Chapter 1

Prince Benjamin was quietly sitting on the courtyard steps intently reading his book. Geography wasn’t his very favorite educational subject, but it was the only schoolbook suitable for his age and noble rank that could be extremely quickly located by his protective team of extremely indifferent and quite annoyed guards, none of which were inclined to do the condemned boy any favors whatsoever. Reading the maps helped to divert him and pass the time tolerably well, despite the near intolerably loud crowd noise surrounding him that was extremely distracting. This morning there was a public execution going on, on the small hill at the far right end of the main castle courtyard, and the grounds there were packed solid with a full turn-out of noblemen and women, knights, soldiers, and a goodly assort of townsfolk and ale-sellers. Everyone except for the featured guests looked to be in high spirits, and not just due to the free-flowing ale.

Nothing beat the sport of a public execution, most people would say. Ben felt otherwise.

About the time a loud ‘Thunk’ sound rang out and the vast crowd began to loudly cheer, a young lady in a rather overflowing green gown sidled up to the courtyard steps to speak to the boy. As a young lady of undoubted quality, her delicate figure appeared to be on the small side, still more of a girl, the boy thought, as her fancy dress didn’t seem to have the extra expansive bits, top and bottom, that the more mature girls tended to sprout, once they had reached their teenaged years. From a glance, the girl was about the same age he was, Ben decided. That was fine ... particularly since he was extremely unlikely to be considered as marriageable fodder now, for this young noblewoman ... or any other member of that sub-set of eager young ladies of quality yearning to make a fine marriage match while at court.

“You don’t seem particularly diverted by the spectacle, young master ... is it not to your liking? Most every other boy I know, my brothers’ especially, are all crowded up to the front, wanting to find the best viewing locations for the spectacle.”

“No ... not particularly,” Ben slowly replied, his eyes mostly still fixed upon his geography book. “But my oldest brother Reginald would have been greatly diverted, though, I must admit. In fact, he’d have been the very first one there, probably wanting to hold the headman’s axe, before and afterwards. I’m sure that he died very happily, even feeling his own head now being the one cut off. He really loved a good execution ... but perhaps I think he might have preferred to be impaled upon a spike, instead. That’s what he enjoyed best doing to the helpless bodies of the young maidens that displeased him. There seemed to be a new girl squirming upon a sharp pole run straight up her ... well, private areas, nearly every week outside our castle.”

“Oh, that’s absolutely dreadful!” She exclaimed in a hesitant sort of voice that suggested that she knew exactly where the sharpened spit had gone up ... but was too much of a proper genteel young noblewoman to actually ever admit it.

“It really was ... and my big brother would always want to make me watch during and afterwards, while the girl thrashed in agony for those last few minutes upon the pole. He absolutely adored watching a good skilled pole dancer, he’d say. He also said that this was educational for toughening me up mentally, to demonstrate taking a favorite toy of mine and then breaking it. Dad thought so too, always said that I couldn’t possibly be his youngest son because I wasn’t nearly hard enough.”

“Didn’t your mother do something about all of... that?” She asked, with her soft green eyes growing wider with horror with what she had heard ... and worse, what she could then imagine occurring.

“She couldn’t, not practically anyway,” the boy sighed, now shutting the pages of his book so he could pay closer attention to the girl. She had a kind, pretty face, he admitted to himself, and thought for a moment that she might have made for a nice sort of sister for him, under other pleasanter circumstances. Being the youngest boy, he had suffered having three rather obnoxious older brothers constantly beating on him and hounding him to become more like them and he never had anyone nice to talk to.

“My father caught her being unfaithful to him, about when I was eight,” he slowly added, “and he punished her in increasingly savage ways for the better part of an entire week, on public display right in the center of the town square. He stripped her and locked her into the town stocks, and then let everyone who wanted to whip or fu ... well, abuse her. When everyone had taken their pleasure with her, he then he let his horse, well... mount her ... and soon afterwards she died.”

“That’s absolutely terrible!” The girl gasped, with both hands now covering her mouth in genuine shock.

“Yes, I’m afraid it really was ... but it did make the other witch that now become my new step-mother quite pleased, not that she wasn’t also a complete wanton, but at least her preferred vices with her chambermaids wouldn’t engender any accidental additional heirs to his throne ... but it became really quite impossible thereafter to find decent maidens, or even desperate harlots, willing to work in the castle.”

“And she...” the wide-eyed girl started to ask in enquiry, but quickly thought the better of it.

“Yes, she was the witch who was burned at the stake out in front of the cathedral, just after dawn this morning. They told me it was pretty awful, the way she screamed and screamed as the low fires cooked her alive, but fortunately no one forced me to watch it. I really think watching my eldest brother Reginald get the chop over there just now was quite bad enough.”

So ... that was your brother that they just executed? And the witch they burned this morning was your step-mother? That’s just really terribly beastly awful ... so that means that you are...”

“The last prince and heir, the so-called ‘Evil Prince’ Benjamin von Baad. Soon about to become the very last one left of that wicked line of long-cursed northern march kings. Ah, and there’s my father being pushed up to the block right now, so it must be time for the final main event. I think he’s trying to scream out or say something, but they’ve got him gagged. No loss, I suppose ... not hearing his final last words or the High-King finally executing him ... he never had anything to say that wasn’t utterly insane anyway.”

A moment later there was a second loud ‘Thunk’ and the crowd cheered even louder and toasted the happy death of the mad petty king with more free-flowing ale.

“Oh, Ben ... I’m so sorry for you,” the girl stuttered with visible wide-eyed disbelief and shock. It did make her green eyes appear even larger and after a second of reflection the boy decided he liked them, that they were quite pretty, especially when she wearing that particular shade green dress. Unthinkingly, he said as much to her.

“You’re very pretty in that dress as it really does set off your eyes and makes you quite the precious little first-flower of spring,” the lad muttered quietly as he shamefully realized he’d spoken this thought aloud and not entirely to himself, and then he quickly picked his book up again, to hide the visible embarrassment on his face.

“Thank you, I think you’re right about this dress color suiting me, but I’m wearing it because I’m a novice still in early training, not for the spring season. The Fae accepted me as their student about a year ago, to learn magic from them. It meant giving up my family, relinquishing all clan ties, and quite renouncing every part of my past life, but it was a sacrifice I was very willing to make. I’d like to become a great enchantress someday, if I study hard enough, but I think I could become a good Fairy-Godmother as well, much later, sometime far further into the future when I’m grown.”

“If you’re asking me, I rather suggest that you should just become a most skilled and wise enchantress instead, but I’m very opinionated about that matter, since a Fairy-Godmother cursed me at my christening while I was newborn in my cradle.”

“That’s absolutely terrible for you! Why did they do that to you?” The girl exclaimed in complete dismay, now hopping about like a very young child that had been fed rather too many sweets.

“Well, my father was an absolutely terrible person, and he had been cursed as well in his own cradle ... and I think his own father had gotten the same treatment, in his, so it seemed to be a family tradition. Everyone agrees that there are far too many curses on my family name to count. That’s what the warlock that was my schooling instructor and mentor told me once.”

“You had a Warlock for a school master and tutor? I shudder to even think about it! I bet he was an absolutely horrible sort of man, if not a complete and utter monster who consorted with fiends from the very pit of hell itself!”

“Well actually, he was fairly kind to me, as long as I learned my lessons, and he taught me how to read and enjoy the company of books. He had a lot of them, way more than my father had in the castle library, and he’d let me borrow and read any of his books that I wanted, so I spent most of my free time hiding from my father down in his dungeon with a book for company.”

“Ok, that doesn’t sound too bad then,” she decided, while risking taking a good deep breath before the boy told her anything else that was even appalling or far too unsavory for her tender ears.

“Not really,” the lad then sighed, debating whether to reopen his geography book again and start reading once more, hoping that the nice girl would take the hint and leave him alone again. “He wasn’t that usual sort of Warlock, binding demons or making bargains with devils for more power. Those horrific talents were far beyond his abilities. Father never hired any competent help and this cast-off had a huge price on his head and just wanted a deep hole to hide in, so he was the only magician he could find that he didn’t have to actually pay a salary to. No, the Warlock was not any good at any of that ‘evil magic’ stuff ... instead, most of his magical books were all about necromancy. Talking to the dead, raising up the dead in vast evil undead hordes, finding ways to have, ummm, well... intimate relations with the dead. Sometimes when my step-mother was finished with her various girly-toy playthings, she’d let him take the corpses and reanimate them, and other stuff like that. He told me once that he wanted to become a lich, living forever entombed in a crypt with just the dead around him forever, when his mortal frame passed on. Fortunately for all of us instead, when High-King’s soldiers came for him, they chopped him into pieces, stuffed the parts everywhere with bits of garlic, ran cold-forged iron spikes into his eyes, heart and private parts, then burned the pieces in the biggest bonfire that they could manage ... and when the flames were done, everyone lined up to piss on the ashes, before they were tossed into the sea. They let me help.”

There was long dead silence between the children for a full minute or so, but before the girl could turn to walk away... hastily, Ben touched her arm and bade her to stay for another moment.

“I’m sorry,” he tried to apologize, “I’m afraid that I’ve been quite rude, maybe even quite beastly to you. I didn’t intend to be shockingly cruel ... I was just trying to answer your questions, politely and perhaps too honestly. My father and brothers never told the truth once in their entire lives and it’s very hard to live that way. It just doesn’t come naturally to me to deceive other people and I was always getting whipped or beaten hard for being so bad at it. From your unhappiness, I can see that the truth can be sometimes be far more sad and hurtful than the shallow comfort of lies might have been ... especially if spoken to a pretty nice girl like you, whose dress does match and nicely compliment her eyes.”

The girl might have said a few words more about what was stirring through her mind, like asking about what the sad boy’s fate was likely to be, but a few of the older ladies hovering nearby, also dressed similarly, but a darker shade of green and with much more frill and trims to their gowns, hurried over with some concern upon spying with whom their young charge had been inappropriately conversing with.

Benjamin thought for a moment he’d heard a rushed call of ‘Goodbye and good luck to you!”, but he dismissed that thought at once. Luck was for other youngsters, and not the last remaining scion of the tragically cursed Baad family. His fate was still uncertain, but quite unlikely to be a happy one.

About five minutes later, more guards arrived to gather the lad up to his feet and they frog marched him into the main audience room of the High-King, where his doom had at last been decided upon. From the rather loud murmurs, as the King’s Justicar pronounced the sentence, a distinct majority of the nobles assembled would have preferred a more final solution to their long-term Baad problems, like just one more smaller head to be knelt upon the block for the axe man to sever.

Prince Ben didn’t feel much, if any relief. As expected, he now faced a sentence of life spent in the dungeons below, and this held worse dreads for the boy than a quick sharp execution. He almost wished he could just get the whole ordeal all finally over with, and petition the throne, after his sentence was passed, for them to just lop his skull off right away and let everyone be done and rid of him ... but he held his tongue, bowed slightly as tradition and courtesy required, and let his guards slap some heavy manacles on his arms and legs without complaint. Walking with all of that weight was nigh on impossible, but the lad managed a slow shuffling of the feet onwards, until his jailors (once out of the royal eye) smacked the youngster repeated with their mailed gauntlets a few good times and then carried the nearly insensible boy down the thirteen long flights of stairs leading to the lowest, deepest dungeon cells reserved for the single most dangerous and notorious traitors of the realm.

It goes without saying that this wasn’t a very nice or comfortable prison cell ... and worse it contained no books whatsoever!