An hour later, after he had eaten dinner and was thinking about other things entirely he picked up a metal dagger Myklan had removed from his belt and it came to him like a lightening flash.
“His face always reminded me of the rising sun,” Aric’s mother had told him, describing his human father. He had never understood what she meant.
Until now. It was impossible to look at Myklan’s face without thinking of Athas’s red sun, bursting over the horizon. Could it be true? Could Rieve’s father also be his own? Mother had thought he was dead, but she hadn’t known that, had only assumed it when he’d stopped coming to see her.
“He never seemed to like elves,” she’d also said. “He didn’t even like himself, when he was with me. It was like he couldn’t stay away, but then when he was there, he loathed himself for it. When I told him I was with child, he was mortified. I never saw him again.”
Another thought was nagging at Aric, but he couldn’t bring it to the surface. He left it alone, listened to a conversation Mazzax and Tunsall were having.
He almost didn’t want to say anything. Rieve would hate it. Sheridia might refuse to help them against Kadya and Tallik. But he couldn’t let it go. He tried to tell himself that it couldn’t be true, that if he voiced his suspicions, Rieve might never speak to him again.
But that red mark glowed in the firelight like it was a sun, blazing away, taunting him.
He couldn’t ignore it.
Whatever the risk, he had to say something.
“That mark on your face, sir. You’ve always had it?”
Myklan’s hand drifted to the red spot. “All my life. I suppose I’ve forgotten about it. Except when someone reminds me.”
Rieve stared at Aric as if he’d lost his mind. Perhaps he had. He avoided her gaze and pressed on. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he said. “When I noticed it, it reminded me of something. Something my mother told me, about my father.”
“Aric,” Rieve said, leaning toward him. “What are you going on about?”
“My father was a human, as I’m sure you know. Mother said that looking upon his face always reminded her of the rising sun. The same could be said of you.”
“I suppose,” Myklan said uneasily. “But …”
“Her name was Keyasune.”
“A lovely name,” Myklan said. “I’ve never heard it before. I’m sure she was a fine woman.”
“She was. Strong and courageous. She raised me alone, of course, because my father abandoned her the moment he learned she would bear him a child. The child of a human and a half-elf. She said he seemed drawn to her, but hated elves, and that being with her made him turn his hatred on himself.”
“Your father had a problem,” Rieve said. “But it’s nothing to do with mine, Aric, so stop.”
“I’m sorry, Rieve,” Aric said, meeting her gaze at last. He held up a hand toward her, as if he could calm her with it. “I need to say this.”
“My daughter has a point, young man,” Myklan said. “Any problems you had with your parents don’t concern us now. We’ve problems of our own.”
“So I’ve heard. Poor Pietrus, accused of murdering all those people.”
“What?” Rieve said. She was about to explode with anger. Aric hoped she didn’t attack him, because it was hard enough to get through this without also holding her off.
“But it wasn’t Pietrus, was it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Myklan said.
“I think you do, sir. I think you’re not just Pietrus and Rieve’s father, but mine as well.”
“Aric, stop it!” Rieve cried. “That’s an awful thing to say!”
Myklan took his feet, clenching his fists. “That’s utter nonsense, and I won’t hear it.”
But Solyara rose as well, stepping between her husband and Aric. “Let him speak,” she said. Her tone was resigned, her manner firm.
“You’ve always been drawn to elf women, haven’t you?” Aric asked. “It was an urge you couldn’t resist. You met one—Keyasune, my mother—and for a while you tried to pretend you could really be with one. But you were ashamed of that urge, ashamed of yourself for giving in to it, and when she told you that I was on the way, that was more than you could take. You hated elves, hated them and wanted them at the same time, and to learn you would be the father of someone—something—who was even partly elf … that was worst of all. So you left her and never let her see you again. She spent her life believing you had died. I’m glad she did, because it would have been worse to know that you lived but were so ashamed you couldn’t bear to be near her.”
“Solyara, this is nonsense,” Myklan said.
“I think we should all hear it,” she replied. “He’s right, you know. Myklan’s head turns whenever he sees an attractive elf woman, even to this day. He has always been attracted to them. You try to pretend you’re not, but there’s no denying it, my husband.”
“But, Solyara—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Please, Myklan, respect me. I knew about the one, all along. So did others among our friends; you weren’t half as clever as you thought. Once, years later, I even went to the market. I’d found out who she was by then. I went, bought a scrap of something from her, I don’t even remember what now. I do recall how excited she was to get an actual metal coin, as if it was something she’d never seen. I felt sorry for her—spending all that time with a wealthy nobleman, and yet so poor that a simple coin could thrill her so. It was more than I owed, but I let her keep it all. She showed it to her child, and—oh. Oh, no. Aric. I never knew about you—that her child was his.”
Aric’s hand had gone to his medallion, hanging around his neck for most of his life. Her coin, Solyara’s. His father’s wife’s. He had a vague memory of the incident, though he’d been young, and no memory at all of what the woman in his vision had looked like. It could have been Solyara. In those days most human women looked the same to him. “This is that coin,” he said. “She never spent it.”
“Oh, Aric, I’m so sorry.”
Myklan had stopped protesting, and Aric wanted to change the subject. He swallowed back a bitter taste. “I don’t know how long it’s been going on,” he continued. “But the urge you felt, the urge you couldn’t deny, has stayed with you. Worse, perhaps, since I was born. You might not have known me, but you knew of me, you knew somewhere in Nibenay you had a child, born of a half-elf. That must have driven you mad. Yet still you couldn’t stop wanting elves, or hating yourself for wanting them.”
“Aric,” Corlan said. “I think Rieve is right, you’re saying things you can’t prove, things that once said there’ll be no turning back from.”
“I know, Corlan. And believe me, I wish I didn’t have to. But now Pietrus has been accused of Myklan’s crimes, and Myklan is letting his entire family suffer for what he’s done.”
“What?” Rieve asked. She jumped to her feet, turned way from the circle, toward the second fire. Her shoulders shook with sobs. Corlan tried to comfort her, but she writhed away from his touch, burying her face in her hands.
“Your desire for elf women turned into violence, didn’t it? You couldn’t be with them, and you couldn’t stop wanting to. So there came a day when you killed a human man who dared take what you wanted so badly. And you killed her. Because she saw you? Or just because of who she was? It probably doesn’t matter.”
Myklan was shaking with rage. His face had gone white, except for that mark, and he was biting his lower lip so hard Aric expected him to draw blood. But he had stopped protesting.
“And that made you feel better, at least for a time. But then the urge came again. Was is stronger this time? You satisfied it in the same way. In time, perhaps, the urge changed. You no longer burned with desire for those elf women, but for the desire to kill them, and the men with them.