by Alex Paul
“That’s what I was taught as well, that Nanders and humans are like harses and dunkeys—they can mate but their offspring, multes, are not able to have offspring. But you are the proof that’s not true.”
“Why isn’t Father here telling me all this?” Arken asked.
“He was worried if he came downstairs to join us, it would wake Zela. He wanted to make sure she didn’t find out.”
“Mother doesn’t know?”
“There’s no reason to tell her. She’s very honest and would have trouble lying to the authorities. And who knows? Perhaps she wouldn’t approve of your father or even you, if she knew both of you were part-Nander.”
“I can’t believe that,” Arken objected.
“Most humans fear and hate Nanders,” Balloom countered. “They think of Nanders as savage animals.” He placed his hand on Arlet’s. “But they’re not. They’re as human as we are and in many ways more spiritual.”
“Really?”
“Yes, their healers can see nature spirits and have visions.”
“Like the Tolarian queen who uses a necklace to see the future?”
“Yes, and did you know that the necklace she uses was made by the Nanders and stolen from them by the Tolarians?”
“No, that’s amazing!” Arken felt embarrassed when a yawn escaped him. He was very interested; it was just that he was so tired, and it was the middle of the night!
“Time for you to go back to bed. You’ll have an early start tomorrow.” Balloom clapped Arken on the shoulder. “Remember, never tell a soul.”
“I won’t, Grandfather.” He rose and Arlet stood up next to him and offered him a hug. He’d always loved her, even as much as his mother. She’d raised him after all. And now it seemed more natural because she was his actual grandmother, not full of airs and society’s graces like Zela’s mother, who was polite to him but always seemed distant for a grandmother. No, Arlet had raised him and was as real as wind, earth, and water. He kissed her, and said, “I love you, Grandmother.”
Tears came to her eyes as she sobbed and hugged him again.
“I have waited so long for this day when you would finally know.” She squeezed him hard, so hard he couldn’t breathe. She was unbelievably strong, but then all Nanders were. This finally explained to Arken why he was so strong, so much more than his classmates despite being the smallest in his class.
“So is this the reason why I am so short, Grandfather?”
“I’ve told you when you turn fourteen, you’ll start to grow. All Nanders do, and that’s what happened with your father. It’s coming soon, I promise.”
“I hope you’re right,” Arken said. He turned away to go to bed, and then stopped.
“What would you have done if I’d looked like a Nander when I was born?”
Balloom looked down and then shared glances with Arlet.
“We were going to return to the forest with you and find my tribe,” Arlet said.
“You wouldn’t have killed me and told Mother I was stillborn?”
“What?” Balloom looked shocked. “No, never. We couldn’t kill our own grandchild.”
“Thank you, Grandfather.”
“Are you all right, Arken? You look upset.”
“I’m not sure,” Arken replied honestly. “It’s been hard for me dealing with the royals that have bullied me in school all these years. I never really felt like part of the Academy. Now I’m not sure I even feel like I’m a Lantish citizen. I don’t belong anywhere.”
Arlet stepped forward and hugged him. “You’ll always be loved by us. And if you keep your secret, no one will ever question that you’re Lantish.”
And don’t forget that you’re going to be one of the most powerful citizens Lanth has ever seen, as your father was before you,” Balloom added. “Strength served your father well. That combined with your Academy training will help you succeed as a warrior beyond your wildest dreams. Many people will like you, then, and make you feel like you belong here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me years ago?” Arken asked.
“You were too young to keep a secret. It was safer to keep the secret from you,” Balloom said.
“Then why did you decide to tell me tonight?”
“Stroebel sent me a note after your reading. He asked me to visit him,” Balloom said. “He was worried that the questions he’d asked you might make you speak with someone, and they’d realize the truth. So we thought we should tell you to make sure you were safe.”
“So that’s what he was talking about,” Arken said. “Is he part-Nander as well?”
Balloom and Arlet shared a glance. She nodded before Balloom answered.
“Yes, he’s half-Nander like your father. But you must never reveal it, or he’ll be put to death.”
“I won’t,” Arken assured them. “I would never do anything to endanger him or my family.”
“Good.” Balloom nodded.
“What about when I wish to marry someday? Can I tell my wife?”
Arlet and Balloom exchanged glances, and then Balloom sighed. “That’s the one person that you can tell. It’s up to you, and it depends on how much you trust her.”
“Then why didn’t Father tell Zela?” Arken asked.
“I think he trusts Zela, but not her mother,” Arlet explained. “And he worries that Zela might tell her mother if she learned.”
“Well, I don’t blame him.” Arken laughed softly. “I don’t trust her either. She’s so cold. Not like you, Arlet—I mean, Grandmother.”
“Now, off to bed with you,” Arlet said as she hugged Arken, and Balloom patted him on the back.
“This is going to be a grand adventure for you, Arken,” his grandfather assured him.
Arken shivered as he walked back to his bedroom. He returned to bed feeling sad, not happy, because he didn’t belong to either world. It made him feel more like an unwanted outcast than being a commoner in the Royal Academy. But he realized his secret was safe within his family, at least, so no harm would come from him being part-Nander.
He tossed and turned in bed. Grandfather telling him this huge family secret had made it impossible to sleep. It was so exciting to think that he had Nander blood in him, and that he would grow so much bigger and stronger very soon. But he could imagine that there would be problems being part-Nander. He could never tell the truth about his past before he got married, so he wondered how he could ever meet and marry a girl now. And what if he told her after they were married, and then she didn’t want him any longer?
He promised he’d ask Father for advice on that matter. And he imagined he’d have to hold back at times so that no one would be the wiser about his heritage.
Everything good about being a Nander made him too excited to sleep while everything bad about being a Nander made him too anxious to sleep!
Arken’s mind raced as he realized he was glad that he’d learned the truth about Stroebel. He had asked his grandfather about the swirling tattoo on Stroebel’s right ear and neck. His grandfather said Nanders got a tattoo like that at their initiation ceremony after killing a toth or ton when they became a bull of the tribe. Stroebel had lied to him at his reading. Arken didn’t blame him, though. Now he understood the terrible secret they both guarded.
And now that he knew the truth about Stroebel and his father, he understood why they both had similarly thick, ropy muscles and powerful builds. Arken concluded that being part-Nander would be wonderful if he became as big and strong as his father or Stroebel.
At the same time, the threat of being put to death was a very real concern, and he tossed and turned in bed, worrying that he might talk some night in his sleep, and someone would overhear him. His tired brain began trying to imagine times that he had to be careful about what he said, but the mental exercise soon fatigued him, and he drifted off to sleep.
Arken woke with a start in the morning and, for a moment, he forgot about Balloom telling him that Arlet was his grandmother. Then the realization flooded his
brain, and he was instantly awake. He was glad that he was alert, because it was time to finish packing for SeaJourney! As part of his preparation, he decided to wear his new knife.
He lifted his tunic and tied the sheath belt for his concealed obsidian knife around his waist. He tied it below his tunic, just above his tots, the loincloth worn by all the cadets. Then he positioned the sheath so that it rested against the outside of his right thigh. A second strap was attached to the bottom of the sheath. He tied that around his lower thigh to prevent the sheath from flapping when he ran.
Finally, he dropped the knife blade into the sheath and grabbed the lanyard, a loop of hide running through a hole in the handle. He pulled the lanyard around the bottom of the sheath. It was just the right length to hold his knife tightly in place, even while running.
He looked down to make sure the skirt of his tunic hid the knife sheath, and then walked around the room, making sure the knife didn’t show when his leg bent. He barely felt its weight. He pulled the lanyard past the end of the sheath to free the knife, and then grabbed the handle and held the knife out, as if in combat. He did this several times and found that it drew well, almost as if it sprang into his hand, eager and ready. The knife was the perfect concealed weapon: light, quick, deadly, and sharp for any emergency.
Never remove, show, or tell others about the blade, Father had instructed. A secret weapon carries no advantage once revealed to the world. Arken had oathed that he would wear it day and night, and remove it only to defend his life or save another’s.
“I’m ready,” Arken whispered. His stomach rumbled; nothing new, he always felt hungry. He yawned and stretched, which he realized was a mistake when his calves cramped painfully.
“Ow, ow, ow,” he whispered as loudly as he dared, for fear of waking his parents. His legs had been surprising him every time he stretched in the morning for the past moonth. Yet he kept forgetting to avoid stretching! Even worse, this morning’s pain was agony because his calf muscles were so sore from the strain of lifting the test rock.
Stretching was especially bad in bed, because he couldn’t use his weight to bend his ankles and get his calf out of a cramp. At least he’d stretched while standing this time, but his calves were so cramped his body weight couldn’t make them relax, so he walked on tiptoe around the room until his weight won out over his cramped calf muscles. He was able to walk with relief on his bare feet down the red-tiled, upstairs hallway. He resolved to be more careful in the future!
His father’s snore burst from his parent’s bedroom off the hallway and startled him. Arken smiled. He wouldn’t miss that sound while at sea.
“Morning, Arlet,” Arken said as he entered the kitchen. She had opened the shutters, so sunshine streamed in through the courtyard window and made her shoulders and head glow. Grandmother Arlet, Arken reminded himself.
“Good morn, Master Arken. Breakmeal is almost ready.”
Arken gave her a hug. The light, golden fur of her neck tickled his nose, reminding him of how he used to twist it in his fingers when he was a toddler. And now he knew why she had cared for him so diligently. She was his grandmother and loved him, and he loved her.
“I’m starving,” Arken said. “I’ll eat some pults from the courtyard until breakmeal is ready.”
“Take this cloth to keep juice off your parade tunic. I worked hard to get it clean for today’s departure ceremony.” Arlet tossed him a soft, white hemp cloth.
“I appreciate all your hard work,” Arken teased. They had a long running battle about how he got his uniforms dirty and how she worked so hard to keep them clean, so in response to his teasing, she pretended to swat at him with the spoon. But he dodged away, making them both laugh. Arken turned serious before leaving the kitchen. “Is there anything I should know about Nanders before I go out into the world?”
“Why do you ask? You’re going on a SeaJourney, not a cross-country ride with the harsemen where you might see a Nander.”
“I don’t know, I just thought it would be smart to ask you before I left.” Arken took a seat sat at the wooden table and watched Arlet move, as if he were seeing her for the first time.
“We are very direct.” Arlet quit moving about the kitchen and gazed out the window. “And simple. I think that’s the Nander weakness. We have little cunning. Humans trick us so easily.”
“That’s sad, but useful to know,” Arken said. “Tell me about the necklace, the one that the Tolarians own and the Amarrat king is trying to gain through conquest. Grandfather said it can tell the future, that it was made by Nanders originally.”
“It was made by us and can tell the future.” Arlet sat at the table with him. “When the Nanders held it, only our healers were allowed to use it. Others can read it, but they must be pure of heart. If a person with a pure heart wears it, they can see the future. Our legends tell us the black stone in the necklace that gives it power fell from the sky.”
She smiled at him. “But that is a story that has been handed down for many generations, so who knows if it is true?”
“Nanders tell their history through stories?” Arken asked.
“Yes, we have no written language like humans do.”
“Do they know how far back their history goes?”
“Our medicine men are our spiritual leaders, and they tell us our history goes back one hundred yarns.”
“That long?” Arken couldn’t believe her—a yarn was one thousand yars long! Lanth’s history only went back five hundred yars, from a time when her people were driven out of their home somewhere south of Tolaria and crossed the Circle Sea to found Lanth.
“So they say.” Arlet smiled. “Now go eat your pults, and let me finish getting breakmeal ready.”
“Yes.” Arken jumped up.
“And keep your tunic clean!”
He stepped over rows of lettuce and beans in their garden and walked to the pult tree in the courtyard’s center. He picked two of the sweet, yellow pults, each the size of half his fist, and carried them up the wooden stairway to the rooftop patio.
He sat on their wooden bench with a view of the city and bit into a pult while leaning forward to keep the juice from gushing over him. The obsidian knife’s sheath pressed into his thigh—a reminder he wouldn’t see this view for some time.
Smoke rose from thousands of city chimneys and was swept out to sea by the morning’s offshore breeze. The sound of crowing roosters mingled with the clattering of cart wheels on cobblestone. Vendors shouted their goods for sale while morning laughter from citizen and slave alike joined the bleating of goats. Lanth sounded to Arken more like a marketplace than a city-state preparing for war.
A swordtooth’s scream carried to him over the walls. It came from the direction of the Academy. He wondered if the cat they had wounded was still close by and hoping to make a meal of the two-legged prey it could smell inside the high city walls. Arken shivered, for he’d heard once of a swordtooth that had managed to get into the city by jumping from a fallen tree that had landed on the wall, creating a ladder for the cat, which normally could not climb trees. The swordtooth had slaughtered many people before the King’s Harsemen could kill it.
His eyes searched his street, and he found the place where Gart tripped him on the way home. He felt his nose; it was still sore. Movement in the upper terraced gardens, far above the city but still inside the city walls, pulled his gaze uphill where slaves were laboring in the soil that yielded beans, amaranth, and corn twice a year. Above those fields, harses grazed alongside ban, the giant bison whose shoulders stood as high as a man’s head.
More movement drew his eyes even higher to the upper pastures that were next to the walls far about the city. The massive walls of the city were built to enclose not only the dense city but farmland and pasture so that they could safely grow their food without fear of the terrible cats and other animals that roamed the world beyond the city walls.
Soldiers were exercising two shaggy brown- and black-haired war toths in an
upper pasture. The Royal Harsemen trained these animals to use their long tusks to sweep warriors aside in battle. The toth armor gleamed in the early morning sun. The war toth were dangerous animals because they could carry drivers and archers in armored baskets strapped to the toth’s back. The toth could not be killed or wounded easily due to their heavy armor and the bowmen could fire deadly arrows into a surrounding army.
Arken’s heart swelled with pride. The Amarrats were a powerful opponent with their sheer number of soldiers, but they didn’t have war toths or a sea service. Seeing Lanth’s magnificent war toths made him confident his country could defeat the Amarrats. He was determined to succeed in war as his father had done and return from battle with the war prizes of a Lantish Sea Captain.
“Arken, come down for your last breakmeal with us!” Zela called.
“Coming,” he answered. “Goodbye Lanth, hello to the world,” he whispered to himself knowing he was looking at the city from his rooftop for the last time before he left. The coming danger and violence would be the stage upon which he would act and succeed. And if there was a Sea of the Never Setting Sun somewhere far to the north, he vowed he would explore it someday.
The sun’s heat evaporated the previous night’s rinfall into spirals of mist, which glowed bright in the morning sunshine. The air was already warm and moist enough to make his face damp. Arken breathed deeply of the wet air and felt his lungs stretch.
“Arken, come now!” Arlet yelled.
“We’re eating your gazzle eggs!” Nortak shouted. The gazzle eggs were a special treat gathered from wild birds. “Mmm, delicious, just how you like them. And your sister is taking your cornbread!”
“No! Not the evil little sister!” Arken yelled as he ran down the stairs. “Stop! Don’t you dare!” Shrill giggles greeted him as he burst into the sun-filled kitchen.
Em’s dark hair and complexion made her a tiny version of her mother. Her white teeth glowed in her tanned face.
“I’m the good sister, not the evil one.” Em pointed at his plate. “See? Nothing gone!”
