Chapter Eleven Elician
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Elician
This is a dream.
There are three children standing outside King Aliamon’s solar. Elician sees them, but he is not himself. He is a formless, shapeless thing, observing only from afar. He knows this is a dream, but it is also a memory. He has been here before. Been there, at that wall, before.
The boy he once was, fourteen, gangly, shy, stands at the centre.
Adalei, newly eighteen, freshly returned from Kreuzfurt, is flush with health for the first time in her life.
There is a lovely rosy red to her cheeks.
Her gown is prudent yet magnificent. Her skin flourishes in the summer sun.
A headscarf, held in place by a delicate band across her brow, hides her lack of hair but does nothing to diminish her grace and charm.
Lio keeps looking at her, stunned stupid by her appearance. Already in love.
They stand with their backs to the wall, Adalei with her hands folded in front of her, Elician with his hands at his sides, Lio trying desperately to copy them both. He is farther down the line, less likely to overhear the royal party in the solar.
But Elician and Adalei hear everything. Every shouted word. Every furious riposte.
‘Elician is ineligible to ascend!’ Anslian yells. ‘He cannot take the throne!’
Aliamon roars, ‘The law is unclear—’
‘Then change the law and make it clear! Change it and free that boy from what you’re doing to him. You’re King, brother, not I. And that is your son. Damn your reputation and tradition. If you are so insistent on putting him on the throne then change the law yourself!’
‘That law has been in place for a thousand years.’
‘And you are wilfully circumventing it by forcing your son to suit its whim. He is ineligible.’
‘And you say this to promote your daughter, do you not?’
The boy Elician once was, the child listening to his family argue, glances up at his cousin. She does not look at him. She stares straight ahead, unmoving, unblinking.
‘She is the only valid heir we have,’ Anslian says.
‘Yes, because you refuse to remarry.’
‘You cannot force me to take another wife. And you are perfectly capable of doing the same.’
‘Glaika has made it clear they will cease supplying us with trade should I set Calissia aside. The responsibility to maintain our bloodline fell to you and you failed it.’
‘Failed? Adalei is standing just outside, alive and well!’
‘Until she catches a cold, or pricks her finger, or does any number of foolish things that send her back to death’s door.
Truly, do you imagine that girl capable of carrying a child, let alone surviving the birth?
You want to rest our line on a broken thing too ill to stand upright, let alone lead a country?
No. I will not contemplate such an heir. ’
Adalei takes the blow without remark. Elician cannot. ‘I’m sorry,’ the boy whispers. ‘He doesn’t mean it.’ But he does. They both know he does.
‘Elician will be king,’ Aliamon continues. ‘He will carry on this line.’
‘Then make it easier on him. You refuse him the basic rights any child deserves. The boy is perfectly capable of making friends, but you won’t allow those friendships to transition to allyship.
You refuse to grant him leave to learn from his own mistakes or to grow.
You terrorize him with thoughts of his Giver status being discovered.
So, change the law. Let him ascend with all the world knowing who and what he is. ’
‘You are not king, Anslian. It is not your place to make demands of me.’
‘It is my place, brother. What will you do if he is discovered? If he gets found out and all of this is for nothing? Will you deny Adalei then? When she is hale and healthy and brilliant?’
‘She will not be able to carry this line forward.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I do. I’d rather see my son as a stud bull, whose purpose is only to breed the next generation, than put that girl on the throne and hope she manages to survive it.
And if he proves a disappointment in that regard too, and our line is to be ended, then I will find another to replace him.
Not her. One strong enough to withstand the next millennium. ’
‘You are more focused on the children they will have than the lives they are living now.’
‘Someone must be.’
Adalei steps away from the wall. She turns left, walking with more poise and dignity than is owed to any of them.
The boy Elician once was runs after her.
He has no such grace, no self-respect nor candour.
He touches her skin, his fingers threading through hers, arresting her forward momentum and pulling her back so he can hold her. She clings to him.
Elician, separate from himself, cannot hear what the boy whispers to his cousin. But he knows the words he spoke. The promise he made. He knows, too, the meetings they had in secret afterwards. The plans they made. The mission they put in place.
Beneath their feet, the hall in this dreamscape turns to water.
It rushes from one end of the corridor to the other.
Lio, behind them, wades towards them. The water rises higher and higher, over their hips, their waists, their shoulders.
It covers their heads, and the dream shifts from memory to fantasy.
The palace walls morph. Seaweed grows from the carpeting.
Paintings twist into coral. Tiles shatter to sand.
And up above, so far above, the chandelier solidifies into the bright light of the sun.
A splash breaks through the silence. An object falls from the ceiling, shimmering faintly as it sinks to the bottom.
Then a boy, small and lithe, dives through that same ceiling, kicking strong legs down, down, down, squinting in search of a shimmering bauble that has long since disappeared.
The peaceful water does not stay peaceful.
It swirls suddenly. Roughly. It wraps around the swimmer’s body and air bursts from the boy’s lungs.
He gasps, making it worse. Inhales, then chokes.
He tries to turn back towards the sky, but the water shoves him again and again, catching him in one current and then the next.
The boy crashes against the coral, smashing against the sandy bottom.
His hands claw and scramble, his legs kick.
Elician tries to aid him, but he has no body.
He is not actually here. He cannot help.
He can only watch. For this is just a dream and dreams are not real.
The boy is caught, encircled by currents that will not let him go.
His small hands reach outwards. He weeps tears that are lost in the water that’s killing him.
He reaches out and grasps at nothing. And then his face goes slack.
His lips move, answering a question Elician never hears being asked.
The boy drowns. His eyes close, peaceful and calm.
He sinks to the bottom, his outstretched hand finding a black cord in the sand, a forgotten bauble lost in the detritus of the river.
But his fingers are too limp to take hold of it.
He loses it as the current shifts and his body moves.
He is lifted back towards the surface. Soon, he will be found.
Elician looks at the cord. A blue stone glows beneath a lump of sand.
A blue stone carved in the shape of a crescent moon. A blue stone fit for a prince.
Who am I? someone whispers in his ear as the water fills his lungs but leaves him breathing. As he is carried towards a memory, to a death, to a coronation, to a forest. He opens his mouth to speak.
But this is a dream, and there is no one there to hear.