a story of two princes

[eliyes]

When at last the Prince of Waters arrived at his destination, horse weary and heart in his throat, all that was left to be seen was a much-battered wooden building, filled with holes and surrounded by the footprints of at least fifty people.

He approached cautiously, debating whether or not he should call out to anyone who might remain inside the sorry shack. He saw the blood, when he circled round to the door, and his hands tightened on the reins.

He had received a premonition-dream, that the Prince of Roses needed his help, was weakened and in terrible danger. He had come as fast as he could, pushing his mount unspeakably, but it was a long way from is own home to this hilly place. He could not bring himself to completely exhaust his horse on the journey of several days, and was forced to stop periodically. Each time he rested, he fell into a fitful sleep, his dreams filled with a sense of urgency, and frightful images of abject torment inflicted on his friend.

Now he dismounted, trusting his horse to be too tired to go far. He approached the door. There was blood, reasonably fresh, in the dirt and on the door -- not enough to clearly indicate a death, at least not a bloody one. Still, some violence had obviously occurred here not long ago. Was he, after all, too late?

He knocked on the door, one hand on the hilt of his sword. There was only a terrible silence in answer -- not even animal noises, although this was clearly, from the smell, a barn. He thought he might have heard the knock echo. Empty, then?

Not willing to risk not looking, he opened the door and peeked in. The dim evening light fell in shafts from the westerly gashes in the walls, spotlighting dirt floor, hay, and a few bits of stray animal tack. He though he smelled blood in here, too, but it may have been the door.

Quietly, he stepped inside, careful his scabbard did not scrape against anything. A cold shiver raced up his spine; there was something in here that felt very... wrong.

There. Movement.

He eyed the tiny bit of hay that had shifted. It might be a mouse. The hay moved again, and a soft, familiar moan accompanied the sight of a brown hand at the end of a white -- though blood-stained -- sleeve.

The Prince of Waters rushed to his friend’s side, uttering a wordless cry of relief to have found him alive. He kneeled beside him in the crackling hay, assessing his condition.

The Prince of Roses had blood staining both his sleeves -- although it was not spreading, and examination revealed no cuts; perhaps it wasn’t his. His shirt was open to reveal a slice of the brown skin of his chest, coated with a fine sheen of sweat. His trousers were pulled low on his hips, almost to the point of indecency. His pale lavender hair was disheveled and damp. Clouded green eyes opened, with some difficulty it seemed, and regarded the Prince of Waters with a muzzy sort of confusion, not immediately recognizing him.

That was the only real outward sign of the terrible wrongness he felt here. Biting his lip with worry, the Prince of Waters tucked back a strand of silken hair the colour of heart’s blood. His friend seemed to be suffering no illness or injury, not even the exhaustion he’d evidenced when last they spoke. He ran questing fingers through those gentle curls, searching along the scalp for bumps. He found none.

“What happened here?” he asked quietly, and was dismayed when the response was a rolling back of the eyes and a return to unconsciousness.

he shook the sleeping Prince, who did not waken, but at least seemed to be breathing normally. He tried other means of rousing him, and when these failed, sat back on his heels to wait helplessly. The object of his concern did not seem likely to die, but this mysterious sleep was only increasing his sense that there was something terribly wrong here.

He tried to pin down what the problem was. He felt a deep sense of unease, had since laying hands on the Prince before him. It was as though he had felt his friend’s soul to be bruised... no, worse than bruised. It seemed as though something had been taken from him forcefully, like an important piece of him had been ripped away.

Was that really the impression he was getting now, or a fancy spawned by the terrible visions of harm he’d experienced in his sleep? Was there truly a difference?

Suddenly remembering vividly a vicious act in one of those dreams, he carefully tugged down the front of his friend’s trousers -- and then hurriedly pulled them back up, horrified by this evidence of the accuracy of his premonitions. He glanced upwards, to the delicate face -- and discovered two huge, green, frightened eyes staring at him.

“I would never --” he began, but stopped abruptly to hear the whispered words spoken to him.

“She -- she put a spell on me...” He seemed, now, to be scarcely breathing. “She took --” Suddenly, he gripped the Prince of Waters’ arm, and whimpered a denial.

“ ‘She’, who?” The Prince of Waters asked delicately.

“...my sister.” A look of confusion, and guilt, crossed his expressive face.

“You... have no sister...”

There was an uncertain silence in the barn for a moment.

“This spell -- it stole a part of you?”

A nod.

“To what purpose? She seems to have healed you, whoever she may be. A mistake on her part, perhaps? She seems a Witch, and a fairly powerful one. Surely she must know that a healthy Prince would --”

“I’m not,” the darker-skinned young man interrupted, with quiet horror.

“You aren’t what?” asked the Prince of Waters, with an enormous feeling of dread.

“A Prince,” came the faint, shocked response. “That’s what she did. That’s what she took.” He blinked several times, and then swallowed deeply before adding, “...She said she wanted to be a Princess. ‘The Rose Bride’ she called it.”

“May the Stars help us,” the Prince of Waters uttered, dragging his hand across his face.

“Where is she now, then?” he asked finally. His companion’s face was ashen.

“I don’t know... There was an angry mob outside. They may have taken her.” He paused, then added slower, as though puzzled, “The wanted my help; that’s why they were here. They were angry that I was too exhausted to serve them.”

The Prince of Waters frowned.

“They may be in danger. We should warn them.”

“Why?”

This question startled them both, but a moment after he spoke it, the former Prince of Roses seemed to firm his resolve.

“It was them who brought me to such state that she could do this to me, and they who cornered us here. She and they can kill each other, for all I care.”

The Prince of Waters gaped at his friend in astonishment, even as the dark and dainty face twisted in a rictus of anguish.

“I’m a monster!” he cried, bringing up his hands to cover his face. A sob escaped. “I fornicated with my own sister!”

The Prince of Waters laid a hand on his companion’s shoulder, comfortingly.

“She’s not your sister,” he said, and opened his mouth to continue along more helpful lines when he was interrupted by several inches of metal passing, uninvited, through his heart.

“I am now,” hissed a curiously flat, female voice in his ear, nearly drowned out by the cry of “No!” from in front of him.

As his soul escaped his dying body, he suddenly saw with clarity the spell that had been woven -- and saw that it was incomplete. With all his might, all his will, he twisted that spell, entrapping the Witch, dividing her as surely as she had divided his friend. With that done, he felt the drained scraps of his soul sucked into the fabric of it.


Several hours later, the villagers noted that the silence in the prisoner’s cell was not because she was still unconscious (or possibly dead do to the beatings she had received), but in fact because she had escaped. They sent out parties to search the area, and at the barn where she had made her stand they found a stranger’s horse. Inside, they found the body, sprawled face first in the hay, surrounded by a long mane of red hair, and dressed like a Prince. Of the other Prince, and of the Witch, there was no sign.