When his flock was devoured by wolves and creatures of the deep wood, he said, “At least my family is safe. Praise the Lord.” But the slavers raided his village, put his sons to the sword, and captured his wife and daughters. He said, “At least I am still in good health and able to work my own land. Praise the Lord.” But he was stricken with disease and then sold into slavery himself. He said, “At least my master is merciful. Praise the Lord.” But his master falsely accused him of a terrible crime and sentenced him to die. He said, “At least I will be put out of my misery. Praise the Lord.” The Everswamp spoke to him and said, “What lord deserves your praise who afflicts you so?” And he could not answer.

-The Legend of the Bogman

Holcort, Grackenwell

Kimbel sat in his cell, in the corner by the tiny hole of a window, twirling a loose thread in the sleeve of his itchy, plain prison tunic. He glared at the jailer who stomped past during his routine patrol. The jailer knew he was glaring.

The sun was sweltering that day, burning in the blue sky over the city of Holcort. The back of his neck stung from the direct light while the rest of his skin became paler day by day. The air smelled of sunbaked brick.

“Do you intend to confess your crime today, Kimbel?” The jailer had returned at the end of his patrol, key in one hand, whip in the other.

“Prince,” he hissed back. “That’s Prince Kimbel to you, lowlife.”

“I’m afraid not,” the jailer replied. “King’s orders. Even if you are a prince, what’s a prince to a king?” The jailer, who was built like an ox and clad in leather and chainmail armor, sighed as he unlocked the door. Kimbel gritted his teeth and resolved not to make a sound during today’s whippings. The door shut with a loud metallic bang and clinked as it locked once more.

The guard lifted up the back of the prisoner’s tunic. Kimbel knew from his experience with slaves what his back must have looked like by now—scars from shoulder to waist, pinkish-white ghosts of past punishments and the red-and-black slits of fresher inflictions. He could no longer tell which one hurt worse than any of the others; they were all one pain now.

Once. Twice. Thrice. The leather snapped into his back and he didn’t cry out in pain, but he accidentally let out a ragged exhale at the end. Damn you, Kimbel, he thought to himself. Weak again.

“Teralt,” he snarled, “when I get out of here... I promise I will not forget what you’ve done to me here. I swear on the Bogman. I will make you—”

“Make me pay, yes,” Teralt sighed boredly. He was already on the other side of the bars now, wiping the blood off his whip with a rag. “Nothing frightens me less than the empty threats of a prisoner. An empty threat is a lie. You know what we do to liars here in Grackenwell, don’t you?”

Kimbel spat in Teralt’s direction, but the guard was already halfway down the corridor. “I am no liar,” he said. “Get back here and say that to my face, you coward!” Teralt didn’t break stride on his way out.

Kimbel’s meal for the day was stale bread and water. He’d secretly hoped for plain oatmeal, since at least that was warm and hinted at the fact that it was cooked recently, like someone had prepared it deliberately with him in mind. Hane’s delivery of the meal added insult to injury.

“I bet seeing me like this is the greatest gift you've ever received in your whole worthless life,” Kimbel told him.

“Nonsense,” Hane replied, sliding the meal under the iron bars on a small wooden plank. Kimbel devoured it angrily. “Must say I got a great deal of pity for you, milord.”

The deposed prince stopped chewing for a moment. “If I have your pity, then I truly am doomed.” He gnawed on the last hunk of bread and softened it with his water. “At least you have my chamber pot to look forward to once a day. And when I’m back on the throne, Hane, I promise that I’ll bring that haughty attitude of yours to heel.”

The skin around Hane’s eyes wrinkled with his polite smile. “Until tomorrow, then. Take care.” Before hobbling away to tend to his other duties, Hane turned back to say one last thing. “Might do well to stop thinking in terms of power. Whose face you got under your boot. Lived your whole life that way, you have. And look where it’s got you. Might rethink things. If you survive it, I reckon. I say, truly, I hope you do.” The old slave shuffled off and Kimbel was all alone again.

But he was never truly alone. That was the worst part of prison. Not the chains, the bars, the beatings, the stale bread. Not the cold brick floor for a bed. The worst part of prison was the people who shared it with him.

There was a thief in the cell next to him. The man was scrawny, with a scruffy head of hair and beard, and wide, wild eyes that constantly darted back and forth. He was always scratching some part of himself. The man had an obnoxious sniffle that sounded like a small pig snorting.

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The cell diagonal to Kimbel’s held a man they said was a murderer. In Grackenwell, killing was not always prohibited—unless it was the destruction of property in the form of a slave—but a man who killed fellow freemen without quarrel was charged with murder. Funnily, the murderer was the best-behaved prisoner. He sat silently with his head against the wall and his eyes closed most of the time. He almost never made a sound, nor did he dare to look Kimbel in the eye. The prince appreciated his respect.

But the worst of all were the two slaves in the cell across the hall from him. There was a pinkish sunburnt one and a tan one, and they were both unbearably loud. They would work themselves into a frenzy whenever Kimbel so much as glanced in their direction. “It’s the prince!” they would say. “What is the prince doing here?” After a few days, they even dared to speak to him directly. “Prince Kimbel, why are you here? What are you doing in here? What law did you break? Why are you in prison with us?”

He would not deign to dignify their low class questions with an answer. They didn’t deserve it.

And he didn’t deserve to be where he was.

***

With night came Kimbel’s third scheduled whipping of the day. The jailer arrived with his key and the length of leather that by now must have grown sick of the taste of young Garrotin blood.

Once—for dishonoring Grackenwell.

Twice—for dishonoring the king.

Thrice—for dishonoring the Secret Ledger and all the sacred traditions surrounding it, chief among them the stipulation that only the reigning monarch was permitted to read it, that even an heir who had not assumed the throne was unfit to lay eyes on its pages.

“If you confess,” said Teralt, his keys jingling as he locked the door to the cell again, “you might make it easier on yourself. A confession might grant a sentence of life in prison. If you agree to part with your tongue, that is, lest you spill the secrets. Small price to pay if you ask me.”

Kimbel said nothing. He was proud of himself for remaining perfectly still and silent this time. This was his small victory, the last infinitesimal shred of power he still held over Teralt. He was confident he could keep silent during every subsequent whipping for the duration of his stay.

Bored and impatient, the jailer eventually made his way to other prisoners, giving Kimbel some peace and quiet.

But the quiet was only peaceful for so long.

***

Restless, with only a sprinkling of stars through the tiny window to keep him company, the only company worth keeping in this wretched hovel, Kimbel rocked back and forth against the wall. He hated the feeling of chains around his wrist; they bruised him around the bones and made most motion prohibitively difficult. He hated the iron bars that walled him in on three sides and the bricks on the fourth. He hated everything.

Hopeless, he decided to let his mind wander elsewhere, the farther the better. He closed his eyes. Took a deep, shuddering breath.

Fragmented memories of his mother surfaced from the depths of his subconscious. She was hanging their clothes to dry on a line. She fried up a young gator that Brynh had wrangled at the edge of the Everswamp that same day, back when he was still Prince Brynh Garrotin. He vividly recalled the way she gently shooed the slaves out of the kitchen, telling them to go relax under a weeping willow, but he didn’t know why that memory stuck out above the rest.

Then there was his favorite recollection of his mother. On very special nights, she would read him The Legend of the Bogman. The theatrics she wove into every reading were unmatched by any of Kimbel’s slave caretakers or even the professional performers he sometimes saw in the streets of Holcort. She was the best. The very best.

Her voice would sink to a low growl during the scary parts, taper off into near silence, then rise and crescendo during the best twists and turns of the story, the climactic victory, nearly yelling and playfully shaking her young son as he giggled and applauded her. She knew the story of the Bogman better than he did. Better than most anyone, he might say. And it was these readings with his mother that instilled a great love for the Grackenwelsh legend in Kimbel’s young heart.

Now it was just a memory. So was she.

But he never stopped living his life by the code of the Bogman—strength over all. The undead hero, conqueror of death itself. He aspired to achieve a fraction of that power and glory in his lifetime.

“And look where it’s got you,” said Hane.

Kimbel’s eyes snapped open. The old slave was nowhere to be seen. Chains still bound his wrist, reminded him of the pain when he awoke. Night still loomed black across the hills and marshlands. He thought he saw the earliest hint of daybreak out the tiny window, sunlight rippling through the sky. It was nothing.

No, it was water. The algae-blanketed water of the Everswamp itself. Pale moonlight shone down through the dark, dank canopy, illuminating ghosts of fog that brooded over the surface.

It rippled; something stirred inside. A gator? A fish? Something round, maybe a tortoise surfacing.

It was a head. Two empty white slits for eyes. It was his father.

“Don’t lie to me, boy.”

Kimbel awoke with a start, choking on his own puddle of drool. He spat out the dust in his mouth from another night sleeping on the bare floor. The nightmare was still fresh in his mind when Teralt came stomping down the corridor—but the sun hadn’t yet risen.

“It’s not time yet,” Kimbel rasped. He cleared his throat. “Leave me be, you dumb oaf!”

Two more guards trailed behind Teralt. He smiled. “Daddy dearest is back from Zan Vayonado. It’s time for your trial, boy. Get up.” The other two guards unlocked his chains and threw him around no gentler than an unruly slave. They gave him new chains to wear around his wrists and ankles.

“Whatever you do,” Teralt growled into his ear, so close he could feel the heat of his foul breath, “just remember what happens to liars here in Grackenwell.”

The three men yanked, dragged, kicked, and shoved Kimbel down the dark corridor lit by the occasional wall torch. The crownless prince shuffled along where he was led, down the narrow corridor to the rusted iron door at the end. Beyond that door lay his uncertain future. Beyond that door lay destiny.

He thought about Hane’s words, about the code he’d followed all his life. “There is no god but the strongest man,” he mumbled under his breath. “There is no truth but strength.” So it was written in the Legend of the Bogman.

“What are you babbling about?” Teralt asked. “Saying your prayers?”

Kimbel gritted his teeth. “Something like that.”