War-Sky Rising

1. Conran

“Last tale of the night, let’s have one from the king’s fiddle!”

Conran watched his father, Emperor Tane, rub a weathered palm across the pommel of his sword, and stared into the firelight, as if he hadn’t heard. A quick look toward Conran told otherwise. Conran let a faint smile play onto his face, as a few other men added their assent. Conran knew he was probably already running over a list of possible songs to share with the little scouting band, and secretly hoped for a story about Dumaria—the kingdom of animals. Tane looked up at the ring of weathered faces around the fire, a circle of almond shaped eyes twinkled out from warm fur hats against the cold mountain night.

“Come on father, just one. We finally found it haven’t we? Let’s hear a tale of Dumaria,” Conran said, adding his voice to the mens pleas.

Conran, several years now as tall as Emperor Tane, had the olive skin and slanting eyes of Kantaro, but green like his mother’s eyes had been.

“No,” Tane finally broke his silence, “not tonight.”

A few of the men scoffed their disappointment. Conran and those that knew him best waited, eyes bright. Tane raised a hand to continue.

“But, we’ll save songs of other worlds for after we’ve visited them.” He turned his hand a little and beckoned for his fiddle. “Tonight we’ll sing of the Lady Sanrin!”

Conran sighed; he’d heard the story of Lady Sanrin hundreds of times already.

Tane clapped a hand onto his shoulder, “Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty to sing about Dumaria soon enough--more than just myths too—after we’ve been there.”

Tane reached for his fiddle as the men passed it forward. He adjusted the two stringed instrument for a few moments before starting the song. The fiddle’s weathered head curled into a winged horse—the symbol of Old Kantaro.

It was one of the longer songs, of how green-eyed Sanrin had found Kerenth and implored his aid for her world and her people: defeated, and held as slaves on Charban. Kerenth had not wanted to help, but fell in love with the foreign woman, uniting the clans to battle against the invading world. They freed Dumaria and sealed Charban against further invasion for five hundred years. The song ended on a bittersweet note: the battle won, the leader of the invading world used a cursed horse’s skin and killed her, leaving Kerenth to found the new empire alone.

As the song progressed, Conran eyed the sword at his father’s side: Rosendoor, the key to reopening the portal to Dumaria. The portal gate itself lay only a short walk from the camp, and with the sword, he could enter Dumaria himself—

Conran shook his head, pushing the thought away.Better to go through with the rest of the scouting party.

The last verse extolled the virtues of the Kantarian empire, and the golden age that had followed the Triworld War.

As the song wound down, the thought of entering Dumaria wheedled its way beck into Conran’s mind. It couldn’t be that dangerous, they were our allies once…

The song drew to a close, and Tane handed the horse-head fiddle back to a servant. The fire burned into coal’s glow as the men retreated to their tents.

Conran gave a long, obvious yawn. Sure that his father had seen him, he slipped back to the royal tent.

He slipped under the thick blankets and furs, fully clothed, and stared toward the sark wall of the tent, waiting.

After the moments dragged on, a sliver of moonlight at last slipped through the dark of the tent, and Conran heard his father’s footfalls as he made his way to his bed.

Tane unbuckled his sword and undressed in the dark, wrapping the blade in his cloak and laying it along side his bed palette.

Conran waited. His father’s breathing slowed, easing into the steady cadence of sleep. He eased out of his bedding and swung his feet, still booted, onto the ground.

The young prince edged toward his father’s bedside, and hesitated, hand hovering over his father’s blade.

He swallowed. He had never stolen before. He half expected the ancient sword to sound the alarm itself.

He curled his hand around the scabbard, and slid it free of his father’s cloak, wrapping it in his own. He slid an eye to the door flap to see if the guard still slept, and slipped out into the night.

Conran glided through the small army’s encampment in silence, dodging between tent walls of embroidered fabric and leather, holding Rosendoor wrapped in his cloak. Despite the fabric, his hands and arms felt strange holding the stolen sword. The feeling unsettled him; it felt familiar, but wrong—though he couldn’t yet place why. He crossed a small ridge and passed through the dark corridor of a stand of mountain pines, then paused as he came into the bright moonlight in the meadow on the other side.

He unwrapped the blade and unsheathed it to see it in the moonlight. It was perfectly balanced in his hand, even though the blade was foreign to him, curved twice, like a wave. His own sword lay sheathed at his back alongside his quiver. The sabre he wore was one of the finest he had handled in his life, forged when he had come of age as Prince and heir to his father’s empire. Compared to holding Rosendoor, he thought, it was as if his own sword was made of wood. Something given to a child who wishes to play at war.

Rosendoor seemed to hum in his grasp, like a trapped wasp.

He dared not swing it.

He wasn’t sure what his father would do if he found he had stolen the sword. There were many superstitions about the ancient blade, most of which, Conran suspected, were false. He doubted it could take lives with a scratch, or kill worlds. It was even said that a shape-shifter had forged it. The only one his father had ever paid notice to were the rumors of the portals; ancient gates between the worlds.

His mother had always wanted to find one; an obsession that his father Tane attributed to having ‘Lady Sanrin’s eyes.’ Conran had inherited both his mother’s green eyes, and her desire to rediscover Dumaria.

Conran held it in his hands, perfectly still in the silvery light several moments, trying to place the strange sensation that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. It was not the feeling of cold metal and hard wood and the heavy thrill of holding something designed to kill. It was like holding something living.

He nearly dropped it then. He took several moments to calm his breathing, until, he imagined, he was breathing with the sword. When he swung it felt as if he were part of it. He could feel the night air cut on its blade. He swung only a few times before holding it to him for closer inspection.

The the blade, though ancient and scarred, was still sharp. Where the handle joined the pommel there was an ornate figure of an amber-eyed, snarling wolf’s head, with a strange, unpolished ruby between its jaws. The moon’s glow penetrated it further than the actual jewel. Conran could see shivers of light refracting down into the handle.

What had been night was now turning into the dark hours of morning; he had some time yet, but not much. He buckled the scabbard around his waist and set off. There was a reason he had taken Rosendoor, and with that in mind, set off for his destination.

A circle of doorways loomed ahead, a ring of portals: large henges of stone covered with lichen and moss surrounding a central, smaller keystone. There was another outer ring that, combined with a solstice or other rituals long since lost to legend, could awaken the doorways, but now he had the sword, he would not need the outer ring.

What will he do, if he finds out I’ve gone through?

Conran pushed the thought from his mind. It could be days before Tane felt the necessary preparations had been made to enter Dumaria—they’d just arrived this morning.

Excitement whirred in Conran’s chest as he approached the circle of hewn stone.

But I shall see it tonight.

There were only two doorways still standing. He walked to the one his father had pointed out when they had arrived, and stopped. Conran ran a hand through his red-brown hair and stared at the massive stones before him. It probably won’t work anyway, he told himself. Others had tried it in the centuries before but no one had ever gone through. Not since Emperor Atish had closed it four hundred years ago, a hundred years after the seal had been placed on Charban’s gate.

It must have been a solemn ceremony then—the severing of a century long golden age for both worlds.

Still, he felt his breath quicken. Her blood ran in his veins—he could open it once more.

He made a cut on his hand with the long side of the blade—not the tip, the scrolls had said—and walked to the keystone in the center of the ring and pressed his hand onto the cold rock.

The hairs on his arms stiffened.

He could feel a pull now, toward the gateways. He stepped forward to the two portals. The sword was pulling toward the left one, but he forced himself away. It was the right portal they had come to enter; he had no intention of reopening Charban’s gate and unleashing another war. He pointed the sword toward the right gate, aligned the tip of the sword with the center, and drew a straight line along the bare earth between the two pillars of stone.

The doorway opened. The circle of stones that had stood dormant for over five hundred years groaned against the magic snapping through it as the doorway shimmered into life.

Early morning mist wafted through the gateway, casting the doorway’s glow into Kantaro’s night. He smelled damp, spring earth. A warm breath of air wafted out.

He looked around him into the darkness to make sure no one could see him. Seeing no one, he held Rosendoor before him, and stepped through. The air was sweet, and wet. It was also much warmer than it had been in Kantaro, so he shed his cloak, and left it at the portal’s base. He glanced once more into Kantaro.

I’ll be back soon enough.

He instinctively checked for the handle of his own scimitar. If he had to fight he would not use Rosendoor. If anything were to happen to it, he might never be able to return home. As an afterthought, he unlashed his bow from the quiver at his back and strung it.

He looked at Rosendoor in his hand, sheathed it, and continued onward, holding his bow tighter.

It was later in this world, nearly dawn or just after—pale gray showers of mist diffused the light and made everything look further away than it really was. He could not see far ahead, but could tell he was in a kind of meadow. After walking a short distance he found a narrow, beaten deer-trail, but there was no other movement beside his own, and the only sounds he heard were the muffled calls of birds. The familiarity of the sound somehow only made it feel more strange. There was a ring of stones on this side as well, mirroring the two standing doorways on the other side. And there was Kantaro—a square of dark between three stones. He felt a thrill run down his spine. It felt like the day he was crowned prince, something anticipated--like this new world had been waiting for him.

Conran followed the trail into a stand of trees, running his hands over their bark, breathing in the smell of their wide leaves, intensified by the water-laden air. He continued at ease into the woods, thinking himself alone.

Conran heard the creature before he saw it. The mist prevented him from seeing more than a few trees forward, but he had heard something. Something alive, and at least as big as a horse or a deer. He drew an arrow. A slight breeze stirred, and the mists parted, giving him a view of what had made the noise.

He thought, at first, that it was a horse. It was silhouetted in the mist, its slender legs fading toward the ground so he couldn’t make out its feet.

It was standing perpendicular to him, but staring at him full on, as motionless as he was. He took a step forward, his hand still on his arrow. The creature tensed, but did not move. As he drew closer, the less horse-like it appeared. It was similar in build, but more slender and deeper chested, with a leanness that made it look more like an antelope or a deer, with high shoulders like the lanky horses bred in the desert southlands. On its head, between the eyes and the ears, was a single, ridged, black horn, curved backward like a drawn bow. His attention flicked away from the horn to a pair of wings folded along its sides, so long they extended past its back legs in an elegant sweep of black tipped feathers, each longer than his arm.

When his eyes traveled back to its face, they both held each others gaze, and Conran saw unexpected intelligence behind them. They were blue, nearly the same color as its coat, and examining Conran with more purpose than an animal would have. He relaxed his bow, and put the arrow back into his quiver, moving slowly, and held out his free hand. The creature, nostrils flared, stepped toward him and arched its neck forward, blowing its warm breath on his fingers. Conran stepped closer, and blew back, as he had done with horses.

The wing-horse looked at him with startled pleasure, ears pricked, and the silent tension disappeared. Within moments the two were circling each other, each as curious as the other. Conran stroked hands down the creature’s neck and across its high withers, to his relief, it didn’t seem to mind. Its black mane was stiff and upright, and spread onto its shoulders next to the base of the wings. It, in turn, was sniffing at his clothes, his hair, his hands, making soft churling noises in a guttural, fluting pattern. When it got to his quiver, it stopped, and lipped one of the arrows.

“No—you don’t want one of those,” Conran said, and turned himself so the arrows were out of reach. The wing-horse was insistent, and tossed its head at the quiver, making a noise Conran thought almost sounded indignant.

When he still made no motion to take an arrow out, it brought its head forward and nosed his bow, making a show of smelling the wood, and the part of the string where the arrows were nocked, then smelling the arrows again. It had seen the nocked arrow. Surprised, Conran relented and pulled an arrow out and put it to the string.

“Yes, that’s what it is for.”

“Aht wuh-hees fore.”

Conran looked up, bow and arrow both forgotten.

“What?”

“Qua-hut?” the creature repeated.

Conran held the arrow against the handle with his fingers and stood to face the blue roan wing-horse. He raised his hand and pointed at his chest.

“Conran.”

“Kahn-rahan,” it said. It reached forward and touched its muzzle where his hand had been. He nodded, and the wing-horse imitated that as well.

“Conran,” Conran then turned his hand and pointed at the wing-horse. It looked at his hand as if there should have been something in it, then back at him, ears akimbo and confused. He took his hand and repeated his name, then touched it to the creature’s chest. It cocked its head a moment, then with a short nicker of surprise, he touched his chest again with its muzzle.

“Kahn-rahan,” it stepped back and indicated itself again, pulling its chin to the place Conran had touched. “Henehhar.”

“Henehar?”

It made a string of pleased, rough noises and tossed its head, nodding as Conran had. It was laughing at him. Conran could not help himself, he laughed as well. When they stopped, Henehhar turned to the side and partly opened a wing, and indicated its long primary feathers with its muzzle. When unfolded, Conran could see a band of bright silver running along the shaft of each feather. It said its name again. Silver Feathers? Or Silverwing? Conran pointed at the wing, then back at Henehhar’s chest. It nodded.

His name meant Silverwing.

They continued, pointing at the trees (herja), the mist (iheier), the sky (eha). Then at Conran’s clothes, his boots, the quiver of arrows. The wing-horse gestured repeatedly at the bow, as if asking what it was for. It was a horseman’s bow, slightly shorter on the bottom for mounted firing. Henehhar watched in fascination as Conran pulled the arrow back until his fingers were behind the corner of his mouth. He fixed a tree as his target, and released the arrow. Henehhar circled it, tugged at it, and when it wouldn’t come loose, cocked his head at Conran, apparently not understanding the point of such a device. Conran replaced the bow at his back. He wouldn’t be able to get the arrow out of the tree, so he left it there.

The wing-horse regarded him for a moment, wickered something, and began to move away. When Conran went to follow, Henehhar pushed him back to the same spot with his muzzle, and turned to leave again. When Conran took a step in the same direction, the wing-horse put him back in his previous spot.

Conran stayed this time, and when the blue wing-horse turned to see if he was following, Conran sat down on the forest floor. Apparently satisfied, the wing-horse bounded off through the trees.

Conran rifled through the leaf litter and pine needles, plucked a mushroom, smelled it, and tossed it away. Once, he heard footsteps, but when he turned, it was only a deer. It lifted its muzzle, froze for a few moments when it saw Conran, then moved off. It looked almost the same as Kantarian deer, but with larger antlers, still in velvet, that swept a little wider. It didn’t have the look of intelligence the wing-horse had had, and after a moment, it moved on.

The familiar sight put him at ease a little more, and he stood again to watch it disappear into the misty forest, lost between tree trunks. Conran fidgeted with the buckle of Rosendoor, and sighed. He straightened as he heard footsteps approach.

The blue wing-horse appeared out of the mist, trailed by two others: a wheat-coated red roan with the slender build of a mare, and another stallion, similar in stature to Henehhar, but dapple gray. They both stopped when they caught sight of him.

Henehhar circled around Conran, and pushed him toward the golden red and the gray. Surrounded now by three wing-horses, Conran stood still as the three chortled at each other, sniffing and pawing at Conran.

Henehhar lipped at his bow again, as if prompting him to show the two new wing-horses the trick of firing an arrow. He eyed the three wing-horses, noting again the sharp horn on each brow, and nocked another arrow and sent it into the same tree as the first, a little higher up the trunk. The red and the gray wing-horses snorted in surprise. The blue made a noise Conran sounded smug, and the three trotted toward the tree to examine the arrow. When they came back, they showed renewed interest in him, and he repeated a few of the words Henehhar had taught him, and laughed at their surprise.

Henehhar prodded him to scratch his withers again, and Conran obliged, rubbing up the sleek neck to behind the ears. The other two followed, nickering in approval when he finished.

When they got to the sword, Henehhar raised the crook of a wing to indicate its horn. “Kahn,” Henehhar pointed to the sword, then indicated its horn again. Conran could only guess that kahn meant ‘horn’ and that they thought his sword some sort of horn itself.

He drew it from its scabbard reverently and held it out. Henehhar looked at it, but did not come close, as he had with everything else they had pointed to and named. He stepped away instead, ears tipped back. Conran sheathed it again. It felt as out of place here in the peace of the woods as it had at first in the darkness of Kantaro. The three wing-horses lapsed into banter between themselves. It appeared to Conran, that they were trying to decide what to do with him now.

Conran looked up at the sky. It was still gray, but much lighter than before, and he could see a watery circle of light where the sun had risen behind the clouds. It would be morning soon in Kantaro, and his father would find the sword missing.

He pointed to the sun in the sky, then at the place they were standing. He circled his hand toward where the sun would set, then back again to where it would rise, then pointed at the ground again. Meet here again tomorrow at sunrise. The three conversed, deciphering the message, and Henehhar nodded. Conran turned back toward the portal. As soon as the three creatures were out of sight, Conran ran for the portal, hoping he could get back before his father realized what he’d done.