Haladras (Haladras Trilogy Book 1)

by Michael Karr

  “I know you are,” she said softly. “Just make sure you’re back in time for my birthday.”

  Skylar laughed awkwardly. He’d completely forgotten about her birthday. It was only a month away. He cringed inside. There was no way he would be back in time. Not if his search took him where he believed it would. No, he wouldn’t be back for months…if he ever got back.

  Skylar's mother left him alone so he could dress and prepare himself for the long day ahead of him. They planned to leave that morning. Together with Krom, Endrick, and Grüny Sykes, he had been planning the details of their journey since deep winter. Now, as the first wisps of spring air roused the plants and animals from their slumber, it was time for their plans to come to life.

  Having dressed quickly in his tunic, trousers, and boots, he set off to find Endrick. He hoped the First Knight of Ahlderon hadn’t somehow forgotten about their departure. Endrick was the most loyal of companions but often failed to take matters seriously.

  On his bedchamber wall near the door, there hung a portrait which always brought him comfort and grief to look at. He paused for a moment to study it. The painting depicted his father. Though it had been painted his father was nearly twenty years younger than when Skylar ever remembered him, it could not have been anyone else. Except perhaps, an artist’s interpretation of what he might look like in ten years. No, the penetrating green eyes, the well-defined chin…these were his father’s features, and his own.

  “I will find her, father,” Skylar said softly. “I promise.”

  Then he turned and strode out of the room, fighting back the lump he felt forming in his throat.

  Despite his anxiety, he forced himself to walk casually down the corridor, the polished granite floor amplifying his every footstep. A sentry standing erect against the corridor wall turned his head slightly at his approach. The guard stood between two scarlet tapestries, embroidered with an intricate pattern of organic shapes, all spiraling around a great tree. The image of this soldier in his white armored suit, blaster held across his chest, surrounded by those great red wings, made Skylar briefly smile to himself. Skylar nodded to the soldier and kept walking.

  No one but a select few must know Skylar’s plans, not even the castle guards. That had been Krom’s decision. "If word gets out that the prince is missing," Krom had said, “we’ll have quite a mess on our hands. And we especially don’t want our enemies to know what you are up to.”

  They decided that Skylar would pretend as if he were going to Kyndoo Yavi, there to finish his schooling under the tutelage of the Kyndoo Yavi priests. All part of the preparation for his coronation. The story sounded legitimate enough. Being sixteen, he ought to be commencing his university studies. And there would be few, if any, who cared enough to travel to the remote ice-bound planet just to verify the claim. Virtually nobody but the priests lives on Kyndoo Yavi. It boasted no cities, no chartered colonies, no provincial lords. Nothing but a secluded monastery perched on some frozen mountain peak, and a handful of scientists and geologists were to be found amid the planet’s endless expanse of frozen wasteland. Skylar felt glad he was not actually going there to study.

  He turned down the west corridor, nodded at two more sentries, then entered one of the service doors leading to a spiral staircase. The cramped staircase was used primarily by the servants, but Skylar often employed it when he wished to move about without notice. Soft phosphorescent lamps illuminated the dark steps as he descended. The staircase led him to a narrow passage, which he followed until it emptied into the castle's main kitchen.

  Maud, the castle's head baker, was at her counter kneading out dough for some pastry or bread good to be served later that day. Skylar watched her for a moment as she worked at her craft. The rotund baker was humming to herself a bright tune, and she swayed her hips a little as her fingers danced across the dough. She seemed entirely oblivious to all the bustling commotion of the rest of the kitchen—the cooks stirring and chopping around their stove tops, the servers and servants hustling in and out with trays of food and drink, and the assistant bread maker pulling rounds of bread from the brick ovens with a long-handled peel. All the while the sounds and sweet smells of it all floated in the air.

  Though the castle dated back several centuries, numerous renovations over the last decades had made more comfortable, as well as nearly impregnable to attack. Yet the castle still imbued everything with an ancient air. Perhaps no more so that here, in the kitchen, where wood-burning stoves still baked fresh loaves of bread. He often came here. It was one of the few places go in the castle where his constant royal duties didn't follow. Until that moment, he hadn't realized how much he would miss this kitchen and all the people in it.

  Maud looked up from her dough to brush a loose strand of brown hair from her face using the back of her hand. Her rosy face brightened when she noticed Skylar.

  “Good morn’n, Prince Korbyn,” she said in her thick brogue. All of the castle servants still called him by his given name, even though he preferred Skylar. Prince Korbyn still sounded like a different person to him. “T’what do we owe the pleasure? Is your breakfast missing?"

  “No, Maud,” said Skylar. “I’m looking for Endrick. Have you seen him?”

  Maud rolled her eyes and nodded her head. “Done had his third breakfast already, I imagine.”

  She motioned towards the back of the sprawling kitchen, where the two doors leading out to a sort of terrace used by the kitchen hands to escape the heat stood wide open. Skylar knew the spot well.

  “Thanks,” he said, then made to traverse his way through the bustling kitchen.

  “Shall I have Layna bring your breakfast?” asked Maud before he could get away.

  “No…no, thank you. I’m not hungry this morning.”

  He knew it was the wrong thing to say to Maud before the words escaped his mouth.

  "Not hungry!" she cried. "Well, how do you like that? Up at the crack of dawn, I was. And what for? To throw it all to the dogs, apparently. Well, maybe I won’t feel like baking tomorrow. How will the prince like that?”

  She would go on like that for who knows how long? She wasn’t talking to Skylar anymore, or anyone, except maybe her dough. She was kneading it again, more vigorously than before. There was little good trying to talk to her now. So he quickly turned and strode away while he could.

  He found Endrick sitting on the terrace at a makeshift table of a wooden barrel and an old door cut in two. A short pile of sullied plates and an assortment of serving dishes, brimming with buttered toast, poached eggs, plump sausages, apple strudel, and lemon tarts lay before the Ahlderon’s First Knight, who was reclining in his chair, looking quite content.

  The table was Endrick’s on crude fabrication. It allowed him convenient access to the kitchen, while not having to be in Maud’s presence constantly.

  “Had enough to eat, yet?” said Skylar.

  Endrick belched.

  “Really Endrick,” said Skylar, “I know you enjoy eating, but this is definitely on the gluttonous side.”

  “Well, this might be our last good meal for a while. Good idea to stock up.” He patted his belly proudly, which did not protrude in the slightest from his stout frame.

  “We’ll have plenty of food on our journey.”

  “Nothing worth eating, especially if that Grüny Sykes is doing the cooking.”

  “Well, if you’re done stuffing yourself, I’d like to get going. We have a long trip ahead of us.”

  “All the more reason to get a good meal in. Sit down, have a sausage.”

  “I’m too anxious to eat,” replied Skylar, turning to looking out across the mountains that hemmed in the north. All winter those mountains had lain dormant, black and gray, and white with snow. Silent. Brooding. Now, the snow-mottled peaks were shrinking and its gray foothills were giving way to greens and yellows. The Misted River flowed with new life, its silver waters charging briskly down into the valley below.

 
; “Good idea,” said Endrick, as he helped himself to another strudel, “you’ll probably get sick if you keep fasting like that. Then we can end this whole adventure scarcely before it begins.”

  “You don’t have to come, you know,” snapped Skylar. He immediately regretted the remark. He didn’t want to be angry at Endrick. After his dream, he simply felt in no mood to put up with Endrick’s quips.

  “Well that’s news to me,” replied Endrick. “Do you mind mentioning that to Krom? He seems to think differently.”

  “Mention what to Krom?” said a voice from behind Skylar.

  Skylar turned at the familiar voice and found the tall form of Krom standing in the threshold to the terrace, his chiseled-stone face and hard eyes fixed on them.

  Krom slowly stepped out onto the terrace. In the fresh Spring light, Krom’s hair looked grayer than ever and his face more careworn. Despite the peace Ahlderon now enjoyed, the demands of the regency were taking their toll on Krom. Skylar felt a sudden pang of sympathy for this man. Krom had never asked to be his regent, never asked for the burden of responsibility to weigh on his shoulders. This man, who for years had striven to preserve the empire even as the tyrant king Tarus sought to oppress it, did he not now deserve to rest and enjoy the peace he had work so long to attain?

  Krom would never rest. Not so long as duty bound him.

  Skylar was all too familiar with that duty. That bond. It had torn him from his simple life on Haladras—from all he’d ever known—into a life that he had never asked for, nor wanted. That life was gone, scarcely a vestige of it remained.

  Krom gazed out across the valley, towards the mountains, just as Skylar had done.

  “You had something to tell me, Endrick?” he repeated.

  “Only that Skylar said—”

  “That I want to be off as soon as possible,” interrupted Skylar.

  “That wasn’t it at all,” said Endrick.

  “You should leave within the hour,” said Krom, ignoring Endrick, as usual. “There’s a party of representatives from Fenorra that I’ve just learned will arrive before noon. It will be simpler for me if you have already gone by then.”

  “I’m ready to leave now,” said Skylar. “We’re just waiting for Endrick to finish filling is gullet.”

  “Hey, now,” cried Endrick, “we can’t have all this food go to waste. It’s not my problem Skylar doesn’t feel like eating.”

  “You should eat something, Skylar,” said Krom. “It may help calm your nerves. Then go see Rolander. His new tutor arrives this morning. A Professor Laris Jonobar. Rolander would probably appreciate the news coming for you.”

  In no humor to argue about food, Skylar snatched a piece of toast from a serving plate and took an exaggerated bite out of it. Then he turned and strode back into the castle.

  He found Rolander in his bedchamber, sitting in an armchair, face buried in a book. It was a ragged leather-bound volume, with embossed text running the spinning, too worn for Skylar to read. He was not surprised to find Rolander reading. In the past few months, Rolander had taken to reading for days on end, sometimes not even taking breaks for meal time.

  He’s never been the same, thought Skylar sadly. And it’s all my fault.

  Skylar's eyes drifted to the nub where his schoolmate's hand and forearm used to be. Every time he saw it, he felt as though someone was sawing off his own hand. Rolander. His friend. The living emblem of the pain and suffering Skylar’s mere existence had caused. If only there were something more he could do for his friend…

  “Did you know that light can be bent?” said Rolander, not looking up from his book.

  Skylar didn’t reply. There was more, he knew it.

  "I'm not talking about mere refraction of it, like water does," he continued. "Technically, that is bending the light. However, I'm referring to bending it around an object—curving it, you might say. The idea's really quite simple. Engineer a material, using a mesh of nanomolecular structures which can redirect the light along an arbitrary path defined by the shape of the material. The light enters one end, it bent billions of times, then reconnects with other light rays out the other side. Effectively rendering the object around which the material is wrapped invisible."

  Skylar blinked at Rolander. The idea of nanomolecular anything did not sound simple to him.

  “Of course,” Rolander went on, as he closed the book and looked up for the first time, “this is all theoretical. No one has managed to engineer such a material. But the possibility is there. And the applications, limitless.”

  “I’ve come to say farewell, Roland,” said Skylar, flatly. “Endrick and I leave within the hour. We likely won’t return for several months.”

  Rolander looked away for a moment.

  “You’re still determined not to have me go with you?” he said at last.

  “I don’t want to risk you getting hurt.”

  “It’s a little too late for that,” muttered Rolander bitterly. “I’m not useless, you know?” he said with more force. “I can still do things…and I have my mental prowess. You may need me there to help you solve some clue.”

  Rolander looked at Skylar expectantly. For an instant, he was that enthusiastic schoolboy with the disheveled red hair and bright freckled face that Skylar had known before the battle on Haladras. Skylar hated to say no, to deny Rolander the one thing that had sparked a flame of the old Rolander. No, he couldn’t allow it. His friend would be safe in the castle with Krom and his mother. That’s what he wanted. He would never willingly put Rolander in harm’s way again.

  “I’m sorry, Roland. I know you’re not useless. It’s not about that. It’s just that it could be dangerous.”

  Rolander didn't reply but pulled his book back in front of his face. Skylar shook his head.

  “It’ll probably be incredibly boring,” said Skylar, trying to make it sound like he himself didn’t want to go.

  “Unlike being locked up inside the castle for days on end,” replied Rolander from behind his book.

  “No one is keeping you locked here. Besides, there’s no library on Grüny’s ship.”

  Rolander didn’t answer.

  “Your new tutor’s supposed to arrive this morning,” said Skylar, wishing to change the topic of conversation. “He used to be a professor at Strybrn. Should be a real smart fellow, a good match for you.”

  “If he’s so smart, why is he a tutor now? The university probably dismissed him for lying about his credentials, or something equally scandalous.”

  “Actually, I left Strybrn of my own free will.”

  Skylar started and turned toward the doorway, where now stood a man with a tangled black beard and mustache, wearing an oxblood robe and poet's cap. The strange man stared at Skylar with beady eyes, through rimless spectacles. The man gave Skylar a queer feeling that he couldn't quite explain. Perhaps because the stranger looked like someone who had just stepped out of another time period entirely.

  “I left, young master,” the man went on without introducing himself, “because the university did not thoroughly endorse my research. They wanted me to pursue more commercially-viable research. I felt stifled, unable to achieve my full potential. So, I left. And why am I here?" the man took a few steps into the room. "I was told there was an exceptionally bright pupil to be taught, a library to rival any at Strybrn, and time and funding for my own research. And as the true mark of any scholar is his pedagogical ability, I felt I could not shirk this opportunity.”

  The man doffed his cap, revealing a mop of unkempt hair, and bowed low to Rolander and Skylar.

  “Professor Laris Jonobar, at your service,” he said, with an air of great dignity.

  Skylar thought it very odd that the man had so intruded on their conversation, and even more so that the man had scarcely acknowledged Skylar. Not that Skylar cared one wit for the royal protocols and formalities, which seemed to define his existence. But he was unused to being treated so in his ow
n castle by anyone but those closest to him. He put the thought aside. This professor likely didn’t know who Skylar was, as he wore nothing that betrayed his royalty, only a simple tunic and trousers.

  “What did you teach at the university?” asked Rolander, his voice critical.

  The professor nodded approval.

  “Mustn’t take anything at face value, should we? Very good. I taught a number of topics during my tenure at Strybrn: mathematics, biology, astronomy, chemical engineering—the basics. My expertise, however, is in nanomolecular engineering. If I am not mistaken, this is a branch of science which interests you. Is that not Dr. Hawvine’s text you have?”

  Rolander glanced down at the tattered book now on his lap. A look of genuine surprise shown on his face.

  “Yes, it is,” said Rolander. “How did you—”

  “I studied under Dr. Hawvine when I attend the university as a student. He was my mentor. A great scholar.”

  “You knew Dr. Hawvine?”

  Rolander voice was filled with astonishment and admiration. That was the end of it, Skylar knew. This strange professor had managed to win over Rolander. The two continued talking, Rolander spilling out question after question for the professor. Skylar, finally realizing there was no point in him staying around, quietly slipped out of the room and made his way to the castle's transport depot. Skylar felt content leaving his friend now. His new tutor would make a good friend for him.

  Krom, Endrick, and his mother were all waiting for him at the depot when he arrived. The open courtyard, surrounded by enclosed transport stalls, lacked the usual flow of traffic it usually enjoyed.

  “Great Yurik, Skylar!” cried Endrick. “Another minute and I would have left without you. What took you so long?”

  Skylar ignored him and checked that his things had been properly stowed in the two-seater’s luggage compartment. Seeing everything in order, he closed the compartment’s hatch with a click, then turned to face Krom and his mother.

  Krom stepped forward and placed a strong hand on Skylar’s shoulder.