The Heir of Ariad

by Niki Florica

  Brondro shrugged. “A Skyad is not to be without his gift, artificial or otherwise. I know for most the cloaks are purely ornamental . . . but I assumed you would be different, being . . .”

  “A half-blood?”

  A reluctant nod.

  Kyrian smiled. “I shall be grateful to have it. If the mist is dense along the river it will conceal me well enough. Melkian designed it to cloak me just as well as any Silver gift.”

  “I know.” Brondro smiled sadly. “He made mine.”

  Silence fell over father and son, standing in the mouth of the Adamun mines at the base of a gorge washed bloodred by the sunset. Brondro studied the ground, one hand rising to the back of his neck, and when at last he spoke again his voice was hoarse and ragged with sudden, age-old guilt. “I am so sorry, Kyrian,” he rasped, jaw flexing, tears thick in his voice and welling in his eyes. “For everything. For all of this. If I could change the past, could bear the Sword myself . . .” He gasped. “I am so very, very sorry.”

  Kyrian blinked hard, then looked away. “So am I. For the lies—” he cringed—“and for the truth. You deserve a more honourable son. I am sorry I could not give you one.”

  Brondro glanced up, surprised, and for a moment Kyrian almost saw the Man Melkian had once described—soft-spoken, timid, and blind to the goodness that shone from his humble Adamun heart. He deserved a better son. He deserved a better Heir.

  He frowned, thoughtful, eyes swimming with pride that Kyrian had so often imagined but never seen, never felt. Skies ablaze, he had longed an eternity for this. Brondro moved to lay his hand upon Kyrian’s shoulder, but then, as if afraid to overstep his bounds, settled it awkwardly instead upon the hilt of the knife at his side. Smudges of soot still darkened his brow and clung stubbornly to his cheeks. “You have fought so long to be seen as something you are not,” he said suddenly, quietly, “you no longer remember who it is that you are. Perhaps your honour lies beneath, in the creature Aradin has chosen, the one you have spent these years fighting to hide. I do not think this kingdom needs a Skyad, Kyrian. Nor a Man. Not anymore.” He listed his head, pale in the last light. “I think the Heir this world needs is the very one Aradin has chosen. Not the facade, the counterfeit, the one accepted by the Skyads . . . but the one you seem to have forgotten. The one you have been fighting to hide.” His expression grew fierce, his hand clenching in an impassioned fist. “The one who will always, always have my pride.”

  He turned away quickly, a pool in both eyes, and gestured for Kyrian to follow, toward the stone path and the forest trail to the river, the dawning place of a journey that still did not seem real.

  Kyrian stared after him. The wisdom of Midian still did not cease to astound.

  Brondro Tarmilis cast him a glance that was almost—almost—smug. “You need not look so surprised,” he chided warmly. “I can speak wise words of my own when I wish, whatever Melkian has told you.”

  His voice saddened then, as the first pale stars winked to life in the sky above Werdumon.

  “Twenty years is a long time, after all.”

  Brondro Tarmilis held his son like a dying Man to life—memorizing him, studying him, gathering every thread of Kyrian of the Rain Realm into a vibrant, valiant, priceless image that had too long been a figment of his dreams. He was not dreaming. He was not dead. He had a son. He still had a son.

  Kyrian was the Heir of Ariad. He was embarking on a return journey to the very place from which he had fled a fugitive, to destroy a phantom tyrant who had not been seen in twenty years without revealing himself or the Sword of Kings, until the Usurper was ended.

  And there was also the matter of the Rains.

  And the Storm Lord.

  And the alliance.

  Brondro had lived too many long days beneath the shadow of the Usurper and the will of the King to believe for a moment that the quest would be as simple as the prophecy portrayed. He could see enough of himself in the heart of his son to know that Kyrian suspected it as well. The world was darkening, and with the alliance of the Storm and Rain Realms was sure to come a deeper darkness even than before: the shadow of Greys and of Tasnil’s devices. A fell wind now carried Rosghel westward, far beyond the reach of the starving Green Lands, buying time for the Usurper and lengthening the journey of the Heir across land that had fallen into mystery long ago. Hope was fading. Brondro knew it. His people knew it.

  Fortunately, he also saw enough of himself in his son to hold such thoughts to himself.

  The Nelduith was hissing, the sky growing dusky as timid stars lifted their veils in the firmament above. Kyrian smelled of clouds and wind and silver, Rosghel Skies. Like Jas. Brondro was not a Man of many words, but in that moment in his son’s embrace, he heard himself whispering the very phrase he had rehearsed in his mind daily since the night of his departure from Rosghel. “I love you, Kyrian.” My fierce little warrior.

  Skies, he could not possibly know how Brondro had ached to speak those words.

  Kyrian said nothing, but his hands tightened against Brondro’s back, taut and fierce.

  Then again, perhaps he could.

  When they drew apart Kyrian’s dark eyes were glistening, but his jaw was clenched and his shoulders were squared, and all the watchful world seemed poised upon the edge of dusk, informing them—both of them—that it was time for the Heir to depart. He nodded. Brondro nodded. The Nelduith spat in urgent indignation. “Promise me, Kyrian, you will remember who you are.”

  Kyrian’s expression twisted. He looked away. “And if I do not know who I am?”

  Skies ablaze. Skies and moons and Skies ablaze, Brondro loved this boy.

  “You will,” he answered simply. “In time. With trust. But you must seek the truth if you wish to find it.”

  Kyrian echoed him with a quick, small smile. “Seek and I shall find. I have heard that wisdom before.”

  Night was falling, drifting over the riverbank like a blanket of silence and shadow. “Aradin be with you,” Brondro said softly, clenching his hands at his sides against too much nostalgia, the sickening sense that he had done all this before.

  Kyrian of the Rain Realm nodded again and cast him a shallow smile that did not reach his bright, deep eyes, one of which shone duller than the other in the starlight, a scar of his warrior childhood. Perhaps it would not have been so had Brondro been there to raise him as a father should. But he had not been there. He had been here, a thousand leagues from his son, his daughter, and his wife in the days she had needed him most. His clenched fingers were shaking; he fought to still them. Perhaps if he had been there, Kyrian would not have been Rosghel’s menace, or fled his home a fugitive of murder’s price.

  Perhaps, if he had been there, the weight of the world would have fallen to him instead.

  Kyrian drew his hood over his head and for a moment, the cloak blended so seamlessly with the mist that he was little more than a wisp, a phantom of the starlight. “Wait for me,” he said softly.

  Brondro exhaled. “Always.”

  He was very, very good at waiting.

  As Kyrian vanished into the starlit mist, Brondro ran a hand through his hair and sighed into the ever-darkening sky, feeling as if he had just stepped from the skyladder and realized he had left something precious behind. “Be with him, my King,” he breathed. Prayed. “Please, Aradin, be with him.”

  The white-clad Peasant sitting on the riverbank looked up at him and smiled.

  “I am, Brondro,” he replied, eyes shining. “Always. You know that I Am.”

  To Kyrian, travelling by night was a like a reunion with an old friend.

  He loved the shadows, the whispers of wind, the chill of air that daylight had not yet touched, the wash of pale white stars, the three moons caught in their eternal race above a silent world. In Rosghel, he had often slipped from his bedchamber in the darkest watch of the night, stolen through the west wing, down the curved stair, through the servant’s entrance, and into the eerie gloom. As a child he had often sat in
the shadow of the manor, toying with tendrils of cloud as he had gazed up into the deeper Skies, to the stars and moons, his companions. Sometimes, his only companions. It had been his own sanctuary, his delicious secret, shared not even with Salienne, fellow conspirator in almost all else. Melkian might have known, but perhaps he had not. Kyrian had always found it difficult to know all that his guardian did and did not see.

  He did not think as he walked, treading over the mud and stones of the riverbank, invisible beneath his sky-cloak in the mist of the Nelduith spray. He refused his mind the luxury of drifting, for he knew it was certain to divagate to something grave, something overwhelming, unthinkable, and suffocating that Kyrian could not bear to consider. Not yet. The Sword at his side was a surreal prop in a dream heavier than any he had experienced in his life, a dream from which he was still hoping, vaguely, to awaken.

  He did not wish to be the Heir of Ariad.

  He did not wish to be a king.

  He did not wish to meet Tasnil the Usurper face to face. Not ever, ever again.

  It was strange to journey by earth, without the constant fall and lift of cloud beneath his feet, strange to know with each step that he was anchored, bound, to solid ground. He had grown accustomed to the sound of the river, but the shadows of trees on his right and the slipping of mud beneath his boots were still foreign, still uncomfortable and unnerving without Brondro to rob them of mystery. This world, these Lands . . . they were not his. They were not home. In some deep, hidden fissure of his mind, he was almost grateful for the opportunity, the reason to return to the Skies, even if it meant a journey across unknown land, even if it meant a battle with the phantom of his childhood nightmares. Perhaps he was not a Skyad, but he was certainly not a Man. He did not belong here.

  An avalanche of stones and mud rattled in his boots with every stride, becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, but still, he ignored it. His thoughts were drifting dangerously near to memories and fears that he was too weary, too uncertain, too numb to consider, at least until Rydel of Robinsdwel could bear part of his burden. Instead he drove his mind to safer ground, away from Tasnil, or the Sword of Kings, or the prophecy of the Heir of Ariad.

  Instead, he thought of Melkian.

  He had been ten winters old when Salienne had first mastered the Skyad gift. He remembered their time in practice together, in the courtyard behind the manor, remembered the first time he had watched his sister close her eyes, furrow her brows, and disappear into the fog. He had been astounded. Proud of her and enthused for her, but envious. And bitter. Deep in his heart, deep where neither Melkian nor Salienne would ever unearth it, he had been bitter as well.

  It was not as though he had not tried. Skies knew he had tried. Day after day, night after night, moon after moon he had struggled and failed to become one with the mist, as all true-blooded Skyads could. He had not known then that his blood was tainted, but Melkian had, and still his guardian had watched him, taught him, told him, “Focus, Kyrian. Close your eyes, forget all else, and focus.”

  He had focused. He had focused until his head had ached and his palms had bled from the bite of his fingernails, and still Kyrian and the silver mists of the Rosghel Cloud did not, could not, become one.

  “Listen to me, Kyrian,” Melkian had said, in the quiet moments of dusk on the manor’s front stair. “I know it is difficult . . . to be without the gift.” Kyrian still remembered cringing, clenching his jaw, glaring at his feet. “But you must know you are not the first. I have known others without it.”

  “Yes,” Kyrian snapped, “so have I, Melkian. The giftless, banished to the outskirts or worse—living like peasant filth in Rosghel. I have seen them. I know what becomes of those without the gift.”

  Melkian shook his head. “Some, perhaps, those who lost hope. But there have been others.”

  He scowled. “Who?”

  Melkian leaned forward on his knees and clasped his hands between them. “Your father. He could not control the mist, could not become one with the clouds. He did not have the gift.”

  The truth was clear as daylight now, reminiscing upon the bank of the Nelduith. His father had not possessed the Skyad gift because he was not Skyad, though Kyrian had not known it until the day a moon before, the day Melkian had entrusted them with the truth. The day legend and reality had melded perfectly in Kyrian’s mind, and the day Salienne had turned her back upon the Skyad who had raised her. Only a moon had passed, just one, and yet Kyrian felt as if he had known of his Green blood for an eternity. He could scarcely remember a time when his failings as a Skyad had been his failures, his shortcomings.

  It had grown easier to hide as time had passed. Melkian had made a sky-cloak for him, treated and cured in such a way as to produce an artificial gift, a cloak that would allow Kyrian to meld with the mist, enough to be accepted into the guard. He had done the same for Brondro long ago, a private pride to Kyrian as he had worn his false veil into battle alongside pure-blooded warriors. He was following in his father’s legacy. He was a half-blood, strengthened by the might of Brondro’s people.

  If only Salienne could see the truth as he did.

  If only Salienne could forgive.

  If only Salienne were here.

  He paused upon the riverbank and raised a hand to his eyes to study the stars, shielding the forest and the river from his vision, placing himself once more upon the Rosghel Cloud in the light of the three moons. The hood of his sky-cloak obscured his vision of the Skies; he tossed it back onto his shoulders and allowed the night wind to buffet his dark hair freely, not caring that he was now exposed to any and all watching eyes, not caring that the wood was likely filled with threats he could not see. The first and second moons were waning, but the third, as always, remained full. It was strange, and somehow reassuring, to know that some things did not change regardless of the mass beneath one’s feet. He drew a breath, released it, raked his hair. Wondered if, in Rosghel, Melkian suffered for his sin.

  He was so lost in his fragile, starlit fantasy that he did not hear the footfalls, did not hear the almost-silent ring of metal upon metal until a blade was pressed to his spine and a voice was dark in his ear.

  “Move, Skyad,” it rasped, to the tightening of the knife, “and you shall not see dawn again.”

  Ten

  Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well. And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet thee . . .

  -Exodus 4:14B

  “On your knees,” the voice commanded, accompanied by the blade’s cold point. Kyrian complied, grinding his teeth, cursing himself for dropping his guard as his knees sank into the sludge of the riverbank. “Who are you, Skyad, and what is your business in these woods?”

  The blade against his spine forced him to straighten, to his own disgust. “That is not your concern.”

  “The business of strangers in the North Wood is always my concern. I would caution you, Skyad, against playing such games with me. I have killed your kind before.”

  A sardonic snort escaped his lips before he could smother it. “So have I.”

  The knife tightened.

  “Your arrogance shall be your demise,” the creature hissed. “You should know, Skyad, that you are not the first of your people to enter my domain, and whether you shall be the first to leave it remains to be seen. You will grant me the answers I seek, or die. The choice is yours.”

  These situations were growing tiresome. “My name,” he replied at last, darkly, “is Kyrian of the Rain Realm.” He craned for a glimpse of the creature behind his back before his head was turned promptly forward again by the point of the chilled knife.

  “Your name is of no importance to me.” The stranger’s voice was cold but decidedly youthful.

  “You asked, did you not? I have answered.”

  “Good. You are wiser than those before you. Continue in this manner, Skyad, and you may yet escape with your life.” His tone turned toxic. “We return, then, to the question you can no longer es
cape. What is your business in the North Wood, domain of the people of Robinsdwel?”

  Kyrian’s interest perked. “Robinsdwel? It is near, then?”

  “What concern is it of yours?”

  Kyrian clenched his jaw, patience swiftly thinning; one hand stole silently beneath his cloak, groping for the hilt of the Sword, soundless beneath the whisper of the Nelduith. “It is of great concern to me, friend,” he returned snidely, “for my business lies with a Robin warrior by the name Rydel of Robinsdwel. He is the grandson of Camuel the Robin, said to dwell within the North Wood . . . I know little else of him.”

  The knife stiffened against his spine. The stranger scoffed, “A Robin warrior?” but his voice was tight, almost strained. “This is a rare creature indeed, if you speak the truth, Silver filth, although naturally I would not expect you to know of such things. The affairs of the Greenfolk are too far beneath you, are they not?”

  Kyrian ground his teeth, feeling something warm and livid seep into his blood from the wellspring deep in his chest that simmered always beneath his emotions, like a waiting beast. The hilt of the Sword was warm in his palm, pulsing with the memory of Aradin’s presence in the cavern. He wondered at the stranger’s reflexes, painfully aware of his disadvantage on his knees. “You do not know him, then,” he remarked, as coolly as his hardening resolve would allow. “Rydel of Robinsdwel.”

  The stranger’s tone turned frigid. “I know all of them.”

  “I must speak with him.”

  He barked a crude laugh. “Speak with him? Yes, with the point of a dagger, I have no doubt. Allow me to offer a small wisdom to you, Skyad—Rydel of Robinsdwel is not easily defeated. Many of your kind have fallen to his blades, and many more shall attempt to destroy him before the Usurper drifts among his forebears. He is invincible, Silver filth. No Skyad shall fell him while Robinsdwel remains beneath his charge.”