Age of Myth

by Michael J. Sullivan

  He glared back defiantly, his anger unmistakable.

  Most people wouldn’t risk antagonizing the son of the only Fhrey endowed by the god Ferrol with the power to kill or order the death of another of their kind. But being too lenient wouldn’t help Mawyndulë or the future of their people. After spending time with him, Arion was sure Fane Fenelyus wanted her grandson schooled in more than just the Art. And she was going to do exactly that.

  You may be the prince, she thought, but I’ve lived more than two thousand years. Which well do you think goes deeper?

  If she was going to teach him anything, she had to establish respect. As far as Arion knew, the only person Mawyndulë held any respect for, other than his father, was First Minister Gryndal. Not a surprise, Gryndal was a legend and held in awe by nearly every Miralyith.

  Arion didn’t waiver. She stood with folded arms, staring directly back. After several minutes, the prince’s ire turned to bafflement. Servants who’d been with him since birth weren’t likely to lock eyes with him for long. This was only their third meeting, his second lesson, and the prince was testing her boundaries. Centuries of meditation and training gave her a considerable edge. Arion didn’t so much as blink. The prince struggled to mimic her resolve. The lad was stubborn if nothing else. That was good. It showed a strength of character. She could work with that.

  In the stillness of their silent war, Arion could hear the rustle of leaves and the songs of birds entering an open window accompanied by a pleasant spring breeze. Deeper in the palace, she could make out the muffled music of the Estramnadon Choir practicing for their performance before the fane. She settled in for a long battle and focused on her breathing, each inhalation and exhalation evenly paced. Arion was just becoming comfortable when Mawyndulë’s glare wavered.

  The prince huffed, and with a scowl picked the stones up again—two in one hand, one in the other. He threw the first, but with too much force. Arion was grateful she had insisted on practicing under the high ceiling of the entrance hall. Mawyndulë quickly threw the second stone, too quickly. The height and timing were both off.

  Is he really so inept or feigning incompetence out of defiance?

  The stones came down like projectiles, and Mawyndulë chose to dodge rather than catch. She didn’t criticize his reluctance. From such a height the rocks would hurt.

  The stones hit the floor again with loud cracks.

  “See!” Mawyndulë shouted, putting hands on hips. He pursed his lips so tightly that they went white.

  “Yes, yes, I see. You’ve proved me wrong. That’s wonderful. Now, if you’d actually juggle the stones, I’d appreciate that even more.”

  “It’s stupid, and I don’t see what this has to do with the Art.” He hummed, and with a tension-filled flick of his fingers the stones rose and chased one another in a circle like a wheel spinning in the air. “Why should I use my hands when I can already do this with the Art? Your lessons make no sense.”

  “Yes, you’re very clever, but that isn’t today’s lesson,” she said.

  Arion picked up a wineglass from a nearby table. She’d been enjoying the light, delicate ambrosia while waiting for the prince. The glass was empty except for a dry red ring at the bottom.

  “Catch,” she said, and tossed it at Mawyndulë.

  “What?” Panic flashed across his face. The prince reached out with his control hand, and the crystal goblet bounced off his fingers. He tried to make a grab with the other, almost had it, but the glass slipped away, as did the stones. Everything struck marble. The stones clattered; the glass shattered.

  “Hmm,” Arion mused, tapping her upper lip. “Something seems to have gone wrong there, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, you threw a glass at me!”

  “Imagine if it had been a knife, a javelin, or a ball of fire. And instead of stones, what if those rocks were people’s lives?” She looked down at the mess at his feet. “Perhaps if you had learned how to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, they wouldn’t all be dead right now.”

  “Arion,” the boy said, looking down. “They aren’t people; they’re stones.”

  “Lucky for you, or should I say lucky for them? Now pick up those poor dead bodies and try again.”

  “And the glass? That was—”

  Arion coughed, and the eight large pieces, seventeen shards, and two thousand three hundred and seventy-four grains of powdered dust leapt off the floor and reassembled themselves into a glass, sitting on the table, perfectly restored. Even the residue stain remained.

  “Whoa.” Mawyndulë stared at the goblet. “How did you do that?”

  “By paying attention when others were teaching me and not questioning their methods.”

  The prince contemplated this. His eyes shifted between the glass and the stones while he rubbed the stubble on his head. Like all Miralyith, Mawyndulë shaved his head, but it had been a few days, and a dark shadow was forming. Arion couldn’t understand how he could allow that. She couldn’t go two days without shaving. It didn’t feel clean.

  As Mawyndulë bent to pick up the stones, the doors of the Grand Entrance burst open and boomed as they banged against the walls. Arion didn’t need to look to know who it was. Gryndal’s aversion to touching doors bordered on obsession. He avoided touching most things, preferring to cultivate lavish fingernails long enough to curl. Instead, he used the Art to punch doors open and always overdid it. Arion knew the excessive force wasn’t due to a lack of skill or control, just one of Gryndal’s many idiosyncrasies. His issue with doors was among the least peculiar.

  Gryndal didn’t offer so much as a glance in their direction as he marched across the hall. The jingling of tiny chains draped between piercings in his ears, cheeks, and nose accompanied each step. A long golden cape flowed in his wake. Arion rolled her eyes. Gryndal was using the Art to summon a breeze to make his mantle billow. He maintained a second weave to enhance its color, which was brighter than any dye could achieve. Mawyndulë had a different reaction. He watched the First Minister with wide-eyed eagerness.

  As Gryndal passed them without breaking his stride, he barked out, “You. Follow.”

  “Do you think he means you or me?” Mawyndulë asked Arion, unable to contain his excitement.

  “I suppose we should find out. Go on. You won’t be able to concentrate now, anyway.”

  The boy sprinted after the First Minister, toward the throne room. Arion bent down, picked up the rocks, and placed them in her satchel. Although ordinary, the stones were the same ones she’d learned with. Arion kept few keepsakes, but these were three of her most prized. She had hoped they would somehow make things easier with the prince by instilling the same sense of wonder in him as mastering them had in her. So far things weren’t going as she’d hoped.

  When she looked up, Mawyndulë was already out of sight. Arion sighed. Gryndal was a tough act to compete against. As the winner of the Grantheum Art Tournament each year as far back as anyone could recall, he was the idol of every Miralyith. Arion was in the minority; she couldn’t say she cared for him. Although Fenelyus hadn’t mentioned anything, Arion suspected that the old fane had shared Arion’s opinion.

  I wonder what she would have made of Trilos.

  Who, or what, he was remained a puzzle. She hadn’t seen him since that one meeting, and even though she inquired about him everywhere she went, no one had heard of anyone by that name. Her failed efforts to unmask the stranger deepened the mystery to the point that she almost doubted the encounter altogether.

  —

  Arion caught up to the pair outside the throne room. Even Gryndal didn’t dare blast open that door, but she was surprised he had waited for her.

  “Your flawless magnificence, I have news,” Gryndal said to the closed doors, and a moment later they opened. Gryndal entered, his cape whipping like the tail of a cat nervous about getting it caught. Arion and Mawyndulë followed.

  The throne room was precisely that—a room for the throne. The chamber needed
to be massive because the Forest Throne consisted of six extremely old and intertwined trees of different varieties—each representing one of the six original tribes of the Fhrey. A mass of roots formed the room’s floor, and the ceiling was an impenetrable canopy of branches and leaves. The fane’s “chair” predated everything except the Door. The Forest Throne was the second oldest thing in Erivan and perhaps the world. The room, the whole palace, had come later.

  “Your Majesty, a bird has arrived with confirmation from Alon Rhist on the matter of Nyphron and his Galantians,” Gryndal said. He and Mawyndulë stood at the foot of the Forest Throne, where Fane Lothian sat listening. “They have indeed refused to obey your edict and assaulted Petragar before escaping to the wilderness of Rhulyn.”

  “How is Petragar? Did they kill him?” the fane asked.

  The Fhrey’s supreme ruler—and divinely chosen voice of the god Ferrol—sat with one leg over the tendril arm of the magnificent throne, absently strumming a seven-string vellor. The Great Chamber wasn’t designed for music, and the soft notes were lost to the expanse, making weak, wistful sounds. Fane Lothian wore a green robe and the familiar gold-cast circlet of leaves, the same one that had graced Fenelyus’s head for as long as Arion had lived. Seeing it on his bald head, she conceded Fenelyus’s argument that hair had its beauty.

  “No,” Gryndal reported. “Petragar is alive but seriously injured.”

  “So where are they now?”

  “Unknown. I don’t expect they’ll return to Alon Rhist. Not on their own, that is. They’ll have to be brought to justice.”

  Lothian sighed. “I didn’t want it to be this way.”

  “Excuse me, my fane, but I’m a bit lost,” Arion said. “Exactly what are we talking about?”

  “Nyphron, son of Zephyron, was the commander at the Alon Rhist frontier outpost.”

  “Son of Zephyron? The Instarya who challenged you for the throne?”

  Lothian nodded. “I doubted his son would give me his unwavering loyalty, so I replaced him with Petragar. Nyphron took the change worse than I expected.”

  “Indeed, after beating the new commander bloody, he deserted,” Gryndal added.

  “That’s horrible,” Arion said. “I had no idea conditions out there had become so atrocious.”

  “Few do,” Gryndal told her. “And we need to keep it that way. All these centuries stationed on the borderlands, all these years living among savages, has bred dissent among the Instarya. They have grown wild and insubordinate, and the Galantians are the worst example of this. They’re more Rhune than Fhrey now.”

  Arion frowned as she noticed how Mawyndulë stood with hands grasped behind his back in the same stance as Gryndal.

  “Uncivilized barbarians.” Gryndal’s usual voice could make Good morning sound like a death sentence, but he spoke now with even greater brutality.

  Arion thought Gryndal saw himself as the epitome of culture. Dark eye makeup, half a dozen facial piercings, and an obsession with wearing only gold were all attempts to demonstrate his refinement. As fastidious as he was about his appearance, the Art was his true addiction. Fenelyus had warned about the temptation to overindulge. Power has a way of seducing by saying what you want to hear. Remember, it’s easier to believe an outlandish lie confirming what you suspect than the most obvious truth that denies it, the old fane had said.

  “Such insubordination is dangerous to leave unchecked, my fane. I advocate execution,” Gryndal said.

  Lothian considered this, then shook his head. “I don’t agree. They only beat Petragar. They didn’t kill him. If they had crossed that line—”

  “They haven’t crossed it…yet. Are you willing to take such a risk?”

  “I may be the fane, but I still need justification. Ferrol’s Law grants me the power, but I must be judicious in its use.”

  Gryndal looked irritated, more so than usual. Seeing any expression beneath all the rings and chains was difficult. Arion suspected that he walked carefully through the thickets of the Garden so he didn’t catch the hoops or chains on any branches.

  Maybe that’s the point. His way of displaying he’s above such mundane concerns.

  Given the length of his fingernails, he certainly couldn’t juggle her rocks or—she smiled—open doors.

  “Ferrol’s Law was created for ordinary Fhrey, not the Miralyith,” Gryndal said. “The Art has elevated us, and we cannot be bound by the law of a god when we have become gods ourselves.”

  Arion saw Mawyndulë nodding, a look of wonder and admiration in his eyes. He would be the next fane, and it was her responsibility to make sure he was a good ruler.

  She stepped forward. “How wonderful! I wasn’t aware we had achieved divinity. When exactly did that happen?”

  Her tone caught them all by surprise.

  “And now that we have,” she continued, “please tell me when we’ll be having tea with brother Ferrol? My mother would love his recipe for vegetable soup. As for myself, I’d like some advice on how to create my own race of people, for that ability has eluded me.”

  Gryndal’s chains rattled as he turned to glare, his look so venomous that she prepared to weave a shield. He wasn’t beyond abusing his power. There were those who accused Gryndal of excessive violence during tournaments and told stories of him using the Art in romantic encounters. One ex-lover claimed their tryst had resulted in her death and resurrection, which proved that not all the rumors were true. Still, Arion once had seen Gryndal torture another Fhrey, a simple Gwydry farmer. As far as she could tell, he’d done so for the thrill, seeing how far he could go without killing the man. Not unlike holding one’s own hand close enough to a flame to almost burn.

  “Gryndal didn’t mean it that way,” Lothian said. A flip of his hand revealed how oblivious the fane was to the cataclysmic eruption pending only three feet away. “But he makes a valid point. Miralyith are a breed above everyone else. It’s foolish and outdated to think otherwise. We might not be gods, but compared with the other tribes we might as well be.”

  “Then we should seek to be benevolent gods, yes?” Arion said. “Treat other tribes the way we would like Ferrol to treat us?”

  “Exactly,” Lothian said. “We have a responsibility to our own, and the Instarya are monsters of our making. They want to return. Did you know that?”

  “You can’t allow it,” Gryndal said, reluctantly pulling his gaze away from Arion. “They can’t hope to assimilate into Fhrey society any more than a Rhune could. They would be a terrible disruption.”

  Arion noticed how the First Minister used the term Fhrey as if it no longer applied to himself.

  “Come now, Gryndal. It’s not quite as bleak as all that,” the fane said. “Rhunes are vile, filthy beings living in makeshift dwellings of dirt and rocks. They wallow in their own waste.”

  “You’ve seen them?” Mawyndulë asked excitedly. “You’ve crossed the Nidwalden River?”

  “Yes, once. Many centuries ago.”

  “You left Erivan?” Arion asked. “Why would you do that?”

  “My mother required it. During the Dherg War, she wanted me along to see it for myself.”

  “And you saw a Rhune?” Mawyndulë asked again.

  The fane chuckled. “Not a Rhune, many Rhunes. They multiply at a ridiculous rate. A single female can give birth to a brood. Some mothers have as many as twelve or fourteen offspring.”

  “Fourteen?” Arion said, shocked.

  “Yes…well, not at one time, at least I don’t think,” Lothian explained. “But they have been known to bear a single litter of two or three, possibly more.”

  “There must be thousands,” Arion said.

  “Tens of thousands,” Lothian corrected. “We actually don’t know how many.”

  “Are they dangerous?” Mawyndulë asked.

  “No more than any other animal,” Lothian said. “In fact, a bear or big cat is far worse. The Rhunes are terrified of us. They would scatter if we came near.”

  “Yo
u are correct, my fane,” Gryndal said. “I shouldn’t have grouped the Instarya so easily with the Rhunes, but it doesn’t change the fact that centuries among the barbarians have made the Instarya unfit for Fhrey society. Similarly, I don’t think the Instarya at Alon Rhist are capable of dealing with Nyphron and his Galantians.”

  “So you have no confidence in Petragar?” the fane asked.

  Gryndal looked at Lothian as if he’d made a bad joke. “Nyphron is dangerous, my fane, and one of your best warriors. I think you would be wise to send a Miralyith. The Instarya revere Nyphron and his Galantians. The longer they avoid judgment, the greater the risk becomes they could fuel a rebellion, as we saw with Zephyron.”

  “But that wasn’t a rebellion,” Arion said. “Zephyron followed the law and acquired permission from the Aquila to blow the Horn of Gylindora and challenge for the throne.”

  “It was legal,” Lothian told her. “But it revealed a mindset, a propensity for dissent against the rule of the Miralyith, that I don’t appreciate.”

  “I’ll go!” Mawyndulë announced, eyes shifting between his father and Gryndal. “I’ll bring this Nyphron back on a leash.”

  “The frontier is no place for a child,” Lothian declared.

  “I’m not a child.”

  This united them all in a smile, all except Mawyndulë.

  “Actually, this is why I invited you to this meeting, Arion. I think you should be sent to subdue this Artless rebel,” Gryndal said.

  Arion was stunned and not at all pleased. “I have responsibilities here. I need to continue Mawyndulë’s lessons. He’s woefully behind.”

  “I can fill in for you,” Gryndal said.

  The delight on Mawyndulë’s face was unmistakable.

  “Besides, as tutor to the next fane, wouldn’t you agree that crossing the Nidwalden and seeing the greater world would enhance your ability to educate the prince?”