Kudisha Departure Episode 1 Journey to Rehnor series (2 page)

“It’s fine,” Karukan sighed, grasping the tray
through the small slot. “I’ve quite grown to like them.” And,
indeed, he did, especially with cream and jam.

Karukan enjoyed staying alone in his room, as
he was a prolific reader of literature of all sorts, and he wrote
extensively in journals, recording his every thought. On many days,
it was only the serving maid who shared words with the young
prince, except for the invisible companion, which everyone had
heard about, but no one else saw.

“It is a concern to me,” the Lord Chamberlain
announced, during a quiet moment with the King as he toured the
reconstruction efforts at the Royal Palace. “Your brother is quite
happy conversing with no one but the air. The maids and guards are
all gossiping that he is insane.”

Revak made appropriately concerning noises,
while running a hand along a newly installed gold rail, for his
rebuilt palace would be significantly improved from the somewhat
modest building that had been before. This new edifice would be a
testament to Revak in both beauty and size, dwarfing the King of
Hahr’s place by more than twice.

“Perhaps, letting him out on occasion for
fresh air and exercise would do the boy good. Allowing him to
socialize with young people of his own age would encourage him to
speak to someone real, instead of a mental fabrication.”

“Mhm,” Revak mumbled again, testing a foot
upon the smooth and glossy marble floors.

“Furthermore,” the Lord Chamberlain continued.
“The Prime Minister is suggesting you both be matched to
appropriate young ladies who will be capable of providing the realm
with future heirs.”

Revak waved a royal hand dismissively, for he
had heard this refrain before. A bride for himself, and one for his
brother to ensure the line.

“Fine. Whatever.” The King strode away to his
car, which would return him to the summer house by the lake. There,
his latest paramour waited patiently for him in bed, which aside
from retaining his throne, was Revak’s only concern.

Two young ladies were then designated as the
most appropriate marriageable material for a king and his brother,
the mad young prince. The elder was the Lady Myra, daughter of the
Duke of Kirkut, tall, blonde, and exceptionally lovely, although a
bit of a shrew. This fact was something Revak wouldn’t find out
until it was too late, but by then, he was too far gone to
care.

Lady Lorena, the daughter of the Duke of
Tirkoop was also available, although she was young yet at only
fifteen years old. She had a pretty face, and a genetic makeup
which included a shared ancestry with the de Kudishas, but Lorena
was a bit chubby to put it mildly.

Actually, the girl enjoyed food far too
profusely. Had she dropped half her body weight, she would have
still been fat. However, she had a personality as lovely as her
bright eyes and smile, and was forever laughing joyously, endearing
all with her full and compassionate heart.

“That ought to make her the perfect nurse for
my mad brother and his invisible companion,” Revak decided.
“Certainly, there’s room for both of them at her enormous
breast.”

Thus, Revak and Myra were quickly wed, while
Karukan and Lorena were betrothed to be wed in seven years upon the
prince’s twenty-third birthday.

The royal wedding of Revak and Myra served to
knock Karupatani out of its doldrums for a brief time, as good news
was few and far between. Both the war and the constant stream of
battle deaths were an immense drain on the economy’s growth, as the
people’s enthusiasm for shopping rarely went beyond anything not
required for survival.

Wedding parties and banquets were planned and
many dresses commissioned, while the new palace was finished at a
breakneck speed. The new queen was photographed and adored for her
every move, often seen waving to the people as she rushed in and
out of her chauffeured car, or occasionally posing with a brave
soldier heading off to war.

Lorena, in the meantime, vowed to commence a
new routine of both diet and exercise in order to reduce her body
prior to her own wedding. Seven years ought to be a sufficient
amount of time to acquire a figure similar to her future
sister-in-law.

Although the couple had never met in person,
Lorena had seen pictures of Karukan on TV, and she knew he was
exceptionally handsome by anyone’s standards. Her greatest fear was
at the altar, he’d gaze with horror upon her size, and immediately
declare her unsuitable as a mate. Lorena would be standing alone,
shamed and embarrassed before a prime-time planet wide audience,
forever after, a laughing stock to be mocked on daytime TV. However
much the young prince insisted this would never happen, for the
couple corresponded by email regularly, Lorena did her best to
dramatically cut her intake.

Karukan, in the meantime was still confined to
the summer house, released only once to attend his brother’s
wedding. Immediately afterward, he was returned to his lonely room
in the near empty estate, except for the single maid, and the
single butler who saw to his needs, however few.

“I’m perfectly fine with this,” he told Lorena
in an email the next day. “I enjoy both the solitude and time I
have available to reflect.”

“What about school?” the girl inquired, for
she was attending the local preparatory academy, a place where the
daughters of only the bluest blood were allowed.

“Online classes,” Karukan replied. “Although
His Majesty, my brother may allow me out when I am old enough to
enlist in the Royal Guard.”

When Karukan turned eighteen and Queen Myra
was pregnant with the Royal Heir, Revak finally relented and
allowed his brother the freedom to join the Royal Guard. The young
prince’s release was only granted with the provision that upon
commission, he would be sent to the front, for the King still felt
great fear he’d lose his throne to his usurper sibling.

Karukan, who despite his treatment remained
forever loyal, and upon the advice of his invisible friend, gladly
jumped at the opportunity to leave the summer house.

“I’m off to fight the war, and secure
Karupatani,” he wrote to Lorena, who was now attending the
university in Tirkoop with the intent to acquire a degree in
something useful. As to her size- well, she still had five more
years until the wedding.

“Stay safe, my beloved, Ruka,” the prince’s
betrothed wrote back, using the nickname she had given him years
before. “My heart would break and I would die if something happened
to you.”

“Do not fear, Rena,” the prince replied. “My
friend tells me I’ve got a long life ahead of me yet.”

Indeed, Karukan did, although the same
couldn’t be said for his brother, Revak, who several years later,
found himself still without another heir. Queen Myra had miscarried
four times in the interim, and not one of his mistresses managed to
conceive.

“I am cursed,” Revak bemoaned, to which Queen
Myra heartily agreed for she had come to despise her faithless
husband.

After four miserable failed pregnancies, with
nothing but the King’s complaints to console her for her loss, Myra
began to dream of Revak’s death. It started out quite simply, a
misplaced bomb falling on his car, or a raging venereal disease
contracted from a mistress.

As time went on Myra’s imagination took on a
more deliberate and fanciful tone with images of Revak writhing in
pain. He might be captured by Hahr, and tortured unmercifully, or
maybe, he’d swallow a vial of radioactive iodine and melt from the
inside out. Whatever the means, Myra realized, she wanted him
dead.

Only seven years after they had wed, only
months before the then-Lieutenant Karukan and Lady Lorena were
scheduled to do the same, Queen Myra took a knife and cut King
Revak’s throat. Although they didn’t normally share a bed, this
particular night Revak was both desperate for affection, and
wishing to try to procreate an heir once again.

Myra, having grown tired of the many failed
heir attempts, and having grown to prefer the company of her maids
to that of the king, removed a serrated paring knife from the
basket of fruit beside her bed. While the King lay half asleep in a
state of post-coital near-bliss, Queen Myra sawed his neck, and
ended his reign.

Then, she began to scream. In fact, she
screamed so much, forever after her voice was hoarse, although it
didn’t matter, as her forever was neither long, nor spent anywhere
other than the palace prison.

In the meantime, Karukan was summoned from his
Royal Guard posting at a base on the northern coast, which was
covered in twenty feet of hard packed snow, and a layer of ice too
thick to melt.

“It was necessary for his safety,” the
late-King Revak had stated, when signing the order to send his
brother to the furthest and coldest outpost within his dominion. “I
should never forgive myself if my only remaining sibling should
somehow end up dead.”

It took the new king four days to return to
Kudisha, the first two of which required sitting upon the back of a
dog sled. Once arrived at the newly rebuilt palace, Karukan’s first
order of business was to sentence his former sister-in-law to her
death. Killing a king was high treason, and the punishment not
negotiable by even the next one.

However, Karukan was reluctant to execute the
lady, for he had always liked Myra, and thought her beauty second
to none. In addition, Fate had seen fit to toss in a cruel twist,
for it turned out that Myra was pregnant.

“You have no choice,” the Chief Justice
insisted. “You cannot deny the law you are sworn to
uphold.”

Poor Myra and her unborn infant were then
terminated forthwith. After which, King Karukan secluded himself in
his suite to pray. For more than two weeks, he failed to emerge,
once again preferring the company of no one to any
other.

“He’s insane,” the old Lord Chamberlain
whispered to the Palace’s Chief of Staff. “We all know he’s in
there consulting with his invisible companion, or some sort of
ghost.”

“Heaven help us now,” the Prime Minister
mumbled to the President of the Parliament. “Our new king never out
grew a child’s predilection for imaginary friends.”

“He’s no worse than the other de Kudishas.”
The Chief Justice shrugged at his favorite bartender. “They were
all crazy in one way or another. Hit me once again, but this time,
make it a double. The lad is still young, and I fear his reign will
be long.”

Chapter 3

Lorena de Tirkoop was the perfect match for
Karukan de Kudisha. With an enormous and loving heart, and a gift
for finding joy in even the grimmest situation, Lorena’s presence
was like a shower of sunlight bursting through the clouds of
Karukan’s dark and introspective world. She made him smile, and she
made him laugh. She filled his empty room and lonely heart with
both warmth and copious amounts of food, especially bread, which
Lorena adored in every possible rendition. White, wheat, rye, corn,
hard, soft, quick, dark, light, in a loaf, or shaped as a roll,
Lorena was a slave to the bakery, and the bread-man at the
Palace.

Prior to the nuptials, and her concurrent
coronation as the Queen of Karupatani, Lorena had tried to lose
some weight. Honestly, she had. She had limited herself to only the
wholest of grains, exchanged the butter for low fat smart
margarine, and absolutely, completely, ruled out any other
toppings, except for the occasional dollop of peanut butter at
lunchtime. She needed her protein, you know.

Initially, this new diet was successful. The
first week alone, Lorena lost nearly ten pounds. Yet, with six
years still to go until the wedding, Lorena found it too taxing to
deny herself something she simply loved beyond life. Even her
beloved Ruka was not worth that.

Five and three-quarter years later, with only
months to go until the wedding, Lorena decided to give the diet
another go.

“It is not necessary,” Beloved Ruka wrote in a
letter from his station at the frozen outpost on the planet’s
northern pole. “I have and will always love you exactly how you
are.”

While these sentiments warmed Lorena’s heart
beyond measure, and yet again she counted herself fortunate to have
been matched to the youngest and kindest of the de Kudisha princes,
a small niggling of doubt remained at the back of her brain.
Beloved Ruka had never seen her.

Of course, she had seen his handsome image
plenty of times on the evening news. And, they had exchanged
pictures, although her’s had only been a headshot. Taken from up
above. With her dark hair at an angle that brought definition to
her chin. And, a dog on her lap. A large dog. And, then there was
that small bit of photoshopping, too.

In any case, with only weeks to go, Lorena
exerted her most concerted effort to reduce, and once again, was
initially successful. However, the horrific news of King Revak’s
murder, and Queen Myra’s subsequent execution at the hand of
Beloved Ruka, sent the would-be Queen into a tailspin from which
she couldn’t possibly recover.

If that wasn’t enough, the dreaded Markiis
Kalila, King of Hahr, decided to take advantage of Karupatani’s
current political instability by launching an attack on all the
internet service providers.