The Battered Crown

Chapter 12: The Second Clue

Viaan was searching for a book which had information about rare types of magic. He was still shaken from what they had concluded about his dearest brother. His brother was using large amount of life threatening magic and nobody knew. Something was clearly bothering Vivaan. Viaan knew his brother wouldn't bow down to threats or anything like that. And he also knew that his brother would never betray his family. But he didn't know why his brother was using magic and keeping this all secret. If anyone had any hint, it was his sister. And she never set foot in the library. He cursed his sister's lazy habits. The place looked same and yet it felt different to Viaan.

Viaan wasn't moving as carefree as he once moved. Now there were consequences for every small action of his. He could get his identity revealed and his friends would pay for his folly. He couldn't spread all the books on his table and not put them back in their places. Viaan got up and quickly put the book he was perusing back in the high shelf. There wasn't a known restricted section in this library but knowing how many secrets the palace had hidden  from him, Viaan wouldn't be surprised if he found a secret library inside this library.

He was expecting many more secrets in his kingdom and he knew that he would find them sooner rather than later. He migrated to the other part of the room and striked the spines of the books there. They were all hard bound and looked very heavy. The other thing was they didn't have any titles on the spine. He had to remove each of them to read the title. And to his surprise, the titles were only numbers. The books were placed in haphazard way and he itched to right them but controlled himself. He picked out a book in a random way and opened it. It had all types of magical and non magical properties of herbs and stones. He only read one page when he found Vidyut standing before him with a morose expression.

He plopped on the chair beside Viaan and opened a book on palace architecture. Viaan didn't see anything alarming in place architecture so he didn't know what made Vidyut that much sad. Vidyut produced a note and Viaan read it thrice to be sure.

It only had three words.

Vi
Sorry
Help

It didn't need a genius to figure out who wrote it. Viaan knew that kinda loopy handwriting which he always tried to imitate. He broke into cold sweat. There was only one implication of the letter. His brother knew that Viaan was back. Viaan didn't know if it was good or bad that he knew. Viaan thought back to the stressed out man who didn't notice his brother's presence earlier. Was that all an act?

Viaan massaged his temple with his fingers. His threshold for headaches had changed.

"Your brother is suffering."

Viaan looked at Vidyut who was frowning deeply. He had no answer to his statement. He kept quiet.

"I know how much a person suffers when they are using their magic for something bad."

Viaan looked at him after a long sigh.

"You mean dark magic?"

Vidyut shook his head, "Magic isn't dark or light in my view. It's how a person uses it. You use for good, you are a light magic user, you use it for wrong purpose, you are a dark magic user. Simple. Sometimes you need to use something for the bad for it to become good eventually. It doesn't mean there was a light way to do. Situations demand everything. "

Viaan saw that Vidyut was in some faraway place. He never asked Vidyut about his home life or his family. He had to know what terrible thing had happened to him that made him live with the group alone. Why his family didn't like him painting? But it wasn't the time for his questions. Vidyut would tell him when he wanted to. Viaan could see him hesitating to talk.

"Let's see if our eavesdropper found something!"

Vidyut looked happy for the subject change. They stepped out of the library and moved towards the common civil area. People were all talking about whatever was the gossip then. It made a perfect cover for their conversation. No one would mind a group of young blue robed apprentices. They waited atleast fifteen minutes before she came back. Viaan found her gliding through the throngs of people in a gathering. She moved with quite ease and superiority unlike anyone he knew.

She sat beside him and took a deep breath.

"Do you know a guy called Samvanth?"

"What does the name even mean? Vidyut answered her.

She had all her attention on Viaan.

"Um, no."

She huffed.

"Why do you look like you want to hit us?"

It only made her attention shift to Vidyut with a harsh glare. Viaan found it amusing that Vidyut was grinning at the other side of the deadly glare.

"Will you tell us what happened?"Viaan brought her focus back to the matter at hand.

"I was moving in the lower levels of the main palace, you know, where there are assistants and others. I saw two guys in violet moving very fast. Obviously,  I was intrigued so I followed them." She held up a hand when she saw we were about to interrupt. "Yeah, I was careful. They didn't know about me. I heard their conversation. Apparently a guy called Samvanth was threatening one guy. He wanted to find the prince as soon as possible."

"You think it's me?" Viaan asked her.

"Well, who else could it be? Your brother is the king. That makes you an only prince now till your nephew grows. And also I deduced that one of the guys was the assistant of high secretary. And I think he is involved in whatever that was happening in this kingdom. And..." she abruptly stopped. It was not her way to stop speaking suddenly. She was very eloquent and that meant her forthcoming words were somehow important and that was how she dropped the bombshell.

"They talked in a tone which made me intercept it as that they wanted you dead."

Author's note:
Long time, no see, right!.

I wasn't feeling good and then had some drama which didn't give me time to write. But I'm back. And I can promise things are gonna get bad in the next few chapters.

What do you think will happen next? Please tell me. And how was it?