Prologue

Phytia County, Thuurdia

Year of the Swan

The sun had shone almost the entire day, with the exception of a quick ‘flash storm’, which rolled in from the sea and across the land, giving the region a generous sousing of rain. It had whipped up the waves quite nicely, and they crashed loudly against the rocks along the coastline. The noise was almost loud enough to drown the screams of the woman inside the palatial estate house that was firmly entrenched atop a humongous garden complex that backed up to the fifty-foot drop to the ocean. Several small boats tossed around in the rough waves, but did so unconcerned. This kind of weather was what they were used to. They fished the sea as they always had, but remained mindful in case another storm popped up.

Above the natural bay, a small army of gardeners and servants lovingly tended the gardens of the palatial estate, trimming bushes, snipping the small imperfections away and smoothing the dozen marble fountain statues of urinating babies in various poses. It was a favorite area that the wife of the Margrave enjoyed. In fact, she seemed to prefer it to almost anywhere else, and therefore, it had to look perfect.

The Lady Elisa von Tyrannus was the absolute matron of the estate, and the wife of the Margrave-Palatine Ulrich von Tyrannus. They had been married six years and she had already bore him his heir dutifully, at age seventeen. She was a Princess, daughter of the King of Rhys, which effectively had become a puppet kingdom propped up by the wizard scrolls of Thuurdia. Her marriage to the Phytian Margrave was as political as a marriage could be.

She had never set eyes on the man until the day of her wedding, her father signing her life away with the stroke of a quill. Brought to the Phytian Margrave only a year after his father and two brother’s deaths, Elisa had to admit that he wasn’t hard on the eyes. The newly minted Margrave was a surprisingly handsome man in his mid-twenties, with a powerful build that would have shamed most men. Ulrich was his name and the first thing she noticed about him, aside from his size, was his eyes, which were a sharp ocean blue.

He carried himself with such a powerful and commanding presence that her aides had noted could have made tree’s wither under his stare. Still; he looked at her with a soft smile, and a gentle demeanor that relaxed her considerably. His sheer size was intimidating, and he towered almost a full foot over her.

The wedding was an extravagant celebration that brought the whole of Phytia out, waving the Tyrannus family flag’s. The von Tyrannus family was not overly typical for nobility. The previous Margrave had been extremely affectionate towards the people he had ruled, going out of his way on numerous occasions to see to their well-being. This was one of the first things that the blushing new bride had noted when travelling in state through the County on her way to be married. There were no homeless wretches in the streets of the cities.

After the previous Margrave died in battle, his sword swinging to the bitter end, along with his two oldest sons, Ulrich was crowned Margrave-Palatine of Phytia. He was twenty-three. The battle had been for the now flattened city of Anjar. With his death, his soldiers flew into a complete frenzy and what had been a tasteful and professional siege turned into a full on and murderous frontal assault; the troops being totally heedless of the consequences. The commanders of the army watched helplessly as the vengeance-filled soldiers of the Phytian Margrave clawed and climbed up the embattlements and overwhelmed the defenders, putting them all to the torch. The result was the sacking and razing of the city, its defenders slaughtered to a man.

His funeral had been a glorious affair, replete with showers of flowers and lamenting women who tore at their hair and wailed. They hadn’t even been paid coin. The people were lamenting their loss profoundly, but holding onto hope that the last son of the Margrave they loved would prove as good a leader as he had been.

Ulrich loved a challenge, and sought to make himself worthy of their praise and their respect. Within a year of his ascension to the seat of his father, piracy was all but obliterated. His standing order was simple; pirates die. No trial, no discussion, and no debate. So they died. All of them. Like his father, he listened to his advisors and took their advice under close scrutiny. Taxes were stabilized, and he instituted a new measure within Phytia that ensured a quarter of all farm land was allowed to grow whatever the landowner wished, to do with as he wished. It was immensely popular to peasants and merchants alike, and totally unheard of.

Although his advisors screamed that this was folly and that Phytia would be run into the financial grave, it did not. It prospered because the people who grew what they wanted, sold their goods at market, and inter-village trade exploded.

Once again his councilors begged him to wed a woman and thus preserve the family bloodline which was centuries old. In the end, he agreed with their assessment and sent out his seneschals to find a bride worthy of him that the Thuurdian Court would also approve of. The Wizards, mindful of his position with the lay ranks of Thuurdian Nobility, assisted with the selection of a fine wife, worthy of good breeding and coming from royal stock. She was diminutive in stature, thin with long shock-blonde hair that she liked to wear straight. Although slightly short, she was a very attractive young woman.

Her father was the last King of Rhys, a puppet, but loyal with a family name that carried five centuries to it. The pairing was acceptable to the Thuurdian Court because, as the only offspring of the King, and she being a Princess, there would be no more Kings within Rhys. With no royal bloodline, the last of the permanent monarchs would be gone, in accordance to the laws of patrilineal royal inheritance. This made the match very acceptable to the Thuurdian Wizards indeed, and also to his own people. Therefore, he agreed on the condition that his wife wasn’t a cow. The Margrave-Palatine was not disappointed when he saw her on their wedding day.

When he took her on their wedding night, it was a physical coupling that he thoroughly enjoyed, relaxed at the fact that she was not some hideous old maid that the King of Rhys might have been hiding in some tower.

The union was fruitful, and she was with child less than a month after the wedding. Although the Margrave was physically imposing, he was surprisingly tender with her in the bedroom. This was something she had been told not to expect, that large men of his stature tended to be rough and violent. Ulrich was neither of these things.

Nine months later she gave him what everyone wanted. A son and an heir, who was born the day that her father died. To honor her, and her family, the Margrave-Palatine did the unthinkable; he named his first born son not after himself, but after her father. The gesture went far with her and her family. Thus, the heir to Phytia was named Stephan Adam von Tyrannus.

The young boy was unusually healthy, and rarely did he get sick. Once, when he had, the Margrave was almost frantic with worry, because a plague had erupted on his southern border and he worried that little Stephan had contracted it.

Whatever the disease, the baby had shaken it off like a true son of a Margrave. That, and his mother’s ceaseless love and care along with an army of doctors. After several years, and as the boy was growing from baby to toddler to small child, the Margrave went to war. He left her and the estate and all his lands under her care, and travelled far beyond the Reed Sea to the Northeast, where the House of Malitar had gotten it in its collectively stupid and addle-brained head that it owned everything it saw.

To make matters worse, the people of Cann’en had gotten yet another attack of the World Goddess and now considered the Thuurdian Wizards as vile, and corrupt. Therefore, his being sent there served a two-fold purpose. One, punish the House of Malitar and their arrogant belief that they should rule whatever they could see, and two; find a way to arrive at a peaceful solution to the problems with the people of Cann’en.

He did all that and more, although it cost him nearly every political favor his father had ever gotten, and all of his own as well. The Royal Family of Cann’en agreed that they would stave off problems with Thuurdia and grow closer, on the condition that there would be a Royal marriage. The Margrave was the first to offer up his next child as the political chit for this agreement. If his wife was pregnant with a son, then Cann’en would offer a daughter. If his wife had a daughter, she would wed their Prince, who was almost ten years of age. He also bartered his soul to ensure that Phytia would reap the benefits through exclusive trading deals. Phytia would become the single point of entry for all grain supply shipments from Cann’en, as well as the sole distributer. One hundred tons per month. For Phytia and the Margrave, it meant controlling the grain prices, and thus, the very purse strings of the Empire.

The Thuurdian Wizards hated the idea for their own two reasons. The initial reason was that very thought of their own nobility marrying into a barbarian family of any rank was almost too horrific to contemplate. To the Wizards, the people of Cann’en spent their days making cave paintings and dancing around fires throwing grass into the air for blessings. They were illiterate and savage, ill-kempt and barbaric with few redeeming qualities. The second was that they knew all too well that if Phytia became the Empire’s sole distributor of wheat grain, they could control the people. Nothing convinced the commoner to a new idea or a new leader faster than a forced-lean diet.

So the Margrave von Tyrannus spent months and months through intermediaries, and personally on occasion, trying to convince the Thuurdian Court Wizards that this match was the solution. For nearly eight months he worked tirelessly to persuade them, but it wasn’t until his armies had utterly smashed the arrogant nobles of the House of Malitar at the battle of the Dustbowl Rivers, that they finally agreed. He knew, as they did, that it was only his victory that convinced them to grant him a boon in lieu of additional title or lands. Therefore, they would allow the marriage.

Having returned to his castle with the assistance of one of the Wizards, he found that his wife was not there. She was, instead, at the palatial estates. He didn’t mind, because he gave them to her, but he did not appreciate having to go find her. When he did, however, he was overjoyed that she was in labor, screaming, and surrounded by the finest midwives in Phytia, including an Elf Matron from House Honeydew.

Elves were nearly-human, in the eyes of many. They were an ancient people; impossibly ancient. Unlike humanity, Elves were more in tune with their surroundings and the rhythm of the world. It was what allowed them to use its essence, allowed them to live life spans that would shame others. The Margrave always consoled himself with the fact that while Elves may have innate magical abilities, live longer, and look physically more pleasing… they were all lean, thin, and not very strong. That, and there were fewer of them every year.

“Push milady!” one of the women begged.

Slowly pacing back and forth in the room, his boots noisily clanked against the floor and it upset many of the women in the room. Even the gigantic sword across his back was intimidating to them. Only the Elf Matron spoke up.

“You should wait outside, Ulrich,” she told him, using his familial name and not title. It was a scandalous thing, but one few would bother to mention, the Honeydew Family had been friends of the Margraves for over three centuries, and the Elf who stood before him now, coming only to his mid-chest, had been the very same lady to physically bring him into this world. Ulrich had a very special place in his heart for her, and everyone knew it.

“I want to be present at my child’s birth.” His reasoning was not merely to see that his wife was alright, but to see which side of the demon’s bargain he would be the recipient of. Not a few Thuurdian Wizards had made it abundantly clear to him that should a daughter be handed to Cann’en they would consider the treaty he’d arranged about as worthy to them as a pile of excrement on a mountain top; smelly, disgusting, and completely unimportant.

The Elf Matron smiled at him, like a mother. “Ulrich, you fret too much. It will be a boy-child, and your wife will be just fine. Trust me.”

He did, but he still worried. “How do you know it will be a boy?”

She smiled and laughed softly for him, which sounded almost musical. “I have been delivering the babies for over eleven hundred years; elven ladies as well as human ones. I have seen enough births in my many years to know exactly what sex the baby is just by the sounds of her voice, and the rhythm of the contractions. This will be a male child, my sweet.”

The Margrave knew that he couldn’t even fill a ladies sewing thimble with what he knew about babies, or birthing. Aside from that, he was far too fond of the Elf to disagree with her. Elves were from the northern regions of the world, far beyond the borders of Thuurdia. The closest enclave was wedged between the nation of Polaria, and the Dauphiny. Thessalonala, the Elven Nation’s capital had no shortage of troubles; a mob of bloodthirsty lunatics to the west of their lands, and religious lunatics to their east. That was where she was from.

They were almost all fair skinned, light haired, and short by human standards. The tallest of them only hit five foot four. They were also slowly dying out as a people. “That sounds like a humanly arrogant statement, my Lady. Have you been living amongst us so long that you’re beginning to pick up our bad habits?”

Again, she laughed musically. “I suppose so, Ulrich. Still, arrogance or not, it will be a male child she shall have this day.” The Lady groaned on queue.

“A wager then,” He smiled. “Since you’ve obviously picked up one bad human trait, let’s give you another.”

“Gambling? Ulrich…I’ve made leaf and seed bets since before your beloved Thuurdia was even a farming village.”

“I wager you for a bottle of your best Elven Vintage.”

The Elf Matron of Honeydew suppressed her surprise. The Margrave rarely drank, but more than that was what he was willing to wager. An Elven Vintage wine was hard to come by, and very expensive. The best Elven Vintages were worth more than a new keep. She smiled at him. “Alright Ulrich. A bottle of the best Elven Vintage that House Honeydew has ever produced. It is an ancient wine, bottled some two centuries past by my father. A drop on your tongue will have visions of forests playing across your emotions for hours. A glass will have you tasting the very memories of nature herself.

“I will wager that bottle. Against what?”

“A promise.”

She laughed, which coincided with another groan from the Lady on her birthing bed. “A promise? Wagered against a bottle that is worth the financial cost of a newly built keep? Is that your idea of humor, Ulrich?”

“No. I offer a promise. Not just from me, but from my family.” He smiled at her. “The promise is this; should I lose this friendly wager, on the honor of my family and my own as well, that should the need or day ever arise that House Honeydew requires assistance in any measure; the full might and backing of Phytia.”

“Ulrich! Now that is quite a statement! Are you certain you are capable to make it?”

“What I have wagered, I have wagered.” His knowing smile evident.

She shrugged slightly, “I must return to your wife. Very well, Ulrich. A good wager that I hope you’ll never have to make good on.”

He loved her self-assuredness, and left the room to continue his pacing just outside. Three hours later he lost the bet to the beaming Elven midwife of House Honeydew. Yet, for all her newfound glory in her victory, she had a strange look on her face. It was enough to make him ask why.

“There is something different about the child, Ulrich.” She told him simply. “There is something there that I cannot explain.”

“He’s not malformed is he?”

“Certainly not,” She brought him into the room where the maids and midwives were all cleaning the copious amounts of blood and afterbirth. The Elf smiled benignly at mother and baby, and she unfolded the swaddling cloth just enough for the Margrave to inspect the baby.

He laughed. The baby, his newborn son, and the lady were fast asleep from their long day. “A woman’s fancy. He’s as healthy as a bull.”

“That isn’t it, Ulrich. There’s something very special about this baby. I can feel it.”

The Margrave looked at her curiously, and then burst into a roaring laughter. “Oh, come now, Matron Honeydew. You’re not seriously going to fill me up with all that bunk about nature and flowery magic, are you?”

“Call it Elven intuition, Ulrich. There is something truly special about this boy.”

“Yes. He is my son. That makes him special.”

“I’m being serious, Ulrich.”

The Margrave shook his head, but not with anything other than playfulness. “Mother,” –he often called her that when she took on a more motherly tone with him…and she did quite frequently, “you know how I feel about all that magical nonsense. Grown adults; running around in night-time clothes, screaming weird words and flinging flaming bat guano at one another… it’s ludicrous. It’s worse that ludicrous, it’s absurd.”

“Magic is very real, Ulrich. You know that better than most.” It was true, he did. His father and two brothers were killed by a wizard. A powerful and unrepentant War Wizard that had gone by the name Magon, purportedly a dark wizard who had attempted to follow in the footsteps of the Dok um Toht, a despicable band of cultists who practiced a form of magic that would have done a troupe of demons proud. Everyone had hated these cretins so it was no surprise that when one popped up in the Kingdom of Anjar, his father and brothers instantly rose to the task of excising the wizard like a boil.

They died for it, but not before the attacking Phytian army wiped out the city, and the so-called wizard found himself crucified, upside down, and whipped to the point of his bones showing. Ulrich knew that had he been there, the wizard would have really known some pain before he left this world screaming into the next. Still, he died badly and it was only that, which gave Ulrich any solace in the victory.

“Magic is nothing but smoke and mirrors, Matron Honeydew.” Ulrich replied offhandedly. The topic of Wizards always bothered him, more so now that he was the Margrave-Palatine…it was a title he never asked for, or wanted. It sickened him to think that his entire world, his people, his title, lands, and even his armor were all at the pleasure of the Thuurdian Wizards. Phytia was a vassal state of the greater Thuurdian Empire. That he sat atop the pyramid of position and power mattered little…he still had strings attached to him. Strings that held him, and every other noble and royal family in check to the Court. A Court comprised solely of Wizards. Non-Magically gifted people had to resign themselves to a life absent the ability to serve in the ruling body that really mattered. At least, he thought secretly to himself, until the exclusive trading rights are enacted. Then, it will be Phytia calling the shots on its own destiny… not some high-minded hucksters who wore nightgowns and wiggled their fingers.

Although he was high nobility, he existed, and would only ever exist within the second of the three rungs of position within the Thuurdian Court. The second position was only one step above the third…the position of all merchants and layman alike. Peasantry. That’s what he felt like he was to the Thuurdian Wizards…a peasant with a title, some lands, and a castle. They threw him the bones…but they never had the meat…

“No, mother,” he told her wearily. His head hurt, like it always did when he thought about wizards and magic. He couldn’t grasp it, and therefore didn’t bother to try. It was all manure anyway. “He is special, but only as my second son. He will have rank and privilege, and a high quality life. He will also bear my name.”

She nodded. “He will be special, Ulrich. You will see.”

He smiled for her, as a son might to his mother. “Care to wager?”

So in the Thuurdian Year of the Swan, in the tenth month and on the twenty-first day, a male child came into the world, yawning with little more than a whimper before he greedily suckled his mother. True to his word, the Margrave named the babe after himself. Ulrich. Ulrich von Tyrannus, second in line to the family title of Margrave and Palatine of Phytia.

Chapter 1

Thuurdia

Year of the Peregrine

Ulrich was running around crying. His tears stung his red-hot cheeks from the pain and shame of the spanking he’d received at the hands of his father, who glowered in the corner. The toddler, who’d only turned two years of age a few months prior, had received a stiff beating on the rear for the mischief he’d caused.

It was the older son, Stephan, who had first noticed the problem when they realized that Ulrich was not in his playpen and his nursemaid was asleep in a chair. Normally this would have been grounds for instant termination of her position, except there was nothing normal about her slumbering, which she was doing in a seated position and eyes wide open. Only the soft snoring sounds give indication that she was, in fact, in a deep sleep.

Matron Hanifa Honeydew was old enough to know exactly what had happened, and how. As she had once told the Margrave, his son Ulrich the Younger, was special. The toddler had inadvertently cast a sleeping spell on the nursemaid. It was obvious he had done it, but how was the bigger question. Even so, that wasn’t what angered the Margrave. It was what his toddler son had done to the utensils that had upset him.

Ulrich the Younger, had toddled into the pantry where the spoons and forks and knives were, and had decided that it was a good idea to play with the silvery shiny objects. He’d banged them around, certainly, and with no one around, the little boy had happily amassed a pile of the silver accruements.

What had angered the Margrave was that somehow, his little son had bent and mutilated every single silver piece of dinnerware in the pantry. They were all twisted like noodle dough. Stephan found him first, sitting in the middle of the room, a pile of mauled silverware in front of him. The elder son himself almost received a beating for what the Margrave considered a fabricated tale of his own. Stephan had come into the pantry in time to watch as his little brother picked up a butter knife and merely by looking at it, warped it and twisted it until it looked more like a baker’s pretzel than a knife. Once this fleeting interest passed, the child dropped the violated silverware piece, and picked up another. He never uttered a word, or wiggled his fingers. He simply looked at it.

The elderly Elf Matron arrived with the Margrave to find the little boy sitting in front of the pile of ruined silverware and before she could utter a word, the Margrave took a massive pair of steps forward, yanked the stunned child to his feet and clobbered his behind with a series of swift, hard strokes. The startled toddler shrieked and struggled to free himself, which was only granted after another series of hand slaps landed on his rear.

Howling, the little boy ran from the room, bawling for his mother and leaving the Margrave, Stephan, and the Elf Matron to stare at the pile of silverware.

“That cost me a fortune,” The Margrave growled.

The Elf smiled. “Silverware is replaceable, Ulrich, your son’s sense of security is not.”

“You think giving him a good crack on the rear would harm the boy?” The Margrave snorted. “When I was a child my father would take his mailed glove to me if I did something wrong. Look at me. I came out just fine.”

She nodded, looking at Stephan. “So did Stephan, and as I recall you were pretty harsh with him.”

“Yes.” The Margrave looked at his seven-year-old with a sense of swelling pride. The boy was still a wee rough, but that would be fixed with hard work, discipline, and a man’s attention to all things proper.

“Your namesake is different, Ulrich.”

He looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Do you remember when I told you the babe was special?”

“What of it?”

“This is what that is,” She gestured to the pile of mangled silverware. “Your son, Ulrich, has the gift of magic in him.”

The Margrave frowned. His son and namesake was no budding wizard. He would be a knight, like Stephan would be, and he would be big and strong, by the stars and the moon! “No. He’s merely creative, and…constructive.”

“He’ll be a wizard Ulrich.”

“In the abyss he will, Hanifa!” The Margrave growled at her. “He’ll be a knight. It’s swords and shields, not bat shit and bathing robes.”

The Elf looked at him with an expression of complete seriousness. “It is out of your hands, Ulrich. If you don’t have him tested officially, and you deny him the ability to control or handle the magic, he’ll go insane. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

He did, but he didn’t want to think about it. His namesake was supposed to be a warrior, a soldier for the World Goddess and for Phytia; but more for Phytia because the Margrave took little stock in the belief of some all-powerful being in an endless mushroom patch. “He’ll be a Knight of Phytia, and a Knight of Thuurdia. He’ll carry the family herald into the field of battle, not a bag of rose petals and a stick.”

Looking at the pile of bent silverware, she knelt down and picked up a fork that looked as though it had been marched over by an army. “You see this?”

“It was my deep silver fork,” The Margrave drew in a breath, clearly displeased with it and with some annoying analogy she was going to make.

She smiled. “No, Ulrich. This is your namesake’s mind if you don’t have him tested.” Handing him the fork, he regarded it with all the interest of a gnat on a horse.

“If I don’t?” He knew the answer, but wanted to hear it again.

“Then all the healing spells of the priests, all the alcohol, and all the prayers of your wife will not quell the noises inside his mind and he will be driven mad.” She told him simply. “To be born with a gift such as magic is very special, and actually quite rare amongst humans. Are you sure you don’t have any Elvish in your family, Ulrich?”

He couldn’t help but smile at her, even if he didn’t like what she was saying. Ulrich had known her all his life and loved her too much to have any measure of serious argument with her. “My great-grandfather,” The Margrave replied simply. “His mother was half-elven, so I am told. She was supposedly a woman of unsurpassed beauty that his father met during a campaign in Mythica. He married her and brought her back here.”

Hanifa nodded to herself. “Did he ever know which of her parents was an elf? Did you ever learn what kind of elf?”

The Margrave burst into laughter at the questions. “Why? What does that matter? We’re human, very human. My ears don’t have the slightest point to them, and I am hardly the lithe and slender figure so many elves are. All in all, Hanifa, I would make a lousy elf. In any regard, since when could humans figure out what elf is from where?”

Any other elf might have taken his words as an insult, but she knew him and understood that his words were nothing if not honest and guileless. It was true. Humans tended to miss or ignore the differences in the Elvish Race, which was every bit as diverse as humanity. “If one of her parents were a Moon Elf that would in all likelihood give your namesake an extremely powerful gift.”

He looked at her genially. “Why? What’s the difference between a Moon Elf and you?”

“I am what you could call a ‘Sun’ Elf. We do not refer to ourselves in the manner of color, as you do. We have Sun Elves, Moon Elves, Wood Elves, and…others.” She paused, with a small sigh. “As a Sun Elf, this essentially means that I get darker in the sun. Moon Elves do not.”

“So they’re pale?”
She smiled. “They’re pale to the point of near translucence. They practically glow in the moonlight. I’ve seen them only twice in my life. They looked so ethereal and fragile; I thought my heart would stop.”

The Margrave was amused by this. “You make them sound like they’re the most physically attractive creatures…”

“Oh they are, Ulrich, make no mistake about that. They are extremely attractive. One could even say that they could be fatally attractive to people with a weak heart.” She noted, then looked at him with a slightly wry smile. “Which of course, could explain your very handsome features? When you were younger, Ulrich, I recall no shortage of young ladies flocking to you for your hand in marriage.”

He grinned and almost took on a boyish expression. “Yes. There were more than a few ladies that were interested in a marriage,” the memory of some of them lingered pleasantly, but then his expression darkened somewhat. “But I did my duty. My father arranged for the marriage with the Princess of Rhys, and so I married her. That is duty. That is what my son Ulrich can expect, Elvish blood in him or not.”

“He has a rare gift, Ulrich,” She said in an almost pleading voice. “It needs to be controlled.”

“It will be,” The Margrave shot back more aggressively than he wanted. “Through the discipline of the weapons masters of Phytia, the commanders of my armies, and hard physical training. He will be a knight.”

Hanifa shook her head sadly. “He will never be a knight, Ulrich, because his mind will shatter long before that momentous day. This is not something you can hide from, or put away. He must be tested, and soon.”

“No!” The Margrave snapped. His patience with the Elf Matron was at an end. “There will be no more talk about this wizarding business. My namesake will be a knight, and that’s the end of it.” He stormed off without another word, leaving her alone in the larder.

Looking at the pile of utensils, he muttered a few words, and watched as they all fixed themselves and straightened out. She was able to do it for the same reasons that the toddler was; she too, had the gift of magic.