"Three the Candle Chapter 1" by Christopher Heisserer

1

“Firekite!” Ryless screamed. “Stand down your arms!”

“Hold your tongue, Acorn Child.”

            The mischeivous grin disappeared, the quirky squinting of the eyes froze. Green eyes, flecked brown, deepened as focus drifted from friend to friend, head unmoving. The condenscending voice was keenly female, older, familiar. Royalty? Ryless stood to his left, acting as if he hadn’t heard the words that were spoken, concealing his nervousness extremely well by stabbing his tongue between his upper and lower jaw. Tedon, with his less built body, quivered slightly and stopped in mid-sentence. Velriddev’s eyes were wide—

            All taken in by a spin of the neck, a turn of the head; the moment had stood still before his eyes. Acorn Child. The insult was sweet for other races, endearing for the more magikal ones, yet, as insulting to a Noben as being called mud to the Zephyr. She had better hope she was royalty, or she’d have to face the hilt of a dagger between her wings.

His turn completed, Kendrill looked behind himself, between his lofty wings to the creature standing behind him. Matetrian Rainalla. Her seamless face smiled, her lithe body poised in relaxion, her demeanor endearing.

Tamed, was all he could think before she began walking up to beside them. “Didn’t hear me coming, oh mighty Noben warriors, or was Kendrill so enthralling you forgot your discipline?”

“Count on a Slethe to forget her manners,” the darker Kendrill said with an edge of competitiveness to his husky voice. “You shouldn’t walk alone with a memory like that.”

Tedon shrugged, flexing his thin wings and crossing them across his shoulders. “Shush, rogue. She didn’t mean it. At least in a bad way.”

The word rogue was closer to the mark than the four would wish to discuss. The humorous Noben had been in trouble several times for his commentary and sarcasm in the faces of respected elders and instructors. His lack of discipline was extremely surprising to some, while the others who truly knew him would lower their heads in understanding. He was disciplined, but not to the cause of war or the love of race. He was disciplined to himself and the ones he cared for, and he’d fight for what he cared for over the greater good of the entire world if he had to.

A stalwart race descendent of their anscestor Dragons, the Noben was the mark of almost total magikal termination. Cousins to the Zephyr, their wings were leathery, not gossamer like their counterparts, and their skin was leathery and dark as well. Their features had balanced out to walking on two feet, and if needed, four feet or under wings. A race built on strategy and war, they knew nothing better than weapons and competition.

Kendrill smiled as only a Noben could, standing up straighter with his neck lowering, his eyes squinting, mouth shutting completely while the curves of his lips pushed upward slowly. Anyone inexperienced in the movements of a Noben would have missed it entirely. “I know. I know. You warriors,” he winked to Matet, ”can never understand my joking. I think I’m going to stay quiet for a while until it is acceptable to sound stupid.”

Quietly, Matet spoke, “I understood you.”

Kendrill straightened a little more, his grin changing to something of a more relaxed state. “Ah. You are redeemed!”

“I am glad you do not mind his antics,” Tedon said quickly. “Everyone’s, actually.”

“Will you go back to what you were saying?” Ryless asked to Kendrill, not containing his intrigue about the story. They gave Ryless a break due to seniority and their understanding that he was among friends.

“Oh. Certainly.” The darker Noben said slowly, looking up to the sky to remember what he was talking about. “She was unbelievable. I mean, her skin sparkled it was so beautiful. The sun would—“

“Pour down and dance upon her face like fireflies in the daylight, or water in the sky,” Velriddev said keenly. As the only green Noben among them, Velriddev was a rare exception to the non-magic practicing community. Born mostly brown, the Noben could not, by nature, practice any sort of magic due to lack of understanding and ability. Green of skin meant pigmentation of undertrails inside the veins, and the capability for magic use. Velriddev had embraced his heritage full-force, and while he was a practicing Nebon soldier, he was also a wielder of developing powers. “Old news. Everyone knows that about the Princess Abbess. Besides you said that already.”

 “I saw her,” Kendrill said finally, dispensing of the storytelling. “In all her radiance.”

“A swear to your sword? How?” Tedon asked, suddenly excited. He was the quickest to speak before thinking or waiting, as most well-disciplined Nebon tacticians were taught not to do before their second year of cold and warm. He was the weakest among them, though almost as lithe as a female of same strength. He carried a lighter sword, lighter pack. His smile was daring (as the hopefuls had said in whispers behind him once at a festival), and his loyalty was strongly forged within the apex of the Noben military. “You aren’t allowed to see her, you peasant.” The final word was a mockery of the heirarchy.

Ryless was doubly unsheathed of his dios and behind Tedon in an instant, his head as low as he could and tucked between his shoulders. “Do not follow behind those hollow words given sway by Acorn Child’s misunderstood loyalties,” He whispered, energy-smells wafting into the younger’s nose. This reference to Acorn Child had nothing to do with endearment.

Both Kendrill and Matet winced at the name, and the meaning behind it.

“I think,” Velriddev said, “Tedon and Ryless should duke it.”

“Duke it?” Everyone looked at him in confusion.

“Scribe hall. Heard it from a conversation among humans.”

“And it means…?” Tedon asked, hoping against the word he was thinking of.

“Fight...”

Tedon shook his head slowly. Tht was the word.

“Ok,” Kendrill cut in after a few moments of tense silence. ”It’s on the table. Should two old friends attack each other for an ideal that is dying out quicker than sandweed? Or should we think unclouded of confidence and self-assuredness and decide on a better motive?”

Ryless smiled darkly, his head rising a little. “I got one. Practice,” he whispered, and Tedon dropped to the ground like a stone.

“Why me?” He cried as he pulled his single blade out from between his wings and rolled.

Then the metals clanged; experience and keen insight against flexibility and unpredictability. As young as he was, anger was already taught to be a last resort, and a Noben in fury was as unkind as a tornado.

As they fought with an air of reserve and calculation, wholly different from battlefront fighting, Matet whispered something in Kendrill’s ear. He nodded, looking suddenly sullen.

“I will come when this is over.”

She forced a smile, her countenance totally different from his own, and nodded understanding. She left his side in silence.

Matetrian Rainalla was a shorter Slethe than most Noben. She had no wings, and the discerning facial and body features were virtually nonexistant. A scholar once identified the race of Slethe as, “Unfinished in youth, perfectioned in adulthood.” As she walked down the hill, her sixteenth birthday a mere six tendrins away, she could hardly stand her excitement. Near the birth day memorial of sixteen, the Slethe form would change, be it internally or externally, according to their magikal preferance. As one of the few races that concentrated on the inner four points of the Reverberant, a hardly respected code of classification for magic, magik and the living, she would be pulled from underdevelopment into what most would see as overdevelopment. It was not merely a code of classification, but a massive religion that encompassed all save for the weakest and strongest of sentience.

Noben royalty and underclasses, ones for traditionalism and outmoded concepts, had kept the Slethe since the days of slavery, though now treated much closer to equals. Most hired the Slethe before their sixteenth birthdays because when the change came, some were worth much more than others when it came to loyalty, strengths, and individual power.

The inner circle, or Litrell, was the placement of the four elemental points, the four seasons of the year, and the four cardinal directions of the planet. Reciting for the hundredth time in her head, Matet tried constantly to remember her studies as she walked back toward where she came from.

Geimhridh streams soft as snow

Darraigh brings the dew aglow

Samhraid strings of stars echoed

Fomttair sings leaves to blow.

North

Spurs white silence wet and cold

East

Bluewrought rainfall morns enfold

South

Gold-glow star-cast life uphold

West

Reddened shiny leaves tint bold

There was more, for certain, but she could not remember it for the life of her. To course the world inept, she thought, Reverberant are kept… Hah! She was remembering more of the description! The next and final part was a blurry memory. Something about clothen hands or something. When she changed, physically and hopefully mentally, she’d grow in one of the four Tribes of the Litrell: Geimhridh, Darraigh, Samhraid, or Fomttair. She hoped for East. She hoped and hoped.