by Niki Florica
Perfect.
He cursed, then repented in almost the same breath, one hand buried in his hair. He stood in the centre of a clearing, squinting into the shadowy world beneath the canopy that seemed to extend for leagues in all directions, a maze of grey trunks and dead leaves and dank, dying air. How any remotely intelligent creature could choose to live in such a place was far beyond him. Although, of course, even he knew that the Lands had not always been this way. Not before Tasnil the Usurper.
The faintest of whispers to his right sliced the stillness like a hot blade and Kyrian dropped, one hand groping for the knife hilt in his belt, beneath his dust-stained sky-cloak. Dawn was rising in the east, pale and distant, and its light had only faintly begun to stain the darkness grey. He crawled to the nearest wide tree trunk and rose onto his heels, back protected, eyes searching the gloom as his right hand slipped his sister’s knife from his cloak. Silent. Melkian’s first lesson.
He paused, waited, held his breath long enough to listen to the silence before his heartbeat rose to his ears and he was forced to draw another. He wondered if he had hallucinated the sound.
“Hello, Skyad.”
The voice was partnered with a knife, accompanied by a hand, attached to a body cloaked in russet brown and reeking of dust and sweat. Kyrian whirled, mind processing split-moment observations. Creature? Unknown. The face was concealed by a coarse hood. Height? He held the advantage for the first time in his life. Weapon? Long knife; bone-handled; curved blade. Left-handed.
He lunged.
The battle was short-lived, if a battle it was. There was a flicker of dawn upon knives, a muffled grunt from beneath the hood, a clash of steel on steel, and then suddenly Kyrian was surrounded by brown-cloaked warriors with a crossbow to his skull, his knife lying somewhere at his feet.
He spat.
His enemy was breathing hard, his long knife poised at Kyrian’s chest. “You are a worthy opponent, Skyad,” the voice beneath the mask conceded in Skyad speech. “But you are outnumbered.”
Kyrian held to silence. He stood in the centre of a warrior ring, all cloaked in russet brown, faces concealed beneath dusty masks and distorted behind crossbows aimed directly at his chest. There was an arrow pressed to his skull, evidence of a presence behind his back. He remained motionless, palm cold with the absence of his knife hilt. The arrow settled at the base of his neck.
“Who are you, Skyad?” the Mask asked. His Skyad accent was crude and unrefined, but his vernacular was accurate. “It is not often that a Silver warrior appears within Midian’s domain. Where does your allegiance lie, and what is your business in these Lands?”
Kyrian responded in the common Adamun tongue, if only to spite them. “My business is mine alone. I am a Silver warrior of Rosghel and a servant of the Rain Realm. That is all you must know.”
“With respect,” the Mask replied in common speech, “I will decide what I must know, Skyad.”
Kyrian locked his teeth and met the shadowed eyes with a glare.
The Mask returned his knife to his belt and crossed his arms. “You are a strong warrior, and defiant. Most would have betrayed their allegiance long ago. Skyads are so often cowards.”
“I am no coward.”
“Evidently.”
“Who are you?”
“You are in no position to demand information of me, Skyad. Answer my question and perhaps I shall satisfy yours. It is truly very simple. Your life lies in the balance.” The warrior behind Kyrian’s back forced him to his knees, the arrow ever poised against his neck. “State your business.”
“My business is no concern of yours.”
There was a fleeting hesitation beneath the hood, and Kyrian was almost certain the brown-leathered arms tightened against the firm chest. His captor raised his chin, and muddy eyes gleamed from beneath the hood’s shadow. “You are foolish, Skyad.”
“Your threats are empty.”
Another hesitation. Then, “You refuse to surrender your business at the risk of your life?”
Kyrian swallowed, and it was his pride that spoke for him. “I do.”
“Fine.” The Mask surprised him then. While one hand pulled the knife from his belt, the other tore the hood from over his face and tossed it sidelong, allowing Kyrian a full view of sun-browned skin, muddy eyes, a square jaw, and a creased brow. Not Skyad. This much he had known already. The woodsman regarded him for a moment, as if allowing him an opportunity to study his appearance, then seated himself on the forest floor before Kyrian’s eyes and tossed his knife into the trees.
Kyrian narrowed his eyes, surprised, unbalanced, and mildly unnerved.
The newly unarmed creature tilted his head back to gaze at him coolly. “I believe negotiation is more effective without the use of weapons, Skyad. I hope you will be more willing to speak.”
Kyrian raised a brow. “With or without the arrow to my spine?”
“Of course.” The unmasked Mask gestured, and the pressure relieved. “Now.” His face was framed by long, dark brown hair that hung in dripping tendrils about his neck, a shadow of a beard darkening his jaw. He weaved his fingers while Kyrian sat—or rather, was forced to his knees. “You are the first Skyad to appear in the Green Lands in many years, Silver. You are aware of this?”
“Yes.”
“Then you will understand my interest. It must be grave business that bears you here, alone, unless—” his brown eyes darkened—“you are not alone.”
Kyrian willed his eyes to spew the defiance he felt. “I am alone.”
“And your allegiance?”
“Is not to Tasnil.” Treacherous words, worthy of death in Rosghel. Kyrian resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder, as if Tasnil himself would materialize to deal the price of treason. “I am a warrior of the Silver Guard. I defend my people, not the king.”
“Then in this we are agreed. We are the enemies of Tasnil, Skyad. Victims of his cruelty.”
Kyrian stared at him, sifting through Melkian’s tales in his mind, attempting to place a race to the creature before his eyes. The features were heavy, bold, rugged. Sun-browned flesh, broad shoulders, earthen eyes and hair, shorter in stature than most Skyads—though only slightly shorter than Kyrian himself—and an evident mastery of the woods and land. His brows vaulted. “You are a Man.”
The Adamun woodsman did not hesitate. “Yes.”
“I thought you were extinct.”
The brown eyes gleamed. “We endured. We are the Remnant, survivors of Tasnil’s massacre, existing in secret and growing steadily. Midian of the Adamun is our chieftain.”
“And you are his second-in-command?”
“How could you know this?”
“Instinct. I am second-in-command to the captain of the guard in Rosghel.”
The Man leaned back, studying him with renewed intensity. “You are valuable, then, among your people. Your business in these Lands must be grave indeed to bear you from them.”
Grave, yes. Valuable? Kyrian frowned. Unlikely.
“Tell us your mission in the Green Lands, Skyad. I have humoured your defiance thus far, but you are outnumbered and we are armed. You shall not escape with your life if you do not cooperate.”
Kyrian hesitated, certain he would be killed the moment he revealed himself to be nothing more than a worthless murderer in flight. Desperate for time, he latched onto the first inspiration to surface in his thoughts. “I am seeking Brondro Tarmilis.”
The blood drained from the Adamun warrior’s face even as a hard, cold light entered the mud-brown eyes. Kyrian felt the arrow return to the base of his skull. Oh, for all the Skies . . .
The stranger clenched his hands and swallowed, attempting, and failing, to conceal sudden unease. “Brondro Tarmilis,” he repeated, as if the name meant nothing to him, while the pallor of his face and the tightness of his jaw testified the opposite. “The Skyad traitor?”
“The Adamun legend.”
“Adamun?” A strained laugh. “Are you mad?�
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“I know the truth, stranger. I know he is a Man. I wish to see him.”
The frowning woodsman gestured to someone behind Kyrian’s back, followed by the sound of movement. He swallowed, hating himself. Of course they would assume he was a servant of Tasnil. Of course they would assume he had been sent to kill Tarmilis. Of course they would protect their own, if indeed his father was still alive.
His father. For a single breath, hope eclipsed fear.
He was speaking to his father’s people. To the Adamun.
The thought was killed by the increased pressure of the arrow to his skull and the arrival of another Adamun woodsman with a small, cracked goblet in one hand. The first huntsman accepted the goblet, peered reverently into its contents, and withheld it to Kyrian. “Drink.”
His brows shot skyward. “That would be incredibly unwise.”
The Man’s jaw tightened still more. His face was grave and stormily solemn. “Our game has drawn to an end, Skyad. It would be unwise to take you prisoner, but more so to leave you alive.”
“Why? What have I done? I only wish to see him, to speak with him. Is he alive?”
“Drink.”
“I am not a servant of Tasnil. I came alone, by my own will. If he is alive, I must see him. I must speak with him.” The huntsman remained stoic. Kyrian’s desperation mounted and he chose in that moment to abandon all caution. “You do not understand—he is my father.”
For a moment, the Man simply stared at him, slack-jawed and rigid in hesitation. “Impossible,” he breathed as he studied Kyrian’s face, eyes gleaming uncertainty. “You lie.”
Kyrian pressed, grasping at hope. “His name is Brondro. His wife was Jasmiel of Rosghel, my mother. His dearest friend is Melkian of Rosghel, the captain of the Silver Guard. I am his son. My sister and I were born in the same hour. He is my father. I swear to you, he is my father.”
All he had said was simple fact, nothing personal or intimate, nothing that could stand as true evidence, but he was desperate now, his mind groping vainly for time. The warrior leaned forward, brows furrowed, then said softly, “For Man looks upon the outward appearance . . .”
He waited, evidently expecting a password that Kyrian had never heard in his life and could not have begun to complete. He drew a breath, racked his mind for an escape, any escape, then looked away.
Nothing. He had nothing to offer, nothing to prove his worth. Time and hope had fled him. He had cheated death to find it elsewhere, as righteous judgment for his sin. As justice.
The Adamun stranger hardened. “It is as I thought. You do not have the blessing.” He frowned and repeated with solemn earnest, “Drink.”
Kyrian peered into the goblet, where several mouthfuls of clear, crystalline water shimmered like liquid sky, reflecting the treetops above. His throat ached with desperation. His last ration of melsith seemed a distant, buried memory. “What is it?” he asked, hoarse.
“The waters of the river Nelduith.”
“A river?” He swallowed. “I thought the Green Lands were dying of thirst.”
“As they are.” The Man’s taut features tightened. “Drink.”
“Would it not be easier to simply shoot me?”
The Adamun woodsman’s expression twisted in chagrin, and his voice was unsteady as he replied, “It shall be swift and painless, Skyad, I assure you. I do not savour killing.”
“You are forcing me to choose my own death.” Time. More time. Any time.
“I am offering you a mercy. Drink or face a more painful end. The choice, Skyad, is yours.”
Kyrian hesitated, stared, accepted the goblet from the Man’s hard grasp, and peered down into its contents. The water of the Nelduith shone tantalizingly in the faint dawn light, taunting him, mocking him, searing him with the burning desire in his throat. He was weary of thirst, of the constant, raw ache that had followed him mercilessly since the moment Rosghel had realized that Tasnil would never send for the Rains. The moment it had realized that its tyrant king was not only wickedly cruel, but mad.
He wondered if it would truly be painless, wondered how it would feel to die a thirstless death. Wondered if, as a warrior, his duty was to choose the path of pain, of glory and honour and agony. Salienne would not have hesitated in his place. He became suddenly aware of the pounding of his heart in his chest, in his ears, in his mind, and wondered if he would be aware of the moment in which it ceased to drum, when the thread of his life was severed into silence. He hesitated.
He did not want to die.
But Skies knew he deserved it.
“Hello, Kyrian.”
There was another dusty woodsman at his side, seated upon the ground on his right, legs crossed, elbows propped upon leather-bound knees, chin resting upon clasped hands. The woodsman was garbed in the attire of the Adamun but his face was distinct somehow, as if it could have belonged to any Ariadi creature whose garb it accompanied. The eyes were hazel, flecked with gold. And he was smiling.
Kyrian started, turned to the Adamun leader, but the hunters seemed not to see the Man who had appeared at his side. “Who are you?” he demanded. His captors did not hear him but the woodsman clearly did, and his smile was both delighted and mischievous.
“You know who I am, Kyrian,” he replied, still smiling. “Are you going to drink?”
Kyrian leaned away, uncertain and hesitant, and unable to tear his eyes from the gleaming flecks of gold buried in hazel-green irises. “Who are you?” he asked again, more forcefully.
“Drink, Kyrian.” The woodsman grinned. “He who drinks of the water that I give him shall never again know thirst. My water shall be in him, a well of everlasting life.” He laughed. “This is my water, and it is for you. Drink, Kyrian! Seal your destiny and drink!”
Kyrian peered down at the waters of the river Nelduith and heard the words echo in his mind as the Adamun arrow pressed firmly to his skull and the huntsmen watched him with solemn intent. He heard the woodsman’s laughter but turned to find him gone. Vanished, as if he had never been.
Skies and moons, he was losing his mind.
The Adamun watched, all but one concealed beneath brown leather hoods, silent and ready, crossbows in hand, reluctant but prepared to deal a warrior’s death. Their commander nodded, his brown eyes grave, and almost—perhaps—uncertain.
“He is my father,” Kyrian said softly, without hope, without conviction.
The Man’s face was stone-hard. “Aradin shall be your judge.”
Kyrian drew a breath, the fear of death evaporating beneath a sudden, blanketing calm as he peered down into the waters of the Nelduith and heard the lingering laughter of the woodsman that was no longer at his side. The woodsman that had, somehow, known his name.
Aradin shall be your judge.
The huntsmen watched, waiting, solemn and silent and still.
Lifting the goblet to his lips and breathing a silent prayer, Kyrian drank.
Six
. . . and dwelt in the land of Midian:
-Exodus 2:15C
Thunderfoot hesitated before the ivory doors of the throne room, alone in the white-polished hall of Rhos-Arpal. His hands were stalled upon the door handles, white and bloodless, defying his command to thrust it wide; his every muscle rebelled against him, held him there, rigid, while his mind screamed in indignation, cursing his fear. He swallowed, drew a breath, glared at the intricate designs carved into the doors: the crest of Aradin, the Sword of Kings, the Good King’s grand throne. Memories, relics of brighter days, hopeful horizons, and a King who loved his people.
Thunderfoot could not move. He had stood there once before, long ago, not as a lord, but as an apprentice. He had been young, and weak, and spineless, terrified by the prospect of entering this very room, of standing in the presence of Aradin, King and Creator of Ariad, as nothing more than the Storm Lord’s youthful protégé. The memory was faded now, repressed by darker, colder years, but even now he remembered the warmth he had felt when first he had lo
oked upon his King. When first he had met the golden, gleaming eyes and known—known—that there was someone within his broken world who knew him more surely than he knew himself. Knew him and loved him. Somehow.
He was terrified now, in the same nostalgic place, frozen as if locked in the prison of a memory, a moment in time. But it was a different fear. This time, he knew, his Creator did not await him. This time he would thrust the door wide and look upon the reason for every drop of darkness in his realm, in his kingdom, in his blackened, war-scarred heart.
He did not fear Tasnil the Usurper.
No, Thunderfoot feared himself.
He feared he would not be able to control the hate and rage and vengeance that would overtake him the moment he looked upon his enemy. He feared he would lose himself, lose control, act in pure, rash emotion rather than following his plan—his careful, critical plan.
Something shifted within the room beyond the doors. A whisper of movement. Of life.
Thunderfoot steeled every drop of control he had erected in his years as Storm Lord, tore his eyes from Aradin’s crest, and thrust the doors wide.
Tasnil of Rosghel had once been handsome, but twenty years, it seemed, had fed unkindly upon his appeal. He was seated upon a throne, upon Aradin’s throne, his pale, milky blue eyes following Thunderfoot’s every rigid step as the doors swung closed behind him. Long, white hair hung combed about his face, framing sunken, piercing eyes, thin, white lips, hollowed cheeks and pockmarked flesh and a wicked, waiting smile.
Thunderfoot felt a careful chill ride warningly along his spine.
As ever the throne room was the essence of Skyad beauty. White, pure, and unblemished, the walls polished to mirror quality, floors laced with veins of silver. Pale columns upheld a vaulted ceiling, engraved with ornate images too intricate to distinguish at a passing glance. A balcony upon the north wall overlooked the watchtower, the city, the square upon which a Silver had beaten Thunderfoot’s Grey warrior to death. A dark curtain half-obscured the view, choking the light. He focused upon details, upon practical, tangible observations, rather than his sudden, mad desire to strike the smile from Tasnil the Usurper’s face with a fist. Or a knife.
