Chapter One
The cold icy air felt strange to Quentin. After such a long time away from the kingdom of Coldstone it didn’t feel like how he remembered it. After four years away in the jungles that covered the chain of islands that formed Sheria’s Tears the frosty bite of Coldstone was as strange to him as the skin peeling heat that came with Sheria’s Tears was when he first felt it upon his pale skin. It was hot and horrible but the chill of Coldstone wasn’t any better, objectively speaking. To Quentin it was a more familiar kind of bad, he had spent most of his life there and the first few weeks after he left were the worst. Trying to get used to the drastic change of weather was only the start of it.
Four years. Four years of bathing in so much sweat that without it his black and brown animal skin clothing everything felt empty and wrong. The air smelled wrong without blood, sweat, ash and humidity filling it. Everything was wrong. He didn’t feel right returning to Coldstone, not that this was anything new for him. He was a bastard. A bastard is a bastard after all and it was something he had to live with for as long as he could remember. Amongst the noble and common Ser Quentin Stone was known as the son of some foreign servant who rose to be the mistress to the king after the death of his first wife and dismissed with a belly full of bastard after the king announced he would marry again. He had always known who his father was, it was the worst kept secret in the whole kingdom with everyone from the common farmer to the king who fathered him knowing who he was and who his father was. King Daeren Lightbringer the Second.
The first time Quentin had even seen his was as when he was fourteen years of age at the celebration for Prince Kortan Lightbringer’s sixteenth birthday. Quentin’s his trueborn half brother and heir to the throne.
The main event of the celebration was a melee, an event were knights, men-at-arms and one dumb enough to volunteer hit each other with blunted weapons for hours on end until only one of them is left standing. This melee was set to last throughout the night and into the morning inside of the garden within the walls of House Lightbringer’s royal seat, the Rainbow Keep. About fifty contestants were there for the event and the mess that became of the once well maintained greenery was shocking. Deaths were not encouraged, but injuries were. Quentin had heard so many rumors about knighthoods and gold for the most brutal fighters.
Quentin could remember what Kortan had looked like when he first saw the Crowned Prince. It was before the melee had started and everyone was waiting for the start of the main event. Quentin was standing amongst the armed men, all much older and experienced then the boy of fourteen he was then. The prince was on the balcony standing next to his father King Daeron and his sister the Princess Lexi. The prince had looked very much how Quentin expected when reading the history of the Lightbringer Kings and Queens, hair the color of fire and eyes the color of emeralds.
Kortan was muscular and clearly looked the part of the knight he was, with his hair cut short and his facial hair cut and groomed nicely. The face he wore was as stoic as a painting’s, small still line for a mouth and calm eyes. He dressed in the white and light gray armor of the White Lion Knights, the most prestigious knightly order in the kingdom. Only ever one hundred knights are allowed to be apart of the order and all of them were said to be worth ten other men when it came to combat. Kortan was made a member at the age of fifteen, the youngest man to join in recent memory.
The Princess Lexi Lightbringer was as frail as Kortan was strong. While Kortan stood proudly before the crowd the Princess Lexi stood like she would have rather been anywhere else in the world. She always held one hand to her face with her head down and eyes glued to the floor with the other hand holding onto the folds of her dress. She also wore her hair long and flowing like her dress which seemed an odd choice for the sky child. She was only twelve years old at the time but the dress looked like it was meant to draw the eye with the vibrant colors and the big poofy flow it had. She made for a strange sight to say the least.
The King looked like neither of his children aside from the family hair and eyes. He wore a scruffy beard and looked to have enjoyed his meals a little more then he should have. He still carried himself with dignity and had an air of class that would be expected from a king but it was still clear that he was far past his prime.
When Kortan signaled of the melee with the start of his horn the garden became a chaotic mess, a sea of blades and body parts. Quentin had a plan to help make up for his lack of age and skill, he provoked the larger more skilled knights into paying attention to him and would lead them to others who looked to be as good or better and once those two started to fight he slipped back into the sea of madness. That plan had worked well enough for the pale boy until there only but a handful left, two members of the Rainbowguard, a White Lion Knight and Quentin himself. The Rainbowguard were the personal guard for the royal family, one for each color of the rainbow and they were, in theory, the best seven knights in the kingdom. Now two of the best seven knights stood alongside an elite knight stood ready to face each other and standing among them as their equal in this event, was a bastard boy of fourteen.
The three knights didn’t pay much attention to the red eyed child, seeing someone close to the end of his rope and just a boy at that. He was nothing compared to seasoned knights, yet he was still there despite everything. The two brothers of the Rainbowguard turned to the White Lion knight and made him yield in a matter of minutes before turning to look at each other. Ser Artorigus of the Yellow Flower and Ser Borz of the Blue Chalese each looked the other in the eye before turning to the only other person standing amongst the muddy mess of discarded weapons and armor.
Ser Borz sighed in reluctance before walking over to the young boy to be rid of the titleless child. As he stepped closer Quentin grabbed onto the edge of a fallen cloak and pulled it back with all his might, making the knight slip on the mud covering it. He fell to the ground like hard on his back, like someone stepping on a piece of ice covering ground. Once he had fallen to the ground Quentin jumped onto the knight’s armored stomach and held his dagger at the blue knight’s throat. He had yielded both in surprise and anger that he had been tricked by a mere boy. Quentin stood up before he looked to the yellow armored knight.
The ‘duel’, if one could call it that, lasted less than a minute only through sheer pity. Ser Artorigus only put up enough of a fight to gage the albino boy before him. It was clear Quentin was all but done within his first few exhausted blows. Ser Artorigus knocked his foe into the dirt several feet away from him with one blow.
Quentin laid in the dirt for a few minutes as the crowd cheered his demise, feeling as if every patch of skin upon his body was bruised so bad his skin would be as brown as the mud he laid in. He was barely able to pick up his sword and use it to push himself up onto one knee as the victor walked over to him. Quentin looked straight ahead as the knight who bested him walks towards the boy and stopped in front of him. He held out a yellow armored hand and the albino in black took it, helping him onto his feet.
Once on his feet Quentin looked up at Ser Artorigus doing everything he can not fall over and give into the darkness that was kept at bay only through sheer force of will. The cheering had died down but Quentin hadn’t noticed until he opened his mouth to speak.
“I see you are the victor, as would befit a knight of your order,” the young Quentin had said.
“You did better than I thought you would, and I’m sure I am not the only one who thinks,” he had said strongly with a sense of pride that put the bruised and beaten Quentin on edge. “Tell me, who was your mother?”
“Sansa, she was a serving girl here about eighteen years ago,” he had said honestly.
“Sansa,” the knight said fondly. “I knew her well. She came here when the Imperial Empire invaded their homeland if I recall correctly. I wouldn’t have guessed your relation to her until I saw your eyes. As red as crimson. She was a wonderful musician.”
“I was told she loved the guitar,” Quentin said saying more than he intended to. Chandrans had a very different look than those native to Coldstone, known as Coldstonets. While Coldstonets had light skin the color of light wood with a variety of hair colors from golden locks to hair as black as pitch Chandrans had skin that ranged from the color of cinnamon to dark brown and even that of a starless. Their hair also ranged from a dark silvery color to that of freshly fallen snow upon the highest mountain top, the same color as Quentin’s own. His skin was neither the dark shades of Chandra or the light wooden color or Coldstone but it was much paler, only a few shades darker than that of his snow white hair which could appear light silver under the right light.
“Tell me, what’s your name?” he asked not unkindly.
“Quentin Stone,” ‘Stone’ was the surname given to all the bastards of Coldstone. Meant as a way to mark who was of impure blood from that of trueborn heirs and surname-less common rabel. It didn’t matter which noble family sired and bastard the resulting child would be born a Stone and not a Brightroar, a Nightingale, a Lightbringer or any other noble house The Coldstone Isle had to offer the world.
“Quentin Stone,” he repeated. “Kneel before me.”
This is it. He had thought at the time, doing as he was bid. This is how I die.
“I Ser Artorigus of the Yellow Flower charge you in the name of the gods to hold true to what is right, what is just, what is true,” he dropped his longsword at Quentin’s feet stunning the youth as the well crafted and well decorated blade landed in the dirt. The sound it made as it hit the mud was the only sound to be heard in the entire garden and the overlooking balcony. “By picking up this blade you accept these charges and rise as Ser Quentin Stone.”
That was the turning point in Quentin’s life. Everyone knew whose son he was but no one said it, his mother had been well known while she served as mistress to his grace King Daeron and when she was discarded before his second marriage before the whole court for all to know her fall from favor all could see her large belly that was filled with child. Thus his surname was inescapable and often ridiculed but after his knighting…
“Ser Quentin,” a voice called calling the albino back to reality. He turned around and saw the ship’s captain, Captain Mako, a sun worn man who carried himself as if he was born on the deck of ship, which he indeed claimed he was.
“What is it?” Quentin asked pulling himself back together.
“We’ll be docking soon, hopefully before dark. You should get ready,” he said not unkindly. He smiled happily but Quentin knew it was because of what waited on land for men like him, men who where sea werry and gold heavy. “What are you going to do first Ser?”
“First things first Captain, I need to get more weather appropriate armor,” The two laughed and the captain left.
Could be worse Quentin, the knight thought to himself, Not everyone would knowing lend travel to the King’s bastard. Especially if the bastard in question is you.
