The Lost Prince (The Shadowdancer Chronicles, Book One)

Chapter Thirteen

The broadsword was increasingly awkward to swing around at first, but I quickly understood the basics of the barbaric northern fighting styles. When I took it to the wrapped wood just outside the pit, I was doubly impressed when a single blow cut all the way through the body, sending the top section spinning off on to the ground. We spent weeks going over the broadsword until I knew as much as Liras knew about it, though I felt like I wielded it far better than Liras ever did.

One day, Liras went into town to gather supplies, so it was left to Varo to look after me. Though I had scarcely herd him talk the entire time we had been on Ovum, I decided to ask him what happened between him and his brother, Vari, when they went to the Sieltacor those many years before. I knew that Vari had been killed by the traitorous Barost the night Lilanth fell, but I knew little else about their history.

He did not even bat an eye, but just looked over at me and began to speak as if he had been doing so the entire time. “The oscura presented Lord Narris with an offer. That he would take two of the Uthari armsmen, but not require them to hold to the lifelong obligation in exchange for services rendered.” Varo moved around the small room, past the unlit fire hole, and to the opposite side as he spoke. “In our ignorance, we didn’t know what those services would end up being—neither did Narris, at least not at first. So, by initial agreements only, Narris brought my brother and me to Osprey to attend the Sieltacor. After we arrived they separated us from Narris. We thought nothing of it at first, for we figured it was simply the initiating process. It was not until we heard raised voices and eventually the cries of what could have only been our names that we began to worry.

“This went on for some time, until all of the sudden and without warning, the noises stopped altogether. Moments later, they separated Vari and I, and placed us in similar forms of isolation somewhere underground. I cannot say for how long we were sequestered, but it was some days. Eventually, I was pulled out of the small room they had left me in and dragged through a dark hall and into a small room somewhere else deep inside the structure. They told me that I had a choice to make. The choice was to save my life or the life of my brother. They said that there was only room in the Sieltacor for one, and that twins were the mark of evil upon the world. My brother chose to save himself, they said, and if I wished to save my life I would have to do the same. It was absurd, and I refused to play their game. So, until I did as they pleased, they would beat me to within an inch of my life and drop me back into the isolation room for some time.

“It was somewhere around a moon’s turn that we were down there, Vari and I, though we would find that out from Narris later. As it turns out, Narris would not accept the terms of their deal, ‘The cost was an abhorring request, one that I could not, would not, have accepted regardless of what trinkets they offered.’ I remember Lord Narris’ words as if they had been spoken just yesterday. It took him the entire moon’s turn to rush back to Lilanth, gather the Uthari in force, and travel back to Osprey and storm into the Sieltacor demanding our release. Of course the oscura let us go, but from that moment on the Uthari’s relationship with the Sieltacor had become a strained one, and that was over a decade ago.”

I was dumbstruck by the tale. “The oscura would have had you and your brother killed? What was the point of having you turn on Vari?”

“The shadows doomed kinslaying long ago. They were attempting to garner signed confessions from us, delineating our betrayal of each other in order to justify killing us.” Varo’s solemn expression remained from the beginning of the story until the end; even the talk about his brush with death did not alter it.

“But you and Vari both remained true to each other,” I said with a confident smile.

Varo nodded. “We were twins, born but seconds apart; there was no one in the world that knew me better. And it was the same with him. No matter what tricks and lies they wove to deceive us, they could not change what was in here.” He pointed to his heart and nodded his head at me. “Remember that.”