The Heir of Ariad

by Niki Florica

  He swallowed, delayed adrenaline melding with wrath as the dagger trembled beside his neck.

  The Robin saw his fear. He saw it, and he loved it. He crossed the distance between them and leaned forward until his narrowed eyes were breaths from Kyrian’s own, exposing again the little flecks of black embedded in their disconcerting colour. “There,” he hissed, his body lax but his voice taut, “the knife remains with you, as your precious insurance. It was given to me. A gift, from my grandfather, and you may rest assured that though I would willingly abandon you, I shall not so easily be parted from it.”

  Kyrian channelled every fibre, every drop of his defiance into a glare that met his rival’s eyes and held them unwavering. Rydel of Robinsdwel broke the gaze. A small victory. He said nothing more, but his throat bobbed visibly as he leaped once more onto the crude oak ladder and ascended into the hazy golden canopy. Gone, as silently as he had arrived. A phantom of forest and dust.

  Kyrian drew a breath and pressed his skull to the oak, feeling each sensation with vivid, bitter clarity. The tingling of his hands beneath the choking ropes, the burn of cord against his wrists, the dead solidity of the empty, spiritless tree behind his head. The silence of this world, of this strange, dusty, dying world, pressed in upon him from all sides, as wrath and resentment and hate burned in his chest, flooding him through every vein, throbbing in his temples, churning in his lungs. The knife grew still, its hilt too near to his eyes for him to clearly study it. He could see the places upon the pommel where emerald garnish had chipped away, worn to brass bone by expert fingers whose use had shaped the metal as surely as had its craftsman. A gift from Camuel, the Robin had said. Kyrian wondered how young the creature had been when given them . . . and if Camuel had known then what dark fates the twin blades would deal.

  As ever his anger ebbed quickly, receding like a tide into some deep recess of his heart, with a vow to flood him another time, in another place. His mind cleared, and his senses sharpened. The thirst of the world screamed to him from every leaning tree and crumbling leaf, but his focus had shifted, fixed now upon the cords binding his hands behind his back, and the knife threatening to slit his throat each time he forgot its presence beneath his ear. The cords were tied fast, wrapped several times about his wrists and knotted behind the tree, but they were old and frayed with wear. Hope sprouted.

  When he pulled, the cords held steadfast, and he felt his skin grate raw against its binds. His hands were all but numb. He pulled again.

  Something creaked in protest, and the oak groaned a woeful lament. Kyrian braced one heel against the roots and strained against the bonds with all of his strength, sweat bursting from his skin, a growl of effort wrenching itself from his throat, the ropes chewing his flesh like twisted hemp jaws. He pulled; the cords moaned. Somewhere in the treetops a stale breath of wind rattled the shrivelled canopy above.

  And then he was free.

  Toppling to his knees he caught himself with feelingless hands and grinned, triumph dwarfing anger and the sting of raw-cuffed wrists. The ropes lay limp upon the forest floor, coiled snakelike in the dust. The Robin would not have use of them again. He stood, dusting his hands on black Rosghelli breeches, and raked one through his hair, eyeing the oak and its disfigured enclaves, tracing the crude ladder to the leaves.

  It felt unwise, but he was accustomed to that. Setting his jaw in firm determination, Kyrian wrenched the Robin’s knife from the oak, tucked it into his belt, then jammed his boot into the oak’s first foothold and, ignoring the pain, began the ascent.

  Robinsdwel ahead, dust and dolor behind. Kyrian climbed, and did not look back.

  Most realms in Ariad bore many names, known by one among the Skyads, another among Dryads, still others by the birdfolk, the Naiads, the stworfs. The tongues of Ariad’s more elusive races had been all but forgotten, along with the titles tied by them to the great vast hills and woods that stretched between the borders of the world. Some were remembered, if brokenly, others remembered only for their places in the ages of history. But despite the myriad titles and tongues, it was the language of Men that lingered longest, and in the minds of most.

  Kyrian had been raised to speak Adamun as fluently as he did Skyad. It was the common speech of Ariad, the bridge between the races, more natural in the everyday doings of Rosghel than even the language of the Skies. Even after the breed of Men was thought to be extinguished, their speech lived on among the Greenfolk, lingering among the noble and—despite Tasnil the Usurper—among even the Skyads.

  So it was that when Kyrian ascended the last enclave to the golden, sunlit sanctuary in the treetops, North Wood was the only name he knew to encompass it.

  It seemed a vast understatement, shallow and broad, too dull to be applied to the wide, winding branches, the moss-dripping bark, the curtains of yellow leaves rasping in unison to a gentle wind. Between the branches wound plank walks, avenues of fragrant wood pegged fastly into place by some foreign Robin craft, rising and curling with the oak’s meandering arms, speckled with fallen leaves and shreds of withered moss. It was beautiful, and terrible. The embodiment of suffering. Only if he chose to be blind could he find beauty, golden and serene and ethereal beneath the thin veil of suffering, drought, and thirst.

  The Sword at his waist felt suddenly very, very heavy.

  Crumpled leaves scattered beneath his boots as he strode the narrow boardwalks, following the laughter and song, stepping distrustfully over the aged boards. The broad arms of the oak coiled and twisted about him, arching over the path and forcing him to stoop or step over them; more than once he paused to listen. To the music, to the wind. To the flat rattle of dying leaves, dying branches, dying trees. The music grew louder. In time he began to feel the staccato of dancing in the planks beneath his feet, flurrying the matted carpet of leaves, jarring the weather-stained boards to the rhythm of mounting pipe song until all that remained between him and the festivities was a curtain of golden foliage.

  Colour flashed between the spidery branches. Music leached through the curtain. Singing.

  Shrugging his cloak more securely about his shoulders, Kyrian drew a breath, parted the leaves, and stepped into the brightness beyond.

  He clung to the shelter of the leaves to avoid colliding with the swirling mass of bright-eyed creatures that filled the canopy. They occupied every space upon the broad plank square, the wide branches overhead, the ropewalks that ran between the leaves. Exuberant scarlet assaulted his eyes, shouting from the red feathers bobbing behind their ears, in their hair, threaded into their clothes, strung about their necks, twisted on their wrists, swaying from every fixture, every rope path. A chaos of slender bodies garbed in once-bright colours and still-bright feathers, grinning through flushed cheeks as they sang and laughed to the sound of the pipes, wafting from somewhere in the centre of the square.

  Kyrian heard himself laugh.

  A Robin’s foot scuffed his and he stepped backward, skirting the merry chaos, smiling as he watched the bright eyes and clasped hands, wondering how Rydel of Robinsdwel could be blood kin to a people as mirthful and ebullient as these.

  He was hardly surprised when a dark, sharp voice rose in a shout above the laughter.

  “Fools!”

  The music died. All eyes turned to the centre of the square, where Rydel of Robinsdwel stood in the boughs of the great tree from which all the plank platforms outspread. His one hand was pressed to the trunk, the other clenched in a tight fist at his side. Even from the shadow of the leaves, Kyrian could see the twin flames burning in his eyes, fierce and hot and spitting venom as the birdfolk looked on, bewildered.

  “Fools!” he shouted again, “Do you not realize what is coming? Do you not realize the fate that awaits us all when these provisions wane?”

  Kyrian eased into the shadows, seeking invisibility. He followed the blazing eyes through the crowd, to the Robins whose hands held bottles, lips stained red with wine, smiling brighter and swaying more heavily than any others in
the crowd. Some were chewing, fingers clenched about shrivelled fruits, berries, seeds; the planks were strewn with them, like hailstones, scattering beneath their bare feet and clinging to their downturned lips. Everywhere there were bottles and flasks and vials, everywhere traces of indulgence, and the more he sought them the more Kyrian realized that the merriment in Robinsdwel was not merely a morning song.

  It was a feast.

  “Our world is dying!” the Robin bellowed. “Do you not understand? This wood has failed to supply our harvest. The Rains have failed to water our trees. This season has yielded nothing to us, and yet you feast in your revels as if you have nothing to fear! As if we shall not die in our thirst and hunger the day these provisions dwindle to nothing! How can you forget the death that awaits us if we do not preserve what remains?”

  A Robin ahead and to the left of Kyrian murmured something dark and unintelligible. His neighbour replied in an exasperated mussitation. “. . . only Rydel . . .”

  The Robin swallowed, gaze roving the crowd. His challenge still echoed beneath the golden leaf dome, stretching in the silence, blazing in his eyes, heaving in the square of his shoulders.

  “Enough, Rydel!” cried a voice suddenly, from somewhere in the throng. “You’ve spoken your part, now leave us in peace. We’ve heard enough of your doomsayings for a lifetime.”

  “Aye!” shouted another, with drunken passion. “Enough! We’ve heard your prophesying before.”

  Rydel of Robinsdwel’s jaw drew taut, his nostrils widening, then narrowing, then flaring again.

  “Why must you poison everything?” a wizened elder cried. “You are forever telling us of the death of Robinsdwel, but here Robinsdwel remains, and here it will remain until the end of time. Why shouldn’t we continue as we always have?”

  “Listen to me!” the Robin roared, both fists balling at his sides. “Do you not hear? Why will you not listen? We shall die, ignorant fools! All of us! Death stands upon our threshold—it seeks to lay hold upon us with every passing day! Can you not see that our stores have all but dwindled to nothing? There is little enough without your thoughtless revelry to drain what remains of our harvest!” His voice chipped. Something stricken and desperate passed fleetingly over the flaming features. “You blind fools! Listen to me! This is waste!”

  He was pleading with them, begging reason, standing above them with flesh pale and taut, eyes too wide for his burning face, fists too tight, lips too bloodless. His words were ragged, tattered by a thousand uses, and already the Robins were turning their backs upon him, the music returning, the dance resuming, leaving him to stand forgotten. Cast aside, like the words of wisdom his people were too ignorant, too frivolous to hear. An unwanted prophet of doom.

  “Be gone, Rydel,” jeered a drunken Robin from somewhere in the throng. “You have no place with us.”

  “Take your doomsaying and leave us in peace!”

  “Skies ablaze,” mocked another, “Camuel himself was not so bothersome as you!”

  Fruit began to fly, exploding against the bark of the tree, pummelling the branches. The Robin raised a forearm to deflect one aimed for his face and cringed as another struck his side and left its crimson juices upon his untucked shirt. The dancers twirled on, laughing at their new spectacle to the renewed song of the wood pipes, and still he stood there as the pipes sang, as wine dribbled and fruit flew and seeds spilled through clumsy fingers. Still he stood in the face of his people’s rejection, silent and flinching and grey.

  That was the moment his eyes found Kyrian.

  The desperation disappeared, along with every drop of pleading, of consternation, of hurt. Kyrian watched him harden, watched every muscle tense, his spine straightening as if pulled from behind by an invisible string. His eyes grew cold as ice, and dark. Darker than they should have been, with something murderous, wicked, and deadly-hard in a place where such abysmal hatred did not, could not belong.

  Kyrian felt a sudden, nameless fear grasp his heart. The world grew frigidly cold.

  Amid singing and laughter and hazy golden light he felt reality unravel, disintegrating before his eyes to be replaced by a vision of sunlight and stillness over a vast, tranquil wood. Cloud-dappled Skies, green, cool trees, and morning mist weaving beneath a quiet canopy, languid with a peace that Kyrian could feel somewhere deep in his chest. A peace Ariad had not known for years.

  He saw Robinsdwel, lush green and painted pale by the dawn. He was there, standing in the treetops, peering through the leaves, the strangeness overcome by a profound sense in the marrow of his bones that, somehow, he belonged there. He was looking for something. He felt it. The desperation, the anxious agitation, the way his eyes roved the trees, darting to and fro but never snagging upon the one creature they hoped to find, the one creature they sought.

  His grandfather, he realized suddenly. By some foreign, inner instinct.

  He was searching for his grandfather.

  It was wrong, and yet, it was utterly right. He bounded across the branches of Robinsdwel’s great trees, sprinted the plank boardwalks, his green moccasined feet sure and nimble beneath him, always searching, never finding. Where was he? Where had he gone? The desperate anxiety within him mounted, evolved into a frothing, writhing beast of nameless fear—panic—that Kyrian did not understand but knew he could not ignore. He was not there. He should be there, but he was not. Where had he gone?

  The vision wavered, blurred to blackness and then regained focus. Kyrian was crouched in the shadows of a sparsely furnished chamber, plank floors beneath him, the walls a matted chaos of entwined oak branches behind his back, his knees clutched desperately to his chest. His green cape was heavy upon his shoulders. Two emerald-hilted knives, too large for his young hands, lay upon the aged planks, beyond his reach. The world was dark, and silent, and empty, the shadows seeking to engulf him as he shrank into the walls, eyes stinging, lungs constricting, shoulders shuddering with the tears he was fighting to suppress. Anguish, fear, and bitter grief roiled toxically in his chest, but all Kyrian knew, all he understood in the chaos of emotions that were not truly his, was that he, somehow, was utterly alone.

  Abandoned, forsaken, forgotten.

  Alone.

  Kyrian opened his eyes.

  He was standing in the light of Robinsdwel—the yellow, sickly light of the sun through a veil of dying trees. The square and its drunken festivities lay somewhere behind his back; the jaunty tune of the pipes and the calls of the Robins echoed distantly beneath his heart’s erratic pounding. He felt empty. Drained, as if every fibre of himself had been poured into another creature’s skin and left there.

  He winced, raising a hand to his pounding skull.

  Perhaps it had.

  The attack came from behind, while Kyrian was too lost in recalling how he had come to be there to reach for the Sword of Kings. A blinding impact from behind sent him to his knees in a flurry of limbs and flashing metal, tearing a grunt from his throat and syphoning all breath from his lungs. The Robin drove a knee into his spine and wrenched his head back with a fistful of hair, and he despised himself for the strangled cry that slipped through his lips.

  “How dare you, Silver filth?” the Robin spat in his ear, locking his knife beneath Kyrian’s throat once again. “How dare you defile this haven with your Skyad devilry?”

  The world was still blurred with vision-haze, his lungs heaving madly for breath while urgency flooded his veins. He should have been on his guard. He should have been ready. Skies ablaze, had every drop of warrior instinct fled him since this accursed day had begun? He lowered his head but the Robin wrenched it back again, so fiercely Kyrian suspected he had taken a fistful of black hair with him. “Robin—”

  “I told you I would kill you if you came within sight of my people, Skyad. Do you think I shall not honour my word, that I have not killed for less? Fool! No Skyad has entered Robinsdwel beneath my guard and escaped with his life, and upon my grandfather’s name you shall not be the first.”

>   Kyrian felt the knife bite coldly and acted upon pure instinct, throwing one elbow back and lunging forward only when he heard a grunt of pain. He stumbled away, twisted to face the Robin, reached for a low-hanging oak bough to steady himself if only until the world ceased to sway before his eyes. A trickle of blood leaked from the Robin’s nose, dripping from his chin to stain the planks. His nostrils flared. With murder in his pale, tight features he knelt to retrieve his knife. Its partner was still tucked in Kyrian’s belt.

  “This is mad, Robin,” Kyrian whispered, eyes fixed upon him, upon the rusty hair and green eyes, familiar but distant, like a whisper of a memory or the lingering thread of some forgotten dream. “You have done all you can. You cannot force them to hear you. You cannot save a people that will not be saved.”

  “Silence!” The Robin scoured one wrist across his face, streaking his features with blood. “You know nothing of my people, nothing of me! Who are you to speak to me of Robinsdwel? Of what I can and cannot save? Yours is the putrid race that has condemned us to this fate, to this inescapable death. You dare not deny it. You cannot deny it. You have brought this darkness upon us!”

  “No,” Kyrian protested, shaking his head. “Robin—”

  “You are Silvers, are you not? Masters of the Rains, keepers of the spring, upon which all the Green Lands are helplessly, hopelessly dependent. But where are they, Skyad? Where are the Rains? Do your people expect to linger into eternity when all the world lies dead beneath them?”

  He drew nearer as he spoke, blood trilling from one nostril, his shoulders hunched over the white-knuckled fist that held his shaking knife. When he halted it was a breath from Kyrian’s chest. Near enough for his hot breath to buffet Kyrian’s face, near enough to count the flecks of black in his eyes, the flecks that had multiplied since last they had pierced him, turning the green eyes dark. He could see their red rims, the scarlet veins webbing them beneath crusted, red-brown lashes. A madman’s eyes. A reject. Windows into a soul tormented by isolation, by the burden of wisdom in a world where only ignorance was bliss.