by ML Spencer
That hurt. It hurt terribly.
He looked up at Vandra with an accusing glare. Silently, she moved into the room and sat down on the floor next to him. For a moment, she just sat there, hunched over and staring downward at the ground, her dark hair dripping into her face in greasy ropes. Aram didn’t try to keep his resentment off his face, instead letting it burn in his eyes, hoping it scorched her. He had placed his trust in this woman, and what he felt was the pain of betrayal.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked at length.
With a heavy sigh, Vandra looked up at him. “When you first came to us, we were all very worried about you. You’d already endured more suffering than most people will know in a lifetime. We wanted to give you time to mend. And then, after that…” She shrugged. “We wanted to give you the best chance we could to pass the Trials. We feared that hearing your father’s story might strike a blow to your confidence. We didn’t want it to be a fatal blow.”
A lot of what she said made sense, but it fell far short of justifying their actions. He said in a low growl, “I needed to know.”
Vandra nodded, then sat for a time in silence. At length, she whispered, “How much do you know about your father?”
“Not much. I guess he never spoke about his past. My mother thought he may have been some kind of soldier, but he never would admit it. He was always going into town for business. And then, one day, he just didn’t come back. They did a search, but they never found his body. Everyone thought he’d run away and left us.”
“No. He didn’t run away.” Vandra blew out a long sigh, tossing her hair back from her face. She rose, pushing herself to her feet. “Let me just pour something to drink.”
She stood and walked to the table where Esmir his supply of liquor. Vandra picked up the first jug and took a sniff, crinkling her nose before sealing it again. She reached for the orange-glazed jug next to it. From it, Vandra poured two cups, handing one to Aram before settling back down in front of him.
“Your father was born here. In Skyhome,” she said. “He was Wingmaster of the Southern Eyrie long before me. He had this magnificent dragon named Maranth, the biggest dragon I’ve ever seen. Darand was different, just like you. He wasn’t a Savant, but he was very Gifted, more so than any of us since Torian.”
She took a sip of her liquor, making a face. “At the time, Kathrax was just starting to assert his power again after hundreds of years of quiet. He’d somehow managed to tame therlings and void walkers to flesh out his ranks. We were at an extreme disadvantage; we didn’t have a Champion that could oppose an Archon, and we didn’t have much of a chance without one. Your father was the closest thing we had to a True Savant. He could see the strands in detail and was a natural at manipulating them. He wasn’t like you, though—he couldn’t see them in color. And, just like all Auld mages, he could only use his Gift in the defense of others.”
Aram sat staring into his cup as he listened, unable to bring himself to taste it, and unable to bring himself to look at Vandra. As she spoke, emotion curled around Aram’s throat like a strangling snake, slowly constricting.
“We needed a Champion,” Vandra continued, “and Darand was agreeable. So the Council decided that he should be trained.”
“But why would they let him train, if he wasn’t a Savant?” Aram’s voice seethed with resentment and grief.
“True Savants have always been exceedingly rare, and not every Champion was one. Your father was very Gifted, which should have been enough. Luvana was assigned to be his mentor—”
“Luvana?” Aram interrupted. “Why not Esmir?”
“Esmir fell out of the Council’s good graces a long time ago. It was thought that Luvana could do a better job. But they were wrong.” Vandra spread her hands. “She did her best. Darand was as prepared as she could make him. He was already the best warrior I ever knew, and he always gave everything of himself. But there was one thing he needed that Luvana couldn’t give him: a mentor who truly understood and appreciated the particular needs of a Gifted mind.”
“He needed Esmir,” Aram guessed softly.
Vandra nodded. “He did. Esmir spent centuries with Torian. He knows more than anyone what it means to be truly Gifted, but no one thought about that. So, when it came time for your father’s Trials, he was lacking in some important ways.”
“So he failed,” Aram summarized, his voice ragged.
“Yes.” Vandra took a gulp of her drink. “He failed. And it broke him.”
Aram squeezed his eyes shut, the resentment within him gathering like a great, darkening storm. Luvana and the Council had abused his father badly. And then they’d kept their silence about it, a crime nearly as bad.
Vandra heaved a sigh. “Darand returned to us from the Portal Stones, but he wasn’t the same man. He barely spoke and never left his room. Even his dragon could not console him. Then, one night, Luvana caught him in the act of throwing himself off the cliff. She wasn’t in time to stop him, so she did the only thing she could think of: she wove a rupture beneath him, and he fell through it. It was the last we saw of him for a very long time.”
Aram lifted his cup to his lips, taking a heavy drink. He grimaced from the bite of the liquor. It wasn’t wine, but something far more powerful, and he was grateful for it.
Vandra glanced at him through snarls of hair. “About twelve years ago, your father returned to us. He wouldn’t speak of where he’d been, but he was renewed, mended. Somewhere along the way, he’d found a new reason to live.” Vandra gave a sad smile. “Looking back on it, my guess is that reason was you.”
Aram ducked his head. Hearing Vandra say that made him feel worse instead of better. If he had truly meant so much to his father, then why hadn’t he stayed?
Vandra said, “Things had gotten bad here during the time Darand was gone. Kathrax had invaded the Greenwood and our forces were losing.”
She paused and sipped her drink. “I guess word of our losses had reached the other side of the Veil. Darand said that a bard had come to the village where he’d been living and shared the news. He came back to see for himself how bad it was.
“As you can imagine, we were all very shocked to see him not just alive, but sane. Luvana begged him to lead the Wing just one last time. He disappeared again, and we thought he’d fled. But then Darand returned and took up his star-steel blade. He mounted Maranth and led the offensive to take back the Greenwood.”
Vandra looked at him with eyes moist and intense with remorse. “I’ve never been prouder to fly with a man. Darand Raythe wasn’t a Champion, but he was our champion. He left behind the life that had made him whole again and returned to lead our Wing.”
She bowed her head, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “Kathrax himself joined the battle. I’m guessing he recognized your father’s power and perceived him as enough of a threat to challenge him personally. Darand couldn’t defend himself, not with his Gift still locked. Against an Archon, he never stood a chance.”
She drained the last of her drink, tilting her head back. “But what he did accomplish was distract the enemy long enough for the rest of us to retreat and reestablish our line. We lost the Greenwood, but without Darand, we would have lost the entire Wing. And we halted their advance.” She looked at Aram with blazing eyes. “Your father was, in every sense, a champion. Never doubt that.”
Aram stared at the floor, mired in grief and anger and a dozen other tangled emotions that his mind couldn’t separate. His cup trembled in his hand, and it was all he could do to hold back the tears that wanted to come. It was a long time before he trusted his voice enough to speak.
“Thank you for telling me.”
Vandra rose and set her empty cup back on the table. “I should have told you sooner. I regret that now. I know it’s a lot for you. We’ll push your Trials back—”
“No.” Aram’s opal eyes narrowed, burning with anger. “This doesn’t change anything.”
For a moment, Vandra looked like she wanted t
o protest. She stared hard into Aram’s face as though searching for something. At last, she nodded.
“Were you his friend?” Aram asked.
“Yes.”
Hearing that, his resentment lessened ever so slightly. “What was he like?”
Vandra gave him a small, reassuring smile. “He was a very brave man. A very kind man.” Her gaze drifted to the side. “And a very wise one.”
Aram nodded, his gaze faltering. “Thank you.”
Vandra turned and left. When the door closed behind her, Aram sat for a while in silence, finishing the rest of his drink as the coals in the hearth slowly faded to gray. He thought on Vandra’s words with a heavy sadness in his heart, but also with relief. For the first time in his life, he knew—really knew—that his father hadn’t abandoned his mother because of him.
He was still awake when Esmir returned. When the old man’s eyes fell on him sitting in the shadows, he frowned deeply. He, too, had kept his silence, and Aram begrudged him that. Esmir hesitated, looking as though he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. Aram peered up at him, wanting to ask a hundred questions. But in the end, there was really only one that mattered.
“Do you think I’m ready?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
Aram appreciated Esmir’s honesty. Without responding, he stood and picked up his pallet. He carried it to the partition that enclosed the alcove where Siroth and Markus now made their home. The two were sleeping when he entered, though when he spread his pallet out next to them, Siroth opened a great golden eye and gave a low rumble of understanding.
Aram lay down and closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of Markus’s snoring and warmed by the heat of Siroth’s inner furnace. Still, it was a long time before he could sleep. His thoughts were of his father, but also of the abyss at the bottom of the gorge.
Somewhere down there was the void dragon, and Aram’s soul yearned for him.
Chapter Seventy-Four
If it hadn’t been for Siroth’s comforting presence, Aram doubted he would have slept at all.
When he woke, he felt a little better. What Vandra had said about his father had given him a reason to be cautiously optimistic. While the consequences of failure now seemed much more personal, Aram also recognized that he had two great advantages over his father: he could see the world in color and, also, he had Esmir. He wasn’t sure which gave him the greater edge, but both gave him hope.
Aram rose, drawn by the sound and smell of meat sizzling over a fire. He was alone in Markus’s alcove. Siroth had gone out to sun on the terrace, and Markus’s pallet was empty. He rolled over and stretched, his head aching from lack of sleep.
It was the day of the Trials, the day he had been dreading for over a year. It might be the last day of his sanity or even the last day of his life. Both were real possibilities. But what was certain was that this was the last day of his childhood, and that scared him more than anything.
Rising, he slid back the partition and found Esmir attending an iron skillet. Markus knelt next to him, stirring something in a wooden bowl. More bowls and plates were arrayed around them, and for a moment, Aram wondered if they were making a feast.
He moved toward them blearily, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and stood appraising the spread of food laid out before him, his mouth already watering. There was pork belly and eggs, aged cheese and fresh-baked bread, along with a bowl of fruit that looked ripe.
“You made my favorite breakfast,” he said, kneeling on the rug next to Markus.
“You need all the strength you can get.” Esmir bent forward to flip a sausage in the pan, but it got away from him and fell into the fire. He looked like he wanted to grumble, but he didn’t. Instead, he smiled, which was completely out of character.
Aram frowned, suspicious. Esmir was too cantankerous to let something like losing a sausage go unremarked. He must be a lot more nervous than he looked. Aram accepted a plate from Markus and nodded his thanks.
The breakfast was everything he could have hoped for; it was the conversation that was lacking. The few words that were exchanged between the three of them were awkwardly positive and punctuated by long gaps of silence. By the time the meal was finished, Aram was ready for it to end. Both Esmir and Markus had done their best to set him at ease, and he appreciated their efforts, but for some reason, their forced positivity made him feel worse.
He stood and started toward where his clothes hung from a peg, but Esmir caught his arm. “You will need something different today.”
He stood and handed Aram a folded outfit. It was a plain gray cloak with a matching tunic, and Aram recognized it immediately. It was the same outfit the Overseers had clothed him in the first time he had entered the Shadow Realm, the only thing they had ever given him that he’d been allowed to keep. The garments were torn and blackened, and in some places stained brown with his own blood. Aram glanced a question at Esmir, wondering why the old man had saved them.
“It’s tradition,” Esmir said. “You are to wear this when you go in. If you pass the Trials, then you will emerge with this clothing remade. Just as you will be.”
Aram donned the scorched outfit with an intense feeling of foreboding. There was something about wearing the ruined garments that made him feel like he was already defeated. He shivered, hoping that feeling was not a premonition of what was to come. But he managed a weak smile, turning to Markus and spreading his arms.
“How do I look?”
Markus made a valiant attempt to grin in return. “Absolutely dashing.”
“All right, you two lovebirds,” Esmir grumbled. “You can fawn over each other later. People are waiting!”
Aram winced. “People?”
“You didn’t think this was going to be a private affair, did you?”
Aram hadn’t given it a thought, for he had always entered the portal alone—and naked. The thought of others watching him strip...
“Oh, no—I can’t—”
This time, Esmir laughed. “Don’t worry. You get to keep those on. After all, they did give them to you.”
That was true. Aram breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “All right, then. I’m ready.”
As they walked toward the door, Siroth let out a soft growl that Aram couldn’t interpret, for the images it provoked were conflicting. He glanced at Markus, wondering if his friend had a better idea of what the dragon was trying to tell him.
“He has hope for you, but he also fears for you,” Markus said, his eyes sad and distant.
Aram appreciated the dragon’s sentiment, for it was honest, and it echoed his own feelings. They left the eyrie and started down the hallway, Aram walking with Markus and Esmir at his sides. He held Esmir’s arm and helped him mount the steps, concerned that the old man seemed frailer than he ever had before.
When they arrived at the top of the bluffs, Aram halted, staring across the Henge in shock.
Everyone in the world who mattered to him was standing at the top of the stairs, forming a path consisting of two lines of people between the stairs and the stones of the first portal.
He hadn’t expected that.
Aram lingered a moment, overwhelmed by emotion, taking in the familiar faces arrayed before him. There were his friends from his dorm: Corley, Eugan, Jeran, Kye … only Iver was missing. There were also the novices he had trained with for a short while, all staring at him with solemn faces. Many of the windriders were there as well, all dressed in the armor of the fighting Wing. Aram didn’t understand why they were there, then realized that many of these men and women probably had been friends of his father. At the end of the line, nearest the first portal, stood Vandra and Luvana, Vandra in her typical leathers, Luvana in long, silken robes.
Licking his lips, Aram started forward, nodding his gratitude at the people who had come to support him. As he moved past Eugan, the young man caught his arm.
“Iver couldn’t be here,” Eugan said. “He couldn’t… But he wanted me to wish you luck.”
When he at last arrived before Vandra and Luvana, he shook Vandra’s hand then caught Luvana’s gaze and held it defiantly. He wanted her to see the anger in his face, and he glared at her until she looked away.
As he paused in front of the stone archway, the witnesses spread out, positioning themselves among the outer ring of stones. Only Markus and Esmir remained with him in the center of the Henge.
“Good luck,” Markus said, holding out his hand. But when Aram went to take it, Markus hugged him instead, whispering, “You’ll do fine.”
Aram pulled back but held onto his shoulder. “I wish I could have you in there with me.”
Markus smiled. “I’ll be here when you come out.”
Esmir stepped in front of him. “Each portal you return from will unlock the next, but it will only remain unlocked for a short while. You won’t be able to stop and rest going from one to the next.”
Aram nodded. When Esmir stepped aside without saying goodbye, he almost felt grateful. He started toward the portal but then paused when he heard someone say his name.
Turning, he saw Calise hurrying toward them across the sand. Seeing her brought a smile to his face, and he walked to meet her halfway. He stopped in front of her and took her hands. A silent moment passed between them in which everything that needed to be spoken was said.
Suddenly remembering the woven necklace he wore, Aram reached up and touched it. He’d almost worn it in there again, and only the sight of Calise had made him think about it at all. A shiver passed over him, and with a wash of intense relief, he removed it and pressed the heart knot into her hand.