by Kirby Crow
In Byzantur, Liall had claimed that Norl Udur was his homeland. Only when they were on the ship did he reveal that Norl Udur was actually Rshan na Ostre, a land Scarlet’s people believed to be a myth, the home of gods and giants.
The high, flat mesa could have afforded them a stunning view, if they were not surrounded by a black circle of standing stones three times the height of a man. A cadre of spear-toting royal guards in full regalia waited patiently outside the stones for them, within earshot but keeping a respectful distance.
“I’ve never gotten dressed up to look at the sky before,” Scarlet said. A thick silver brooch at his throat held the fur cloak pinned together, and beneath that, he wore a fine blue virca embroidered with Liall’s house emblem of stars. A cold wind blew from the north and the stars seemed to pale in the sky.
“This damn thing itches,” Liall complained, shrugging his broad shoulders inside his own heavy formal virca. The leather saddle beneath him creaked with his weight and the horse whickered.
Scarlet looked at the king, admiring the cut of his profile, his sharp cheekbones and snowy hair, and the deep color of his skin, like polished oak. Though most Rshani shared similar traits, Scarlet never tired of looking at this particular one. “At least you’re well-protected. There’s enough silver and gems on that to pass for armor.”
“I look like a peacock in mating season,” Liall groused.
“No one can see us except the rocks and the horses.”
“There are the guards. And the entire Nauhinir when we ride back.”
“You complain much.”
Liall went on as if he hadn’t heard. “I think this virca weighs more than you do.”
Scarlet winked. “When this is over, I’ll see what I can do about getting you out of it.”
Liall laughed, then cleared his throat and straightened his back. “It won’t be long now.”
“What should I do?”
“Pretend to concentrate on the east. Draw your brows together in a frown. Be ever-so-serious.” Liall winked back.
Scarlet studied the valley below. His fingers went to his brooch and he traced the outlines of it. It was a snow bear, exquisitely molded. “I never imagined that snow and ice could hold so many colors.”
Liall glanced at him. “Your sight is truly amazing. I can only see shades of blue and gray, but I’m not a Hilurin.”
“I forgive you.”
The king smirked.
Scarlet had only seen the Temple Road as far as the ruins where Cestimir had died, and never from such a high vantage point. He narrowed his eyes and peered into the distant hills. “I don’t see anything that looks like a sacred mountain.”
“You cannot. You can’t even see the Blackmoat from here. We’d have to travel far past that ridge,” Liall pointed to a line of dark cliffs, so distant that Scarlet could have blotted them out with his thumb, “and take the Temple Road through the valley on the other side to get to the home of the Setna.”
“I’ve never seen a road like that. Doesn’t look natural.” The road was raised yet appeared to be smooth and level, every curve precise and perfect. Scarlet looked to Liall for answers.
Liall shrugged. “The Ancients made the Temple Road, or so the legend goes. Other stories say that the road was here long before them, and the Shining Ones who raised the standing stones still wait inside the ice, longing for the sun to return.”
“Are there more of these stones?” Scarlet looked down at the snow beneath his horse’s hooves. Inside the ice?
“This is the largest, but there are many such circles and markers in the far north, and monoliths, too. We think there are many we haven’t found, and many that lie in the deep places, in ice caves and massive rifts in the earth.” Liall nodded his head to the north, where the humped blue and white shapes became strange and hard for the eye to follow. “If we were to venture out there, we might find such things, but few who leave the Temple Road survive. The land is treacherous. Nenos used to tell me it is angry, and that it grows hungry and yearns to devour travelers. But when we travel, the road keeps us safe. Or so the stories say.”
“Did the Ancients build it for themselves?” Scarlet was disturbed by the talk of hungry earth. He looked left and right, but could see nothing moving.
Liall shook his head. “For us, for the Rshani. The road was to lead their descendants out from Fanorl to the sea. There was a time when we, too, lived deep in the center of the continent, but the land was too cruel. The Ancients had to forge a way south for us when we became too many to sustain ourselves. Melev once said that the Ancients were most pleased that their children were so fond of breeding, but they hated crowding, so they built a road to the sun.”
Scarlet frowned at the mention of Melev. If not for Melev, perhaps Cestimir would still be alive. He was not sure who he blamed more for the murder, Melev or Vladei. He was certain of one thing: Vladei had held the sword, but Melev had made it all possible.
“If they’d done that, you’d have ended up in Byzantur,” Scarlet said. “I wouldn’t exactly call Kalas Nauhin sunny.”
“Near enough. Ancients hate the water, but we don’t.”
“You do.”
Liall chuckled. “I thought we’d cleared that up? I don’t hate the water; I just hate being at the mercy of another’s skill rather than my own. I’m no mariner. Anyway, I’m not your ordinary Rshani.” He gave Scarlet a questioning look. “These are tales any child should know. I thought Jochi was teaching you history?”
Scarlet made a rude noise. “He does, but your lot never runs out of history. Muckety Muck married Muck and they had many mucklings, and then there was war.” He made talking motions with one hand. “Yap yap yap. After a while, all the names run together and sound like babbling water. I can’t tell one Lyran Something who lived a thousand years ago from one who lived a hundred years ago.”
“Lyran is an old family name. I have many ancestors named Lyran. I always told my mother that if I had a son one day...” The words trailed off. “Never mind. It’s not a good day to talk of past or future. Let’s do as the snow bears do and live in the moment. Today, I have no past.”
If he has a son. Scarlet’s mood plummeted. The only way he’s going to get a son is if he marries Ressilka.
In the months since Liall had taken the throne, while the deep winter passed, there had been whispers of putting the Lady Ressilka forward as the future queen of Rshan. There had been no formal betrothal while Cestimir was alive, but everyone knew that if Cestimir had lived, Ressilka would have been his queen. So far, Scarlet had been able to ignore the gossip. Liall’s careful avoidance of the subject informed him that he wasn’t the only one getting an earful.
“No,” Scarlet said adamantly. “That’s no way to start thinking. I’m not a bear and neither are you.” Liall shot him a cryptic look but said nothing, and Scarlet wondered what it meant.
Scarlet tugged the fur collar of the cloak over his mouth as the wind began to draw tears from his eyes. “Tell me about one of these famous Lyran people,” he said, his voice muffled. “Start with the best one.”
Liall sidled his horse closer to Scarlet’s. “It’s a male name. Lyran was one of the last of the Druz. My family is actually two families who came together after a long war: the Camira and the Druz, hence my name. He was a great peacemaker, a wise king who brought a warring people together and saved them from destruction. They say Lyran had the look of the old Druz, as tall as an Ancient, with hair so white it held shades of blue and violet, and eyes bright as a candle flame.”
“Jochi has yellow eyes.”
“I would say more gold than yellow, but yes, he does. His bloodline is old.” Liall tugged at his long white bangs. His hair had grown past his shoulders in their months in Rshan. “Many of our women have some gold in their hair, but generally there is little variation in our coloring. Silver and blue: those are the colors of Rshan.”
“In banners and people both,” Scarlet quipped. “Except Ressilka. She has hai
r almost like a Morturii, but she’s taller than any Morturii man.”
Liall’s mouth turned down, and he nodded. “You’re not the first one to make note of that. Ressanda’s ancestor was Maksha, a mariner. Maksha was in love with a beautiful Morturii dancer, and when they had a child, he obtained the crown’s permission to bring both mother and child home with him. Maksha named his daughter Romaksha, after him, and she became a famous dancer in Rshan. Although she was a half-blooded commoner, she had no shortage of noble suitors vying for her hand. They said her hair fell to her ankles and was like a living flame.”
“But how—” Scarlet frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to be rude, but I wondered. I know how your people feel about lenilyn.”
“So how did Romaksha find a husband, and a noble one at that?” Liall touched Scarlet’s cheek softly. “I wish you would not use that word. Lenilyn. You know what it means.”
He did, but he refused to hide from a word. “If it bothers you, I won’t say it again.”
“Rshani men have a weakness for beauty, as you know,” Liall said, overlooking the barb. “It was scandalous, of course, but Romaksha married into a noble family of Tebet, and her son was Baron Ressanda’s father. Ressanda, however, did not come to rule Tebet by right of blood. He married my cousin Winotheri, and her father was the rightful lord of Tebet.”
“So why didn’t she rule instead of him? Your mother ruled and she was a wondrous fine queen.”
“Yes, but she was a queen, love. There are rules and there are rules, if you understand me.”
Scarlet did not.
“What I mean is, there are rules for the people and there are rules for the Camira-Druz. We are...” Liall seemed to be searching for the right word. “I don’t know if there’s a way to explain it. You don’t have a term for it in Bizye.”
Scarlet’s horse pricked his ears forward and shuffled his hooves restlessly, and Scarlet patted his mane to gentle him. “There’s a first; you not having twenty words when one would do.”
Liall smiled. “It’s difficult to put the concept together succinctly, but in a sense, the Camira-Druz are to the Rshani what the Flower Prince is to Byzantur.”
Scarlet looked at him quickly. “They believe the gods speak to you?”
“Hardly. Rather, they think we can intercede with something they revere, and in some ways, we can. An Ancient must come when a Camira-Druz calls.”
Scarlet gave Liall a sour look. “I don’t much care for your Ancients.”
“Neither would I, if I’d gone through what you did. I don’t say I forgive them, but just like men, not all Ancients are cut from the same cloth. I don’t pretend to understand them, either, like I would never understand a Shining One.”
Scarlet was curious all over again. He was always curious about the Shining Ones, who were honored among the Rshani but were demigods to the Hilurin, as well as demons. “Did the Shining Ones really come from this place?” He looked around him at the barren but strangely alive landscape. The vast expanse of ice and snow never seemed to stop changing. Perhaps it really was alive and restless, like the stories Liall mentioned. The wind had died down and he could hear the deep, healthy breathing of the horses and the faint clinks of armor and the weapons of the guards.
“All the stories tell us is that they emerged from Ged Fanorl, which is a mountain to the north,” Liall said. “Though we have never seen them, we sense them. The Ancients are our link to them, to our origins. There could have been no Rshani as a people without the Ancients.”
There were large gaps in Scarlet’s knowledge about Liall’s people, but he was beginning to realize there was much they did not know, either. It seemed there were mysteries that not even the Setna were able or willing to reveal, and all Rshani hated to admit ignorance. He’d never met a people more proud of themselves.
A shadow drifted through the valley, moving rapidly.
“Liall!” Scarlet called in alarm. His muscles tensed and he sawed on the horse’s reins. The horse shied and balked in fear.
Liall quickly seized the reins and stopped the horse from bolting. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “It’s fine.”
“I saw something.” Scarlet jerked the fur collar from his face and pointed. “There on the ice. It was...” He shook his head and his breath quickened to a fog before his eyes. “It had arms, I think. Or something. I don’t know what it was. It moved so fast.”
“We’re safe,” Liall said. He touched Scarlet’s shoulder. “Pay it no mind. It is not aware of us. We matter nothing to it.”
“It?” Scarlet felt his hands shaking. “Is it a monster?” He recalled their voyage across the oceans and the huge, fanged fish that Liall and the mariners had hunted before they reached the ice. He had thought those were monsters, too, but Liall had laughed and said they were only fish.
Liall looked over Scarlet’s head into the distance, narrowing his eyes. “No,” he said, though he did not sound all that sure. “But it is not something we should disturb. It will not harm us.”
“What is it?”
“Call it a wind rider. That’s the closest I can get to the term in Bizye.”
“It flies?”
“Not really. Glides, more like. Stop looking over your shoulder. It won’t come all the way up here. I told you: we do not matter to it. It can’t eat us and we’re not interesting enough to get its attention.”
“A wind rider,” Scarlet murmured. He felt colder. “What does it eat?”
“Ice, if the tales are true. Look!” Liall pointed to the east, a note of excitement in his voice. “There it is. I told you, redbird.”
Scarlet’s breath caught in his throat. After so long, it had seemed he would never look upon such a sight again. A razor-edge of orange, vivid as fire against the monochrome landscape, hovered on the rim of the horizon. It shimmered and flared like a live thing, and as he watched, the band of fire grew larger and a shaft of light burst through the surrounding trees, arrowing down between the circle of black stones.
“Gentle Deva,” Scarlet breathed. He could see the sun.
Liall chuckled. “So your Byzan legends are only partially true. This is the land of night, but it’s also the land of the sun. Get used to looking at that, t’aishka. You’ll be seeing it in Kalas Nauhin until fall.” He called out in Sinha to their guards, his voice loud and merry, and the guards answered with happy shouts and a rhyming cheer in Sinha that Scarlet caught two words of: shining and green.
“What did you tell them?”
“Just that the sun had returned. It’s officially spring, or Greentide as we call it.” Liall sighed in satisfaction and turned his horse’s head toward the waiting guards and the road back to the Nauhinir. “Now the ice will melt in the straights and the eastern barons will be free to come to the palace and make their pledges to the crown.”
“Will they come?” Scarlet asked.
“Oh yes,” Liall said, very confident.
“When?”
“Soon.” He winked. “After all, if the king can call the sun, he ought to be able to manage a pack of mortal barons.”
CHAPTER THREE
The Grove
Scarlet raised his arm and pointed to a spot in the sky, low on the horizon. “What’s that?” he asked Jochi lazily. A yellow blur hovered just above the trees, barely visible through heavy snow clouds.
“That is the sun, ser,” Jochi answered, polite as ever. He sent a hard look to the armored Nauhinir guards who had accompanied the hunting party to the gate of the grove, as if daring them to laugh.
They were on the hunting lands that Liall had gifted to Scarlet. For six months, the sky had been either a dome of indigo dotted with stars or a heavy cover of solid clouds which could barely be seen against the dark. Occasionally, the ostre sul, the lights in the darkness, had illuminated the sky with brilliant bands of blue and green, and sometimes orange, purple, yellow, or even red. Jochi claimed these lights could be predicted, but whatever method the Setna used was unknown to Scarl
et. He only knew they were wondrous, and he was a little sad when he was told that they would be very difficult to see until Greentide—the Rshani spring and summer—was over.
Scarlet only questioned Jochi to be difficult. For days, he had been expecting the season to turn into the bright, blazing summers he had known in Byzantur, and he was bitterly disappointed that the sun stubbornly refused to spill more than this milky half-light upon the land. For sure, this summer sun never set, but how could anything grow under it?
“Is it the same sun we have back home?” he wondered. It seemed impossible that the little blob of light that skated around the horizon but never seemed to rise in the sky was the great bronze sun that had warmed his back as a child.
“The very same.” Jochi slipped off his mount and held the reins of Scarlet’s pony for him while he dismounted. “It is as much daylight as we can expect this month, ser. It may snow again later.”
It had snowed yesterday. Or last night. Scarlet was finding it every bit as hard to keep track of hours when the sun never set as he did when it never rose. He patted his gray pony on the nose. “The tracks will be fresh. Easier to hunt.”
“Yes, ser.”
“I don’t like easy.”
Scarlet unslung Whisper from his back and looked down. There were rabbit tracks leading off into the grove.
The hunting lands Liall had given him were a few hundred acres of rambling, forested hills. Scarlet’s favorite part of it was the grove, a wide meadow dotted with apple trees and bordered by low stone walls that ran for many acres and circled it all around except for one gate.
Hunting the grove was like spearing fish in a barrel. Scarlet preferred simply to walk there and admire the trees, but he was restless and eager for any sport, no matter how tame.
He strung one end of his bow and slipped it between his knees while standing, then he bent one limb far back to loop the string to the other bow nock.
Jochi watched him. “There is nothing easy about pinning a running rabbit with an arrow, ser.”