Torrie & The Snake-Prince

Chapter 1 In which a prince goes missing Long before I ever went dragon-hunting or sailed the South Seas, I went on a quest in my own land, the Wild Forest. But the adventure actually began in High Morroway, a small kingdom almost lost in the towering, snowcapped mountains that lie between the Forest and Erythroth. It all started on a cool spring night, with the frogs singing in the ponds. Liasis, the Crown Prince of High Morroway, had stayed up long past his bedtime, reading about the goblin wars by the light of a single candle. When a sudden sharp breeze whirled in the window of his tower room and snuffed the candle out, he yawned. Lighting it again seemed like too much work so very late at night, so he set the book on the table by his bed and pulled the blanket up over his ears. Outside his door, something creaked. It was the noise that usually woke him in the morning -- the floorboards creaking as Farancia, the maid, brought him a pitcher of hot wash-water. Liasis rolled over to look towards the door. It was open, and the faint starlight showed a dark figure. Prince Liasis might have been half asleep, but he knew he wasn't dreaming. He stretched a hand out from under the bedclothes to the table by the bed. His fingers groped over the smooth leather of the book's binding and the cold metal of the candlestick. They touched the odd, lumpy packet that was the present he meant to give his stepmother, Queen Demansia, for her birthday in the morning. The gift was a fish made from scraps of tin and copper wired together. When you held it up in the sunlight, hanging on a couple of fine threads, it seemed to twist and shimmer like a real fish leaping up the waterfalls in the spring. Liasis hoped it would please his stepmother. She still didn't seem very happy in High Morroway, and, although of course she would never take his mother's place, he felt very protective of her, as if she were a timid young aunt. Liasis had bought the fish from a pedlar girl he met on the road when he was out riding two days before. She had made it herself, and he thought there was a bit of the girl's own spirit in the shimmering fish -- free and wild and full of joy. Demansia needed to feel that happiness. But the tin fish wasn't what Liasis wanted. His fingers found the hilt of his dagger and closed around it. He always kept the dagger by his bed, not because he was afraid of enemies, but because it had been a gift from his own mother on his ninth birthday, his last birthday before she died, four years ago. He slid the blade out of its sheath. "Who's there?" Liasis demanded. The dark figure said nothing, but it took a step closer. As Liasis swept the blankets back and sat up, knocking everything clattering off the table, whoever it was flung something towards him. A net. He saw the glitter of its strands as it settled over him, covering him from head to toe even as he tried to beat it off. It was like the nets used for fishing in the mountain lakes, but far, far finer, as though it had been knotted out of spider-silk. There were odd, glittering things caught in it. Fish scales? Liasis flailed his arms frantically and yelled for help, but his room was at the top of the empty east tower. He'd liked the privacy, the feeling that the whole tower was his own place. Now it meant that no one could hear him. The strands burned cold where they touched his skin, rather like the feeling you get when you grab frosty metal in the winter. And then they tightened, as if they were shrinking around him, pulling his arms to his sides, binding his legs together, constricting his chest so that he felt he could hardly breathe. "Help!" he gasped, much more faintly now. "Somebody!" Nobody came. After one abrupt jerk, as if his attacker had almost moved to help him, the person just stood there, watching. Prince Liasis fell to the floor, thraDelezenne, Christine is the author of 'Torrie & The Snake-Prince ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781554510702 and ISBN 1554510708.