“...triumphant rose in wake of peace
redeemed with restless friend...”
Nilwn Gyndoh Dynde XX
2:2:4:7/5, III:IX
From the roof of A’lara’s northeast tower, Kingard watched stars waver in the faint light of last moon. His plans to retake Sierlyn weighed heavy on him, but it wasn’t for crown and country that he found no rest. Varyan lived! After centuries of grief for his bygone friend, Kingard shuddered in new horror at the monster he’d encountered. Was the elf he knew long dead after all?
A knock shook him from the bewitching sky, and Sharis rose from the stairwell, her long braid loosed in dark waves. “May I join you?”
“Of course,” he obliged, her visit unexpected but not a surprise. Restored to mortality, Kingard stifled his rising fondness for Sharis with hours of hard training, but she’d soon broach their matching sentiments. Three hundred years his junior, the lady elf descended from Sento, his brother in arms who died to forge A’lara. Kingard planned to decline her affection, but as noble as he strove to be, his heart whispered that life was too fleeting to waste alone.
Sharis eased to his side, the tranquil stars taming the fevered chirps of the jungle. Kingard fought not to clear his throat, determined to grant her the room to speak first. She gazed upward with him, wishing she could fathom the depths of his mind. What troubles lurked beneath his silence? Resting elbows on the parapet, Sharis sagged from her shoulders. “What did the empress say?”
“We plan to rouse the nation,” he answered, the tension broken by her practicality. “We’ll give the imperials time to calm down after the stir we caused this afternoon. In a few days, we’ll venture into Lowtown and seek the help of Grishem.” He paused to consider the northeast sky, where the Longbow aimed its drawn arrow for the north star. “My hope is he’ll have the men and the method to retake Sierlyn.” Her slow nod ushered the silence back around them.
“How are you sleeping these days?” he checked, sure that questions of Deira hadn’t roused her from bed. Nightmares plagued Sharis after her ordeal with the mindwarps, their shadows lurking in the hardness of her eyes and the wanness of her smile. Kingard prayed for her steady recovery, but her midnight company attested to a journey incomplete.
“Well enough,” she straightened to flash a grin his way. “The dreams come and go, though sleep doesn’t come some nights. Like tonight,” she appended, surveying last moon with a weary curve on her lips. “But better than it’s been. Fal’on says I don’t–” She stopped, adjusting her report with a slight cough, “I don’t toss and turn so much anymore.” Her younger brother watched over her slumber, reading by lamplight in the corner of her bedroom until the comfort of his chair claimed him. Sharis counted the night a success when she woke to his gentle snores in the morning light. “What about you?”
Centuries of wakeful immortality left Kingard struggling to resume the habit of sleep. Though his mortal body required rest, his swirling thoughts spared no time for slumber. “Don’t worry about me,” he chuckled, patting her tanned arm in the darkness. “I sleep just fine.”
After a flicker of hesitation, she rested a hand atop Kingard’s. “Don’t lie to me,” she scoffed. “You sleep as fine as a spider flies.”
Battling to remain casual, Kingard squeezed her arm and slipped his hand from hers, lacing his fingers together. “How is it you’ve come to that conclusion?” teased the elf, unwilling to burden her with details of his nightly struggle.
“I care for you, Kingard.” The words came soft, blunt, and unflinching. Kingard’s breath froze in his lungs, fire ablaze in the pit of his stomach. Their cautious dance of unspoken feelings ended here. “Is... that okay?” She faltered at his silence in the wake of her confession.
“Yes,” he choked, realizing what his hesitation had wrought. “More than okay.” Catching her hand, he pressed it to his cheek, wishing for a better way with words.
The tension drained from her, and her head sank to rest on his shoulder. “Good. That’s good, then.” Rigid, Kingard fought to relax and cleared his throat, dropping her hand to circle an arm around her. Doubts flared – what if her fondness stemmed from the meddling of those wraiths? Had she mistaken his mental repair for a deeper bond? Kingard swallowed, unwilling to embrace her love and more unwilling to surrender it.
“What’s troubling you, Kingard?” He balked, unable to question her affection without insulting her.
His silence stretched into restlessness while she waited. At last, he scraped together, “I... saw an old friend, at the palace today. One I’d long thought dead.”
Sharis lifted her blue eyes, and Kingard read his transparency in her knowing smirk. “A friend alive, this troubles you?” she allowed, his true thoughts forsaken for more tangible matters.
“Turned, and with no memory of himself,” lamented Kingard, plunging into the less delicate uncertainty. “He fears me, and found no echoes of the old days within him. He doesn’t know me, or himself any longer.”
With a comforting hand on his arm, she appealed, “What can be done?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Kingard’s heart bloomed with gratitude, her practical query unleashing a surge of hope. “I must try to save him, Sharis. Before we retake Sierlyn and he is called to fight against us. I have to at least try. But his turning runs deep, and his memories of me are buried under centuries since.”
“Could you unturn him?” she pressed, recalling Jorn’s recovery after A’lara’s unbinding. “Could he remember himself, unturned?”
“By some dark magic, he’s been made immortal,” rued Kingard. “That weight of magic even I can’t transport against his will, and within the palace I’d have no time.” He trembled at resorting to exile, though Jorn had proven the technique possible during his betrayal. If he exiled Varyan to the ether, Kingard could transport to safety and summon him back again. But he’d never attempted the feat, and the risk of failure was too great. He wouldn’t lose Varyan by his own hand, not now. “But if, somehow, I could unturn him... he’d prove a valuable ally inside the palace gates.”
“Then convince him to come with you,” Sharis urged. “If you can’t transport him, talk him into following you. He’s turned, not stupid. You’ll find something to lure him to neutral ground.”
Kingard nodded in contemplation. “If I could lead him here, somehow. Here I’d be able to perform the unturning without interruption.” Even if Varyan failed to remember their friendship, at least he’d be free of the darkness and able to live for himself again. But the notion gave him pause. “It would put you all in some danger, though.”
“We’re well equipped to handle ourselves in the presence of evil,” chuckled Sharis. “Save your friend. Bring him here. If the powers of A’lara can’t protect us from a single elf, we’ve no business leading the fight to save Allana anyway.”
Shoulders easing in accord, Kingard gazed up at the stars. With hope blazing in his chest, he drew Sharis against his side, the intimacy both natural and alarming. In so many ways, life had been easier when guided by prophesy, when the chafing yoke of his fate had been a known burden. But the gentle scent of her dark hair stoked warmth within him, and Kingard embraced the fresh unknowns hatched beneath the starlight. Perhaps prophesy was not the only guide available, nor his redemption as far off as he’d thought.
----------------------------------------
“...and quell the wailing of the sea
by recognition pale...”
Dynvyi Lannwe Kaedya I
2:3:1:1/5, III:IX
Tirrok checked his winged horse under a muddled omen, both moons low in the morning sky. Tossing his long braid over his shoulder, he caught the lash of a bloated saddlebag and drew up its flap with a slow breath. Atop his provisions lay a book wrapped in twine, the parting gift from his adoptive grandfather. If Tirrok disturbed the magic ties, the old desert mage would know.
“You wouldn’t leave without a goodbye, I hope.” Tirrok grinned over his shoulder at Kingard, and the elf folded his arms with a scowl.
“I waited for your return, did I not?”
The departure tempering his starlit joy, Kingard groused, “And where must you go?”
“To the mer world,” declared Tirrok, his farewell rehearsed through the night. “We fly west, up the coast of the badlands, then make for the desert. There, I loose Tiena and seek my past below the waves.”
Dismay flashed in Kingard’s eyes. “You’d leave Allana with so much at stake? And you’d fly through cursed air, after what happened in the D’jed? Why not just visit the reefs here off the glade?”
“And leave Tiena to await me alone? If I cannot stay by her side, she at least needs her own kind around her. I must go to the Sutek and loose her there. But fear not for me – I have honed my magic since we crashed in the mountains. And the badland’s curse is weaker offshore. Besides,” he reflected, patting Tiena’s flank, “I may never have this chance again. I must go, Kingard. Fate washed me far from my birthplace, and I mean to learn why.”
“But have you asked the mer jyagaweh?”
“Of course. But those pages fill with magic, and prophesy. No matter what book, the words are the same. A’lara withholds the contours of my past, Kingard. There is no more of what I seek within this glade.”
“Then what of your grandfather’s book?” he recalled from their winter in the D’jed. “Is your past not scribed there?”
Tirrok straightened and the elf’s heart sank. “Likely, but Jokkel asked me to return within a month of reading it. My underwater journey may delay me, and I cannot risk a late arrival.”
“So you risk your journey blind instead?”
“Does fate not guide us all?” Tirrok countered. “I am no more blind than any, and perhaps less blind than some.”
Despite his chagrin, a smile crept over Kingard’s face. “So be it, lad. Will you return?”
“Life unfolds as it will, I have found. But in my heart, I do wish to meet again.”
A bittersweet laugh aired the elf’s blessing. “Good enough. I’ll at least give you Meri before you go?”
“That, I will take,” Tirrok agreed. The week before, he’d received the language from Larin, who’d learned from her mer mentors in Kanata. Now fluent in the tongue of the merfolk, Tirrok wouldn’t deny the elf a farewell gift.
Kingard brushed three fingers over the youth’s brow, eyes closed in concentration. A flood of words and structures dazed Tirrok, but most of it overlapped Larin’s framework. New knowledge interlocked with fragments of his native Suteki, and the Meri language settled into place. “You already knew it?” Kingard mused at his mild reaction.
“Larin gifted me last week,” affirmed Tirrok, a smile ready for the elf’s surprise. “This is not my first journey, Kingard. I go prepared.”
“You still tread the line between deference and nerve,” the elf grumbled, embracing the youth with a fond clap on the back. “Send word, if you can?”
“As I can, I will,” promised Tirrok, throwing a leg over Tiena to perch astride her wings. “Until our paths cross again, Kingard.”
“Farewell, my friend,” the elf sighed, backing from the horse as she broke into a trot. Wings pumping, she leaped for the sky and spiraled upwards. The warmth in his heart cooled into sadness, and Kingard shouted, “Don’t do anything stupid!”
Cresting the city wall, Tirrok waved over Tiena’s side. “Where is the fun in that?”