by Niki Florica
Another image darted through his mind, across his sweat-blurred vision. A green leaf chain, flickering in the sunlight, swaying against the chest of a Robin with grey-streaked hair and a white scar tracing one cheekbone. A Robin who carried his bone-hilted knife beneath his waistband, knowing his fellow tree-dwellers were distressed by the sight. A Robin who was the messenger of Aradin himself, ever flitting to and from the Skies upon the business of the King, but always returning to Robinsdwel, as solemnly promised. Always returning to his grandson. His strange, grave, lonely grandson.
A strangled half-sob leached through Rydel’s clenched teeth. He wondered what his grandfather would say to see him now, fallen to his knees upon the forest floor, heaving for breath and fighting to resist the sea of hate churning deeper in his heart with every passing day. Wondered if he looked on the outside as dark and hollow and soulless as he felt within. Wondered if Camuel would even recognize him, if he looked upon his grandson after so many long and lonesome years.
The world swirled to a cold, black void as realization settled in his lungs.
Dead.
He cringed, unable to bear the word’s weight even in the confines of his own mind. The tears came slowly, stinging his eyes and leaking through sealed lashes to moisten the earth beneath his hands and knees. It could not be true. It could not be true. The Skyad was deceiving him, using his Silver treacheries to bewitch him while somewhere in the Green Lands his grandfather lived and breathed, awaiting the time to return. He could not weep for him. He had never wept for him. He had not wept when Camuel had first vanished without farewell, not when the worlds of the other youths had grown brighter while his own had sunk into darkness. He had not wept when days and moons had bled into years and still he was alone, estranged from his people and clinging to hope even while seeds of doubt had embedded themselves in his heart. He had not wept when the Robins had first called him a doomsayer, a bearer of ill tidings and dark fates. He had not wept when he had realized for the first, stark time that he was utterly, utterly alone.
Rydel of Robinsdwel did not mourn. He did not grieve. His heart had shrivelled to an unfeeling husk a long, long time ago, and such emotion, such pain, was beyond him.
The world was grey, the first fingers of dawn clawing at the Skies from beneath the tree-lined horizon.
As a shadow in the darkness, alone and vulnerable beneath the trees, Rydel of Robinsdwel wept for the only father he had ever known.
Twelve
He startled awake with a surge of panic, one hand groping for the Sword while his mind sought to rationalize why it was wet, the other clenched still about the green leaf chain. The stone at his back was cold, jagged, the riverbank damp with the mist of the Nelduith that the sun had not yet risen to burn. It was dawn. How could it be dawn? The third moon had scarcely crested, the stars had not yet faded, so how in Rosghel’s name . . . ?
Kyrian unleashed a self-loathing groan into the pale morning light.
Melkian would not have been impressed.
He stood, shaking his dripping right hand and slipping the chain beneath his collar, where its weight could burden his conscience unseen. He had slept, somehow, through the third night watch, exposed upon the riverbank with the Robin’s stolen inheritance in hand and a foreign world of threats at his back. He snarled at himself, dragging a hand down his face. It was a miracle he had awoken at all.
When he walked his wounded knee screamed in protest, but he did not allow himself the luxury of favouring it, too intent upon the pounding in his skull and the mocking sensation that he was more exhausted then than he had been the night before. The Sword in its sheath still hung at his side. It no longer glowed, and in the plain, leather scabbard its grand hilt looked almost tarnished, almost ordinary, despite the power pulsing in its pommel. He wondered if the change was the illusion of the sheath, meant to conceal the blade’s identity from the world’s watchful eyes. Aradin had said as much, had he not? Secrecy was his ally.
He told himself that lie, that the sheath was responsible for the chill he felt upon touching the hilt, or the dull, lifeless sheen of the blade when he drew. He told himself it meant nothing; it had no tie whatsoever to the green pendant weighing like a grindstone upon his neck.
But unlike Salienne, he had never been overly skilled in the art of lying to himself.
A spark of colour drew his eyes to the treetops, where a slight green shadow sat perched in the willow boughs, glaring down upon him. The Robin’s gaze dipped to his feet, then rose again, sardonic. “Rested?”
Kyrian glared, but only as a mask for the chill riding his spine.
It was truly, truly a miracle that he had awoken at all.
“Rosghel flies swiftly over the western wilds,” the Robin said blandly, standing upon his willow perch. “It is crossing the Oenghi Sands and hastens now to the Azure Sea, toward the Storm Realm. If you wish to reach it before the skyladder leaves the earth, we must cross the river before midday.”
Kyrian squinted up at him, the green-cloaked figure with a scarlet feather tucked behind one ear. “There is a crossing, then. Is it near?”
“Near enough.” The Robin walked to the bough’s edge and dropped deftly to the bank, the branch scarcely bending beneath his weight. His voice was flat, almost monotone. “It was once a great bridge, built ages past by the birdfolk in the days of union between the Robins and the Jays of Jacondel. When the western woods grew treacherous, the Jays returned to the eastern side of the Nelduith and the Caralim crossing fell into disrepair with none upon the west bank to maintain it.”
“What of the Robins?” Kyrian asked.
Rydel of Robinsdwel stared at him as if no creature more ignorant had ever been born to Ariad. “The Robins,” he replied slowly, “do not concern themselves with anything beyond feasting, music, and wine.”
His cool green gaze held Kyrian’s stare, daring him to question it, daring him to ask. He looked older now than he had in the moonlight, his features a taut, blank mask, his sharp eyes rimmed with red. The knees of his trousers were torn, soiled. Blood gleamed beneath his nails . . . Kyrian hoped it was his own.
There was no ceremony. The journey began simply when the Robin turned his back and Kyrian, steeling frayed nerves, stepped wordlessly, doggedly after him. They followed the river, beneath the shadow of the willows, striding where mud succumbed to dust and the gnarled roots of the trees protruded like Elyis’ begging, clawing hands, groping at their feet. The sun rose over the North Wood and burned the mist to memory, rendering Kyrian’s sky-cloak useless. The Robin remained silent, his presence as cold and detached this day as it had been hot, wild, and livid the night before. Kyrian found them equally unnerving.
When he walked, the Robin was soundless. The worn, green-beaded moccasins left no print in the earth and whispered over the muddy riverbank like the silent paws of the wind. Kyrian watched them as he followed in trail, watched the light, sure footfalls and the soiled, forest-green cape, and the way the feather bobbed with his steps. The Robin’s green-hilted knives swayed at his hips, the blades protruding in curved scythes whenever his cloak shifted. Kyrian wondered how many Skyads they had felled, then wondered how swiftly he would die if he asked.
The necklace of Camuel was cold against his throat, the pendant resting on his chest beneath Rosghel’s insignia. He felt it, its weight like a burden on his heart, pulling at his conscience each time the Robin’s scarred arms appeared from behind the shadow of his cape. Kyrian had stolen it, exploited it, seized it as his weapon and plunged it deep into the Robin’s chest, to remain there, his advantage. His security against the threat of the green-hilted knives, and one Robin’s hatred of all Skyadkind.
The sun was high above the yellow wood when the first strains of song drifted over the river, wafting from somewhere in the distant treetops, soft, light and clear in the silence. With no life in the wood and no song save the river’s, each note sparkled in the pale morning, crystallizing above the stillness like a cord of glittering diamonds. The Robin’s t
ousled head lifted at the sound, and for a moment Kyrian watched his every muscle tense. Stalling, as if each note were intended for him, rooting him where he stood, holding him there, rigid, trapped beneath its merry spell. “Robinsdwel,” he said suddenly, tersely, in response to a question Kyrian had not asked. He began forward again, dragging himself from the trance. “It is Robinsdwel. The morning song. The Robins are awakening.”
A moment of halting steps before he paused again, his fingers clenching and unclenching in tight white fists, his forward foot twitching as if fighting whatever indecision held him there, still as ice. Kyrian felt one hand seek instinctively for the hilt of the Sword, watching the clenched hands, noting their nearness to the green-hilted knives.
Suddenly, decisively, the Robin turned, expression etched in stone. “Give me your sword.”
“What?”
“Your sword.” He withheld one nail-chewed hand. “Give it to me.”
“Not likely, Robin,” Kyrian scoffed, but his eyes did not stray from the other hand, the one hanging ready alongside one emerald hilt. “I am not your prisoner.”
The hard eyes glowed sickly green. “By our agreement, perhaps not. But there has been an alteration in our plans. I must pass through Robinsdwel to obtain provisions for the journey ahead, and you—” his fingers twitched—“shall not leave my sight so armed.”
“Fine.” Kyrian stepped backward. “Robinsdwel. So be it. But the Sword remains with me.”
A flicker of irritation crossed the blank features, danced through both bright eyes, then disappeared. The Robin folded his arms, the slightest of creases forming between his rusty brows. “I am in no mood for negotiation, Skyad. You wish to reach Rosghel within the fortnight, I wish to have my prize. Neither shall be possible if your guide falls dead of hunger in the midst of the Jardenith wilds, shall it?”
Kyrian inhaled a breath and released it through his nostrils, willing himself to reject the bait. The Robin watched him keenly, patiently; the light, once-white shirt tucked into his trousers ruffled with the wind. Between Kyrian’s ribs he felt his temper stirring, and through his mind Melkian’s cool voice urged restraint. Patience, Kyrian. There shall be a time to prove yourself, but it must be wisely chosen. A rival need not be an enemy.
Too late.
“Very well,” he said at last. For Melkian. “I shall pass through Robinsdwel as your prisoner.”
The Robin raised his chin and withheld his hand, waiting, lips quirked smugly to one side.
“But the Sword remains with me.”
The smirk died. The Robin’s nostrils widened, then narrowed. “You would place yourself at my mercy for the sake of your weapon? You realize, Skyad, that I hold the power to kill you at any moment?”
Kyrian glared. “Oh, I have no doubt of that. I would hardly expect a Green to honour his oath.”
The eyes narrowed to slits. “I do not break my vows.”
“Good.” Kyrian withheld his hands. “Then I have nothing to fear.”
For a single, silent moment, it almost seemed that the Robin’s cold mask wavered, the simmering wrath from the previous night seeping through the chinks in his armour. The taut flesh over his cheekbones stretched tauter; his knuckles flexed white against his folded arms. A glint of wildness, of reckless hate, gleamed fleetingly in his irises, as if the hot wrath pulsed just beneath his skin, leaching through the fissures in his facade like liquid fire from a mountain’s heart, his flesh too thin to withhold it.
It passed with a pulse of Kyrian’s heart. Rydel of Robinsdwel chilled. Diminished, to an empty statue, carved from indifference, etched in frigid stone. He drew one knife and gestured blankly toward the shadow of the forest, his eyes vacant pools of green, his face a perfect mask.
Kyrian frowned, surprised, glancing dubiously at his unbound hands.
Camuel’s heir gave a ghost of a smirk. “After you, Skyad,” he said, unreadably. “Robinsdwel awaits.”
It was a strange thing, to be a prisoner, guarded by the unfailing eyes of the enemy, prodded forward by the occasional knife point, marching when ordered, halting when allowed, and yet simultaneously free and unbound with a Sword at one’s side and a thousand opportunities to use it. Kyrian could have tolerated the Robin’s frigid nimbus, perhaps even the constant watchful gleam of the creature’s venomous eyes. With some small effort the forest could be replaced by silver-white mist, the ground with damp cloud, and Rydel of Robinsdwel with a pale-haired, blue-eyed Grey. Such realities were not difficult to blur.
He could have tolerated the slander, the taunts, the mocking. He had faced arrogance before.
But the knife point to his spine, prodding him onward like a purchased slave . . .
That was growing tiresome.
The North Wood was silent and empty of life. The leaves were yellow, curled in defeat, drifting to the ground in silent showers to revert to the dust from which they were born. They crumbled beneath Kyrian’s mud-encrusted boots, screaming of thirst as with each footfall a pitiful plume of dust erupted at his feet. Roots protruded from the forest floor like desperate, clawing hands, begging alms of mercy from the Skyad prisoner, the trees looming over him as if they sensed his presence, the blood that ran in his veins. They were no less desperate in the depths of the wood than the willows that lined the banks of the Nelduith, all of them thirsting, all of them dying, the river an indifferent witness.
“You expected a grander welcome, Skyad?” The Robin’s voice was hard and flat, tinged with something jagged. “Your noble kinfolk the Dryads shall not greet you here. They have vanished, driven from Ariad’s bounds by the tyranny of the Usurper. Their spirits linger no more in the husks of these trees.”
Kyrian glared steadily ahead, focusing upon the heavy air in his lungs. “I suppose I am to blame for that as well. You realize that there is, in fact, a difference between one Skyad and the Usurper?”
A sharp prod, driving him forward, setting fire to his veins. “That remains to be seen.”
Kyrian bit his tongue and gritted his teeth until his skull ached. For Melkian.
The singing was ever present, punctuated by the rapping of countless feet and the whistling of merry pipes in the treetops. It was surreal, wafting from the dying canopy to skitter and dance through a wood ravaged by thirst and hunched upon the edge of death. Kyrian had heard tales of the merriment of Robins, but until then he had been questioning their credibility. While he would never admit it to the Robin, Skyads were not known to be overly attuned to the affairs of the Greenfolk.
The trees were gargantuan. Great, noble pillars upholding a plafond of leaves like the ceiling of Rhos-Arpal itself. Reverent and silent, they stood in commanding vigil over the wood, emaciated with age and thirst, resonating wisdom. Kyrian felt it, felt the quiet sapience echoing from their husks, wondered if the memory of Dryads remained within the wood even in their absence. Melkian had once said that in the rising and falling of ages, none in Ariad had endured the trials of time as the ancient keepers of the trees. The third and final strand of the Duriyal: Dryads, Naiads, Skyads.
He was halted before a towering oak, wizened and gnarled and crippled with age. He felt the pressure on his spine relieve, heard the metallic protest of the Robin’s knife returning to its sheath.
Then his hands were forced behind his back.
Tied with cords.
Pulled taut.
And Kyrian found himself bound to the shredded flesh of the oak, livid and burning and white-knuckled with fury but too acutely aware of his position to curse the Robin for all that he was. A liar, a spineless cheat, an arrogant, ignorant, impossible worm of a—
“I cannot but notice your displeasure, Skyad,” the creature hummed, dusting his hands as he severed Kyrian’s stream of mental invective. “Surely you did not truly believe I would allow you to enter Robinsdwel? And with your weapon?” He snorted. “The ignorance of the Skies does not cease to astound.”
The rope bit mercilessly into Kyrian’s wrists, chewing flesh, but h
e was almost thankful. Skies only knew what wrath he might have unleashed upon this creature’s pompous, smirking face had his hands been free to seize their will. “You said we must pass through Robinsdwel,” he spat. “You cannot leave me here.”
“On the contrary.” Rydel of Robinsdwel’s thin lips curled. “I most assuredly can.”
Carved into the oak at Kyrian’s back was a ladder of shallow enclaves, staggered and crudely carven, reeking of sap and oak flesh. The shallow footholds dotted the trunk from the forest floor to the tangled yellow canopy high above, most of them half-sealed, the others chipped with use, all of them misshapen by neglect. With the speed of a sky wind the Robin leaped deftly onto the trunk, his moccasins finding footholds above and to the right of Kyrian’s skull, sending a shower of bark down upon his shoulder. The green beads rasped against the footholds, grating in his ear.
Kyrian craned to shred him with a glare: the blithe, nimble Robin whose moccasined feet had already ascended three footholds in the heartbeats since he had mounted the oak. “You coward,” he hissed, his skin burning, steaming, storming with the boiling of his veins. “You gave me your word, Robin.”
Rydel of Robinsdwel released one handhold and swung out from the trunk, to hang there, from one hand and one lodged foot, as he gazed through dispassionate eyes down upon his prisoner. “I intend to fulfill my oath, Skyad,” he superciliously replied. “My service, for your payment. This I shall uphold, as is the way of honour. But you—” his eyes glinted—“I cannot trust to do likewise. You have refused me your weapon, and thus you are my prisoner as long as we tread the Nirtuikann paths. This is my domain, Skyad. My realm, my dominion. Here, I am king.” He smirked. “And you are nothing.”
Oh, how Kyrian ached to wring his filthy neck.
Instead, he twisted in his bonds and willed his voice to level. “How may I be certain of your return?”
The twitch of a brow and a glint in green eyes were the extent of the Robin’s exasperation. He released the oak enclaves and dropped lightly to the ground, dishevelled red-brown hair rustling with the motion, and faced Kyrian at ten paces with a spark of malice in his young, taut features. Kyrian did not see his hand reach for one knife, did not hear the ring of metal pulling from the sheath, but suddenly the Robin’s hand was arcing through the air and a blade was singing in his ear and a worn, green hilt was trembling by his jaw, its blade embedded deep in the oak behind his back.