AllFreeNovel
Share Us
6
~
Prince Calix slammed the cabin door, bolting it shut with trembling fingers. From above deck drifted the muffled laugh of Ondocian sailors, carting crates of apples and clanking amphorae of wine. Beneath the hobnails of his caligae boots, the ship groaned against the jagged shoreline.
But that was not the dominant sound. In the dark room, fast as a marching drum, came the thump of his heart and the stutter of his breath.
His face was drenched in cold sweat as he sank into the corner of the stately cabin. As if wishing to retreat as far as he could from any other soul.
“Control yourself! Control yourself!” he hissed through clenched teeth, his hand quivering so hard that it would have spilled a mug of water in seconds.
Ardora protect me.
So alive...
So powerful...
I’ve never felt...
Not since...
He tried not to think about it.
He tried not to think about him.
It was some time before the prince moved again, only rising later that night, once the ship was well underway, staggering to the shutters that covered the window.
The wooden slats carved his face between light and dark. With desperate movements, he threw them open, allowing the thin, silvery light of the half-moon to soak into his dark olive skin.
Only then did the shakes cease.
7
TEIGRA
Dawn broke over the red-clay roofs that surrounded the Lapiso Library. The warm light blended with Teigra’s lamp, illuminating a lamb-leather scroll.
She sighed. It was just getting to the good bit too, where the great Mestibian hero, Harophonies Savair, had rallied the forces of Vaticily, Ondocis, and Ardora against the bronze-armored might of Rinath at the end of the Third Dynosian War.
Stifling a yawn, she returned the scroll to its hive and made her way toward the exit. “Good night, Senator Vivlios,” she said to the old sphynx behind the counter.
“Good morning, Miss Cosmin,” he said, his tail swaying languidly behind him like a river reed, the crook of his wings resting gently against strong shoulders. “More stories on the therians, was it?”
“No, I was just reading about Snow Sands again.”
“Ah. Your grandfather was a great archon indeed. Good that he is being remembered.” The sandy-furred sphynx turned a codex page of his own and popped a piece of goat’s cheese past his fangs. “Until tomorrow.”
Teigra stepped into the late spring air of the agora, only now filling with merchants. The stars and half-moon retreated as she exchanged a handful of drachmae for a basket of fresh sprat, still wet with brine. The shores around Mestibes were rocky and steep—bad for seafarers, but good for the predawn fishers who clung to the cliffs with their long poles and longer lines.
Teigra loved this time of day more than any other: wandering the quiet streets as the sun roused the free citizens of Mestibes. Breathing in the leafy aniseed aroma of olive blossom and the inviting pear-and-walnut waft of hot tiganite cakes. Hearing those first few knaps of the sculptors, or the drifting notes of musicians tuning their instruments.
And as she walked the winding streets, she would think about what she’d read. And she always read something.
Just like he had taught her.
While she took care to read a selection of everything, even those scrolls and codices that made little sense to her, she loved the stories on history most—those tales with strange beasts and gods-chosen heroes, all fighting in grand battles between good and evil. And most of all, of the strange and unusual creatures born of the gods, like her absolute favorite stories: the therians.
Gorgons and sirens and eidolons and phoenixes and satyrs!
