The Book of Terrus: The Ghosts of Goran

Chapter 4 - A Pale Wallflower

This chapter has an audiobook accompaniment! Courtesy of the lovely CarolineDonica, you can find it both above and on Youtube under the channel 'GreenScholarTales'. 

Ten years later

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The Saurivic estate fair hummed with activity. Servants swarmed everywhere, putting the final touches on this flower arrangement or that floor polish. No one even dared go near the kitchens, where the cooks were ordering everyone about with the steely authority of First Company knights. Every banister had been dusted, every window hung with the good silk curtains. Outside, the gardeners fussed over their flowerbeds and lit the lanterns lining the path to the front doors.

Tonight the Saurivic family was hosting a ball in honor of Crowning Day. Crowning Day marked the anniversary of First King Amenthis' coronation, and by extension, the birth of Goran itself. Every Gorian household marked the occasion, some more ostentatiously than others. The nobility of Vaelona made celebrating Crowning Day into something of a sport, each trying to out-do the others when it came their turn to host the party.

Upstairs, away from all the noise and activity of the household, the heir to the Saurivic family name stood bent over his wash basin, a towel draped across his shoulders. Wringing excess yellow dye from his damp hair, the young lord straightened and looked in the mirror. A little sigh of resignation escaped him. The face in the glass was the same that had always greeted him for the past twenty years.

Jatheryn Saurivic had been born as bleached white as the first snows of winter. Nothing about him had any color whatsoever, not even the rings of his eyes. If he were an illustration in a manuscript, he would have been the one that the artists forgot to color in. Nothing could have set Jatheryn further apart in a city like Vaelona, with its deep love of beauty in all its hues, displays, and extravagancies.

It was fairly common knowledge that Jatheryn's mother, Rosarin Saurivic, had been direly ill during her pregnancy with him. Somehow, no one knew how, that sickness had affected him in the womb. Whatever its cause, the Saurivic family had never lived Rosarin's illness and Jatheryn's appearance down.

Rubbing his freshly washed head dry, Jatheryn dubiously eyed the result. He had been dyeing his bone-white hair a somewhat less offensive shade of pale blonde for as long as he could remember. It did little to help the rest of him though. Why couldn't fate have been at least a little merciful and given Jatheryn his maternal relatives' square jaw and broad forehead? Instead, Jatheryn had inherited his father's precise, bony features and his mother's narrow eyes. The finished product was a razor-sharp, hollow looking face that seemed incapable of warmth.

With another sigh and a shrug, Jatheryn put aside the towel and set to work dressing himself. His private rooms were his one sanctuary, and he was loathe to go downstairs. Today was Crowning Day though, and every member of the Saurivic family was expected to be in attendance.

As he laced up the sides of his ocher tunic, embroidered with the black and gold Saurivic family crest, he paused to look longingly at his viol, where it leant in the corner. The polished wood gleamed in the late afternoon sun, beckoning him to stay and play a while. The instrument had been a gift from his grandfather, Lord Jalborn, on his thirteenth . As the heir to one of Vaelona's richest families, Jatheryn owned many fine things, but that viol was his most treasured possession.

Reluctantly turning his back to the room, Jatheryn went out into the hallway. Over the banister, he could clearly hear the servants rushing about making final preparations. Somewhere below in the house he could also hear his father's voice. No one took the public appearance of their family more seriously than Jahaelis Saurivic.