Souls of Aredyrah 3 - The Taking of the Dawn (2 page)

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 eastern 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

Chapter 2: Jewel of the Valley

D
ayn and Alicine
traveled for three more days before finding the pass that led them
between the mountains. As Dayn had suspected, they’d simply not
gone far enough north. Reiv had told Dayn to look for the pass
between the two peaks east of the smoking mountain. But the closer
they got, the more difficult it was to tell where one peak began
and another ended.

At last they found the passage they were
seeking, but when they reached its end, they could only stop and
stare. Below them was a vast green valley, its wild grasses rising
and falling like waves on an emerald sea.

“I swear, if I wasn’t so tired I’d gallop
right into it,” Dayn said. He twisted around in the saddle to look
at his sister. Her grin was stretched as wide as his was.

They wound the horses down the mountainside
until at last they were standing at the edge of the vale. It spread
across the landscape like an endless palette of teal upon teal,
spotted here and there by patches of red and white and yellow. A
ring of snow-capped mountains surrounded it, rising like a great
crown tipped with sparkling jewels.

Dayn pulled a breath through his nostrils,
relishing the sweet scent of clover mixed with early autumn
wildflowers.

“It’s so beautiful,” Alicine said, gazing
out. “Think of the crops Father could grow in a place like
this.”

“Anyplace would be better than that rocky
patch of ground he struggles with year after year,” Dayn said. Then
his hopes lifted. “Do you think he’d consider moving the family
here? I sure wouldn’t mind it. Then we could live closer to…oh,
never mind.”

“Closer to Tearia?”

“Well, if we lived halfway between…”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen, Dayn,
so you might want to put that little fantasy to rest.”

“Just a thought,” he said.

The valley proved to be rich with life, and
it soon drew Dayn into a sense of contentedness he had not felt
since they had left Tearia. But he knew better than to linger. If
what Reiv told them was true, and it probably was, they had only to
make their way between the two ridges directly ahead of them and
they would be in Kirador. From there they had only to go west,
then—

“What’s that?” Alicine asked, pointing to the
ground in front of them.

Dayn squinted in the direction she was
indicating, toward a patch of faded pink flowers with pale yellow
leaves. A reflection could be seen glinting in the sunlight,
appearing and disappearing with every step he took.

“Where did it go?” Alicine asked, rising in
her saddle.

“There…over there,” Dayn said, his arm
outstretched. “See it?” But he didn’t wait for a reply and
dismounted his horse.

The glimmer vanished, and Dayn searched the
area in slow circles. Alicine dismounted and joined him, but
whatever it was they were looking for was no longer in sight.

Dayn shrugged. “Probably just a rock or
something.”

Alicine halted. “No,” she said, and reached
down to gather something that lay at her feet.

Dayn took several strides toward her. “What
is it?”

Alicine thrust out her hand. Dayn gazed into
it, his heart skipping. He would have been less astounded if she
had been holding a serpent under his nose. Cradled in her hand was
a brooch of silver, a purple amethyst set at its center. It was a
brooch surely made for a royal, much like the ones they had seen
Whyn, Reiv’s brother, wear. But Whyn’s jewels were emeralds, not
amethysts, and he would never have had cause to be in this
place.

Dayn took the ornament from Alicine’s hand
and inspected it. “This can’t be Whyn’s.”

“It’s Reiv’s,” Alicine said. “I’m sure of
it.”

“Reiv’s? But when would he have—oh…of course.
But I didn’t think he’d actually been here. I mean, when he
transcended and the goddess gave him visions of the valley, I
thought they were just visions.”

Alicine’s eyes sparkled as she gazed at the
brooch. Dayn handed it back to her. “Here, you keep it. Something
to remember him by, ‘til you see him next time. Won’t he be
surprised you found it?”

She smiled, then pinned the jewel to her
dress, low enough at the breast so she could look at it with ease.
“The color reminds me of his eyes,” she said, running her finger
over the stone. Then she gazed at the shell bracelet draped around
her wrist, its iridescent swirls competing with the elegance of the
brooch. Both were precious in her eyes. Reiv had given her the
bracelet and now, in a way, he had given her the amethyst as
well.

****

The pass into the valley from the southern
side was not difficult, other than the finding of it, but the pass
into Kirador to the west proved to be more treacherous. There was
evidence of recent landslides all along the canyon-like passage
they had entered. Dirt and massive boulders were tumbled into
precarious mounds on either side of them; trees, once towering
giants, lay toppled with root balls exposed; a fresh mountain
stream was now a river of mud and debris.