Episode 01 - Ch 04: High One

Aelric spent most of the way home focused on his feet, taking one step forward at a time as he pushed the cart full of logs along the dirt road. His family's home was not far from the forest, but he wondered if he'd have any strength left for the trek to the lake, let alone a swim. Thankfully, he had just crested the final hill, and it was a smooth ride down the rest of the way.

He could see the modest cabin in the distance, its stacked timber walls and thatched roof, which his father repatched every year. He had expected to see his mother outside tending to the vegetable garden that the family kept for their own consumption. It was still mid-afternoon and his mother was usually attending to her chores at that time. But then he noticed that his laundry, which she had taken from him that morning, was still hung on the clothes rack, well-dried under the sun.

Ma never leaves clothes out in the sun past their due time, he thought. That was especially true for his clothes, as the sun shrank the fibers, and his ceaseless growth stretched them back out, causing countless restitchings over the years. Even when his tunic had not been left out in the sun for too long, it often needed mending.

It wasn't until he came around the bend in the road that he got a full view of the front of the hut and became truly alarmed. A horse he didn’t recognize was tied to the post beside the front door. He knew all the horses of the village, he even knew all the goats, cows, and oxen. This was no Aldin animal. It was a far finer breed than anyone in the village could afford.

Aelric set down the cart and approached. The horse's saddle was made of fine, dark leather, and it gleamed with silver buckles that caught the afternoon light.

Terrifying thoughts ran through his mind, stories the older boys told around the campfires when he was young, stories they’d heard from the towns and other villages. Stories about riders clothed in black, slaughtering villages with glowing hands and red smiles.

The door was ajar, swaying and creaking slightly on its hinges in the light breeze. He thought he heard movement as he approached, perhaps even voices.

“Ma?” he tried calling out, but his voice did not come out loud, tempered by his fear.

He pushed open the door and stepped inside. Dim light from the curtained windows cast long shadows over the small living room.

Strange, was his first thought. Why were the curtains closed?

Then he was certain he heard something, and he rushed further into the house. And froze. Standing on one side of his parent’s bed was a rotund man with oily curly hair and an even oilier beard. The orange and white of the Legionaire Kallow's colors were prominent on his coat and the pants that he buckled with a satisfied sigh. Standing on the other side with her back turned was his mother, smoothing down her dress, her fingers trembling as she tightened a buckle around her waist.

As if suddenly sensing him, she spun around, eyes wide with horror. “Aelric,” she said quickly, her voice thin and choked. “You’re back so soon…”

Aelric didn’t know how to respond. He just stood there, still frozen, still disbelieving what his eyes saw. The legonaire's man seemed to take notice of him then. He gave the boy a quick smile and patted him on the shoulder as he paused at the entry way. “A fine lad you have here. Tall and strong like his father.”

Aelric barely heard the words, but the smell of the man’s sour breath woke him to his senses.

“Remember,” the man said to Aelric’s mother. “Full payment of your dues next season. No more delays. Or you'll be answering to Legionaire Kallow, not to me.”

His oily beard quirked upward with his smrik and he exited the home. They heard him mounting his horse and hoofbeats fading into the distance. The room was silent. Then his mother jerked into motion, muttering something about the garden and the laundry.

“Mother-,” Aelric began, a deep accusation in his hoarse voice.

“Don’t,” she interrupted, snapping her head to him. Her tone was firm, but her eyes seemed almost wild. “Don’t tell your father about this. He wouldn’t understand.”

Aelric blinked at her, almost in disbelief. That was it? That was all she had to say?

“Did you hear me, Aelric?” she demanded.

“Yes, I heard you,” was all he could muster.

“Good,” she said. “Now run along. Dinner will not be ready for another two chants.”

She did not wait for him to leave. She stepped past him and headed out through the back door into the garden.

He stood there feeling like a leaf separated from its branch, lost to the wind. He knew not what to do or how to feel. Anger? Sorrow? He did not know how to describe the feelings rumbling in his chest. But he knew he couldn’t stay in this room any longer, and so he fled.

✣ ✣ ✣

He hadn’t gone to the lake. Seeing the others splashing and playing in the water would have been too much to bear. Feyna would not have spent time with him anyway with her parents being there, and he did not want to see his father just yet. His father, who knew nothing.

How could Ma do this to him?

Of course, he knew the answer. They had been late paying the legionaire's tax—half of every farm's harvest. If a farmer didn't have enough to pay the legionaire in litras of wheat, then they were required to pay a hefty fee of arcas per every thiff the lord's land that the farmer oversaw. Most farmers in the five villages sowed wheat in the spring and harvested in autumn, but once again the rains had not come and so it had been a tight season. Not the tightest the village had ever seen, but tight nonetheless.

A horrible thought crossed his mind. How many times had his mother done this before? The memory of the tax collector flashed through his mind—the way his rotund belly hung over his belt and the oil that smeared his whiskers against his cheeks. Aelric felt ill, and he couldn’t fathom the horror his mother went through.

He knew she loved his father, there was no question of that. Though her arcumen was low, she was the daughter of Elder Steady. His grandfather had long passed, but it was said that he was the most respected elder in the village’s memory. He could have found her a rich and respectable husband, but his mother had not wanted a rich, respectable husband. She wanted his father. And to everyone else's dismay, that was what she got.

The family's standing in the village dropped after she was married. And not long after Aelric was born, it dropped even further.

"That's what she gets for marrying an ashhand," they had said, even though marrying below one's caste was not all that rare in the Five Villages. This was not the cities and towns where such improprieties could get one sent to court if the marriage hadn't been approved by the governing Crownbled. Farmers had mouths to feed and crops to tend to. They had to survive. But that was also why it had been so unacceptable for his mother to marry his father. It was not only the issue that she had married below her caste, it was that his arcumen was even lower than hers and that was something not even farmers could understand.

When Aelric turned four years old, the misgivings of the village were only further confirmed. His arcumen was barely noticeable, and by then he should have already been able to regain at least a few arcas in a day. As the years went on, his arcumen barely developed. By the time he turned sixteen, when one’s arcumen blossomed the most and reached its peak, his deepest fears had come true. Aelric had the weakest arcumen in all of the Five Villages, even below those of his father and the other Mirebound. And despite what his parents told him, he knew this was the reason they did not have another child.

Just like the day Feyna had picked a flower for him, it was one of many memories from his childhood that he could remember vividly. Every detail. The warmth of his breath against his hands as he crouched in the tall grasses of the garden. The bright green worm that slithering beside his fingers in the dirt. How big his parents seemed, even in the distance as they argued. They thought he had gone to spend the day with Brint and Feyna. He was already seven years old by then.

“Why not, Kes?” his father said with the rare note of frustration in his tone. “You said you always wanted a house full of children, and we’re still young enough to have another.”

“You know why,” was his mother’s answer as she carefully picked a tomato off a vine and placed it in her basket.

His father looked around then, as if to make sure Aelric wasn’t near. “Because of his arcumen?”

“Between the tax and the village dues, we can barely feed ourselves. We can’t afford another mouth to fill.”

“But we don’t know what our next child’s arcumen will be. It’s bound to be higher. And Aelric is so strong. The gods gifted him with strength and will for his lack of arcana.”

His mother became still, and her voice was quiet. “Aelred’s was little stronger than Aelric’s when he was four. And he would not have surpassed yours. It will not be enough.”

His father did not immediately reply, and it was that moment Aelric learned he had an older brother no one had ever told him about. Suddenly he was running, flinging himself out of the thicket hand over feet. He had to escape. He couldn’t listen anymore. He couldn’t bear to hear what might come next.

“Aelric!” his parents had called after he revealed himself, but he did not turn back. He ran and ran, tears streaming down his eyes as he went.

He ran straight to the treehouse in the woods that he, Feyna, and Brint had begun to build two summers ago. It was where he ran whenever he felt scared. One time it had even saved his life when a stray wolf had wandered into the village’s side of the woods. Aelric and Brint had been playing and Goddess Luck must have been watching over them, for they spotted the wolf in the distance before it spotted them. They bolted straight for the treehouse, Aelric arriving first, pulling Brint up with him once he found footing. The wolf heard them when they ran, and rushed to them, circling the tree, waiting for its feast to come down.

But Brint had left a messaging stone there, and he’d called his father, who arrived in a whirl of blue arcana, zigzagging through the trees and into the air, his bow pulled and released, the arrow struck in the wolf’s neck before his feet returned to the ground. It was Aelric’s first time seeing magic beyond spells used around a farm. He hugged his tree trunk with his mouth agape, staring at the hunter in complete awe. He had never thought much about his future, but that day he knew he wanted to become an arcanist. He didn’t yet know that it was an impossible dream.

“Come on, it’s safe now,” his friend had said that day. But Aelric could not let go of the tree trunk, his hands were shaking but felt as if they were frozen. Eternally unmovable.

“Come on,” Brint said again, and Aelric realized that the entire time they were in the tree, his friend had not been scared. But Brint had always been like that. Never scared, never bothered by the tiniest thing.

Come to think of it, Brint had also been at the treehouse the day Aelric had heard about his brother. Aelric had arrived already balling big painful sobs by then. Brint knew nothing of it, but he held Aelric as he cried. Aelric told Brint everything, how his parents had betrayed him, and the loss of a brother he had never known.

Later, his parents came to find him and took him back home. They told him about Aelred then and apologized for not telling him sooner.

Aelred had passed away at the age of four years old. At that time the Drakh had swept through the entire county. The whole village had caught it.

“He wasn’t strong like you,” his father said sadly. “His little body couldn’t handle the malicious arcana.”

“Did anyone else die?” Aelric had asked. His mother and father shared a look then.

“The rest of the village was lucky,” his mother replied.

That was the last time they spoke about his brother. He knew it brought them great pain, and so he did not bring up the subject again.

Aelric didn’t know why these memories repeated themselves in his mind. When he looked around to see where his feet had carried him, he felt an odd melancholy in his heart as he found himself standing before the old treehouse. It had been built out over the years since the wolf. They added supposed defensive structures and even a pully system that would drop a weight and launch a visitor upward. Then Feyna and Aelric had begun going together, and his friendship with Brint broken. None of them went to the tree house anymore. Over time, wind and rain withered their little structure, and now only half the roof remained.

“Oh, Aelred,” Aelric said now as he wandered aimlessly through the darkening woods. “How I wish you were here now, big brother. Perhaps together, we could have come up with some way to save our family…”

He fell to his knees then and began to cry just as he did when he was a little boy. His chest heaved with sobs as he covered his face in his hands.

“What happened to Aelred?”

Aelric startled, snapping his head upward toward the feminine voice. He blinked through his tears trying to see into the shadows of the tree branches. He saw her eyes first, bright and piercing before the shape of her body formed as she stepped past the open wall of the treehouse and onto the thick branch that supported its weight. She slid down into a seated position in a movement so graceful that it reminded Aelric of a panther he'd seen on a hunting trip with Brint and his father when he was a boy. With a leg perched and the other dangling off the side, she tilted her head and said, “Well?”

“The Drakh took him,” Aelric said, and he didn’t know why he answered her question.

“The Drakh?” the woman repeated as if testing the word on her tongue. “Mmm… I’d heard they’d done it here. Mild, well-controlled by Fenlein. Why didn’t your parents take him to a healer, if he responded adversely?”

Aelric felt as if he had been clubbed over the head. Twice. “Who is Fenlein?” he managed.

The woman made a scoffing sound, though Aelric still couldn’t see her face well in the shadows. Somehow it made her sound younger than he had first supposed. “Despot Castavir's high arcanist. Don’t you even know that? He used to arcane for your prefecture's magistrate.”

“What do you mean he controlled the Drakh?” Aelric pressed on.

“He fed it his arcana and spread it thin. Too thin to let the Drakh rage, but enough to let it circulate. A success I’d heard. Otherwise there’d have been a lot more dead little Aelred's when the plague passed through here two years ago.”

Something hot flashed in his chest when she said his brother’s name. He hadn’t liked the way she said it. But the questions came just as rapidly. Nothing she was saying made any sense. The Drakh hadn't passed through the plains again. It was impossible.

“There hasn’t been a plague in this village since I’ve been alive.”

The woman laughed, but it didn’t sound like she was happy. “This is why I hate assignments like this. You shadebloods really do have toads for brains.”

Aelric’s eyes widened. Shadeblood. A derogatory term for the lower castes. He’d heard the term before but never used toward him. Once he'd heard Elder Keen call a Mirebound such a name. The man had an unkempt appearance and was out of food and arcana. He had come through the village looking for work. Elder Keen had chased the man away, calling him curses all the way. His father had frowned deeply when Aelric asked him what the term meant.

"Elder Keen shouldn't have used that word. No one should, but especially not him. It is used by the higher castes when they wish to bring shame to the lower castes. And last I checked, Elder Keen was Earthborn himself."

The highest caste Aelric had ever met was only a Sealed, and he seemed like any other trader at the town market. He wasn’t sure how he felt about being called shadeblood now, it was true he was only an Earthborn, and only half of one at that given his father's lineage. But it made him afraid. This woman was definitely someone higher than an Earthborn or even a Sealed. He was certain now. It was in her voice. Not just her accent. It was the way she spoke. Calm, commanding, and a hint of something he still didn't understand. It was almost playful. Darkly so.

“Say,” she said, leaning down at him now as if for a closer look. “How long have you been alive?”

“I-I turn seventeen in a few days, High One.”

“Your parents taught you some manners. That’s very good.”

The women dropped from the tree and landed lightly on her feet in what appeared to be an easy fluid motion. But having climbed and fallen from that exact tree a number of times over the years, Aelric knew there was nothing easy about it.

"So… you're almost an adult…"

He could see her face now as she stepped toward him. She was a head shorter than him and she was beautiful, strikingly so. Almost as if her beauty was too much, as if it were something sharp and dangerous to be wary of. Feyna flashed through his mind, and he suddenly felt a pang of guilt that he didn’t understand.

“You’re a big lad, aren’t you?” she said, looking him over as she drew close. “Which village are you from?”

“I am from Village Aldin of the Five Villages, High One.” There was a shimmering quality to her cloak and yet it appeared extremely smooth at the same time. He had never seen fabric so fine.

She nodded. “Aldin of the Five Villages. Seventeen. Are you the one I’m looking for?”

“No,” Aelric replied immediately. He dared not move. His heart was pounding in his chest.

“Say,” she said again in that casual, dangerous voice. She leaned close to him, so close that when she asked her next question, he could feel her lips brushing against his ear. “You wouldn’t be dampening your arcana right now, would you?”