by Niki Florica
He was preparing to call for the woodsman when the darkness was softened by a light in the distance, a faint but welcome respite from the gloom. It grew as he neared it, from charcoal grey to pale, dawn silver, then to white, flickering in blazes and swirls upon the cavern wall and allowing Kyrian the first sight of his own hands in what seemed an eternity. He approached with caution, blinking in the light. The tunnel wound to the right ahead, hiding the light source from view. Kyrian braced himself, wishing for a weapon, and rounded the corner.
The cavern shone so brightly he was forced to shield his eyes, dropping his guard long enough to adjust to the light. The walls glowed in swirls of white, violet, silver, gold, ever-changing and flickering upon stone. The cavern was empty. No woodsman, no escape. And yet, beyond the blaze of colour, Kyrian saw the shape of a stone pedestal, in the exact centre of the chamber. He squinted, straining his unreliable right eye, wondering if he had lost his mind. Or died.
A sword rested on the pedestal, glowing like starlight. Golden, silver, and pearlescent violet, casting coloured shadows upon the cavern walls. Runes laced the blade’s edge, some Skyad, some Adamun, some in tongues Kyrian had never seen, curling along the hilt. Gold threads entwined the pommel, laced and crossed in an intricate pattern designed to fit the hand of its bearer, inset with shining gems. Celestialis stones. Three of them: white, silver, grey. The jewels of the Skies.
Kyrian’s bloodstained hands curled into awestruck fists.
Drawn to the blade like a moth to flame he stepped nearer, peering into the light. His hazy eye blurred. He caught himself squinting before he closed it and shifted all vision to his left eye, as he always did when he came upon something worth seeing clearly. Heat pulsed from the blade, shimmering in the cavern air, buffeting his skin, pulling him, drawing him, entrancing him. He was dead, or dreaming. Surely the woodsman could not have meant to guide him here. Not here. One hand reached for the hilt. His mind screamed against it but his fingers still stretched forward, even as a thousand warnings blazed in his thoughts, even as the blood drained from his fingers and left them cold and white. He could not touch it. Skyads had died touching it—turned to dust, to ash, some to stone. He knew the tales. He had heard them all a thousand times.
His traitorous hand ignored the warnings. Heat burned his fingertips. He looked away.
An explosion of light burst in his vision as his fingers closed about the hilt. A dream, or a vision, or a hallucination, carried by the hot power tearing through his hand, along his arm, into his shoulder, down his spine. He saw darkness and light, a world of shadow, three moons, an infinity of stars sung into being, a rolling land of emerald green, a dark, roaring, living sea, a deep, fathomless sky. He saw a young village blacksmith who looked remarkably like his father, a Silver warrior with dark hair and sparkling eyes that could not have been Melkian but was, a beautiful Skyad maiden with her lips pursed on one side and her arms crossed over a soot-stained chest.
Kyrian wondered if he was breathing, then decided he did not care.
He saw a red-haired, green-eyed warrior who could have been a Man, except he was too small, too slender, too avine to be anyone but Camuel the Robin. He saw colour and life, darkness and death, too much and too little enfolded in a moment that felt like an eternity but could not have been more than a heartbeat. He came to himself, breathless, bloodless, clinging to the pedestal with one hand and holding the blazing sword in the other. He was shaking, the pedestal all that prevented him from falling to his knees, but the sword was warm in his hand, the hilt melded perfectly to his palm, and it lent him strength as he stood in the dark, listening to his own rasping breaths.
Somewhere in the shadows, a voice spoke his name. “Kyrian.” Then again. “Kyrian.”
His breath died in his throat. He crumpled to his knees at the same moment the Sword of Kings slipped from his grasp and clattered deafeningly to the cavern floor.
He fought for breath. Bowed his head.
“Here I am, my King.”
Eight
Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.
-Exodus 3:10
“So you do know who I am,” the woodsman said, laughing, the cavern blazing brighter with his entrance. “I told you, Kyrian. I never say aught unless it is truth, and you have known of me a very long time. Not known me, perhaps. Not yet. But known of me, at the least. A good place to begin.”
Kyrian’s eyes were fixed upon the cavern floor but he felt it—the heat, the power—spilling onto the stone beneath his knees, staining it golden, igniting his bloodstains like rusty flames, licking hungrily at his knuckles. The Sword was abandoned on the stone beside him, glowing white, heat rising from the blade in waves, anticipating the touch of its master.
Its master.
Aradin.
The Woodsman.
Oh, Skies.
“Though you may not yet know me, Kyrian,” the Woodsman continued, “I have spent twenty-four years by your side, and I am quite familiar with you. I know your name and that of your father, the memories that linger in your mind, the fears that haunt your soul, the teachings impressed upon you by your guardian.” He paused, and Kyrian heard a smile enter his voice. “Melkian is very dear to me.”
This was not real. It could not be real. Surely the mines had collapsed upon him and Kyrian had died a reckless son of Midian, and Brondro would mourn for his son and his wife, and the Adamun would whisper of the foolishness of Skyads while heaving his broken body from the rubble. Aradin did not speak to murderers and liars and fugitives with blood on their hands. He only spoke to saints. Like Brondro. Like Camuel. Not like Kyrian. Never like Kyrian.
“This is not real,” he heard himself whisper, shoulders sagging lower to the dust.
“Is it not?” replied the Woodsman who was Aradin. “You, who have borne the Sword of Kings and tasted of its power ought surely to know that real is far more than you have long believed it to be. Kyrian, you have been raised upon tales of me, of the Good King, of the Peasant who died for his people and conquered death for all the world. Alongside the truths of your father you clung firmly to your faith in me for all the painful years of your childhood. I know, for I was there to witness it. I know the pride and pain, blood and tears your faith cost you, and it did not pass unnoticed by the Father of your world.” This voice was like the Woodsman’s, yet different. Deeper, richer, somehow golden. Laced with a majesty unlike anything Kyrian had imagined, while simultaneously light and soft, dancing with humour as if at some jest that he alone could see.
But when he spoke again, the laughter had died, replaced by something grave and sad.
“Your faith wavered, Kyrian,” he softly continued, “when you left childhood behind you and began to fight an altogether different battle for an altogether different prize. You trained for the honour of a warrior. You fought for the respect of your fellow Silvers. You strove for Melkian’s faith, his trust. You climbed for your sister’s admiration. When your people no longer questioned your beliefs, you felt no need to cling to them as fiercely as you always had.” The footfalls rang upon the stone, circling the pedestal, the cavern, Kyrian. His presence could be felt as acutely as seen, a golden shadow on the edge of Kyrian’s consciousness. “That is how your faith slipped away. There was no longer need to prove it to the world, and thus no need to approve it yourself. You chose to fight alone. Without me.” He sighed. “That is where you failed.”
Kyrian felt as if a thousand millstones were hung about his neck, dragging him, pulling him to the ground, drowning him in a sea of shame, fear, memories, reducing him to dust in the presence of a King. If this was death, it was a painful death. He did not need to hear this, to hear where and when and how his faith in Aradin had died. To be reminded of the exact time and place at which his life had tilted into a downward slope destined to end with bloody hands, a shattered life, and a dead Grey.
If this was death—fine. Then l
et him die.
But it was not death. It was worse.
It was judgment.
“Why must you torture me?” he whispered to his hands. “You know what I have done. You know who I am. Why will you not judge me and let the price be paid?”
Footfalls, heavy and strong, circling the pedestal, ringing on the stone, coming to rest so near to Kyrian’s bowed head he could have gazed up into the eyes of the King, had he not been too hideously afraid. He was shaking, his fists clenching dirt, hair reaching for the cavern floor. Aradin’s stillness was eerie in the golden blaze, and when he spoke Kyrian felt as if he would be deafened by the softness of his voice.
“The price?” the Woodsman whispered. “Oh, Kyrian. No. You could not pay the price even if you truly wished, even if you knew what it must seize, what it demands. It is too great. The price of your sin is a debt no mortal may pay nor escape. It is death, Kyrian. Death is the only payment.”
His eyes stung. He closed them. “I know,” he rasped, shakily. “That is why I ran.”
“Oh, but you cannot run from it, Kyrian.” The voice was heavy, weighed with solemnity, resting on Kyrian’s shoulders like a mountain seeking to reduce him to the dirt beneath his knees. “You may fight to escape it, you may flee to the very borders of the world, but still it shall follow you. Like a plague it shall haunt your steps, seep into your heart, seize control of your deeds, your mind, your loyalties. It shall be a wound to you, then a burden, then a scar, until the day it arrives to collect your dues and you shall have nothing with which to pay the price. Then it shall take your life. It cannot be escaped, cannot be fled. This is the way of wickedness.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Kyrian gasped, eyes flitting open long enough to snag upon his bloodstained hands before he closed them again. “Why must you tell me there is no hope?”
There was a creak of leather as Aradin the Woodsman descended to crouch on his heels, the warmth of his presence beating hot against Kyrian’s curled shoulders. He felt the King’s nearness, felt every fibre of his being leap in ecstasy with the nearness of his Maker, but he was too small, too afraid, too unworthy.
“I did not say there was no hope,” said Aradin softly. “I did not say the price could not be paid, only that you, Kyrian, cannot be the one to pay it.”
“I do not understand.”
“No. No, you do not. I know. But tell me, Kyrian, that I may help you to understand. When you told your father the stains would not wash away, what did he say?”
Kyrian swallowed, drew a shallow breath. “He told me to take them to the One who can.”
Aradin’s smile was almost tangible. “And you knew even then what it meant, did you not? You knew that only I held the power to free you. You know because you once believed it, before the trials of your life stole your faith and planted doubts within you. You know that I can take your sin.” He paused, traced a finger in the dust before asking, “Would you like to be rid of them, Kyrian? The stains? The penalty that you cannot pay? Would you like me to take them away?”
Kyrian breathed, “Yes.”
“Then look at me.” A trembling hesitation. “Kyrian, look at me.”
The Woodsman was smiling—a soft, proud, compassionate smile beneath shining eyes that were no longer hazel but deep, molten gold. He was the same, and yet he was different. Still clad in brown leather, still crouched on the heels of creaking Adamun boots, gaze still creased into crescents that snapped and danced with his laughter. He was the same Woodsman who had been buried in rubble and shouting Kyrian’s name in Elyis’ voice, but he was different. Prouder, and firmer. And without a grain of dust upon him.
“Now you see,” he said, smiling. “You have known me all along. Now tell me, Kyrian—” he draped his wrists over his knees and jounced on his heels—“do you believe I can take your stains? Do you believe that when I died a Peasant and returned from death a King, I paid the penalty of death for your sins? That the price of your stains was paid by my own spilled blood?”
Kyrian had stood upon the skyladder what seemed an eternity before and questioned everything he had once believed—a loving King, a Peasant who had died and conquered death, a Sword filled with Aradin’s power, an Heir of Ariad chosen to bear it. But now, with the Woodsman’s golden eyes upon him, he knew only one truth, one belief, one certainty. One desperate, wild hope.
“Do you believe it, Kyrian?”
“Yes.”
When the Woodsman smiled, his eyes glowed brighter. “Your sin is grave, Kyrian, but your heart is pure. You have accepted my gift, and for this you shall be made free. Give me your hands.” Kyrian complied, heart stalling when the King’s warm, calloused hands closed about his own. “I so loved you, Kyrian, you and all this broken, shadowed world, that I gave myself—my own life, my own blood—that whoever shall believe and accept my gift shall not know sin’s death, but shall have eternal life. Do you believe this?”
He whispered, “I do not understand it.”
“You do not need to understand.” Aradin’s gaze burned his flesh. “You need simply trust and believe.”
His palms were hot in the grasp of the Woodsman, athrob with a searing, cleansing intensity that seemed to flow from the very being of this immortal Creator before his eyes. Melkian had once looked upon Aradin, he knew, as had Avel, and his father, and many in Rosghel. But not like this. He had been a King then, a physical King upon a physical throne though immortal, mighty, and vastly above any of the pitiful children with which he chose to dwell. Now he was a Woodsman, and a King. Now he was all things, unbound by the fabric of the mortal world. King and Creator. Saviour. Friend.
“Yes,” Kyrian answered at last, shaking with conviction, gratitude, shame. “Yes, I do. I will.”
“Good.” Aradin released his hands. “You are clean.”
Kyrian stared at them, his hands, the palms and knuckles and fingers that could not be his, but were. The blood had vanished, along with the bruises and gouges that had screamed of murder each time his eyes had snagged upon them. They were clean, almost unnaturally clean. White and spotless. Unstained. Innocent. “Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you, my King.”
Aradin nodded and knowingly smiled. “Trust me, Kyrian. It is my pleasure.”
The Woodsman waited patiently on his heels as Kyrian struggled to gather himself, breathing hard on hands and knees and staring at the white, unblemished knuckles he no longer needed to hide. He was half-faint with relief, with the gift, the miracle, with the realization that he was free. Skies ablaze, he was free. He found himself wishing for Melkian, if only to lighten his burden, to bring him some small shred of joy as payment for breaking his heart. I believe you now, Melkian. I am so sorry I did not listen then, but I believe it now. I do. I wish I could tell you. Skies, I wish I could tell you . . .
Aradin’s gaze burned his shoulders and he knew his thoughts could not hide from the Woodsman, but he did not care. Tears welled in his eyes and spilled down dust-coated cheeks, pooling on his hands and the stone of the cavern floor. Two days had been his undoing. First a warrior, then a murderer, then a fugitive, then a captive. Then his father, alive and waiting, and more tears and lies and guilt. The bloodstains, the memory, the haunting, omniscient Woodsman. The sin on his conscience and blazed on his hands that he could never truly escape and could not forever hide, etched in Grey blood on his battle-scarred knuckles, permanent and irrevocable as death itself. He scoured at his tears with a filthy wrist.
Irrevocable for him, perhaps. But not for the Woodsman.
“You brought me here,” he said through his tears, gathering himself slowly, one unravelled thread at a time. “You knew I would follow you.”
Aradin nodded as Kyrian drew a steadying breath and forced himself onto his knees, dragging both hands over his eyes, and then through his hair, if only out of habit. “Yes, I knew.”
“How?”
He spread his palms, smiling. “Because I know you. This day has awaited its unfolding for a long, long t
ime, Kyrian, longer than you can possibly know. Your sin is erased, your faith restored, and now the time has come for the bestowing of your purpose—the calling that has long awaited you, and only you.”
His right hand was pulsing again, the Sword a white flame on the edge of his vision.
“Kyrian, I called your father to the Skies from his Adamun village not to become the nemesis of Tasnil, but to be my light, my messenger, a symbol of faith to shine in my name. Upon his legacy, my new chosen shall arise. He knows this well. He has been waiting. This much you already know.”
“Yes.”
“Brondro’s faith ignited faith in others. Through him I affirmed my majesty, my power, and my undying loyalty to the mortals I created at the dawn of Ariad. He followed me as a King, loved me as a Peasant, and accepted my gift when I died to pay the price for his sins and all others. That is why I chose him to protect the Sword. It was my promise, my covenant, the symbol of my prophecy—that I would send a chosen Heir to reclaim my throne from Tasnil.” Aradin’s gaze drifted into the distance, to another time, another servant, another purpose. “He has served me well. The Sword has remained preserved and untainted until this day.” His eyes gleamed. “The day of the Heir.”
Kyrian felt every drop of light in the room fix suddenly and blindingly upon the King.
“All that I was then,” Aradin continued, glowing fierce gold, “I am today. I do not change. I am the dawn, the dusk, and the span of day. I am the King of your father, the King of Camuel, the King of Melkian, the King and Creator of all Ariad. I have heard the cry of my people by reason of Tasnil, and I have chosen this day, this hour, this moment, to set in motion a glorious plan to free my beloved from the Usurper.” He straightened, shining, and pointed a finger at Kyrian’s chest. “This plan, Kyrian, is you.”