Alassian Born

It was a wooden gate in the closed fence surrounding the garden. It was very big and dark with thick mahogany doors that shone in the sunlight. It wasn’t magical or special. Father had said there were things in the world that were special, but this wasn’t one of them, this was just a wooden gate.

Though sometimes it didn’t seem like a gate at all. Sometimes it shimmered, filling with minuscule lights that quivered and fidgeted bumping into one another, pushing and pulling. He could see shapes beyond it, shapes made of colorful bright lights that didn’t stand still, but moved like living things, walking this way and that, beating wings in the sky, shaking branches in the wind. They did all the things that living things do.

There was a world beyond the gate, a world he could glimpse through the fabric of the gate itself.

Father called it the outside.

Outside there were voices, not voices that he could hear but voices that just were. Only, they hadn’t always been. They’d began being the first time the gate had not seemed like a gate, and they had not stopped being since.

He woke to the chirping of a bird perched on the sill of his open window, his eyes heavy from a tiring, troubled night. He sat up and rubbed the dribble from his mouth with the heel of his fist. The sun was low, hidden beneath the branches of the trees, but the day had begun to warm. It was time. He gasped.

He bolted out of bed, crashing clumsily into the door trim before stumbling through, missing the first step down the staircase. He caught the wooden handrail and hugged it tightly, proceeding to descend each step carefully till his feet found the safety of the short grass, at which point he ran, calling out as he crossed the shaded garden. “Father! Father, can I go with you?”

Miriethal paused with a hand against the gate. The many long braids of his chalky hair brushed the grass, swaying gently before catching up to the new state of things, becoming still. When Father turned, the rays of morning lit a frown on his face. He gazed down from above, his ivory eyes each inked with only the tiniest black pupil. He said, “Not today, child.”

“Then when can I go?”

“When you are older.”

“How much older?” He had not been old enough the last time this had happened and he was, now, nearly four years old.

“When you have grown to match my height,” his father said. “Now stay with Tashira. I shall be back soon.”

Tashira roared sleepily from somewhere among the garden trees; then she was silent.

He sat in the grass watching the gate doors close and hide his father from sight. The morning dew wet his naked legs and small braies, but that particular problem did not concern him. A much bigger problem did. It had taken him well over three years to become as tall as he was now, and unless he found a better way to do it, it would likely take him another three or even four years to match his father’s height. That would simply not do. He was done with staying at home, done with being left behind, and done with being a child. He wanted to see the wonders beyond the gate, to meet the strangers that lived outside, and to go with his father into the forests he’d glimpsed all about.

Home was not always a bad place to be, and actually, it was usually just fine. It was a great house of living trees, of wooden walls, a roof made of reeds, and far above, a green canopy of leaves. Great roots stretched out from the ground like folds of cloth, so tall that he had to bend his head back and look up to the sky to see where they merged into trunks. The hot sun shone over a garden of grasses and weeds, and berry-laden shrubs, and the air smelled of flowers: the yellow lionprides with their manes of round petals, the tiny white whispers huddled densely in clusters, and the red tulips, their cups raised to the skies.

He knew the trees that made his home were very old—his father had told him so. He also knew that trees required plenty of water and sun to grow. So when the sun rose above the highest branches, he walked to the green pond at the garden’s heart and stepped in the middle of it. He stood there like a tree, his arms outstretched to the blue sky. The water nuzzled his hips.

He didn’t feel himself getting any taller. Only tired and slightly cold.

When Tashira woke from her long nap, she demanded he came out of the pond and play with her. He chased her as she bounded about the garden, and she let him climb on her back, then hustled him around in a frenzy. But when their games bored her, she went to lick her black fur dazzling clean and dozed off in the sun, leaving him alone with his worries.

–

In the late afternoon on the following day, his father returned, looking disheveled with a bright red dot painted on his forehead and a line on his lips.

Father kneeled to kiss him on the cheek, then without a word headed up the spiral staircase to the warm wooden rooms overlooking the garden.

He followed upstairs. “Why can’t I go with you?”

Father leaned his ivory sword against the wall and bent to untie the laces of his leather boots. His hands moved wearily, yet with urgent impatience. “I am tired, child,” Father said.

These words were of no use to him, because already his own eyes, which had been light and lively before Father’s return, had since become heavy and slowed with a terrible drowsiness. He pouted and watched Father undress, toss his white robe at a chair, miss, pick it up, and hang it over the back. Father lay on the wide puffy cotton mattress, pulled the sheets over himself, and closed his eyes. At last, peeking toward him, Father said yawning, “It isn’t . . . saaafe for a child.”

He, too, yawned. He rubbed his sleepy eyes with his fists, then yawned again. His steps were light and silent over the wooden floor. He climbed onto the wide mattress, slipped under the sheets, huddled close to his father’s warmth, and soon fell fast asleep.

–

“Take me with you!” he said one day when he was five. He was in his room above the garden, sitting on his small bed still warm from the night’s sleep. The first light of morning came through the open window.

“You know I cannot do that.”

“But I can hunt with you, I can!” Hunt, he had learned, was what his father did when he was gone for days, sometimes one day, sometimes two or three. Once, it had been more days than he could even count, although back then he had been too small to add past the number of his fingers, and in truth he could not be sure it had been as many days as that, because once or twice he’d forgotten how many fingers he’d already counted. He had done a great deal of crying when his father had come home at last, ill and weak.

“I do not need you to hunt with me, child. What I need is that you stay hidden, that you stay safe. You stay here.” Father’s gaze was earnest, and his word final. “I must go, now.”

Burning tears filled his eyes as Father turned his back to him. His lips began to tremble. He did not watch him go, but curled into a ball under the bedclothes and breathed in damp air, sweltering in his own breath. When he could no longer bear the heat, he slipped the linen from his head and used it to dry his eyes and nose.

Later that day, he perched on the balls of his feet in the warm grass, his lips pursed tight and a frown pushing his brows down. The closed gate stood mockingly in front of him. From each of the two doors, a thick twisted handle hung some distance above the ground. He reckoned that if he stretched himself on his toes, he could reach the handles with only the tips of his fingers. But he would definitely reach them.

“I’m going out,” he said.

Tashira made not the slightest move. Her huge black feline form lay seemingly asleep in front of the doors. Her pretense did not fool him. He had pondered the matter long that morning, back in his room. There would be no stopping him.

He rose upright. “I know you hear me.”

Tashira opened a round yellow eye, as big as a full-grown apricot, and looked at him. She did not move.

“Let me pass!” he ordered.

The kaara opened her other eye and stood up on her hefty, furry legs. She was much, much taller than he was. She bent her head down so that her snout almost touched his nose. Then she growled. Between her black lips flashed walls of pointy yellow teeth. Her thick fangs split apart, her pink tongue flattened against the floor of her mouth, and a roar boomed out of her.

But his mind was made up, and he was not afraid. He brought forth focus to his eyes and made them shine with ruby light. He watched Tashira’s shape brighten with the inner flow of her energies. He no longer saw black fur. Instead, he saw the life’s movements within her body: the beating of her heart, the seeing of her eyes, the thinking of her mind. Her shape was dense and smooth as marble, yet it shimmered from within with strength and motion. He raised a hand, and ushered her aside—gently, because Father had taught him he must be kind to the weak. Against her will, the forest cat plodded away from the gate; then she stood immobile in the grass and watched him.

He let his focus wane, and his sight stilled.

Stretching on his toes, he reached for one of the metal handles. He could only just touch it. Leaning against one door, he slipped his fingers behind the handle of the other, and pulled.

–

The city of Irieth dwelled at the heart of a lush jungle of ages past. Houses fashioned from wood and living trees hid beneath the green line of the high canopy, as a coral reef lying unseen in the depths of the sea. Its people were wise and long-lived, with pale skin, white hair, and ivory eyes. They called themselves “Alassians” and counted the years of their lives in centuries. The children born in the city were few—only one every decade or two—so that all children were known by all and loved by all. For life was precious to the Alassians, and especially that of a rare child of their kind.

So when a boy three feet tall, dressed in loose garments of rosewood red, made his appearance outside the keeper’s home in bright daylight—a slight figure in the thin gap between hefty doors—the Alassians came to stare and wonder. The child stood still and watched them in return. Until then, he had only known one other who was the same as he, Alassian and not a creature of the wilds: his father, Miriethal. Now he saw others, many others—tall people gathering round, talking to one another, looking at him. Fear came into his heart and held him speechless.

One of the people stepped forward—the robe, brown like the earth, whispered in the grass step after step until it stopped.

The boy looked up at the face smiling down at him, but he did not see it smile, he saw it grin.

The stranger spoke, but the boy did not hear the words, for his heart beat too loudly. He turned, and ran. Through the garden, past the pond, up the stairs, and into his room. He shut the door with a slam and sank his weight against it, hugging his knees with his arms. There he shook with sobs. And he dried his cheeks, and he cried, and sobbed.

–

When Keeper Miriethal returned to Irieth bearing the red marks of a hunt, he found the gate to his home open and a crowd gathered outside. He walked through the people quickly and stiffly. They asked him questions: about a boy—A boy? A little one—who was in that room—Where? Up there—hiding—He’d been hiding in that room for the better part of the day.

“I shall go see this boy,” said the keeper. He pushed the heavy gate closed, slowly and silently.

Outside, the crowd lingered until sunset. Then calm fell.

Miriethal stood by the garden pond, his gaze trapped in its shallow depths where a maze of weeds lay blackened by the night. Tashira, darker than darkness, circled around him and around the hole in the ground. She looked at her sire’s face. Her sire stared unmoving into the pond, deep in thought.

It had been five long years. Only now was Irieth beginning to resemble a shadow of itself, the memory of the loss fading away. And now. Would they ask the question now? Would they ask about their guardian? Their strength? Their heart? All they had seen was a child, and a child was no guardian. The guardian was will of steel and heart of fire, the mightiest and most adept of Alassians. The power did not belong with the young and untrained. The ruby light had faded, reunited with the flow of the world—lost, it must be sought anew. Miriethal had named this the truth five years ago, and he alone knew otherwise. Except that, now, they had seen the boy.

–

The following day there was a knock on the gate. Miriethal emerged from within with the look of one who had kept vigil through the night. Outside his home, in the feeble morning light, stood a falyn—a male Alassian—with an old and stern face. The falyn’s long hair fell to his feet in thin braids that lay on the ground behind him, fine as a blanket of frost. His voice was taut and bitter. The two spoke for long, the visitor now and then peering behind the keeper’s shoulders, though the doors left ajar, and the keeper seemingly untroubled by the intrusion.

That day, Miriethal spoke to anyone who sought him out, neither denying nor confirming the truth, agreeing only to what had been seen. A boy came out of this home, a boy ran into that room. Had there been a boy? So he had been told. Did the boy live in this home? A boy had lived in this home. Who was this boy? A young child, it seemed. Who were his parents? That, he had not been told. He spoke humbly and patiently, and one by one all the visitors were turned away.

The afternoon was beginning to darken, when a furious banging shook the gate. Outside, stood a tall young falyn, his face marked with a thick line of red paint over the eyes. Miriethal met the silent glare with unease, then stood aside to let this falyn in.

Alone in his room, the boy had not eaten or slept since the day before. His father had not tried to come in, but had asked for the door to be open. The door remained closed. He was still afraid, terrified, though not of the people, not since yesterday. At first, between one shameful sob and another, he had realized with horror that in his hasty escape he had left the gate open. He had listened hard for anyone who might come in, but no one had, and returning home, Father had closed the gate. Through the long hours of the night, nothing more had happened. In the morning there had been a coming and going of people, none, however, had gone past his father and entered their home. So he no longer feared the people outside; yet an unexplained dread filled him, and the slightest noise made him gasp with a pounding heart.

When presently, this falyn was let in, the boy at last got out of bed and ran to the door. There he stopped like a fly caught in a web, hands against the wood, heart beating fast. He listened intently—though not with his ears, for he was too far to hear the words spoken. This falyn’s heart was angry and fierce. His rage roared like the squall before a storm. Suddenly, he yelled, and his voice lashed against the closed door and was muffled.

Curiosity won over the fear. The boy reached for the knob, pulled the door open, and crept to the stairs. He saw below him, in the garden, his father and a stranger deep in argument. Tashira, like a shadow, circled them both with a predator’s pace, slow and deliberate, her big yellow eyes on the stranger.

He was a slim figure with wide shoulders and strong arms, taller than Father by a few inches. The color brown was all about him. Baggy brown trousers that stopped tight at the knees, a dark brown leather jerkin, and a wide brown sash at the waist. Into the sash he carried two black-sheathed swords with polished bronze handles. His hair was pure white, brighter than Father’s chalky tone, and shorter; it was plain instead of braided, and tied in a narrow stream that hung behind his back, brushing his thighs when he moved.

“I will hear none of your riddles,” the stranger was saying. His voice, although irate, was silvery clear. “No more, Keeper. Have you lied to me?”

Father did not reply.

“Is he? Or is he not? Answer me!” His command snapped like the cracking of a whip.

Father averted his gaze a moment, then quietly said, “Forget what you think you have learned, please. None of it must leave these walls. No one can hear of it.”

“I have learned nothing!” barked the stranger. “You have told me nothing. If you want my silence, then give me the answers I seek. Talk!”

“You must quiet your anger,” Miriethal said. “You must learn to be patient.”

“Why are you doing this to me!” cried the stranger, and the strain in his voice betrayed despair. “I was left with nothing. Now I . . . Why?! Why won’t you answer me? You are cruel. You are hurting me. And I have done you no wrong.”

“I am sorry, young one.”

There was a pause. Silent, unspoken words. Stares.

“If you say nothing, I shall have to ask him. Where is he? Where is the boy?”

Miriethal stood silent.

“Then keep your secrets! I will look for him myself.”

The stranger turned, and quick as a shadow, Tashira bounced in his way, growling and hissing, big and brawny and black as pitch darkness, almost as tall as he.

Nimbly the falyn drew a sword and held it between himself and the kaara. Glaring at her with hard rage, he said, slowly so that his words were clear and full of silence, “Do not try to stop me, or I will fight you both. I seek answers, not blood. Yet blood will spill if you demand it.”

But after he had spoken, his hand began to tremble. His grip wavered. His sword fell on the grass with a dull thump. His gaze searched the garden then flicked to the stairs. There, he saw the boy.

He was small and thin, fair-skinned, and with snow-white hair less than an inch long—as is true of all Alassian children his age. But his eyes shone bright red, as none of the children’s do. He was crying silently, his lips pressed together, his brows furrowed, and heavy tears dripping from his chin.

Without speaking or moving, the falyn watched the boy cry and sob a little, the glow of his eyes slowly fading until they turned white and dull, the power stowed away.

Then the keeper spoke. “He is. But no one must know. I beg of you.”

The stranger collected his sword from a bush of white whispers that had flattened beneath its weight, and sheathed it. Again he looked up at the boy. “No one will know,” he said. His gaze lingered a moment in scrutiny. Then he turned, and left.

–

In the open kitchen, thickly roofed with tangled leafy vines, a small fire crackled in a high circle of gray rocks, casting long shadows on the earthen floor.

“Father? Who was that falyn?”

He was sitting at the oaken table by the fire, looking into a bowl of steaming soup. Before his answer came, he stirred the food four times slowly with a slim white spoon.

“Someone you may one day know as your kin,” said his father, “but not today. Today you are my son, and he is no son of mine. Eat your supper. It’s getting cold.”

He ate obediently, though the dense, orange soup tasted bland to his palate. When the bowl was empty, he said, “I’m sorry, Father.” The words came out in an indistinct mumble, so that he was not sure they had been heard.

“Come. It’s time to sleep.”

Father took him by the hand and led him upstairs to the bigger of the two bedrooms and to the wide cotton bed in which he had not been allowed to sleep for over a year. Tonight he was allowed again. He cried, and Father held him in his arms until the sobs passed. Sometime after that, he fell asleep.

That night the keeper watched the darkness grow and then brighten again. When at last the morning light flooded the room, he slept, but only until the little one awoke. They got up late and went about their day with a silence and stillness that stayed with them for many days to come.

Then one morning, his father told him, “Tomorrow, we go into the forest.”

His mouth fell open in a wide “O”, and he did not think to close it for quite some time.

“We leave before dawn, so you will go to sleep early tonight.”

He did not sleep that night.

Before the sun rose, he and Father rode on Tashira’s back into the deep, unending jungle. Tall tree trunks rushed by them in a blur of brown and green, and the smell of earth, trees, flowers, and wood, filled their senses. The ground and the air were moist and did not dry even as the day went on, for daylight was timid beneath the high jungle canopy.

Everything he saw that day was a marvel. He grinned and giggled until his cheeks hurt and his breath was all out of him, then he grinned some more; and to his delight, Father laughed along with him till his white eyes were bright with tears.

He pointed at things, asked about them, and listened to his father tell him about the tree with smooth white bark, the stream that flowed fast and babbly, the huge red flower with the white dots that looked as if it might suddenly spring up and begin to walk, and many, many other wonders.

As the light of day began to dim, he kept his eyes from closing for as long as he could, but when twilight came, he slipped into quiet dreams.

In the small room above the garden, Miriethal laid the child in bed and kissed his forehead. Then with a tender smile on his lips, he murmured, “Sweet dreams, Guardian.”

The next morning, and for many mornings to come, the boy awoke thrilled with excitement, dreaming of the day when his father would surely say: Tomorrow, we go into the forest. This time, he would make sure to sleep the night before, so that he could be awake when they returned home in the darkness of midnight. He did not ask his father when next the day would come, for that would certainly scare the time further away. Instead he waited, and once and again, his patience was rewarded.

–

This day was silent and hot, he was eight years old. His father was asleep on a blanket of vivid grass by the great riverside, cloaked in a robe of silver chiffon and wrapped in the heat of a sunbeam that shone intrepidly through the green canopy. Father had returned from a long hunt only the day before and was tired. Tashira was with them as she always was when they ventured into the forest. She, too, was asleep—not because she was tired but because she was a cat and often did just that: she slept.

He was not far, and wide awake. He had climbed a blooming nut tree, and was ten feet above the ground, standing on a cluster of coconut-sized pods and holding tightly the thick twigs that grew all around the trunk, rough and old near the bark and green and smooth at the tips. The tips were covered in green buds, some of which had opened into big flowers with six red petals and a heart filled with pink and yellow stamens. Between two of these flowers hid the little creature he was chasing after: a red squirrel with black almond eyes, a cream belly, and a tail like a tongue of flame.

“I got you,” he whispered, beaming at it. He stretched out to touch it. The critter hopped past his hand and ran up his arm to his shoulder, then leaped, spread its wing-like arms, glided softly, and dived into the tall grass below.

“Not fair!” he laughed.

He hurried down after it and snooped about in the sea of green. The squirrel re-emerged, standing up on an old tree root. It looked his way with a fat nut in its tiny fingers. He carefully went to crouch near it, and offered his open hands. The squirrel gave him the nut.

“I’m not hungry,” he giggled.

The furry creature sniffed his fingers, then leaned forward. He felt the light pressure of the creature’s gentle touch, its hard nails thin and sharp. He waited very still.

Finally, the squirrel climbed to retrieve the nut and began to nibble it right there on his hands. He held his breath, his cheeks stinging with glee.

The creature paused, listening. It glanced around, its head twitching left and right and back; its tail flickered once. Quick as a heartbeat, it scrabbled up his arm and slipped inside his clothes—Hide!

He jolted upright. Then he froze. Warm against his belly, the critter shuddered. His own body shivered, but he held himself still, for the fear he felt was not his own.

His belly squeaked.

“Hush, little one,” he said inside his clothes. “What scares you?”

The creature kneaded his skin, scratching him with little nails, quivering and sniveling.

He inhaled deeply to ease his own tremors. He looked up and cast the fear out through his breath, clenching his fists. Bracing himself, he brought forth focus to his eyes.

About him the forest shone and twinkled with life, full of currents and light. The leaves of trees shimmered green around him and above him. High in the sky, the wind blew white and bright, and the sun wove the world red. Down below, the earth sparkled densely with stars, myriads of tiny lives. He looked upon the one essence of all things, and in it, he saw a darkness, a wrongness, a slithering mass of steaming emptiness that swam in the multicolored currents of the river, thirty yards away. He blinked. The darkness leaped from the water, headed for the white brightness of his father’s form.

He waved a hand at it, and slapped it back into the river. Then he sprang forward.

The squirrel’s nails tickled him as the critter scuttled out his clothes to flee the opposite direction.

He kept his eyes on the darkness. He’d wished to cast it all the way beyond the river, but instead he had only managed to shove it back in the water. And now it leaped again, shooting out from the river’s depths as an up-diving falcon. He threw himself at it, arms outstretched, uncaring of the rock that tricked his foot. His mind locked around a frigid emptiness as his chin smacked the ground.

He lay there sniffling soil. The fall had lashed at the nape of his neck, and he’d whacked his teeth together. His hands were open on the ground, palms up. In the air above, his mind held the icy emptiness.

He got to his knees.

Father lay sleeping beside him, unaware of the danger aloft. It was a snake, a pit viper, twenty inches long, flimsy, its round bulging eyes crowned with a crest of scales, its mouth gaping, the fangs drawn out. He could discern the creature’s features through the steaming darkness that seeped from its marble-like body. But where he should see the light of living flesh, of a heartbeat, of flowing blood, he saw veins and masses of pulsing blackness. The creature’s life was spent, eaten away. It did not think. It neither sensed nor felt the world around it.

He held the snake suspended between parted hands. What was inside it tried to move; he pressed his mind stoutly around it and held it still.

With the fingers of his right hand, he clasped the creature’s feeble living essence, with the left, he tugged at the darkness. He wrenched it all out in one vigorous pull, and his hands snapped apart. The snake fell limp on the ground, lying there unmoving, its life force faintly guttering.

The darkness, like a black vapor, tried to dissipate. He closed his hands around it, his fingertips nearly touching. He squeezed it into a dense globe of icy nothingness and watched it. He watched it pulse with the beat of a heart. And he began to feel . . . wrong.

Cold. He felt very cold. His arms had grown heavy; he could hardly hold them up. He caught himself nodding off, and blinked. Tears oozed from his eyes.

“F-Father? Father w-wake up . . .” he sobbed.

His father did not hear him, just as he had not heard him fall down beside him, or the water splashing in the river. His mind was submerged in a deep-weaving sleep.

Despair took him; and in that moment, he heard Tashira’s high-pitched hissing. The kaara crouched in the grass, watching him with piercing eyes, holding back a little, cautious, her teeth bared. She came closer and pressed a wide paw on Miriethal’s chest.

The keeper’s eyes flickered brightly open.

There was a flash of light.

Father’s arms wrapped around him, pulling him into a fast embrace. Relief washed over him.

He wiped his tears against Father’s chest, swallowing his frightened sobs. “I’m . . . cold.”

“I know, child. But have no fear now. The danger has passed.”

He grabbed the dampened fabric of Father’s silvery robe and held on to the embrace. Miriethal pulled back enough to gaze into his eyes. Because he had allowed the power to fade from his sight, he saw his father’s form as it was in the stillness of things—his small eyes white and dull with tiny black pupils, his mouth unsmiling but wrinkled with kindness.

“You did well,” Father told him. “Now lie in the sun for a while. You will soon feel warm.”

Without protest, he lay drowsing in the heat of the sun.

–

They set out for home well before nightfall, riding fast on Tashira’s back. He did not complain of the early departure—he did not feel like talking, anyway. He leaned against Father’s chest and clung to his strong arm, shielding himself from the cold air that seeped under his clothes. It had never occurred to him that riding on Tashira’s back was such a strenuous and uncomfortable thing. By the time they reached home he was chilled to the bone. The day had grown dark, and he felt sick and exhausted.

For the next three days, he ailed with fever. He spent the hours sleeping or listening to his father read the stories of old. When at last he was deemed on the way of recovery—his favorite meal of coconut bread and pumpkin soup devoured as proof of good health—his father sat down solemnly beside him and told him, then, of the nature of darkness.

“The unlife, we call it, although what its true name is, we do not know. It is by curse of knowledge that our people are sworn to do battle against it, and protect the world from its cold grasp. For darkness is the ender of all life.”

Father talked of how, hundreds of centuries in the past, their ancestors had tamed the powers of light, and with them, had secured the Haven from unending night. They had built the city of Irieth very near that passage between this realm and the one beyond, where this evil resides. And ever since then, they had kept watch.

In the silence that followed, he thought for some time. Presently, he asked, “What happened to the darkness I took from the snake?”

“I cast it out of our realm,” his father said, “and shut the doors behind it.”

“Will you teach me?”

“I cannot.”

“Please?”

“I would teach this to you if it were something that you could learn. But you cannot learn this.”

“I can learn! I promise!”

“You are strong,” said Father; “I know your power. You are the guardian. But you cannot cross the borders, and so you cannot cast out darkness. It is beyond your skill. The task falls to the keeper alone.”

He knew his father spoke the truth, because in the presence of the unlife, and for the first time in his life, he had felt defenseless. The memory upset him.

“But I fought it! Alone! I saved you, Father!”

“That you did. You were brave, child. But you must be braver still. You must wield courage even when your power fails you. Your strength must come from your mind, as well as your heart. Never let one rule over the other.”

He pondered his feelings a while. It was fear he felt beneath the frustration. “What do I do if more darkness comes?” he asked.

“Bring it to me. And I will cleanse the world of its taint.”

“But what if I can’t, Father? What if you’re not with me?”

“Then you must slay it.”

He stared in bewilderment. Father had taught him the value of all living things, Alassians, kaaras, the creatures of the forests, skies, and waters, the plants, trees, and flowers, the grass that crowns the earth and the insects that crawl in it. Slay it, Father said now, slay it—he did not think that darkness could be slain, for it was emptiness, it was coldness—slay it, the creature, slay the creature it wears.

“The unlife cannot thrive in this world without a living body,” said Father. “A creature infected by it may be slain, and darkness trapped inside it for a time. But not forever. Eventually it will escape the body, and seek a new servant. That is why the Light exists. That is why I am its keeper. I am the vanquisher of darkness. It is my duty to cast the unlife from our realm. And your duty—when you are old enough to take it upon yourself—will be to watch the borders between the worlds, to safeguard the Light, and with it, the life of all things. Now you know.”

“I am old enough,” he said. “I can fight the unlife with you.”

His father smiled, and there was laughter in his heart. He said, “No, child. You are still young. First, you must grow into a strong falyn. Only then will you fight at my side.”

“But I am ready!”

“You are ready to learn how to defend yourself. And that, I will teach you. I will teach you the art of combat.”

An art that to him became a passion.

Father taught him the stances and movements, the foot positions, how to feel for his center and find balance. He was a perseverant student, driven by the rigorous practice. Fighting was a fascinating dance, slow and graceful at times, fast and fierce at others. In the training he found clarity of mind and learned to open his senses far outward, farther than ever before.

And so it was that one sunny day in his thirteenth year, his mind came upon something odd, an indistinct noise, like a buzzing. He was sparring with his father and became distracted. Dropping his stance, he shone his gaze eastward, where he could see the forest’s living light for miles, a confused blend of colors and movement. He saw no darkness. Yet, what he sensed troubled him.

“Someone comes,” he said.

There was a flicker of fear in his father’s heart. “How many, and where?”

“Twelve,” he counted, “far beyond the great waterfalls.”

“Alassians?”

He gave his father a questioning look. “No.”

Miriethal, too, gazed to the east, although he would not see past the tree-walls of their garden.

“Father? What are they if not Alassian?”

There was a long silence; then at last, Father said, “Human.”