The Heir of Ariad

by Niki Florica

  Over time, in Tasnil’s shadow, the flood had slowed to a trickle. Some anxious Silvers attempted to flee, but most were stayed by fear. It was a bold and bitter few who entered the gates from beyond, those too defiant to give place to idle fears and too desperate to surrender Rosghel’s market. They were a scattered minority and required little vigilance from the guard, so Melkian had reduced the patrol there to a minimal sentry, and often volunteered to hold the dull watch himself.

  At midday activity was nonexistent, with no Silvers seeking to depart or to enter. Melkian stood in a small guardroom beneath the gates, occupying himself with inventory of the armoury while watching the road for travellers. The weaponry had not been replenished in many a long year; their supply of arrows had all but dwindled to nothing. He was examining the quality of a long-forgotten recurve bow when a clamour from outside the chamber drew him to the door.

  A caravan of merchants had materialized in the mist, filing slowly through the open gates in sombre succession, backs bowed beneath their wares, faces drawn and gaunt with suffering. Melkian recognized the crest of Calryss and leaned casually upon the doorframe to watch their passage, nodding to some, smiling faintly to others, sensing in all of them the same, desperate longing for hope, for light, for freedom. He wished he could tell them they would find it in Rosghel, but in the shadow of the Usurper, they would be wiser to return to the blighted city from whence they came.

  He had almost turned to the armoury again when the last of the travellers straggled through the gates. His hands were empty, his head high, lips quirked in an expression of familiar impertinence.

  He looked up, and their eyes collided. Melkian’s fists clenched.

  The impudent smirk widened to a slow, cold smile.

  He had started forward before he knew his legs had stirred to motion; the knife slid from its sheath and glittered like the watery blue eyes mocking him from across the pass. Six paces, seven—he felt his muscles tighten beneath his skin. The taunting smile never wavered.

  He halted a breath from the Silver’s grinning face, gripping the knife in a death grasp.

  Dorthil of the Rain Realm chuckled and nodded. “Hello, Melkian.”

  “Traitor,” he growled. “You have no place here. I have not lifted your exile.”

  “Exile?” he echoed, feigning surprise. “You do not mean I am still unforgiven?”

  “If you think I will not kill you—”

  “Please. You have ever been quite clear upon that matter, though truly, Melkian, I had never expected you to be capable of so fiercely holding to bitterness. After so many years, no less—”

  Melkian felt his jaw crack. “What is your business here, Dorthil?”

  A faint smirk, followed by a gleam of pale eyes. “I have come to offer my condolences. Word came to Calryss of the events that transpired between Kyrian and a certain unfortunate Grey. If you are in need of a second-in-command, I would be perfectly willing to reclaim my position.”

  Melkian’s vision blurred. “You forfeited your position the moment you set a pack of children like dogs upon a twelve-winter boy.”

  Dorthil, former second-in-command, father of Berdon, waved a dismissive hand. The same hand that had once trained Rosghel’s youths in the art of warrior combat, the same voice that had ordered them to find the son of Brondro Tarmilis and pummel him into submission until he begged for mercy. The same face that Melkian had trusted, to stand beside him, to honour his allegiance to the King. “Dogs, Captain? My pupils possessed the wrath and desire of their own. I merely directed it.”

  “You nearly killed him!”

  “The same could be said of you. It is rather convenient that Kyrian was able to escape, sparing you the heartache of executing him yourself. Had you not favoured him so, Captain, had you not been blind, perhaps if my students had killed him that day, much would have been different.”

  His hands were trembling when he lowered the knife, fighting to breathe, fighting the desire to strike the smirk from this traitor’s face, to avenge what could have been Kyrian’s death and what had been the darkest epoch of his own life. The Last Fight. The Dark Year. Melkian’s living nightmare.

  “Why have you come?” he gnarred, jaw flexing.

  Berdon’s banished father straightened. “Ah, but you are cunning, Melkian. As ever you have discerned rightly. I have not come only to offer my condolences, but to answer a summons from the king.”

  “The king?” Melkian echoed, disbelieving. “You have seen him?”

  Dorthil snorted. “Skies, no. The summons was not delivered in so gloriously chilling a fashion as your orders, Melkian. It did not appear by phantom upon my doorstep, but was delivered by a messenger of flesh and blood.” His eyebrow quirked in unison with the corner of his lips. “King Tasnil’s newly appointed messenger, in truth. My son.”

  “Berdon?” Melkian’s nostrils flared. “You lie.”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “He deserted his post?”

  “Deserted?” Dorthil laughed in his face. “He advanced, Melkian. We are all upon the same side, are we not? Tasnil the Usurper and the Silver Guard?” He leaned forward, his eyes glistening a challenge.

  Melkian ignored the snare set for him and snarled, “What business has Tasnil with you?”

  “So very hostile, dear Captain. Must we come so soon to business?” Melkian’s fingers twitched. “Well, then, if you must know, I come on behalf of Tasnil the king to execute the first of this war’s great demands. I was deliberately chosen to relay the message to you as well as the inhabitants of Rosghel. It seems appropriate, however, that you are the first to know.”

  Melkian waited.

  With painful deliberation, Dorthil produced a twine-bound parchment from his collar and slipped the binding from the scroll. His motions were theatrical, grossly artificial. But there was nothing ostentatious in his voice as he read.

  “Captain Melkian of the Silver Guard, you are hereby relieved of duty.”

  He collapsed, exhausted, ribs bruised by the pounding of his heart, the Sword slick in his hand with his own perspiration. There was no time to rest. They were coming, still coming. But he could not go on. Skies—where was the Robin?

  The torches were dim in the distance but the marching thunder still rolled. Coming, coming—would he never be rid of them? Upon his knees Kyrian heaved for breath, sweat dripping from his brow, his lashes, his hair, and ringing upon the stone washed golden by the Sword’s light. Shadows swathed the tunnel where the glow did not reach. He fought the urge to retch. When the thunder grew nearer he stood, stumbled to the tunnel wall and gripped the stone to hold himself upright. Something shifted beneath his feet, crackled and skidded into the dark. Filling his lungs and willing his heart to slow he bent to examine the tunnel floor, holding the Sword before him to light the shadowed stone.

  It was then that he tasted the death in the air, the stench of rot and decay.

  It was then that he noticed the stillness, the heaviness, the shadows like shrouds of the dead.

  Two empty eyes gazed at him from the tunnel floor. Hollow, unfeeling, and dark, they could have belonged to any unfortunate creature, were it not for the broadsword lying forgotten beside them. The craft of the blade was as sure confirmation as any flesh face would have been. He choked.

  A skull.

  Kyrian’s world waned to horror.

  It was an Adamun skull.

  Melkian would have persuaded himself that it was a dream, were it not so starkly, vividly real. Dorthil, tearing the captain’s emblem from his tunic, withholding his hand for the ivory-hilted sword entrusted only to commanders of the Silver Guard. His blue eyes were pools of triumph, absorbing every flex of Melkian’s jaw, every tremble of his tight-drawn limbs.

  Relieved.

  The words, in their diplomatic callousness, echoed anew in his thoughts. Captain Melkian of the Silver Guard, you are hereby relieved . . .

  “You cannot do this,” he protested to the traitor, to the one who
se jealous pride had shaken Kyrian’s life the day long ago that had threatened to shatter his world. “I have protected this city for twenty years. I have kept the peace, I have performed the king’s every command. The Silver Guard is loyal to me, to its captain!”

  “But you are not captain.” With his pale hair braided at his temples and his eyes shining with long-awaited victory, Dorthil appeared almost the warrior of his youth—a fiercer, bolder image of the feeble son who had never earned his pride. Melkian’s protests died in his throat, and he wondered how in Rosghel’s name he had ever placed his trust in this creature whose smug voice now taunted, “I am.”

  The wind moaned between the silver gates. Dorthil brushed past him, smiling, and Melkian allowed it, numb. His shoulders rose and fell with his breaths, heavy despite the burden that had been lifted from his shoulders by a single word, the burden he had cursed a thousand times in twenty years but would have given anything to hold now. Relieved.

  This city was his. His charge, his responsibility. The only true purpose he had ever known, while the fate of Ariad had come to rest in the hands of others far worthier than he. He was nothing, he knew. Brondro’s ally, Jas’ friend. Nothing but the guardian of the tarmil’s children.

  Nothing but the captain of the guard.

  “Dorthil.” He turned, watched the traitor halt, met the blue eyes with the last of the dignity that remained within his tired, sinking soul. “What of your allegiance?” he asked. Demanded. “What of Aradin”

  “Aradin,” came the cold response, “is dead, and freedom with him. You cling to your honour, to the vows made in a dead age to a dead King and his dead ways, but you are a fool, Melkian, just as you have ever been. You must choose the stronger legion, or die with the weak.” He chuckled. “Welcome to war.”