The Boy

Once upon a time, a boy dreamed of adventure. He was brave and strong and good, and always wondered what lay over the horizon. And one day, as his mother (watching him anxiously) always knew he would, this boy set off with knap-sack and wooden sword, to see the world beyond.

The boy traveled, and grew. At the age of twelve, he arrived at the town of Waysend. He made friends there, and had a half-dozen little adventures (destroying a rat-cellar, retrieving a lost cat), but in the end found it too tame, and left with fond farewells. Shortly before he turned thirteen, the boy drove off a knot of slime-monsters, and rescued their intended victim, an eleven-year-old girl, who was to become his companion for a time. The boy, with a great deal of help from his new friend, cleared the miasma from the Lower Negevin, stopped a rockslide from crushing the villages of the Upper Negevin, and made the canals of the West River locks safe once more by pacifying the monsters that filled it. At the age of fourteen, impelled by feelings he did not fully understand, he propositioned his companion. She refused.

Moved to a frustration he was too young to deal with, the boy left his companion at the town of Prudence and charged onward. Now substantially better armed and skilled than when he began, the boy annihilated a band of brigands near Forbearance, bringing him to the attention of the Prince of that city. The Prince informed him of a dread evil long fortified near Forbearance, vulnerable only to weapons composed of certain rare metals, and even then a great threat indeed. The boy sought the metals far and wide, and in his fifteenth year returned to Forbearance with the metals forged into a mighty lance, slaying the evil thereby. On his return to Forbearance, he was ambushed in the dead of night outside the city by the Prince's men, who (intimidated with his popularity) stripped him of his weapons and locked him in the darkest dungeons of the Prince's palace. The boy, ever ingenious, slipped by his guards and assassinated the Prince, claiming his throne for injustices done him. There he ruled with great severity, punishing the unjust and rewarding the righteous as he saw fit. He associated with the Prince's mistress in this time.

Older and wiser, the boy left Forbearance at the age of seventeen, appointing his seneschal as steward until he should return. He wandered the roads in brown robes and cockle-hat (sword and shield concealed beneath), and learned thus of the ways of the common people of that land - the poor, the artisans, the merchants. He walked thus for a time, resolving disputes and negotiating as best he could, trying to make the world he saw better as he journeyed. He walked far from Forbearance, and (quite by accident) met his old traveling companion at an open-air market. Neither recognized the other, and only a keep-sake the boy wound around his staff (a scarf the girl had given him in gratitude for her rescue) identified him to her. The girl greeted the boy with cries of delight, which the boy (once recognizing her) returned in kind, all dispute long forgot. They traveled together again, both now more mature and accepting of the other. They saw strange lands and sought to help stranger people, and (in so doing) earned the thanks of a god of sorts. Appearing to the boy, he made his gratitude known, and offered one wish to him. The boy thought a while, then said this:

"I have seen many ills in this world. Some may be slain with courage; others crushed with raw power; others placated with wisdom. It is much on my mind that I might return to Forbearance and turn that place into a bastion of the good, making of it the heart of a kingdom. For this I will need courage, power, and wisdom all; which I have acquired in fair measure, over my six years of adventuring. But if my kingdom is to stand, once it is built, there must be others. This, then, is my wish: That after I am dead, others will be born with courage, power, and wisdom in my kingdom, that it should ever be a bastion of light against the dark."

The god vanished; and the boy never did know whether his wish was granted. He traveled home with his companion, and on their return to Forbearance (on his eighteenth birthday), the boy named himself King, and his old companion Queen. In honor of the new age he saw dawning, the King renamed Forbearance (a poor sentiment for the times) to High Rule, kingdom and city and palace all; and they ruled justly and fairly (all in all) for all their years.

And the god did grant the boy's wish after all... in his way.