Heritage: Book One of the Gairden Chronicles
Heritage: Book 1 of the Gairden Chronicles
Published by Tyche Books Ltd.
www.TycheBooks.com
Copyright © 2014 David L. Craddock
First Tyche Books Ltd Edition 2014
Print ISBN: 978-1-928025-01-6
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-928025-04-7
Cover Art by Lili Ibrahim
Cover Layout by Lucia Starkey
Interior Layout by Skyla Dawn Cameron
Editorial by M. L. D. Curelas
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage & retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright holder, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third party websites or their content.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead would be really cool, but is purely coincidental.
For Margaret Curelas, editor and friend.
For Mom and Dad.
Last but never least, for Amie Christine.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
The Great Day
A
IDAN
G
AIRDEN OPENED HIS
eyes to see the first rays of the Lady’s light creeping through the thick layer of frost over his bay window. He rolled over and nuzzled his pillow, granting himself a royal decree to spend the day burrowed beneath his blankets. His eyelids grew heavy. Just before they closed he caught a glimpse of the day’s outfit laid out for him on the table across the room. His eyes snapped open.
No royal decree could save him. Today was the great day.
Aidan groaned and threw his bedding over his head.
The great day
, he thought with more than a hint of sourness. That was what his mother and everyone else in Sunfall called it, and in the most aggravatingly cheery tones. As if reciting it in tones as sweet as birdsong would make him believe it.
A knock sounded at his door. Aidan peeked out from his covers. Maybe whoever it was—his mother, probably—would take pity on him and let him sleep a few minutes longer. Then the door opened and a troop of attendants bustled in.
“Happy sixteenth birthday, Prince Aidan,” they said in perfect unison. Aidan gave one last groan that rivaled the most enthusiastic of his mother’s
great day
s. Then they swarmed him, yanking off his bedcovers and hoisting him to his feet. He gasped, shocked at the cold of the stone floor. The attendants gave him no time to recover. One propped his arms out to either side while another slipped on the white shirt his mother had set out and began doing up the buttons. Others smoothed out wrinkles and straightened his collar.
“I still—” Aidan began, but cut off with a yelp when their pack leader, a bald man of medium height, stood on tiptoe and ran a comb through his curly brown hair.
“Need to trim that,” he muttered, combing none too gently.
Aidan shook free and flapped his hands at the lot of them. “I still know how to dress myself!”
“Still?” one of the women murmured. Two of the other girls broke into a fit of giggling.
Aidan glowered. “That will be all.”
“Very well, Prince Aidan,” the bald man—Gilton; that was his name—said, bowing low. “When can we tell your mother you’ll be ready? Ten minutes? Perhaps five?”
“Fifteen. Perhaps twenty.”
Aidan waited until they left, then finished buttoning his shirt and crossed to the dresser to scrutinize the day’s other garments. White pants, white boots, and a cape. A
cape
. He rolled his eyes. At least it was white, too. He could blend in with the snow and sneak away.
He finished dressing and cracked open his door. Sounds of chatter made their way up from the corridor to the left, the one that led into the heart of the palace. Aidan went right. His footsteps echoed through Sunfall’s empty corridors, galleries, and parlors. Gray light lit the tall, frosted windows that ran the length of each corridor as he wound his way along. He drank in the quiet. It was likely the last stretch of solitude he would ever enjoy.
Aidan rounded one last turn and saw Helda, his mother’s head cook, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, hands on her hips and a wooden spoon tapping against a leg as thick as a ham. Filling the doorway was more like it. Helda always said that one didn’t become head cook in the royal kitchens by skipping meals.
“Up with the Lady, I see,” Helda boomed, spotting him. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
Before Aidan could reply she put hands as large as dinner plates on his shoulders and steered him into the kitchen. All around him, cooks clattered pots and pans, stoked roaring fires, and carried trays containing freshly baked bread, steaming platters of meat, and desserts. Aidan absently reached for a cookie. Helda rapped his fingers with her spoon just as absently and steered him on. She planted him at a small table in the corner where a jug of juice and a plate of poached eggs, fried potatoes, and three strips of bacon crispy as a twig sat waiting.
Aidan brightened. Helda never forgot his favorite meal and had made it every year on his birthday. He used one of his bacon strips as a shovel to break ground in his yolk, spilling golden goop over the pile of potatoes. Feeling quite like an artist, he dipped his bacon into the egg and painted streaks over his potatoes while Helda fussed at his hair and straightened his collar.
“Your mother says to swallow without chewing and make your way to the south gate,” Helda said, stepping back to admire her handiwork.
Grumbling, Aidan began shoveling his last meal down his gullet.
Her fists returned to her hips as she came around to face him. Aidan wondered if she had been born that way.
“Won’t you be needing a coat? You’ll catch your death out there. Wouldn’t want your guests to remember the great day
that
way, would you?”
Aidan chewed on the idea while his mouth chewed on a greasy strip of bacon. Dropping dead from the sniffles wasn’t exactly a demise worthy of the heroes from the stories, but it would be memorable.
“You’ll fetch a coat, then?”
He shook his head and waved a stick of bacon in an elaborate gesture.
Helda harrumphed. “No coat warmer than the Lady’s light, I guess.”
Aidan munched leisurely until Helda began tapping her foot. He took the hint, slurping up the last of his eggs and chasing them with swigs of juice.
“Your mother says to use the east path down to the city,” Helda called after him as he hustled to the door. “People are already gathering in the south courtyard. Tyrnen will meet you outside in... Well, at this rate, he’s probably there
now
.”
Aidan turned on his heel and slipped down a side hallway that deposited him in the east hall. Tall arched windows frosted over with ice ran down either wall, stamping the floor with light. Below each one, Wardsmen in white mail stood straight and still, backs against the wall and a spear standing point-up in one hand. They moved their eyes, caught sight of the prince, and relaxed, breaking their statue-like postures.
“Are you ready, Prince Aidan?” one called. His name was Thomas, Aidan recalled. He was only a few years older than the prince.
Aidan pasted on a grin. “Do I have a choice?”
The Wardsmen shared nods of understanding. They knew what it was to lead lives of duty. The two stationed at the door that opened onto the courtyard gripped either handle. “Leaving this way?” one asked. Through them, Aidan could hear muffled laughter and shouts. Flutters in his stomach churned his breakfast like a plunger churned butter.
It’s happening. This is really happening.
“I’m to take the east trail,” Aidan said, stretching his grin as far as it could go and gesturing at the door. “The women are already lined up out that way. Can’t have them getting a look too early, now can we?”
The younger Wardsmen crowed and banged the butt of their spears on the floor while the older ones chuckled and shook their heads.
Aidan headed down another side passage and entered the east courtyard. Walking paths and stone benches hibernated beneath a blanket of white; a curtain of snow as thick as fog stitched new layers over top it. Over the icy walls, the babble of the gathered assemblage doubled in volume. This time Aidan ignored it. The cold was a bigger concern. Forcing himself to relax, he let a sliver of daylight flow into his skin while he whispered a prayer to the Lady of Dawn, spoken in the Language of Light, from between chattering teeth.
Kindling, men called the process. Men who wrote stuffy textbooks that were even older than Tyrnen. Aidan preferred to think of it as
playing with fire
, but his grumpy old teacher discouraged the term. As his lips closed over the last word of the prayer, warmth settled over him like Darinian fur. He crossed the courtyard to the wrought iron gate at the far end. Snow peeled away and ice melted to watery trails as he went.
He took his time picking his way down the twisty, rocky path from Sunfall’s mountaintop perch to Calewind’s backstreets. The tumult rose with every step. People had gathered in the city, too; he could see them below, a shifting mass of heads, furs, ribbons, and banners flapping in the wind. His feet grew heavier. He had to drag himself up to the gate that opened into the city. The four Wardsmen standing guard clapped him on the shoulder in greeting. Two of them broke away and walked him along the predetermined route through empty side streets. Bodies clogged the alleyways that fed into Calewind’s main thoroughfare. Wardsmen stood at each opening like dams built from steel and flesh.
At last he reached the south wall and banged his fist on the door to the guard tower. The door opened and a Wardsman waved him in. Another hurried to unlock the far door while the others crowded around Aidan, talking idly of the turnout for the
great day
and holding up their hands to him as if he were a hearth. Then the door swung open, the Wardsmen wished him luck, he stepped out, and the door clicked shut behind him.
The heat bubble surrounding him cut a path through the ankle-deep snow as he walked a mile outside the city, toward the white expanse of rolling hills and skeletal woods. All at once a great roar rose up from Calewind’s four walls. Aidan paced back and forth, now quite positive his heart would break free from his chest at any moment and go tearing across the hills.
Aidan would have watched its flight with the utmost envy.