The White Tower (The Aldoran Chronicles: Book 1)

by Michael Wisehart

  “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to grow up without family.” Ayrion watched as Howler continued to hand out the goods. “So how did your brother end up here? Where is your family’s holdings?”

  Amarysia chuckled. “Even as a young kid, Sedge always had the romantic notion of running away from home and joining a troupe. Making friends with some of the street kids we were helping was about as close as he ever got. When our parents died, our properties were repossessed by the crown.”

  Ayrion wrinkled his brow but didn’t say anything.

  “Apparently, our father was great at organizing parties of fashion but not at keeping up with the family estate. Our taxes and debts were so far in arrears, Sedge and I were lucky to keep the clothes on our backs. Thankfully, I had already been chosen as a lady-in-waiting to the queen. It was more out of a favor to my mother than anything, I believe. Even after hearing of the scandal behind our family’s sudden lack of position, the queen kept me on as her personal attendant. She has told me more than once of the deep respect she had for my mother, and how sorry she had been that my father’s poor managerial choices had sullied our good name and standing within Aramoor.” Amarysia shrugged with a sigh. “What’s done is done. I’m happy, and strangely enough, so is Sedge.”

  Hearing her story gave Ayrion a new respect for her. “I would say your mother’s heart lives on in you.”

  She turned and looked him in the eyes. “That was a beautiful thing to say.” She stared a long moment before speaking. “Those gray eyes of yours really are unsettling, you know.”

  He chuckled. “My Upakan heritage at work.”

  “You never told me how you ended up in Aramoor. Did your family die as well?” An embarrassed look crossed her face. “Oh, sorry. That didn’t exactly come out the way I had wanted. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  Ayrion knew from experience that when a woman said that, what she really meant was ‘I’m trying to politely tell you that you better talk to me.’ And after she had just opened up to him about her family’s sullied past, how could he not? “Not exactly,” he said with a heavy sigh. “But I’m dead to them all the same.”

  Amarysia looked puzzled. “I thought the Upaka always stayed together?” She shrugged. “But what do I know? You’re the first one I’ve ever met.”

  “They do . . . except for the rare occasion of banishment.” Ayrion took a deep breath. He could feel her eyes weighing his response. “It was a long time ago, probably best left in the past.”

  “I can tell it bothers you.” Ayrion lifted his head when he felt her hand enclose his own. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t care.” Again, another polite hint that he could keep talking.

  Ayrion was about to continue when Howler walked over and interrupted. He had his heavy mallet up over one shoulder. “Thanks for the grub, sis,” he said, forgoing any outward affection in front of his boys. “We needed it. Food’s as scarce as a warm smile these days. Seems people are hoarding what they have. There’ve been rumors of a possible war with Cylmar.” He glanced at Ayrion as if looking for confirmation.

  “Let’s pray it doesn’t come to that,” Ayrion said, “but I would be lying to say the signs aren’t there.” He didn’t want to give the boy any immediate information. Ayrion knew how fast news traveled in the tribes. However, a looming war with their neighbors was the very topic the High King had him and Commander Tolin discussing all night.

  Her brother smiled. He had a handsome face even if he preferred to wear a gruff scowl while around his underlings. “Best you were gone, sis, before you’re missed.” Sedgewick started toward the door, clearly wanting them to follow. “We wouldn’t want that queen of yours waking up without her toddy, now would we? Oh, and thanks again for the vittles.” Howler opened the door and stepped aside for them to pass. “I just wish you’d quit taking so many risks. One of these days, you’re gonna get caught, or worse, lead the patrollers here. You don’t need to worry about us. We’ll be fine.”

  Amarysia huffed. “You’d starve, you mean. Now come here.” She engulfed him in big hug. There were a few stifled chuckles from the kids behind them, causing an embarrassed Sedgewick to pull away with a grunt.

  Amarysia just smiled.

  Her brother held out his hand to Ayrion with a roguish grin on his face. “Sorry about the warm welcome, Protector.”

  Ayrion shook the boy’s hand. He had a firm grip. “Any time. If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask. I know a little something about the streets myself.”

  “A little?” Sedge snickered. “There’s not a street rat in Aramoor who doesn’t know the name Death’s Shadow. Thanks for sparing my life.” He bowed low, showing Ayrion proper street deference.

  Ayrion acknowledged Howler’s actions with a smile before walking out the front door, giving Amarysia a moment alone with her brother. Ayrion maintained his decorum in front of the boys. It came naturally. Behind him, he could hear Sedge whispering to his sister.

  “You didn’t tell me that Death’s Shadow was your suitor?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call him my suitor—”

  “Well, what would you call a guy who follows you all the way into Cheapside just to make sure you’re safe? Does he do that for all the girls up there at the palace?” Ayrion wanted to see the look on her face, but he forced himself to keep walking.

  “Stop it, Sedge, he can hear you.” Ayrion smiled at the playful tone in her voice. It sent a run of prickles up his arms. “I’ll try to come by next week.”

  Once outside, Ayrion collected Amarysia’s horse and they walked up the street to where he had left his mount around the back side of a small depot.

  “So, what would you call me?”

  She glanced at him and lowered her brows. “Huh?”

  “You said you wouldn’t exactly call me your suitor. So . . . I was wondering what would you call me?”

  She poked him in the ribs with her elbow. “I’d call you annoying.” She tried hiding her smile. “Hey, you never finished your story about how you ended up in Aramoor.”

  Ayrion shook his head. She had done a superb job of avoiding his question. But instead of pressing, he took a deep breath and tried to decide where to start. He guessed at the beginning. “To understand what I’m about to tell you, there’s something you need to know first. As an Upakan, there were many rules. Rules about strength and endurance, rules about how to survive, how to fight, rules of etiquette and social behavior, rules on how to cook food, how to do the tasks assigned to you in order to keep the assembly functioning. But, above all the rest,” he said with an air of conviction, “there was one underlying law. Like the lifeblood of our entire existence, it’s what defines us, what makes us strong, what keeps us separated from every other society that walks the face of Aldor. And that law is: You are never to kill another Upaka.”

  Ayrion stared into the distance as if watching the clouds of his memory unfold. “I wasn’t particularly strong for my age, but I wasn’t altogether ungifted. Upaka are trained early in the art of war and combat. It’s what keeps us alive.”

  Amarysia never spoke or interrupted. She let Ayrion reveal what he wanted when he wanted. She was a great listener. He liked that about her.

  “When you’re young, and as gifted in the art of combat as I was, you tend to get a bloated sense of self-worth. And, unfortunately, mine was quite overfed. There was an older boy, Flon, sort of the unofficial leader of our small pack of kids, who took it upon himself to be the one to bring me down. He couldn’t understand how someone as small as me could best someone like him. And during one of our regular sparring matches, he felt my time had finally arrived.

  “It didn’t help that the exhibition happened to be part of his final testing for advancement, or that it had drawn a large crowd, or that the boy’s father, who happened to be the leader of the Upaka, was in attendance. Flon was determined to set a strong example. Regrettably for me, and him, he did.

  “Flon fought harder
than he ever had before. He had a lot to prove. As much as he tried, he was never able to push past my defense. So in a final, desperate attempt to catch me off guard, he tried pulling off an advanced pinning maneuver he had never attempted before. It was a dangerous move using a back-spinning vertical jump. He had planned to wrap his left leg around the back of my neck and use his weight to throw me onto the ground and into a locking pin.” Ayrion lowered his head and sighed. “I should have just let him win, but I was too proud. I saw what he was about to do and used his momentum to throw him off balance. Instead of getting his leg up and around, he fell and landed on the side of his head. The force broke his neck.”

  Ayrion didn’t say anything for a while as the two continued to walk their horses down the loose cobble of the empty street. Their horse’s shoes echoed off the stone, leaving behind a sense of loneliness. The moon peeked through the clouds and cast a pale glow across the way. “No matter how much my mother begged or my father threatened, the final verdict was set in stone. I was to be banished.”

  Ayrion stopped and got a spare piece of rope from one of Amarysia’s saddle bags and tied it around his horse’s neck. “In hindsight,” he said, “I guess I can’t blame my family for allowing it, or their decision not to leave with me—”

  “I can. That’s horrible. Family should stick together.”

  Ayrion tried to figure out the best way to explain the situation. “You have to understand. The Upakan society is our family. It’s our food, our shelter, and our protection from a hostile world that wants nothing more than to be rid of us. Besides, my parents had my brother and sisters to think about. I don’t blame them.”

  Amarysia tugged on a lock of her blonde hair and started wrapping it around her finger. “It still doesn’t make it right.”

  “Maybe not, but they did provide me with provisions, and my father gave me what money they had saved. He said it would be enough to get me to Aramoor. He figured with my particular set of skills, I’d stand a better chance here in the capital city than anywhere else. I guess he was right.”

  Ayrion had directed them to an adjoining street lined with three and four-story homes that had remained unoccupied for the last decade or two when his horse tripped in one of the numerous potholes and whinnied. He stopped to make sure the animal hadn’t done itself any permanent damage.

  Amarysia kept walking, not realizing he had stopped.

  He was busy feeling along the animal’s thick tendons when he heard a muffled shriek.

  Ayrion looked up in time to see two men pulling Amarysia away from her horse and back toward a dark alley between two of the larger buildings.

  His hands reached for his blades on instinct. This was about to be the worst day of these sellswords’ lives, Ayrion mused as he ripped the dragon-hilted weapons from their sheaths and started forward.

  Chapter 40 | Ayrion

  AYRION SLOWED WHEN he noticed moonlight glinting off the edge of a dagger pressed against Amarysia’s throat.

  “Toss the weapons.”

  The voice came from the shadows of one of the nearby brick buildings. Ayrion turned to look at the man holding Amarysia. He could see there was no way to reach her before the angry looking thug slit her throat. So, instead, he concentrated on his breathing, burying his emotions deep inside the way his father had taught him when he was a boy. Ayrion lowered his twin blades to the ground and waited.

  Out of the darkness, three more ruffians took shape. This was no street tribe of orphaned children they were dealing with. These were clan members.

  The men shuffled their feet as they pulled him into the darker recesses of the narrow lane. One grabbed Ayrion’s swords as the others attempted to thoroughly pat him down for any other weapons he might have hidden on his body.

  Amarysia didn’t move. Her eyes remained strong.

  “Don’t worry,” Ayrion said, hoping to impart what hope he could under the circumstances. “Everything will be alright, I promise.” He couldn’t understand why his gift hadn’t alerted him. He should have sensed something was going to happen before they had been within five paces of that alley.

  Looking around, it didn’t take long for his eyes to adjust. There were more of them than he had at first anticipated, possibly over half a dozen, depending on how many others there might have been hiding further down the alleyway.

  No one said anything.

  He watched as they slid a gag over Amarysia’s mouth and tied it off, no doubt trying to keep her from alerting the city patrol. Not that it would have mattered. The patrol never ventured this far south into Cheapside.

  “What do you want?” Ayrion asked, his temper beginning to rise.

  “Well, looky what we have here. If it ain’t the all high and mighty dark warrior himself, come to pay us humble folks a little visit.”

  There was something in the voice that Ayrion recognized. It belonged to a tall, shabby individual near the front of the ominous-looking group. The man’s dark hair fell halfway across the side of his face.

  Grabbing Ayrion by the wrists, they twisted his arms behind his back and started to tie them off with a thick strip of leather binding.

  “What do you fools think you’re doing? Do you know who this is? Use the manacles.” Tearing his slender frame away from his companions, the thin-faced young man stepped forward and with a scrutinizing glare, walked a complete circle around Ayrion. There was a familiarity that Ayrion thought he recognized in the man’s eyes, but couldn’t quite place.

  The cold iron clamped shut around Ayrion’s wrists. He took a deep breath. This was going to be a bit of a problem.

  “Bring ‘em!” the spokesman called out before doing an about-face and marching off in the opposite direction.

  Without warning, Ayrion was being shoved deeper into the darkness. Twisting around, he caught a quick glimpse of Amarysia being steered in the same direction. Their horses were being led away. He was thankful he hadn’t taken the time to saddle Shade.

  Given nothing more than the freedom to move his head, he tried his best to memorize their path in case they were afforded an opportunity to escape. However, the farther into the maze of side streets they went, the more hopeless their situation became. He knew where they were being taken: the Warrens.

  The warrens was a city within a city. A labyrinth of back thoroughfares, dark alleyways, abandoned warehouses, dilapidated buildings, and degraded people. Even the city patrol, comprised mostly of former Elondrian lancers, had enough sense to steer clear of the Warrens.

  Ayrion had only ever set foot in the place a few times in his life, and none of those occasions had left him with pleasant memories. He trembled at the thought, not so much for himself, but for what Amarysia was about to be subjected to.

  Every city had its poor, whether by choice or circumstance. The larger the city, the larger the collection of those underprivileged—and where there were men and women of low standing, there were always those willing to prey or profit on their situation. In a city the size of Aramoor, that population was considerable. One thing he knew for certain, the farther they walked the less likely their chances of making it out were going to be.

  If the royal palace was the heart of Aramoor then the Warrens was its lower gut, the place housing all the dross of society, as the elite would have called them.

  There was a certain sort of freedom in living on the streets, Ayrion guessed. Not having to worry about responsibilities, doing whatever you wanted, when you wanted. Having lived in both worlds, however, Ayrion had to admit he would rather take on the added duties accompanying a hard day’s honest labor if it meant not wondering where his next bed and meal would be coming from.

  Unlike the rest of those he associated with in the palace, Ayrion had a different view of the streets and those unfortunate enough to be living there. Many, like him, had been given no option as their livelihoods had been stripped away by death or loss of work. However, there were plenty whose lives as vagabonds had been by choice—those who had no desire to
profit from an honest day’s work; those who sought their possessions through more unsavory means. On the streets, there was a different set of rules. Life was harder and far more dangerous. Property belonged only to those strong enough to hold on to it. It was a harsh life, but one in which Ayrion was very familiar.

  The small escort came to an abrupt halt outside a metal door, barring entrance to what appeared to be a simple stone outhouse, at least from the exterior. Ayrion knew all too well where this led. He curled his hands and quietly worked his wrists back and forth in hopes of pulling free of the metal cuffs. He hoped to dig deep enough to draw blood and use it as a lubricant, but the manacles were still too tight. He knew that once inside, there would be no turning back.

  The lanky man in front waited for one of his men to throw back the latch and open the door. After grabbing a torch off one of the inner walls, the man with the straight dark hair turned and winked in Ayrion’s direction before marching inside. Ayrion wondered what that was all about.

  He watched as the man’s head melted into the shadows and disappeared from view. One by one, the others entered and disappeared as well until it was finally his turn.

  Instead of finding a rancid set of privies, there was a circular stone stairwell leading down. With a firm push, Ayrion was shoved forward. He glanced back over his shoulder to make sure Amarysia was still there. He could see her being guided through the entrance above. The knife was no longer at her throat, but the man holding it kept her close as she stepped onto the open landing and started to make her way down.

  The light from the torches reflected off the moisture seeping from the walls around them. The air was strong with the scent of burnt tar, but free from the sharp odor of unwashed bodies and emptied chamber pots which clung to the streets above. For that, at least, Ayrion was thankful.