The Heir of Ariad

by Niki Florica

  It seemed an eternity before they arrived at the foot of Rhos-Arpal, a towering palace of pearl, silver, and ivory, gleaming golden in the last light of the sun. The jewels that adorned the great, shining walls sparkled blue, scarlet, green, and black in a beautiful tribute to the earthbound races condemned to the Green Lands far below. It was stunning, a nostalgic monument of a time long passed, but Kyrian had not admired its beauty since he was a child, too young and naive to understand that nothing beautiful lay behind its walls. The windows of the towers were dark, as ever. Not a shadow flickered beyond the glass. Tasnil had not appeared in twenty years. Not a soul in Rosghel had seen him in decades.

  One half-blood excluded.

  Thunderfoot gave the order for the Silvers to be freed, but Kyrian’s captor, the worm who had held a knife to his throat, saw no need for haste. With painful lethargy he unclasped Kyrian’s belt from around his waist, smiling as he placed it in his waiting palm. “It has been a pleasure, Silver,” he purred, icy eyes chilling his smile. “Although, it would have been a greater pleasure to hear you plead for mercy at the point of my blade.”

  Kyrian’s hand closed about his sword. Melkian’s eyes were upon him, grey and warning, but he ignored them, feeling no obligation whatsoever to take the bait set for him. Habit compiled all critical observations. The Grey was taller, broader, undoubtedly heavier. No revelation. Any Skyad in Rosghel knew the danger of measuring Kyrian’s strength by size. Salienne flickered somewhere on the edge of his vision as he clasped his belt about his waist and returned the glare. The creature was prodding for a fight. Kyrian resolved to disappoint him.

  He nodded to the blue eyes, ignoring the challenge. “The pleasure is mine. And welcome to Rosghel.”

  When he turned away, Melkian’s arms were folded before his chest, but his eyes shone with approval as they projected a question across the pale square. All right?

  Kyrian forced a half-smile and a nod, and he did not miss the slight tension that lifted from his guardian’s rigid shoulders. Melkian worried for him. He knew that. But there were greater concerns upon the captain’s mind that not even Kyrian could draw from him—fears for the shadowy future, burdens from a heavy past, and now, Salienne’s bitterness as well. Kyrian wished he could bear them, share the weight. But, at the least, he could keep himself from being one of them.

  The Storm Lord turned to ascend the Arpal Stair, a towering warrior of stony grey against a backdrop of pristine silver-white. A king awaited him within the palace walls. Rosghel’s phantom tyrant. Tasnil the Usurper. Forger of the alliance. Thief of Aradin’s throne.

  And, most likely, the doom of the world itself.

  The regiments dispersed, Silver and Grey, and Melkian’s gaze flickered over the square, watchful and leery of the raucous Greys, noting all, missing nothing.

  Ever the wary warrior, Melkian. Ever the honourable captain.

  Salienne appeared at Kyrian’s side, and together they turned to the watchtower.

  Two

  And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.

  -Exodus 2:11

  “You surprised me,” Salienne remarked as they stepped through the watchtower door. “I expected that Grey to receive the fight he was seeking.”

  Kyrian twisted his face, still dripping disgust. “You underestimate my patience.”

  “It has been a trying day.”

  The watchtower was the oldest structure in Rosghel beside Rhos-Arpal, armed with weapons imported long ago from the Green Lands in the brighter days of trade and prosperity. Its creaking rafters arched high overhead, laced over a chamber of flickering light and fluctuating voices, keeping watch and groaning only occasionally in protest to the proceedings below. The room was alive with Silvers, returning from their posts to receive their rations from Avel, the tower’s keeper, and to share the day’s events over little food and less water. Most were seated already when Kyrian arrived, at circular tables, pale hoods resting on their shoulders or slung over the spines of their chairs, the murmur of their voices a low, pulsing hum.

  Along the western wall, Avel kept his domain, an organized chaos of shelves and barrels beside a blazing blue fire on the tower’s hearth. He stood with his forearms resting on the ledge that divided him from the rest of the room, grey brows creased in thought, but he straightened and saluted to Kyrian as he and his sister entered.

  “Kyrian,” the keeper greeted. “You are late. It is nearly dusk.”

  “We were occupied longer than expected,” Kyrian replied. “Melkian feared treachery, and the Storm Lord did not disappoint.” He slid into the seat nearest the keeper, across from the fire.

  Avel spat. “Grey filth. Melkian was wise to expect the worst.”

  Kyrian leaned forward on his elbows and nodded. “Wise, as always.” Salienne’s presence chilled at his side, and as usual, he ignored it. “Has there been word?”

  The keeper exhaled heavily. “The messengers Melkian sent to the outskirts have returned. The outer territories have withered to almost nothing. Near fourscore Skyads have died, by their reckoning.”

  Kyrian felt the words weigh like stones in his chest. “Fourscore. Dead of thirst?”

  “Of course. The outskirt clouds are small. They had not the melsith to survive.”

  The Rosghel Cloud was the largest in the Skies, and deep within its white mass lay the hidden reserves of melsith, or cloudwater, that had kept Rosghel clinging to life when all trade to the Green Lands had crumbled to an end. They were fortunate, Kyrian knew, for the reservoirs. Clouds in the outer regions were not so blessed, and it seemed the resilience of the Skyad outskirters was finally running dry.

  Without water, they were dying. It was brutally, brutally simple.

  Tasnil, hidden in his pearly palace, could end the suffering in the blink of an eye. One word and the strongest of the Silver Guard would be sent north, to the wilder Skies, to capture the Rains and bear them to Ariad. The rainy season had come and passed and with it autumn, winter, and a lifeless spring, but still Tasnil the Usurper remained silent within his walls, despite the Skyad deaths upon his hands, despite the cries of a thirsting world. He had not been seen for twenty years.

  Kyrian swallowed. Hard.

  Repeating the lie—unfortunately—still did not make it true.

  Avel placed a plate before him, distracting him with yet another disappointment. A mound of withered greens bordering rot, a pathetic loaf of long-stale bread, a goblet of melsith so pitiful it was almost a waste of a glass. He exhaled through his nostrils—an almost-sigh. “Thank you.”

  Avel’s expression was chagrined. He did not reply.

  A soft groan drew Kyrian’s eyes to his sister where she sat, shielding her face from the doorway with a hand, bowed to the table to seek refuge behind him. “What are you doing?”

  “Berdon.”

  The Silver warrior stepped into the watchtower without ceremony, his pale, darting eyes combing the room even as he propped the door behind him.

  “Does he see me?” Salienne hissed. “Tell me he does not see me.”

  Berdon’s eyes paused upon Kyrian, then flickered to the figure behind him. “He sees you.”

  Avel laughed, leaning upon the ledge again as his eyes gleamed mischief. “What is it, Salienne? You would not refuse so valiant a warrior as Berdon. One of Rosghel’s finest.”

  She scorched him with a contemptuous glance. “That snivelling coward does not know the meaning of valiance.”

  “So cruel,” Kyrian quipped, grinning as the pale-haired Silver began to navigate the crowd toward them. “You will break his heart, Salienne. You know he is harmless.”

  “You are one to defend him. How many times has he blackened your eyes?”

  “Not half so many as I have his.”

  Her lips curled in dark pleasure. “I rather miss those days.”

  Kyrian’s childhoo
d nemesis weaved through the Silvers toward them and Salienne chose the moment to make a cruel escape, draining her melsith and following it with a mouthful of damp greens before slipping from her seat. A blink, and she had vanished, with a nod of thanks to Avel and a promise to meet Kyrian at the manor before second mooncrest. Berdon was left in disbelief at the centre of the throng, scanning the Silver cloaks with pure dismay written in his watery eyes.

  Kyrian turned again to Avel and raised his brows. “He is hopeless.”

  “Aye,” the keeper replied, eyes glinting. “Beauty is a curse.”

  Kyrian prolonged his rations as long as possible, eating sparingly while Avel tended the patrons of the watchtower, arriving in droves for their provisions. The blue moonfire burning on the hearth cast a watery glow over the empty glass flasks and decanters that lined the wall, and in its pale wash he sat, alone. As always he spared his melsith for his meal’s end, and he was reaching for the goblet when a touch on his elbow drew his eyes to the left.

  It was Elyis, hunched and wizened and staring into Kyrian’s face with wide, milky eyes. The old Silver was robed in the torn regalia of a Rosghel melsith-miner, a relic from days long passed that had not likely been separated from the Silver’s gnarled frame for a decade. Elyis’ days of mine labour were buried too deep in Rosghel’s history for most of the young Silvers to recall, but Melkian said often that before his mind had fled him, he had been a noble creature and a friend of Kyrian’s father.

  Elyis gripped Kyrian’s forearm with surprising strength and eyed his goblet of melsith with tangible longing. “Pardon me, lad,” he said shakily, “but could you spare a . . . a glass? A mouthful?”

  Kyrian drew back, one hand curled already about the stem of the goblet. “Elyis . . .”

  “You know my name!” the Silver exclaimed, with a beaming smile that transformed his pale face into a web of spidery creases. “You know my name! You are a friend if you know my name. What is your name, friend? My new friend, what is your name?”

  Kyrian was certain they had performed this exact conversation a thousand times before, but, as ever, he swallowed his impatience and introduced himself—again—to his beaming elder.

  “Kyrian,” Elyis muttered upon hearing the name. His eyes glazed with memory and fierce, obsessive concentration. “Kyrian of the Rain Realm. I have heard it. I know I have.”

  Forcing a smile, Kyrian prompted, “The son of Brondro, Elyis.”

  “Brondro, yes!” The smile returned. “Brondro the swordsmith! Brondro the warrior! How could I forget? Of course! Brondro, the champion of Rosghel, the finest craftsman of weaponry ever to walk the clouds! Ah,” he gasped, eyes unnaturally bright in the deathly pallor of his face, “Brondro was a good soul if ever there was one. Honest and gentle and cunning and kind. ‘Tis good blood that flows in your veins, my friend.”

  Kyrian blinked.

  How very ironic.

  “I traded a moon’s worth of cirras for a blade of Brondro’s once,” Elyis continued. His bony hand was still twisted about Kyrian’s wrist. “A pretty thing . . . ivory, curved blade, pearl sheath. Brondro would have given it for nothing, but I insisted. It was years before I found he had slipped the cirras into the binding of the scabbard. My moon’s wages had never left my belt all along.” He chortled, grinning. “Never was there so good a creature as Brondro in Rosghel, friend Kyrian. Never, never.”

  This time, Kyrian’s smile was genuine.

  “And never was there a creature so deserving of a beautiful bride,” Elyis continued, eyes shining. “What is her name? By the Skies, I know her name.”

  “Jasmiel,” Kyrian supplied. His mother.

  “Jasmiel.” His brow furrowed. “No. No, Jas. That is her name. Jas.” Elyis turned his milky eyes upon Kyrian again, but they were clouded and unseeing, lost in some distant time far beyond the reach of Kyrian’s memory. “Where is Jas?” he asked, suddenly. “I have not seen her for some time, and I would very much like to speak with her again.” He paused. “Would you take me to her?”

  Kyrian swallowed hard, suddenly aware of Avel watching him from behind the ledge. “No, Elyis, I cannot,” he said at last, lamely. “She is dead.”

  The milky eyes widened. “Dead? Not Jas. No. I saw her . . . only moons ago. Only moons . . .”

  Kyrian diverted his eyes, jaw clenching. “She has been dead near twenty years, Elyis.”

  There was a moment of prolonged silence beneath the murmur of the Silvers, as the old miner stared blankly into the distance, clawlike hand still wrapped about Kyrian’s wrist. It was long before he returned to alertness, and his milky eyes roved the chamber frantically as if surprised to find him there, in the watchtower with a strange young Silver’s forearm entangled in his bony fingers.

  He raised his eyes to Kyrian. They were wide and rimmed with red.

  “A glass, lad?” he asked softly, voice trembling. There was no recognition in his face. “Could a strong warrior spare a glass for a weary miner? A mouthful?”

  Kyrian’s dry, raw, ever-thirsty throat tightened.

  He slid the goblet into the gnarled Silver’s hand and wrenched his eyes away.

  Avel eyed him from across the ledge, a cloth hanging from one hand and a filthy glass in the other. His expression was apologetic, guilt-ridden, begging forgiveness for the rations order that prevented him from replacing Kyrian’s glass. Kyrian shook his head. He heard Elyis chuckling somewhere behind his back, about the Green Lands and the past and . . . oh, Skies.

  The Adamun.

  He almost winced, still painfully sensitive to the word. Elyis, for Skies’ sake, hold your tongue.

  Elyis’ voice was shrill and bordering hysterics as he raved, and despite himself, Kyrian found himself listening, as he always did when Skyad talk grew dangerous. Elyis rambled of the Adamun. The race of Men. The ancient people that had once walked the Green Lands tilling earth, stalking prey, and forging weapons that no smith in the Skies could match. Woodsmen, warriors, masters of wood, stone, and iron. Elyis sang their praises with feverish passion. The Silvers scoffed at him, demanding silence, for the extinct race of Men was a dangerous subject in the domain of Tasnil the Usurper.

  Kyrian’s foot tapped a nervous rhythm against the ledge.

  It was a dangerous subject for him as well.

  “Do not mock!” Elyis cried. Something shattered. Avel cursed. “Fools, fools! Do not mock!”

  Silver voices arose to drown his, and Kyrian prayed the mad fool would have the sense to hold his tongue before he caused more damage than shattered glass. He was seized by a sudden, desperate desire to be elsewhere, and turned to make his escape from the room that had grown suddenly stifling with Silvers and voices and far too many eyes.

  He turned around and found himself staring at the pale-eyed Grey from the escort.

  His evening, evidently, was not improving.

  “A full melsith,” the Grey demanded, tossing a handful of silver cirras onto the ledge. “Make yourself useful, Silver, and quickly if you wish to avoid trying my patience.”

  Kyrian resisted the impulse to roll his eyes and turned to the fire again, awaiting an opportunity to slip from the watchtower without attracting the attention of the Storm warrior. Somewhere behind him, Elyis’ shrill voice was cracking as Avel fixed the Grey with a cool glare. “Half-rations are an order in this city, Grey. You shall have no more than the others.”

  “I shall have what I wish,” the Grey replied, tone mutinous. “A full melsith, before my patience wears too thin for negotiation.”

  Avel’s frown deepened. “We do not have melsith enough for all to have what they wish. You will drink a half-ration or none at all. It is your choice. This is the command of Captain Melkian.”

  The Grey’s jaw flexed before he forced a crude laugh. “Captain Melkian. The Silver coward with a child for a second-in-command.” Kyrian ground his teeth. “I am a warrior of the Storm Realm, keeper, feared across the Skies, Lands, and Seas. You shall give me what I ask or face the edge
of my blade. I care not for the commands of your spineless captain.”

  Avel’s blue eyes gleamed hard and hot. “I will give you nothing.”

  “Then in Aradin’s name, you will die!”

  “Aradin!” The cry drew all eyes to the centre of the watchtower, where Elyis stood smiling in his old miner’s garb, his white hair a wild tangle about his opaque, blue eyes. The Grey stared at him in revulsion. Kyrian’s staccato intensified. “Aradin,” Elyis sang softly, grinning. “Aradin, King of Ariad. King and Creator of Ariad. The Good King. The Great Captain. Aradin of the Skies.”

  The Grey’s lip curled and he moved to turn away, but Elyis had stumbled across the room and locked his bony hand to the warrior’s wrist. Kyrian cringed. “Aradin,” Elyis trilled again. “Do you know him, Grey? Do you know the Good King? The one who bears the Sword of Kings?”

  The Grey wrenched his wrist away, but Elyis held firm. “Release me, filth!” the warrior spat.

  “Do you know Aradin?” The old miner seemed to have lost whatever had remained of his sanity, his voice eerily childlike, his eyes unnervingly bright. “Aradin is everywhere.”

  “Mad,” the Grey hissed. “Aradin is dead, old fool! Killed by Tasnil the Usurper himself.”

  “Killed? No, no. Aradin cannot be killed. The Creator cannot be killed.”

  “He was not the Creator,” the Grey spat, eyes blazing. “His followers may have believed it, but he was a fool, along with all the rest. Tasnil killed him, Tasnil claimed his throne, and Tasnil is the king of Ariad. Aradin is dead.”

  “Liar!” Elyis’ agitation was swiftly turning to wrath. “Aradin is here. He is everywhere. He is always. His power dwells within the Sword of Kings. Brondro has it. Brondro has the Sword.”

  “Brondro?” The Grey tossed his pale head to the sky and laughed a mocking chortle that rattled deep in Kyrian’s bones. Avel was looking at him again. He ignored it. “Brondro Tarmilis? The traitor? Fool! Brondro stole the Sword after Aradin’s death. He stole it to claim its power for himself. And then he vanished into the Green Lands, with the Sword, and left us to die of thirst while we wait for Tasnil the Usurper to fetch the filthy Rains! Brondro Tarmilis is to blame for our suffering!”