Merauve crossed his right leg over his left, leaning back in his chair. “Yes, yes. Evasion. Quite clever.” His right index finger tapped against his left hand. “Though I do question its quality as humor.”
Elenden’s response was immediate and utterly disarming: a smile that bloomed across his scarred features, genuine and unguarded. “Sorry. I’ve not had occasion to laugh in quite some time.” His eyes held a brightness that seemed to illuminate the stone chamber. “I’m afraid it might have been pent up.”
Merauve studied Elenden’s face, searching for guile. Nothing. Only that unguarded brightness.
He cleared his throat. “Your narrative suggests considerable... theatrical flair for an eleven-year-old boy.”
“Does it?” Elenden’s head tilted slightly. “I suppose from one perspective, dodging arrows might seem performative.”
“Arrows fired by whom, exactly?” Merauve leaned forward, sensing opportunity. “You mentioned a figure in black leather. A professional. Yet somehow this mysterious archer simply... vanished?”
“He did.”
“Without a trace? No pursuit? No investigation by your father’s men?” Merauve’s voice sharpened with skepticism. “A nobleman’s son nearly murdered at his family’s own festival, and the perpetrator simply melts into the night?”
Elenden was quiet for a long moment, his gaze drifting to the barred window. When he spoke again, his voice made the chamber feel smaller.
“My father’s men found exactly what they were meant to find.”
“Which was?”
“Three dead boys in the woods. Bow and quiver of matching arrows stashed nearby. Marcus Ashford and the Fenworth twins. Throats cut, positioned to look like they’d killed each other in some dispute over the night’s mischief. Very neat. Very believable. Case closed.”
Merauve continued the thought. “You’re suggesting the archer killed them? As... what, a cover story?”
“I’m telling you what was found.” Elenden met his gaze. “Lightbringers don’t leave loose ends.”
The implication hung between them like smoke.
“Professional enough to infiltrate a heavily populated festival,” Merauve said slowly. “Positions himself for a clear shot behind torch light. Professional enough to eliminate witnesses and fabricate evidence.” He paused, studying Elenden’s composed features. “Yet somehow, an eleven-year-old boy with dancing lessons managed to evade three of his arrows?”
“The Dark are not all-powerful.”
“The Dark? You mean the Lightbringer?”
“We have a different name for them.”
For a moment, Merauve wondered if he had misheard. He ticked off his fingers. “Let me see if I understand you correctly. You hear otherworldly voices that warn you of danger. You claim mysterious spirits guide your movements. And the so-called ‘True’ consider Lightbringers to be... the ‘Dark’?”
“Yes.” No hesitation, no elaboration. Simply stated fact.
“That’s absurd.” The words escaped before Merauve could moderate them, sharp with incredulity. “Several of the top echelons of Inquisitors consider Lightbringers to be among our greatest allies. Some members of the Inquisition are even rumored to be among their illustrious numbers.” He leaned back, delivering what he considered his decisive blow. “High Inquisitor Sirius himself implied that a Lightbringer brought you in.”
Elenden’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered behind those sea-blue eyes. “We’re not to that part of the tale yet.”
“Do you deny it?” Merauve pressed.
The response came with the quiet authority of ancient stone: “I have sworn to tell you the truth, Inquisitor, not affirm the stories you’ve been told. I believe I warned you of that at the outset.”
Merauve opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again. If he hadn’t deliberately resolved on being curious today, the patient biographer rather than the interrogator, he would have had some very sharp retorts to that.
The second bell’s toll drifted through the barred windows, its bronze voice cutting through the tower room air. The interruption came as welcome relief; his mind was racing through implications he wasn’t sure he was ready to process.
“Please excuse me one moment,” he said, rising. “I believe the food has arrived.” It had not yet, but Merauve was exact about the timing to deny Elenden the opportunity to notice first.
Elenden’s response was a fluid gesture: flat open hand extending the fingers outward while slightly lifting the palm, offering deference. The casual use of hand-speak felt like another small surrender of secrets, though whether deliberate or unconscious, Merauve couldn’t say.
As he crossed to the door, Merauve’s mind churned with questions.
“Open,” he called, pleased by the clockwork precision of his orchestration. At least this would proceeding according to plan.
The serving staff waited in the corridor with their usual anxiety, covered trays presented like offerings. Merauve examined the options with calculated deliberation. He selected simple porridge with cream alongside bread still warm enough to steam in the cool tower air. The other dishes he dismissed: broths that carried particular herbal undertones, sweetmeats salted to loosen tongues along with inhibitions, wine that had been carefully doctored with compounds from his private collection.
“I’ll serve this myself,” he announced, selecting only the simple fare and dismissing the staff. “You may dispose of the others and clear the previous dishes.”
He entered the room and arranged the meal methodically, setting the bowl before Elenden like a gift. The bread he placed on a separate wooden plate.
Elenden bowed his head over the simple meal, his lips moving in what was unmistakably prayer. The words were too soft for Merauve to catch, but there was a melody to them. Was he singing?
Merauve watched, fascinated despite himself, as Elenden ate. Here was breeding meeting austerity in perfect harmony: the precise way he broke bread into measured portions, the controlled movements of spoon to bowl that spoke of noble upbringing. Yet there was a mindfulness, an appreciation for the simple act of nourishment that transformed necessity into something approaching reverence.
When he had finished, dabbing his mouth with the linen napkin, he folded his hands in his lap and looked up to meet Merauve’s gaze.
“Thank you.” He looked up, meeting Merauve’s gaze. “Shall I continue?”
The days following the Harvest Festival brought changes to our household that left me feeling like a ship whose anchor had suddenly been cut. Where before I had been the afterthought, the barefoot wanderer of the moors, suddenly I found myself at the center of attention in ways both novel and bewildering.
My brothers were the first surprise. I had expected mockery, perhaps grudging acknowledgment of my narrow escape from death. Instead, I found Aldwin waiting in my chambers the morning after the festival, his usually sharp demeanor replaced by genuine concern.
“Hey El,” he said, and the way he said it carried none of his usual condescension. “I owe you an apology. Several, actually.” He was twenty-one then, nearly a man grown, with our father’s strong jaw and the kind of presence that made people listen when he spoke. He seemed almost uncertain as he perched on the edge of my bed. “All those times I called you dancing princess, made sport of your lessons...” He shook his head. “What you did up there, El, that wasn’t just dancing. That was... something else.”
I didn’t know what to say. My throat felt thick with emotion I couldn’t name.
“You moved like water, like wind,” he continued, his voice growing stronger with conviction. “Like the old heroes in the songs. I’ve trained with blade and bow since I could hold them, and I’m not sure I could have done what you did. Not like that.” He reached out, hesitating only a moment before clasping my shoulder. “I’m proud of you. We all are.”
Corrin arrived shortly after, still bearing scraped knuckles from his own martial training. At nineteen, he had always been caught between Aldwin’s natural authority and my mother’s protective focus on me, finding his place through competence rather than birthright.
“Father’s having the entire guard questioned,” he announced without preamble, settling into the chair by my window. “Every man who was supposed to be watching the perimeter, every servant who had access to the courtyard. He’s...” Corrin paused, searching for the right words. “I’ve never seen him so furious, El. Not even when the Imperial tax collectors tried to claim double levies.”
“It’s not his fault,” I said quickly.
“No, but it should have been prevented.” Corrin’s hands clenched into fists. “We should have seen it coming. Could have protected you better.” He looked directly at me then, and I saw something new in his eyes: respect. “What I can’t figure out is how it seemed like you knew. How you moved before the arrows flew. It was like you could see them coming.”
The invitation to brotherhood was thrilling to me. I tried to explain about listening, about the wrongness I had felt in the crowd, but all my words felt inadequate. How could I describe that voice that had spoken peace into chaos? I sounded unconvincing, even to myself.
“Huh. Well,” Aldwin said finally. “Whatever it was, it worked. I’m glad you’re alive.”
My father’s response, when it finally came, caught me most off guard.
Aaron deArthis was not a man given to displays of affection or lengthy conversations with his youngest son. Our interactions had been brief, formal, and focused on the practical matters of estate management that would someday be my brothers’ responsibility. I existed on the periphery of his world, acknowledged but not quite seen. That changed the morning Lord Carrick came calling.
It was a cold day, so I was in the library, attempting to lose myself in the familiar comfort of books, when raised voices in the great hall drew my attention. Peering around the doorframe, I could see Lord Carrick gesturing animatedly while my father listened.
“...absolutely extraordinary, Aaron. In forty years of these festivals, I’ve never seen anything like it. The boy moved like he was born to it, like the very air was conspiring to keep him safe.” Lord Carrick gestured expansively, his voice rising with each phrase the way it always did when he’d found a story worth telling. “Lady Carrick hasn’t stopped talking about it. Keeps saying we must invite him to perform at our Midwinter celebration.”
“The precision of it,” another voice added: Lord Tydsdale, I realized. “Not just the dancing, though that was remarkable enough, but the way he evaded those arrows. Like he could read the archer’s intentions. My master-at-arms was speechless.”
I pressed closer to the doorframe, fascinated beyond propriety.
“And the grace under pressure,” Lord Carrick continued. “Never broke rhythm, never showed fear. There’s steel in that boy, Aaron. The kind that can’t be taught.”
My father’s response came in his measured baritone: “He’s had good instruction. Whinn’s methods are...”
“That went beyond small town instruction,” Lord Tydsdale interrupted. “That was artistry. Natural talent refined by training, yes, but something more. Something that speaks to breeding.”
I heard my father’s footsteps begin pacing. “Is that so?”
“Aaron,” Lord Carrick’s voice dropped to the tone reserved for serious counsel, “I don’t know how you kept this under your kilt for so long, but I think you may be sitting on something here. The kind of talent that brings honor to a house for generations. My cousin serves at court, you know. He tells me the Emperor himself takes particular interest in truth dancers. Invites them to perform at the most prestigious gatherings.”
“Imperial notice,” my father murmured, and I could hear the wheels turning in his mind.
“More than notice. Recognition. Favor. The kind of connections that open doors for families.” Lord Tydsdale’s voice. “A truth dancer of genuine ability becomes a valuable asset, Aaron. Not just to his own house, but to the realm.”
The conversation continued, but I had heard enough. I slipped back to the library. My father, who had barely acknowledged my existence for eleven years, was suddenly viewing me through the lens of family advancement and political opportunity.
That evening, he summoned me to his private study.
The room smelled of leather and parchment, pipe tobacco and the particular mustiness that came from books older than the living. Maps covered one wall, marking the boundaries of our holdings and the trade routes that connected them to the wider world. Behind his massive oak desk hung portraits of deArthis ancestors, their painted eyes seeming to track movement across the room.
“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the chair opposite his desk. His manner was different from our previous interactions: not quite warm, but focused in a way that made me feel too visible.
“I’ve been thinking about your performance,” he began without preamble. “About what it means for our family’s future.” He steepled his fingers, studying me. “You have a gift, Elenden. A rare one, apparently. The question is how best we can leverage it.”
I waited, uncertain how to respond.
“Lord Carrick has extended an invitation for you to perform at his Midwinter celebration. Lord Tydsdale as well, for their Spring Festival.” My father leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking under his weight. “I’m inclined to accept. Both of them.”
The thought of performing again, of standing before crowds of strangers, made my stomach clench with anxiety. But there was something in my father’s tone that suggested this was not entirely a request.
“There are other invitations as well,” he continued. “Word travels quickly among the noble houses. Lady Ashworth has requested you for her daughter’s wedding celebration. Duke Meridian’s household has inquired about your availability for their Harvest Festival next year.” He paused, letting the implications settle. “It seems our reputation is growing.”
“This is an opportunity, son. For you, for our family, for the deArthis name.” He was beaming. “Excellence demands to be shared. Hidden talents serve no one.”
I was to shift from being a hobby for my mother to a pawn for my father.
And so began what I would later think of as my traveling year. From my eleventh year all through my twelfth, I found myself part of a circuit that carried me across the Northern Provinces and throughout the Empire, performing at festivals and celebrations for audiences that grew larger and more prestigious with each engagement.
Whinn traveled with me, of course, serving as both instructor and guardian. But Whinn grew more watchful with each performance, her eyes constantly scanning crowds.
“Remember,” she would say before each performance, “you dance for Truth, not for money, fame, or power. Let those who have eyes to see, see, but never forget who you are dancing for.”
The performances themselves were a blur of stages and torches, music and movement, crowds that cheered, gasped, or occasionally fell into awed silence. I learned to read audiences the way I had learned to read the landscape: understanding their moods, their expectations, their moments of distraction that might signal danger.
Between performances, my real education continued. Whinn seemed to plan our routes not for convenience but for what she called “the curriculum of creation.”
Our journey to the Central Provinces meant crossing the Thellassian for my first time. The ferry struggled against waters that carried half a forest’s worth of branches downstream. I’d seen rivers before, of course—the Thane that bounded our estate, the narrow streams that cut through the moors. But the Thellassian was different: wide as a small lake at the crossing, brown with silt from half of the continent.
“The river was here before the Empire, will be here after,” Whinn said as we stood on the bank. “Listen well.”
She had me dance in the shallows where the current tugged at my ankles, teaching me forms that used the water’s resistance as partner rather than obstacle. “Yielding Pool,” she called the sequence—movements that flowed with the current’s pull, then against it, finding strength in yielding and power in redirection.
In the Whispering Pines of the Central Provinces south of the capital, she led me deep into forests where trees older than kingdoms stretched toward a canopy so dense it made noon feel like twilight. Here, the air itself seemed to have a patience that made urgency feel foolish. Whinn would have me stand perfectly still for what felt like hours, my bare feet pressed against roots thick as my waist, until I could feel the slow circulation of sap. “That’s a rhythm of Endurance.” She taught me a sequence so slow you had to ensure you were perfectly balanced at all times, lest any imbalance send you tumbling.
The Southern Provinces taught different lessons. We lingered beneath cherry orchards where spring washed the world in shades of pink and white, each tree a celebration of ephemeral beauty. Whinn would position me beneath the heaviest-laden branches and have me dance as the wind brought down showers of petals. I learned to move with the unhurried spiral of falling blooms, my arms tracing their descent. “Petals on the Wind”. The blossoms would catch in my hair and stick to my sweat-dampened skin.
Of all those detours, I most loved our visits to the sea cliffs of the Eastern Reaches. There, where waves had spent millennia carving their sermons into stone, Whinn would have me dance on wet sand while the tide rewrote the shoreline with each surge. Every step I took was erased before I could complete the next movement, teaching impermanence. The sea’s rhythm entered my body not just as a crash and retreat, but as something deeper: the presence of something so vast and ancient it made the earth itself seem small. “Ocean’s Heart” became one of my strongest sequences, learned from hours of moving with that oceanic heartbeat until I could feel it even when we were leagues inland.
“Each place has its own way of speaking Truth,” she told me one evening as we camped beneath stars so bright they seemed close enough to pluck. “The mountain speaks differently than the sea, the forest differently than the field. They speak different languages, but they’re all saying the same thing.”
“Why are some people afraid of it?” I asked, thinking of the suspicious glances I sometimes caught from observers, particularly after a performance.
Whinn was quiet for so long I thought she might not answer. When she finally spoke, her voice held a strange sadness. “They fear Justice,” she said quietly. “Fortitude. Temperance. Prudence.” Here she looked at me, her eyes steady. “They fear the Truth because it reveals them to be liars. But what they fear most is Love. Most would rather live with small lies they can control than surrender to a Love vast enough to hold all of creation.”
As my thirteenth birthday approached, conversations between my parents grew more frequent and intense. I would catch fragments through closed doors: discussions of my future.
The resolution came, as these things often do, through a combination of opportunity and timing. A letter arrived bearing the seal of the Imperial Academy of Virtue, signed by someone whose title alone required three lines of parchment. It was an invitation, or perhaps a summons, for promising young students to attend the capital’s most prestigious institution.
My father was immediately enchanted by the prospect. “The Imperial Academy,” he said, reading the letter aloud to my mother over breakfast. “The finest minds in the realm, the most advanced instruction available. Connections that could serve us for life.”
But my mother had different ideas.
“Modern, certainly.” She set down her teacup slowly. “But Aaron, consider what we would be trading away. The Imperial Academy produces graduates who think alike, move in the same patterns. They create competent servants of the state.” She leaned forward. “But the ancient schools... can create something rarer. They create masters.”
My father frowned, his brow furrowing as he considered her words. “Masters? El is only thirteen. He needs a foundation, not a philosophy.”
The debate that followed lasted three days and ranged across every aspect of my education, my future, my role within the family’s larger ambitions. My father argued for the immediate advantages: political connections, exposure to imperial thinking, the kind of background that could open doors throughout the realm.
My mother countered with concerns about tradition, about the depth of learning that came from institutions that had weathered empires. “The Mountain Monastery,” she said finally, producing a letter she had apparently been saving for this moment. “Founded before the Empire itself. The oldest continuously operating Virtue school in the known world. Mistress Whinn has connections to the Virtue schools,” my mother continued with feigned casualness. “She spoke with those who knew of the monastery’s reputation, and word of Elen’s... talents... reached the right ears.”
“A monastery?” My father’s skepticism was evident. “El’s gifts are too valuable to waste away in some backwater.”
“Not waste. Refine.” I recognized that tone—the one my mother used when the decision had already been made. “The deepest wells produce the clearest water, Aaron. Let him learn from masters who measure their teaching in centuries, not seasons.”
The decision, once made, gathered momentum like water down a mountainside—what began as a trickle of intention became a torrent of preparation that swept everything before it. Within a moon, arrangements had been finalized: letters exchanged, maps studied, travel plans coordinated, my meager possessions sorted into what would come with me and what would remain behind like shed skin.
My brothers took the news with surprising gravity. Aldwin, who had spent months treating me with newfound respect since the festival, pulled me aside the night before my departure.
“Five years.” Aldwin’s gaze drifted past my shoulder, his eyes going distant. “You’ll be eighteen when you return. A man grown.” He refocused on my face, studying it as if trying to memorize it. “I won’t know you when you come back, will I?”
The question sat between us, and I found I had no answer.
Corrin’s farewell was characteristically practical. He pressed a small leather pouch into my hands, heavy with coins he had somehow accumulated. “Hide it. For emergencies,” he said gruffly. “Don’t tell mother. She thinks monks subsist on air and good intentions.”
Mother’s goodbye was a gift.
She came to my chambers on the final morning, carrying a small wooden box I had never seen before. Inside, nestled in faded silk, lay a ring: simple silver set with a cut rounded stone the color of deep water.
“This was grandmama’s,” she said, her voice carefully controlled. “She wore it every day until...” She didn’t finish, but carefully slipped it onto my index finger. At thirteen, it fit perfectly, as if it had been waiting all these years for me to grow into it. “Perhaps it will remind you that you carry more than just your own hopes into that place.”
When she embraced me, I felt her shoulders trembling. “Be careful, my heart,” she whispered against my hair. “Learn all they can teach you.”
“I will,” I said, though I had no idea what I was committing to.
My father’s farewell was brief. He clasped my shoulder and shook my hand with the firm grip of someone sealing a bargain. “Bring honor to the deArthis name,” he said.
The weight of their expectations, their fears, their love, settled around my shoulders like a mantle I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to bear.
Whinn accompanied me by carriage for the first three days of travel, her presence a bridge between the world I was leaving and the one I was entering. But when we reached the crossroads where her path turned back toward familiar territories and mine continued into the mountains, even she seemed affected by the finality of it.
“This is where I leave you to walk,” she said, and for the first time since I had known her, she looked old. “You’ve learned to listen to the world around you, child. Now you must learn to listen to the world within.”
As her carriage disappeared around the bend, taking with it the last connection to everything I had ever known, I stood alone on that mountain road with nothing but uncertainty ahead and the weight of promises behind. I felt the last threads connecting me to childhood snap.
The hike took three more days through countryside that grew wilder and more remote with each mile. The trail wound upward through forests where moss grew thick on ancient stones and the air tasted of pine resin and distance.
On the first day, as afternoon shadows lengthened, I heard singing drift through the trees. My feet stopped, my whole body turning toward the sound. Wordless and wild, it carried that same untamed quality I remembered from years ago: the girl dancing in heather, teaching me to see the world true.
My heart leaped. Could it be? After all these years, had some strange current brought us to the same remote corner of the world? The melody pulled at me with invisible threads, promising answers to questions I hadn’t known I was carrying. The undergrowth beside the path looked inviting, almost like an invitation, and the singing seemed so close: just beyond those trees, just over that rise.
I stepped off the track, pine needles soft beneath my boots; the ferns parting easily. The singing grew sweeter, and something in it made my chest ache with longing. Another step. Another. But as I moved, I engaged the nearly unconscious habit of truly listening to the world around me, and I was shocked to discover the sound shifted — not left or right, just... always farther. Almost directionless.
My body responded before my mind. I sank into “Root Deep, Reach High”—that form from childhood where earth and yearning meet. The hairs on my neck raised. The singing continued, beautiful... but now seeming terrible; I heard what my eager heart had missed: how it circled, how it made ever greater promises without fulfilling the last.
I turned in panic to realize how far from the trail I’d been going. Only when I felt the honest hardness of stone through my boots: solid, real, uncompromising as truth itself, did I realize I’d been holding my breath on the way back. The firm resistance beneath my soles was like waking from a dream.
The singing lingered a while longer, then faded, leaving only wind through needles and the hammer of my own heart.
I walked faster after that, and didn’t look back.
I knew I was close on my second night when the monastery bells began their evening song somewhere in the heights above, their bronze voices carrying melodies that seemed to give voice to the mountains.
When the monastery’s walls finally appeared through the morning mist of that third day, rising from the mountainside like something carved from the living rock itself, I was no longer the overlooked third son who ran barefoot across familiar moors or the dancing curiosity who performed for noble audiences. At thirteen, standing before those ancient gates with nothing but a traveler’s pack and a head full of questions, I was simply me, ready to discover who or what the Truth was from masters who had dedicated their lives to its pursuit.
The gates swung open with the weight of centuries behind them, and I stepped forward into a world where neither my mother’s protections nor my father’s ambitions could follow.