THE KATEI OCEAN

ASTRIDE THE RIFT

CHAPTER II

“...the turning crown and meet by fate

the son long left behind...”

Jaynrik Yohvikye Kaedya V

2:1:1:1/5, III:IX

With the sun sinking in the west, Sharis picked a southbound riverboat to put them up until morning. Air travel made better time by day, but the vessels progressed by night and offered better amenities than camping on the banks of the Ka. As he had the previous afternoon, Tirrok circled above the selected boat, waiting for the elves to negotiate their overnight passage. Gryphon riders, it seemed, earned some veneration in the Rishi, though nothing like the holy reverence the Dua Dara commanded in the Sutek.

After speaking with a plains elf in his late fifties, Fal’on beckoned and Tiena glided to the bow, the deck passing beneath her trot until she halted at the stern. “The captain’s checking to see if they can make room,” Sharis briefed once Tirrok dismounted.

“He seemed pretty edgy; I think he’s got imperials on board,” added Fal’on in a low voice. “They don’t like surprises, but they shouldn’t be onto us. We said we’re visiting family in the Red.”

The captain returned with a cloaked official, his hood raised despite the warmth of early spring. “By your leave, m’lord,” intoned the elf, “they wish to stay the night.”

“They may, Talii. You’re dismissed.” With a quick bow, the captain left them to talk in private.

“We’re grateful for your hospitality, sir,” Fal’on broached when the man regarded them in rigid silence. “We mean no imposition.”

Waving away the formality, the official inquired, “Do you really have family in the Red?”

“G-huh?”

Tirrok stepped forward before the elf’s hesitation exposed them all. “Forgive any rudeness on my part, good sir, but the customs here are quite different from my own. In the desert whence I hail, it is a grave insult for a man to hide his face, particularly when making such a personal inquiry.” His relief blatant, Fal’on nudged Sharis, who rebuked him with a scowl.

“Still you tread a fine line between deference and nerve,” mused the official, throwing back his hood. “You should have gone home, boy! Yet I must admit, it is good to see you again, Tirrok.”

“You’re–!” Fal’on gasped, torn between grabbing his sister’s arm and pointing in shock at the plains elf before them. Arm folded to cross his heart, the young elf dropped to a knee and announced, “Rider Fal’on Vedors of Vedosr’f’n, at your service my lord.”

Wincing at her brother’s obsolete salute, Sharis shoved the ball of her foot into his ribs. “What are you doing?” The official looked familiar, perhaps from one of Fal’on’s many books, but she saw no reason to genuflect.

“Don’t kneel for me,” the stern elf ordered, gesturing for him to rise. “I am no more noble than you are, and indeed far less so.”

He turned to clap Tirrok on the back, and Sharis yanked her brother up by the arm. “Fal’on, who is that?”

“Kingard!” he wailed in humiliation. “There was only a statue of him back home! That, dear sister, is our lord Thane Kingard the Valiant, holy savior of Allana–”

With overt patience, Kingard interrupted, “If we could spare the undue extolments, Fal’on?”

“Undue?!” squeaked the young elf, his objection lost beneath his sister’s halting salutation. To Tirrok, he breathed, “And you know Lord Kingard? How?”

“Just Kingard will do, if you please,” the sage corrected, turning Sharis’s proffered hand to brush a kiss across her weathered fingers. “The honor is surely mine.” A powerful knot in his throat gave him pause, and Kingard surveyed the lines of the lady elf’s face. Leja’s cheeks had been more sallow with the grief of her time, her chin pointed and nose sharper, but the resemblance chilled the breath in his lungs. “Tell me,” he rasped, clearing his throat, “is it true you have family in the Red?”

Flustered, she apologized, “No sir, it’s been just my brother and I since the plague. We were at academy when it took our rookery.”

“...My sincerest condolences for your troubles.” Planting a fist over his heart in a solemn rendition of Fal’on’s salute, Kingard knelt before them. “I am leading an expedition to the Glades of Despair. We seek to unbind the city A’lara, and... and I would have your company.”

The elves spluttered at the unlikely invitation, but Tirrok affirmed, “That is where we travel as well. I had thought the City of Mist might reunite us, but to make the journey together is what I requested before you left.”

“You were trying to find me?”

Explaining the desert legend, he gestured at the gryphon riders. “They overheard mindwarps discussing the empress. I thought perhaps I could be the warrior in the tale, and you the chieftain.”

“Fal’on speaks Khollic,” Sharis elaborated, shoving her brother forward. “Tell him what they said!”

Jolted from his stupor, Fal’on related the conversation and asked, “You’re going to fulfill the prophesy, aren’t you? To unbind the city and save the light from evil! What are they doing with the shifters, do you know?”

“No, but the dragon mage is a shifter, and they were after him.” Could Xolyu have enacted such a complicated scheme? “He and the faerie are aboard with me.”

“Then what if it’s to find the dragon mage?” theorized Fal’on, voicing Kingard’s thoughts. “They could be trying to gather all the pieces of the prophesy together, to–” Gasping, he quoted, “To be bestowed each tower bared to hungry eyes. The city itself! They’re trying to take A’lara!”

“Perhaps,” allowed the elf, “but they’d need much more than just the dragon mage.”

Ticking off a few fingers, Fal’on countered, “They’ve had over three centuries to do it though, and they only need you, the dragon mage, and five builders. Lovynge turned after the occupation, so there’s one right there. And I bet the elf turned too, since he disappeared–”

“Show some respect,” barked Kingard, sickened by the legitimacy of Fal’on’s theory. “He would never have turned willingly.”

To shift the conversation from her humbled sibling to something more tangible, Sharis asked, “...So what exactly is in A’lara?”

With a pained smile, he reflected, “Everything, and nothing–”

“Sugar plums and butterflies?” Vithril emerged from where she’d been eavesdropping behind the corner of the galley wall, Darek in tow. “Why is it, Kingard, that we’ve been on this bedamned boat for over a week and you haven’t answered any of my questions, but the moment some elves show up, you suddenly go all chatty?”

She sauntered over expecting an apology or overdue explanation, but Kingard scoffed. “Faerie, if I haven’t answered any of your questions so far, why would I start now?” As she floundered for a response, he pointed out the new arrivals. “Tirrok, Fal’on, and the lady Sharis, this is Darek, the dragon mage, and Vithril, the faerie.”

“It’s bloody obvious I’m a faerie!” Flicking two fingers in the greeting gesture of her kind, she quelled her irritation to chime, “Hello then. Charmed and all that.”

“He means the faerie,” Fal’on exclaimed, appalled that Kingard’s companions knew so little. “You see, long ago the mers shared every prophesy with the landfolk, and that time was called the Golden Age. Considered the height of civilization by many historians, including–”

“Get to the point, Fal’on!”

Scowling at Sharis, he grumbled, “I was!” The elf gathered his thoughts and continued, “Obviously, the mers stopped sharing their prophesies with us, which is why we don’t have any today. The Golden Age ended with this prophesy about A’lara–”

“Which says?” prompted the faerie, sensing Fal’on’s tendency to pontificate.

“The city was forged three centuries ago, by one builder of each race,” he delivered. “The prophesy says that as evil rears, and readies light’s demise, the descendants of those original builders will return to unbind the city. And you – Vithril, was it? – are of the faerie bloodline. That’s why you are the faerie, as opposed to the rather obvious fact that you are a faerie.”

“What about me?” piped Darek, excited someone would answer questions for a change.

A touch of reverence on his features, Fal’on replied, “Lord Kingard called you the dragon mage. The prophesy reads, the dragon mage shall bring them all to find the star as evil rears. Ah, the star is a metaphor for A’lara itself; its value is beyond imaginable, and it will be an asset to the forces of good against this rearing evil.”

The faerie pummeled Fal’on with more questions, and Kingard found himself snickering. “She’s worse than the child, I warn you,” he called, studying Leja’s likeness beside him with foreboding lodged in the pit of his stomach. Though his centuries of waiting had ended at long last, history loomed unwritten for the first time in three hundred years, and soon the battle would begin.