Circle of Reign

by Jacob Cooper

  “Of course wolf men aren’t real,” Drilth Wendham would admit. She had started to clean up after the children’s meal, clearing the plates from the wooden table. As the hold’s cook, Old Lady Wendham did not wait on people, but she enjoyed the Kerr twins and in particular, she loved to spar with Hedron. “People don’t become animals or vice versa.”

  “That’s not what I mean. They’re monsters that look like men but can smell like wolves,” Hedron had said. “And they’re stronger than the Haxlium ever were.” He enhanced his stories with roars and animations to impress his small audience.

  “For not believing in such stories, you certainly seem to know a lot about them.”

  “Everyone knows the legends. Just stupid stuff to try and scare kids.” He spat and sat back down next to his sister. “We’re not afraid, right, Reign?”

  She was not afraid then, before she had met a real monster. But she was afraid now.

  Reign was brought back from her memories by Hedron’s mischievous laugh as he ran toward where she huddled in a corner vacant of moonlight just outside the walls of Hold Hoyt. He reached down quickly and pulled her up fast and hard, dragging her behind him in tow. Angry voices were following them, shouting out orders and curses. He refused to give any explanation, but Reign could see this was not a time to ask questions. All she could think about was what Hedron could have possibly done this time.

  She felt the cobblestones under her feet as they dashed from the Hoyt hold. It wasn’t the same as the rich forest floor and roots of the Western Province’s terrain, but still Reign could negotiate the streets they ran through with speed. They would have to scale the tall walls that anchored massive sail-like contraptions at their tops to escape. Hoisting ropes hung freely from the pulleys far above that would aid in their extrication as they had many times before. The wall’s construction was mercifully rough, with stones and rocks jutting out randomly making for sturdy footholds. Though masts and sails atop the walls existed for a practical utilitarian purpose, their design was beautiful and the visual effect created when they were fully deployed in a sandstorm from the Schadar was stunning, as was much of the Southern Province’s unique architecture. She had seen it once, long ago, during a visit to Hold Hoyt as a much younger girl with her family. Even then she would spy on Hedron playing “kissy face” with the Hoyt girl.

  Somehow, Reign knew their current plight was not of her doing, but of her bull-headed twin brother. Again. Kathryn Hoyt had for some time, according to said bull-headed brother, been betrothed to him. The rest of House Hoyt seemed oblivious to this fact, however, and chased the lad off their lands whenever he was caught scaling the hold’s walls to Kathryn’s chamber. Ascending rock and stone was not as easy for the young wood-dweller boy as the forest trees of their home province, but this did not deter him in the least. The guards had no idea that who they chased was a Kerr of the wood-dwellers, but it probably would have made little difference. Actually it might have made their resolve to catch or bring down this intruder burn even hotter. Catching the son of one of the Realm’s most notorious traitors in history would be worth a significant reward. Killing Kerrs had become the aim of bounty hunters and ambitious souls throughout the Realm after the entire family line was implicated in her father’s supposed treachery. The eradication of any who held the Kerr name was decreed a holy pursuit by the Changrual, and an official decree from the High Duke authorizing citizens to use any means necessary to rid Senthara of the family name soon followed. The twins were accustomed to being chased and hunted, but not for their name’s sake. No one knew them by sight anymore. Their bodies had changed greatly in the maturity period and their childish features had largely faded.

  An arrow struck a small shop’s wall inches from the left side of Reign’s head, sending splinters free from the wood. Hounds were heard in the distance as the kennel masters released them into the night to track the intruders.

  “Honestly, if I die over some tramp because of your inability for rational judgment, dear brother Hedron, I’ll kill you!” Reign hissed as they fled from the hold. They would soon be out of range for even the hounds. She was not really mad, but amused actually. There was no real danger as long as they had room to run. She often accompanied Hedron on his nocturnal visits to see young Lady Hoyt and enjoyed the solitude of sitting hidden in some shadowed pass or crevice, out of sight of the world.

  “I don’t particularly enjoy being shot at for the sake of your little love story!”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Hedron playfully retorted. “The Lady Kathryn bade me visit her, and I cannot refuse a lady’s humble request.”

  “A lady’s humble request? A lady? That girl, barely fourteen, doesn’t have the physical composition of a lady.”

  “Ah, Reign,” Hedron pleaded as the hounds’ howls faded in the distance, “can’t you just be happy for me?”

  She scowled at him before looking away. They halted their silent run on the far edge of Thera, against the river Roniah. The crescent light of second moon glimmered against the smooth waters of the tributary.

  “Happy for you?” Reign scolded, not seeking to hide her incredulity. “You claim to have intent to marry, but what of her father? You bring no standing, no status in the Realm. Lord Hoyt will not consent, not to you. Not to a Kerr.”

  Hedron actually looked hurt. “Reign, you can’t mean that. Why do you despise your name so?” He was just being argumentative for fun. She could hear it in his tone. In reality, Reign knew Hedron had more issues with their family name than did she.

  “It’s no more than anyone else, and this isn’t about me. The Kerr hold is not even a hold any longer. It rests rotting in the west, where…” Reign cut off. Where our father lies, she had wanted to scream, but she would not speak his name, nor make mention of him. She stood silently glaring at Hedron. After a moment she looked away. The moonlight would betray her welling tears.

  Hedron’s smile changed to a mask of solemnity. “Reign,” he started gently, moving closer. “Reign, father loved you with all his—”

  “No more!” she snapped, turning back to him. “Not a solitary word more.” Hedron held his peace, but he knew what ailed her. He whispered, “It has been six years, sister.”

  Had it only been six years? Reign felt like perhaps six eternities had passed. Every day she hated her father more and spurned his memory. Everything she could think of to make her forget was given a chance, but nothing purged her memory. Not of her once great father, not of that night. To her, Thannuel had been a giant. Immortal as all fathers are to their daughters. Until, that is, she saw him fail. He died like any man, nothing special or exceptional. The Kerr Hold was deserted, little more than charred rubble—or so everyone said. They were completely irrelevant in life.

  Hedron didn’t know how to comfort his sister in these moments. He did not see and witness as she had. Deciding against words, Hedron stepped toward his sister and took her hand. She resisted at first, but only briefly. She would not cry, he knew that, nor would she speak. It didn’t matter, words weren’t needed between them. He felt her pain keenly, though he didn’t fully understand it. The pain seemed to emanate from hatred, not sorrow or loss.

  Hedron loathed how they were obliged to conceal their identity wherever they went, to not confess their true name. Why should a name be enough to damn a person in the Realm? They had felt damned even before they were yet ten years of age, before the age of innocence had passed. Still, Hedron’s hope could not be fully extinguished, despite his own misgivings surrounding their place in the world, cruel as it could be sometimes. Reign pretended there was no hope, but he knew it lay dormant inside her, not dead.

  “Why did you not tell mother where I hid?” Reign finally spoke. Her query was the same as always. “They all supposed I had perished as well.”

  “Because I was told not to,” Hedron said, his answer the same as always. He did not mention who told him not to reveal her to Aiden and his guards when they combed the woods bordering the hold i
n search of her. He was never sure how to explain it but felt the guilt of robbing his mother of some happiness she might have enjoyed if she knew Reign lived. Somehow Hedron understood, though, that Moira’s days would have been even shorter had he revealed his sister. He also understood keenly that his sister was in mortal danger then and likely still now.

  They stood there, on the banks of the Roniah in the Southern Province’s state city of Thera, far from their lands, the last of a once significant and now bereft house.

  The following morning, Reign awoke to freezing water being poured over her face. She jolted awake with a high-pitched scream and saw Hedron holding a hollowed piece of driftwood that served well enough as a shallow bucket.

  “That’s perfect. Perfect! Thank you so much!” she yelled at Hedron.

  His smirk could not be more infuriating. “What? It’s no more than you’ve done to me a hundred times!”

  Reign sprang to her feet and chased after her brother, intent on helping him feel just as loved. It didn’t take long for her to trip him up as they ran along the riverbank and shove him into the fast moving but shallow water. He came up screaming and clutching his chest.

  “One got me! A hydraf bit me!” He twisted around and screamed with pain.

  Reign’s face turned white with terror. She retrieved their satchel, withdrew some Triarch roots and ran into the cold water to her brother’s aid.

  “Where? Did it let go? Let me see!”

  “It’s burning!” Hedron cried. His hands covered his left upper chest, grabbing it so hard that his hands were white and purple.

  “Let me see!” Reign again demanded. “Where did it bite?”

  “Right here!” Hedron said as he reached his right hand behind Reign’s head and pulled her down hard. She was not expecting this and lost her balance, sprawling into the river face first. Hedron started to laugh uncontrollably.

  “Ancients curse you!” Reign pronounced as she came up spitting water. “Do you know how stupid you are? Don’t ever joke like that!”

  Hedron fell backward in the river laughing and let the current take him north. It drifted toward the Western Province’s border.

  “Come on,” he finally answered after catching his breath. “It was just a joke. They’re no hydrafs this close to shore.” He just continued to drift with the current, floating on his back and staring up into the morning sky. He wore the expression of a boy amazed by simple pleasures. “Well? Are you coming?”

  “Where exactly?” Reign asked. She still stood in the thigh-deep water with a foul mood.

  “Grab the satchel. We’re already wet. We might as well just float upriver. We’ll get out at the crossing.”

  The Roniah Crossing was where the river crossed borders from the south to the west. The Southern Province was south of the Eastern and Western Provinces and shared no border with the North except for a small speck of land under the Changrual Monastery where all the provincial borders met. The crossing was a busy port of trade for both the south and west. Riley’s Cove was the nearest town to the crossing in the Western Province where most of the trade occurred between the two provinces.

  Reign looked back to the shore where the satchel lay. In the distance, southeast of them, a sandstorm approached from the Schadar Desert. It was miles out and posed no threat to them. Sighing, she admitted to herself that Hedron was right. They were already wet and floating upriver to the crossing was a slower but much more relaxing method of travel. They would probably get there just before nightfall.

  “I don’t float as well as you, remember?”

  “That was before you were…uh…more developed up top. You’ll be fine. Quit stalling.”

  “Hedron! I can’t believe—”

  She heard his laughter. He was drifting farther upstream. She went ashore, grabbed the satchel and replaced the Triarch roots she had taken to counteract the hydraf poison.

  I wish he had been bitten! Not really, though she wouldn’t mind if he had hit his head. Might make him a little more right up there. She found a piece of driftwood about three arms thick and mostly hollow inside. Woman now or not, she still did not float like Hedron.

  Maybe that’s because he’s so fat, she mused. He was anything but fat, having their fathers broad shoulders and trim waist, but he didn’t have to know that.

  More than three spans later, the twins drifted off to sleep in the arms of a large sprawling oak. They were northwest of Calyn by about a day’s walk. They always made sure to avoid the southeast part of the city where their family’s hold lay cradled in entropy’s arms.

  “Tell me about mother,” Reign asked. Her voice was heavy with sleep.

  “You knew her too, Reign. It’s not like she died when you were born.”

  “I know. Please?”

  Hedron sighed. “Fine. She loved you. She loved me. She loved everyone. Good?”

  Reign did not answer. She was having trouble keeping her eyes open as she stared through an opening in the thick canopy above at a single star peeking through. Stories of Moira always comforted her.

  “She did love everyone, actually,” Hedron continued after her non-response. “She would often take in those who were just passing by, no matter if we had provisions or not for them. We used to always have enough, but that changed after—well, you know. Mother was strong, though. She hid it well, but I could see the loneliness. The sadness. Above it all, she was still beautiful.”

  Just as sleep overtook her, Reign thought she heard Hedron say, “Like you.” She smiled and left behind her fears and sorrow as sleep finally took her.

  She screamed in the night, but no sound came from her. The scream was audible only in her mind. Reign watched motionless as the scary man searched for her, his head jerking in different directions, seething. His face contorted as he snorted short, feral intakes of the night air, flaring the gills on the bridge of his nose. She felt the urge to silently plead for her father to get up, but she did not. She sat there, as if dead inside, motionless. Emotionless.

  The raindrops hit his bald head and dripped down his brow, tracing the geometric scars that connected and covered his exposed flesh completely. His sword ran with her father’s blood. But she felt nothing, not even fear as he drew closer to her perch. She heard noise from afar that seemed to approach. Howls in the night, but Reign did not react. She did not even blink.

  Then, others were present to her view from the Triarch in which she hid. Her mother, huddled over her father. The rain could not mask her tears as she screamed. Aiden and the hold guard sprinting through the forest, hunting something. The hounds sniffing intently in all directions around the scene, coaxed by the kennel masters. Hedron hiding behind a tree wearing a paralyzed look of confusion. He looked around warily, his lip quivering. As he did so, his sight rested upon the Triarch that nestled Reign about twenty feet off the forest floor. She knew he had found her even though he could not see her so far back in the dark hollow cavity of the tree. She still remained immovable, seeing but not feeling. She felt cold and gray on the outside, hard and rigid on the inside. The impossibility of what her eyes had seen clashed with what she knew in her heart, that her father could not die, could not fail. And yet he was there, not far from her. Lifeless, just as she felt.

  It pushed against her.

  Reign awoke with a start, nearly falling from the branches that nestled her. Hedron still slumbered next to her, oblivious to the world. A small caterpillar rested on a patch of leaves near her left hand where she had grabbed the bark so tightly that her hand pulsed and ached. The nightmare, the same as always. She would not sleep longer this morning. The first glimpses of day’s early pale light were becoming visible on the horizon. Hunger usually visited her after the night terrors.

  Thumping. Quick of pace, light, but drawing nearer. Dropping without noise to the forest floor, Reign extracted one short-blade from the inner sheath of her leg. The curved knife resembled that of a thin crescent moon. Its twin remained sheathed; she would not need both. Then, with
her free hand and feet, she escalated up the self-same tree she had just vacated, roughly to the height of a man. Her one hand clinging hard to the tree, the other relaxed with the short-blade’s hilt therein. The hilt had a cover of sheepskin, soft and molded to her hand over the many years. It had once seemed so large.

  She focused, forcing out all thought. Instinct would take over when the time came. The vibrations became more intense, although she knew she wasn’t hearing the footfall. A wood-dweller often felt more than heard, particularly in a forest of the West. Inter-tangled root systems of thousands of trees quickly transferred vibrations with more clarity than sound through the air over long distances. Reign could decipher distance, speed, approximate size and number by clinging to a tree and concentrating. Only one was coming toward her. Wait for it …

  She leaped down, short-blade hand swiping through the air with speed, the bladed edge finding purchase as the smell of fresh blood filled the morning. Her momentum carried her gracefully through a full turn before stopping in a crouch, short-blade arm uplifted in a defensive posture just below her chin. She could easily pounce and strike again if needed, but Reign knew it was over. The large elk fell not two feet from where the blow had been dealt.

  Hedron awakened to the smell of elk being smoked over a small fire. The morning meal was being prepared precisely below the branches where he had been sleeping.

  “Reign,” he said groggily, wiping the nightsands from his eyes. “You made me breakfast.”

  “Really? I only see room for one down here,” came her jest. Hedron let himself fall the nearly thirty feet to the ground, coming to settle cross-legged next to his sister while still yawning. He stared greedily at the meat over the open fire.

  “I didn’t even hear you awaken. You should have told me you were fetching food.”

  “Why?” Reign asked. “So you could wish me luck and roll back over?”

  “Ha! You think me of no worth in a hunt, dear sister?” Hedron exclaimed. “Well, I’ll have to allow you to observe my next hunt. You might learn something.”