Wings Unseen

by Rebecca Gomez Farrell

  He dozes off, certain he can smell the sharp bite of cloves in the cave.

  Daylight wakes him, and he shields his eyes. Has he slept through to morning already? There is no doubt now—that cider addled his senses. With a yawn, Janto pulls himself up and sweeps his pile of needles together. It must be late—even Rall, always last to rise, is gone. Janto is surprised no one woke him. Perhaps a man who slays a silver stag is granted an extra hour of sleep before training. He runs his fingers through his unruly locks, grown past his ears without his mother insisting they be cut. He plucks a few needles from his hair then walks to the cave mouth, his boots slopping up mud. It must have rained overnight, which is odd because it rarely rains here in the spring if Janto’s tutors can be trusted. But the rains have been relentless in western Lansera this year, and who is he to scoff? He did not believe the silver stag existed before yesterday.

  Janto breathes in the fresh air, sweet like a cracked open honeymelon. He relieves himself in a nearby bush. Next, he must find the others, which will not be an easy task. The cider erased his memory of where they planned to meet. He notices broken twigs at the base of another bush and takes off at a trot down the path that opens before him. He pauses to wipe mud off his boots. Ser Allyn would scoff at the prince of Lansera not taking time to clean them.

  Ahead, a slight dip rises up and Janto sees a glimmer of silver disappear past its crest. He stops moving. Can there be another stag? Maybe the one he killed had a mate, and this is the doe. Only one way to find out! He strains to see ahead. Another metallic glint jumps further down the path. Janto pulls out an arrow and grips it in his hand, though he does not remember taking his quiver or the Old Girl. He follows the silver into a wooded glen and shivers at how much colder it is out of the sun’s path. Darker, too. The deer, and he’s sure it is one now, stays out of arrow’s reach, enticing him onward. Janto’s body tenses, but his blood throbs with the thrill of another chase. He never enjoyed hunting this much when out with his father, half the court trailing behind them. No, this is how it is supposed to be: silent, chilly, and unknown.

  He steps into a clearing. Barely ten feet away, the doe stops and turns to face him. Its coat of sweaty, gleaming fur pales in comparison to the light emanating from its eyes. They are uniformly silver; no pupils interfere with the sparkling pools. Yesterday’s stag was nothing compared with this creature. Its whole body pulsates as it stares, not blinking or making a sound. Janto instinctively threads his arrow and pulls back the bowstring. He doesn’t hear the twang of release until the deer collapses onto the grass, the arrow protruding from its ribcage. Something pours from the wound, but it is not blood. It cannot be blood. It is quicksilver, pumping out into a growing pool by its stomach. Janto, transfixed on this spreading radiance, is not sure if time passes or everything surrounding them is simply dimmer by contrast. The deer’s eyes drain of color as the liquid slows to a trickle. The rising of its flank ceases as its heart stops. It is utterly dark, except for wisps of gray fog rising from the puddle of quicksilver. Soon, Janto cannot see the doe at all, only those lingering life threads shifting and swaying like rays catching the edge of dark, luxurious curls.

  Not like curls—they are curls. There is no deer at his feet but a woman twisted beneath him, naked. Her eyes blaze open and he gasps. They are the deer’s eyes but more brilliant, the color of stars at their birth, at the very moment the world was conceived. Janto is drawn to her, to her eyes and the hair writhing around her head. He reaches to touch her, but she dissolves in a flash and his fist strikes a boulder. He yells, not because of the pain but because he has lost her.

  The glen is lightening—grass stalks and tree branches reflect the bour-geoning sunlight. It is too glaring, too gaudy compared to the graceful silver he has grown used to. He hears voices, loud but hidden, and he turns on his heel, hoping to see her again. Instead, there is another doe, or the same one, up ahead. It holds his gaze, its eyes flowing silver, then flits into the woods, leaving Janto alone and shivering in the golden light of day.

  But he was not alone. Voices surrounded him. And boots. Many pairs of boots. Janto jolted upright, the scratchy threads of his blanket rubbing against his arms. He felt out of breath and very thirsty. A familiar voice called his name. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, willing his vision to focus.

  “There he is!” His father laughed as he clapped his son’s shoulder, leaning over him. The king had dressed down, wearing simple jade pants with a sand-colored tunic, though the crowned swan at his neck dispelled any question of who he was. The way he spoke and the smile on his face, grander than Janto had ever seen before, conveyed the pride he felt. The king never needed to speak loudly, but he did so now, addressing him.

  “My son, the sleepy slayer of the stag.”

  His father was only one of many strange sights. Lord Cino Xantas raised his elbows to a stunned Jerusho. Eddy and Captain Wolxas beamed with nearly as much pride as the king. Wolxas’s raised bushy brows reminded Janto of the barools in the eastern mountains.

  Despite the new sights greeting him, the silver deer and woman covered in curls lingered in Janto’s mind. It must have been his Murat vision. That had to be why it felt so real and why his chest ached in a way he could not explain. He yearned for the woman, and that emotion turned to shame. It did not matter that she was imagined; Serra was all he should desire.

  Janto shook his head to dispel the images and greeted his father. “I did slay it, but you could not have come to congratulate me this fast.”

  “We were already coming,” his father explained. “That you have done such a deed only sweetens your Murat completion. I would not have missed coming to you on the day of your vision, regardless.” His face held a knowing expression, though having a Murat dream was never certain.

  “Do you know of the woman, then? Of the—”

  The deep resonance of Lord Xantas’s laugh echoed through the cave. “Ah, you dreamed of a woman, too!”

  The still-sleeping men around them stirred at the sound, their faces reflecting the same mixture of confusion and understanding Janto had felt moments ago. But none of them appeared pained at waking, except for lack of sleep.

  “I dreamed of my Gella back then and getting lost in her many—well—her many curves.” Lord Xantas’s face turned wistful. “It was before I realized she was the wife for me, you see. I knew her only as Ertion’s newest axe-woman who smelled of tree sap. She had been on a logging trip in the mountains for months. But there she was in my dream, more desirable than any woman I had taken notice of before.” He sighed, his expression besotted. “We were married in Varma before the next year ended.” He winked at Janto. “I imagine your Serra played quite the role in your dream?”

  Janto’s heart fell. Did it mean something that Serra had been no more than a passing thought in it? It could not—Serra was his dream. He did not need a vision to tell him that.

  “Not all Murat dreams are of women, Xantas.” His father chided his friend, and Janto was grateful he could defer his answer. “Mine was not.”

  “So you say, my king,” Lord Xantas teased. “But you have refused to talk about yours all these years. I have only become more convinced a woman is exactly what you dreamed of!”

  Janto’s fellow Muraters were quiet as the burial Mount in Callyn. The mornings these last three weeks had been filled with Flivio and Tonim teaming up to tease Nap into smiling—a task they had yet to achieve—and Jerusho regaling Rall with stories of Lady Gella’s many attempts to beautify Varma’s bleak stone walls and buildings. Rall appeared starstruck now. Sometimes, Janto forgot the presence of the king and his noblemen was a notable event.

  “Hey—” he nudged his friend “—did you dream?”

  Rall blushed, shooting a glance toward the king, but Janto prodded him to continue. He wanted his fellow Muraters to know their futures were important to him. And he was compelled to remind them of their friendship, especially with his father there. Losing it, after all they’d shared, would be a sh
ame.

  Rall gathered his courage, squeezing the stuffed koparin cub he slept with, a farewell gift from his daughter. “I saw my son. He was older, mayhaps twelve or thirteen, and he held a delicate figurine carved of Wasylim wood. It was decorated with copper threads that mimicked my wife’s sigil, an opened thrushberry blossom. It was skilled work, and I complimented him on it with tears in my eyes.” Rall smiled broadly. “I did not see my wife, though, or Katya. I would have loved to know how they will look then.”

  Flivio had also dreamed, and he described a thundercloud over a manor he did not recognize but felt certain was his and a woman’s from his dream who wore a gown of a thousand feathers. He was recounting all of the gown’s colors as the king gestured for Janto to join him outside the cave.

  He slipped away. “What is it, Father?” Janto dreaded having to recount his dream after all.

  “You’ve changed. You manage those men without them noticing your fingers pulling their strings. That is a good skill to have, son. But is there a reason you don’t want to talk about your dream?”

  Janto opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  His father nodded. “I have only told your mother and one other person about mine, not even Ryn Cladio when I withdrew from the Order after the war, though he pleaded with me to change my mind. I think you would benefit from hearing it now, Janto. Would you like to?”

  “I would.” It would put off telling his own for a little while more, and Janto had always been curious about it.

  “I was on a hill above Callyn. The colors were soft, as though an artist had painted it in pastels, but the bridge shone as brightly as it ever does. Past it, the perspective shifted. It seemed I could see the whole of Lansera at once, honing in on different towns and cities as though in a kaleidoscope turned at my eye. And it was not just Lansera I saw—or rather, it was true Lansera, not this divided land we’ve accepted. My eyes followed the Giants’ Pathway, the tents of the Deduins thick beneath Thokketh’s ice walls. Across the waters, the spires of Qiltyn beckoned, sun-faded reds and turquoises I had not seen since a child. Great herds of cattle roamed beyond them in Yarowen, a sight I had never seen and I knew could not be—drought had whittled away their numbers for decades. That was when I knew this was no vision of the present but of the future, and a better one.”

  The memory of it enveloped the king. With each word spoken, years of stress and responsibility eased, and he appeared younger, as though that twenty-two-year-old again. “I was excited to see the Meduan lands in a better state than before the war, and I had to know what caused it. I don’t know how, but I went down from that hill and my foot landed on the Yarowen grasses, the sour smell of their seed pods’ milk in the air. I found a herder, his brown hair matching the dark spots on his palomino mount.

  “‘Excuse me, mer,’ I said, noting he did not recognize me despite my royal garb. ‘When did you get so many cattle? Has the rain returned?’

  “The man regarded me with consternation. ‘We have grown our herds for decades as the king past the mountains decrees. The drought has not troubled us in years.’

  “‘You trade with Lansera?’ I beamed at the thought of relations being restored. The war had been brutal. To think it might not have been in vain was a relief, truly.

  “The man narrowed his eyes. ‘We are Lansera. Have been ever since the king saved us from the plagues of man and Madel. Where are you from, wanderer, that you do not know in what country you travel?’

  “‘And who,’ curiosity got the best of me, ‘who is this king? Is he an Albrecht?’

  “‘Is he an Albrecht? You are addled, surely. Have we ever had a king who was not an Albrecht?’

  “‘Is it Gelus?’ I was thrilled at the thought of my brother bringing this great change about—I had admired him greatly as a little brother is apt to do. ‘Is Gelus Albrecht on the throne?’

  “‘Never heard of him.’ The man’s expression softened, concerned at my mental state. ‘A distant cousin, perhaps? No, Gelus Albrecht is not the man who sits the throne.’ He dismounted and extended a leather-gloved hand to me. ‘Come home with me, traveler, and let us break our fasts together. My wife will have a fresh pot of tachery steeping over the fire by now. We can talk all you want of thrones and droughts then.’

  “As I reached my hand toward his, I had the sensation of rushing through water, a river’s current forcing me down a rapids. I closed my eyes against the pressure, and when I opened them, I awoke here in this cave, and nothing had changed.”

  The same loss Janto had felt that morning reflected from his father’s face, though the subjects could not have differed more. Then it was gone, replaced again by pride as their eyes met.

  “So that’s why you left the Order when your father and brother died?” Both deaths had been unexpected. Turyn Albrecht fell prey to a bear’s attack when hunting with Cino Xantas’s father during a snowy, blustery day in the northern mountains. Not a fortnight later, Janto’s uncle, Gelus, succumbed to a sudden infection of his flesh where his arm had been shorn off at the Plain of Orelyn. It had remained painful but unchanged for a decade before festering. Janto continued, “There could be no peace between Medua and Lansera if no Albrecht ruler existed to bring it, as the man said in your dream.”

  His father nodded, pleased but quiet, waiting for Janto to connect the rest of the dots.

  That’s ridiculous. It cannot be—it cannot.

  “You think—” Janto’s voice caught, “—you think I am going to restore Lansera?”

  As his father answered, the weight of his words landed straight on Janto’s shoulders. “You are the slayer of the silver stag, my son. Do you doubt what else you can do?”

  Janto knew nothing this morning, not after a dream that had shaken his core. His father’s had been full of hope and possibility. Janto’s brought dread he prayed would leave him once Serra was back in his arms.

  But that was not to be soon. His father continued, joy evident in all his features. “Tomorrow, after our celebrations are done, you will depart with Lord Xantas. He is leading a survey group from the southern Ertion mountains down toward the first Meditlan vineyards. We have heard of strange plants in that region, and I thought you might wish to take stock of them. They are likely to be a new resource for Gavenstone, and you and Serra should be familiar with them. Plus, your mother could use some specimens for her collection.”

  “But what about the wedding?” Serra had been furious when he announced his intention to attend the Murat so close to the ceremony. There would be no appeasing her if it had to be postponed, no matter the reason.

  “It will only take a week. Serra knows of your delay. She has accepted it.”

  “Then yes, of course I will go.” He wanted to refuse. The only thing that appealed to him was losing himself in Serra’s lips and honey hair. But duties to the realm came first. Serra knew that.

  CHAPTER 25

  GARADIN

  Garadin peeked through the carriage’s levere curtain. The stone walls of Sellwyn drew close, and the hanging tree Lord Jahnas was so enamored with loomed near its gate, a rosewood transplanted from the town’s nearby groves, the streaks on its trunk of no natural origin. Jahnas was fond of lashing his recaptured deserters while they jerked. The ground beneath the hanging tree’s sturdiest limb had the reddish tint.

  Sellwyn had been Garadin’s lengthiest and easiest assignment. The advers had spent fifty years carefully building a hierarchy of dominance through brutality and fear mongering, but nevertheless, few people were quite as cruel as Jahnas. He was, in essence, the ideal Meduan, so concerned with protecting his power he had no appetite for fighting his neighbors or aspiring to a greater rule. If all lords were like Jahnas Sellwyn, Medua would be a peaceful land.

  At the gate, his driver, a sallow fellow who knew better than to meet Garadin’s eyes, presented Garadin’s papers to the guards. The man’s boots hit the ground with a squish, a curious sound. Is the ground wet? The region had been in drought for at
least half as many years as Yarowen, almost two decades. Rain clouds loathed crossing the mountain divide. Sellwyn’s water was shipped in from eastern Lorvia, lugged once a week by the workers Lord Carnif housed. Carnif had offered to make the trip every few days in exchange for the first pick of Sellwyn’s timber, but Jahnas had said no on Garadin’s advice. Thirst made his men compliant.

  It was difficult for the half-parched to complain, and they were given just enough to fulfill their needs. When they knew nothing else, people accepted anything as normal.

  They proceeded into town, and Garadin relaxed his grip on the Guj’s letter. Few would attack a traveler rich enough for a levere curtain for fear he kept a wizard as well, but travel was perilous. If Garadin lost the letter … it did not matter now. This would be a simple task. Jahnas would not refuse the offer of marriage—it was unimaginable. Rather, he would kiss Garadin for offering such a pleasing solution to his trouble with the girl. Yet Garadin’s chest cinched and his hip ached more sharply than it had in Qiltyn. The humid weather made his thoughts fuzzy. He had been shaken by the Guj’s sudden attention and had not formed a plan yet for slinking back into the shadows after completing the errand. Hopefully, the Guj would grant him leave to return to Yarowen, to his warm room in the manor where one of Lord Clardill’s daughters would wait in his bed to welcome him home. It did not matter which one. All five had that soft, milky skin that reminded him of his sister’s friend back in Ertion before the war. It was her fault he had joined the rebellion. Oh, she had been delicious to take, but the whore reported him to the town council. Garadin had slipped away from Lord Xantas’s guards and joined the uprising, never understanding how tasting something so sweet could be wrong.