Sorcery in Alpara by Judith Starkston

Author:Judith Starkston [Starkston, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781732833944
Publisher: Bronze Age Books
Published: 2019-10-13T16:00:00+00:00

35

Hattu held back in the door to his son’s sleeping chamber. He watched Nerik, propped up by pillows, his eyes closed. The boy’s coloring was all wrong, tinged with a sickly, yellowish shade. Hattu had asked the physician about that color. Utar confessed that the people he’d treated with this color in their skin had died slowly and painfully, but he was doing everything he could to save the Crown Prince.

Tesha had done this. He couldn’t believe it, and yet it was true.

Even dozing, lines of tension tugged at the boy’s eyes and neck. If only he could recover. No one would attack him again. He didn’t need to worry. Hattu would see to his safety from now on, no matter the cost.

Nerik’s eyes opened. His gaze caught Hattu, and he looked down.

Hattu came up to the bed and pulled a stool close. “How are you feeling?”

“Not so good.”

Hattu’s hands wrapped tight around the seat of the stool. If he could feel steady, maybe he could think more clearly. “You’ll get better. Give it time. You’ve been through a lot.”

The stench of sickness still lingered in Nerik’s room. It’d be more pleasant if he opened the shutters on one or two of the windows. He stood up and reached for the hook on a long stick that was used to open them.

“Leave them closed.”

Hattu turned in surprise. “But the sickness—”

“I like the shutters closed.”

For him the walls felt too close. Hattu fought down panic and sat again.

Fiddling with the edge of the linen sheet covering his chest, Nerik looked up at him. “Father . . . it’s good to have you back. I missed you.”

Warmth radiated through Hattu. “I missed you terribly. Especially when I thought I would be executed without ever seeing you again. There’s so much I need to teach you so you can be a good king from the start.”

“Me? You’ll help me be king?”

“Of course. It’s my dearest hope.” Hattu wrapped his hands around his son’s hand. He had a happy idea. “I’ve given orders for a second throne to be carved. When you’re well again, you will sit in that place of honor at my side as Crown Prince.”

Hattu assumed that Nerik would realize that the second throne had been intended for Tesha, but maybe he’d ignore that. Young men yearned for outward signs of authority.

“Really? I get to rule with you?”

Nerik looked alive for the first time since Hattu had run into this room to find his son poisoned.

“How else will you learn to be king?”

The boy kept asking to be given military command. Even when he was healthy again, Hattu preferred to introduce those duties slowly. But an important role in his court would both satisfy Nerik and train him in statesmanship. At his age Hattu had also thought it was all about taking down enemies in battle. Time the boy learned there was more to it—without losing men, the way Hattu had.

“But . . . a throne. Like yours?”

“You’re my son. Why not?”

Nerik hung his head.

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