Prince of Attania, 2

Later that night, Attan dug out the communicator his father had given him and quietly called Jet. It had taken them the rest of the day and half the night to reach Arden by car, and Merrell brought him directly to the enforcer’s wing where he would be housed for the next several years. On the drive back, Merrell had stressed to Attan the importance of the new rules: no transforming without other Family present, absolutely no going off on his own without permission, and even then, he needed an escort.

Jet laughed on the other end of the communicator. “Ask Merrell if that ever worked with me,” he said.

“You mean I can?” Attan asked hopefully. He kept his voice low because he had a roommate. Not Greg this time, but John, the young enforcer he’d met in Darcy several weeks earlier.

“I gave the order,” Jet admitted. “I didn’t want you traveling back alone after all that happened. Why tempt fate? But it’s the other Elementals I’m more worried about. As Prince, I need you to set the example. But no, I don’t expect you to keep physical shape all the time.” Even through the communicator, Attan could feel Jet’s shudder. The thought was repugnant to him, too. “Just—be sensible about it.”

Attan grinned. Don’t get caught, in other words. He could do that. Jet promised to come up to Arden to see him before his next big wedding in Wister. Attan closed the communicator and went to sleep, feeling better already.

“You’re not supposed to have that, you know.” John pointed to Attan’s pillow, which at the moment covered his communicator, as Attan opened bleary eyes. So he had been listening last night! The young enforcer moved aside several textbooks on a high shelf. “At least hide it better,” he said with a small grin. He was already washed and dressed. He left Attan to get ready, after admonishing him to hurry; at Arden, breakfast was not optional. Attan groaned and rolled out of bed.

Attan very quickly learned the routine at Arden. Breakfast, then classes with the other royals, then lunch, and afternoons spent training in the enforcer’s wing, or out with Merrell or one of his senior enforcers, learning how to handle various real-life situations. Attan liked those better than the educational classes, because he was able to use his elemental abilities and could even transform into pure spirit if a situation called for fast action. He learned that generally, the younger the Elemental, the more spiritual stamina he or she had, though none of the enforcers came close to what he was able to do. The rumor went that only the less-skilled royals became enforcers. The King, Merrell, Daniel and Attan all knew that wasn’t necessarily so.

Attan only asked once what had happened between Merrell and Emma. “I lied,” Merrell had replied matter-of-factly. “If it makes her happy to believe I took her son under my wing, then good. At least I don’t have to deal with it ever again.”

Emma believed Merrell acknowledged Tom as his, which was an altogether different interpretation than what Merrell apparently thought. “So you’re not going to see Emma again?” Attan asked.

“Why would I?” Merrell walked away while Attan was still puzzling over that reply. He’d thought Merrell actually cared about Emma, at least, if not her son.

Attan had few friends at Arden, besides John the enforcer. John didn’t attend the morning sessions at the main school, being older than Attan and beyond that sort of thing. But he stuck by Attan in the afternoon sessions, having assigned himself as Attan’s personal tutor. Attan suspected Merrell might have had something to do with that. However, it was relatively easy to fool John, who wasn’t nearly as skilled in the use of his elemental abilities as the Prince.

He was glad to find himself assigned to Matt’s new class. Now that he was a bona fide teacher, Mattie Pomeroy frowned on his youthful nickname, but he had no objection to being called Matt. He was, after all, only a few years older than his students. Attan was under strict orders to do no more than any of the other students in his group, as far as elemental skills were concerned, but Matt was a little more lenient. He often used Attan as an example, and was the only person at Arden, staff and students combined, who would spontaneously merge with Attan. If Attan had to rank him, he would put Matt somewhere just below Daniel, but significantly higher than any other Family—as far as elemental skills were concerned. That included Merrell.

Matt’s new class was all about transforming, and the royals at Arden quickly learned their limits, or lack of—which is where Attan came in. When a new student first completed a merge, which was more than just letting go of his or her physical body to become their elements, it was often overwhelming. Family had been human for too many generations. The total lack of individuality could be heady, as well as frightening. Attan had been merging before he was even born, so to him it was the natural state, and his physical body took effort to maintain. Every so often a new student would get lost in the transformation from physical to purely Elemental, and would lose focus, expanding as Parker had accidentally done on Attan’s first visit to Arden. Then Attan would, as he had done that time, go after the lost Elemental and rein him in until the student’s sense of self-awareness reappeared. This rarely happened more than once, as the newer students immediately felt the difference. Unfortunately, it didn’t endear him to many of the students, who took his intervention as a criticism of their inborn abilities.

Since Attan slept in the enforcer’s wing, he didn’t spend his free time, such as it was, with the other royals either, so that didn’t help matters. Everybody thought that now that the King was taking on more wives, a new and hopefully better Prince would soon be born, so nobody felt the need to be particularly nice to Attan. Except Matt of course. He didn’t care about the succession; he genuinely liked Attan. Attan knew this because of their merges; it made him look forward to Matt’s classes most of all.

Attan ended up attending his father’s second, technically third, wedding after all. He did not stand with the royal couple as Attania’s Prince. This time, he stood in the background with the other enforcers, guarding and observing. He observed his new “mother,” the lovely Madelyne Farley, now Estee like him. She was young, looking more of an age with Jet than Lorra or even his own mother did. That’s because Jet had stopped aging for all intents and purposes. Attan wondered if that would happen to him, too. His father often warned him it would happen before he was full-grown if he didn’t eat enough. He liked what he saw of Madelyne. He’d liked Lorra, too. He hoped both these new wives would give Jet some much-sought-after heirs and take some of the scrutiny off him. Attan was well aware that most of Attania thought him deficient because of his commoner mother.

Jet found time after the ceremony to slip aside and seek out Attan. In Elemental form, they merged, as it was the quickest and surest way to exchange information. True to his promise, Jet had met with Attan a few times near Arden before the wedding. It had given Attan a chance to test his skills in front of John. The young enforcer had no idea his charge was sneaking out at night, out of their shared room, out of the enforcer’s wing, out of Arden completely. It was easy. Attan improved on his original deception with Greg, strengthening shadows until they were virtually indistinguishable from the real him. Of course, if John had tried to shake him awake, the shadows might hold up but they would not respond. Either John would think Attan truly dead, or he would realize he’d been fooled. Luckily, it hadn’t come to that yet.

“Can you take back your physical form, no matter what?” Jet had asked, as they perched on a log in the woods past Arden. “If you were forced to relinquish it, I mean.”

That had never been an issue for Attan. The greater issue, he thought, was would he want to? What if what Aylard or whoever was acting in his place offered was so enticing, he wouldn’t want to return to the physical world? For Attan, that was a very real danger, because he didn’t think much of the physical world to begin with. No, that wasn’t quite right. Lately, he’d begun to develop ties—Greg, Emma, the girl Elea, the lights—the lights!”

“Dad, have you seen the colored lights in the caves under New Parrion? Did you know they go out into the Eastern Sea and they—clash, and then they go back into the caves?” With all the excitement of Merrell’s coming and Tom’s startling revelation about his supposed parentage, Attan had completely forgotten about the lights.

Jet didn’t bother with words. He immediately relinquished his physical body to go into Attan, who did the same. Show me. The thought came clearly, the last coherent thought in a lightning interchange of images and sensations.

“Daniel doesn’t know about this?” When Jet took back his physical body, he was still trying to sort through everything he’d experienced through the merge. “Are you sure the lights came off the rock walls and went out into the sea?”

There had been no time to tell Daniel or anyone else besides Greg about his adventure. He had discovered something about the colors on the caves that neither Daniel nor Jet had in their years of investigation. The colors moved. Attan had been able to travel within them, a part of them as surely as he was a part of every elemental he ever merged with. He’d naturally assumed the colored markings on the walls were elementals, too. Jet and Daniel hadn’t.

“And they clashed together and just—receded? How far out?”

Attan nodded. “They all criss-crossed,” he said. “It was pretty spectacular. It happened just as the sun touched the horizon, right at dawn. As soon as the sun came up, they went back.”

“Did they ever talk to you?”

Attan knew what his father meant. Elementals didn’t talk like physical beings did—with the possible exception of Midver’s unusual elementals. Those elementals didn’t speak in words, either, but in clearer images than most elementals, who just were. “Not really,” he said. “I just became a part of them when I traveled within them, but except for contentment, there was no real communication.” He hadn’t thought much about it at the time, since he was in a hurry. It had seemed natural. Now, he wondered if he’d missed something important. “You don’t think they’re elementals?”

Jet pondered the question. “No, now that you’ve shown me, I do think they’re elementals. The real question is why didn’t either Daniel or I think of it before?”

Jet wanted nothing more than to go immediately and explore the caverns below New Parrion in light of this new information, but he had a wedding to prepare for. He settled for contacting Daniel by communicator and asking his brother to investigate the lights.

Now, at the wedding, Jet and Attan exchanged their recent experiences, save a few—Attan did not want to know about Jet’s married life—Daniel had gone to see the dawn phenomenon with his own eyes and even traveled as water to the point where Attan had reported the lights crashed spectacularly together midway to the horizon. He’d gone precisely at dawn for four days in a row, with no results. There were no lights beyond the caves. Perhaps the phenomenon only occurred at specific times throughout the year. Daniel would keep trying.

Jet still believed there was a hidden meaning behind the colored lights which lined many of Attania’s underground caverns, if only they could figure it out. He asked if Attan had found any near Midver. “I—I’m not sure,” Attan said, taking back his physical body. “I never looked.”

“Well, look,” his father advised. “I’ll let Merrell know you’re to be allowed access to Midver, on my authority. He can work it into your schedule.”

“What about the threat? You know—discorporating like the Sons of the First?”

Jet smiled. “I never really worried you would be taken against your will. But you’re young still—I was more worried you would be influenced to believe that nonsense.”

Attan didn’t tell his father he did believe it. He just nodded. “I told you I’d stay.”

Jet nodded back, and pulled his son into a hug. “I know you will. I’ve got to get back. Eat something. Put a little meat on those bones.” He softened his criticism with a rueful grin.

Attan settled into his routine at Arden, mornings belonging to classwork and afternoons with Merrell’s enforcers. He experienced firsthand some of the things the enforcers had to deal with in a town not far from Darcy. Enforcers were the pariah of Attania, for all that they were necessary. Family and non-family alike resented their interference, and the dreaded gray uniform sparked fear in most of the people who had the misfortune to encounter it.

Still, he enjoyed going outside of the restrictive bounds of Arden, even if it wasn’t alone. He thought he might even grow to like it, if his father had another heir and he was relegated to enforcer. Attan Spencer. He tried the name out on his tongue. Not bad.

“What did you say?” John looked at him curiously.

Attan reddened. “Nothing.”

Attan accompanied John and two other senior enforcers to the town of Breen, where complaints of cheating by certain Family officials warranted scrutiny. Breen was a mixed town, partly Family and partly not. Before Jet became King, Family held the important positions in the town, leaving the tedious work to the non-family residents. It was a common theme all over Attania.

As their distinctive black limousine cruised down the main street, business owners peered out of windows or hurriedly closed their doors. Their driver parked at one end of the long main street so they could all get out. Three older enforcers led the way back down the street, stopping at each business as they went. John and one of the older enforcers took the right side of the street, while Attan, the driver and the third enforcer went systematically down the left.

“What are we looking for?” Attan asked.

“Trouble,” the third enforcer said without a smile.

“Not what—who,” said the driver. “We walk, we look, we see who panics first.”

“Oh.” It hadn’t occurred to Attan that the enforcers might use their reputation to their own advantage.

One of the storefronts which had been wide open as they drove past earlier was now locked tight, in the middle of the afternoon. “Here,” said the driver, becoming shadow to squeeze under the closed door. Attan quickly followed suit, leaving the other enforcer to signal the two across the street. Attan retained his shadow essence once inside, although he noted that the driver had taken back his physical body on the other side of the door, and now just used shadow to conceal himself.

At first glance, the store was empty. Attan sensed movement far in the back and flowed over darkened displays of paper goods in that direction. The enforcer who had been with John entered in Elemental form, taking back his physical body as soon as he was inside, the same as his comrade. This one flicked on the lights, drowning the shop in color. It was a bookstore.

Three people huddled near the back wall, two non-family and one definitely Family. They must be employees of the bookstore. Attan materialized in front of them, startling a scream out of the older non-family woman. The two enforcers near the front of the store hurried over.

“Why did you close this shop?” One asked.

The non-family woman stammered out something, only to be cut off by the second enforcer, who asked, “Is he bothering you?” He meant the young Family man who cowered next to a girl in a blue smock with ‘Books Aplenty’ embroidered on it.

The older woman’s eyes widened. “No. He’s a customer!”

Attan heard scrabbling noises from somewhere above. “Where’s John? He asked.

The driver looked up, annoyed at the interruption. “Outside, watching the exit. Why don’t you go join him? We’ll handle this.”

Attan wasn’t sure the enforcers were doing anything other than antagonizing these people, although it was curious that they’d locked their building at the sight of the enforcers. He took Elemental form, becoming wind, but he didn’t go outside to look for John. He’d definitely heard noises upstairs. A quick search of the shop revealed no stairs of any kind leading to the upper level. The entrance was probably from the outside of the building. But Attan didn’t necessarily need stairs, either. He went through the ceiling to the upper floor.

To his surprise, there were several people up here, mostly Family but some non-family as well. Even more surprising was the presence of free elementals, who tended not to gather around people unless there was something going on. It appeared as though the enforcers had interrupted a meeting of some sort. A meeting which would attract free elementals? Attan puzzled over that, as the free elementals merged in and out of his wind form.

Too late, Attan realized that wind was possibly not the best choice inside a confined space. The people looked up and around as their hair and clothing stirred with Attan’s presence. “The First!” One murmured it, and then a few others picked it up. “It’s The First! He’s here! He’s among us!” Even the non-family people repeated it. Attan realized he had stumbled upon a meeting of the Sons of the First.

A Family man tried unsuccessfully to shush them, whispering fiercely, “It’s not The First. I would know if it was The First. Quiet! Or the enforcers will discover us!”

Attan wasn’t sure if now was a good time to reveal his presence. He was confused—again. Had he interrupted a ‘release?’ But why were there non-family among the Sons of the First?

A section of floor exploded upward with a loud clatter as the enforcers responded to the noise upstairs. Several people screamed, and one non-family man pushed right past the enforcers in his panic, and fell through the broken floor to the bookstore below. There was an awful thump, and then sudden silence.

Attan flowed through the opening, still in his wind form, to the still figure lying between two tall bookshelves. He didn’t think; he flowed through the man and learned an awful truth in that moment. All his life he’d thought of non-family as having no spark, no spirit like all Family possessed. But he was wrong. Non-family weren’t the same as Family, but they were there. This man had nothing; no spark, no breath, no lingering identity at all. He was dead—and there was nothing—nothing at all—left.