Kelly Gay - The Darkest Edge of Dawn

“Come, come. Come closer,” she said, not turning around.

Her long, gray braids were flecked with dirt and pencil shavings, the ends tied off with strips of beaded leather. She wore a brand-new, puffy white ski jacket and a long, stained skirt that had seen better days.

I came around her left side and took up space across the fire pit. There was a pot hanging in the center, the source of the chili smell. “You want a story, eh?” She lifted her eyes, one violet, the other glazed over in blindness. She sighed, her face sinking back into the deep frown lines that curved around her mouth and eyes. “They all wants a story from Vendelan Grist. None comes to see me otherwise.” Her head shook in disappointment. “Very well. Sit, sit.” She motioned with the glowing end of her stick to the low stones set around the pit, her one good eye gleaming with intelligence. “Once I was this great warrior, ya know? But that is more story, for later times. So what is it? What you want? I haven’t got all day, ya know.”

I pulled a fifty-dollar bill from my pocket and handed it to her as I sat down on a low stone, pulling my knees closer to my chest. “The story of Solomon,” I said, slipping my bangs behind my ears and settling in.

“Ah.” She nodded in approval, stuffing the bill into her coat. “That’s a good one, yes. The great king himself. The half-breed. Born of the jinn High Chief and a human mother, much like our Sian.” She laughed, poking the fire again and making it crackle. “But in those days, he was a god to the jinn. Male of two worlds, ya know? A king who wanted to rule the land, to break the yoke of the nobles, and bring the jinn to greatness.”

“I thought he captured the jinn, used them as his slaves, commanded them.”

Her white brow lifted and her lips thinned in a scolding manner. “Who tells this story?”

I held up my hands. “Sorry.”

She began all over again, and I had the feeling we were going to be here awhile as she started in on who begat whom. I glanced at my watch. Ten minutes later, Solomon was finally begat by the jinn High Chief, Malek Murr, and a human woman, Bathsheba, and was raised as a son of David and a prince of Israel. The story, once again, drove home the notion of truths lost in legends, and the fact that the off-worlders had involved themselves in our civilization for untold millennia.

The story continued with Solomon’s childhood with his half brothers, his young adult life, and, through the efforts of his mother and the prophet Nathan, his rise to the throne while David was still alive. He was cunning, ruthless, and ambitious, with a lust for magic and power. He reorganized the kingdom of Israel into twelve tribes and built the temple of Solomon.

It was an hour into Vendelan’s story that Solomon learned of the First Ones from a jinn Storyteller.

“Since the Great War in Charbydon, when the nobles comes into our land, and takes control of the tribes, makes us bodyguards and servants, many jinn tribes they leave, they make home in the human world. But the nobles, they refused the jinn to stay there, they don’t want Malek Murr to raise an army against them. Solomon reacted, ya know? So angry, he was, when the nobles call the jinn back to Charbydon. He learns of the First Ones. He sees, ya know, opportunity. Thinks that with this old knowledge of these great beings that he will set free the jinn, return his sire to the throne to rule over Charbydon, send things back to the way they was before the nobles come. ’Cause the nobles never belonged in our land to begin with, you see.” She waved her hand impatiently. “Everybody knows this. Solomon, he sets out to uncover this knowledge of the ancients. He makes a cult of powerful jinn and human priests. Some says he succeeds in finding this knowledge. Some says he fails. In the end, he dies anyways. The jinn returns to Charbydon under the nobles’ rule, and Solomon is dead.

“But”—her finger shot in the air—“he did great things. It is said he found a star, a star that shone its brightest at dawn. That he forged a ring of great powers to one day give this star life. Solomon’s ring, ya know? But who can tell.” She shrugged and laughed gleefully, her one eye going bright. “They just stories, right?”

“The star,” I said, sitting straight. “He found the star?”

“Oh, yes. And he worshipped it, you see, for the star was a First One. So he makes this new religion. And calls himself the Son of Dawn. They still believe, ya know.”

“Who believes?”

“The Sons of Dawn. Oh, they still around. Trust me. New members, sure, but still around.”

“What do they believe, Vendelan?”

She leaned forward. “What all us jinn already know and everybody else forgets. The Char nobles and the Elysian Adonai are from the same stock. All were once Adonai. They forget, you see. So much time has passed. Ancient time. But we know. We remember. The nobles, they ruled in Elysia first, but they were no good. No good, you see, so they were cast out into Charbydon. Into our land. So long ago,” she sighed, “no one remembers. Sons of Dawn want nobles to remember, you see, to rise up and take back Elysia for their own. And the star is their proof, you see. Not myth, but truth. She is ancestor.”

“If it got out that the First Ones were real, and nobles once ruled in Elysia …” I said more to myself than to her.

“War,” she said with a crazy gleam in her eye. And then she straightened and shrugged, going back to her fire. “Good for the jinn, though.”

“How so?”

“Char nobles leave to fight for Elysia. We return home, back to our land, and rule as we did in the old times.”

I didn’t bother pointing out the fact that Charbydon’s moon was slowly dying, that one day there wouldn’t be a home to go back to, and, instead, asked a question that I was pretty sure I knew the answer to. “If that happened, Vendelan, if the nobles went to reclaim Elysia, who would be High Chief over all the jinn tribes?”

She glanced over her hunched shoulder, her one good eye taking on a zealous violet gleam. “Grigori, of course.”

My stomach went light and cold. Despite the heat and humidity, I wanted to hug myself, to ward off the chill of her words. Even Vendelan, as old as she was, thirsted for war and vengeance against the nobles. If Grigori felt he had a chance to win, there’d be no stopping him. But why would he want to return to a land that was dying? Why fight to reclaim something already lost?

Unless he knew of a way to stop it …

Vendelan turned back to her fire and stirred her pot of chili. “My story is ended, girl.” She waved her spoon, but didn’t turn around. “All they wants is a story …”

I hesitated by the chamber door, feeling sorry for the old Storyteller. “Next time,” I said, “I’ll bring my uncle Walter’s chili and all the toppings. No story. Just food and company.”

She turned at that. Her white eyebrow lifted. A grunt rumbled in her throat. “We’ll see, Charlie Madigan. We’ll see.”

I opened the door and stepped back into the corridor where Tennin’s guard was waiting to escort me out of the Lion’s Den. This time, I didn’t pay attention to the chambers I passed or the uneven ground at my feet. My thoughts were on Llyran’s “cause” and his “star.” He had Solomon’s ring. By his own admission, he wanted to liberate the nobles, to start a war in Elysia. The very same thing the Sons of Dawn wanted.

And Grigori Tennin had a hell of a lot to gain if the myth of the First Ones was proven true.

As I stepped beneath the massive archway that led into the main chamber, I saw several things at once. The jinn still sitting around the fire. Grigori sitting like some kind of Conan the Barbarian king in his massive chair, dressed in his snug, triple-X T-shirt, his guards behind him, his booted feet propped up on the massive table set in front of him as he carved an apple with a dagger that was way too big for the job. And Rex standing to the side, facing Tennin.