The Misplaced Prince (The Disinherited Prince Series Book 6) Read online

  The Misplaced Prince

  Disinherited Prince Series

  Book Six

  By

  Guy Antibes

  Table of Contents

  Map of the continent of Eastril & Daera

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Excerpt from The Fractured Empire

  Copyright Page

  Author’s Note

  A Bit About Guy

  Books by Guy Antibes

  The Misplaced Prince

  Copyright ©2017 Guy Antibes. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the permission of the author.

  ~

  This is a work of fiction. There are no real locations used in the book, the people, settings and specific places are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual persons, locations, or places are purely coincidental.

  Published by CasiePress LLC in Salt Lake City, UT, June, 2017.

  www.casiepress.com

  Cover & Book Design: Kenneth Cassell

  ~

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ~

  Pol needs a breather, but not quite the breather he gets in The Misplaced Prince. Pol’s life takes a turn, but not necessarily for the worst as he gets some time to develop during the time his memories are restricted. For this book, Pol and Demeron are on their own. However, I didn’t like the entire book to be about just the two of them, so we get to put in some time with Shira. During their time apart, she needs to develop some skills as well and that happens during this book. This is the first time I’ve written anything in the actual novels in anything other than Pol’s point of view (except for a necessary coda to The Emperor’s Pet).

  I’d like to thank Judy and Ken for contributions on this episode and my wife Bev, who helped along the way.

  — Guy Antibes

  In the world of Phairoon

  Map of the southern portion of the continent of Eastril and the continent of Daera

  (Contact Guy for a clearer map at www.guyantibes.com)

  The Misplaced Prince

  ~

  Prologue

  ~

  P ol Cissert Pastelle, newly adopted into the Emperor’s family, is tricked into leaving the Shinkyan capital of Tishiko and is physically knocked out by the Scorpion faction. Not wanting Pol dead, but wanting him out of the way, they place a ward on his mind that brings forgetfulness. He will need a high-level magician to remove the ward to restore his memories. Demeron will travel with him and perhaps help Pol find a magician. The Scorpions don’t expect that to happen, but a chance is a chance.

  He is placed on a ship with Demeron and headed for Daera, where no one knows him, but he is magically disguised as a Shinkyan. Their ship is caught in a violent storm and Demeron, with Pol strapped to his back, jumps into the sea and sets out for the shore. They make it to a sandy beach where Demeron collapses, and both of them sleep.

  After Pol awakens, Demeron writes their names in the sand. All Pol knows is his name and Demeron’s name. They head off into the jungle and come across a village where watchmen capture them. The village chief has the village Shaman administer a truth spell and finds out that Pol has no memories of his former life.

  Not knowing what else to do with Pol, they place him in an apprenticeship with the village tanner. Pol goes from being an Imperial Prince to a tanner’s assistant, from Emperor’s Pet to tanner’s pet, as he has now become the Misplaced Prince.

  ~~~

  Chapter One

  ~

  Pol

  ~

  P ol’s stomach complained as the village tanner clapped him on the back.

  “Does being your apprentice get me some food? I honestly can’t tell you the last time I had anything to eat,” Pol said, looking towards Bingi, then at the tall Chief Gonga and Naori, the village shaman.

  “That’s something we will fix right now,” Bingi, the village tanner, said. “Let’s go. Is everything on your horse?” The tanner’s aromatic garb was a put-off, but Pol felt he could persevere as long as he could get something in his stomach quickly.

  “It is, although that doesn’t mean much. I’m guessing the ship that I rode went down with more of my belongings,” Pol said. He figured his Shinkyan coins wouldn’t last long, so they would be tucked away in his saddlebags, waiting for the day he left the village. Having lost his memory, he needed some time to determine where he was and what he could do.

  Bingi gave the chief a nod. “I’ll bring him back tomorrow sometime. I’m sure you’ll want to tell him about the apprenticeship rules.”

  “Rules?” Pol said. Perhaps he had made a poor decision in accepting the apprenticeship. He knew what an apprenticeship was, but he couldn’t remember if he had ever been an apprentice.

  “Tomorrow,” Gonga said.

  Bingi pulled Pol out of the Chief’s hut and waited for him to fetch Demeron. Pol peeked in the saddlebags to see if his money was still there. It was. He took a relieved breath and followed the tanner out of the village, leading Demeron.

  “We live a fair distance from Soagi, the name of our village. Oddly, no one wants to live around my tannery,” Bingi said grinning.

  Pol had to ask him about a few of his words, but he caught the gist of what the man said. Where had he learned the language? He didn’t remember Shinkya, but they said he looked like a Shinkyan. The writing on the Shinkyan coin was different than scribblings Demeron had made on the beach. If he remembered languages and didn’t know all the words of the villagers, that meant he had never been to this land before.

  He felt out of control, and that made him uneasy. Pol wanted to take everything in stride and go along with the flow of events, but he just did not have enough information to know who he was. Could the trauma of the ship going down have damaged his mind?

  Demeron nudged Pol from behind. That brought a smile to Pol’s face. At least the horse had been a friend. What kind of horse could spell and communicate? Pol didn’t know. How could his memory be so selective that he could remember languages, but not the countries where the languages originated?

  “Do I get paid for being an apprentice?”

  Bingi turned around. “Pay? Of course. It isn’t much once I deduct for room and board. My wife cooks our meals, so you will have to endure that. There is a decent-sized shack for you, although it could stand a little cleaning.”

  The man mumbled half of his words, so Pol had to ask him to repeat himself, but he was picking up how Bingi spoke. He wondered how much he could learn from the tanner. He didn’t have high hopes about that, but Pol would try to get into the village as much as he could to learn about his new country.

  After walking for a while, the tanner turned into a little compound. There were some sturdy wooden frames set up on one side of the yard. Half of the frames had hides stretched out. Three wall-less sheds contained odd tables that were thick but narrow. Pol looked around and saw a row of wooden vats downslope on the lower edge of the property.

  He turned his head and saw three whitewashed shacks. The thatched roofing looked a bit disheveled, and the whitewash wasn’t white anymore. One was large, and two of them were smaller. He supposed those had to be the living quarters.

  Pol didn’t know what to think about the place. It all looked foreign to him, but then what did he expect if his memories were locked away in his brain, if they even remained?

  “You have to make a little corral for your horse. There is a clearing on the other side of the houses,” Bingi said. “Put your things in your shack, and then we can get to work.”

  “What have you got there?” a large woman said as she walked out of the largest shack. “Where did you ever get that horse? It looks like it belongs to a Lord.” She gazed up at Demeron.

  “The Lord is our new apprentice, Doara. Meet Pol. He washed up on the beach not far from here, and the sea washed out his brain. He can’t remember where he’s from. Chief Gonga won’t take him in, so I got him as an apprentice.”

  “About time. Maybe we can make some money again,” Doara said. She walked up to Pol and peered at his face. “He
isn’t one of us.”

  “Naori said he looks like a Shinkyan. He speaks a bit of Shinkyan but not like the Shinkyan’s I’ve ever talked to.”

  “Poor dear.” Doara took Pol’s hand and rubbed it. “Not a working boy, that’s for sure.” She looked at Pol. “We’ll take care of you while you get your memories back. There’s a lot of work here, and soon these hands won’t be as soft.”

  “I know how to work,” Pol said. “My name is Pol, and my horse is named Demeron.”

  “I’m Doara, Bingi’s wife, but you probably have got that figured out,” she said slowly and loudly.

  Pol smiled. She could tell he didn’t speak very well and had spoken slowly. “I would appreciate it if we could talk from time to time to improve my language skills.”

  She nodded. “You’re different from the typical riff-raff Bingi brings. They have been the naughty boys in the village. You don’t look like one of those.” She smiled and stroked his hand again. “There is a nice clearing on the other side of our house for your horse. You’ll have to build a corral.”

  “Demeron doesn’t need one, but if you’ll feel better about it, I can put something up.” Pol said. He didn’t exactly know how to make a corral, but he could figure something out.

  Doara squeezed his hand and led him to the smallest of the shacks. The place was dirty, and the furniture looked like it would easily break when used. The woman pursed her lips. “You can clean, can’t you?”

  Pol nodded.

  “Then this place is yours. The last two apprentices wanted to live in the main house. I didn’t really like that, so this is yours to fix up as you please.”

  Pol smiled. “Thank you. I think I would like to be alone, anyway. I believe I have a lot to think about.”

  “Thinking’s for another time,” Bingi said. “Time to get to work.”

  The tanner pushed Pol out of the little house, leaving Doara standing by herself.

  “I’ll give you a quick idea of what we do, and then we’ll go harvest bark for tanning.”

  Pol looked back at Doara standing at the door to his new home. He bowed to her and followed Bingi over to the yard to learn about how to tan leather. It was all new to him. Tanning was a dirty, smelly process. Pol didn’t know if he knew how it worked before or not, but he would have to learn.

  The hides came from a few cattle farms to the west and northwest. The first step was to soak them for a few days in water. They had to be scraped and then put in a lime solution to help take off the hair. The long thin tables were for scraping. The hides had to be scraped again and then put in tanning vats for weeks. After rinsing, the hides were stretched onto frames and beaten to maintain pliability.

  Bingi said the hides could be smoked or oiled depending on the order.

  “I don’t make fine leather for clothes. My, or should I say our, skins are for working uses. Shoes, saddles, belts, straps of all kinds. Durable stuff.”

  Pol figured out the process and realized that it took a lot of work to make leather and Bingi had been doing it by himself for the last eight months. No wonder Doara said they couldn’t make any money.

  “Now that you know all of that, follow me,” Bingi said. He led Pol past the scraping huts; the tanner showed him to a stream that flowed on the north part of the property. The village was south.

  Pol looked at the stream flowing beneath his feet. Someone, Bingi most likely, had built up a high edge on the side of the stream heading towards the tannery. A pipe led from the bank heading back towards the property.

  “That is my water supply,” Bingi said. “I use it for all kinds of things. Tanning takes a lot of washing and a lot of soaking.”

  Pol now understood that. “Where does the waste water go?”

  Bingi grinned. “The stream heads straight out to the ocean. There isn’t another village from here to there, so I just dump everything back into the stream on the other side of the vats. It cuts down on the smell. Someone located the tannery here a long time ago for that reason.”

  Pol couldn’t tell. The odor from the tanning processes and the hides couldn’t be worse, but he vowed to endure. Doara seemed nice, but he wasn’t so sure about Bingi. The place seemed to be refuge enough for Pol’s purposes. After another whiff of the vats, it was plain that whoever set up the place put the tannery where it was for a reason other than easy access to the water.

  “Come with me,” he said, walking into the woods. Bingi pointed out three species of trees. All of them had rough bark. “These are used for my tanning. There is tannin in the bark that takes the rotting parts out of the leather. That’s what tanning does. If you leave untanned leather out, it goes bad. We don’t want that. You’ll have to travel north on the path to a red stake. That’s where you can scrape the bark off the trees and bring them back here. You need to spend a day each week doing that.”

  “Why do I go so far?” Pol asked.

  “The trees closer in have all been harvested. This tannery has been in operation for a long, long time. I get help from the village to remove the old trees and plant new ones on a regular basis. We all pitch in to make things work here.”

  Pol nodded. He wondered if he already knew this, but his mind didn’t give him an answer. He may be learning something once familiar to him, but he just soaked it in. The village working as a cooperative unit seemed something worth contemplating. He guessed some people cooperated more than others, and he expected he’d have the opportunity to test that guess.

  ~

  After a hard day doing all of the physical work in the tannery, Pol walked into Bingi’s house where he ate with the couple. He had little to do the next day, but that still meant checking the vats to make sure the solutions were topped up, so the curing leather didn’t dry out. Bingi timed the work so they could get a less intensive day once a week.

  Bingi was out in the yard counting hides in the second shack that held his cured hides. Doara put lamb stew on the table.

  “I wish we could raise animals, but the smells affect the animals as much as it does the rest of us,” she said. “I have a tiny shack just off the road to the village where I wash and change my clothes.” She smiled. “I get better treatment when I shop after I’ve cleaned up.”

  Pol hadn’t heard of it before, but then he still hadn’t found the time to go into the village, and he had spent the last two months learning all about tanning.

  “How do I go about whitewashing my shack? It’s dismal inside.”

  Doara brightened up. “We make our own. Bingi’s too lazy. You can take Demeron into the village and buy a few extra bags of lime that Bingi gets delivered. Do you want me to go with you?”

  “I’d like that. Will Bingi be upset?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. We’ll go tomorrow morning.”

  The next morning, Pol was up and ready. Doara stepped down onto the ground from Bingi’s hit, and they headed to the village. Pol could still hear Bingi snoring, even after they reached the road.

  “A nice day. Did you bring any money?”

  Pol stopped. “I didn’t.”

  “Never mind. We’ll spend your pay today.”

  Pol didn’t even know what the local coinage looked like since he had left the village for the tannery in the same hour that he arrived.

  There was a market set up in the middle of the village. Unfamiliar men wearing a different style of clothes manned the stalls.

  “The merchants don’t live here?” Pol asked Doara. She looked different, dressed more nicely after she had changed in the shack. At least Pol had thought to bathe in the stream the previous night.

  “No. The market men travel from village to village. There are usually two or three of them selling the same things. Competition is good to keep the prices down,” Doara said. “Watch me haggle. You’ll get a better feeling for what things are worth. We’ll buy you a new set of clothes, so you can put them in my changing shack. No matter how hard you try, you can’t wash the tanning smell from your work clothes.”

  Pol had gotten so used to the smell that he didn’t even notice, but from the looks of the villagers, they did. He hung back from Doara but listened as she shopped for food and his clothes. Bingi needed more drawing knives, so she haggled for a while with a cutlery merchant.