Souls of Aredyrah 1 - The Fire and the Light (23 page)

He twisted around and ran, but found himself
stumbling into a shadowy maze. He stopped and turned in a slow
circle. Dark corners. Mysterious shapes. Fluttering walls of gray.
Which way? Which way? Dayn took a determined step forward, but it
led to nowhere. He changed direction and snaked between a row of
pots. A spindly plant latched onto his sleeve. He jerked his arm
and sent it crashing to the floor. Too many obstacles. Trapped.
Always trapped.

“What is this place?” he screamed. He turned
round and round, scanning the spinning room. Then he froze. There
she was. The woman. Standing at the edge of the atrium, moonlight
bathing her face in white.

“Dayn, please don’t run.” She was begging
now, pleading.

“I have to run,” he whispered.

A blur of dark braid and gold fabric rushed
forward and planted itself in front of him. Alicine balled her
fists, a murderous expression splashed across her face. A familiar
scene, Dayn thought, his little sister, once again to the rescue.
He ran his fingers nervously through his hair.

Alicine shook her fist at Brina. “Lies!” she
yelled. “Lies!”

“No, girl, hear me,” Brina said.

“He’s my brother, do you hear? He’s not your
son!” Alicine took a threatening step toward the woman. “Don’t
touch him,” she said between clenched teeth. “Don’t you dare!”

Reiv rushed to Brina’s side and thrust out an
arm to block her advancement. “Brina, stop! He cannot be your son.
You must be mistaken.”

Brina turned her face to Reiv. From the look
in her eyes it was clear she had no doubt as to Dayn’s
identity.

Reiv directed his attention to Alicine who
was still poised for battle. “Calm yourself,” he said with forced
control. “Brina means your brother no harm.”

“Why should I believe you?” Alicine snarled.
“You’ve caused us nothing but misery ever since we met you.”

He nodded. “Yes, but we need to get this
sorted out, and Brina is the only one who can do it. Perhaps we
should just quiet down and listen to what she has to say.”

Reiv no longer had the face of the scowling
boy who had forced them at sword point from the fields to this
place. The mask of hostility was gone, replaced by an expression of
concern for a woman who had lost her handle on reality. Whether
Reiv’s suddenly calm exterior was sincere or not was difficult to
determine, but Alicine lowered her fist nonetheless.

Reiv placed a hand on Brina’s arm and
motioned his eyes toward the kitchen. “If you and Alicine will wait
at the table, I will talk to Dayn. There is some honey water in the
jug there.”

Brina smiled as though in agreement, then
looked back at Dayn still transfixed in the atrium. Seeing her
hesitation, Reiv said, “I will fetch him.”

She nodded, then walked toward the kitchen.
Alicine followed her reluctantly.

Reiv took a deep breath and approached Dayn.
“Come to the table, Dayn,” he said.

“No!” Dayn said, and stepped back.

“I will not hurt you.” Reiv said. He paused
and turned up his palms. “See? No weapon.”

Dayn glared at Brina across the way. “Well,
lies hurt.”

“I do not think she is lying. At least not in
her own mind.”

“I’m not her son. I’m not!”

Reiv cocked his head. “Who are you then?”

“Who
am
I?” Dayn hesitated, then
scowled at Reiv, suddenly angry with the boy, or perhaps at
himself, for the seeds of doubt sprouting in his mind. He lifted
his chin. “I am Dayn.”

“I know that,” Reiv said. “But is it possible
you are something more?”

“More? I—I don’t know.”

“Well,” Reiv said, “we will not find out
standing here, now will we?”

Dayn looked at Reiv as though he had never
seen him before. He had, in fact, certainly never seen this side of
him. But what Reiv said did sound reasonable, and so Dayn took a
small step toward him, and then another, and before long he was
following him out of the maze and into the kitchen.

They gathered at the table and sat silently,
cups of sweetened water sitting untouched in front of them. Dayn
sat at the farthest end of the bench from Brina and stared down at
the table, daring not even a glance her way. Alicine placed herself
between them, while Reiv sat on the opposite bench, facing the
three like a judge before a court.

For a long awkward moment there was only
silence. Brina pulled a cup toward her and ran her finger round and
round its rim. Finally she leaned around Alicine and looked at
Dayn, trying in vain to meet his eyes. Then she said, “Dayn, I am
sorry I frightened you. I know you have many questions.”

Dayn lifted his gaze to her. “You’re not my
mother.”

Brina rose from the bench and walked a few
steps from the table, her back to the group. She folded her hands
in front of her. “There is much to tell, Dayn. Please promise you
will listen.”

“I’ll listen,” he grumbled. But he didn’t
think he really wanted to hear.

Brina turned to face them. “Sixteen years ago
I bore a son. He was so beautiful. We named him Keefe. That means
‘cherished’, did you know that? That perfume bottle there,” she
said, pointing to the counter where it now lay, “was a gift from
Mahon. Mahon is my husband, Dayn. He is your . . . he was the
father of my child.”

Dayn looked down at the table, tracing the
patterns of wood with his eyes. He hadn’t even thought about the
father. A new cause for alarm grabbed his gut.

Brina continued. “The bottle was an
anniversary gift. Mahon gave it to me the year I carried our son
inside of me. We had not been married long, only a year, and the
gods blessed us quickly with a child. But he was marked, marked
with a flower-shaped stain here.” She raised a finger to the left
side of her neck.

Dayn lifted his hand and covered the
birthmark clumsily with his fingers. He could feel everyone’s eyes
staring at him, at it. He had never considered the mark to be of
any consequence before. No one in Kirador had ever cared about it;
there were too many other things about him to be concerned with.
But here the mark seemed to mean everything.

Tears welled in Brina’s eyes. “Mahon would
not accept it. No one would have, of course, but I fought against
the inevitable.”

“The inevitable?” Reiv asked.

“The Will of Agneis,” she said.

“The Will of Agneis?” Reiv said, shocked.
“No, Brina, surely not. That only happens to people who are—”

“Inferior?” she said, completing the sentence
for him. “Reiv, the Will of Agneis can happen to anyone. I am of
superior blood, but my child was marked. According to Temple law,
his fate was sealed.”

“What is the Will of Agneis?” Alicine
asked.

“When a child is born impure,” Brina said,
“it must be disposed of. Usually that means taken out into the wild
and left to fate. It is written as law, but few speak of it.”

Alicine gasped and lowered her eyes. She did
not ask any more questions.

“Gods, Brina,” Reiv said, “I never realized.
How could you do it?”

Brina walked over to him and looked him in
the eye. “Reiv, you of all people should understand the value
placed on physical beauty here.”

Reiv winced and slid his hands to his
lap.

She continued. “Reiv, you asked how I could
do it. Well, the truth is I could not. But my choices were few, so
I made a plan to save my child. I told Mahon—I told everyone—that I
would do what had to be done, that I would allow no one else to do
it. I left the next morning, taking only a handmaiden with me. But
I did not go where they thought I would.”

“You went to the cave instead,” Dayn
said.

“Yes, Dayn, yes!” Brina rushed to his side
and knelt down beside him. “I took you to the forbidden mountain to
find the gods. To beg them to cure you.”

“But you left me—I mean—you left the child
there.” His voice sounded pitiably small.

“Yes, but with a god, Dayn! A god who
promised to remove the mark. Hear me Dayn. I could not let you die
by the Will of Agneis or otherwise. I could not!”

“But you did not go back.”

“Oh, Dayn, of course I went back. I went back
for you the next year, and the next, and the next, and every year
after that, just as the god instructed. But he did not bring you.
He never brought you.”

Dayn shook his head. “This can’t be
true.”

Brina rose and grabbed the perfume bottle.
“The gifts, Dayn! You saw the gifts. You said so! Look—the perfume
bottle.” She held it out to him. “It was a gift, for you, so you
would remember me. Every year I brought gifts: blankets, clothes,
toys, tokens. I brought them all for you.”

“Maybe you did give your son away in the
cave,” he said, “but that doesn’t prove I’m that son. Besides, I
still have the mark, see?” He pulled back the collar, revealing the
birthmark to her once more. “The mark’s still there. No god took
me. No god cured me.”

Alicine rose from the bench and moved away,
standing with her back to the others. She had remained unusually
quiet during the entire conversation, asking few questions and
offering no comments. “I think she speaks the truth, Dayn,” she
said softly.

Dayn cocked his head. “What are you saying,
Alicine?”

“I think she speaks the truth,” she said,
turning to face him.

Dayn rose. “How could you know whether she
speaks the truth or not?”

“Because of what Father said.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember I told you how I sneaked up and
listened when Father and Mother went to Eileis’s, when we all went
looking for you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I overheard Father admit he let the
demon-witch think he was a god.”

“He said that?”

“Yes.”

“Those very words?”

“Yes, Dayn, he said them.”

Dayn felt the truth come crashing down upon
him like the rocks that had rained upon them in the cave. One by
one the beliefs he held dear, as well as all his doubts and fears,
tumbled around him. “Demon spawn,” he whispered.

“What?” Alicine asked.

“Demon spawn. That’s what the boys used to
call me. How could they have done such a thing?”

“They were only cruel boys,” Alicine
said.

“No, I mean our parents! I knew I was not
their real child, but it was their lies I hated more than anything.
And now to find out that I was stolen...” Dayn began to pace,
playing old questions and new answers over and over in his
mind.

“Mother lost many babies in childbirth before
we were— before we came,” Alicine said. “Maybe Father was
desperate.”

“I didn’t ask why, Alicine, I asked how.”

“Dayn, if Brina thought Father was a god,
maybe he thought she was of another world too. Maybe he thought you
really were a gift from Daghadar.”

“Then why did he say he got me from a
demon-witch?”

Alicine looked over at Brina and bowed her
head. “I don’t know.”

“Regardless of what he thought she was or
said she was, the fact remains that he made promises to her he did
not intend to keep. He promised to remove the mark and he promised
to bring me back to her. He did neither.”

“Dayn, I don’t know what happened in that
cave, but I do know this—Father and Mother love you. And you know
it, too.”

Dayn knew she was right. His parents had
always loved him in their way, seen to his every physical need,
strived to make him happy as best they could. “Yes, I know it,” he
said, “but it doesn’t make the pain of this any better.”

Brina had stood silently to the side,
watching Dayn and Alicine’s faces, listening to their words.
“Keefe, where have you been all this time?” she asked.

Dayn searched her face, then searched his
heart. This woman believed her child had been left with a god, when
in fact he had been stolen by a man. While Dayn’s life had been
difficult as a result, hers, surely, had been worse. “I’ve been in
a place called Kirador,” he said.

“Kirador? That is where the god took
you?”

“Yes, but he wasn’t a god. He was a man.”

“But he said he was a god. He said he would
remove the stain from your neck. He said he would return you to me.
He said—”

“Yes, he said that.”

Brina’s face went stark. “Oh, Keefe. I am so
sorry. I did not know.”

“I was loved and cared for, Brina.”

“Then why did you come back? Why are you here
now?”

“I had questions about who I was, where I
belonged. I was different.”

“Dayn,” Alicine said.

“No, Alicine, you know it’s true. You know
what I went through.” Dayn turned back to Brina. “I went to the
cave to find out who I was, but when the truth began to reveal
itself I wasn’t ready. I’m still not sure I’m ready.”

Brina nodded. “It will take time for all of
us, but know this: you are my son. You are Keefe.”

“Maybe, but I’m also Dayn.”

“Then that is what you wish to be
called?”

“Yes, I wish to be called Dayn. That is my
name.”

Their reunion was, at first, an awkward one,
but gradually Dayn and Brina relaxed and before long they, along
with Alicine, were seated at the table, trading quiet stories of
their lives.

Reiv sat away from the group, slumped upon
the cross-legged stool by the wall, watching with tired eyes. It
was his choice not to join them, it did not feel right, and though
Brina bade him over time after time, he preferred to ponder the
events of the day from his solitude across the room. Within that
contemplation, however, came the realization that a problem was in
the making. A very big problem.

He rose and walked to the table, facing them
with dread. “Brina,” he said. “What are we to do with them?”

“Do with them?” At first Brina looked
puzzled, but then her eyes widened. “Oh gods,” she whispered. She
rose and stepped from the bench.

“What does he mean, Brina?” Dayn asked with
alarm. “Are we still to be turned over for stealing?”