The Heir of Ariad

by Niki Florica

  The Last Fight.

  Kyrian did not know when the title had appeared, the name for the unspeakable subject so seldom discussed in Melkian’s manor. Like an unwritten law it had become a topic to be shunned, an unspoken vow between the three of them—Kyrian, his sister, and his guardian—never to speak of it unless by his consent.

  It was not his law. He had never established it, never feared it, never given it a name. Melkian and Salienne were the ones who could not bear to speak of it aloud.

  The Last Fight. The Dark Year. The day that had almost killed him.

  He was twelve years old, walking with his hands tucked securely in his pockets, the sky wind whipping his hair about his face as he approached Rosghel from the northwest, upon the path from Melkian’s manor. He had slept that night—truly slept—for the first time in fortnights. The nightmares had not come, the fear was finally, blissfully fading, and he no longer felt the eyes of the Usurper burning into his back as he strode, alone. He no longer heard the deadly-kind voice, calling his name from the shadows.

  Salienne had been the one to tell Melkian of his nightmares. He had despised her for it, but no longer. She was wise. His guardian had listened, not only to the terrors that plagued him each night but to the one Great Terror that had spawned every one of them, the nightmare that waking could not dissipate.

  Out of habit he glanced over his shoulder, but the Great Fear with its pale, sunken eyes was not there.

  He drew a shaky breath. His hands burrowed deeper into his worn trousers as he entered the sparse outskirts of Rosghel, boots half-submerged in misty cloud, shoulders hunched against the dampness and the chill of the wind. Alya’s cookery came into view, tantalizing aromas wafting from the open window, and as ever Kyrian made for the alley that divided it from the tailor’s abode, his daily route to and from the heart of the city.

  The alley was in shadow, for the sun had long since passed its peak, but the sweet fragrance of Alya’s morning labour lent a lightness to the air as he walked between the alley walls, navigating the crates and refuse that scattered his way, just as he did, uneventfully, each day. Salienne had come before him; he did not expect to see her beyond the city heart. Perhaps Melkian would honour his promise, and today Kyrian could begin warrior training with the other youths, all a year his elder. He was younger, he knew, and smaller, but he was strong and willing and ready. Surely they would not resent him for beginning early, not when he had earned their respect.

  A sour wind howled between the alley walls and Kyrian winced, shoulders tightening.

  The blow struck him hard and fast beneath his ribs, sending him sidelong into a mountain of crates stacked against Alya’s wall. He gasped, caught himself on the wall, whirled to face his attacker. Instinct compiled a frantic list of observations but they were scattered and half-formed and there was no time . . .

  Sparks and pain and an explosion of blackness. He did not see the fist until the jagged knuckles drove into his right eye and all the world collapsed, the crates rising up to meet him as he careened backward again, his skull smashing the cookery wall and sending stars across his vision. He could not see them. Them? Were there more than one? Skies, what was happening? What were they—

  Another fist to his ribs, then his temple, then his right eye again. A flash of faces, of eyes and hair and wicked smiles. Eli, Jarvis, Mallin. Faces and smiles he knew. He staggered to his feet; Eli shoved him back again. “What is it, Kyrian?” he spat, somewhere between thundering heartbeats and a pounding skull. “I thought you were stronger than the rest of us. Strong enough to begin training early? We shall see.”

  Fist and fist again—to his stomach. He doubled over, spat onto the cloudy ground and saw red. He could not fight. He had promised Melkian. Just last night he had promised Melkian. Why was this happening? This was not the warrior way. Why was this happening?

  “Fight, Kyrian!” Boots, fists, elbows pummelled him to the cloud, again and again and again. More than three. Six at the least. Shouting, they were all shouting. “You may be the captain’s treasure, but you are no stronger than the rest of us! Fight, Kyrian! Are you Rosghel’s champion or not? Fight!”

  No. No, no, no. He had promised Melkian. He had promised. He had promised.

  Fist, boot, elbow. His ribs, his skull, his eye, his jaw, again and again and again.

  He had promised. Why was this happening? Oh, Skies ablaze, why was this happening . . . ?

  Her father long departed, Elillian startled when Kyrian’s hand tightened in hers. She glanced up to find his every muscle tensed, his features contorted in pain and his left hand rising to his head, as if to protect himself from whatever phantom stalked him in his nightmares. The Robin, standing silent in the pavilion corner, regarded him pensively, and in a rare moment of unity they exchanged a concerned glance. Kyrian’s lips parted. He was mumbling something. Pleading. Not for Elillian, nor for the Robin . . .

  Mercy.

  He was pleading for mercy.

  “Do you think you are something special, Kyrian?” they were shouting, screaming in his ear as they pounded him, pummelled him, struck him over and over. Curled against the cookery wall he held his arms feebly over his neck, over his head, desperate for protection, for salvation from the savage blows. He did not understand. He did not understand. What had he done? Were they trying to kill him?

  “Answer me, tarmil!” the faceless attacker roared.

  Kyrian cringed, whispered, “No.”

  “Louder!”

  “No!”

  He heard a voice, upon the edge of his mind. Berdon’s voice. “Enough! Eli, enough! Leave him alone!”

  Berdon? Defending him? Was he not one of them? Skies, what was happening? Would it ever end? Did they mean to kill him here, now? Would Melkian know he had kept his promise?

  “Silence, Berdon,” spat the others. “If you did not wish to obey your father’s orders, you should have stayed away. This is training, he said. He is our mentor, and we will follow his commands.”

  “You are going to kill him!”

  “Why should he have privileges we do not? Just because he is the captain’s pride?”

  The blows were not slowing, but Kyrian was numbing. His hands loosened over his head, and for a moment the roar of his blood and the shouts of the others dulled to a muffled whine in his ears. He was fading. Graciously, graciously fading. A boot to his temple drove his skull into the wall, and the world tilted. Berdon was tearing at their hands, protecting him, shouting for mercy when he no longer could. Berdon, of all creatures. His rival. He could scarcely feel it anymore . . .

  Someone was screaming. Was it him? No. Salienne. Salienne?

  “Kyrian? Kyrian! Leave him, you filthy cowards! Leave him alone! Kyrian!”

  Too late. It was too late. The darkness came to claim him, and he had not the strength to resist.

  He hoped someone would tell Melkian that he had kept his promise . . .

  Gilvonel came and departed in a blur of tears and black blood, washing, treating, binding, murmuring the Naiad words of healing that Elillian knew but had forgotten until her father’s calming presence was beside her. The black veins that webbed Kyrian’s pale flesh grew darker before they began to retreat, as Gilvonel murmured in the tongue of the Nelduith his healing prayer to Aradin, and Elillian waited and worried and followed his instructions like the healer she was supposed to be.

  She did not even notice the presence of the Robin until Gilvonel departed at dusk.

  Perched on a pedestal in the corner he had not moved, had not spoken, but sat like a green-shrouded ornament carved from the pearl and ivory upon which he sat. Head propped against the wall, arms crossed torpidly before his chest, the gentle rise and fall of his shoulders was the only sign of life in his otherwise comatose presence. His eyes were closed, but Elillian knew from the deliberate blankness of his features that he was very much awake, and she wondered if he felt her eyes upon him.

  Kyrian slept soundly for the first time since dawn, his
grey hand cold in hers. She had cleaned the fang wound and replaced the binding, and now she bathed his glistening forehead while fever burned hotter in his skin and his complexion grew still more deathly by the hour. The black veins of poison had retreated, to Aradin’s praise, but Elillian was little consoled. He did not look like a living creature, lying so still and pale upon the gauzy white robes woven by Naiad hands. He did not look like the bright-eyed warrior who had laughed in the face of death, or defied the Council of Peace in fierce defence of his people.

  Exhausted and frayed, Elillian lowered her head to rest alongside his ashen right arm.

  Now, more than anything, Kyrian of the Rain Realm looked like a corpse.

  She did not know how long she lay there, head resting upon the crook of her arm, his fingers closed in hers. She might have slept, or perhaps simply drifted in vague, shapeless thought as the sun dipped beneath the western horizon, but when at last she opened her eyes it was to the gentle rasp of metal upon metal. The rasp of a knife escaping its sheath.

  The Robin sat with his legs stretched before him and his feet crossed in their worn moccasins. He had removed one knife and was focused intently upon twirling the dagger between his nimble fingers, his bright eyes reflecting every flash of the blade as if silver flame blazed behind them. His hands were the sole facet of him that moved, his position otherwise unchanged, and for a moment Elillian stared blankly at him, struggling to understand what it was in his presence that appeared so starkly different.

  She realized then, with a slow-drawn breath.

  His face. His expression.

  It was miserable.

  As if he sensed her gaze upon him, his eyes snapped upward to collide with hers and instantly all emotion drained like lifeblood from his face. Veils fell over his eyes, shrouds to conceal the windows of his soul. The knife stalled between his dexterous fingers, and as he wrenched his green gaze once more to his hands she watched his face harden, cold and still as ice, and very nearly as colourless.

  She watched his throat bob, watched his fingers haltingly resume their dance. Each time his left palm flashed she caught a glimpse of glistening scarlet, stark against the eerie pallor of his flesh. “Robin,” she said suddenly, softly, lifting her head from the robes, “what happened to your hand?”

  Again his gaze flitted to her, and she wished she could see the thoughts whirling behind it.

  When she repeated her wish, it was no longer a question. “Come here, Robin. Let me see it.”

  He obeyed, after a moment’s hesitation, silently and slowly across the pavilion like a child facing reprimand, his knife slipping once more into its sheath. She withheld her hand for his, and he complied reluctantly, his every muscle tightening as her skin met his own and the slow pulse in his wrist drummed faintly against her fingertips. She turned it to the light, and drew a breath through her teeth at the sight of the oozing, deliberate slice-wound cleaving his calloused palm.

  Elillian bunched her lips, tucking a tendril of hair behind her ear with a dour, weary sigh.

  This, she could heal.

  She guided him across the pavilion floor to the washbasin beside Kyrian’s pallet, leading him by the hand, painfully aware of his keen focus following her every movement. Over the basin she began to cleanse his wound, swabbing gently at the blood with a cloth, grateful for the distraction, for the occupation, if only to take her mind and eyes from the Skyad whose cold fingertips she could still feel in her own. The wound was not infected, though crusted with blood. A perfect, deliberate slice.

  “Who did this to you?” she whispered vaguely, brushing the last of the crust from his skin.

  For a long time her question was met only with silence, until Elillian began to wonder if he had, in fact, heard her address him. Curious, she glanced upward to find him staring at his sliced hand with furrowed brows and the faintest, slightest suggestion of wonderment written in his face. She frowned. “Robin?”

  He flexed his fingers slowly, eyes following their movement as if suddenly he were no longer certain they belonged to him. “I think . . . ,” he answered faintly, voice rusty with silence, “I . . . I think I did.”

  Elillian’s fingers stalled. “You?” He met her eyes emptily. “Why in the Nelduith’s name . . .”

  The thought died upon her tongue, replaced abruptly by another.

  “The blood,” she mused, coldly. “The blood that frenzied the Nelduith. It was not Kyrian’s. It was yours.”

  His russet curls drifted with the faintest of concurring nods. “Yes,” he whispered distantly, eyes glazing as his mind bore him elsewhere, deep into the shadows beneath the green veils. “Yes. I recall it now.”

  “You tried to kill him.”

  There was neither guilt nor satisfaction in his single, whispered, “Yes.”

  Elillian knew she should have resented him, should have despised him for his dark deeds against Aradin’s chosen, for his flippancy toward the one whose fate concerned them all. Kyrian resented him, she knew, for she had seen it, burning in his eyes upon the floor of the accused. But Kyrian also pitied him. Enough to free him of whatever oath had bound them together. Enough to plead for his life.

  Elillian reached for a crystal vial of Guilyra waters and unclasped its mouth, holding the Robin’s hand firmly in hers as she poured its contents onto the wound and watched the healing liquid froth and spit within the gash. It should have stung him, she knew, for such was the cleansing power of Guilyra, but he did not flinch. Merely watched the waters froth in his skin with an expression of vague fascination. Regarding it, detached, like a specimen from a distance.

  “Robin,” she murmured, staring openly at his lifeless, colourless face. “Are . . . are you mad?”

  It was not an accusation but a genuine inquest. She could not tear her eyes from him.

  “Not mad,” came the whispered response, at last, his hand falling limply away. “Dying.”

  He traversed the pavilion while she looked on—slowly, with his dripping hand hanging lamely at side. With rigid motion he settled once more onto his pedestal, resumed the precise position from which she had disturbed him, and promptly unsheathed his green-hilted knife to twirl it, over and over again, between slender, nimble fingers. His visage was utterly empty once more. A vacant, barren mask.

  Not mad, said his rasping voice in her mind.

  Not mad . . . Dying.

  They were memories, not dreams, which drifted through the darkness of Kyrian’s unconsciousness. Of awakening in the watchtower, in Avel’s private quarters, his every muscle and bone aflame with pain and his skull still ringing with the screams of his attackers. Of calling out for Melkian, of hearing his voice but not seeing him through the dark haze that was his right eye’s vision. Of looking down at his broken body for the first time, at the bruises marring his ribs and abdomen. Of fighting to draw breath after laborious breath through the pain lying heavy in his lungs.

  He remembered Melkian, moving his chair to the left side of the pallet to hold Kyrian’s hand while Avel set his broken ribs. He remembered how grey his guardian had looked, how fiercely his hands had held to Kyrian’s, how gently he had brushed the sweaty hair from Kyrian’s forehead and how moist his eyes had grown when Kyrian had whispered that he had not broken his promise. Warriors had come and departed, requesting orders from their captain, but Melkian had held steadfastly to his place at Kyrian’s side, and not even the obligations of the captain of the guard could have torn him from the watchtower quarters.

  He remembered listening to the murmurings from beyond the closed door, from the great foyer of the watchtower where came the Silver warriors for food and drink at the close of each day, served by Avel himself. He remembered the sharp clarity of his own name above the voices, listening to them whisper amongst themselves and to Avel of the tragedy that had befallen him. Listening to Avel reply, in hushed tones, that he feared Kyrian would never walk again.

  Berdon came to see him, once, and Kyrian thanked him then, for all that he had fr
uitlessly done to protect him. The watery-eyed child, a year his elder, had only stared miserably at his knotted hands, muttered his incessant apology, and departed in a state near to tears with Salienne glaring daggers into his back. Kyrian had not the strength to defend him, nor yet the conviction. Berdon may have aided him in the end, but even he had been among the striking fists in the beginning.

  The memories swirled and drifted through the haze in perfect, vivid clarity. Of Melkian, staring through the window of Avel’s bedchamber with his hands knotted in white-knuckled fists, lips moving constantly in soundless invocation. Of Salienne, crying for him when she thought he did not know it. Of Avel, smiling hollowly down upon him through dull, despairing eyes each time he entered the room from the foyer beyond the door, the foyer from which he heard the Silvers whispering his name.

  Melkian, carrying him through the streets of Rosghel and holding him tighter every time another Silver paused to stare at the pitiful menace of the Rain Realm, now a broken shell.

  Melkian, pressing a kiss to his head and promising him a place one day as his second-in-command.

  Melkian, kicking the door to the manor wide, laying him on the chaise by the blue-flickering hearth and telling him tales of his father’s valour until the ache in his soul was temporarily eased.

  Melkian, praying aloud when he thought Kyrian could not hear it. Please, my King. Aradin, please. He has lost so much . . . so much already. Do not take his life from him. Please . . .

  Holding his hand, brushing the sweaty hair from his forehead, Elillian winced at the fever burning still within his skin. Sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes and brows knotted fiercely in pain, he would have been more cadaver than creature were it not for the gentle rise and fall of his ribs with each breath. It was second moonrise, and darkness pooled thick beyond the soft wash of the pavilion’s pale lantern light. The Naiads of Dunbrielle were at rest, praying in their veiled abodes for the life of the Heir of Ariad while the Robin sat unspeaking against the pale-washed wall, twirling his curved blade.