Buried Heroes

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

Iellieth trailed her fingers lightly across the tall wildflowers trapped inside their designated plot in the castle gardens. She breathed in their shy, hopeful aromas as she passed. A memory trickled by from when she had been only as tall as they, running through the fields outside of Aurora, ready to show off her newest discovery. The flowers’ faces seemed to turn toward her as she walked; they alone would bear witness to the tears that gathered in her eyes. She would be forced to leave them behind, like everything else that had grown in her years here. But however hopeless the situation appeared, she was determined to have a say in her ultimate destination.

She and Katarina had arranged to meet in her favorite spot in the gardens, just at the edge of the arboretum. Many others had claimed it as a cherished location since Iellieth started tending it a few years before. She felt more at peace than she had in days as the blush-flowering trees poked their arms above the other greenery and beckoned her forward to their petaled embrace.

When she first told Mathilde, the gardener, what she wanted to plant in the formerly overgrown bed, the woman had scoffed. The Lady surely had her head in the clouds if she believed the spring-blossoming trees would grow beneath the shelter of the carefully groomed forest. They wouldn’t receive enough sun, and if they did grow, they would cast too long a shadow over the collections of crimson and ivory flowers Iellieth wanted to cultivate beneath them.

“Breathtaking as always, Lady Amastacia.” Katarina feigned a short curtsy from beneath the stone archway. Iellieth grinned and hurried forward.

“Did you catch sight of yourself in a mirror, or are you waxing poetic about the flowers?”

Katarina laughed at Iellieth’s teasing. She extricated herself from the raptures of the climbing roses and embraced her friend. “How are you?” she asked as she leaned away to look at her face.

“I am as alright as you would guess.” It seemed they were alone in the gardens, but the fresh growth obscured the far bends too fully to be sure.

“I cannot believe it’s finally here.”

“Nor can I.”

“And there’s no way they can be talked out of it?”

Iellieth sighed. “No, dear Katarina, not that I have found.”

“Well, I find it truly abominable—”

“Wait, please. We cannot all be free-roaming Celestial scholars, and I would choose for . . .”—her voice grew husky as the tears gripped her throat once more—“for our final chat to be of something more high-minded than my stepfather’s scheming. One last story, before I go.” Katarina loved telling stories and would never be able to resist such a request, especially under the circumstances. “A new one.”

Katarina grinned at her as a tear fell from her dark eyes and carved a path across her warm brown skin. “Very well.” She pulled Iellieth’s arm through her own, and they began their final walk together around the gardens.

“There was once a beautiful oread, one of the dryads of the mountains, who would disguise herself as a human and tell her tales to curious travelers making their way from one land to the next. Eramis, that was her name. What Eramis valued, as most oreads do, was a mingling between cultures so that all lands might be joined, especially through their stories, one to the other.

“The type of traveler Eramis encountered determined the story she told. Those who left their small villages seeking adventure learned of distant, exotic lands where even their wildest dreams for what life might contain would be surpassed. Those who returned home from a long journey heard of incredible transformations or revelations that others had experienced after an extended time alone on the road, engaging with the sanctity of the land around them.

“But Eramis’s favorite story to tell was that of Hugh and Lilia, two great heroes of old. He was the leader of the lycan people, the first humans to emerge on the surface of the prime plane, protected by the wolf god Fenrir in their journey across the lands. One day as he ventured through the forest, he heard a heartbreakingly gorgeous song that danced its way between the trees to nuzzle against his ears.

“Oreads are beautiful mistresses of song, as you recall I’m sure, so this part of the story is somewhat suspect. It’s possible that Eramis inserted herself in some ways into the role of Lilia in the romance, which is of course up to her to do as the storyteller, but it bears noting all the same.

“Hugh tore through the forest in search of the singer, sure that his life would be forever darker if he could not find the being behind the song. And there ahead of him, with her pale hand pressed against the firm body of an oak tree, was Lilia.

“She looked rather like you if the stories are to be believed. Deep red hair that cascaded all the way to her waist and mystical green eyes starred through with gold.

“The lycan alpha was caught off guard by the embodiment of loveliness before him, and he stopped, frozen in his tracks. Lilia’s bright eyes turned slowly at the disturbance she felt in the woods. In the space of a heartbeat, she withdrew a deep green bow and notched an arrow. ‘Who dares disturb our morning ritual, between the woods and I?’ she demanded. Hugh stumbled back, surprised by the aggression from what he had previously seen as pristine beauty.

“By this point in the story, Eramis would have walked for some time with the traveler and would know which part of the legendary love between the two they might most need to hear. And, in that tradition, thinking of our friendship, I’ll leave you with the end.

“A great tragedy overtook the world and drove apart what had previously been woven together by the natures of magic and time. Hugh and Lilia faced a choice: to abandon their peoples or to be divided from one another. They each chose the latter, though it was the hardest thing they’d ever done. He remained with the humans on the prime plane. She retreated with the other fae to the Brightlands, a realm of wild beauty and mischievous magic well suited to their empathetic, curious natures.

“Enid called the soul of her daughter into the heavens after a time, and Fenrir brought his warrior to a place of peace. Through the ages, they would long for one another, as we long for those we are separated from, either through space, time, death, or other machinations. Some believe that this longing proves that we are alive. Others, that it marks the path forward.”

“What do you think it means?” Iellieth asked, knowing Katarina was fond of burying lessons inside ancient tales.

“I believe the answer is somewhere in between the two. Many emotions remind us of the life pulsing through our veins. Many forces conspire together to illuminate the roads ahead. We live, learn, and love by both.”

“I shall dearly miss your stories, Katarina.” Their moments together were among her few bright memories of life in the castle.

“And I shall dearly miss you, Iellieth. In my heart, I want to tell you that things may turn out better than they seem, but I don’t wish to make your journey any heavier than it is already.”

“Thank you.” Iellieth turned to go before the parting became more difficult, but Katarina caught hold of her arm.

“Are you sure that telling your mother about Lord Stravinske’s behavior would do nothing to change her mind?”

Iellieth shook her head and suppressed the shudder in the middle of her spine. “She and the duke know exactly what sort of man he is. Nothing of that sort could possibly be a surprise. I already tried to tell her before, and she did nothing.”

“But he—”

“He may have his wedding ceremony, and a night or two at most if I can do nothing to prevent it. But I’ll not endure longer than that. What the duke means to be a cage, I mean to be a step, however unwelcome, to freedom. I’ll find someone who doesn’t know who I am, book passage across the ocean, and make my way to the Realms.”

“Are you hoping to seek out Teodric, after you find your father?”

“It has been years, Katarina. I haven’t heard from him since we tried to escape, and his aid to me brought about the ruin of his family. He doesn’t want to see me. I’m sure he has only painful memories of our past now.”

“I wish there were more that I could do, Iellieth.”

The sob she had struggled to hold back leapt from her chest, and Iellieth threw her arms around her friend. “You’ve given me access to worlds I could never have otherwise known, to languages and literatures extending beyond these lands and back through time. I would never have been able to endure all of this, to find a way to survive, without the tools you placed in my hands.”

Katarina’s tears mingled in her hair as she was sure her own were doing in her friend’s twisted locks. “Kev’rei mau, adeli lei,” she whispered into Iellieth’s neck. I’ll never forget you, in the language of the Celestial realm, their favorite to translate together. Katarina kissed the pointed tip of Iellieth’s ear and stepped back. “I’ll be there to see you off at the Lyceum. Take care.”

She squeezed Katarina’s hand. “Until then.” Iellieth turned toward the garden’s side entrance. In a trick of the early morning light, the beds of flowers appeared brighter, more vivid than they had only a few minutes before. Hadvar, where she and her family would transmigrate later that morning, was too far to the north to have open-air gardens. They kept them only in glass houses, trapped and forced to stare through panes to capture the life-giving rays of the sun.

Iellieth stepped into the enclosure of the castle hallways. Linolynn’s additions to the ancient fortress of Io Keep were primarily large windows, pale stone walkways, and beautifully crafted turrets. From the foundation of a time of violence, Katarina liked to say, arose a testament to light and beauty. Iellieth wouldn’t be so lucky in her new home in Hadvar, though luck was the wrong word for it; she had no desire to stay here either.

She hurried down the castle corridors toward the Amastacia wing. On most days at this time, her family would be blessedly absent but, this year, they were all traveling to the Festival of Renewal together. It was unlikely that she could make it through the receiving area without either the duke or her mother catching sight of her.

Her boots echoed on the cool gray stone as she walked in and out of rays of sunlight to her family’s rooms. When the castle was full and bustling, Iellieth tried to choose lesser-traveled routes, where she stuck to the carpets in the middle of the halls to muffle the sound of her footsteps. She preferred to go unnoticed and, whenever possible, to blend into the world around her.

Iellieth paused at one of the multistory windows. The Infinite Ocean gleamed in the distance, sparkling like a beacon of freedom. On moments like this, it felt as though the waves called to her as they had when she was a child, asking her to step in and join her being to the water.

As she grew older, her connection to the ocean changed. It crashed against the cliffs below the castle, day and night, reminding her of those she was separated from: her father, whom she had never met, and Teodric, who had been sent away across the waters.

But water also brings together, by its very nature. When she lay awake at night, she would imagine the sea spray below as having come from the distant Elven Realms, where her father might have walked along the shore with trouser legs rolled up, scrunching his toes in the sand. Or when the wind whistled against the cliffs, crafting a unique melody each night to sing her to sleep, she heard again the songs Teodric used to write and play, created just for her.

Reluctantly, she pulled herself away from the view and hurried on again. Her stepfather would be irritated that she had left in the early morning hours on such an important day, but she loved to feel the dew against her ankles and watch the petals greet the sun.