Blood Curse

During the Ancient Time, before the Kingdom of Francovia was ripped asunder by a madman's fury, the Mother Planet was a world of wonder, albeit a savage one. In those days, when the Day's-Eye rose from its sleeping-place within the Great Ocean, it shone upon a land still innocent and vital.

Its awakening rays would touch the peaks of Francovia's Blue Mountains, shining on a castle built upon the gorge at the lower slope where it flattened into forest and meadow. The first faint rays brushed windows curtained against the light, but at one room, set apart from the others, it fell upon a balcony and a doorway always open to the morning, the bright beams casting a pattern upon the floor of the chamber where the Giarl of Lindenscraig lay with his lady-wife.

For all the years he lived there, 'twas his custom to rise early to watch the sun come up over the land where, by the Margrave's Grace, he was sole Lord and Magister, again to see the dark forests and meadows slowly illumined by a new day's light. For that space, as he stood silhouetted in its glow, feeling the warm fingers of sunlight upon his face, he would once more marvel that he, the son of a barbarian sell-sword, was now a Noble of the Realm.

Sometimes, he felt that, from their first meeting, the gods had planned her for him--or, perhaps, it had been the other way around.

He had no way of knowing that he was totally correct, or, as the Father of the Gods had stated on the day Riven kan won his Barbara, that the gods weren't finished with him, yet....