Sample 1 of 'Isai'

Chapter 1
I was nothing more than a child when the first people started meeting up in the town square to mobilise people to go for the newly discovered land beyond the mountains in the south of Tidanar. They shouted about how their homes were no longer theirs with the new king's rule. Without getting hung up in details, I can say that after the old king died, the fields and animals - and essentially our food - was all sent to the capital, and then restributed to those places where the capital saw fit, which mostly didn't include my little county of Meyrine. Besides the little food production we had, all we produced was just enough silk and linen to cover our backs. As neither linen nor the food was much use for the bigger counties, we didn't get more back than the amount of silk we sent in, which wasn't much. Of course, this wasn't the king's fault. He was just six years old when he inherited his mother's throne, and was two years younger than I. Azixiz was ruled by the old king's power mad advisor, who sought to take and keep all the power he could get. Either way, t didn't really matter who essentially had the final word; we were hungry, and the probably very rich, untouched soils beyond the southern Tidanaran Itharta mountains were very tempting, there was only one big hurdle that was between us and that. The Leika desert, a relatively small desert, compared to other deserts around the world. However, the desert was anything but simple to cross. The occasional surviver spoke of a curse, some even of the gods' wrath. They all seemed convinced that whatever was beyond the desert was the gods' own land, and not to be entered by us mere humans.

As the years went by, the waves of adventurers became smaller, and further apart in time. All they produced was the death of hundreds of young and old men and women, and madness for those who came back to tell the tale of gruesome sandstorms that split them apart and tortured them throughout the night. Nobody had ever stayed in the desert for more than that one night after entering.

I was aware of the dangers; I grew up with hearing them. My mother, my uncle, his wife and their two children all died in one of the earliest waves of adventurers. At the age of 17, I had nothing left. You may ask why I didn't go with my mother in that faithful travel. I say that Mejur(*) was watching over me. It all weighs out in the end, anyway, and he owed me one. My name is Isai, and as the son of the previous ryoto(**), I was not very popular among the grown ups, who knew my father. If the stories I had heard about him were true, then it was totally understandable as to why his kin was unpopular. It was difficult not to think they were either totally made up, or at least grossly exaggerated. After all, it seemed almost impossible to comprehend that he from the age of 17 - 20 deflowered all the ikiltes (***) of the village the ryoto mansion was in, convinced two to abort their children, and then vanished from the face of the earth with two other newborns, leaving only the still unborn me behind. In hindsight, this wasn't as impossible as I used to think in my youth. I say this because I wasn't more than 15 when I lost my virgin tail to a girl named Firth. We were together for six months' time, and five of them we spent in bed. I broke up with her when she showed me that she was keeping a box under her bed containing my virgin tail in the ponytail she cut off me after we firstly slept together. Who keeps something like that? The brace it was held together in, yes, but the virgin tail itself? She said it was because she loved the lush shine in my hair, which at that time was down to my knees in length. After I broke up with her, I pretty much went from one ikilte to the other, although I didn't do much more than to flirt with them. They didn't mind. They were typical ikiltes, always striding for the romance they knew couldn't come true, and I played the part. Up until I came of age, at 17, I didn't fall in love once. Not once, before the misty and rather cold winter night in the middle of June, when I was walking home from being chased out the door by another ikilte's father, who shouted profanities, such as the nickname my father handed down to me, "Thori d' dirs-lô", or "snatcher of children, the second". I remember feeling very sorry for myself, as I had almost fallen in love with this one, but as I looked up on the heart of the town, the ryoto mansion, I forgot the name and face of that girl I had pouted about a moment earlier. Up on the only third floor in the village, lamps lit up the room that was only hidden behind see-through curtains. Behind the railed windows stood the daughter of the ryoto who had taken over when my father had left the scene. She was wearing nothing but a silken skirt that flowed elegantly out over the floor, and a servant was readying the top of the dress to be applied to the skirt. The perfect body she posessed was enough to stop me in my tracks. Her hair was as long as mine, but hers was something as rare as nutty brown, and rarer still, slightly curled. I still remember the feeling of my entire torso going completely warm and cold at the same time; it felt like I was feverish, and I could barely breathe. I caught myself staring just too late, Alith Yunus had done the same thing, and shouted at me through the glass. She probably knew perfectly well that I couldn't make out a word she was saying, but she kept telling me off and pointed at me while pressing her forehead on the glass. I couldn't help smiling.