“Myrana’s right,” Amoni said. “Without you, we might have already been back in Nibenay by now. Much closer, certainly. It’s you, Sheridia, who we’ve the greatest need of. Among those Veiled Alliance members I know, your reputation is without peer.”
“Perhaps you should just take Sheridia, then,” Corlan suggested. “I can protect the others.”
“You’re very bold,” Rieve said. “And you fought well yesterday at the fort. But the six of us alone wouldn’t have a chance.”
“We stay together,” Aric said. “We should mount up and go, though. Already the sky lightens before the rising sun. We need every minute’s advantage we can gain.”
They doused their fires with sand, packed, and set off as soon as the sun cleared the horizon. After a few hours, they again caught a glimpse of their pursuers, closer than they’d been the day before. Myrana suggested that since they were already so far off their route, they make another detour.
They changed course abruptly, heading away from Nibenay instead of toward it. Myrana was correct, though—the trip to the raider’s fort had taken them far afield, and although time was certainly growing short, dying before they reached Nibenay would help no one. Myrana hadn’t explained exactly what she had in mind, but Sellis agreed with her plan, and that was good enough for Aric.
Around midday, they reached a broad, barren valley ringed by low mountains. Instead of cutting across the valley floor, Myrana and Sellis led them by what seemed a much slower route, circling it. When they reached the far side, they stopped to rest and to drink from a spring high up on the wall.
From there, looking across the valley, they could see the raiders on the valley’s far rim. The raiders spied them as well, but chose to cross the valley.
“They’ll catch us in no time, now!” Rieve’s grandfather said. “We lost hours by going around.”
“Just wait,” Myrana said.
“Wait?” Corlan asked. “The sooner we go, the better!”
“Wait,” Sellis echoed. “Watch. I think you’ll enjoy this.”
They waited and watched. When the party of raiders was halfway across the valley, someone emerged from an unseen shelter hidden among large rocks. From the valley’s rim, he looked tiny. But even at that distance they could tell he was angry. Miniature arms flailed with rage, miniature feet stamped.
And then he began blasting away at the raiders.
“Who is that?” Mazzax asked finally.
“That’s the hermit Kalipher,” Sellis said.
“He hates intruders,” Myrana added. “Last time we saw him, he swore he would kill any who entered his valley.”
“So you don’t mind using magic to kill,” Aric said. “As long as it’s not your magic.”
“He would have killed anyway,” Myrana said. “Or so he claimed, and I’d no reason to doubt him. I just thought it would be helpful if he killed the right people.”
“Some may yet escape,” Amoni said. “And we should take advantage of the opportunity to make some progress.”
Aric loaded some freshly filled water bladders on the pack kank. “Nibenay awaits!”
“So it does,” Tunsall said. “Or so we hope.”
2
They pushed on as hard as they could during the day, but stopped before sunset in order to make camp and start fires before the cold set in. Everybody was more relaxed than the night before, when they had made camp after dark and they’d scrambled to get things ready. At any rate, everyone was exhausted from fighting and running, none more so than Aric, who had not been riding like the others.
Once camp was ready, he sat on the ground chewing on dried meat Mazzax had brought, watching the others settle in. There seemed an odd distance between Rieve and Corlan, a coolness that had not existed before. At the same time, Corlan and Myrana spoke together several times, sometimes laughing. Aric wondered what had transpired, on the backs of those kanks for so long.
He’d never had a chance to really look at Rieve’s father, who he hadn’t met at the Thrace estate. The man had only spoken a dozen words since they had met; none of them, now that he thought of it, directed to Aric. They had been running so much, and the man had been so bundled up during the night and morning, that he hadn’t even had a good view of him. Myklan of Thrace was a handsome enough fellow, he decided. His hair was black and thick, with a few strands of gray near the temples. His features were even and pleasant, as befitted the father of someone as lovely as Rieve. He was fit, a little thick around the middle, but not nearly so much as many nobles. The only thing remarkable about him was a bright red mark on his left cheek, like a sunburst. A birthmark, Aric guessed.
As he watched Myklan, he found himself staring at that birthmark. It reminded him of something. He sat with his back against a rough-edged rock, racking through his memory.
An hour later, after he had eaten dinner and was thinking about other things entirely he picked up a metal dagger Myklan had removed from his belt and it came to him like a lightening flash.
“His face always reminded me of the rising sun,” Aric’s mother had told him, describing his human father. He had never understood what she meant.
Until now. It was impossible to look at Myklan’s face without thinking of Athas’s red sun, bursting over the horizon. Could it be true? Could Rieve’s father also be his own? Mother had thought he was dead, but she hadn’t known that, had only assumed it when he’d stopped coming to see her.
“He never seemed to like elves,” she’d also said. “He didn’t even like himself, when he was with me. It was like he couldn’t stay away, but then when he was there, he loathed himself for it. When I told him I was with child, he was mortified. I never saw him again.”
Another thought was nagging at Aric, but he couldn’t bring it to the surface. He left it alone, listened to a conversation Mazzax and Tunsall were having.
He almost didn’t want to say anything. Rieve would hate it. Sheridia might refuse to help them against Kadya and Tallik. But he couldn’t let it go. He tried to tell himself that it couldn’t be true, that if he voiced his suspicions, Rieve might never speak to him again.
But that red mark glowed in the firelight like it was a sun, blazing away, taunting him.
He couldn’t ignore it.
Whatever the risk, he had to say something.
“That mark on your face, sir. You’ve always had it?”
Myklan’s hand drifted to the red spot. “All my life. I suppose I’ve forgotten about it. Except when someone reminds me.”
Rieve stared at Aric as if he’d lost his mind. Perhaps he had. He avoided her gaze and pressed on. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he said. “When I noticed it, it reminded me of something. Something my mother told me, about my father.”
“Aric,” Rieve said, leaning toward him. “What are you going on about?”
“My father was a human, as I’m sure you know. Mother said that looking upon his face always reminded her of the rising sun. The same could be said of you.”
“I suppose,” Myklan said uneasily. “But …”
“Her name was Keyasune.”
“A lovely name,” Myklan said. “I’ve never heard it before. I’m sure she was a fine woman.”
“She was. Strong and courageous. She raised me alone, of course, because my father abandoned her the moment he learned she would bear him a child. The child of a human and a half-elf. She said he seemed drawn to her, but hated elves, and that being with her made him turn his hatred on himself.”
“Your father had a problem,” Rieve said. “But it’s nothing to do with mine, Aric, so stop.”
“I’m sorry, Rieve,” Aric said, meeting her gaze at last. He held up a hand toward her, as if he could calm her with it. “I need to say this.”
“My daughter has a point, young man,” Myklan said. “Any problems you had with your parents don’t concern us now. We’ve problems of our own.”
“So I’ve heard. Poor Pietrus, accused of murdering all those people.”
“Wha
t?” Rieve said. She was about to explode with anger. Aric hoped she didn’t attack him, because it was hard enough to get through this without also holding her off.
“But it wasn’t Pietrus, was it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Myklan said.
“I think you do, sir. I think you’re not just Pietrus and Rieve’s father, but mine as well.”
“Aric, stop it!” Rieve cried. “That’s an awful thing to say!”
Myklan took his feet, clenching his fists. “That’s utter nonsense, and I won’t hear it.”
But Solyara rose as well, stepping between her husband and Aric. “Let him speak,” she said. Her tone was resigned, her manner firm.
“You’ve always been drawn to elf women, haven’t you?” Aric asked. “It was an urge you couldn’t resist. You met one—Keyasune, my mother—and for a while you tried to pretend you could really be with one. But you were ashamed of that urge, ashamed of yourself for giving in to it, and when she told you that I was on the way, that was more than you could take. You hated elves, hated them and wanted them at the same time, and to learn you would be the father of someone—something—who was even partly elf … that was worst of all. So you left her and never let her see you again. She spent her life believing you had died. I’m glad she did, because it would have been worse to know that you lived but were so ashamed you couldn’t bear to be near her.”
“Solyara, this is nonsense,” Myklan said.
“I think we should all hear it,” she replied. “He’s right, you know. Myklan’s head turns whenever he sees an attractive elf woman, even to this day. He has always been attracted to them. You try to pretend you’re not, but there’s no denying it, my husband.”
“But, Solyara—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Please, Myklan, respect me. I knew about the one, all along. So did others among our friends; you weren’t half as clever as you thought. Once, years later, I even went to the market. I’d found out who she was by then. I went, bought a scrap of something from her, I don’t even remember what now. I do recall how excited she was to get an actual metal coin, as if it was something she’d never seen. I felt sorry for her—spending all that time with a wealthy nobleman, and yet so poor that a simple coin could thrill her so. It was more than I owed, but I let her keep it all. She showed it to her child, and—oh. Oh, no. Aric. I never knew about you—that her child was his.”
Aric’s hand had gone to his medallion, hanging around his neck for most of his life. Her coin, Solyara’s. His father’s wife’s. He had a vague memory of the incident, though he’d been young, and no memory at all of what the woman in his vision had looked like. It could have been Solyara. In those days most human women looked the same to him. “This is that coin,” he said. “She never spent it.”
“Oh, Aric, I’m so sorry.”
Myklan had stopped protesting, and Aric wanted to change the subject. He swallowed back a bitter taste. “I don’t know how long it’s been going on,” he continued. “But the urge you felt, the urge you couldn’t deny, has stayed with you. Worse, perhaps, since I was born. You might not have known me, but you knew of me, you knew somewhere in Nibenay you had a child, born of a half-elf. That must have driven you mad. Yet still you couldn’t stop wanting elves, or hating yourself for wanting them.”
“Aric,” Corlan said. “I think Rieve is right, you’re saying things you can’t prove, things that once said there’ll be no turning back from.”
“I know, Corlan. And believe me, I wish I didn’t have to. But now Pietrus has been accused of Myklan’s crimes, and Myklan is letting his entire family suffer for what he’s done.”
“What?” Rieve asked. She jumped to her feet, turned way from the circle, toward the second fire. Her shoulders shook with sobs. Corlan tried to comfort her, but she writhed away from his touch, burying her face in her hands.
“Your desire for elf women turned into violence, didn’t it? You couldn’t be with them, and you couldn’t stop wanting to. So there came a day when you killed a human man who dared take what you wanted so badly. And you killed her. Because she saw you? Or just because of who she was? It probably doesn’t matter.”
Myklan was shaking with rage. His face had gone white, except for that mark, and he was biting his lower lip so hard Aric expected him to draw blood. But he had stopped protesting.
“And that made you feel better, at least for a time. But then the urge came again. Was is stronger this time? You satisfied it in the same way. In time, perhaps, the urge changed. You no longer burned with desire for those elf women, but for the desire to kill them, and the men with them.
“Finally, you were seen, chased. But the people who chased you home couldn’t believe that Myklan of Thrace, esteemed member of the nobility, could have done such things. No, it must have been Myklan’s addled boy, Pietrus.”
Pietrus was sitting across from Aric. His hands were over his ears, and he made a low-pitched, keening sound. Tears dribbled down his cheeks. Sheridia knelt by him, stroking his shoulders, but he didn’t seem to know she was there. He was the one Aric felt worst about in all this, and he was sorry he had started it while Pietrus was present. There had been no choice, though. Having come to the realization, Aric had to say something.
“You were happy to let them think it. Happy to let your own family believe you had to flee Nibenay because Pietrus was accused. Perhaps you even let them think that maybe the mob was right, that Pietrus was guilty of those murders. Getting away from the city was the only solution, the only way to protect your son. But it wasn’t Pietrus you were worried about, was it? You were worried that someone would realize it was you all along.”
“You were out that night,” Solyara remembered. “I didn’t see you come home, and you told me you’d been there for more than an hour when the mob started screaming outside. But you were winded, your cheeks flushed with effort. You had just come home, hadn’t you?”
Myklan didn’t answer. He shook, and stared into the fire, and chewed his lip.
“If our guard Bryldun were here, instead of killed in the desert by those awful raiders, we could ask him,” Solyara went on. “But he’s not. Another death on your conscience, Myklan? How many is that?”
“All right!” Myklan sank to his knees, folded over, pounded the earth with his fists. “Yes, yes, yes!” He loosed a great, anguished wail. “Yes, all of it, it’s true!”
“Father!” Rieve cried through her own sobs. “No, Father! I won’t believe it!”
“I’ve known for a long time that there was something wrong,” Solyara said. “That he hated elves, but couldn’t stop looking at them. That there was a fire burning somewhere deep inside him that I could never see, never extinguish. I didn’t know the extent of it, but I should have found out, I suppose. I was afraid to push too much, afraid of what I might find.”
Myklan drew himself back to a seated position. His eyes were rimmed with red, and sand coated his face where tears had dampened it. “Yes,” he said, more composed now. “I’m sorry, Solyara. My Rieve, my Pietrus, I am so sorry. But it’s all true.”
He pointed a quivering finger at Aric. “You … yes, I am your father. But it is not true that I abandoned you, although I admit, to my shame, that I did your mother.”
“How can that be?” Aric asked.
“You must have known, all these years, that you’ve had a secret benefactor. Someone looking out for your interests, interceding from time to time. Gifts, financial assistance. Your smithy …”
“That was you all along?”
“None other.”
“I thought … never mind. I never dreamed it was my own father, doing those things.”
“It’s true, boy,” Tunsall said, “that Myklan’s the one who recommended I commission Rieve’s sword from you. He spoke highly of your work.”
“I had means,” Myklan added. “I knew you were there, knew your mother was gone. You needed help, and I was able to help. I never hated you, Aric. Keyasune, y
es, by the end, but mostly myself.”
The rest of it, Aric had figured out on his own, just from seeing the mark on Myklan’s face and knowing his history through the knife.
But this … this came as a shock.
More than that. He felt sick. He felt like he had been stabbed in the gut.
He had told himself it was the Shadow King. If not him, then some wealthy stranger, who had taken an interest in him for reasons he could not fathom. There had never been any clue, any hint that it had been his own father doing those things.
He wondered, if he had known that, if he would have found a way to refuse those gifts. Without someone’s interference—Myklan’s, as it happened—he might be a blacksmith’s apprentice. Instead, the shop’s owner had handed it over to him, without hesitation. Paid off, Aric had learned. Now he knew who had paid him. Myklan wasn’t particularly frightening—or wasn’t, unless to human men in the company of elf women—but he had plenty of wealth to spread around.
He owed Myklan, it was that simple.
He hated the man. The idea that Myklan was his father, and had left his mother in her time of need, and had murdered people through some bizarre compulsion, made him want to pluck his own eyes out so he wouldn’t have to see his closest friends staring at him. He didn’t want to look at his father. Hot tears stung his own cheeks, and he turned away from the others and swiped a hand roughly over his eyes.
Myklan was a liar and a killer. Aric had killed, too—these last few days he had killed many, had lost himself in killing, come to think it was something he was good at. Was that inherited from his father?
But Myklan was a liar and killer who had taken an interest in his son, albeit from a distance. Who had gone out of his way to help Aric. Could he be entirely hateful? He told himself it was necessary.
That was a question Aric could not answer. Someday, perhaps. Not tonight. Not while he burned with rage.
“It’s true, and Pietrus, I am sorry that you were blamed for my crimes. I never meant for that to happen. I tried to control myself—as Aric said, I tried to resist, but I just couldn’t. There’s something inside me, and it drives me to do these things, and if I could cut it out with a knife I would happily do so.”
City Under the Sand: A Dark Sun Novel (Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun) Page 33