Souls of Aredyrah 2 - The Search for the Unnamed One (31 page)

“Where’s your coat?” Alicine asked.

“In my pack. But one thing at a time. Boots
first…coat later,” Dayn said.

Alicine sighed. “Suit yourself, but that
tunic of yours is not going to keep you warm for long.”

Dayn shrugged his shoulders against the
rough, green wool of his tunic. At one time he had worn it in
comfort, but it felt itchy to him now. For too many months in
Tearia he had gone bare-chested, with nothing against his skin but
a kilt around his hips. Now he had on long sleeves and thick
trousers, the scratchy material pressed against every part of his
body.

He pulled the boots from his pack and plopped
to the ground, frowning with annoyance at his feet. They were
stained with dirt and rough with calluses from months of going
barefoot. But the boots, he knew, would bring blisters to his toes
no matter how tough his feet had become. He scowled and yanked on
his socks, then the brown leather boots, shiny new when he had left
Kirador, now scuffed and worn with travel. He snaked the long laces
up his calves without regard to pattern and tied them in a knot,
then stood up and groaned. The things were miserable.

Alicine laughed. “You loved those boots when
you first got them. Couldn’t wait to wear them as I recall. Worked
extra chores at home and helped Jorge at the smithy to earn the
coin to buy them. And now…”

Dayn cocked his brow. “And who is it that
keeps tugging at her collar? Hmmm?”

Alicine arched her neck and ran a finger
beneath the lace of the collar that stopped just below her jaw
line. Ever since she had donned the dress for the return trip home,
she had tugged and fidgeted at the material almost as much as Dayn
had his.

“I don’t know how I ever thought this dress
was comfortable,” she said. “But I guess we’d better get used to
dressing like Kiradyns again. I doubt the climate or our neighbors'
icy attitudes will allow us to go around showing our arms and
legs.”

Dayn turned away and checked the strapping of
the packs on the back of his horse. “There’s a lot of things we
won’t be allowed,” he muttered.

“What’d you say?” Alicine asked.

“I said, won’t Father and Mother be pleased
that we’re bringing two horses back with us?” He stepped over to
his sister and lifted her onto one of the horses. “Come on. There
isn’t much daylight left, and I want us to get as far away from
here as possible before we set up camp for the night. I’d hate to
wake up and find us in the path of that,” he said, motioning to the
glow of roiling fire on the other side of the ridge.

Dayn mounted his horse, a broad-backed
chestnut with a patch of black on its face. It was a beautiful
animal, nothing like the old hag of a horse their father owned. But
then again, their father probably didn’t own a horse anymore.
Alicine had ridden out of Kirador with the only one he had when
she’d gone looking for Dayn the day he ran away. They’d left the
animal grazing near the cave that had taken them to the other side
of the world, and it was doubtful the old gray had found its way
home. The poor beast was probably still wandering the mountains
somewhere, or else dead by now. Regardless, Father would be pleased
to see his children riding home after all these months. Perhaps the
new horses would settle his temper, once the happy emotions of the
reunion faded and the reality of what Dayn and Alicine had put him
through set in. But it wasn’t likely.

Dayn took the lead and urged his horse down
the embankment to an open space near the trees below. There wasn’t
exactly a path to follow, no humans had been there for centuries,
but he and his sister had learned to navigate the rugged terrain by
working their way through only the barest patches of landscape. The
going had been slow, and they’d oftentimes found themselves having
to retrace their steps. As a result, it was taking much longer than
expected to make their way to the other side of the mountain range.
The shortcut through the cave that had taken them to Tearia was no
longer an option. It was destroyed by the violence of an angry
mountain, taking evidence of Kiradyn and Tearian history with
it.

It had been several days since they had left
Tearia, a great region with a namesake city in the southeastern
region of their island world. It was a place Dayn and Alicine had
not known existed until recently. The western side of the mountains
was supposed to have been destroyed long ago, plunged into the sea
by an angry god, or so the Kiradyns believed. But now Dayn and
Alicine knew the truth of it, though the people of Kirador would
not likely welcome that truth. Of even more concern was the fact
that they would not likely welcome Dayn either.

They turned their horses northward, neither
of them saying a word for quite some time. There wasn’t much to
talk about; all best and worst case scenarios regarding the reunion
with their parents had already been discussed. Dayn felt certain
the homecoming would be an unpleasant one, at least for him, but
Alicine refused to see it that way. As a result, their
conversations had begun to end in more and more arguments.
Father will be so glad to see you he won’t even care that you
ran away or that I left with his horse
, Alicine said over and
over. But Dayn knew there was more to the issue than that. While
his sister imagined hugs and kisses upon their arrival, Dayn
expected only angry words and accusations. Someone would be
storming out of the house when all was said and done, and it would
probably be him. His father owed him an explanation, as did his
mother, but there weren’t enough words in the world to explain it
all to him. What words could explain why a man would steal a child
and claim it as his own? What words could justify why two people
would lie to that child and everyone else about who he really
was?

“What are you thinking?” Alicine asked.

Her question yanked Dayn back to the present.
His mouth compressed, then he said, “I was thinking about what I’m
going to say to Father and Mother when I get home.”

Alicine turned her attention to the path in
front of her. “Do you have to hang onto all this anger, Dayn? Can’t
you just start over? I mean--”

“No. I can’t just start over. It’ll never be
right for me there and you know it.”

“It could get better. When we tell them what
we know and…” Alicine paused, the scowl on Dayn’s face a clear
indication that he was not receptive to her suggestions. “Well,
there’s always Falyn to look forward to,” she offered
cheerfully.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Dayn
grumbled. He kicked his heels into the horse’s ribs, urging it
ahead.

“I’m sorry, Dayn. I won’t mention it again,”
Alicine said to his back.

“Good,” he retorted.

* * * *

That night they camped in a gully beneath an
overhang of willows. Bright moonlight distorted the surrounding
landscape into patterns of black and silver and gray. Trees creaked
and swayed, morphing from ghostly shadows to skeletal shapes. At
one time, Dayn would have been terrified to be in a place like this
after dark. He had been raised to believe demons lived in the
mountains and that they would make a meal out of a man if so
inclined. But now Dayn knew the truth of things, and he wasn’t
afraid anymore. There were no demons, at least not the kind he had
read about in the Written Word. That was another thing he looked
forward to telling his parents.

Dayn strolled over to Alicine who was sitting
and staring into the campfire. He sat down cross-legged next to
her, but she didn’t acknowledge his presence and continued to stare
at the fire.

Dayn stabbed at the coals with a stick. He
shifted his gaze to her. “So…” he said, waiting for a reaction. But
there was none coming. “So…” he repeated slowly. “Do you think Reiv
has—”

“I miss him,” Alicine said.

“We’ll see him again.”

“No we won’t.”

Dayn stiffened his spine. “Yes we will. I
will anyway.”

Alicine flashed her eyes at him. “What’s that
supposed to mean?”

“Listen, I don’t want to argue anymore, but
you know full well I’ll be going back to Tearia eventually.”

“If you hate it so much in Kirador, then you
shouldn’t have come,” Alicine snapped. “You’ve done nothing but
complain ever since we left Tearia. Why didn’t you just stay
there?” She turned her eyes back to the fire and wrapped her arms
around her bent knees.

“Because I promised to get
you
back
home, that’s why. And because—”

“And because you want to make a play for
Falyn. What do you think is going to happen when you do, Dayn? Do
you think she’ll leave Kirador for you? I wouldn’t put my hopes
there if I were you.”

Dayn felt the heat rise to his cheeks.
She’s baiting you for another fight. Don’t fall for it.
He
forced a look of indifference and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, if
she doesn’t want to go back with me, then I’ll go without her.”

Alicine snorted. “You mean to say that even
if Falyn said she loved you, you’d go back to Tearia without her?
Ha! That I’d like to see.”

Dayn glowered in Alicine’s direction. She
knew as well as he did that he would never leave Falyn behind,
certainly not if the girl told him she loved him and wanted him in
her life. He would suffer in Kirador for the rest of his days if
Falyn would only say the words. But he also knew that wasn’t likely
to happen. Her father would never allow it. Lorcan, as well as all
the other Kiradyn fathers, had already decided no daughter of
theirs would ever court him. Dayn was strange, they said, too
different, too dangerous, too demon-like in his appearance. His
hair was pale and his eyes piercing blue; nothing like the swarthy
Kiradyns; nothing like the girl Dayn called sister who sat beside
him now, her brown eyes studying him, her thick, black hair plaited
down her back.

“You heard me,” Dayn said in a lame attempt
to convince his sister as well as himself. “I’ll go back without
her if I have to.”

“I heard you, but did you hear yourself? You
know what Falyn said, what she told me at the festival. You’ve only
asked me to repeat it a hundred times. No, I don’t think you’ll be
leaving Kirador—not with Falyn feeling the way she does about
you.”

Dayn jumped up and kicked the fire with his
foot, sending white-hot sticks and orange sparks flying. “It
doesn’t matter what she thinks of me!” he shouted. “Her father
won’t allow her to see me anyway, so there’s no sense in arguing
about it!”

“Things could change,” Alicine said, rising
to face him.

“Why do you keep saying that? They won’t
change, so you’d best get used to the idea that I’ll be leaving one
day—alone if I have to.” Dayn shot her a contemptuous look. “Why do
you think it will be so hard for me to leave without Falyn? You
left Reiv behind didn’t you?
That
didn’t seem so hard.”

Alicine threw her hand up to cover her mouth.
But it didn’t stop the sob that escaped her throat. She wheeled
around and stormed to her bedroll, then threw herself upon it,
keeping her back to him. “It…it was hard,” she said between muffled
sobs.

Dayn folded his arms and stared at the
ground, then at Alicine’s back. He could see her shoulders rising
and falling to the rhythm of her grief and regretted that he had
been the cause of it. His sister knew how to manipulate him with
her tears, but these, he knew, were sincere. When it came to the
subject of Reiv, their conversations were always emotional ones.
During their time in Tearia, they had both come to love Reiv. Once
a prince, Reiv’s personal tragedies had thrust him into their lives
in a most unexpected way. And while Dayn had come to embrace him as
friend and cousin, Alicine had come to embrace him as so much
more.

“I’m sorry, Alicine,” Dayn said softly. “I
shouldn’t have talked about you and Reiv like that. I know it
wasn’t easy leaving him.” He knelt beside her and placed a hand on
her shoulder. “But he said himself that we would see each other
again. And you know Reiv has a way of knowing things.”

Alicine looked up at him. “He does, doesn’t
he.”

“I don’t think he would lie about a thing
like that would he? I mean, you did manage to straighten him out on
that little issue of his lying, didn’t you?”

Alicine smiled. “That I did.”

“There, you see?”

She nodded. “I’ll see him again,” she said
with a sniff.

“Get some sleep,” Dayn said, pulling the
corner of the blanket over her.

He rose and made his way back to what was
left of the campfire, pushing the wayward sticks and coals back
onto the pile with his foot. With fresh kindling and a few gentle
breaths, the fire billowed back to an orange glow that radiated a
perimeter of warmth and sent a trail of smoke into Dayn’s face. He
wiped the sting from his eyes with the back of his hand, then
curled up on his bedroll. But he found he could not sleep, and he
could not stop the tears from trailing down his cheeks.

BACK TO ToC

Glossary

Aredyrah (Air-uh-DEER-uh)
—An ancient
island world, divided by superstition, mysticism, and a forbidden
range of volcanic mountains.

Agneis (AG-nee-us)
—Goddess of Purity;
supreme deity of Tearian culture.

Alicine (AL-uh-seen)—
Kiradyn; of the
Aerie clan; daughter of Gorman and Morna; sister of Dayn.

Brina (BREE-nuh)—
Tearian; sister of
Queen Isola; birth mother of Dayn; maternal aunt of Ruairi (Reiv)
and Whyn; estranged wife of Mahon who is the Commander of the
Guard.

Cinnia (SIN-ee-uh)
—Tearian; daughter
of Labhras; wife of Prince Whyn; future Queen.

Clans of Kirador
—Four clans inhabit
the wildlands outside of the city of Kiradyn. They are the Aerie to
the east, the Basyls to the northeast, the Sandrights to the west,
and the Crests to the northwest.