Mickey Reichert - Flight of the Renshai

"Ironically, the answer lies," Amazir explained, "in the part of your story that you most believe you already know, the piece you skipped right over when we discussed how you lost your soul."

That particular conversation remained engraved, in vivid detail, in Calistin's memory. Nevertheless, he had to consider what his torke meant.

Amazir did not wait for Calistin's recollection, "You know you were conceived during the sterility plague, as near as possible to your brothers' births, to maintain your mother's fertility."

"Yes." It all seemed so foolish now. His mother had never borne another child, perhaps because she had birthed three children in the space of a year or, like many Renshai, she simply lived too violent and harsh a life to conceive or carry another baby. Infertility, miscarriages, and stillbirths were all a natural and common part of Renshai life. More miraculous, the actual births.

"And I told you that the plague had made many men desperate, stooping to acts of cruelty they would never have considered in ordinary circumstances to assure the continuation of humankind."

Calistin recalled all that, and nodded.

"And, as you can imagine, the kings were most distressed, and their loyal followers. For, if their line perished, they reasoned, who could possibly rule in their place?"

"Nearly anyone?" Calistin ventured. He did not hold the awe for bloodline that many did. His parents did not raise him to believe ancestry mattered much.

Amazir laughed. "As I agree, but others gain silly attachments to things of little import.To equate shared blood with love is to doom all of us to marrying our mothers and sisters. Yet, to the king of Pudar, blood meant a great deal. He had recently lost his beloved older son to murder, leaving no heir. He branded his younger son a fop and a fool, but no one else could sire the line. So, he imprisoned Kevral and forced her to lie with his younger son until she either cycled or was proved to be with child."

Amazir's words lit a fire in Calistin's veins. Rage filled him, so hot it caused him pain; and the urge to slaughter the entire Pudarian royal line seized him. "He raped my mother? My mother?" That led to another scorching realization. "I'm a child of rape? And my blood… my blood…" Suddenly, he wanted to slice open every artery, to drain himself of the tainted, now boiling, life-fluid of his enemy. It explained so much, not the least of which why he looked as different from his brothers as they did from one another.

Treysind moved toward Calistin, as if to drag him into an embrace, but stopped short of actually completing the action. He knew better.

"No," Amazir said softly. "The prince no more wanted a part of it then Kevral, but he had little choice."

Calistin refused to believe it. "A man always has a choice."

"He would have been killed."

Calistin folded his arms across his chest, still seething. "I doubt that. Then the king would have no heirs at all."

"As I said, King Cymion thought little of his younger child. He would have executed him without much provocation."

Calistin gave no quarter. "The threat of death doesn't matter. A good man would choose to die rather than commit such a vile crime."

"But Prince Leondis surmised, rightly, that if he was executed, the king would have taken his place in Kevral's bed."

Calistin made a noise of outrage and revulsion. "She would have sliced his manhood from him and fed it to his dogs. Then she would have killed him."

Now Treysind cringed and made a sound similar to Calistin's.

Amazir only smiled. "I'm quite certain she would have, had she not been jailed and fully shackled, with her newborn twins as hostages."

"So I'm an heir to the throne of Pudar." Calistin tried to muster some interest in the idea but failed miserably. At the moment, he would rather carry Treysind's blood than King Cymion's.

"No."

Treysind and Calistin jerked their heads to Amazir simultaneously and in just as shocked a silence.

"No?" It made no sense. Calistin knew only nine months had elapsed between the birth of his brothers and his own, and he had carried full term. "How could…?" He recalled heroic tales from his grandfather about how his father had single-handedly challenged the army of Pudar to rescue Kevral from their prison. Knight-Captain Kedrin had never mentioned the details Amazir elaborated now, but Calistin knew the stories had to intertwine. "Papa?"

"Acted with courage befitting the bravest Renshai, but he did not arrive in time."

Treysind did not give Calistin a chance to gather his thoughts for a full question. "So who's Hero's real father?"

Amazir gave Treysind the first stern look ever aimed, by him, at the boy. "Ra-khir is not fake or false. He is Calistin's real father."

Treysind looked even more confused, staring at his feet to avoid the harshness of Amazir's gaze. "But yas sayed he didn't 'rrive in time."

Calistin rescued the boy. "He means Ra-khir is my real father because he claimed and raised me. Bloodline doesn't matter, and a man's seed alone doesn't make him a father." He gave Amazir a pleading look. "Nevertheless, I would like to know whose ancestral line I carry." He could not help adding, "And it's my right to know. My parents should have told me."

Amazir nodded sagely. "In their defense, they were sworn to secrecy. A Knight of Erythane would die before he broke an oath, and Kevral loved him too much to risk losing him by violating her own promise."

"She loved me, too," Calistin found himself saying defensively. "Or so she said."

"Poor Kevral," Treysind murmured, apparently catching a detail Calistin's outrage forced him to miss.

No longer irritated with the boy, Amazir nodded. "Imagine having to live with such a secret. To keep it meant violating her son's trust, but to reveal it meant betraying her husband and her own honor."

Calistin fell silent. He had not yet looked at it from Kevral's viewpoint, might not ever have done so if not for his two companions. He suspected most of the details of his life might look different from others' perspectives, yet he refused to analyze them. He might not like what he found.

"And one last event helped tip the balance. Your blood grandfather gave his blessing to Ra-khir as your father. He promised that his family would not interfere."

"An' yet," Treysind said with uncharacteristic thoughtfulness and an intensity of expression that focused squarely on Amazir, "ya has now, hasn't ya?"

Amazir smiled.

Calistin gawked. "Are you saying…?" He turned fromTreysind to Amazir. "Are you confirming…?" He shook his head to clear it, wishing his mouth would work. "You? You are my blood grandfather?"

"I am," Amazir admitted simply. "But I wasn't planning to tell you just yet.Your astute companion has a tendency to help you when you least deserve it, usually at my expense."

Calistin expected his mind to fill with questions, but he found only one and that he aimed at Treysind. "How did you know? How could you possibly know?"

Treysind only shrugged his skinny shoulders. "Who else's gonna know so much 'bout ya? Or care 'nough ta cram it through ya's big, fat head?" He added the simplest detail as if in afterthought, "An' yas looks 'ike some, too."

Calistin studied the wrinkled old man in front of him and wondered how anyone could notice anything similar about them. Only then, he remembered he had once considered the possibility that Amazir was a vision of his own future.

Amazir laughed. "You should not see any resemblance, regardless. I've altered my appearance."

"It's tha eyes," Treysind explained. "Ya can't das'guise 'em."

It seemed a family trait of Kevral's children, that, when it came to appearances, each tended to most favor his paternal grandfather. Subikahn looked more like Weile Kahn than anyone else; and Saviar had inherited all of Kedrin's splendor, including his natural, damnable charisma. Suddenly, Calistin had to know what the future held in store for him. "So what do you really look like? Can I see? Please?"