He will eventually come to his senses and see you for the better son you are. And he will reward you for it, with the kingship that should rightfully be yours. Do not worry over it. He is blindly attached to his firstborn, but that is a common syndrome in kings, and in fathers. He hopes to adhere to the tradition of the empire, and Eldor is the one tradition dictates he should name his heir.”

“Of course,” Garendor granted, audibly and visibly unconvinced.

“But tradition only goes so far. And besides,” Ghergol continued, “that high palace lord, Olbe Morowyn—I know that you have his support.”

“The support of that old man means nothing to me.”

Ghergol raised his bristly brows at that. “Am I not such a man?”

Garendor pursed his lips into a wan smile, faintly bowing his head in concession.

The old man smiled in turn, a smile that somehow bespoke a vigorous confidence well below his age. “In any event,” he uttered at length, “Lord Morowyn has your father’s ear, more so than anyone else in the city. That is worth something, I am sure.”

A pause ensued, after which Ghergol rose from his seat.

“Now go,” he bade Garendor as he approached him, taking the tumbler from his hand and patting him paternally on the shoulder. “The hour is late. You will need sleep, before your voyage.”

Garendor gave a tired nod, rising and moving toward the door as Ghergol put away the cups and flagon.

Ghergol joined him at the door and took the young man’s face between his hands, smiling assuredly up at him. “I have every confidence in you.”

He then lowered his hand to the sword at Garendor’s side, encircling the gem-encrusted hilt in his firm, wiry grasp.

“Wield this great sword well and often in the name of Zoll Zora. Bloodshed breeds power,” he preached to the prince. “Show no mercy, shed no tears.”

“Tears? From these eyes?” Garendor raised his left brow, tapping the blue eye beneath it and simpering widely.

Ghergol’s earthen eyes narrowed and darkened. “There’s a heart in there. And that’s a dangerous thing,” he stated, his palm now pressed flat against Garendor’s sturdy chest, his wintry voice steady and dour. “Don’t you dare let it beat for anyone else.”

There was a grave solemnity in what he’d said, but Garendor was too dimwitted, with both drink and inborn denseness, to detect it. “I’d sooner tear it from my chest!” he vowed.

Ghergol knew that it had been an empty pledge. But that would have to do.

At any rate, he knew, no pledge against the indomitable power of the human heart could ever be upheld.

“That is well. Farewell, my friend. My future king,” he now addressed him. “The world across the sea awaits you.”