Prologue II: The River’s Secret

Author: Dream Books Sanjeevi

Some say the river actually flows in the opposite direction, and it did the day the Queen disappeared. The water was glimmering, but usually flowing towards the sea; and originating a storm and desperate movement as if the world rejected what had occurred. People were caught standing on the river’s edge with their eyes opened wide and their lips open in prayers to gods who had deserted them. This was no ordinary omen.

Within the kingdom, the palace bells chimed with alarming brassy crescendo against the complete and utter lack of sound emulating from the realm. Some servants patrolling from hall to another looked for the Queen in vain. The rolls remained pristine; her chambers remained her own; the scepter royal on her bedside cabinet. Her only sign was a beautiful black feather left on the silken bed that even no bird in the entire kingdom had.

The Queen had not been available to the court for weeks; her last sighting was a complete secret. Some stated that she had fallen sick, the others began to murmur that some enchantment threatened to seize the crown. Her harshest critics were not able to give an explanation as to why she vanished one day and how the river could turn in the opposite direction.

There in the background of the court, came a man, old, ragged in his worn-out robe. A man with age hazy eyes yet filled with ancient knowledge, and my father’s chief advisor was Olbrecht, the court’s own seer. He had planned for that day and the every single event that would lead to it, yet no one had paid heed to him.

“The Queen has gone to the other world,” he grumbled and the words seemed to catch in his throat, tearing through the dry air like dead leaves. “The ancient pact is broken.”

A murmuring sound was heard all round the room for as low a tone as it contained the peers and ladies of the court were able to hear. Twilight region was called the Otherworld; there were mysterious living within it, people said that there were clever spirits in this area, and time broke here. It is a common oral tale to this date that no one would come out of the temple as he was before he went in.

In response to this, Olbrecht changed his position and gestured in the direction of the mountains located about 3o miles away from the city ; what little can be seen at the summit level, is always shrouded with mist. ‘The only chance for her is there is one who can find her’. In turn, … it will have a relatively high cost.”

With people, one man attempted to walk but remained unable to do so. Having recently returned to king’s court from northern wars young Eryndor shivered just a moment. In his dreams during the night he saw the Queen – she was near the large dark forest and beckoned at him through some kind of fog. Out of these visions he had talked to no man for that would make him a candidate for Bedlam. But now with the Queen gone, and the river running counter to the law of gravity he somehow felt that the wheels of fortune have begun to grind slowly towards him.

Eryndor COME FORWARD his voice sounded calms though he felt like a storm of fain in his stomach. “I will find the Queen.”

Albrecht looked at him with the hunger of an antediluvian man and for a fleeting second, it felt as though the world was rewound back to when the Moldavian nobleman existed.

“The place about which you dream,” Olbrecht repeated, as if to a slow-witted child, “is not in the world of the nation, but in the Beyond. By following it, one has to become a prey to the greatest fear… and the bitterest reality.”

Court spectators didn’t want to breathe and they watched the jaw-dropping confrontation intently. Eryndor’s chest throbbed, but there was more behind the call today. There was thus some sort of link, some thread he could not put a name to, that made him feel he was inexplicably tied to the fate of the missing Queen. He realized he could not turn back now.

“My lady, the Queen has met her fate I have pledged mine,” The tone of Eryndor was resolute. “I will go.”

To this, Olbrecht only bowed his head gravely and for a moment a brief cloud of sadness crossed his forehead. “Then may the gods have mercy on your soul, for the river now flows backward, back the way you came and so does fate.”