Chapter Text
Young Prince Csorzhen poked his head around the doorway, his long silver braid swinging down across a blue linen nightshirt embroidered in white, swooping birds. His bright amber eyes caught Lieutenant Beshelar’s frown at him and winced. Then he straightened and skipped forward to scowl imperiously at his father’s First soldier nohecherus. “We wish to see our father, the emperor,” he announced with all the dignity he could summon to his slender, childish frame. He emphasized the demand with a shake of the stuffed, silk creature the Pencharn ambassador had called a 'tiger.' “And so too does Zhessar!” His dignified scowl fell apart in a helpless giggle.
Lieutenant Beshelar’s frown did not lighten, but somehow his eyes did. Csorzhen could tell. “Your Highness. His Serenity is preparing for bed. We will announce your arrival. And where is your guard?”
As though summoned by the censorious words, an Unthelienise guard came panting around the corner. “Your Highness! Your Highness, please wait…”
Besheler coolly redirected his frown. “Guardsman. You and we will have words. Stand here while we announce the Crown Prince.”
The guardsman snapped into a portrait perfect form of attention even as his body seemed to give off a certain strain of unease.
Besheler then knocked upon the great oaken door and boomed, “His Imperial Highness Crown Prince Csorzhen is here to see His Serenity.” A voice called out “Enter!” and Beshelar swung open the door to the young boy who darted around before the hinges had even stopped moving. The prince shot a mercurial grin at the Lieutenant who exchanged it for a quick wink, mouth and ears miraculously unmoving, before once more returning to his post. The last thing the boy heard was “Now Guardsman…” before the snick of the closing latch cut off anything further.
The prince did a quick scan of the room - Cala Athmaza in the corner and - yes - his father sitting in front of a mirror clearly just beginning to end his day while one edocharus briskly whisked tashin sticks from the grip of taut braids and the other gracefully tugged heavy rings from slender, dark fingers. The third was...there! Walking past a frosted screen with a tray of mysterious lotions and ointments.
His father caught his eyes in the mirror and smiled, a gentle, bright smile that felt like a pet to the hair or a warm kiss on the cheek - and the prince rushed forward to receive the real thing. “Father!” he cried out, and his father softly patted the spot next to him on his cushioned, embroidered bench. When Csorzhen had wriggled his way into a seated position, his father gathered him to his side and gently kissed the top of his head.
Csorzhen gave a sigh of contentment, his earlier bedtime turbulence melting away as he cuddled into the warmth of his father’s arm. “Father, Zhessar also wants a kiss!” Another one of those warming smiles.
“Then so shalt he receive one.” And the edocharei paused a moment in their work as the imperial head bent down to bestow a light kiss upon Zhessar’s orange brow.
Csorzhen began to chatter about his day, small complaints intermixed with expressions of wonder. He watched his father’s face in the mirror, lovingly tracing with his eyes the shadow of each curl released one by one to frame that dark countenance. Father said little but the occasional low, murmured hmmm, content to stroke his son’s shoulder with his thumb.
That was something that Csorzhen loved about Father - sometimes it seemed that silence was a refuge that Father built over the two of them. Gradually his words wound down and Csorzhen leaned heavily into his father’s side, entering fully into the muted haven of his father's warmth. He stroked Zhessar’s head echoing the way his father stroked his own shoulder, gentle and slow. His father was always so gentle - Csorzhen tried to be but was often filled with a buzzing, blitzing energy that filled his stomach and blazed out through his skin. Sometimes it led him to run and shout which occasionally ended in bruises and tears.
Now his words were quieted - all but one burning Question, the one that had unsettled him into running through the corridors tonight. It had started weeks months?...years? ago as a lump in his stomach, growing monstrously large, and over time had crawled slowly up the ladder of his ribs, one by one. The Question squeezed itself through the tightness of his throat to curl up like a ragged, wild creature pressing against his gums and weighing down his tongue like lead. He had carried it like a brand in his mouth and here, now, he finally opened the gate of his teeth to let it tumble out.
“Father…am I ugly?”
The stroking of his shoulder stopped. Csorzhen dropped his eyes at the terrible stillness in his father’s face - something forbidding roiled there that Csorzhen had never seen before.
“Who hast told thee so?” came the measured words, plunging like stones in a once still pond, ripples shattering the surface.
Csorzhen squirmed, suddenly feeling too hot in his nightclothes.
“No one really…just…sometimes I hear...or...I know I don't look like the other boys at court. Or…like the famous elves in tales. Like elves at court should. I just…I’m sorry, I just wanted to know.”
His eyes burned with shame. Somehow he’d said the wrong thing again, and bruised with his words. He felt his father grip both of his shoulders and looked up, surprised. His father had only half his hair undone - but Csorzhen realized that the edocharei had pulled away. Father faced him fully and tilted his chin up so that Csorzhen stared into softly shimmering silver eyes.
“Csorzhen, my darling love. Thou art the dearest treasure of my heart and the shining jewel of my eyes. Thy hair is lovelier than the finest silk and thy skin is more polished than the moon. Thy eyes brighten my days, and my heart is lightened every moment I see thee. Thou art a very handsome boy, and indeed a trippingly handsome prince to grace this Court. Most handsome of all is thy warm and giving heart, which gives thee a glow undimmed. Wilt remember? Wilt remember that thy father, the emperor, hast said this?”
Csorzhen flushed and gazed back at his father’s serious face. “I…yes, Father.”
His father held his eyes for a moment more before gripping Csorzhen tight to him and kissing his forehead and cheeks with trembling solemnity. He released the now breathless boy, and Csorzhen hesitantly cuddled back up - then climbed into his father's lap. His father held him loosely in his arms, reaching up a hand to grasp his shoulder in a tense hold and giving him a small, a shaky smile. “Quite handsome, my prince.”
Csorzhen smiled trustingly back, closed his eyes, and leaned into his father’s broad chest. He rubbed his cheek there to feel the soft velvet underneath. His father was the emperor, and what the emperor said was so. Finally the weight in his stomach and throat and tongue was...released. The Question scuttled away in retreat. ("Mostly," came a dark whisper in Csorzhen's mind)
He heard the edocharei return to their nightly duties, the soft rasp of hair unbraided by nimble fingers and the slick noise of lotion applied.
“Wilt tell me a story, Father? A story of the goblin boy and his magic cloak?”
His father’s thumb resumed stroking. “I have a story for thee - but is about a brave young Elf Prince, not a Goblin Boy. And it goes like this:"
~~
~~
In a bright, golden palace covered in roses of every hue lived a handsome Elf Prince by the name of Quicksilver, so named for the silver of his skin and hair and the quickness of his mind. He himself was drenched in gold, for his father had given him a golden coat that he jealously safeguarded.
Csorzhen held his bare arm out to the light to examine it for similarity to silver. Father quirked an odd smile and continued.
Quicksilver adored his coat, for his father had made him the coat himself out of love - its threads were made of prayers, its weft and weave from soft lullabies, its shining buttons from loving kisses. Quicksilver often admired it gleaming in the mirror.
Csorzhen turned his face up for a loving kiss, and his father obliged the unspoken request.
One day a young elf woman, a farmer, came to the palace. She begged the court for aid, for the distant countryside had become so dry the ground cracked and the crops withered. One by one, the ministers turned her away.
"Can no one help us?" she cried
Quicksilver heard her plight and rushed to her side. "We are but a young prince and have little experience in the matters of governance. But we will do what we can an you lead the way."
The woman glanced at him doubtfully, but led the prince to the farmland. It took seven nights and seven days on horseback, fleet as a courier, to the farthest edge of the realm. The soil was as dust and blew in the wind, the crops mere stalks with wilted leaves. An overcast sky shadowed the land but held no promise of rain.
The prince stood next to the farmer and asked her, "We know little of farming. What does this land need to prosper?"
She said, "These fields were once fertile and green, but many border battles have torn the roots out from their earthen wombs and trampled the rest. Now the borders are safe, but the fields are left desolate. The soil blows away in the wind and what is left is parched, Your Highness. The fields need water to wet them, and roots to hold the moist soil, and then sun to grow."
The prince listened carefully and nodded once. He asked "Where is the nearest water to these fields?"
The farmer again led the way, towards a great river thundering through a stone gorge. The prince stood at the frothing water's edge. He unpinned one braid from his head, unwound the braid to the root, and from those hairs selected a single, silvery strand. He knelt and knotted the strand of hair around a rock under the river water and then pulled at it until it lengthened longer and longer as if it were a great thread unspooling from his own head.
Drops of water dewed along the silver hair until it became a trickle that Prince Quicksilver slowly guided back and forth along the borders of each field so that the water wet the parched earth.
At the end of the fields, he knelt and prayed to Orshan, the goddess of the earthen womb and green fertile things, and finally plucked from his own head the long, long hair which was now a gentle stream. The pain brought tears to his eyes, and as he wept, the skies opened up around him and a soft rain misted the earth until the soil the prince was kneeling on became dark and sodden with the blessings of the sky.
Csorzhen had been curiously tugging at one of his own hairs - and then without a second thought, he plucked it abruptly from his own scalp. "
Ouch," he gasped, "it really does hurt!"
Silence.
When he raised his now watering eyes to the mirror, he met four disapproving gazes.
"Please leave thy head alone, dear michen," scolded his father in that mild way he had. Father's words were emphasized by a sharp nod from each edocharus in turn. Csorzhen burrowed back into the soft velvet of his father's chest. "Yes, Father," he murmured, as he rubbed that prickling spot on his head. He felt a kiss on the back of his hand and smiled.
Prince Quicksilver stood from his work, and saw that many farmers had come from their houses, hands raised to the sky to receive the rain they hadn't seen in many months.
He then lifted a hand to his beautiful coat - paused - and then wrenched a golden button from its collar. The coat gaped sadly. "Where shall I plant this?" he asked the farmer.
Speechless, she pointed toward the center of the field. He knelt once more in prayer and dug with his own hands a small hole. He delicately placed the gold button there and covered it with a blanket of damp soil. From the button grew a young verashme tree, its bark golden where it is usually silvered. Soil mounded in soft beds between the roots that spread outward in a great ripple. The desiccated wheat stalks in that field raised their weak, wilted heads until they stood weedy but proud in the rich dark soil.
The prince strode lightly along to the next field where in the very center he wrenched at his coat, knelt. and planted a golden button. And the next field - and the next - and the next - until he arose from the last field at the end of a trail of golden verashme trees and upright crops. He gazed up at the gray, misting sky. His now bedraggled coat, soggy and dirty, flapped open with torn threads fluttering around the edges.
Csorzhen's hand had crept to the top of his nightshirt and scrunched the fabric in his fist. Maia took note, and gentled a thumb along the small hand until it relaxed the tight grip.
Prince Quicksilver turned to the bright-eyed farmer. "Water, roots, and sun?" he asked. She averred it was so. With a strong, sure hand, he whipped his coat off of his own shoulders - and swung it in ever swifter circles until he tossed it high into the sky. The coat floated there, blazing gold with the reflection of the suns rays that could finally break through the murky clouds.
The rays warmed the crops to round and ripen until the fields were as golden as the sky. The farmer stood with her hands on her hips and surveyed the wealth growing in the fields of the people with deep satisfaction.
"Thank you, Prince. We can take it from here." So saying, she curtsied deeply then rolled up her sleeves and got to work.
The prince clambered upon his horse and returned to the palace after seven days and seven nights of riding. He was cold and hungry and went to his father. His father asked, "Welcome home, my son. Wert able to assist the farmers?"
He replied "Yes - I listened and listened again, then I acted - my hair led the water to wet the earth, my golden buttons made roots to hold the soil, and my golden coat reflected the sun to warm the plants."
The prince paused and looked down at his hands. "Gladly did I take this task and gladly wouldst I do it again - but I grieve for the loss of my coat, for it wert made of thy own prayers and lullabies and kisses."
His father put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "But look again, just there in the mirror."
Quicksilver raised his eyes and saw in the reflection himself - draped from neck to knees in a shining golden coat.
His father said "Prince Quicksilver - thy coat is made from mine own dear love for thee. No matter how many times thou might give it away, thou wilt never lose it - for thou shalt never lose my love. And look how it shines even brighter than before."
Quicksilver ran a hand along the gleaming collar.
"It shines so because love is greater when shared."
And with that his father kissed him gently on the forehead. "And now, my son, though hast done a great work - thou art tired and cold and must to bed."
And so Quicksilver lay in the warmth of his father's arms until he slept and was carried to bed - wrapped in golden, shining love.
~~
~~
Maia finished his last words and looked down at his son, quiescent in the loose embrace. The boy seemed contemplative and hugged his little toy to his chest.
"What didst think of the story?"
"Hm...it was pleasant."
"Pleasant only? What wouldst change?"
"Well - I think there should be more tigers in it. And pirates! And maybe the prince and the tiger can fight the pirates on the thundering river and save the people!"
Maia smiled at the lively image and at his incorrigible son. Clearly he would have to add more sword fights to his clumsy parables of statecraft - Csethiro's son demanded no less.
"I see that next time, thou must tell me a story of the brilliant prince Quicksilver."
Csorzhen grinned up at his father with his dear little face alight. "I have a lot of ideas! First, he will meet a grand pirate - from the land of the lion women! And then -"
"Enough, enough," Maia chuckled. "Thou must savest it for when next we meet. Or perhaps write for thy tutor, hmm?"
A calculating look came over Csorzhen before a solemn nod. "I will write the best story ever, Father! Just wait!"
"Wilt wait," replied Maia. "And now is time for all sleepy princes to bed."
A pout was met with a gentle kiss and after several more negotiations, the prince was guided out of the room by his guard, who looked to have been thoroughly chastened by Besheler. The guard extended a hand to the prince - and a weary but sincere smile as well.
A rare man, Maia inwardly mused to spare a smile after his own chastisement. Wilt do well for the prince.
Then they were gone.
And it was silence that reigned, thunderously, in the emperor's bedroom.