The High King's Tomb

The chamber ended at a room framed by a broad arched entryway. It contained a worktable and a couple sections of shelving that were mostly empty. The lamplight glistened against a seam of crystalline quartz that jagged through the smooth granite of the back wall like a streak of lightning. Inset into the wall was an alcove with a manuscript displayed in it.

“This was the area we discovered during renovations,” Estral said. “It was all walled off and we had no idea it was here.” She walked past the table to the alcove. “And it was here we found some old manuscripts, but only the one remained intact.”

Karigan followed Estral into the barrel-vaulted chamber and over to the alcove. She looked down on the manuscript. It was yellowed and stained. She knew what it was without Estral telling her. This was why Estral had brought her on the “tour,” to show her this one thing: the Journal of Hadriax el Fex. Her ancestor, the murderer.

Her fingers hovered just above the fragile title page. She could not read the scrawl on it, for it was written in the imperial tongue, but she knew the translation: My Voyage from Arcosia to the New Lands; the Country There and Its Resources; My Adventures Among the Heathen Inhabitants; Our Settlement of Morhavonia; and the Long War that Ensued. Journal of Hadriax el Fex, Count of Fextaigne. Then in Old Sacoridian, he had written: Hereby known as Galadheon.

“The paper must have been from Arcosia,” Estral commented, “and of a very high quality to last all these years. Our ancestors had nothing like it.”

Sacoridian ancestors, she meant. Karigan’s ancestor was of Arcosia. “I sent my father the copy you made for me,” she said. “But I don’t know if he’s bothered to read it.”

Her fingers trembled and she withdrew her hand without touching the manuscript. Though she could not read the words, words in her ancestor’s own hand, they seemed to speak to her, reach out and resonate. She turned her back on it.

Why was it that everything she had once thought to be true, like her father’s fidelity to her dead mother, had been turned upside down? It wasn’t enough that she had become a Rider instead of the merchant she had always planned to be, but even those things she had thought incontrovertible, like her heritage, had been swept out from under her feet. Everything that had been the foundation of who she was turned out to be nothing but lies. She swiped away unexpected tears.

“Karigan?” Estral’s voice held a tinge of concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything and nothing.” She strode down the aisle between shelves but did not get far before she stood in darkness. Estral had not followed. She turned and saw her friend standing at the alcove gazing at Hadriax el Fex’s journal. After a few moments, she left it behind, her lamplight pushing the dark down the aisle and revealing piles of scrolls on the shelves to either side of them.

“Is it something to do with Hadriax?” she asked.

Karigan took a shuddering breath. “My people were fishermen, or still are, I presume.” Her father had never taken her to Black Island where he grew up. There was little love between him and his father, the grandfather she’d never met. “Simple Sacoridian fishermen. They’re not supposed to be descended from imperial murderers.”

Estral cocked her head the way she did when listening very closely, or turning something over in her mind. “It was war, and atrocities were committed on both sides, by Arcosians and Sacoridians both. Karigan, you aren’t your ancestor. Hadriax el Fex is long dead and gone to dust. Besides, he was courageous enough to renounce Mornhavon in the end and aid the League. If he had not, the outcome of the war might have been far different.

“As for your family on Black Island, they are not the simple folk you think. Your grandfather holds a good deal of prestige among the islanders and owns several fishing vessels.”

“I–I didn’t know.” Karigan scrunched her eyebrows in consternation. It was not fair that Estral knew more about her family than she did. “I know only the stories my father and aunts told me. Seems my father has kept a number of things from me.”

“I’m sure he had his reasons,” Estral said. “Your family was poor when your father left the island, and though they are not exactly prosperous by some accountings, they are, for fishermen, doing well enough for themselves.”

“How do you know?”

“Our minstrels voyage out to the Night Islands from time to time, where they are eagerly received, for news is sparse and visitors rare, especially visitors gifted in music and tale telling. The minstrels watch and listen, and learn the affairs of the communities around them.”

I should have guessed, Karigan thought.

She had never been overly curious about her extended family out on Black Island. She knew they fished, and that her grandfather was a horrible enough tyrant that her father left the island to seek his destiny elsewhere. She had grown up absorbing her father’s antipathy toward the island G’ladheons. She’d had enough love and support from her father and aunts, other mainland members of the family, and even the household staff, that she never felt anything was missing. Just her mother who had died so young. Her mother’s side of the family, also from Black Island, was an even greater mystery to her. Maybe one day she’d venture to the island and see for herself what her family was all about.

“Nothing is ever what it seems anymore, and nothing is what it should be,” Karigan said.

Estral’s eyes glinted in the lamplight as she gazed at Karigan. “I’m sorry things haven’t gone the way you’ve expected, or have turned out differently than you’ve always known them to be. It does seem like you’re adjusting to Rider life, though.”