“Heir Apparent” – Chapter One of River Dragon

“Heir Apparent” – Chapter One of River Dragon

This is an excerpt from River Dragon, Book 5 in the Ari Ara Series. You can get River Dragon through our Community Publishing Campaign.

Gritting her teeth, Ari Ara waved to the crowd, a fixed smile plastered on her face. The horse fidgeted beneath her, sensing her discomfort and distraction. Her fitted jacket was so stiff that she could hardly move.

Designed to prevent slouching, Ari Ara thought in annoyance, and any other motion unbefitting to a royal heir.

Solid as a suit of armor – and just as uncomfortable – the jacket held her ramrod straight as she rode through the tight-packed streets. Thickly embroidered patterns of river dragons – the symbol of the royal house of Marin – curled around the cuffs, arms, collar, and panels of the jacket. The heavy fabric weighed more than the thin strands of silvermail beneath it. She’d argued against wearing the woven metal garment, but lost. The silvermail protected her from assassins’ arrows. As the double royal heir to two thrones, her life was not merely her own. Her discomfort with the weight of security was a small price to pay for the stability of the world.

It’s worth it, she told herself. When I’m queen, I’ll make it possible to ride through the streets without armor. She grinned, thinking of all the changes she longed to make when she wore the crown. Build peace. Retire the army. Use the money to build schools. Train children to solve conflicts, not fight them. Teach everyone how to make peace not only possible, but inevitable.

Since the Great Lady of Mariana had summoned her to return home, Ari Ara had imagined this day a thousand times. She hadn’t expected her arms to ache from hours of waving, however, nor for her legs to shake with cramps, nor her back to scream from riding a slow-plodding horse, nor for her cheek muscles to twitch from constant smiling. She tried not to squirm as the procession inched through the enthusiastic throng of people packed into the streets of Stoneport. At this rate, it would take them a week to reach the river dock where her aunt, the Great Lady Brinelle, waited to welcome the long-exiled heir and take her down the river to Mariana Capital.

Thank the ancestors we didn’t try to ride all the way there, Ari Ara thought.

She’d rolled her eyes when Shulen – her gray-haired mentor – had insisted that they travel from the Spires to the Stonelands discretely. He’d served as Captain of the Guard under two queens and saw assassins hiding behind every bush. But she’d overlooked the tedium of wading through teeming masses of people. Never mind flung daggers or poison-tipped arrows. It was more likely that cheering students would crush her with adulation. It had taken them hours to cross the city.

Every fishmonger, farrier, and farmer wanted to see the fifteen-year-old daughter of Queen Alinore of Mariana and Tahkan Shirar, the Harraken Desert King. Schoolchildren and scullery lads scaled the pillars of buildings to see the fabled Lost Heir who had been found at age eleven, hidden in the High Mountains. Street urchins and shopgirls scurried into the streets to catch a glimpse of a legend-in-the-making as she returned to her mother’s lands after being exiled. Porters and potters packed the sidewalks, gawking at the child of their mortal enemies, the Harraken. Merchants and milliners jostled for a view of the girl who evoked hope and hate simply by being alive. Dockworkers and river sailors debated whether she’d defend the nation or betray them to the desert demons. Cooks and housekeepers argued about her outspoken dedication to peace. Warriors wondered what the Heir To Two Thrones heralded for their future.

Ari Ara resisted the urge to loosen her collar. The day’s warmth made trickles of sweat run beneath the frothy cascade of shirt frills that fell like lily blossoms down her front. Her copper hair blazed in its braided crown and only the bronzed skin of her father’s desert-dwelling people kept her from burning red as a hot coal.

Ahead of her, Minli of Monk’s Hand swiveled on his horse’s back to toss her a bolstering grin. His golden stallion stood with infinite patience, head high, swishing his white tail as proudly as if he bore the royal heir. The desert horse had once belonged to Ari Ara, but had traded loyalties the instant he met the one-legged Minli. Ari Ara couldn’t blame the horse. She, too, held a ferocious loyalty to the fifteen-year-old boy. Minli was her best friend, her oldest friend. Under the tousled bird’s nest of brown curls lay one of the best minds of their generation. Clever, studious, and quick-witted, Minli had hauled Ari Ara out of trouble more times than she could count.

Unbound by the same expectations of stiff dignity as she, Minli fanned the front of his white tunic against the heat. The black symbol of the Mark of Peace inked on the back puckered and billowed. The circle rippled, the two halves of river waves and sand dunes shifted as if wind-stirred. Ari Ara twitched her shoulders where, hidden under her clothes, the same black circle had been emblazoned on her skin, the sign that she was the heir. Ari Ara’s eyes swept up to the flags that surrounded her procession, all bearing the same symbol, all borne by members of the Peace Force.

They carried no weapons. They fought no battles. They waged no wars.

They were followers of the Way Between, the ancient non-martial art of working for peace. They stopped fights and forged friendships. They resolved conflicts and aided reconciliation. They strove for a peace rooted in justice and had traversed the Border Mountains all year, quenching the smoldering embers of hatred that so often sparked the fires of violence into the inferno of war.

As soon as Ari Ara had been summoned to return to Mariana, twenty of the Peace Force members had gathered at her side. From their outposts in villages and mountain towns, they journeyed long and hard to assemble in a show of support. Commoners and nobles, riverlands residents and desert dwellers, elders and parents and youth, professors and carpenters: the Peace Force embraced them all. Ari Ara’s smile shone as she gazed proudly at her friends. Each one had vied for a place in her honor guard.

We wouldn’t miss this for all the coin in Mariana Capital, they’d written, sending word on the wings of messenger hawks. It’s a moment that will go down in history.

Ari Ara wished her father was here. But the Marianan nobles had specifically – and strongly – insisted on disinviting the infamous Desert King from joining the returning procession. Tahkan Shirar had ridden off into the desert wilds in a storm of fury. No amount of diplomatic efforts had been able to smooth the matter over. Not yet. Tahkan would not forgive this insult easily. He seethed with pride and clung to honor. The copper-haired man hissed with ferocious temper and fierce protectiveness of his people.

I am going into the mountains, he wrote to Ari Ara, where I can fling lightning bolts into boulders instead of at the heads of riverlands idiots.

Given the glowering looks shot at the Harraken members of the Peace Force, the Desert King’s absence was possibly for the best. Scars cut by millennia of wars would not be healed overnight. It had to be taken one step at a time.

Like this procession, she thought, sighing and craning ahead to see what delayed them.

The Peace Force members were slowly opening a path through the crowd, parting the dense pack of people with infinite patience. With easeful words and small chuckles, they formed the flanks of a gentle plow, opening a furrow for the procession to follow. As she inched forward, Ari Ara nodded at a beaming stone carver and winked at a solemn-eyed child sucking her thumb beside her mother. She caught the eye of a pack of students clinging to the shoulders of a tall statue and smiled. One of them clutched his heart as if shot by love’s arrow and toppled backwards into his friends’ surprised arms. Ari Ara stifled a giggle.

“Are you flirting with him?”

She pivoted toward the incredulous voice at her elbow. Finn Paikason’s black eyebrows pulled into a scowl. He craned over her horse’s neck to stare at the students. Rangy as a yearling elk, sturdy as a mountain goat, the youth drew as many askance glances as the desert dwellers. The Paika of the Border Mountains were loyal to none and sometimes enemies to all. The rumor that the heir to two nations had lost her heart to one rankled many. But Ari Ara didn’t care. She loved the stormy-eyed, wild-built boy – as he well knew!

“He’s flirting with me,” she retorted, rolling her eyes at Finn. “There’s a difference.”

“Not that I blame him,” Finn added, finally grinning. “You look amazing.”

She turned to him with a blazing sunbeam of a smile. Finn remembered all over again why he’d fallen in love with her . . . and why he chose to be at her side through all of this. Ari Ara de Marin en Shirar was the most remarkable person he’d ever met. She had trusted him when no one else did, listened when all other ears – and minds – were closed, and saved the clans of his family from death when few others thought them worthy of aid. She’d braved dangers with him and matched him in the Paika’s wild dances. He owed her. He loved her. And he’d ride alongside her as far as he could.

“You look every inch the heir,” he assured her, casting an appreciative glance up and down her fancy clothes. “All that scrubbing paid off.”

She made a face at him. Ari Ara had entered the inn last night dusty from the road, hair wild with the wind, the knees of her trousers streaked with grass stains, and her boots scuffed dull with crosshatched wear. She left this morning afraid to sneeze, not a hair out of place, the finest garments catching the light, coiffed beyond even her own recognition. The fleet of servants sent by her aunt, the Great Lady Brinelle, had taken one dismayed look at her and thrown her into the bathtub for a scorching soak. They washed her hair so many times, she suspected them of attempting to rinse out the telltale red of her father’s people. They scrubbed her from the tips of her toes to the edges of her ears. Ari Ara grumpily thought they were trying to rub out all signs of her madcap adventures, leaving only a bland, well-behaved, fifteen-year-old heir.

She doubted their strategy would work.

They turned off the broad avenue to the central port, following the quay-side docks to meet the Great Lady. The crowd thinned, giving way to the bustle of oxen teams pulling crated statues and winches hauling granite blocks onto barges. The river sailors paused their labors as the Lost Heir passed, leaning muscular arms on ship rails or waving from the rigging. On the landward side, the clerks of shipping companies jostled in the windows, vying to catch a glimpse of Ari Ara. As word spread, the midday taverns emptied. People filed into the street and pressed their backs up against the buildings to let the riders pass. Emir and Shulen scanned the narrow corridor cautiously. There wasn’t much room to maneuver.

Ahead of them, the sound of chanting arose. Ari Ara peered over her horse’s head, looking toward the intersection. A cluster of blue-garbed sisters, spiritual counterparts to the monks, huddled on the corner, eyes closed, swaying side to side as their lips moved over the words. They held their hands up, one arm crossed over the other, fists balled to block bad spirits or omens. Ari Ara furrowed her brows, straining to catch the words. The streets snarled with competing sounds – voices, bellowing mules, ratcheting winches – but she recognized the chant. She scowled. It was a warding prayer, a protection against evil. The monks where she’d grown up had used it once when a beast dug up a baby’s grave in the village. Ari Ara swiveled left and right in her saddle, looking for what they were chanting at.

Behind her was a wall. A plain brick wall at the back of a warehouse. She craned around again. As the riders clopped down the length of the cobbled street, the sisters pivoted, tracking them. One caught her eye and glared. Then the woman deliberately turned her head to the side and spat. Ari Ara’s mouth fell open in shock. They were chanting against her.

A rattle of words burst from the lips of the blue-robed woman, rising over the chanting:

“One will come who heralds ill, prophesized, foretold, feared. Death follows in her footsteps, war-breaker, change-maker. Chaos and upheaval chase her. Famines, floods, misfortune stalk her.”

Ari Ara gaped, recognizing some of the familiar words of the Prophecy of the Lost Heir – the one that foretold her existence. The phrases had been severed from context, mashed together with baseless claims, and twisted into a litany of doom.

“Shulen,” she muttered, annoyed.

“I hear them.”

The warrior’s reply came low and calm. Too calm. In his quiet, Ari Ara recognized the taut carefulness of high alert. He shifted to move his horse between her and the chanters, but before he could interposition himself, a round, hard object hurtled through the air. Ari Ara ducked low, flattening against the horse’s mane.

Something smashed against the bricks, a crunching splat followed by a gagging stench. A trail of slimy yellow oozed down the wall.

“Eggs – they’re just eggs!” Ari Ara cried out, nearly laughing in relief, moving swiftly to forestall Shulen’s instinctive reaction to a threat.

She ducked as another rotten egg whipped past her head. A third flew toward her as she straightened. Without thinking, she reached out for the egg. Her focus tightened. The world slowed. She dropped into the ancient practice of the Way Between. Neither fight nor flight, the non-martial art drew upon the teeming field of all other possible reactions. With four years of daily training under her belt, the graceful motions hummed in her bones and sang through her blood. Time elongated under the intense stare of her sharpened attention. Her breath sounded loud in her ears. The shouts turned muffled and dull. Delicately, she touched the edge of the egg’s shell, not catching it – anything that forceful would smash it – but merely redirecting its path. She gently tugged the egg into a long arc, rolling it through her fingers and palm, rotating her arm over her head in a circle, spiraling the egg around and sending it back–

Splat!

Slimy, yellow yolk and clear whites smashed on the blue robe of one of the sisters. Her snarling face shattered into a shocked gasp.

Heads swiveled. The chanting faltered. Shulen swore under his breath. In the moment before shock switched to fury, he signaled to the Peace Force to open the street and form a barrier between the sisters and the heir. Then he grabbed the reins of Ari Ara’s horse, kicked his own mount into motion, and led the riders out of the intersection, ignoring Ari Ara’s demand to go back and apologize, or talk to the women, or at least explain to everyone that they’d got the Prophecy of the Lost Heir wrong. It wasn’t all gloom and doom.

“Not now, Ari Ara,” he growled. “Let the Peace Force handle this.”

________

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