A Shield of Faith (BOOK 4)

Chapter 11

LAUCAN

"Open the heavens with the splendorous melody, its ringing echo, in the icy whispers of the tundra, hear its voice, feel its truth, believe in her. In you. Children of space and time, hear the call forevermore."

It followed the small chimes of a child's music box sat in his two palms while he himself sprawled across the private dance floor. Aerial silks folded around their rafters, unused and left abandoned as everything else had been; where no Naveeran troupe gave it meaning — life. In truth, his lessons failed to stick and he had no more knowledge to fall let alone fly. Guardians sat in the wall crevices, their eyes following him whenever he turned, each one with the traditional weapons of Naveera — icesteel chakrams and glaives, forged in the coldest of a forges flames. Knights and dancers. Two sides of a single coin. Underneath a wilted snow rose, wyverns reigned. Laucan tucked his legs close together. Ice-cold metal drove a wedge into his brow, but he sat there all the same, listening to the melodic passage within the music box while the humming all around him tried to match its dissonance. He heard the call, but found himself trapped to answer it.

But I must answer it.

Crimson worms fluttered at the edge of his view when the hum shifted into a piercing shriek of a crescendo. It faded into the deepest pits of the Infernal Abyss, and the music box slowed to a frozen stop. The wyvern's curved tail clicked against the last pieces of the crystal comb. Ascend to the firmament, bloom over the tundra and fly to the song of your soul.

The final, long gone passage, forgotten to the masses.

Every piece of his downy feathers fell along his ears when he tried to block out the incessant noise. A softer hum lost in the allure of sirens of the sea. Ghosts of Father's court swung around him in the mist splattered with light pinks. Another flick of one of his longer feathers, he tore himself to his feet when it grew into half-wyvern's, half humanoid shapes. It pleaded for him to set himself free, to fly, just like Mother's lullabies. Deep within the notes of the song, an answer behind closed eyes. If we tremble to its song, then will we ever be free? He put his back to the pink mist and shambled out of the dance hall, into the dark, quiet corridors of his palace — his home he never left; until the Summit, until he met King Reyn, who his people thought as a barbaric beast worth less than the snow on their soles. But what promise can I make when my people hate me more? Hate me for the sins I carry? Ice gathered over his knees when he allowed his body to take control when he wasn't able to do anything right.

I ascended the wyvern's steps, I beheld the white nothingness that awaits us — and heard nothing until now. He walked past the ghosts, with Father's desiccated corpse always in the corner of his view as he stopped in front of the throne room. White doors lined with stringed pearls and opals, a testament to Avaerilian penchant for hiding the grim underneath beautiful art. In lovely lies. He pushed open the doors, with the court lost in their revelry, he ascended the steps once more to face his shadow built in the shape of Yuven Traye.

I wanted to save us — our culture, our language, everything we are, before we are buried. He shadowed the throne which built itself into icy crystals along the wall, with barricades built in a vain attempt to keep out the blizzard. He raised his hands to his head, tearing off the bloodsoaked, pale-blue crown studded with crystal jewels. Wyverns blew upwards into the peaks, where decorative feathers fell along the sides.

Each one, a memory, the soul of his people.

He tucked into his own neck when Father's death rattle reminded him of the truth.

We're not wyverns, we're not even vipers. We're corpses.

Sing.

Shockwaves wrapped around his spine in the tug of motion, and he set the crown on the throne Yuven Traye sat upon — the blood feud neverending. It oozed in the smallest cracks of the walls, splattering the snow and thickening it for slaughter. Sing, it begged him. Each word, a tenant of Naveeran philosophy. In their voices, power, in their souls, wyverns. Worms laced with black streaks wriggled over the crown when he tried to reach his hand out to it in his last light of defiance.