by T. A. Miles
Alere closed his gray eyes and felt the oncoming force. The energy brushed over his fair skin and filtered into his flesh. He thought back, to a night such as this, and a beautiful young mother, who had sheltered her son from his fear of the beasts in his dreams.
“You must never fear them,” his mother had said. And she said it again, years later when the nightmare creatures attacked their home and slew nearly all of the Shaederin household.
It should not have happened. They were elvenborn, descended of the highest of their kind. Morgen Shaederin was renowned for his prowess as a warrior and a slayer of demons. And yet, somehow, he fell to darkness. His wife took up his sword and fought the invaders with her own skill, but the elves were overwhelmed. Eria Shaederin returned to the place where her adolescent son had been charged with keeping the other children of the household hidden and safe. She was mortally wounded, but showed no fear and little pain as she issued Morgen Shaederin’s blade to its rightful inheritor and said, “You must never fear them, Alere. You must survive...and defeat them.”
The voices of the past departed and one belonging to the present spoke softly. “It still looks the same. It constantly amazes me just how much.”
Alere opened his eyes, but did not look back at his cousin. Aside from himself, Kailel was the oldest of the remaining Shaederins. He was just sixteen, and scarcely that, but it would have to be old enough.
“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Kailel said in a moment, and while his tone was calm, Alere could sense the distress building inside of his cousin. “You’re going to leave us.”
“I cannot stay here.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kailel offered at once.
“One of us must remain. Our family must be rebuilt, and the rebuilding must take place here, in our home.”
“But your father was the lord of our house. It is your place…it is your responsibility to stay here!”
Unconsciously, Alere’s hand strayed to the hilt of the sword at his belt. “I inherited what my father wished me to inherit. The house is yours, Kailel. I did my part by leading you from it six years ago and by bringing you back to it now.”
“We would have died in those passages without you, Alere. I know that.” Kailel spoke with deference now. However, he continued to argue, as it was his only defense against Alere’s determination. “I know that well. I still have unsettling dreams about that night. I was not too young to understand why we’d been sent into the mountain corridors. It was you who kept us calm and safe. It was you who led us to Lord Doriel’s land and negotiated our stay. You were the one who served him. You lent him your father’s sword in becoming a guard in his army. I think that blade has done its task and you must do now what your father did when the fighting was over. You must put it away and turn your attentions to your family.”
Alere lowered his gaze from the horizon and closed his eyes again. “It is for my family that I must leave this place again. What happened here was not random.”
“Your father had many enemies,” Kailel confirmed unhappily, as if he knew what Alere would say next.
Perhaps it was predictable, then, that Alere’s answer would be, “They are my enemies now.”
A long silence passed between the cousins. At length, the younger said, “I cannot stop you.”
Kailel left and Alere opened his eyes once more to the coming storm. He watched the lightning tumbling from the sky until he could just hear the answer of thunder. Then he turned away and walked back into the bedroom that once belonged to his parents. He looked over the draping webs and layers of dust, and realized that it would take considerable effort to make the place livable again. Some of the others had already begun the cleaning since their arrival earlier in the season. Alere had spent much of that time searching the castle for unwanted residents and he would stay until the task was finished. Thus far he had discovered nothing but spiders and rats, and a few other small beasts that had strayed in from the surrounding wilderness, all of them mortal children of Ysis, the goddess of the sky and mother of all that lived beneath her ever changing veil. It was the goddess’s immortal children that one had to be wary of, particularly her daughter Ceren, goddess of the earth and of the Void.
The offspring goddess, according to legend, had been charged to watch over the physical world and its inhabitants from a closer perspective and to maintain a balance between the World and the Void; life and oblivion. It seemed that she more enjoyed toying with the scales than keeping them in check. There were times when Alere believed that the goddess had gone mad. There had been far too much war carrying on throughout Dryth. War among men, war among men and demons, possibly war among the gods themselves as well.
Alere had seen the battlefield. He’d seen it littered with the bodies of thousands of men and beasts, killed by blade and by will, and sometimes by magic. He had seen his own blood flowing freely over his eyes from a terrible wound, the scar of which still traced his hairline. He had seen much for his young age, but nothing that troubled him so greatly as what he had not seen; the murder of his family at the hands of a legion of unnatural invaders.
He wondered what could be worse, the actual event, or his imagination’s interpretation of it…of the sounds and the smells, and the sensations while running through blackened passages that claws were ever close to tearing at his back. Even now, he shuddered inside thinking about it.
Outside, the storm had finally arrived, and the sound of the rainfall washed at once into the room. Alere stood in front of the fireplace and listened to it. He stared long at the healthy flame and eventually his gaze wandered to an item on the mantel, covered over in dust and abandoned webs.
He stepped forward and lifted his hand to the object, slowly sweeping away the layers of filth. When he’d exposed the wooden sword stand, he stared at it, visually tracing every delicate engraving. He fell almost into a trance-like state while studying the fascinating work until he came upon a word; a name. Aerkiren, the name given to his father’s sword, which in the Northern Elvish tongue literally meant ‘sky of evening’, or more commonly, ‘twilight’.
“It sings when darkness falls,” Morgen Shaederin had said.
Alere drew the long elven blade at his hip and held it in both hands, studying the emblazoned symbols for several moments before finally setting the sword upon its mount. He hesitated to take his hands away from it at first, almost as if he believed it would vanish or as if somehow he would not be able to reclaim it. Eventually, he lifted his hands and stepped back…and watched.
The lighting in the room made it difficult, but soon enough Alere descried the faint glow along the edges of the engravings; a soft violet light that seemed to actively trace the symbols. Alere had seen them glow stronger, but he had never seen them fully brilliant, not even in the near pitch darkness of the mountain corridors he and his siblings had fled through. Perhaps then he had been too preoccupied to notice, but it seemed unlikely, since the enchanted glow should have lit their path and all any of them could remember was the absolute depth of the darkness in those passages. This blade, clearly a gift from the gods, was mystery to him. He knew little of its origin and almost nothing of its true purpose in the world of mortals. Morgen Shaederin did not live long enough to explain such things to his son, if he had ever known himself.
I will not tarnish your legacy, Father. I will do whatever I must to serve the power that was bestowed upon you.
Alere did not hope to master the enchanted blade. To attempt to do so would be to defy the gods, and only arrogance and foolishness set a mortal soul on such a campaign.
The twilight glow of the sword Aerkiren gleamed in Alere’s eyes, as if the weapon itself were a sentient being and had read his thoughts, and understood them.
EVEN THE OPEN corridors of the castle were dark. Months could not lift the gloom that had spent years settling. Even after the bodies of their relatives had at last been properly buried, the spirits of those savagely murdered still seemed to linger in the air. T
hey seemed to linger, but not one ghost of the past had been found after a long and thorough search.
Alere stood idle for a moment upon a carpeted staircase between floors that was also a bridge across the center hall of the mountain fortress. Someone had been along to light the lamps. Not all of them, but many of the sleek, decorative iron posts had a fire glowing within the delicate glass shapes that topped them. It was not an entirely useless endeavor, as the bridge happened to be one of the easiest and quickest routes from one side of the main house to the other. Still, the light did little to penetrate the surrounding shadow and even less to uplift Alere’s spirits.
He could justify passing charge of the house to Kailel. Not only was his cousin the son of Morgen Shaederin’s closest brother, but he had a sound presence of mind about him and a natural skill at handling the affairs of the household. Already he had been to the treasury and tallied the remains of the Shaederin capital against the records and the evidence of thieves. Mostly artifacts and items throughout the castle appraised by the greedy eye to be of tremendous worth had been taken. The treasury itself had been ransacked, but apparently not by a large number of burglars and none who were inclined to return after filling their purses once. The remains belonged entirely to the Shaederins, without lien or attachment, as Alere had paid for their stay in another elven lord’s domain with his sword arm and very nearly his life, on more than one occasion.
Kailel had trained with a sword as well and his skills were not lacking. Again, his placement as lord of the Shaederin household was justified. And yet, Alere couldn’t help the misgivings he felt dropping such a burden in the lap of one so young.
And are you so old? He asked himself. At just sixteen you set foot upon your first battlefield. Kailel is the same tender age and he has only to combat his emotions. He will do well here, with the others. It is where he belongs.
“Alere?”
The tiny voice drew him out of his pause. He shifted his focus back to the steps and walked up a few more of them, stopping again when he saw the small girl in his path. He knelt to her height. “Edelyn, it is late. You should be in your bed, little one.”
“I’m not tired,” she said. “I’m never tired. I want to go with you.”
He smiled at her gently and tucked strands of pale hair behind her ear. “And you may...when I have returned from my journey and you are old enough to be taught to ride.”
Edelyn was the smallest of them—not seven years old yet, as she had been an infant when they fled from their home—and so, in her endearing innocence, accepted the terms without considering them. She did so with a firm nod.
Alere stood and lifted her into his arms. “My darling little one, I shall surely miss you.”
“I love you, Alere,” the child yawned, wrapping her arms around his neck.
“And I love you,” he answered, but she did not hear as she had already fallen fast asleep upon his shoulder.
Kailel, however, standing at the top of the bridge of stairs, did hear. “How can you leave them?” he asked, and not argumentatively, so much as wonderingly.
Alere said softly, “With a heavy heart.”
Kailel watched his cousin holding the smallest Shaederin for a moment, then said, “We will need to employ guards. Will you not at least stay long enough to help me with the selection? I fear I am not as wise a judge of character as you. I’m not certain whether I can tell a mercenary from an honest soldier.”
“Any soldier whose services are not pledged already to a lord is a mercenary,” Alere informed. “But there are some better than others. I think you will be able to tell them apart.”
“I think you have too much faith in me.”
“You have yet to damage my faith in you, Kailel. It would bolster, I think, if you were to develop some faith in yourself.”
Kailel looked away from Alere just then, down at the deep shadows beneath them. “I have not seen as much of the world as you have, Alere. I feel naïve sometimes.”
“That you can admit to that proves you are not.”
Kailel met Alere’s gaze. “Alere...”
Recognizing the sentimental gleam in Kailel’s eyes, Alere diverted a second assault on his heart by changing the subject. “The armory appears in fair order.”
Kailel confirmed the statement with a nod. “The weapons’ master kept a detailed catalogue. All that was missing lay with the bodies and were recovered before burial. Apparently our thieves were more interested in elven art and gold than blades.”
“A foolish lot they were,” Alere replied. And then he asked, “You have claimed your father’s sword?”
Kailel shook his head. “It was broken in the battle. I buried the shards with him.”
Alere had not partaken of much of the task of burial once becoming enrapt in his thorough search of the grounds. He had not been informed and said appropriately, “I’m sorry, Kailel.”
“My father’s blade wasn’t enchanted.” Kailel came forward and carefully took little Edelyn from Alere. “Perhaps it’s for the best. What would the others do if we both felt vengeance’s call?”
“Find a weapon that you trust,” Alere advised, deciding not to reproach his cousin for his careless statement. “Find one for Tahren and Ardin as well.”
“They are only children,” Kailel argued.
“They are each fourteen and they are each strong. They will learn fast and well.”
Kailel sighed and said, neither for the first time or the last, “I wish you would stay.”
“I have put this off for too long already. I will leave when the storm passes.”
Kailel turned and started back up the stairs. “In that case, I hope that it rains all night and into the morning. Then you’d at least have to assist me in the selection of weapons.”
IN SPITE OF Kailel’s wishes, the storm lasted only a few hours. The stars were visible again when Alere led Breigh, a strong ivory mare, out of the stables. He was dressed in the traditional riding whites of a Verressi hunter and again wearing his father’s sword. With it, he carried a small dagger and a bow. He carried very little supplies or provisions and only a small amount of coins. He was not planning on squandering time or money at inns or other establishments.
“I wish you would stay,” Kailel said, once more, as Alere performed a final check of his gear and the finely bred horse Lord Doriel had given him before he left his land. “It has been years, Alere. Who’s to say that whomever was behind the attack on our family isn’t dead?”
“No one is to say, save whomever was behind the attack. But you should know, Kailel, that it is not revenge that I seek. Certainly not that alone.”
“Then what?”
Alere tugged on the last straps to be checked, then gathered the horse’s reins and hoisted himself effortlessly into the saddle. He looked down at Kailel and said, “The demons of Dryth are restless. Someone must quiet them.”
“A pity for us that it must be you,” Kailel complained, then met Alere’s gaze, shadowed beneath the hood of his cloak, and said gently, “Safe journey, cousin.”
Alere inclined his head, then looked to the castle’s main gates, and fled from his home for the second time.
IT HAD BEEN no easy task leaving the Pride of Celestia and her crew. However, there was no time for lingering. Xu Liang had emerged from his meditation several hours before coming to Nelayne and settled his fees with Yvain, both monetarily and with a translation of the returned scrolls written by Cai Shi-meng. She seemed to appreciate the shared knowledge, but was preoccupied with staring at his previously wounded shoulder, even though it had been cleaned—with water only—and covered with the mended, stained silk of his robes. She did not specify whether she was curious about the wound or the repair to his clothing—performed by Gai Ping—that not quite neatly reconnected the image of a bird’s head to its body along the seam of the over robe’s shoulder.
Xu Liang did not ask. He appreciated the concern that he received from those who Fu Ran had evidently develop
ed a strong sense of kinship with. Compassion was a divine trait, after all. Still, the wound was acquired in honorable service to his empress, and would heal quicker with her blessing, as well as through the attendance of the spirits his constant meditative state invoked. Knowing that enabled him to put the lingering ache in his shoulder and the attack that inspired it behind him for now. He had taken many important steps since the start of his journey, but perhaps none so important yet as those he would take now that he had arrived on the shores of what many would consider the outermost barbarian lands.
The ship drifted at a sluggish wake in search of a proper landing. From his portside view, Xu Liang was able to draw in aspects of the settlement forthcoming. It was beyond a settlement. The western port city reminded Xu Liang of Ti Lao with its crowd and bustle, but otherwise they were not at all similar. There was a great deal more peddlers conglomerating near the docks of Nelayne, most of them selling wares rather than food. The merchants sold out of carts and baskets, and from lines connecting many of the stands, like a colorful network of webbing. Music was played from several different sources at once, mostly with western instruments, though there were a few evidently from other cultures…none from Sheng Fan. There were dancers and magicians performing wherever they found space among the merchants. Beyond the waterfront, the city itself rose in the form of grimy white towers and proud-looking brick structures standing close together, life flowing between the narrow gaps like blood through veins.
Xu Liang had seen the city before, but only twice, and both times it seemed to have changed somehow in his absence. Inevitably it was growing, but even a growing city in Sheng Fan maintained some sameness in appearance. Western towns seemed to spread like wildflowers, in a vast array of disordered color, size, and shape.
Guang Ci and the four other bodyguards who had never left Sheng Fan before this journey stared at the upcoming barbarian land in utter amaze. They were too disoriented by the scene to show either admiration or disgust. The veterans of Xu Liang’s expeditions, however, were not impressed, nor were they overly unimpressed.
