Leslie Moore - Griffin's Daughter

Lately, though, Ashinji had begun to question that role. The second child of every Sakehera generation was bound by tradition to be given to the military. Lord Sakehera himself was a second child, as was his mother before him. It had always been so. The tradition of obedience to one’s parents dictated that Ashinji acquiesce to his father’s decision that he remain a soldier, rather than pursuing his own dream of a very different life.

Obedience was a virtue he found increasingly hard to live with.

Ashinji laid the bow and quiver aside and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankles. He reached around and undid the ties of his light cotton tunic and pulled the garment away from his sweaty torso. Kerala Castle lay quietly drowsing in the heat of midday. Ashinji’s emerald-green eyes became increasingly unfocused as his thoughts turned more deeply inward. He hadn’t been sleeping well since he’d returned home-due in large part to his ever-growing desire to quit the army. The strain put on all of the family by the upcoming nuptials played a part as well.

But mostly, it was the dream.

Since childhood, Ashinji sometimes dreamt visions of such strength and clarity that when he awoke, he could not immediately separate the waking world from the dream state. These special dreams were always prescient, and he had learned that to ignore their message was to do so at his own peril. All elves possessed some psychic abilities, commonly referred to as Talent. Those with the strongest Talent were usually trained as mages. Lady Sakehera-Ashinji’s mother-had, as a young woman, trained at a very prestigious school of magic, but had chosen to give up a career as a professional mage for marriage and family. It was she who had first told Ashinji that his dreams were a manifestation of his Talent.

This particular dream always began with him standing alone on the bank of a slow moving river, the sun high and hot overhead. A sound, like the cry of a great beast, caught his attention. He turned his head to seek out the source but he could see nothing save the ranks of silent trees marching down nearly to the water’s edge.

Suddenly, he no longer stood alone. A woman appeared before him, dressed in the simple clothes of a servant. She was very young, with a wild mane of dark, tightly coiled hair and eyes that were full of sorrow and loneliness. She appeared to be elven, and yet, there was something different about her that Ashinji could not quite fathom. Within the body of this not-quite elven woman glowed a core of pure, radiant blue energy that pulsed with each beat of her heart. He could sense the immense power of it and its inherent danger, though he also could sense that the woman herself posed no threat; in fact, he felt a powerful affinity toward her, as if she were someone for whom he had been waiting a very long time.

In that peculiar, disjointed way of dreams, he and the woman suddenly stood in a jumbled landscape of fractured, snow-encrusted boulders. The low ceiling of gray clouds overhead spit flurries of stinging ice crystals down upon Ashinji’s head. As he watched, the woman’s expression slowly changed from sorrow to fear. Darkness bled from the rocks, slowly coalescing into a massive black shadow that loomed over her. A palpable air of menace flowed from the shadow, and the woman shrank from it in terror.

Help me! she cried, reaching for Ashinji with pale, long-fingered hands. As he grasped her hands in his, he saw that, upon one finger, a tiny beast crouched-a miniature griffin. Its feathers were wrought of silver, and its eyes were glowing red pinpricks. The beast hissed and struck. Ashinji cried out in pain as tiny fangs ripped into his flesh. Reflexively, he let go his grip on the strange woman’s hands, and she was pulled backwards into the shadow and engulfed.

He always awoke in a sweaty panic, the woman’s screams echoing in his head. Unable to return to sleep, he then spent the remainder of the night staring at the ceiling of his bedchamber, trying fruitlessly to wrest some comprehension from his tired mind. Nothing he had ever dreamed before had carried the sense of urgency of this particular dream. He instinctively knew that it presaged an event that would radically alter his life, but whether for good or ill… that wisdom remained hidden from him.

A stray lock of hair, the color of honey, fell across his face, and he pushed it back behind one ear. A hound barked off in the distance. The fly, or possibly its kin, returned to buzz in an annoyingly persistent, erratic flight path around his head.

I really need a bath, he thought.

He rose to his feet, dusted off the seat of his breeches, slung the bow over his shoulder, and headed for the gate.

“ Youngest Son! There you are. I need to go over some things with you.”

Ashinji, still damp from the bathhouse, came to sit at the massive oak table that was the central feature of Kerala Castle’s main hall. Ashinji had always liked this room for its stark simplicity. The whitewashed walls, unadorned save for the family crest above the flagstone fireplace, sturdy oak furniture, and darkly polished wood floor, gave the hall a feeling of unassuming grandeur.

“ Father,” Ashinji replied, pulling out a chair and seating himself across from the Lord of Kerala.

Lord Sen Sakehera had been a soldier his entire adult life. Multiple gold service rings adorned both ears, and a very large diamond glittered in the lobe of his right, a symbol of his rank as Commanding General of Alasiri’s armies. He had served the royal house of Alasiri for nearly ninety years and was the present king’s oldest and closest friend. He ruled over Kerala with a firm, yet compassionate hand, and his people loved him.

Despite his exalted rank, Lord Sen was a humble man -a simple soldier, he’d say, who just happened to have the ear of the king. Today, he was dressed like a gentleman farmer in a plain, unbleached cotton tunic, baggy breeches, and sturdy leather sandals. He wore his tawny hair in a soldier’s braid, which reached almost to his waistband.

“ Do you wish to discuss the wedding, Father?” Ashinji asked. “I assure you, I’ll have the Ritual of Welcoming completely memorized by the time I have to perform it.”

“ Oh, that. Bloody thing’s still eight weeks away, but you’d think it was tomorrow if you listened to your mother. May The One preserve us!” Lord Sen rolled his eyes. “No, no wedding talk. Something much more serious.”

“ What could possibly be more serious than my brother’s wedding?” Ashinji asked, a touch of sarcasm coloring his voice.

“ Hmm, yes. What, indeed,” Sen replied, a tiny smile drawing up one corner of his expressive mouth. “I’ll tell you what, Youngest Son.” He held up a sheaf of papers in one hand. “These are reports from the Saihama River district. Several farms have been attacked within the last month by human bandits coming across the river from Soldara. The local sheriff thinks it’s the work of a single gang operating from a camp near the fords. She has requested that I send a posse to clean them out.”

“ You want me to lead it,” Ashinji stated, leaning forward with interest.

“ Who else but you? Sadaiyo is far too busy being the center of attention as the soon-to-be married Heir, and besides, I can trust you to do the job right.”

“ Father… Sadaiyo is a perfectly competent fighter and quite capable of performing this task,” Ashinji chided gently, “but of course, I will do as you command.”

“ I just hope that this isn’t the beginning of something worse,” Sen said, shuffling through the stack of papers in front of him. He pulled out one that bore several official seals. “This report just arrived from Sendai today. It seems that we out here in the east are not the only ones suffering from human incursions. There’ve been several incidents in the Tono Valley district. Soldaran patrols have been spotted on the Alasiri side of the border, and there have been raids as well. There’ve been rumors that the Soldaran empress has designs on Tono… that she plans on taking it back.”