Chapter 2

When Leras was born, his father was still dead.

Throughout his childhood, as he watched other fathers tease their sons, Leras had asked his mother about him. She’d evaded the question for years and would have done so for longer but for his insistence.

“He’s gone, Kaleras,” she told him at last. “He gave his life for you and me. For all those living in Aolas.”

He’d begged for more details, but the truth emerged from another source: his brother, Rolan, older by thirteen springs and a witness to the events.

“He defied malevolent gods, little monkey. Defied them and won.”

“But he died?” Leras insisted.

Rolan nodded, a rare melancholy shadowing his face. “He’s gone.”

For a time, the need to know more consumed Leras. He hunted down the companions who had fought beside his father during his final hours: Garin, Wren, Uncle Aelyn. When that still wasn’t enough, Leras tracked down the many stories sung and spoken about Tal Harrenfel, as Brannen Cairn had been known in his previous life. On festival nights and holy days, he was the first in the audience and the last to leave. He even listened to accounts told by other Highkin depicting his father as a mere meddler and charlatan.

He didn’t care—he devoured it all. Every word was sustenance to a son starved of his father.

When he turned nine, Leras tired at last of his quest. He’d learned much that made him admire and worship his father, but other pieces he couldn’t puzzle out. Uncle Aelyn hinted at darker narratives, names that Leras turned over at night as he imagined the bloody exploits behind them.

Magebutcher. Red Reaver. Death’s Hand.

They curdled the picture he’d formed of his father as a fallen hero. Complicated a figure he’d once held as an ideal.

By the time his father returned to Elendol, impossibly alive, Leras had almost come to hate him. Eleven springs of absence endeavored to turn son against father.

It took just one of Bran’s crooked smiles to banish the resentment.

Yet his father’s return hadn’t fully assuaged the ache in his chest. Inadequacy cradled his bones, whispered between his thoughts. Doubt became his closest companion. The legacies of his mother and father were burdens he shouldered wherever he walked.

Even when they felt too heavy to carry.

* * *

The tension of the fight sloughed off Leras with every step. The bridge swayed beneath his boots, the forest floor yawning far below. He didn’t fear stumbling. Born to this realm of lofty branches and leaves the size of children, navigating it came as naturally to him as to the monkeys clambering above. Rare was the Gladelyshi with a trepidation of heights—even for a halfkin like him.

He let his gaze drift across the dappled canopy. As high up as they stood, it loomed still farther above, the kintrees rising well beyond where their inhabitants burrowed into them. Except in a few choice locations, the green ceiling was nigh impenetrable. The frequent rains struggled to find a way through, streaming down in small waterfalls as often as droplets.

He loved this place, his home. The birds that perched upon the branches to sing their melodies. The primates contriving to steal any scrap of sustenance. The flowers blossoming in defiance of the seasons. There was a beauty to this lofty city no visitor could deny. He’d heard the awe in the voices of dignitaries come to bow before his mother too often to deny that.

Yet Elendol was all he’d ever known. Even its towering canopy seemed too small. With each spring, it seemed to grow smaller.

Soon, it would be his emerald cage no longer.

As a warder, he would venture beyond the city. Though obliged to remain within the queendom’s borders, it was a freedom he’d rarely tasted. Just the thought made him quiver with anticipation.

His mother would permit him to join the Green Garrison. She must.

Leras pictured the sky beyond the canopy, but his training conspired against him. By reflex, his thoughts wandered back to the contest with Elidyr. He reviewed each movement as his dancing masters had taught him, noting his mistakes and where his efforts fell short. Each error appeared with hindsight, as glaring as mud splatters on a Peer’s pristine robes. He held the mistakes at arm’s length, dulling their sting through detached evaluation.

Watch your balance in the Form of Water—don’t be so fluid as to lose your strength. Too rigid in the Form of Stone—can’t be so firm that you cannot transition…

As his eyes trailed the distant leaves, his mind caught on a sudden remembrance. Reaching the platform at end of the bridge, he caught up with his father. Bran was less adroit on those high bridges, though he managed well for a human in his sixth decade.

He glanced at Leras with a subtle smile. “Something the matter?”

“Not exactly.” Leras hesitated. “Near the end of the match, did you feel…I don’t know what to call it. A shadow, perhaps?”

“A shadow?” His father looked at him, the creases around his honey-brown eyes deepening. “Not sure how many shadows fall here with all the kintrees.”

Leras shrugged. He was right, of course; without werelights illuminating the heights of Elendol, it would have been dark even at noon. Yet thanks to the enchantments cast by sorcerers of yore, countless lights floated around them, casting off an ambient light that shifted with the time of day. It still being morning, yellows and greens presently dominated.

Shadows were banished before the werelights. So what had he felt?

They stepped onto the next bridge, this one wide enough to allow for walking side by side.

“That’s what it felt like.” Leras stared at the platform ahead, moving with the sway of the bridge as they crossed. “Like when you’re in sunlight and a cloud passes overhead, casting you in shade. For a moment, it’s colder than you expect, and you shiver.”

He felt his father’s gaze intent on him, but didn’t look over. Bran’s response to the query was making Leras suspect this was all in his head.

“I felt nothing,” his father said at last. “But that doesn’t mean you imagined it. If it was sorcery…”

Leras looked away, staring across High Elendol to the network of bridges and platforms erected over the vast trunks of the kintrees. Sorcery—just the mention of it struck deeper than any bruise Elidyr had given him.

It couldn’t be sorcery.

Despite the witness of his parents and their closest confidantes, it had been so long since he’d felt any glimmer of the gift supposedly his heritage from his mother’s elven blood. He doubted he ever would again. It only proved to their subjects the wrongness of the queen’s halfbreed children—never mind that his younger sister, Syllana, had already shown herself to have a talent for magic.

Yet he’d felt something on the plaza. An experience he’d only had in a few other moments.

Leras scarcely recalled any touch of sorcery now. The years had scraped away his memory of it to hide in a dark corner of his mind. Better to bury that which he could never attain.

But it didn’t stop him from yearning for it.

His father’s sigh brought his gaze back around. “Well, never mind. The important thing is you didn’t let it distract you. You nearly won a match against Prime Elidyr. That’s no mean feat, Leras. I doubt I could achieve it these days.”

Leras barely repressed a snort. “I did nothing you wouldn’t have. And you win in our bouts as often as I do.”

A smile flashed across Bran’s face. “Suppose I do. But you know dancing far better than I ever will. And you’re younger, quicker, stronger. Someday, I’ll be lucky to best you at all.”

There was something disconcerting in that thought. An upsetting of a natural order. Even if he’d striven to surpass his father for the better part of a decade, he wasn’t certain he was ready for the moment to arrive.

Reaching the platform, Leras made for their home kintree. Little as he wanted to confront his mother on the issue, he wanted to delay the decision even less. 

His father placed a hand on his shoulder, drawing him up short. Turning, Leras met his father’s gaze.

“I’m proud of you, Leras. You had an aim. You’ve worked hard to achieve it. I couldn’t ask more of my son.”

Swallowing against the lump in his throat, Leras hid his emotions behind a quip and a smile, as his father had taught him. “You’ve asked a few things more than that.”

Bran’s hearty laugh lifted to the lofty canopy. “I can scarcely deny it! Come, you miscreant. It’s past time we confessed our secret to your mother—though her spies have likely stolen that honor.”

Leras grimaced, but followed as his father led the way home.