The Heir of Ariad

by Niki Florica

  “So Tasnil killed him.”

  “Yes.” Brondro’s eyes were dark, despite the sunlight. “He conspired against Aradin, accused him of blasphemy and treason, somehow found grounds for an execution.” Brondro’s voice fell lower. “We all watched him die, Kyrian. Aradin. As a Peasant. For us . . . to redeem us. To show us we were forgiven. He could have spared himself and destroyed Tasnil with a blink of his eyes but he didn’t. He died, and the Sword of Kings vanished with his death. We—Jas, Melkian, and I—thought all light had been stolen from the world. But we were fools to believe that Aradin, King and Creator of Ariad, could be killed by any mortal Skyad. Three days after the death, he appeared to us again. Alive, Kyrian. You have my word. Alive as you and I. He spoke to us, spoke to me, told me the time of my purpose was coming, told me to wait for the signs.”

  “Signs?”

  “Yes. There were few, but one was clear enough.” Brondro trailed a hand in the Nelduith, watching the water swirl around his fingers. “The Sword of Kings, Aradin’s Sword, appeared to us one night. It had not been seen since the death. It appeared, glowing with Aradin’s power, and we heard his voice speak the prophecy . . . the prophecy of the Heir of Ariad, of the one he had chosen to free us from Tasnil.

  “We told no one of the Sword. Forged by Aradin before the dawn of the world, it held his power, and only the Good King and his worthy Heir could wield it.” He winced, remembering. “I was not the Heir, Kyrian. I could not wield it, could scarcely touch it. I was unworthy. But Aradin gave me strength to bear the pain, enough to hide it, and to protect it from Tasnil.” He pulled his hand from the river and shook the droplets from it, and for a heartbeat Kyrian caught a glimpse of the unnatural whiteness of his palm. Dead white, like scars.

  Or burns.

  Like burns.

  As if aware that he had seen it, Brondro slid him a wry glance and curled his fingers into a fist. “Tasnil refused to accept that he was no longer Aradin’s chosen, and believed the Sword was his to bear. We lived in constant fear as he tore Rosghel apart, searching for it.” He studied his knuckles, and his voice fell. “Aradin appeared to me that night, Kyrian, spoke to me. He told me to leave. I’ll never forget the midnight I stood upon the skyladder with the Sword wrapped in cloth, with Jas, Melkian, and Camuel the Robin, who would take me to Robinsdwel for my protection. You were there, though too young to remember.” He sighed. “I thought it would be only for a season until the madness of Tasnil passed. I thought we would meet again and go on as if . . . as if the Sword had never come to me.” He glanced up and drew a breath, gathering himself again. “But here I am, Kyrian. Near twenty years have passed. Jas is—” he swallowed—“is dead, you are grown, and Melkian has fathered my own children.”

  Kyrian gazed at him. “But you are still waiting. For your purpose to be fulfilled.”

  “My purpose has always been to protect the Sword of Kings, to preserve it for the Heir, the worthy bearer. But it shall soon be accomplished. The Heir is coming, Kyrian. He shall be the new chosen of Aradin, and he shall wield the Sword as I never could.” He nodded firmly, as if to himself, gazing over the sunlit river. “Soon, Kyrian. Aradin is faithful. The Heir of Ariad is coming.”

  “How will you know?”

  “Signs. The prophecy. I am the keeper. I’ll know.” He clasped his hands behind his head. “But there it is—my tale complete. And if the silence in the Skies is any indication, Tasnil has not stirred in twenty years.”

  Kyrian’s lips parted, the words lodging in his throat. Somewhere in the darkest recesses of his memory a sickly-sweet voice whispered, Kyrian, I could be your father. You could be a prince. One day, a king. Would you like to see what true strength looks like?

  He swallowed, killed the memory. Just as he always had. “Yes. That is true.”

  Liar.

  Almost subconsciously, he knotted his hands.

  Brondro scowled. “I feared as much. Twenty years for his hatred and jealousy to fester behind palace walls. Twenty years to plot and scheme and choose his blasted pawns. Skies, Kyrian, when his assassins ceased to search for me I’d hoped he was abandoning the chase. I was a fool. His hatred for me is too deep, too black. For twenty years he’s rotted, waited, and now . . .” He scowled. “Now, his noose is narrowing. Now we’re all trapped in his game.”

  “I do not understand,” Kyrian replied, throwing a rock into the river. “Why does he withhold the Rains? Why does he starve his own kingdom, his own people, himself? What has he to gain in all this?”

  Brondro’s eyes rose to the distant Rosghel Cloud in the western Skies. It was stark against the blue of the sky, a rolling, solid mass of shining white mountains, shadows, and towers of cloud. How many times had Kyrian looked down upon the Lands from its edge, pitying the earthbound who walked beneath? He looked away. Brondro sighed. “He wants the Sword of Kings . . . and me. My head, to be precise.”

  “Why?”

  Brondro stood, raked a hand through his hair, and gestured in the direction from which they had come, answering only when Kyrian began to follow him into the wood again. “Because long ago Jas of Rosghel chose a blacksmith over a Rain Lord,” he softly replied, “and since that day my every success has driven Tasnil deeper into the dark. My fame grew when his diminished, my life brightened while his darkened, I had Aradin’s favour while he was cast aside.” He shrugged. “The rift is deep between us, Kyrian, as is to be expected, when one walks toward the darkness and the other toward the light. I do not fear him.” He blinked. Looked away. Toyed absently with his silver wedding band, eyes glazed with memory. When he blinked again, a shining tear streaked his features, pooling black upon the ring. “And I am fighting desperately not to hate him.”

  Kyrian stared at him, fists clenched. The Usurper had been a subject avoided in Melkian’s manor for years, an unwritten law made for Kyrian’s sake. It was strange to hear his father speak so freely of him now, strange to hear him break the law, not knowing. Not knowing of Kyrian’s childhood nightmares, of the memory that lurked in the shadows of his mind like a demon, haunting him when he had not the strength to repress it. Not knowing that Tasnil the Usurper had, in fact, appeared once in these dark, silent twenty years. Once. Only once. With only one witness.

  Would you like a true father, Kyrian? said the sickly memory. Would you like to be a king?

  He shook his head. Winced, and stumbled. No. Not now. Not again. Never again!

  Brondro was staring at him. He wrenched his eyes away, studied his footfalls, watched them, counted them, flesh burning beneath Brondro’s earthen, scrutinizing gaze. They walked upon the edge of the Adamun gorge, the precipice concealed from view by a curtain of half-dead lichen. Brondro halted. Kyrian’s feet stalled beneath him and he dared a glance sidelong, but the bright brown eyes were not fixed upon his face. They were locked upon his hands.

  The bracers had slipped. The dark bloodstains screamed from his knuckles like an emblem of death, burning beneath his father’s eyes. No. No, no no no no . . .

  “Kyrian, you have left much unanswered.”

  Aradin, if you are indeed the King of this world, do not force me to do this. I have already broken his heart. Do not force me to rob him of a son as well. Do not turn him against me, I beg of you.

  “You say you are Melkian’s second-in-command,” Brondro mused, his voice cold and far, far away. “And you say that in Tasnil’s silence Melkian rules Rosghel alone. If this is true, surely you are needed there, not here.” He continued. “And you bring no word from Melkian—strange in itself. Perhaps, then, he doesn’t know you are here.”

  Skies ablaze, Aradin, I did not mean to kill him. I swear to you upon Rosghel, I did not wish to kill him.

  “You say you haven’t fought since the attack that damaged your eye . . . and yet, unless I am mistaken, someone has very recently attempted to kill you with their bare hands.” He cocked his head. “Am I mistaken?”

  Kyrian could not breathe.

  “Your throat. Did you think I
wouldn’t see it? Skies, Kyrian, I may not be Skyad but I can say with some confidence that I am not a fool.” He frowned. “I’ve waited twenty years for word of my wife, of my daughter, of you. I know I have hurt you . . . robbed you of more than I can ever hope to repay, but I cannot wait any longer. I must know the truth.” His brown eyes pleaded in the golden light as his hands fell imploringly to his sides. “Please, Kyrian. Just tell me the truth.”

  Kyrian’s voice escaped him in a whisper. “You wish to know why I am here?”

  Brondro stepped nearer, pleading. “Kyrian, I already know. I only wish you to say it.”

  He knew. He already knew. The world tilted beneath guilt, shame, and dizzying relief, and Kyrian could not speak for fear that he would lose himself in the tide of emotions he could not have begun to control, even if he had wished. Brondro’s warm eyes were crescents of sympathy. He fell to his knees, and the Man knelt with him, saying nothing, but carrying the weight of the world simply by being there. Simply by knowing.

  “They will not wash away,” Kyrian whispered, clenching his red-stained hands. “I cannot escape them. I cannot wash them away.”

  His father nodded, folding his fingers between his knees. “I know.”

  Kyrian looked up to squint at him, through tears and his hazy eye. “What must I do?”

  Brondro Tarmilis simply laughed. “Take them to the One who can.”

  “You mean the woodsman.”

  Brondro’s brows furrowed. “Who?”

  Before he could answer, an explosion of screams erupted from the gorge beyond the lichen, accompanied by a tremor somewhere deep in the earth beneath Kyrian’s feet. A horn blasted in the gorge, low and clear and wavering with alarm, sounding above the screams. Brondro blanched.

  “Oh, Skies,” he breathed, eyes flying to the lichen curtain. “The mines.”

  Brondro tore through the lichen and pounded down the carven slope to the canyon floor, Kyrian hard on his heels, scattering stones with their strides as another alarm rose from the Adamun horn. Dust was thick upon the canyon floor, a crowd gathering in the cloud. Kyrian was dimly aware of stone-carved dwellings passing on his left, but his weak peripheral captured nothing but shapeless shadows as he followed his father to the canyon floor, weaved through the log cabins and avenues of the Adamun, coughed dust from his lungs with each breath. His father halted suddenly, whispering a prayer to Aradin at Kyrian’s side.

  They stood at the entrance of an enormous cavern, carved from the stone of the cliff face. Colossal mounds of rock and refuse stood alongside the entrance, overshadowing a crowd of Adamun villagers gathering on the dusty threshold of the mines. Some Men were shouting to his left, filmed in dust, shouting of a tremor and a collapse while women sought their husbands among them. Kyrian watched a miner lift his daughter into the air, smile brilliant white against his filthy face, and almost caught the Man’s eye before wrenching his gaze away.

  “What happened here?” Brondro demanded on his right. Eyes were turning to Kyrian now, whispers drifting through the dust, brushing his consciousness, barbed with the word he had come to despise. It is Brondro’s boy. The half-blood.

  Brondro’s question was swiftly answered. “A collapse, Midian. The mines have caved.”

  “Are any wounded?”

  “No, sir. All have escaped unharmed. The mines are abandoned.”

  “Thank Aradin.”

  Brondro turned his attention to his people as Kyrian peered into the settling dust, squinting at the great black mouth of the Adamun mines, listening to the voices of his father’s kin. Empty, the Man had said. All had escaped unharmed. And yet . . .

  He heard it then. A scream. Loud, desperate, and laced with panic, it rose above the dust and echoed in the great black mouth of the mine entrance, rattling in the very marrow of his bones.

  Kyrian’s blood ran cold. He knew that voice.

  Like a phantom of the past the scream sounded again, louder this time, more desperate, echoing upon every stone, every wall, every particle of all-consuming dust. This time, Kyrian could feel the panic seeping through his blood, into his bones, into his heart. Panic and desperate, frantic desire to do something, to do anything. The scream rose again, and this time he heard his name.

  The world blurred to dust, whispers and a shaking, pleading voice.

  Elyis.

  Kyrian was running before he knew his mind had resumed functioning, chasing the screams into the cloud of dust, through the throng of the Adamun, toward the shadow of the mines. His father shouted his name. He barely heard it. He heard the cries of Brondro’s people and ignored them, sprinting directly into the dark mouth of the Adamun mines, half-obstructed by fallen stones and boulders displaced in the collapse. He coughed, peered into the darkness, shouted Elyis’ name.

  The scream sounded again, echoing Kyrian’s name in the darkness.

  “Where are you?” His lungs spasmed and he coughed raggedly, throat obstructed by dust. “Elyis, where are you? Tell me where you are!”

  “Seek, Kyrian, and you shall find me,” cried the voice that was Elyis. Mad, mad, deranged Elyis.

  Kyrian followed the voice blindly into the dark. The earth trembled beneath his feet and he was forced to crouch for cover as a shower of stones rained down upon the mine floor, disturbing a new fog of dust. He coughed again, wincing at the pain in his chest. Somewhere beyond the mine entrance, his father shouted his name. “Kyrian!”

  “Please, Kyrian,” Elyis’ voice begged from the shadows. “Please, do not turn away from me.”

  “I am not leaving you,” Kyrian assured him. “Elyis, I will not leave you! Where are you?”

  “Here, Kyrian. Always here. Then, now, always here.”

  “Elyis!” Another shower of dust and stone. He stumbled. “Elyis, just tell me how to find you!”

  “Seek me, Kyrian,” the old miner wheezed. “Open your eyes and seek me.”

  Oh, for all the . . . He flicked dust from his eyes, coughed, frantically scanned the shadows until his gaze snagged upon a misshapen form in the gloom, coated in dust and pinned beneath a mound of stones. He tore at the boulders with his ungloved hands, wincing as his fingernails broke and bled, coughing, wheezing, and gasping in the gloom until a brown-gloved hand broke through the stones. Kyrian followed it to a dust-coated shoulder, burrowed deeper into the rubble, braced himself against the mine wall and heaved with all that remained of his strength.

  Dust billowed, the stones crumbled in upon themselves and a filthy body broke free. Kyrian knelt to help him to stand, stumbling backward with a cry when the miner who was Elyis but not Elyis leaped to his feet and flashed him a brilliant white grin.

  “Hello, Kyrian,” the woodsman laughed. “I said you would find me, did I not?”

  Kyrian stared at him. “How . . .”

  “He who seeks shall find, Kyrian. Always. This is my promise. I do not break my promises.”

  “What is this?” Kyrian demanded. “What do you want with me?”

  The woodsman laughed, teeth flashing white. “See for yourself,” he replied. “Follow me.”

  Then, hazel eyes glowing with secrets, the woodsman whirled and sprinted into the mines.

  “I will assemble the Men,” Caynan declared. “I know the mines well, Midian. We will find him.”

  Brondro glanced up at him, perched on a boulder outside the mine entrance, one foot jogging an anxious staccato against the dusty ground. Caynan’s voice surprised him. He had forgotten—as usual—that his second-in-command was there. “At ease, Caynan,” he replied. “There is no need.”

  “Midian?”

  Another impatient glance. “Yes?”

  “You do not wish us to find your son before these mines collapse on his head?”

  Brondro stared at him blankly, wondering how a phenomenon so obvious to him could pass so far above the mind of his loyal woodsman commander.

  Kyrian had not left the Skies to seek his lost father. He had fled them, with Skyad blood upon his hands. He hims
elf had confessed to years of fighting, and as Melkian’s second-in-command he was by right the guard’s strongest warrior. Combine his skill, troubled childhood, and mother’s temper with a Grey invasion, and the blood upon his hands was evidence enough of the result. With bloodied hands the Heir shall flee his home amid the Skies, And find the strength of tainted veins within a traitor’s eyes . . .

  Kyrian had spoken of a woodsman. Brondro knew precisely what it meant. Kyrian had sprinted into a collapsing mine as if a phantom had appeared to him in its shadow. Somewhere in the darkness of the caverns Kyrian walked alone, unwittingly drawing near to the greatest treasure in Ariad, the treasure that had been Brondro’s burden for a very long time. Kyrian was the first honourable Skyad to appear in the Green Lands in near twenty silent years, and now, in the shadow of the Adamun mines, he walked the path no Skyad had yet seen, let alone trod. Chasing his woodsman, likely as not.

  Kyrian had appeared with blood upon his hands. Kyrian had tasted the waters. Kyrian was a half-blood of Silver and Green. Kyrian was about to stumble upon the Sword of Kings.

  In the shadow of the Adamun mines, Brondro Tarmilis almost smiled.

  Because he knew precisely what it meant.

  Kyrian ran in the echoes of the woodsman’s delighted laughter, one hand trailing the mine wall to guide him, stones scattering beneath his feet, dust thick in his lungs. The tremors in the earth had ceased and the mines seemed, almost, to be settling, but he did not trust the crumbling wooden beams that held the tunnel ceiling. They creaked as he passed, and though his every instinct screamed for him to return to the light, something in the woodsman’s voice, his smile, his bright hazel eyes drove him onward, into the shadow. He did not even have a weapon.

  He tripped upon a fissure in the floor and stumbled, repenting aloud when a curse escaped his lips. He gripped the wall, squinted into the gloom, listened for a remnant of the woodsman’s laughter or the pounding of his footfalls on stone. Nothing. He stood again and pressed on, more cautiously, fingers trailing the cold mine wall, guiding him through the obsidian blackness as he chose each step into the gloom.