by JC Kang
Cheeks pink, Zheng Ming rose from his bow and cleared his throat. “I am honored, Jie-xia, but if I might be so rude. Do you not plan on marrying someone?”
And by someone, he meant Tian.
She shook her head. “Let there be no question that I rule as regent, and that no one man shall influence my decisions on affairs of state.”
Affairs of the heart, however, were another story. Tian had shuddered at the thought of being the regent’s husband, and the social duties that came with it. She looked toward the column where his breathing betrayed his presence to her ears alone.
The old proverb asserted that those who didn’t have yuan, destiny, could pass each other each day and never meet; while those who had yuan would cross oceans and mountains to be with each other. Certainly, when neither banishment, war, nor even death could keep Tian and Kaiya apart, they were destined to be with each other.
EPILOGUE:
Parents and Prophecies
Cradling her two-day-old secondborn, Kaiya shuddered as she listened to the frantic brush strokes across rice paper inside the Hall of Water Spirits. It wasn’t that she wanted to face Geros again—the memory of what he did to her was still fresh, even after nearly a year—but, as General Altos had reminded her after his audience several months prior, there were prophecies to uphold.
A Bovyan who knew his true mother and father would end the Teleri Empire and restore the Bovyans’ honor.
Her loins still ached after laboring for countless hours, and despite Doctor Fang’s insistence that she stay bedridden for a month to recover, the curse could claim Geros any time now. At least she’d rested for a day.
Behind her, Tian held the smaller, weaker twin. So frail and blue he’d been, his energy sucked by a dominant twin. Doctor Fang had thought the newborn wouldn’t make it to his first hour. Yet the little one was a warrior. He’d survived. On his name day, she would call him Yi, for perseverance. The one of Geros’ seed, she would name Xi, for hope. Her hope that one day, the Teleri Empire might fall. Not because of the threat they posed to Hua, which they no longer did, but because of the misery of the peoples they had conquered.
With a deep breath, she peered past the steel-barred door they’d installed to hold their prisoner.
Mismatched eyes wild, Geros scribbled frantically, his script growing as messy as his disheveled hair and unruly beard. A ghost of his former self, flesh hung from his bones.
A pang knotted her stomach. Despite what he’d done to her, the suffering carved into what remained of his body filled her with sympathy. Was this the curse, coming to claim him?
Some of what he wrote, in fluid Arkothi, made sense—memoirs of past glory, regrets of his last mistakes. Gibberish of the Arkothi alphabet filled other pages, reminiscent of the words she’d seen on Great Peace Island.
She cleared her throat. “Geros, come meet your son.”
His brush paused, his body stilled. Slowly, he turned around, meeting her gaze. “Kaiya, you are so pale.”
Behind her, Tian’s hand tightened around his dao.
She reached back and placed her free arm on his, lest he drop his own son. “You are looking…well.” A lie, certainly, but what else could she say? “Come, meet our child.”
Papers clenched to his breast, Geros scuttled across the floor on one hand and two knees. He crouched by the bars, his eyes bright as he smiled.
Her stomach flipped again. The powerful, domineering man had been reduced to a dog, waiting for a treat. Deserved? No, maybe she should’ve let Tian kill him seven months prior. Heavens, the curse should’ve claimed him by now. She held up Wang Xi and cooed. “Your father, little one.”
The baby let out an adorable squeak, which made her heart race and stomach flutter. To think something so perfect could have come from him.
Geros reached through the bars, but Kaiya took a step back. No—even with that gentle expression, he would not be allowed to touch their son. She lifted her chin to the papers at his chest, the ones with the nonsensical alphabet combinations. “What is that, Geros?”
Blinking, he scratched his head. “My last will. Or maybe the last will of the first Geros. I’m not sure.”
Ramblings of a madman. Kaiya forced a smile. “Goodbye, Geros. We will not meet again. If you need anything to keep you comfortable in your last days, be sure to let the guards know.”
She turned and hobbled away, ignoring whatever the former emperor babbled. From the threshold of the building, she caught sight of the Hall of Bountiful Harvests; where, four years before, a naïve, gangly princess’ journey started when she met a dragon in man’s clothing.
She leaned into Tian, and he wrapped his free arm around her. It was comforting, just like when he consoled her as a child, just like his affection in the Wilds. With him providing a reminder of who she really was, despite the image of princess and regent she projected, she would rule fairly and justly.
Jie climbed the steps to Black Lotus Temple, her first visit back in several years. The meeting with her adopted father, Master Yan, might prove interesting after what she’d learned a few months before.
The day of the regent’s first audience, she’d accompanied Brehane to a meeting with Lord Xu in the Hall of Bountiful Harvests.
“There is no reason why your arm shouldn’t work,” the elf had said. Even his powerful magic had no effect.
She sighed. “It has moved on three occasions, when I wasn’t even trying.”
Staring at her, he pressed a finger to the center of her chest. “You must resolve something in your heart.”
Tian, perhaps? She’d already given up on that. What else could there be?
“Jie!” a female voice called from the door. Princess Alaena stood there in a frilly Arkothi dress that didn’t suit her, cradling her baby. “They said we might find you here.”
“Aye lass,” Prince Aelward said. He, too, looked handsome in his formal sailor’s uniform. “We ‘ad to say goodbye before we sailed home.”
A handsome male elf peered around them. His eyes widened when he met her gaze. He looked at the royal couple. “This is the half-elf you were telling me about?” He turned back to her. He felt familiar.
The elf from her dream.
He had bowed, his focus never leaving her. “It seems our paths have come close, but never crossed until now. I am Thielas Starsong. And you are?”
Hair prickled on the back of her neck. No words came out of her mouth for a few seconds, probably a first. When she finally spoke, it was a squeak. “Yan Jie.”
“Yan,” he repeated, voice hollow. “Adopted daughter of Master Yan?”
Jie’s mind had spun. Hardly anyone knew Master Yan even existed. “Who are you?”
He moved closer, arms wide. “I think you know.”
“No.” She had taken a step back. “You can’t just appear thirty-three years after you abandoned me and my twin.”
“Abandoned? Twin?” He shook his head, so violently his ears might’ve caught the wind and made him take flight. “No, there was only you. I had to protect you…your mother…the prophecy.”
Jie’s own elf ears twitched. “Prophecy?” And no twin?
Thielas’ voice was almost a whisper. “A half-human girl of Aralas’ blood shall slay the Orc King.”
Lord Xu had choked. “Such silly tales. The elf angel was something of a philanderer, with a fetish for human women. It wouldn’t surprise me if he made that up.”
Everyone gawked at the blasphemy. It was hard to believe that Xu, no matter how powerful he might be, could so easily dismiss an elf angel.
“That fetish,” Brehane had said, voice acerbic, “the nine loves of Aralas, helped win the War of Ancient Gods.”
Xu scratched his chin. “Were there only nine?”
Jie had ignored the elf lord, turning instead to the other one, her supposed father. “If anything sounds made up, it’s your pathetic excuse for giving me up.”
Hands raised, Thielas had shaken his head. “I had to hide you, s
omewhere the Altivorc King would never find. Where better than your mother’s people? I begged Master Yan to give you your birthright.”
Jie had frowned. “He said I was left abandoned at the temple gate with a note attached to my swaddling blanket.”
“And how would I find the temple gates without your clan knowing? What did the note say?”
“Master Yan lost it.” That’s what he’d always said.
“Since when does one of your clan lose anything?”
Which was how Jie now found herself outside the temple’s gravesite, behind her unknowing stepfather.
“Father,” she said.
He spun around with amazing speed for his age, the clan’s Black Lotus Blade in his hand. He lowered it when his gaze fell on her. “Jie. I don’t think anyone has ever succeeded in sneaking up on me.”
Fitting her like a second skin, Kiri’s magic armor made her stealth even better, even hid her scent from the temple guard dogs. It kept her cool in the stifling summer heat, as well. Despite her frustration at his hiding the truth of her birth, his kindly eyes melted her heart. Her angry tone slipped. “Where is my birthright?”
Master Yan sighed. “You met him, then. Your father.”
She nodded.
He pointed to two new grave markers. “Here lie the Architect and the Surgeon, their bodies recently returned to us. Their lives were indelibly tied to yours. Your mother was the Beauty, my daughter. You are my granddaughter by blood, though I could never tell you. Come with me.”
She followed him in silence back to his study, where he opened a secret compartment built into the wall and withdrew an object bound in black cloth. He unwound it, revealing an arrow. Silver impurities veined in regular patterns through its transparent crystal point.
“Here is your birthright.”
She reached…with her bad arm…and took it.
***
Jie picked her way through the wild forests of Kanin, again in search of self. She’d always taken pride in not letting destiny dictate her life, that she molded her own future; the magic arrow wrapped and hidden in her magic pouch proved otherwise. Never good at archery, she knew where to seek out a good teacher… as well as more answers.
She looked around. With her poor woodcraft skills, the forest looked more or less the same. However, the rock formation rising before her in this clearing could only be the magical pool in wild elf lands. She lowered the hood to Kiri’s… no, her stealth armor.
“Kala!” she yelled, removing a sealed funerary urn from the pouch. “I have Kiri’s ashes.”
Birds chirped and cawed. Bowstrings pulled back from all around.
Jie sucked on her lower lip. She’d never fulfill her destiny to kill the Orc King if elf arrows killed her first.
Kala’s voice, familiar only in that it was a younger version of Jie’s own, called out. “On your knees. Show your neck.”
Kneeling, Jie bent forward and pulled the hood down further, to expose her nape.
Elf voices tittered from all around.
“Hand’s up,” Kala said. “Why you wear her armor?”
Setting the urn down, Jie raised her hands. “My friends killed her and took it. I am sorry.”
“Why sorry?”
Jie’s brow furrowed. “Kiri was your friend, right?”
“Still is.” Kala stepped out from between two trees.
Kiri emerged, the same haunted look in her eyes, rambling in the wild elf language.
With a gasp, Jie looked down at the urn, then at the sisters. If the ashes didn’t belong to Kiri… “How many sisters do you have?”
“Vrztchkrn. When we escape, eight.” Kala held up eight little fingers, then pointed at the urn. “She first. His… weapon. Hunt you.”
Grabbing Kala’s shoulder, Kiri broke out into a tirade.
Jie shuddered. The him must refer to the Orc King, and the idea that her identical septuplets were out to kill her wasn’t reassuring. Still, something did make sense: people who’d claimed to have seen her all over the world, in before she’d even visited. “What about the rest?”
“Slaves. Like Kiri.” Kala motioned to Kiri. “He do bad things. Hurt them. Make sick. He afraid you.”
Jie gave a slow nod. The prophecy. No wonder Altivorcs always attacked her on sight. Still, something didn’t add up. Thielas had said she was the only baby, that he’d held her in his arms. And, Kiri was clearly much younger. “Vrztchkrn. What are we?”
“You not Vrztchkrn. We Vrztchkrn” Kiri pointed at herself and Kiri, then stared straight at Jie. “You… you… I don’t know word…”
Jie’s soul might be squirming, given the weight of Kiri’s stare.
“You…” Kiri cocked her head like one of the Temple dogs when they tried to understand human language. “You… mother.”
THE END
Please turn the page for a short story about what happened thirty years before Songs of Insurrection.
Birthright:
An Origins Short Story
Thielas Starsong held the bowstring taut, the green fletching of the arrow prickling his pointed ear. One well-placed shot would be the latest momentum change in the six-thousand-year war between elves and orcs.
Concealed behind a tree at the top of a wooded ridge, he watched as the column of two dozen tivorcs shambled along the path below. They were infamous for a lack of discipline, and their unsynchronized steps could hardly be considered marching. Their plated shoulder and chest guards clanged in nerve-wracking cacophony, scaring wildlife deeper into the forest. Sweat on their turquoise skin glistened in blinking patches through the dappled noon sun.
A horse the size of a house, armored from head to tail-less rump, walked at the rear of the formation. It moved quietly compared to the Tivorcs. Astride it rode an altivorc, a more intelligent cousin of the Tivorcs. A prince, no less—a begotten son of the Altivorc King himself.
Straight, meticulously groomed black locks cascaded out of his crowned helmet, contrasting with the tangled hair of his minions. While the T-slotted helm protected his head, he wore only a dark tunic—an inviting target for the misinformed.
However, Thielas was well-informed: neither his magic nor his razor-sharp steel arrowhead would penetrate the cloth. Even though the orcs had lost their ability to channel magic after losing the War of Ancient Gods a millennium before, the King and his princes hoarded a handful of artifacts from before that time. Like this tunic.
The prince snarled something which Thielas, despite his century of battling the brutes, barely understood: “By the Second Sun!”
Thielas stifled a laugh, imagining the obsessive and stodgy altivorc to be appalled by his underlings’ poor excuse for marching.
Don’t worry, he thought, I will end your frustration just as soon as you present me a good target.
As if obeying a subliminal suggestion, the altivorc turned his head, exposing an eye in the helm’s slit. A near-impossible shot for a human, but routine for Thielas.
Just as he was about to loose his arrow, a frail voice whispered on the winds.
It’s a girl...
The urgency in the voice threw off his concentration. The arrow flew errant, jolting the Prince’s head back as it plinked off the side of his helmet.
The tivorcs sank into defensive stances with growls, heads jerking this way and that to find the source of the attack. The prince himself looked straight in Thielas’ direction.
He would not see Thielas.
Thielas had uttered one guttural syllable worthy of a tivorc profanity and disappeared into the ethers.
He rematerialized at the mouth of a cave, his limbs heavy and languid from the draining effect of his invocation of Shallow Magic.
Disoriented, he looked around to find the area surrounded by the straight trunks of vaulting eldarwood trees. The low-lying sun cast the wispy clouds above in a swath of red hues. He scanned the sky for the iridescent moon, Riyalas, which never moved from its spot in the heavens. It was high and to the south-southwe
st, waning to half.
Dawn. Somewhere in the mountains between Cathay and the Elven Kingdom of Aramysta.
Thielas felt his energy increase by the second, and he patted the pouch that hung over his chest. It held a rare Starburst jewel, a relic from the First Orc-Elf Wars that helped offset the fatigue of Shallow Magic.
His keen eyes were drawn to the fresh black and red blood smeared across the ground.
His heart lurched into his throat. Just a step into the cave laid a dead altivorc, a flat metal pin lodged in his eye. A young elf woman lay sprawling beside him, gutted by a horrendous slash across her abdomen. A clear orange jewel—his own beacon—sparkled just out of the reach of her lifeless fingers. Sadness yanked his racing heart back into his constricted chest, even as he buried his emotions to stay focused.
He slung his bow and drew his longsword, knowing that it would be difficult to shoot through the dense forest. Then he froze in place and listened.
Not far down a rocky path, Thielas heard the distinct cries of a newborn, high-pitched and full of vitality, almost drowning out the rhythmic jingling of metal. Looking down, he saw a trail of fresh blood heading in that direction.
As he raced through the trees, the sounds got louder. He jumped over the hacked-up body of an elf lady, lamenting that he could do nothing for her. He swerved around a pair of altivorcs, crumpled dead over a fallen tree trunk.
And then he saw them, blurs of color dancing through the trees: four altivorcs in chainmail, wielding bloodied broadswords, and a silver-haired elf maiden in a gown of starlight. Despite being a head shorter than her attackers, she held them at bay with elegant thrusts of a thin longsword. Behind her, a human woman staggered, clutching a screaming bundle close to her chest. In the other hand, she gripped a curved, black-lacquered sword, which now served more as a crutch than a weapon.