What followed was a great uproar among the clans and wild rumors were flying around. One such rumor was that a warrior king from Kreshya had kidnapped Athea. In a few years he would come to claim the Throne of Blood with an army of his warriors. No one would be able withstand him after he took Athea's virginity. No one but Roban could. Although Roban liked that rumor better than most of the others, there was something very disturbing about it and doubts began to grow in his mind. He became restless; disturbing dreams of a blond young woman in the arms of many different men often woke him at night. At first those dreams were just disturbing, but a few months after their departure he awoke with the now usual morning hard-on after such a dream and was furious. His puberty made him very aware of what those men were doing with his sister. He didn't like that one bit. Lots of times he had to calm down reminding himself that it was just a dream and she was only six years old! Years went by with no news about his mother or sister. The dreams continued.
There were good dreams as well, dreams of his little sisters smiling face with sparkling eyes. Some of his mother too, they were calming, but those other dreams left him furious for hours after waking up. One day after such a dream he was sparring with Kaias. At fourteen years old, standing six feet tall and weighing nearly 220 pounds, he was almost as big as Kaias. Still furious about his dream he was hammering a war mace against Kaias' shield. The shield broke and with it Kaias arm. The pure rage in Roban's eyes shook Kaias more than the pain in his broken arm. Roban was trembling under the strain of trying not to kill his teacher, and Kaias could see it!
Cradling his broken arm, Kaias told Roban as calmly as possible, "Roban, the debt I owed your father is paid now. There isn't anything more I can teach you. You're already stronger than I am. I don't know what made you so furious, but I do know that, if I continue to spar with you, you will kill me one of these days. If you don't control your anger, you will likely kill the rest of your teachers too. This is my last day as your teacher. Can you tell me what caused your anger? I want to understand that, at the very least."
A bit calmer now Roban looked at Kaias, the rage had left his eyes, replaced by coldness even more frightening to Kaias.
"You all are the reason. You are the reason my sister had to leave me. Every morning I wake up I also know that all of you are not worth it! If I have to kill every Norgar to get her back, you will all die." Roban told Kaias without any emotions visible in his expression.
With that he turned and left Kaias and he never saw him again….....
........
Two months before Roban's sixteenth birthday he woke up in the middle of the night, not sure about the reason but highly alert. He grabbed a sword from his weapons rack and walked to the door of his chamber. Before he reached it the door flew open and two masked men jumped inside. They were clothed in black from head to toe, with short swords in each hand. The first of them sheathed one sword to take something out of his clothes. Roban pinned the man's wrist with his sword to his chest before he could do so. The second man cursed and jumped over his fallen comrade swinging his short-swords in fascinating pattern. But there was no audience and Roban was not interested in watching it. Crouching he used the longer range of his sword to cut the man's feet from his legs. The man was a skilled and artistic fighter but the sixteen year old Roban was faster and stronger. The footless man stared up at him, a look of shocked disbelief on his face, as Roban thrust his sword through the man's neck.
Roban walked through the door and into the small corridor leading to the entrance hall. Stepping into the hall Roban could see six more of the masked men. They carefully walked up to him, but didn't attack. One of them spoke.
"We didn't come to kill you. Our Queen, Leandris of Ghota, sent us to invite you to her kingdom and keep you safe from your own people."
"You don't look like a royal delegation, more like a band of assassins," Roban replied.
"We were led to believe your people wouldn't look favorably on your departure. Is that untrue?" The man asked in response.
"Probably not, but why would your Queen want to keep the heir to the Throne of Blood safe from his own people, or anyone else for that matter?" Roban asked in return and couldn't hide his grin.
"You're no Chieftain yet. If you stay here maybe you never will be. Only the Norgar Chieftain would be our enemy. Be that as it may, I am ordered to assure you that you won't be a prisoner in Ghota, but a treasured guest of our Queen. Free to leave whenever and for wherever you want to go," the man answered.
Roban thought about it. Ghota was a prime target for Norgar raids, so why would their Queen want to help him, an heir to the throne? On the other hand, if she wanted to kill him, those men would have attacked and not invited him to their land. He was probably missing something he thought, but he didn't care. To leave this house, his prison, was too tempting to resist.
"I will accompany you to visit your Queen." He finally agreed and offered his sword to the man with the handle towards him.
"As I said, you are a guest, no prisoner. Keep your sword. I assume Yor and Keta are dead?"
"The two who came to my chamber? Yes, sorry but I wasn't aware they were there to invite me to visit your Queen."
The man nodded to one of the others and three men left down the corridor to Roban's chamber. When they returned two were carrying the corpses of their comrades and one of them handed Roban a bloody letter.
"They were ordered to give you this letter from our Queen."
Reading the letter Roban nodded. It was indeed an invitation, just as they had said. Signed with their Queen's name and affixed with an official looking wax seal. Roban left Falkath that night on a ship hidden not far up the coast. The ship's destination was Ghota, at least that's what he was led to believe, but he really didn't care.
Roban had his own destination in mind anyways.