Below is the prologue of my second book, which I have plotted out and have about 1/2 rough drafted (which has been the case for about 6 years) that I recently edited and expanded.
Any comments or feedback are enthusiastically welcomed.
Prologue – Snowfall
Kaejon stirred in his bed. As far as he could tell it was still some hours before dawn and knowing that it was going to be a full day he decided to rise. The fire had long gone cold and his chambers were freezing so he dressed in a woolen tunic and pants, both of a dark grey. Thinking further he clasped a blue cloak about his neck, walked back to his bed, kissed his wife upon the forehead and pulled the furs up to cover her more thoroughly.
He smiled to himself as he strode from the room. He was still not used to the cold, it was a word entirely alien to him growing up in the city of Xyrin. Kaejon was a tall and powerfully built man but the years were beginning to take their toll. Even warmly dressed, the foot-long scar on the left side of his chest, a souvenir from the axe-man who had nearly ended his life at the Battle of Goran Ford, felt tight and stiff in the cold air and the three flights of stairs down to the city square of Lechon made his right knee ache terribly.
Although the sun had not yet creeped above the horizon, Lechon was already abuzz with activity. The city was ahead of schedule and his architects told him that it would be completed in time for the trading season at the end of the coming winter. The final caravan had headed out the previous day, hoping to get over the pass which Lechon had been built at the foot of before the snows came.
Kaejon spent a solid hour organizing, with his servants, the preparation of the train that would take him and his household south. At dawn he broke his fast upon some fresh bread with a bit of warm stew. After that he went and trained with his guardsmen. He remained, as yet, unbeaten in the practice yard but it was only a matter of time before some talented kid, half his age, got the better of him. His entire body ached by the time he was done. He remembered a time, which seemed to be getting ever further distant when he could fight all day without a single muscle’s complaint.
After that there was a meeting with the architects to discuss what kind of fortifications he wished to guard the gate up to the mountain pass, yet another argument with the delegation from Belthan about how many stone-masons the city had agreed to send, and then at noon a meeting with the leading merchants who had agreed to set up shop in Lechon to take advantage of the increasing volume of trade with the people over the mountains. It was finally after assuaging the merchant’s fears, again, that Kaejon was able to retire to his study and continue to update The Chronicle. A servant brought in a plate of fruit for him to eat and, after calling for another servant to build the fire, Kaejon dipped his brush into the ink well and began to write.
Writing The Chronicle had always been a difficult task for Kaejon and, as he often did, before he opened the large, leather bound book he stared at his mother, Nerinah’s, flowing script on the front cover. Just as she had been the driving force behind his life’s work of reuniting the Cities of the Baion Plain, the history of the changing of the world and that reunification had been begun by Nerinah. She had felt that it was important for future generations to understand what she and Kaejon had done and why. Kaejon sighed, it had been three years, but his mother’s passing had left him feeling directionless. After a moment he shook his greying head, opened the book to where he had left out, and finally put his quill to the paper.
He had produced several pages of his recollections of the Karan Revolt when he heard giggling and shouting coming up the stairs to his study. As the shouting grew louder the door of the study burst open and three children came running in. One was a boy of 10 years with raven hair just like his, dressed in woolen garments of dark blue with a dark brown belt and boots of the same color, his son Huon. Huon was leading a girl of 6 by the hand who was wearing a green dress and had a small fur draped around her shoulders that was the same color as her own auburn curls, his daughter Kaia. In close pursuit was a boy of 9 dressed in a tunic of bright red with a thick yellow cloak proudly emblazoned with the three-tiered tower, in black, of his father Primarch Gaiti’s city of Xyos. There seemed to be an argument occurring.
“The world is not ending!” shouted Huon as he darted around behind Kaejon’s chair.
“Oh yes, it is,” replied Gaito confident in his knowledge as only a child can be. “How else do you explain what we saw?”
“I don’t know,” said Huon defensively. “What makes you such an expert on it anyway?”
Gaito puffed himself up as if he was making a speech, “my father told me all about it before I came here, he said that it would slowly grow colder until we all die and what is more he says that it is all your father’s fault.”
Recognizing that his son was about to respond with some insults that would likely lead to a fight Kaejon rose quickly and interjected himself into the children’s discussion, “What exactly is the matter?”
It was Kaia, still clinging to her brother’s arm, who responded quietly, “we was in the courtyard playing and this white stuff began falling from the sky, we tried to catch it but it were too cold.”
Kaejon looked out of the window and saw that a gentle flurry had begun and thought for a moment about the caravan which had just departed and hoped they would make it over the pass before it was snowed in. As he turned back to the children, who were staring at him expectantly, his wife Luana walked through the door out of breath. He smiled at her as he felt a pang of guilt that he did not have time to give her more help with the children, none of whom were hers. Kaia had taken well to her, since her mother had died bringing her into the world and thus she never knew her. Huon, however, was old enough to remember his mother and was getting towards a difficult age and Gaito, a hostage for his father’s good behavior, had been nothing but trouble since joining his household six month previously.
As Kaejon rose to get a chair from the corner of the room for Luana he addressed the children, “That white stuff is called snow. When it grows cold enough the clouds get all heavy and fall to the ground in those little fluffy pieces. Once it only happened at the very peaks of the mountains but now during this time of the year it is growing cold enough for it to fall here. This change has frightened some people, like your father, Gaito, who remember when snow was distant and unknown, because they are not used to it.”
“My father is not frightened of anything.”
“I knew my father had nothing to do with it, Gaito, your father is a liar as well as a coward.”
“We must always be nice to our guests,” Kaejon reminded his son gently, smiling to himself, both boys were at that age in which their fathers could do no wrong in their eyes. Seeing that all of them had faces flushed from the cold he then instructed them to gather round the fire to warm themselves before going out again and moved the chair closer to the fire for Luana for which she smiled kindly at him. Some part of him still felt guilty about marrying her. He was more than twice her age, and in fact she had not even been born when the Battle of Star Fire made him King of Xyrin and Overlord of the Baion Plains, as his official titles ran. Still, they had come to love each other despite their marriage beginning as the sealing of the alliance his mother had forged between him and the Three Cities of Karas, one of the last acts of her life. As the children chattered to themselves around the fire he gently rubbed her back, knowing that between the cold and her pregnancy that it must be hurting and as he did so he tried not to think of his first wife Shiasa who had died in childbirth and the fact that the healers had told him that the first child was always the hardest.
Lost in his thought, Kaia had to ask him the same question three times before he truly heard her. “Why is it colder?”
Before he could answer Gaito answered the question himself, “my father told me that Lord Kaejon vanquished the sun’s spirit and now as it slowly dies our world is growing colder.”
Kaejon shook his head, knowing full well that there were a great many who still believed that despite his best efforts, “That isn’t exactly what happened Gaito.”
“Is that what you are writing about all the time, Father?” asked Huon.
“Yes and no,” replied Kaejon and, realizing that none of the children understood what he meant he said, “I am writing a history of our family and of my attempt to form all the cities that lie between these Vernai Mountains and the Sea of Dramsk into one nation. Mixed up in with the history of our family is the tale of how the world changed. I played my part in what happened that day, but I did not ‘kill the spirit of the sun’ nor is the sun dying. In fact, this,” he finished gesturing out the window, “is how this world is supposed to be.”
“Can you tell us the story please, daddy,” said Kaia.
“I want to know as well.”
“As I shall be Primarch one day I would understand this world better,” finished Gaeto imperiously.
Kaejon smiled, “very well, I suppose you are all old enough to know. I will warn you, however, that this is a long story, it will take me many days to finish it but then again we are going to be spending the next months on the road through the Karas River Valley until we reach the port city of Feranai.”
The children all sat themselves around the fire and looked up at him expectantly and Luana gave him an encouraging smile. Kaejon took a deep breath and said, “this is the story of myself, of my mother Nerinah, and of my grandfather Amjoh, whom I never knew. Part of it is my own experience and much of the rest was relayed to me by my mother before she passed on and the final pieces of the story come from an altogether stranger source. I shall begin this story with my Grandfather’s 20th name day, the day which would change our family forever. The city of Xyrin was dying, its buildings were falling into ruin, its wells were drying up, the herds were moving on, and the sun burned red. . .
Copyright © 2018 Jon Holtgrefe All rights reserved
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