“Even if you do defeat the Silent King, what then? I knew it all along, but I never really knew.” She paused, not sure of how to say it, or even if she should. “Panthos is gone,” she said with a shiver of understanding.
A pained look traced Kareth’s face. “Panthos will never be as it was, this I know, but Panthos is not dead. It lives here, and here.” He pointed to his head and his chest as he spoke. “In every Panthosi still alive, it lives. Lilanth lies in ruins, but it can be rebuilt. Flame and metal cannot erase history; they can but hold it back.” Kareth took a moment, gathered his thoughts. “The first time I visited Lilanth was near my twentieth nameday. At first glance, it is little more than a large pile of rubble. Most of the streets were still visible, the stone showing through sand and debris occasionally. The first tears I shed in my own country fell at the Temple of the Moon, or what was left of it. The pillars still stood, the giant stones licked by flames, but most of the temple had caved in on itself. I realized then that the entire city was one large graveyard. We must have seen the bones of a hundred thousand people throughout the city. You would think that scavengers or travelling folk would have found Lilanth over the years and made it a home, but no man wants to live in that kind of shadow. I can only imagine that Lilanth, to this day, remains deserted—taken back by the desert, by the Moon Gods themselves.”
“Panthos was not able to fight back, not even a little?” Selene’s face was a mask of confusion and pain, and something inside of her ached, something unexplainable.
“It will all make sense soon, my dear. Sit back and I will tell you how Lilanth, the City of the Moon and the center of Panthos, fell.”
*****
The northern king arrived in Lilanth a mere fortnight after Queen Somara received her brother’s body in a simple wooden box. She wept over him for hours. The wound at his neck was stitched closed and painted with covering, but it remained ominously present. Barost brought in the crate filled with Narris’s bones and laid them at her feet. His face was somber and he flattered her with courtesies. She had but to agree that Narris was guilty of the treasons he was so charged, though it killed her inside. Somara and Narris were no more than two years apart and were all but inseparable until he took his vows and joined the Uthari. Even then, she kept him as close council. He was in charge of her Royal Guard and doubled as the keeper of her secrets. They had no other siblings, at least none that made it past childbirth. Their mother, only years after their birth, had died giving birth to a stillborn child who never tasted a breath of air, and their father died shortly after in the Trippant Wars. It pained her so to turn her back on her brother, but it made no difference then, she supposed. Somara had given her word to marry the northern king and thus unite the two great empires of the Vint and Panthos. Even though she wanted nothing to do with him, there were no facts to base a dismissal on. Refusal now would most certainly mean war for Panthos and death for her people.
When the king rode through the gates the city was a wash of angry stares and soiled japes. The great City of the Moon knew who their Uthari Lord had been, and they scorned his slayer, regardless of what tales of grandeur accompanied the northern monarch. However, when he walked up the milky white steps to the queen’s temple, his face was writ with compassion and humility.
He bowed a long, deep bow, and rose with tears glistening his eyes. “My most beautiful queen, so long have I heard of your magnificence, but the stories fall short of your true beauty. My heart pains me, for we must meet so soon under such grave circumstances. I feel at a loss to express to you my sorrows for the way things turned out. I can but pray that you have found it in your heart to see the justice in my actions and forgive me for that which has taken place.” But it was not the king that spoke. A man standing directly beside him dressed in a long blue robe laced with silver had loosed his voice through an equally compassionate face.
YOU ARE READING
The Lost Prince (The Shadowdancer Chronicles, Book One)
FantasyThree decades ago the realm bled. Today, The Lost Prince lives. Kareth is a legend, a mythical hero; a brigand who just so happens to be the Prince of Panthos, the realm The Silent King destroyed three decades before. Kareth is real, he is alive, an...
Chapter Nine
Start from the beginning