Golden Age (The Shifting Tides Book 1) (31 page)

‘Sword,’ Nikolas said. He opened his palm and looked at one of the soldiers nearby expectantly.

The whisper of drawn steel filled the air. The soldier proffered the sword, and Nikolas gripped the hilt tightly in his palm.

He suddenly raised the weapon to strike.

Eyes wide, shocked into frozen silence, Dion didn’t move to stop him.

Nikolas gritted his teeth, grunting with effort as his arm twitched, high in the air. His muscles were bunched, tensed to breaking point.

‘I can’t do it,’ he whispered.

Nikolas lowered the sword. A sob erupted in his chest, but was swiftly suppressed. He spoke in a voice of torn emotion Dion had never heard before.

‘You gave us away . . .’ he whispered. ‘They came through the Shards.’

‘Brother—’ Dion struggled to speak.

Nikolas raised the sword again and Dion’s voice fell away. Once more Nikolas tried to slash down at Dion’s neck. Once more his muscles tensed and wrist trembled until he lowered his arm.

‘Though my parents are dead, and my kingdom has been seized by invaders; though my wife has suffered in ways I can’t bear to think on, and I have no news of my only son . . . still I can’t strike you.’

Nikolas visibly held himself in a state of suppressed emotion. His chest heaved up and down like a racehorse at the gate.

‘Brother, it’s me—’

‘Go,’ Nikolas said. He turned his back on Dion. ‘Get out of my sight!’

‘Why?’ Dion asked, trying to force himself to understand.

Nikolas whirled, rounding on him. ‘How would men from Ilea know about the passage? You went to Ilea, to Lamara. Look at you.’ His burning gaze traveled up and down Dion’s body. ‘You told them.’

‘It wasn’t me,’ Dion protested. ‘It was a traitor!’

‘Who, Dion? Who was this traitor, if not you?’

‘It could only have been Peithon.’

‘Peithon?’ Nikolas grunted. He called out. ‘Peithon, where are you?’

Dion’s eyes went wide as Peithon stepped forward into the circle. The brow of his large face was curled into a scowl and his eyes were narrowed over his hooked nose. The fine tunic around his paunch was white and clean; he had taken no part in the fighting.

‘You accuse me?’ Peithon’s voice rose.

‘Peithon was in Phalesia when the attack came,’ Nikolas said. ‘Today I cannot see another member of my family killed. I may not feel the same tomorrow. Now get out of here, Dion, before I change my mind and kill you.’

53

The hills swarmed with the sun king’s soldiers. The army of Xanthos blocked the pass. As night fell over a day of utter anguish, Dion went to the only place he could go.

He left the Gates of Annika and walked north, into the Wilds.

Leaving civilization behind completely, he climbed into the forested mountains and soon felt the heavy presence of trees on both sides and thick branches ahead. He crested a hill and entered a valley, with a fast-flowing river tumbling over a bed of smooth white stones.

The darkness was complete but still Dion kept walking. He followed the river until it became sluggish, with grassy banks at both sides. Entering a tranquil clearing within an almost perfect circle of surrounding evergreens, he stopped in the very center and looked up at the night sky.

Stars shimmered in the heavens, scattered pinpricks of light that clustered in strange formations. In the distance he could hear the roar of a waterfall. Something about the place calmed his ragged emotions.

Gazing at the firmament, Dion scowled up at the gods, who had all deserted him; he thought he’d come here to pray, but now the words escaped him. Who would he pray to? Aldus, the god of justice, who had caused Dion to be cursed with treachery? Helios, the sun god, whose name was uttered with supreme reverence in Ilea? Edra, the fertility goddess? Balal, the god of war? Silex, the god of the sea? Aeris, the goddess of healing?

He sank to his knees and then fell onto his back as he cursed them all, still staring up at the night’s sky.

He remembered his family giving him the gift of the bow on the beach. He tried not to, but he couldn’t stop himself thinking about his mother’s final hours. He remembered her saying goodbye to him as he sailed away, the last person standing to see him go, her hand raised.

He wished he’d known it was the last time he would see her alive.

It took a long time, but blessed sleep finally came.

‘Dion.’

He heard his name spoken by an unfamiliar voice.

He opened his eyes and saw swaying treetops, a brilliant shade of emerald green. The rushing sound of water combined with the buzz of insects to provide a soothing melody of nature. The air was crisp and fresh, and although the sky above was bright and blue, the glade was cool, filtering the strongest rays.

He sat up.

A tall, lean man with arched eyebrows was crouched on his heels nearby as he watched Dion. He wasn’t a man, Dion realized – he was an eldran. He wore well-fitting garments of soft deerskin – a vest and loose brown trousers – but nothing on his feet, appearing completely comfortable on the soft grass.

He had pale skin, nearly white, and a crescent-shaped scar on his left cheek. His brown eyes were flecked with gold and appeared ancient, making Dion feel like a young child, insignificant beside someone wiser and greater. Lustrous silver hair hung to the eldran’s shoulders.

Thinking of Triton, Dion reached for his bow, but then remembered that Chloe said Triton was broad-shouldered, with one eye missing and skin tight on his bald head. This eldran was slim, with long hair; his face was gentle, weathered like parchment by the passage of time.

‘You won’t need your weapon, Dion. My name is Zachary. You have nothing to fear. You are in our lands, but I won’t harm you.’

‘How do you know my name?’

‘I know you well, young prince Dion of Xanthos.’

‘How?’ Dion climbed to his feet, and the eldran slowly rose with him. Though he was extremely thin, Zachary was taller than Dion by a full six inches. ‘How do you know me?’

‘Through your mother,’ Zachary said softly.

‘My mother is dead.’

‘I know.’ He spoke simply, but his voice carried a sense of loss and sadness. ‘I grieve with you.’

‘Leave me be,’ Dion said, hanging his head. ‘I came to pray to my gods, not to talk to eldren.’

‘Dion,’ Zachary said as he gazed down at him. ‘Look at me.’

Despite himself, Dion tilted his head back to meet the eldran’s gaze.

‘You will want to know what I have to say. What she never wanted you to know.’ Zachary paused, and then spoke clearly and succinctly, so that Dion could not mistake his words. ‘Your mother was one of us.’

‘She cared for your people, I know. You are all most likely alive because of her. She—’

‘It’s the truth,’ Zachary said. ‘Although I can understand why you find it hard to accept. I always thought she should tell you, but she wanted you to be completely one of them, rather than partly one of us. You should know the truth.’

Dion wondered if he was still lying on his back, dreaming as his closed eyelids banished the light of the stars. ‘Truth? What truth?’

‘Long ago Markos, your father, King of Xanthos, had a tragedy. His wife died giving birth to his firstborn, a son.’

Dion frowned. ‘Nikolas.’

‘
Yes, Nikolas. Your half-brother.’ Zachary nodded. ‘Markos grieved, but after some years his advisers pressed him to bear another child to ensure the succession. They found him a young wife, a noblewoman named Thea, from a tiny far away kingdom called Azeros, to the north and west of here, in a valley between two mountains.’

‘I know all this,’ Dion said.

‘Then humor me and allow me to continue.’ Zachary’s ancient
eyes suddenly blazed, and Dion felt a stab of fear. He remembered the crescent scar on the face of the serpent that cleared the narrows . . .
and then realized that he was looking at the very same eldran.

But all the eldran did was fix Dion with a steady stare.

‘Out of duty, the king agreed to the marriage,’ Zachary said, ‘in order to father a noble son, more than to build an alliance with a small kingdom he knew little about. The young bride, Thea, and her retinue set off for Xanthos.’

Zachary’s voice changed in character. The brown eyes that never left Dion’s face became penetrating.

‘We discovered her just outside her homeland,’ he said.

Dion started. ‘What did you just say?’

‘She was badly wounded but still alive, the only one of her retinue to escape harm, for her escort had fought for her to the last man. We took her in and tended to her wounds, discovering the nature of the wildran attack on her homeland. I sent some of my people to Azeros and we discovered that it was destroyed by the giants, completely and utterly.’

Zachary’s voice became sad. ‘We tried, Dion, we tried. We tried to heal her but her body was as broken as her heart, for she knew that her home was gone, and she would never see anyone she knew again. Our best healer spent a great deal of time tending to her, sharing in her life, doing all she could for her.’ He paused. ‘But even so, despite the healer’s efforts, the woman died.’

Dion wanted to tear his eyes away from Zachary’s, but there was such strength in his stare that he couldn’t look away. He didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe any of it.

But, at the same time, he knew it to be true.

‘We eldren began to fear for ourselves. For at that time there was no peace between Xanthos and our people. We knew that if the king of Xanthos’s new bride was killed by wildren, his wrath would come down on all of us. There aren’t many of us, Dion. It is your race that won the war, long ago. We only want to live here in peace.’

Zachary reached out to take Dion’s hands. His touch was strange, and then Dion realized why. It was no different from the touch of any other person.

‘Your mother, who was the healer, came up with a desperate solution. She dyed her silver hair black and went to Xanthos. That healer became Thea. And from then on, until she died, that is who she was.’

Dion’s breath came in gulps. It must have been a terrible secret for his mother to carry.

‘When she reached Xanthos she was comforted by the king and given time to acclimatize to her new world. If she acted strangely, all forgave her. They put a golden chain around her neck, as is your people’s custom, though it must have hurt her every day.’

Zachary’s eyes moved down slightly to Dion’s neck, bare ever since he gave his necklace to the farmer. ‘I see you do not wear your chain. Did it ever cause you pain?’

Dion started to shake his head, but then slowed and finally stopped. He thought about the naming ceremony of Nikolas’s son Lukas, and his own naming ceremony. When the magus called him to silver, he hadn’t come.

‘Your mother married the king, who, as is tradition, asked what gift he could give her. She asked her husband to hunt the wildren as he must, but not to seek revenge on the eldren. Over time she brought about peace between us, and together we cleared Xanthos of the wild ones.’

Dion remembered his mother dyeing her hair. She’d always said it was to cover gray, but now he knew the truth.

‘My mother was an eldran?’

‘She was.’

He remembered his difficulties learning swordsmanship. The only iron present in archery was in the heads of the arrows. Sailing was about rope, cloth, and wood. He felt strange.

‘But I’m only part eldran. It doesn’t change anything. I’m the same person I’ve always been.’

‘Of course you are,’ Zachary said.

He had a sudden thought. ‘When the attack came, why didn’t she change? She could have helped, couldn’t she?’

‘I believe that if she had asked to have her golden chain removed, and changed, your father would think he had been betrayed, right to the end. She loved your father, Dion. She died with him, rather than lose his love.’

Dion felt his eyes burning, but Zachary’s steady expression kept him strong. He removed his hands from Zachary’s and turned away as he thought about all he had lost.

There was still something he could do to help.

And it was standing right next to him.

Dion turned to Zachary and the eldran tilted his head to the side, waiting for him to speak.

‘You know what the Ileans did to my mother. Will you help us against our enemies?’

‘This is a dark time for your people.’ Now it was Zachary who looked away from the fire of Dion’s gaze. The eldran stared into the trees in the direction of Xanthos, as if seeing the blood that would soon be shed dripping from the low branches. ‘But it is not our war.’

Dion knew Nikolas. He knew his brother would lead the army down from the Gates of Annika and try to retake the city.

For Nikolas was now the king of Xanthos.

‘But eldren are fighting on the side of the sun king,’ Dion persisted. ‘That makes it your war. Triton—’

Zachary’s eyes narrowed as he interrupted. ‘Did you say “Triton”?’

Dion nodded.

‘I have not heard that name in a long time.’

‘He says he is your king.’

‘Untrue,’ Zachary said as his wizened features curled in a scowl. ‘He has the blood of Marrix, but many can make that claim. He may lead those from the Waste, but only if he reclaims our homeland can he call himself our king.’

The pieces fitted together in Dion’s mind. Only now did he understand the truth. There was more at stake than the survival of Xanthos and Phalesia.

‘Triton needs the horn of Marrix,’ Dion said. ‘The horn is inside the Ark of Revelation, at the Temple of Aldus in Phalesia.’

Zachary drew back and his eyes went wide. ‘How do you know this?’

‘The two myths,’ Dion said. ‘They overlap. The story of King Palemon says he stole a magical horn and put it in an iron box, for eldren magic fails when confined by metal. The Ark of Revelation is said to contain holy tablets, and must never be opened or all will suffer.’

Dion waited for Zachary’s reaction, but it was a long time before he spoke.

Finally, the eldran nodded. ‘We know this. We’ve known this for a long time, and we’ve watched over the ark. But we did not know that Triton knew.’

‘He only just discovered the ark’s location,’ Dion said, remembering Chloe’s story. He hesitated. ‘The one thing in common with both tales is that if the ark opens then humanity is lost. What does the horn do?’

Zachary’s eyes stared into the distance, unfocused as he watched the surrounding forest, seeing something else altogether. ‘It would give Triton control over the wild ones. There are many more wildren than eldren. It would give him power over them all. Long ago, our people and yours fought. For Triton, that war never ended.’

‘And you?’

He looked at Dion. ‘We have no wish for more war between humans and eldren.’

‘If you help my brother retake Xanthos, together we will be able to save Phalesia. Nikolas has thousands of men under his command.’

Zachary’s expression was pained. ‘Some of us will die. We are barely a hundred.’

‘If Triton gets the horn he’ll bring about total war. Many more eldren will die then.’

Zachary’s face was inscrutable, but Dion knew he was deep in thought.

Then the tall eldran came to a conclusion.

‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I will return.’