Chapter 12

The Cripple Prince

“I’m tired,” Daegan said.

“Tredains don’t tire” Landryn replied and shot forward. The first clash of steel on steel made Daegan’s heart leap in a conflicting blend of excitement and worry. Landryn knocked Daegan’s sword aside, and then as quick as a snake whipped back and whacked the flat of his blade against Daegan’s shoulder. “You’re going to have to do better than that if you’re going to challenge Ferath,” Landryn said. Daegan jumped back, raising his blunted sword in his fighting stance. Landryn came at him again, each clash leaving Daegan with either rapped knuckles or a slap of Landryns’s blade to his arm.

“Don’t swing so hard,” Landryn said as he easily evaded one of his younger brother’s offensive moves.

“Swordsmaster Garld says you need to throw a lot of strength to cut through armour,” Daegan said

petulantly.

“Yes but I’m not wearing armour. A big strong swing is fine when your opponent is all clad in steel and moving slow,” with a condescending flair, he plucked at his cloth tabard to demonstrate the difference, “you know I’m going to move quickly, so you’ve got to adapt and be quick too.” Landryn leapt at him again and Daegan clumsily parried the attack.

“Why would someone go into battle without armour?” Daegan asked, managing to back step out of his brother’s range.

“Most of our soldiers don’t even own their own plate,” Landryn said.

“Do we not give them armour?”

“Steel is expensive,” Landryn shrugged, then shifted into another offensive stance, preparing another attack, “so most of the lower classes wear dragonshide, it’s cheaper.”

Landryn jabbed and Daegan deflected but his older and faster brother allowed the movement to carry him into a spin and came around in hard whack against Daegan’s shoulder with the flat of his blade. Pain flared and Daegan dropped his own sword to rub at the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“You won’t always be wearing armour either. If this was a proper fight, I’d have taken your arm off. Now pick that up,” Landryn said, nodding to the fallen sword. Reluctantly, Daegan picked up the sword and assumed an offensive stance of his own. Gritting his teeth, Daegan tried a similar jab and spin but Landryn had been prepared for it and easily knocked his smaller brother back. They carried on in a series of parries, mostly ending with Daegan stumbling after a shove or deflection from Landryn. Occasionally the larger boy would give him another sharp whack to the shoulder.

Daegan’s shirt billowed, the tip of Landryn’s sword just catching the material as Daegan jumped back evading a side swing. His heart lurched with excitement at the near hit. Landryn reset again into his stance and drove in again for another jab. Daegan finally saw an opening, assuming that his brother was intending for another parry and spin attack. This would be Daegan’s first chance to land a hit, he grinned as his brother put his weight into the jab. Daegan sidestepped and performed a careful and efficient swing of his sword at the other boy's shoulder.

And then he felt it; a rush of wind that pushed him off balance, causing his sword to swish up and miss its target. The manoeuvre made Daegan stumble and trip.

“Hey!” Daegan said furiously, jumping back to his feet, “No runestones, that’s cheating!”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, it just happened.”

“Don’t apologise for simply using your talents,” a voice called from the edge of the duelling ring.

“Father!” Both boys dropped their blunted swords and stood to attention. The boys’ father stood at the entrance to their private duelling ring alongside Swordsmaster Garld.

Landryn spoke first, “I’m sorry, father, I know it’s late. We just—”

“—thought you could ring steel swords against one another in the middle of the night and no one would notice.”

“Daegan is facing Ferath tomorrow. Ferath’s the best in our rank, he needed to practice,” Landryn said.

“And so you thought you would use steel swords in an unsupervised bout?” Garld said, his disapproving gaze making Daegan squirm.

“Where is your stormstone, Daegan?” father asked. Terror rose in the boy's chest.

“Here, father,” pulling out his runestones. Hanging from a silver chain around his neck were all four of the elemental runestones; eradite, topaz, aquamarine and amethyst. Each of the gemstones glowed with a faint light. Daegan had made a point to learn the scholarly names for the elemental gemstones. In truth, Daegan studied harder than all the others in his rank. He needed to.

“So why— when your brother windpushed your blade —did you not push against it with your own stormstone?” father said, his grim expression made Daegan want to shrink away.

“I-I didn’t know he was using it,” Daegan said.

“Landryn’s edir is wild and uncontrolled, a toddler could detect it,” the father said, Daegan noted that Landryn too was ashamedly looking at his feet, “you are telling me that you couldn’t feel him drawing in the air, and then pushing it against you? Are you lacking in your senses as you are your wits?” he asked disdainfully. Daegan trembled. I’m trying. I’m trying as hard as I can.

“Windweaving is the most difficult to grasp, your Highness,” Garld offered.

“Don’t make excuses for him, Garld,” father said, “He’s a Tredain, Landryn was half his age when he started using runestones. So tell me, boy, why do you continue to fail?”

“I don’t know, father,” Daegan said, tears had begun welling up in his eyes.

“We have coddled you long enough,” father said, “give me your sword.” Daegan jumped to obey, offering the blade which the King snatched.

“Landryn, resume your attack,” he commanded.

Landryn hesitated, “but father, h-he’s unarmed,” he said.

”No,” father said bluntly, “he isn’t. Your brother is a Tredain, just like you. Like me, and all of our ancestors back to Queen Elyina herself. Our edir bends water to our will, rock forms at his command, the very air itself should rush to obey him. So Resume. Your. Attack.”

“Yes, father,” Landryn said, wincing as father spoke. Once again, Daegan’s older brother assumed his fighting stance, he looked at Daegan with worry, “please, Daegan, j-just defend yourself.”

Daegan was too shocked to move, a boy not yet even twelve years old, facing his armed brother two years his senior. His only defence was four glowing stones. In the same manoeuvre as before, Landryn shot forward. His attack had a fraction of his previous spirit but Daegan had no means to parry and so he raised his arm in defence. The blunt steel bit into his arm, pain flaring as the sword broke his skin, he felt the impact rattle the bones in arms. Muscle and bone were not meant to take the full brunt of steel. Daegan cried out and staggered back clutching his arm.

“Again,” father said.

Landryn resisted, “Please, father—”

“—again!”

Before Daegan could grasp what was happening, Landryn struck him again. The same instinct took over and he raised his bloodied arm to shield his face but this time the sword belted against Daegan’s shoulder.

“Defend yourself!” Landryn shouted, frustrated as he hit his brother again. All Daegan could do was take the attack, pain blinding him as his brother repeated again and again until eventually Landryn lost patience and kicked the younger boy square in the stomach, knocking him to the ground. The stone floor of the duelling ring felt cold against Daegan’s face, nausea from the kick welling inside him. The sharp cold of the tiles on his face helped distract him and avoid vomiting.

“Lan, sto—” Daegan started, only to have the breath knocked out of him as Landryn’s foot slammed into his chest, pinning him to the floor. Daegan gasped, trying to suck in ragged breaths, “Lan, please!” he shouted at last. Landryn was panting heavily, his face flush with fury. Daegan looked up through watered eyes at the tip of the blunted blade hovering above his face. Please Lan.

Landryn stared at their father for a long moment before turning his gaze back to Daegan, flat on his back. Daegan could taste copper in his mouth, his blood ran hot from his nose and the gashes on his arms. Landryn still held the blunted sword above Daegan’s face, and for a split second Daegan truly believed that Landryn was going to kill him. That his brother would slam the tip of the sword through his eye. With pained effort, Daegan raised his bloodied arms and weakly tried to bat the sword away. Landryn gritted his teeth and threw the blade across the duelling ring. Father said nothing, just stood watching with disapproval while Daegan groaned on the floor.

“Tredains do not yield,” the King shouted at Landryn. “We do not bend. We do not cower. We cut down the enemies before us or we die in the effort.” His father’s fists clenched tightly around Daegan’s sword. “We do not have weakness in our family,” he growled “now get up, Daegan.” Daegan coughed, he could barely grasp his father's words through the confusing haze of pain. His arms ached as he tried to push himself up. His hands felt sticky from his blood as he pushed himself off the ground. Bruises already forming around the messy cuts. He got as far as his knees before stopping to retch.

“You are dismissed, Landryn. Return to your room,” father said, not taking his gaze off Daegan’s struggle to get up. No, please, don’t go, Lan. Daegan looked pleadingly to his brother, ‘please,’ he mouthed looking at him.

Landryn held his gaze for a moment, his face scrunched in anger. He turned away from Daegan and walked to the door. Daegan closed his eyes, could feel his entire body begin to tremble. He heard the door of the training room slam. Landryn had abandoned him.

Daegan managed to rise to his feet, his father was a mountain of a man when he stood directly over him. Garld next to him was equally domineering. Daegan’s entire body shook from both fear and the beating he had gotten from his brother.

“Idiot boy,” father said, scowling at him “what is wrong with you?” Daegan didn’t respond, his lip began quivering but managed to stem out any tears from actually escaping. I don’t know, father, I don’t know why it doesn’t work for me. He wanted to scream it at him. Father held the sword so intently that he feared any words he said would be seen as weakness and his father would punish him for it.

“Are you now mute and dense?” Father asked.

“N-no, father,” Daegan replied.

“So tell me, have you been slacking in your studies?”

“No father, I read the tomes on runestones every night. I swear it,” Daegan said quickly, and it was true, he had. “So you are confident in how eradite can be used to stonebreak? To break stone into dust and pull it into your edir?”

“Yes, father.”

“We shall see,” he said bitterly.

Daegan felt the tug on his neck roughly jerk him forward as his father grabbed at the runestones around his neck. His head snapped back and he kicked wildly as he was lifted by the chain. The silver links bore into his neck, not enough to fully choke him but enough so that his breaths wheezed as he laboriously tried to suck in air, his body flapping and thrashing ineffectively against his father’s resolute strength. Through bleary panicking eyes, Daegan watched as Father raised his free hand calling up jagged pillars of rock that broke up through the floor of the duelling ring. Six stone spikes that crept up from the ground around him. He felt the jagged edges of the stone pillars slowly press into his shoulders, biting into his skin. Four of the pillars of rock pinned him in place, his feet dangling just a few inches off the ground, unable to find purchase. Two columns with sharpened points pressed unbearably against his throat. More pillars began to rise, all of them working to pin Daegan in place, pinching into his skin. Only when Father released his grip on the chain, Daegan felt his full weight push down against the pillars, suspended in the air by jagged pieces of rock all pointing inwards at him. Instinctively Daegan tried to let out a cry of pain—but with the two pillars pressing against his throat —his airways were too tight and only a barely audible squeak escaped him. His lungs tried to pull in more air but it came in thin rasps. He tried to beg his father, to plead for release from the prison of stone, but the words incomprehensibly wheezed out of him. His father still held Daegens eradite in his hand, it’s light completely faded. The runestone looked like just a regular piece of brownish jade. “Your eradite is now empty,” he said, if he showed any remorse for the pain he was inflicting on his son, his face and voice did not show it.

Please, father, please let me go. Daegan thought desperately. Free me. His eyes frantically searching his father for understanding, for some sliver of caring. But he knew he wouldn’t find it. Tredains show only strength, never weakness. To show emotion was a weakness. So his father was—and always would be—cold and impenetrable.

“-leese-” Daegan managed to croak, “hree”

“There is only one way you’re getting free, Daegan.” He shook the eradite in front of him, “You know how to use this. You are a Tredain. You are not some skragling halfbreed. The blood of Elyina flows in you.”

Daegan looked desperately to Garld. The man had stood solemnly beside his King, wordlessly allowing the abuse. “Harrd,” Daegan wheezed, “ease” was he could manage. Garld said nothing. And then his father—King Abhran Tredain of Reldon, Protector of all Reldoni People—turned his back on his suffocating son. “No son of my mine is a cripple,” he said, “you will get yourself out—or you will die here.”

***

Daegan wasn’t sure how much time had passed. The exertion of his beating from Landryn, in addition to the strain on his breathing was more than enough to push him into unconsciousness. But he would find himself gasping awake moments later, in a sharp heave that would cause the stone pillars to all bite in on him simultaneously as his chest expanded with the breath. He wept openly now that he was alone. He wept until there were no more tears. When his lungs would eventually protest at the lack of air filling them, he would cough violently, the action causing his body to spasm in his torture chamber; the sharp edges of the stone spikes gnawing at him. The pain of it overwhelmed him and he passed out again. This cycle continued and after the fourth time he passed out, Daegan stopped counting. He stopped caring to know how long he had been there. He stopped waiting for someone to come help him. He stopped hoping—pleading—for the eradite to work. For the pillars to simply dissolve at his command. He would go in circles like this. Times where he would try to feel for the vibrations, the thrumming sensations people claimed they could feel from rock and earth when they held eradite. He tried to will the stone to dissolve into his edir as he had been taught for so many years to do. At times, Daegan thought maybe he could feel it. But it was just his own limbs going numb with fatigue and strain. The spikes didn’t dissolve, they held fast and when his focus and effort fled him he would wheeze and cough. And the cycle would go again.

***

Daegan woke but it was not a harsh waking. The pillars were still crushing against his windpipe, but he could breath and his body wasn’t spasming. For that he was grateful. Light was beginning to creep in from the arched windows of the duelling ring. This was the private royal training room so only he and Landryn would train here. No other students would be coming to find or help him. At first Daegan had hoped that Landryn would find him. That his brother would rush to his aid and blast his stone prison to dust. But the bruises on his arms—now pinned by the pillar—made him think otherwise. Landryn would never betray their father.

Daegan wept as the sun rose. Light began to creep in and he wept because he knew it would be the last one he would see.

***

Daegan was cold. He had soiled himself so many times through the rough spells of coughing and spasming that pain flared everywhere in his body and he was unable to control himself. During those moments he thought he wouldn’t be able to draw enough breath to keep going. And then there were moments where he felt there was no point in trying to keep going. It won’t hurt so much, he tried to tell himself. He could just slip away and it would all be over. He could sleep without being jolted back awake in pain. It won’t hurt like this forever.

As the early morning chill took him, Daegan began to shiver. His rattling caused the pillars of rock to stab at him. He blinked his bleary eyes open and was surprised to find Landryn standing in front of him. He looked horrified and Daegan in his dazed state couldn’t tell if he was horrified to find that Daegan had been entombed like this or because he still hadn’t yet figured out how to free himself.

And then, suddenly, there was a loud crack and sharp flaring of pain on his knees as Daegan fell hard against the floor. His elbows followed, crashing against the ground. For the first time in what felt like eternity Daegan took a full unrestrained breath, filling his lungs of air and dust. He coughed and spluttered in a succession of heavy laboured breaths, kneeling on all fours. Through bleary eyes and a cloud of dust, Daegan could see Landryn kneeling in front of him. He was saying something but Daegan couldn’t understand the words. He was so exhausted, he just wanted to lie down. To close his eyes and let sleep take the pain away. He collapsed onto the ground.

Absently, Daegan could feel that Landryn was carrying him. His head lolled as Landryn carried him down the hallway that led to their rooms. He gently lay him down in a bed, and Daegan felt warmth and comfort enveloping him. Unconsciousness hovered about him, waiting to claim any shreds of awareness he had left. Landryn stood to leave him and he reached out a hand to him. Please, Lan, stay. He thought desperately. Please, protect me. His hand found Landryn’s tunic and gripped on it. The material in his fist the only tangible thing his mind could hold on to.

“Please, Lan,” Daegan rasped.

“Let go of me,” Landryn said, and then pulled himself forcefully out of Daegan's reach. Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Landryn walked away as unconsciousness finally grabbed hold and pulled him under.

***

In the weeks that followed. Daegan’s lessons in sword fighting and runewielding had come to an abrupt halt. During the brief moments that Daegan and his father crossed paths, Daegan would begin to choke and sputter, struggling to breath from some imaginary hand choking him, his father did not even give him a cursory glance. The King had never questioned how Daegan had been freed from the stone torture chamber, but Daegan suspected that he knew. The King’s son had no edir, that much was clear and it was quickly becoming heavily known through the palace. Somehow a son of the Tredain family had been born without the ability to command the forces of the world to his will. It was not unheard of for a person to have a weak—almost indistinguishable— edir, but Daegan had none.

Daegan and Landryn did not speak much after that night. Landryn did not come to visit while Daegan was recovering. The palace healers and chirurgeons did their work to heal his wounds and injuries, as well as ease the pain. Without an edir, the chirugeons couldn’t use bloodstone to accelerate the healing and so his physical injuries took time to heal. Most of the bruises and cuts were all superficial. He had suffered only a broken arm and two ribs and in time those healed also. But something else was broken inside of Daegan, something that required more than just time to heal. Something that a twelve year old boy could never heal on his own.

Landryn was soon relocated to the main garrison in Epilas to complete his military training and in the years that followed, he and Daegan did not stay in contact. For the most part, Daegan had become a shadow in the Tredain family. His eldest brother Lukane would check in on him occasionally, he would feign interest in the boy’s education. He was forbidden to spend time with his younger sister, Allyn, lest Daegan’s affliction somehow also pass to her also. But Alyn’s edir was already growing. From what Daegan had heard from others in the palace, Alyn had a stronger edir than Landryn or Lukane had at her age.

Daegan was a forgotten thing left to gather dust in the Reldoni palace. His education continued, he was still a prince and would be required to serve the kingdom in some capacity but he was a mark on the Tredain bloodline, a cripple who would never live up to the legacy that all Tredains aspired to. Like a blunt training sword amongst razor sharp Reldoni blades.