The Will [on hold]

5000s - Episode 7

5000

“Where is my father?”

“Where is your brother?”

Garendor glowered at his mother as he moved toward her across the dock. “Why has my father not come to greet me, his triumphant son returned? Where is he?”

“He is waiting for you. In the council hall.”

“And he sent you to fetch me?”

Vana wagged her head. “He sent Olbe to retrieve you,” she answered, gesturing at the palace lord who stood a few paces behind her. “I… I came to greet you.”

“You came to greet my brother,” Garendor spat. “But I will have you know, that Eldor is not here. He sits across the sea and speaks sedition. He has proven himself a traitorous son, a pathetic excuse for a prince.”

Queen Vana blinked, an invisible smile surfacing behind her luminous onyx eyes. Sedition against the empire, treason against the king—that meant that Eldor had been faithful to his promise to his mother, and to the world. Of that, the queen was glad, and deeply proud.

“Very well,” she pronounced, meaning these words more literally than the phrase let on, “Olbe will take you to see your father.”

Garendor stormed ahead, past Olbe, who followed mutely at the general’s heels.

From the far head of the table in the great hall, Xor could hear the heavy footfalls of his second-born prince through the closed doors long before he shoved them open and strode inside.

“Father,” Garendor greeted him curtly as he claimed his seat.

“Garendor,” the king acknowledged with a wan smile and a slight cant of his head. “And where is the high prince?”

“Across the sea. Defying his king and his empire.”

Xor lifted his brows. “Is that so?”

Olbe settled into his seat beside the king.

“He and his band of renegades harbor sympathy for Glorion. They refuse to do your bidding,” Garendor elaborated.

“Glorion?” Xor echoed, as though he’d never heard the name before.

“The land we found across the sea. It is a pitiful place, inhabited by idiots who have never seen a sword in all their lives. War and bloodshed, for those people, happen only in the storybooks.”

The king nodded, jutting out his lower lip in bemusement. “How interesting.”

“There is nothing interesting about the place, I promise you.”

“Your brother seems to have found it interesting.”

Garendor seethed.

“What was it about the place that may have piqued his interest?” Xor inquired. “Tell us, Garendor. What was Glorion like?”

The councilors assembled at the table seemed to all lean in at once, ears pricked and eager.

“Well, the land was good,” Garendor bluntly reported. “Lush. Fertile. The city that we visited had pretty buildings, but no infrastructure. No arms or defenses. No leaders. No order, no law.”

“No law? However do they get on?” one councilor asked.

“That is what baffled me.”

“Then the place must be in great disorder and disarray,” another surmised.

Garendor shrugged his stalwart shoulders. “It… it was actually rather…”

“Peaceful?” Xor proposed.