“I can now reveal something I never told you, Leitos. I ask beforehand that you forgive me for the things I kept secret. That will be hard for you, perhaps, but understand that I did it to protect us from the eyes of the slavemasters.”
“Zera said as much, before …” Leitos’s voice faltered, seeing again the stark vision of her death, feeling again the last fitful beats of her failing heart, the heat of her blood spilling over his skin. He pawed at his eyes, angry at the wetness that burned in them. “There is nothing to forgive between us.”
Adham troubled over that awhile, then gave a brief nod. “Kian Valara, the King of the North, is my father, Leitos. In turn, I am your father. To hide that from the Faceless One, it was agreed that I leave my father’s side soon after you were born, and pose as your grandfather.”
Leitos sat in awed silence. Adham’s eyes dimmed, as he spun a tale Leitos had never heard.
“Your mother and I, with you swaddled in the back of an oxcart, departed my father’s mountain stronghold at Cordalia and made our way into Miz’Ratah, a land far north of Izutar, beyond the Sildar Mountains. My father and I believed we would be safe there from any Alon’mahk’lar attack. We were wrong.
“We had just arrived to E’ru, one of a score of secluded garrisons, when the Alon’mahk’lar raiders came out of the snowy forest. We held for near on a moon’s turn, but eventually our walls were breached. In the end, we who survived surrendered at the edge of the sword. In the dark watches of the night between then and now, I have often thought it would have been better to die with the rest … but I could not do that which would have kept you out of the hands of our enemies.”
Leitos did not need clarification. Only his death would have kept him from being taken by the Alon’mahk’lar. He thought of Sandros then, who had claimed that Alon’mahk’lar did not aimlessly roam league after league in search for future slaves, but rather used human spies to find their prey. “All men are liars,” so he had said often. Maybe many are, Leitos thought, but in regard to Izutarians, Sandros had been wrong.
Leitos’s mind turned. “Was my mother taken?”
“Keri?” Adham rasped. He cast his eyes on Zera, his whiskered chin trembling. “No … no, my son, she was not. After the rise of the Faceless One, it is rare thing for an Izutarian woman to allow herself to be taken. Knowing what will come should that happen, they fight alongside our men. They are often the fiercer of the two, because where men have at least the choice of surrendering to chains in hopes of taking back their freedom later, our women have only death as a choice.”
“Why is that their only choice?” Leitos asked, a sense of horror filling him.
“Do not hate me,” Adham said softly, “but those like Zera are the reason that Izutarian women would rather die by their own hands, than fall into the grasp of our enemy. Alon’mahk’lar are created by the union of Mahk’lar and human women. Never have those abominations been able to hide among humankind. Some years before your birth, we had begun hearing unbelievable rumors that the Alon’mahk’lar had begun refining their race, breeding Alon’mahk’lar to human women. In doing so, they created creatures that looked entirely human.”
“The Hunters,” Leitos said, thinking of Sandros and Pathil. That joining had worked well enough to fool Ba’Sel and his men into taking what they believed to be humans into their midst. It also struck him that Sandros’s tale about the day he was taken from his mother had been a lie, at least in part. If Sandros had not known at first, he had learned in time that his true father had been an Alon’mahk’lar.
“Na’mihn’teghul … Hunters … changelings … no matter how they are called,” Adham said, “they are dread enemies. Fate seems to decide the manner in which they can alter their flesh. This Na’mihn’teghul-”
“Zera!” Leitos snapped, drawing a few glances from the rowing brothers. “Her name is Zera.”
“Zera,” Adham amended with grave reluctance, “is the first changeling I have known that could become a creature of both flesh and spirit. But then, I have been chained these last many years. I cannot say how much has changed in that time.”
“None of this tells me why it matters if I am the last of my line,” Leitos said “Does the Faceless One fear I will rise to take some distant throne?”
“There is no throne to claim,” Adham said bluntly. “As far as thrones go, there never really was one, nor was there ever an established kingdom. Kian Valara commanded a scattered army made up of any who wished to resist the rise of the Faceless One. Your importance to the Faceless One is the blood within our veins.”
Leitos arched an eyebrow. “Why would the Faceless One want our blood?”
“I asked the same of my father when I was about your age, and he told me of the legend of the Well of Creation-of course, to him, it was no legend, but truth.” Adham paused then, as if struggling to find a way to explain. “The Well of Creation was a receptacle, which for eons held the powers of the Three, the first children of Pa’amadin. In penance for creating the Mahk’lar, the Three foreswore their powers of creation. In doing so, they perished … but not before creating Geh’shinnom’atar, the Thousand Hells. Therein, they imprisoned their children, and also Peropis, the first of the Mahk’lar.”
“How did Kian come to this place, the Well of Creation?”
“A prince of Aradan hired Kian, who was a mercenary at the time, to protect him on a journey through the kingdom. Varis’s true intent was to seek out the Well of Creation-a secret revealed to him by Peropis herself. In destroying the Well of Creation, and taking within himself powers never meant for mortal hands, Varis very nearly made himself into a living god.”
“Nearly?” Leitos asked.
“Varis took some of those godly powers into himself, but for the most part they spread into all the world. As well, your grandfather always suspected that the release of such power had caused the Upheaval.
“Those powers spread like ripples in a pond,” Adham continued. “A random few, Kian included, absorbed some of those powers. In my father’s case, he gained the ability to resist Mahk’lar. As well, he told that for a short time he was able to heal the gravely wounded, seemingly by will alone. As far as he knows, he lost that ability in … in bringing his companions back from death.”
Leitos absorbed that, and Adham went on.
“There are other abilities Kian gained, which he passed to those he healed, and to me: strength, endurance, and long life.” Before Leitos could ask, Adham said, “The mines aged me, but as I am sure you have noticed, rest from constant toil has erased some of those years. I have walked this world for one hundred and sixty-seven years.”
Though Sandros had put the question into Leitos’s mind, seemingly a lifetime gone, he gaped in disbelief. “How old is Kian?”
Adham grinned. “All I know is that he has lived over two centuries. I cannot be more exact. My father often told how he stopped counting after his one hundredth year. ‘Why count single years or even scores, when they fail to mark my face?’ He usually said that in jest, but I believe it burdened him to live so long.”
“Why should that trouble him?”
Adham sighed. “Perhaps because I, his only living son, began to look older than him after my seventieth year. While I age slower than other men, I do age, where Kian does not. Without question, I will go to my grave before Kian Valara and my mother, Ellonlef.”