See the Sun

[annarti.livejournal.com]

AUTHOR Annarti
DISCLAIMER All mine
NOTES From back when Yan ruled Raykin. Erm... the palace shouldn't really be that well-developed yet. They've only been a kingdom for 25 years oO

~ ~ ~

The cool, silver steel glinted sharply in the faint starlight as Qewir moved in and out of the shadows flowing over the courtyard of Ni-Yana’s palace. The advisor’s face, hollow from years of worry and stress, was now set in grim determination as he paced through the starlit halls of the palace, his mind running over his plan with every smooth step he took.

No guards were posted at the open doors to the king’s bedchamber—such a job had not yet been invented. The wide open doors lured would-be attackers into the room, like the black tip of a sand viper’s tail attracting its prey.

Qewir took a slow, shaky breath in a vain attempt to calm himself, and gripped the sword’s hilt more firmly in his moist but cold fingers. Fully conscious of his quick, hushing breaths, he moved hesitantly across the cool stone, his eyes fixed on the apparently bulky form of the tyrant king. His slender, once beautiful queen lay beside him.

He spun the sword in his grip, nervously clenching and unclenching his other fist. It wasn’t too late to back out, he could leave now and nobody would ever know. But the memories of the king’s blade slicing through so many throats had pained him for too long. He couldn’t let that continue.

His brow furrowed further and he closed his eyes to take another deep breath, considerably smoother than that he had taken outside the king’s door. Behind his eyelids he could clearly see the task set before him, and with no further hesitation, he swung the blade above his head and thrust it cleanly through the ruler’s head, silencing the tyrant’s nineteen-year reign.

The frown that had been set on Qewir’s face for so many years slid off, and he could feel his shoulders lighten when the full realisation of his actions came to light. Nearly twenty years of fear and distress had been brought to an end. The people of Yraekin—no, he thought, Raykin—would never feel such terror again, at least, not while Qewir still drew breath.

He pulled the sword roughly from the bleeding corpse, grabbed the cloth from his pocket and ran it smoothly along the blade, turning his back on the fallen king.

“Qewir?”

He froze mid-step, turning to look at Queen Aliah as she sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes and looking in confusion at her husband’s most trusted advisor. She hadn’t yet appeared to notice the king’s state.

“My Lady,” Qewir said, bowing deeply to the queen, “Your husband has suffered a grave misfortune. If your wish is not to join him, I would highly recommend your taking the prince and princesses away from this city. The king’s reign is at an end.”

Vague puzzlement registered on the queen’s heavy-eyed face before she turned to look down at her husband of twenty-six years, but Qewir was well and truly out of the room by the time her blood-curdling scream reached his ears. The smile that graced his lips as he strode back to his own bedchamber was that of a man who had had a great weight lifted from his shoulders.

~ ~ ~

“Mina? Mina, darling, wake up. Mina?”

Yraekin’s heir to the throne groaned and rubbed her eyes irritably. “What is it, Mother?” She blinked her eyes open and glanced out the window. “Dawn is still hours—Mother? What has happened? Why are you crying?”

Queen Aliah gave a forced smile and lay a shaky hand on the eighteen-year-old’s shoulder. “Your father has… He… We must leave.”

Mina drew herself into a sitting position, staring at her mother as she stood hesitantly to leave. “Now? Why? Mother, what is happening?” Aliah had always been like this: waste no time on explanations until the job had been accomplished. It was something that had always frustrated Mina, but never more than now.

She climbed out of bed and gripped her mother by the shoulders, speaking slowly and firmly in a voice that necessitated a response. “What. Is. Happening?” It took a strong-willed person to ignore such a demand.

Aliah was such a person. She gave a weary sigh and gently removed her daughter’s hands from her shoulders. “Fetch your sister,” she said quietly.

Mina stared helplessly after her mother, frowning in a mixture of frustration and worry. It took a lot to draw tears from her mother’s cold, dark eyes.

Forcibly wiping a tear from her own, she made her way down the hallway to her younger sister’s room. She gained a similar response from the eleven-year-old to that which Mina had given her mother.

“Come, Waké, we must leave now.”

“Why?” the young girl whined as she was dragged from her room, staring longingly at her nice warm bed. She’d planned on spending several more hours there.

“I do not know, though Mother has been crying, so whatever the reason for our passing, it must be serious.”

Waké blinked and drew her free arm to her chest. “Mother was crying?”

Mina nodded and continued to stride the hall’s length to her younger brother’s room, where she was sure her mother would be.

Sure enough, the queen emerged from the room, dragging an equally bleary-eyed child behind her. “Come, children,” she said simply. Her voice was quiet but strong, yet somehow Mina could hear the tears that stained it.

Yraekin’s royal family swept wordlessly through the dusty streets of Ni-Yana, though Mina was acutely aware that the family was one member short. She glanced back over her shoulder at the imposing form of the kingdom’s palace, thousands of impossible ideas streaming through her sleep-deprived mind.

“My feet are sore,” Waké whined quietly.

“Believe me, child,” Aliah said curtly, “your feet are the least of our worries at present.”

“Where is father?” Noku, Mina’s brother, asked innocently.

Either Aliah hadn’t heard or she had chosen not to answer. Mina opted for the second explanation. It wasn’t until the four had crossed the Ra-Lin that the queen answered her son’s question.

“He has been killed,” she said bitterly, though her anger was clearly not directed at the children.

“What?” Mina’s voice was shrill and she froze in her steps, unable to utter another word. Of all the thoughts that had been flying through her mind, this was the one that she had kept telling herself would not be true. There was no way it could be.

“Qewir came into our room and… He threatened that we would join him if we did not leave.” Aliah stopped walking, her dressing gown billowing around her in a sudden gust of wind as she cupped her face in her hands.

“And you have decided that we will obey him?” Mina could hear that her voice was several octaves higher than normal. She didn’t care. “Are we just going to bow to his will now?”

“What would you have me do?” Yraykin’s queen spread her arms helplessly at the kingdom’s heir, but she could see the icy fire that was still held in her eyes.

“He has taught you magic, has he not?” Mina answered desperately, “We can bring him back.”

Aliah laughed darkly and spun around to face the desert before pacing towards her daughter, her voice like daggers. “You do not dare to try and place false hope in my mind.”

“These hopes are not false!” Mina retorted, “He has taught me enough magic to survive well in the desert without falling prey to Aiea. Given time, we can bring him back!”

“Time?” Aliah let out another black laugh. “Time, the girl cries! Even with your father’s tuition, it has taken no less than your eighteen years to learn what you have now. Even he could not reverse the wills of our goddess Aiea. Time, my dear child, is not the issue. Once Aiea has chosen to take a life away, nothing can bring it back, most certainly not the magic of an eighteen-year-old girl!”

The two women fell silent, each glaring hard at the other.

“I believe we could bring him back.” The timid voice that broke the silence belonged to Waké, disliking how her mother and elder sister were fighting. “If not, it does not matter. We can at least say we have tried our best.”

“We have nothing to lose,” Noku added, casting his gaze around the barren landscape.

Mina folded her arms and grinned triumphantly at her mother.

~ ~ ~

Mina walked with her head bent and face in shadow, hoping desperately that the dusty cloth did not reveal so much of her beaded nightgown that she would be recognised. Her dark eyes peered out from under the makeshift cloak, but none of Ni-Yana’s residents paid her or her brother any more attention than they paid anyone else. Most seemed engaged in heated discussion, and it didn’t take much for Mina to be able to pick up the odd mention of her father’s name. She closed her eyes briefly to ward off tears and pushed her way through the crowd towards the palace.

The two siblings entered through the back entrance so they would not be noticed, at least not by the general public.

As she had expected, chaos ran freely inside the palace walls. Servants, scribes and healers alike bustled purposefully through the corridors, each focused on their duties too much to notice the only two remaining members of the royal family.

Mina pulled back the ‘hood’ of her sheet and tried to gain the attention of one of the passing palace staff, finally resorting to grabbing the arm of an older-looking scribe.

“Have you not heard?” she gasped, trying ineffectively to restrain her excitement. “The king—your father—has been killed! He is to be thrown into the Ra-Lin later today.”

Mina dipped her head slightly in thanks, then turned silently to her brother and gestured back to the door. She had expected as much. The pair returned to their mother and sister in the desert, then walked downstream until they were well out of view of Ni-Yana.

Early in the afternoon, a great roar suddenly arose from the capital’s direction, sending a shiver up the spines of the waiting family.

Mina stared at the swirling brown water at her feet, poking at it with her toe. Was her father really so hated? A second roar answered her silent question, and she clenched her eyes tight before glaring back at the water.

Doubtless Qewir would crown himself king. Mina had never liked the king’s advisor. He always seemed overly helpful, almost too kind. She had warned her father of his possible intentions, but he had assured her that he could easily take care of him were he to fall out of line. Nevertheless, Mina still felt uneasy in Qewir’s presence, and last night she had found out exactly why. She kicked at the water in frustration and stared up the river, waiting, preparing herself for what was bound to come into view.

Not long after the second roar had scraped its way up Mina’s spine, she noticed a black shape floating down the river towards the waiting family. Tears involuntarily came to her eyes long before she had recognised the shape to be her father’s corpse.

Without a word, the family bent down to lift him from the water. Mina tried not to look at his face. The once proud king looked suddenly small and fragile.

“You shall wear the crown again, Father,” she whispered, grasping a heavy leg and lifting it to her shoulder.

Still silent, the fallen king was carried to the gorge that lay ahead of Ni-Yana where the family would work their magic.

~ ~ ~

For decades, the former royal family worked tirelessly to develop the magic their king had taught them so they would be able to use it to resurrect him. They experimented with insects, small birds and snakes, but no joy ever came from it.

One of the few palace staff who had been loyal to the tyrant had also been banished from the city, and willingly joined their cause, even though he could not perform any magic of his own. He confessed to Mina that he had admired her for a long time, and by the time she was thirty she had born him three daughters.

The greatest blow came two and a half decades after they had pulled the king’s body from the river.

The day had been particularly hot, and even the high walls of the gorge and the cool running water of the Ra-Lin couldn’t keep the sun’s scorching heat from them.

The seven family members, including Mina’s daughters, were circled around a wedge-tailed eagle chick that had not survived the heatwave that had now lasted in excess of two weeks.

Mina preyed silently to Lin, the goddess of the water that breathed life into every person in Yraekin, and to Aiea, the goddess of the desert that took it away. She channelled her magic into the tiny bird’s body, keeping her breaths slow and even.

A sudden jolt took hold of her body, making her gasp and choke. The same jolt had grabbed each of the family members, though the aging former queen continued to cough long after her offspring had recovered.

“Mother?” Noku crawled through the circle to his mother, banging her on the back to try and cease her hacking coughs, but instead they got worse.

Mina lifted a hand to her mouth when she noticed several drops of crimson liquid splash onto the rusty orange sand. A sick feeling took hold of her stomach upon noticing that her mother’s hands were covered with the sticky red substance, and she turned away, moving her hand to her forehead when the painful coughing finally stopped.

Noku too had fallen silent. The only noise came from the squawking eagle chick, still sitting in the centre of the circle.

“Was Mother’s life worth this?” Noku whispered, then his voice became stronger. “Did she die to bring back the life of an eagle?”

Mina said nothing, instead staring hard at the Ra-Lin’s rolling brown water, as though cursing its namesake for taking her mother’s life.

“Do you still wish to bring Father back?” Noku demanded, tears cracking his voice. “He died twenty-five years ago, Mina! It was his time to go, can you not see this? Are you still going to continue with this meaningless pursuit? Your efforts will only take your own life, like it has Mother’s. Do you want to die doing this, Mina?”

The older woman still gave no response.

“I can tell you now that I have a different wish to your own.”

Mina could hear her brother stand up and storm away through the gorge and out into the desert. She barely noticed the comforting hand that appeared on her shoulder.

“I will stay with you, sister.”

But still the older girl remained silent.

Over the years, Mina’s own children left with their father, retreating into the desert to live off their magic and escape from their obsessed mother. Even Mina herself was close to giving up, but Waké kept reassuring her that she hadn’t wasted her life.

They were nearing the tenth anniversary of the queen’s death when Mina decided they were finally ready.

Mina smiled down at her father’s preserved body and hooked her long, greying hair behind her ears, letting out a slight laugh when she realised she now looked older than he did. “You shall see the sun again this day,” she whispered.

The two sisters sat opposite each other, the king’s body between them, and closed their eyes.

~ ~ ~

A pleasantly cool late afternoon breeze rippled over his body and teased lightly at his hair and clothes. At his back was the soft sand that was only ever found along the banks of the Ra-Lin, warmed slightly by the day’s heat. The warm faces of the goddesses still smiled down on him, lingering back a while from his dream.

The king blinked his eyes open and frowned up at the rocky red walls of the river’s gorge, the jagged strip of bright blue sky running between the two cliff faces.

The simple act of furrowing his brow brought sudden and intense pain to his face, centred in a line that ran from his left eyebrow to the corner of his mouth. A thousand knife blades ran scorching hot through the delicate flesh of his face, but as it subsided a few moments later, he noted that it hadn’t been nearly as fierce as it had been the first time.

The first time?

Yes, it had happened before, but that time the pain had raked through his whole body, grasping hold of his heart and squeezing the last drops of life from him. The king sat up and rubbed at his chest, the dull throb of what had been so painful earlier now hitting back at him. There was no way he could have survived that.

He froze suddenly, hand over his heart. He could feel the colour drain from his face when he realised there was no beating from behind his ribs.

I didn’t survive it. Those were not dreams that lingered in my mind then… They were memories.

Only then did he notice the two women lying beside him. The grey strands in their otherwise rich black hair and the shallow wrinkles in their faces placed them a good ten years older than himself. Pools of blood lay at their mouths.

He frowned again, running his fingers through the hair of one of the women, recognising something familiar in her face but being unable to place it. The more he looked at her, the more he was reminded of his wife. The other, slightly older woman had the same effect.

He smiled warmly when he realised who the strangers were. “My girls,” he whispered, his voice grating slightly after not having been watered for decades.

He stood up in the gorge of the Ra-Lin, noticing a bulge in the sand near the base of the cliff. Written into the red rock above it was the single word, “Mother”. The king’s eyes welled with tears. He should have expected this, he knew. If those two women were indeed his daughters, that meant he had died at least thirty-five, maybe forty years ago, meaning if Aliah were still alive, she would be about eighty years old. But that did not stop the confirmation of his wife’s death from hurting.

He wiped the tears from his eyes, knowing at the very least that Aliah was now with the goddesses as he had been.

Slowly and purposefully, he made his way to the gorge’s exit, where the Ra-Lin burst out again into the broad, flat desert. Ahead of him lay the sprawling city of Ni-Yana, its reaches stretching a good distance further than it had during his reign.

King Yan folded his arms and leaned back against the cliff face. “Ni-Yana is indeed my city, Qewir my friend, and I shall indeed reclaim it.”