by Devan Skyles
The cloud over Rhydian’s mind lifted and his consciousness returned, his lungs still aching as he struggled to suck in air. He couldn’t see. Had he gone blind? In a wild panic he cast his gaze to and fro, trying futilely to make out his surroundings.
“Awe, can’t see?” another voice mocked, this one female. “We can see you.” She chuckled maliciously. They spoke with a strange accent, the ‘R’s rolled in the back of the throat like a growl.
Rhydian’s heart raced as his blood ran cold with terror. “I— I don’t want any trouble,” he stammered. “I’m unarmed.”
“How convenient,” the first voice growled. “An easy kill.”
Numerous amused laughs permeated the darkness all around.
Rhydian began to shake and fumbled around the ground for anything he could use as a weapon. He recoiled as something slashed, lightning fast, across his hand. He felt warm blood trickle down between his fingers.
“I claim the feathers,” another female voice came. “They’ll look beautiful in my daughter’s hair. What a lovely color.”
Something brushed against Rhydian’s right wing and he heard a purring sound. He snapped his wing shut instinctively, rousing another round of sinister chuckles.
The first, deep voice spoke again, this time directly in front of Rhydian, so close that he could feel his hot breath. “What brings you to our domain, little cloudwalker? The sky wasn’t big enough for you?”
Rhydian gathered all the courage he could muster and answered confidently, “I came here quite by accident. I was engaged in an altercation with a thief and was injured.”
“You’re people are all thieves,” the disembodied voice replied. “You steal our land to make your gateways, and then deny us the use of them.”
“Our thresholds require contact with the ground,” he replied. “And they were never yours to use. We need the ilïmbalm to survive. You don’t.”
“True, we do not require the balm as you say, but many of us would like to return to visit our motherland. Our people were the first to travel though the gateways, before your kind took control of them and pretended they belonged to you.”
Rhydian was perplexed. He had never heard the likes of his claims before. Growing up, he had always been taught that the ground-dwellers tried to take over the thresholds and keep them for themselves.
His eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness now, but all he could make out was the faint, reflective glow of numerous green eyes glinting in and out of existence all around him. The sight sent a shudder up his spine.
“We don’t get many wingfolk down here,” the creature continued, circling him as he spoke. “Certainly not any as helpless as yourself. Are you a spy?”
“I’m a smith. I make—” he considered telling the truth for a moment, that he made the weapons used to kill ground-dwellers in combat, but he decided it was safer to lie. “I make jewelry.” This got the strongest laugh from the creatures.
“What is your name, little cloudwalker?”
Rhydian almost lied about that, too, but saw no point. “My name is Rhydian Gideonson.”
A hushed excitement swept through the invisible group. “Eaglehide!” he heard one of them gasp.
“Silence!” The deep voice growled, and the whispering stopped at once. “You, cloudwalker. You said Gideonson?”
Rhydian tensed, now thinking he should have lied. “Yes.”
The ground-dweller growled deeply. “If you lie to me, it will be the last thing you ever do. Was your father the warlord, Gideon, who fought in the war twenty years ago?”
“Y-yes,” he stammered. “Yes, he was.” Another wave of excited murmuring, even louder now, swept over the group.
“He lies!” one of them accused. “No son of Eaglehide would ever become a jewelry maker!”
Rhydian had never heard anyone refer to his father as “Eaglehide.” He sat there on the ground, wanting desperately to fly away, but he knew he wouldn’t make it ten feet, even if the forest wasn’t so stiflingly dark. The panic in his heart gave way to despair. He was sure they would kill him right then and there. All the stories he’d heard of ground-dwellers told of ruthless killers who showed no mercy.
After what seemed an eternity, the whispering finally died down, and the deep, commanding voice addressed Rhydian again.
“Gideonson! You will leave at first light! You will continue no further through our forest or you will be killed. Am I understood, cloudwalker?”
“I— I understand,” he replied in astonishment. They weren’t going to kill him? Was his father such an intimidating figure to them that they feared his wrath from beyond the grave? He glanced around as the glinting green eyes dwindled silently into the engulfing darkness, and he waited several minutes in silence, not knowing if he was alone.
Despite his pain and exhaustion, Rhydian didn’t sleep that night. He spent what had become the longest night of his life cowering in total darkness, waiting for an attack that never came. It was so cold on the forest floor that he wrapped his aching wings around his body to keep warm. Ominous noises and distant roars echoed through the trees every few moments. He passed the time by preening and straightening his flight feathers so that, as soon as he could see, he could make his escape to the sky.
When the first rays of day finally filtered down through the canopy, Rhydian stood up, groaning in pain. He looked down at his body, covered all over with cuts and bruises. Dried blood caked the side of his face. He opened up his wings slowly, testing their strength. They ached horribly, but he knew he could not linger. Flapping hard through the pain, He rose slowly through the trees. A series of deafening roars, from seemingly everywhere around him, prompted him upward. He labored higher and higher, carefully maneuvering through the tightly woven branches of the canopy, but he finally rose above the treetops.
He couldn’t believe the night’s ordeal, and still couldn’t fathom why the ground-dwellers left him alive. As he winged his way home, the cool morning air soothed his aching limbs. When he arrived home he went straight to his room and slowly, carefully lowered himself into bed. Just as he was closing his eyes to sleep, his mother entered the room.
“Where were you all night?” she inquired, and then she got a look at him and forgot about the first question. “What happened to you?!”
“I got robbed,” he answered groggily, “but I’m okay. I just need some rest.”
“Nonsense!” she exclaimed, running to his side. “You need treatment! Look at you! Was this because of all that extra ilïmbalm you’ve been carrying around? I still haven’t been brave enough to ask where you’re getting it!”
“I earned it,” he lied. It hurt inside, lying to his mother. “I’ve been taking on extra work to help out. I thought you’d be happy. We can finally afford things now.”
“I am happy, dear,” she said, gently stroking his curly hair, “but if this is going to start happening to you now, I’d rather be poor. I’ll go get the medical balm.”
She then got up and briskly walked out of the room. She returned carrying a small bottle of ilïmbalm, but instead of the usual red, this batch was a deep shade of purple. It was a special blend that had been filtered and treated for medical purposes. She had Rhydian take a swig (which he swallowed with disdain) and went about dabbing it on his wounds with a clean rag. When she had tended to his needs, she stood in the doorway, shaking her head with concern, and slowly closed the door.
Rhydian woke, disoriented. The light coming from the window was dim, but he wasn’t sure at first whether it was morning or evening. He looked over his wounds, which had already begun to heal. Ilimíra’s medical developments were some of their crowned achievements, but even the richest medical balm couldn’t heal that much in just a few hours. It was surely the next morning.
He reached under his bed and retrieved a small bottle from his vast ilïmbalm cache and downed the entire thing to take the edge off the pain. He then got up and moved slowly to the wet room, where he opened the tap and bathed
himself in the cool, soothing water. He washed the blood from his skin and inspected where the ground-dweller had struck him. Across the back of his hand were three deep furrows in the skin, perfectly parallel to each other. The incisions were so immaculate, they looked as though they’d been done with razors.
Drying himself off and fluffing his feathers, he put on a fresh pair of trousers and grabbed an olüri fruit (which resembled a large, speckled cherry with a hard shell and a thorny stem) to eat on his way to the forge.
Before heading to the door, he dug through his closet and pulled out an exquisite two-handed longsword. The cross guard was dinged and nicked in places from heavy use, and the leather-bound haft was worn smooth and shiny from repeated friction. He belted it on and made his way to the exit. He wasn’t taking any chances now.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Rhydian turned and saw his mother standing there, looking concerned. “Got to get to work,” he said simply.
“I already told Mr. Ferro what happened. He said not to worry about work for the next few days.”
Rhydian wouldn’t normally have argued, but he needed a little normalcy to help him put the ordeal behind him. “I’m doing a lot better now, Mom. No worries.”
“Are you going to report the attack to the Judges?”
“I don’t know what good it’d do,” he reasoned. “I have no idea who they were. Anyway, I just want to forget about the whole thing.”
“Maybe you should at least go tell Corvus,” she pleaded.
Rhydian groaned inwardly. The last thing he needed was to go complaining about his problems to General Corvus. He had his own concerns, like leading the Ilimíra Fleet.
“I’m a grown man, Mom,” he said with a kiss on her cheek. “I can take care of myself.”
“Oh, clearly!” Her sarcasm was unmistakable.
Rhydian arrived at Ferro’s Swords and Steel and stepped into the heat of the forge. Around the furnace were Mr. Ferro and another of his employees, a young man named Talla. Ferro, noticing the light from the door, turned and saw Rhydian standing there. With an astonished expression, he placed his work back into the heat stones, set aside his tools, and approached his student.
“I wasn’t expecting you today!” Ferro said.
Rhydian shrugged. “I didn’t want to leave you short-handed.”
He gestured to the young man, who was pounding away clumsily at his anvil. “I had Talla come in for the day. You should be resting.”
“I’ve been sleeping for a full day already,” he replied with a shrug. “I needed to get out.”
“Well, in that case, I’m glad you’re here,” he replied, putting a hand on Rhydian’s shoulder and walking him outside. Overhead, Ilimíri were flying this way and that, and songbirds were chirping gleefully nearby.
“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” the old smith continued. “Rhydian, I’m not getting any younger, and it’s getting clearer to me every day that this is a young man’s game.” Rhydian wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “I can’t manage the demands of this job anymore. I’ve decided it’s time for me to retire.”
Rhydian was shocked by the news. “But, Mr. Ferro, the Fleet relies heavily on your forge in this part of the country! What will they do without it? You’re the most skilled sword smith in Ilimíra!”
“Not anymore,” he replied. “You have surpassed me in every way, Rhydian. I’ve never seen such skill in someone your age. I like to think that if you had made the blade your father took into combat, he might have come back to us. I’ve always felt, in some small way, I let him down.” He glanced down at the sword at Rhydian’s hip. “But that’s neither here nor there. You have a gift, son. And that’s why I want you to run the forge in my absence.”
Rhydian stood there dumbfounded. He was flattered, of course, but as he looked at the old craftsman, his tattered, burnt cloths, his tough, leathery skin, his soot-stained feathers — he couldn’t imagine spending the rest of his life in the forge. His heart sank. He wasn’t ready for this responsibility, but neither did he want to disappoint Mr. Ferro, who’d put so much faith in him over the years; who was putting all his faith in him now.
“I— I don’t know what to say,” he replied tepidly. “I’m honored.”
“Good!” replied Ferro, a big grin on his face. “I knew you were the man for the job.”
At that moment, a young soldier in light armor soared in and alighted on the edge of the balcony in front of them. He was lanky and awkward, appearing too small for his breastplate; a new recruit, most likely.
“Mr. Rhydian, sir?” the boy addressed.
“That’s me,” he replied.
“Oh, um, I was asked to summon you to General Corvus’s council chambers, sir.”
Rhydian thanked the soldier, who promptly flew off.
“Something wrong with the shipment?” Ferro speculated.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I guess I’ll go find out.”
Rhydian was grateful for the reason to excuse himself. A pit in his stomach formed and a feeling of guilt and obligation welled up in his conscience. How could he turn Ferro down now?
A swift breeze jostled Rhydian around in the air slightly, but he angled his body just the right way and transferred the wind into lift, bringing him diagonally up along the Monolith City. He flapped to compensate for the direction he was being carried, a motion that was still made agonizing by his injuries, and finally soared through the Fleet compound into the General’s conference room. Corvus was already there, sitting at the table with five of his officers, serious expressions on their faces.
Corvus looked up as he entered and stood up. “Just the man I wanted to see! Excuse us, gentlemen. Rhydian and I have some things to discuss.”
The five men stood and exited the building.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Rhydian asked.
Corvus’s lively demeanor suddenly faded when he saw Rhydian’s injuries. “Good, gracious, what happened to you, boy?”
“I was at the Treetown last night,” he explained, “and I got attacked by some thugs.”
The General, noticing the slashes on Rhydian’s hand, took him by the wrist, and held his hand up. With the other hand, he pulled back the sleeve of his uniform to expose an almost identical scar across his own shoulder.
“That doesn’t look like the work of thugs to me, Rhydian. I have seen many wounds like these in my day. What aren’t you telling me?”
Rhydian, realizing he couldn’t talk his way out of this one, recounted the entire story (leaving out the ilïmbalm and where he got it).
“And they left you alive?” Corvus asked, astonished. “Why?”
“They didn’t say,” he replied, “and I didn’t ask.”
“Did they tell you anything else? About your father, I mean?”
“No, that was it. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”
“Well, that’s probably for the best. You don’t want to know how the minds of those savages work.”
“Why was it you summoned me then, sir?”
“Right! I’ll get directly to the point. Here’s the thing, Rhydian, people respected your father. He was courageous, and he did a lot of things that no other Fleetman could. It is for that very reason that people look up to you; to uphold his legacy. And it is for that very reason I’d like to offer you your very own commission as one of my lieutenants. You’ll report to me directly. What do you say?”
For the second time that day, Rhydian felt completely blindsided. Why did everyone expect so much from him?
“Thank you, sir, but I really don’t think I’m soldier material. I’m certainly not an officer.”
“Well, you’ll need some training, for sure, but I think if anything displays your ability as a soldier, it was your actions on the ground the other night! Sounds exactly like something your father would have done. You should be proud!”
“But I’m not my father,” he retorted, sounding a little more angry th
an he’d intended. “I’m not brave like he was. When I was down there, surrounded by grounders, all I could think of was whether or not they were going to tear me apart! My father would have — my father did fight to the end. I could never do that.”
“You underestimate yourself, son,” he replied. “Do you think your father never felt fear? Let me tell you this, when we fought together, we lived every single day thinking that one of us would have to go home and tell the other’s family that they weren’t coming home. We thought we were going to die every single day. But he kept fighting for what he believed in anyway. Mind you, we didn’t always see eye-to-eye on those things, but that doesn’t change the facts. Your father wasn’t fearless like he is in the stories, but he was the most courageous warrior I have ever met. And I see every bit of him when I look at you, Rhydian.”
Rhydian breathed a shaky, unsure breath. “I don’t.”
He turned to walk away before Corvus could notice the tears welling up in his eyes. He picked up a brisk pace, readying himself to jump from the balcony, when he ran directly into another man, knocking the both of them off their feet.
“I’m terribly sorry, sir!” Rhydian exclaimed, helping the man to his feet and brushing the tears from his face.
“As you should be,” the man berated.
He was clearly a tree-dweller, though taller than most, with bright red patches on his wings. He had short, black hair and a trimmed beard. He appeared only a few years older than Rhydian, very handsome and suave, and there was a smug air of entitlement about him. His forked tail was so long that it swept the floor behind him.
“Governor Redwing, sir!” Corvus said, approaching the newcomer with his hand extended.
Rhydian thought the name was odd. He knew that many tree dwelling communities named their children after distinguishable physical characteristics, and that because no one receives their permanent plumage until puberty, they sometimes went several years without a name. It was an unusual practice, he thought, but who was he to judge the customs of other cultures.
Redwing ignored Corvus’s outstretched hand and simply said, “General. I trust you will ensure this sort of —” he paused a moment, as if pondering the best word, “incident — does not transpire again?”