Page 25 of The Pastel Prince

Grand Advisor Umeris:

Regarding our search for the stone curse, there is new and vital information that has come to our attention. We beseech you to turn the purge clerics from the Verboten wilds and direct them to the base of the Witherhorn Mountains. This is no plague but a dark mage intent on wiping out all forest elves and druids. Your aid would prove invaluable.

Yours in humble subservience, Kenton Amergin, Liaison from Renedith and prince of the Verboten Territory and its People.

“UGH, I HATE HOW YOU HAVE TO SOUNDlike you’re planting your lips on his pucker at the end of every damn missive,” Tezen snarled as she hung from my braids. “That’s the problem with the high-and-mighty. They get all slippery betwixt thier legs from having people grovel.”

I could not disagree. My fingers rolled the small bit of parchment into a tight roll. Nin sat above us, the sleek black carrier of what I prayed would save the druid camps from certain annihilation. I clucked softly to the raven as my brother rested on his travois. Beirach and I had dosed him well with the last of our medicines and then added a sleeping potion atop thehealing draughts and spells. Our aim was to see him slumber throughout the day as we rode. The journey would not be a smooth one, for we had no time now to trot along at a genteel pace.

“You think they’ll call off the clerics?” Tezen asked as Nin left his roost to land in front of me, hopping about to clean up the crumbs left by our hasty breakfast. None of us, other than Eldar, had found much rest last night. After the beetle attack in the library, Beirach and I returned to the clearing, relayed the event to Tezen, and tended to my brother. Our unease was now tripled for who knew if Maverus was watching us through the eyes of another swarm of corrupted insects. Yes, I knew I should not assume that this evil wizard was Beirach’s son without proof, but my instincts were telling me that it was.

“I pray so,” I replied, calling to the raven once more. He walked to me in that funny way that his kind walked, then paused in front of me. I kneeled down and fastened the missive to the raven’s right leg. “Nin, you must fly with great haste.”

He rattled at me, the call possibly meaning he understood or he wished for more bread crusts. I felt he grasped what I asked of him but had no way of actually communicating with him. When this nightmare was over, I must find a way to begin my studies in earnest. Perhaps a wise, kind, and handsome archdruid would take me under his wing.

I stood, daydreams lifting from my mind as the thin fog did as the day warmed. I whispered a prayer over the raven and then lifted my arm. Off he soared, strong wings taking him in a steady spiral until he cleared the treetops. He sailed southwest. At least he was headed in the correct direction for Renedith.

“Would you like to come with me?” I asked the tiny woman wound in my braids.

“If you’re asking if I’m riding to the human camp, shits yeah! I’ve only ever seen humans from a distance,” Tezen calledfrom the knot she had somehow made around her little form. “Also…shit your hair is thick.” She tugged sharply, making me wince as I went to the edge of the glen to pluck some fragrant cedar bells from under a young green elm. The elm was opening its leaves to the new sun, its aura one of pleasure. “Also, I plan on being with you right to the end. I mean, you two need me. I’m the only one with the rock nuggets to drive a pick into the eyeball of Maverus.”

I sighed while pinching off some flowers whose stalks were beginning to look aged, the bells happy to have their white seeds spread as I slowly walked into my village.

I thought to correct her and point out that we did not know if we were facing Beirach’s child, but the odds were high. My next time in prayer I would ask the goddess to make it otherwise, for seeing him have to end his son’s life would be too much to bear.

“No offense,” Tezen tacked on as we slowly made our way along the well-worn path through the village, my grip on the soft yellow stems tight. “I mean, he’s pretty rugged and all, and I’m sure he can do the deed if he needs to, but you seem kind of…well, pretty.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not pretty, and even if I were—”

“Oh yeah, you are, and Big B thinks so too. I’ve seen how you two drool over each other while we’re getting ready for sleep. It’s a damn wonder the fire can stay lit with the rivers of spittle dripping off your chins.”

“Your way of describing things never fails to amaze me,” I commented, dropping a single bell-shaped flower at the stony foot of the clan tailor, hands that usually stitched glorious robes for holy days, weddings, and funerals now locked in front of his gray face.

“My mother used to say all the time, ‘Tezen, you’ll never secure a good mate with that kind of indelicate talk.’ Ow, why isyour hair so…oh, never mind, I got it free.” She climbed to the top of my head, then took a thin braid in hand as if I were a plow horse. “I mean, do I strike you as the type of person who wants a good mate? I don’t want any mate, nor will I ever have one, or whelp a litter of suckling babes.”

I walked on, dropped a flower at the toes of a teenager cradling a small dog to his chest, both with looks of fear locked in place.

“Even if we did gaze at each other in that way, what matter does it make? Our only thought can be saving the druids and thereby saving the wilds of Melowynn.”

“Right, sure, but if you do get dead, and I’m not saying that you will due to your meager battle skills, but if you did, then you’ll go to your goddess never knowing the rapture of lying in a lover’s arms. And that, my pale prince, would be a tragedy!”

“I amnota prince,” I reminded her, but the proof of that was on its way back to Renedith.

She flipped over my brow to hang in front of my face, her tiny, booted feet on the bridge of my nose. I had to cross my eyes to see her properly.

“Yeah, you are. You’reeveal, right? Isn’t that the word you elves use to describe someone of prestige?” I nodded. “See, you’re just like I am. We’re nobility. We can deny it all we want, but our bloodlines are far from common. A son of a wilder warden and a high priestess? Please, you’ve got druid prince aura oozing from you, just like I have pixie princess milady dust falling out of my ass. It’s who we are. Do we want to be? Nope, but we are, so we might as well at least accept it and use it for whatever good we can.”

I tried to blow her away as one would a pesky fly, but she merely clung to those two braids more tightly.

“What good have you found from your lineage then?” I asked, stepping around the well at the center of our communityto place a flower on the lap of a mother clasping her small baby to her breast. The tears on her cheeks were captured in stone. I sucked in a shaky breath and moved on as we had many miles to go. Crying over things would have to wait for later.

“Well, it gets me lots of free ale and pretty wenches when I stop at pubs,” she stated factually, pushing off my nose to take to the air, her wings a blur. Purple dust billowed behind her, making me sneeze. “I bet you’d get all kinds of cock if you used your title to your advantage.”

“I don’t want all kinds of cock,” I told her as we tenderly stepped into the temple where my family stood, locked in stone, perhaps forever if we could not kill the necromancer who had cast this curse. “I just wish to have one man’s love,” I whispered, kneeling down in front of my father to place a bell at his foot. Then I moved to each sibling, and then, finally, I laid the remaining flowers at my mother’s tiny feet. “I will do my best to see you and all our people freed from this darkness,” I told her.

“She’s so lovely,” Tezen softly said, flitting about, leaving a trail of fine lavender particles on my mother’s head. “I can see where you get your looks from. She would be proud of you.” I smiled weakly at my friend. “I’m proud of you, and the big man, and myself most of all. It was really hard to leave home. I miss my sisters…”

“Perhaps when this is over and the spell is broken, you can return home with all the accolades of the druids upon your shoulders. Surely your father will then see you as the fearsome warrior you are.”

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