Please critique!

Hi everyone,
Here’s the prologue and first chapter of a novel I just finished, which happens to be my current favorite. It’s called Prince of the Barbarians. I would really appreciate it if y’all could read it and critique! Thanks!

Prelude to an Epic
I once heard it said by a beggar that the king was the most blessed person alive. “Riches,” said the beggar, “and gold in piles like mountains! And slaves and servants!” said the beggar, “and a beautiful palace! And lots of food, and lots of comfort, and the respect and service of the entire kingdom!”
Well, whoever that guy was, he didn’t know what he was talking about.
I admit that the king does have a treasure room. And he does have a few—try seventy-four, not counting the one who was executed most recently—slaves and servants. And we’ve never gone a day without food. And of course there’s the lovely stone castle on the hill. And the other lovely stone castle by the river, and the lovely brick mansion in the woods if he feels like taking a vacation…. But when it comes to comfort, respect, and service, think again.
Assassins are everywhere. Always. They have eyes in the walls and ears in the cellars, and they have swords in your bedchambers, whether you know it or not.
So let me tell you right away that it is never a wise idea to be born into a royal family. Should you ever be given the choice, choose to be born to a beggar. You might starve, but you’ll never drink a cup of poison. It is the royal families who battle and rage and have confused family trees, where women marry their husbands’ head-chopping brothers because their husbands’ brothers chopped the heads of their husbands and there’s no one else “royal” to marry. Or the women marry their own head-chopping brothers, and then their offspring wind up wrong in the head and then those wrong-in-the-head-offspring become kings and then the kingdom’s in a mess. It is the royal families who have to watch their backs for fourteen hundred and forty-one minutes every day. It is the royal families who must be stern enough that their country remains in order but not so stern that their country hates them.
Generally, hated rulers are hated because they are either too stern, or too lenient, or too selfish. But, then there are those simply bad rulers that nobody trusts, that everybody hates, that somebody wants to kill. My father was one of these.
I can’t claim that he ruined the world with his poor reign. He wasn’t a king at a critical time. He wasn’t a critical king. It had been years since the Great Experiment of 2290 had destroyed all of technology and most of civilization, and we were slowly but steadily progressing back to what we had been over two thousand years ago. My father’s reign had no effect on any of that progression.
He was simply a weak ruler. He taxed the poor because he wanted money, killed the rich because he feared their power and wanted money, and kept his eyes on everyone in between poor and rich because any one of them might be subtly becoming rich and he wanted their money. I think he was one of those ones whose mother married her brother so he ended up wrong in the head… or something like that. Without question, everyone in the kingdom hated him, including the members of his own household. And one day, someone had the audacity to do something about it.

Chapter One
How a Grape Saved My Life
It was five o’ clock in the evening, and I was in my bedchambers.
That was normal enough.
But “normal enough” is no place to start a story, I know. Let me try again.
It was five o’ clock in the evening. I was in my bedchambers, and there was a harpy sitting on my windowsill.
That’s a lie, but it’s a better place to start a story than at “normal enough,” so I’ll stick with it. So the harpy was sitting on my windowsill and the clock in the hall was ringing out “five o’ clock, five o’ clock, five o’ clock, five o’ clock, five o’ clock” with those obnoxious bells that wake you up in the middle of the night just to tell you it’s midnight. I stood up from my desk, where I had been sitting and calmly surveying the Harpy-That-Wasn’t-Really-There. Five o’ clock meant suppertime, and the fifth obnoxious ring meant I was late.
That was normal enough.
I bid farewell to the harpy and flung open my door.
I heard a grunt, and looked to my right. One of the servant girls was sprawled on the floor, knocked over by the force of the flying door. Doubtless, I thought, she had come to summon me.
“Prince Cerdic,” she gasped, rubbing her shoulder. “Your honor. I came to summon you.”
“Sure,” I said, starting down the hall, and dodging the flying door of my half-sister’s bedroom. She was late too. That was normal enough. With a bound, she was ahead of me, sailing down the spiral staircase on the banister and neatly sliding off at the end. She glanced up at me condescendingly.
Garawyn rarely spoke to me—she only glanced condescendingly. She was the only person I knew who could look condescending when she was actually physically standing under me, as well as beneath me in position. Part of her attitude I attributed to the fact that she was a redhead. The rest, I attributed to the fact that she was a girl. “You’re late,” she said.
“So are you,” I told her.
“No, I’m not. The clock in the dining room is one minute later than the one upstairs, and I’m going to make it there before the fifth ring. Goodbye.”
There were probably about thirty seconds before that fifth ring, and I didn’t know how she planned on doing that. I only knew that she was right—I was late.
I went down the stairs two at a time and skipped the bottom five, landing in a crouch and springing back to my feet, then sped on toward the dining hall, nearly knocking over three servants on the way. I could hear the dining room clock chiming its fifth obnoxious chime, and I was still thirty seconds away from it. Garawyn was nowhere to be seen.
I pushed open the oaken door of the dining hall and stepped in. My entire family, as well as the higher lords, was seated around the table. Garawyn had her typical dignified air about her, which implied that she had been sitting at that table for hours, waiting for me. Everyone looked at me when I entered, and my father’s wife said, “You’re late, Cerdic.”
“I apologize,” I said, seating myself to my father’s right.
My father’s fourth wife’s six-year-old son sat next to me. Garawyn, who was my father’s third wife’s fourteen-year-old daughter, sat to my father’s left. My father’s fifth wife’s four-year-old son beat his spoon energetically against the table. My father’s seventh wife, Grymelda, who was only two years older than I, was staring at me with a venomous look. That was normal enough.
I don’t have to invent a harpy at this point in the story because there actually was an abnormal occurrence. My father’s seventh wife looked very hard at the servant, Aven, as he came by with the wine on a tray. And he nodded.
And that was not normal.
The wine was set in front of my father first, then a cup was given to me, to my half-sister, and to my six-year-old half-brother. The lords received their wine. The four-year-old was given a less powerful drink. And I stared suspiciously at my wine.
Garawyn kicked me under the table. “Ow!” I said, and father looked at us.
“Sorry,” she said, “just changing positions.” But when father turned away, she glared at me. That kick had not been an accident. Was it a signal? She was looking at her wine now. So she had the same suspicion that I did: Was there something in the wine?
Father took a sip. Too late for him. Half of my subconscious wondered what kind of poison it was, and how painful Father’s death would be, while the other half focused on beating my heart at four hundred miles per minute. As much as I disliked Father, I hoped for his sake that the poison was of the quick and painless variety.
My six-year-old half-brother spilled his wine, and I inwardly cursed him. If I spilled my wine now, someone would get suspicious.
Being the heir to the throne and the second most powerful person in the kingdom, I was expected to drink next. There was no way out of it—it seemed.
“I don’t feel well,” I said faintly. I believe my voice quavered. Not only was I telling the truth by what I said, but my genuine fear made it sound even more credible.
“Be strong,” my father said scornfully. “Drink and eat, then you may go off and pity yourself as much as you like.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said. That was also true.
“You must eat. But first you must drink.”
I could feel Grymelda’s awful eyes burning into me. Surely she had guessed that I had guessed. She had hated me from the start, I knew. Doubtless, there was poison in the wine before me.
“The wine will make you feel better,” said Grymelda. Her eyes were bright and sickeningly appealing. She knew that I knew, and she was relishing my discomfort, enjoying the aspect of pushing me slowly toward my death. There was surely something dreadful in my glass. And why wouldn’t there be? If she killed us all off in one night, she would be queen. Or if not—if she only killed my father and me—then she would be regent until one of the other children was old enough to rule. By that time, she would be powerful enough not to have to let them rule.
“What’s wrong?” Garawyn asked innocently.
I glanced at her. Was she stalling for time for my sake, or was she, too, trying to corner me?
“Is there something wrong with your wine?” she asked. “Here; let me smell it.” She brought it to her nose. “Hm,” she said. “It smells a little strange. Do you suppose it was made wrongly?”
I smelled it. I had thought she had been bluffing, but she was right; the wine did smell strange. Then it occurred to me that the smell of it might be as poisonous as the taste.
“There’s nothing wrong with the wine,” said Grymelda. “I know; I have seen the cask. It is the best, imported from Elderhaim. You know that the grapes of Elderhaim are the best.”
“I’d rather not drink it,” I said, my stomach churning. Had I inadvertently poisoned myself by smelling the wine? Or had Garawyn not really inhaled, and tricked me into inadvertently poisoning myself?
But then Garawyn picked up the glass again, and I knew that she was not in on any scheme against me. She lifted it to her own lips to take a draft. “I’ll taste it first,” she said.
For a brief moment, I was frozen. What did she think she was doing? She knew as well as I did that there was poison in the glass. I stared stupidly as her lips closed around the edge of the glass, as her head tilted back, as the liquid touched her lips. Suddenly she jerked the glass away from her face, slamming it on the table and sputtering, drawing her hand across her lips, as though she had tasted something unpleasant.
“Ugh!” she cried. “There’s something wrong with it, I say!”
“Why, that’s foolishness,” said the king my father. “There was nothing wrong with mine!”
Grymelda then took a confident draft from her own glass. “There’s nothing wrong with mine,” she said.
“Taste his,” Garawyn said, passing it down to her. “There’s something wrong with it, I tell you. Taste it. You’ll see.”
Grymelda stared at it, caught in her own trap. After a moment, an artificial smile spread itself awkwardly on her lips. “Well, if there’s something wrong with it, I shan’t force anyone to drink it,” she said. “Aven, you may dispose of this wine and fetch the young master new wine.”
“Aven, I don’t want wine tonight, thank you,” I said. “The smell of that has quite turned my stomach.”
Grymelda’s eyes burned into me. “He must drink,” she said to Aven.
“Why should he?” the king said, overruling her. “If he doesn’t want wine, than he won’t have wine. The meals, Aven!”
Garawyn kicked me again under the table. I turned to her, and her eyes said, “What are we going to do about the meals? Of course they’ll be poisoned, too. Aven’s in on it, of course.”
Helplessly, I tried to silently make her understand that I had no idea what we were to do.
The meals were brought out—mashed potatoes and bowls of grapes and corn and tomato stew and roasted chicken. Normally I would have breathed in the scent of that food with anticipation, but tonight, my panicking senses imagined poison in every cloud of fragrance that passed my face.
Garawyn propped her head on her right hand, her elbow on the table. When her fork was loaded with food, she brought it to her mouth—and past her mouth on the right side of her face. Discreetly, she dumped it down her sleeve, then chewed and swallowed the nothingness in her mouth. From Grymelda’s point of view, she must have looked as though she were eating. Despite myself, I almost laughed. Garawyn heard me choke and shot me a savage look.
Neither the king nor Grymelda were paying attention to Garawyn; their eyes were fixed on me as they ate. Noticing this, I glanced self-consciously down at my plate. How was I to eat this? I couldn’t do what Garawyn was doing. My father would see me.
In a rapid sequence of fortunate unfortunate events, my four-year-old half-brother—and perhaps a heavy dose of luck—unwittingly saved me. Or rather, it was a grape from his plate. As though it had leapt, it was suddenly on the tablecloth rather than in his bowl. With four-year-old concern, he gave a little shriek and reached out for it as it rolled toward the center of the table. Grabbing it firmly in his chubby fist, he accidentally knocked into one of the candles. The candle fell. The tablecloth caught fire.
It was a small fire, and could easily have been put out, but nobody did that. Shrieking, Grymelda jumped up from the table, knocking her chair over backwards. My father scooted his chair back. The four-year-old screamed. Avrick cheered. Garawyn snuck me a sideways smile and slipped out of her chair, while I, pondering my splendid luck, got away from the table and watched the tablecloth burn.
It was a magnificent show. The table caught fire, too. Grymelda began to scream for Aven, who appeared looking quite befuddled, caught sight of the burning table, and turned tail. I wasn’t sure if he was running to fetch a bucket of water, or fleeing the flames. Three other servants appeared to look on. Screaming, Grymelda fled the room. Garawyn picked up our youngest half-brother, and he whimpered in her shoulder. All thoughts of supper were vanquished. We moved to the edges of the room. The flame spread further, and eventually the table broke in the middle, collapsing in a burning heap on the floor rug, which caught fire. One of the chairs began to burn.
Aven returned with an ineffectual bucket of water; the fire raged on. He yelled at the other servants to fetch water. Three ineffectual buckets of water were poured on the burning heap. The fire raged on. I laughed. The stone floor wasn’t going to let the fire out of the room, but the table—and our meals—were lost.
Garawyn was not laughing. She looked at me suddenly, stoically. “Fumes?” she whispered.
“Oh,” I said.
“We’re going to die,” Garawyn said, walking from the room with regal dignity and astonishing calmness.
I seized Avrick’s hand and dragged him out of the room, passing Garawyn, who was still doing that regal-dignity thing. When I was out of the room, I looked back at her. She closed the door behind her, then started up the stairs, still cradling the whimpering four-year-old. I followed, uncertain of what else to do.
At the top of the stairs, she set down Melny and sent him to bed with Avrick, saying, “Good night, boys.” With regal dignity, of course.
I started off toward my bedroom, and she followed me, passing her own bedroom and entering mine without invitation.
“I forgot,” I said, “you’re new here. Your room would be that one, down the hall.”
She shut the door of my room—with herself on what was, in my opinion, the wrong side. “We’re going to die,” she said.
“Thank you. Have a nice night.” I tried opening my bedroom door to show her out, but she was in and she wasn’t planning on leaving. Girls.
“We’re going to die,” she repeated.
“Then why did you drink the wine?”
Her eyes laughed suddenly. “I didn’t,” she said. “Which reminds me: I should wash off my lips before I accidentally lick them.”
“You didn’t let it into your mouth?”
“Not a drop of it.”
“And your food?”
Her eyes twinkling, she dumped it out of her sleeve, and there was a pile of mashed potatoes on the floor of my bedchambers. I laughed.
“And now, we’re going to die,” she said, serious again.
“Are the fumes dangerous?”
“I don’t know. It makes sense for burning poison to be dangerous to inhale. Grymelda left the room as soon as the food started burning; did you see that?”
“We also smelled the wine.”
Garawyn nodded slowly. “We’re done for.”
“What about Father?”
“Oh, he’s done for, too. He’s going to die. We’re all going to die except Grymelda, and then she’s going to rule the people as a tyrant and they’re all going to die.”
“You sound optimistic this evening,” I teased solemnly.
“I’m not much for idealism when reality is death,” she said, shrugging carelessly as though she were stating her favorite color.
I sighed. “Then why did you even try to save us after we smelled the wine?”
“I suppose there’s still some chance. Not for Father, though.”
“Is there a medicine book in this castle?”
“Oh, surely,” she replied. “Why?”
“Would it have the antidote for poison in it?”
“Oh, surely,” she replied. “But it wouldn’t do us any good, since we don’t know what we inhaled.”
“I meant for Father.”
“You’d risk chasing down a medicine book and whipping up an antidote under Grymelda’s watchful eye to save him? When the chances are already so unlikely that he’ll survive?”
“Well, I don’t necessarily want a kingdom thrust upon my shoulders at this particular moment.”
“But you don’t want to die, either. Just so you know, at this point, death is what will probably happen to you if you venture farther than the end of your hallway. As for us, in regard to the poison, we’ll just have to wait it out and hope we don’t die.”
“Sure,” I said. “That sounds like fun.”
She glared at me and went to my washroom. Moments later, she came back, licking her lips and making faces. “You should get some soap that tastes better,” she said.
“You shouldn’t taste my soap,” I replied.
Her left sleeve was wet. Clearly, she had washed that arm, too. “Don’t touch that,” she said, pointing at the food on the floor. “It’s toxic. I think I already have a rash on my arm.”
“Pity.”
“Look.”
She pulled up her sleeve, and I gasped. Her arm looked as though it had been burned, and was bleeding in several places. Garawyn’s blue eyes burned up at me. “I think I have a rash on my arm,” she repeated calmly.
“I think you have more than a rash. Maybe we should try to find a medicine book.”
“Are you kidding? We set foot outside of this room, and some man with a dagger is going to spear us both through.”
“Spear us with a dagger?”
“Sure.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“Let my arm fall off.”
“You washed it already?”
“Yes, as best as I could. It’s a bit tender.”
“A bit?” I repeated dubiously.
“Well, all right; it’s very tender.”
“Tender?”
“Or excruciating, if you prefer.”
“Can you imagine what that would’ve done to our insides?”
“Can you imagine what the fumes are doing to our insides now?”
“I’d rather not.”
She didn’t say anything, but sat down on my bed.
“Your welcome has expired and you’re overstaying it right now,” I told her.
“I’ll leave soon,” she promised. “I just wanted to find out what your plan is.”
“Plan?”
“The entire kingdom wants to kill you. Surely—”
“Why?” I interrupted.
She sighed, as though I was testing her patience. “Because you’re father’s son. They want the entire royal family eliminated so that they can stick one of their own guys on the throne.”
“Right, because that would be a great idea. King Blacksmith the First, ruling the country with an iron fist?”
She almost laughed, but then tried to pretend that I was annoying her with my humor by sighing again. “You know that, and I know that, but they don’t know that. You’re in danger. Surely you must have some sort of plan for survival?”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought that far. Well, what chance to I have anyway? They’re just going to kill me. I might as well just sit around and wait for it to happen.”
Garawyn sighed. “Maybe I should just leave and let you die, then.”
“Thanks, that would be much appreciated. The you leaving part, I mean.”
“Fine, fine!” she said, standing up. “All I’m saying is, the kingdom needs a good king. Will you be that king, or will you throw your life away because you didn’t care to try to live?”
She started for the door.
“Oh, and I suppose you have a plan?” I shot at her.
She paused. “I’m trying,” she said. “But I think I’ll stop, since you wouldn’t care to hear it.”
“If you’ve got a plan, I’ll hear it,” I said.
“No, you’ll just throw your life away!” she accused.
“Well, if the kingdom wants me to be their king—”
“This is not about what the kingdom wants, Cerdic,” Garawyn said firmly, almost severely. “I said what the kingdom needs, not what the kingdom wants. The kingdom wants us dead. The entire kingdom is against us.”
“Why should they be against us?”
“Because we are the children of that wicked tyrant,” Garawyn replied with strained patience.
“But we aren’t like him.”
“But they don’t know that.”
“If we killed Grymelda…”
“Ugh, I couldn’t kill Grymelda,” said Garawyn with a shudder. “She’s probably a witch. She probably has sixteen lives, and each one is probably longer than the one before it.”
“That’s a nice bedtime story.”
“Even if Grymelda was killed, we’d still have Aven to deal with. He was in cahoots with her, I’m certain. And even if we killed Aven, we’d have a revolt on our hands. Our people are barbarians; you know that. They raid foreigners for gold and plunder ships and execute prisoners of war and murder each other on the streets. As soon as you’re king, some firebrand farmer stands up on his little wooden crate in the middle of the street and yells for an hour and a half, and next thing you know we’ve got three hundred villagers with pitchforks screaming in front of the drawbridge.”
“Then we keep the drawbridge shut.”
“Then they hurdle the walls of the castle and climb vines to our windows.”
“Then we cut down all the vines,” I proposed.
“Then they devise some sort of battering ram and burst through the drawbridge.”
“Then we lower the drawbridge and smash them all,” I suggested desperately.
“Then they step out of the way until the drawbridge is down, then storm the castle. Then we’ve got the firebrand farmer as the king of Traith and the kingdom falls to another kingdom, and everybody dies.”
I sighed. “You’re totally not an optimist.”
“I prefer to think of myself as a realist,” she replied.
“But if that’s reality, then we have no hope.”
“True,” agreed Garawyn.
I sighed again.
“Unless,” she said. “Unless…”
I expected her to continue, but she did not—she only paused, looking off past me and out my window for some reason. Perhaps she sighted that harpy.
“Unless what?” I prompted.
She hesitated, looking back at me. “Well… I’m not quite sure yet. I’m thinking,” she said. “Whatever it is, it would take you cooperating, trusting, and trying very hard not to die.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
“I’ll hold you to that.”

The end. Please tell me what you all think and what needs changed. Once again, Thanks!
Hannah

• This topic was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by Hannah R..