Sky Riders: The Rising Sun

A large, fair elf stood in the opened gateway. He dipped his head in their direction. “Welcome home, my lord,” he said.

Caelum nodded in return. “Thank you,” he answered. “It is good to be home.” He threw a sidelong smirk at Eliana at the elf’s use of “my lord” and she gave a quiet snort of laughter at the expression

Eliana looked around her, taking in the city. She knew she should have been anxious about entering this unknown place, about facing a people who could very well reject her as quickly as the humans had, but she was too distracted by the sight of Iterum. On first glance, the city appeared no different from the rest of the forest. The massive trees towered around her still, and she still walked along a vague dirt path. Elves were emerging from between the trees, coming towards them.

As she looked closer, Eliana realized that the elves were not coming from between the trees, but from out of the trees themselves. There were arched holes at the bases of the trees, liked rounded doorways. Higher up the trunks, round holes were carved into the trees as windows. Some trees had arched doorways higher up as well, opening onto balconies of thickly woven branches. It appeared as if the trees were hollow, and the elves lived within them.

The path beneath her feet turned to one of packed pebbles. Elves were now crowding along the path, cheering and shouting welcomes to Eliana’s companion, as if he were a returning war hero. She looked around her in confusion and discomfort, but Caelum didn’t seem to feel that this greeting was unusual. He smiled and waved at the elves, calling to a few of them in greeting as they continued down the path.

Eliana looked uncomfortably over her shoulder as the crowd of elves followed them along the path, with more elves joining them every minute. She held the egg closer to her side and touched the sword at her waist. She was not used to being pressed upon like this. People usually avoided her like a leper. If they did draw close, it was never for a good reason.

Ahead of them, the path suddenly widened, edged by hedges with blossoms of purple and white. Eliana studied the flowers with interest. Each individual bloom had a strange swirl of the two colors, which was clearly not a natural hue. She lifted her eyes ahead of them again and was caught off guard by the building in front of her.

Walls of sparkling white stone seemed to grow straight up out of the earth. At the end of the path, the stone formed an ornate archway above a large wooden door. The door was carved with intricate murals of animals, flowers, trees, and elves. The roof was not stone. Instead, the building was covered by the thick canopy of a massive tree.

A short flight of white stone steps led up to the door. Eliana glanced back over her shoulder as she and Caelum climbed the steps. The crowd had stopped on the path, just before the flowering hedges, and they now smiled and waved from there, still cheering Caelum’s return.

“Why did they stop following us?” she asked.

She looked back at his normally smooth face to find that it was creased in a frown of worry, like he was anticipating some extremely unpleasant event. He seemed tense and anxious, which made her own muscles coil instinctively. “Oh,” he answered in a curt, quiet voice, “the land beyond the hedges belongs to the king and queen and the royal family. You can only enter the property if you have an official invitation or are accompanied by a member of the royal family. Or if you’re arrested and are being brought for trial.”

The dark wooden doors opened in front of them and revealed a long room. Tall, white pillars ran along the outer walls, with rectangular windows in between. The ceiling above was nothing but a thick canopy of branches and leaves. The floor was a carpet of green grass, dotted with purple and white flowers, a wide walkway of solid stone cutting across the middle of it, which was where Caelum and Eliana now stood.

A male elf with dark hair, obviously a palace guard, gave Caelum a short bow. “This way, please, my lord,” he said in a deep voice. They followed him along the stone path towards the trunk of the tree, which occupied a great majority of the room’s center.

At the base of the tree, carved into the trunk, were two large thrones. A woman with silver strands in her black hair sat in one of the thrones, a circlet of golden leaves on her head; the other throne remained empty. A small group of elves stood on either side of the woman, watching Caelum and Eliana approach.

One of them—a young man with short black hair—stepped forward. The worried lines in Caelum’s forehead disappeared. He smiled brightly, and the two elves embraced roughly.

The dark-haired elf stepped back, grasping Caelum tightly by the shoulders, smiling still. “We were beginning to worry, Caelum. You were supposed to be back last night.”

“My apologies,” Caelum answered, wearing the smirk that Eliana was already beginning to become familiar with. “I ran into something that forced a delay.” Caelum turned and looked at here. “Denio, allow me to introduce the delay—Eliana. Eliana, this is my younger brother, Denio.”

Eliana held out her hand towards the elf, and he took it, pressing it to his lips briefly. “A pleasure to meet you, Eliana,” he said with a smile. She saw the resemblance between the two brothers in that smile.

Attempting to remember the few manners that Otium had tried to teach her, Eliana smiled back and answered, “The pleasure is mine.”

He released her hand and stepped back a little. It looked as if he were about to speak again, but a sharp, bell-like voice interrupted them.

“Caelum!” the voice snapped, ringing through the room.

Caelum’s smile vanished instantly, and the worried expression he’d been wearing since they’d approached the palace returned. Even Denio looked worried. The woman who sat at the base of the tree rose slowly from her throne. She wore an elegant dress of violet and gold, which swept the stone beneath her feet. Her amethyst eyes observed them coldly beneath the crown of gold.

Then, her face creased into a smile. “Welcome home, my son.”

A look of relief crossed Caelum’s face, and he stepped forward and embraced the woman. Realization struck Eliana. There was little room to doubt the fact that this woman was queen of the elves. And Caelum was her son. It struck Eliana that her supposedly open, honest companion may not have been as forthright about his rights to the throne as he’d claimed.

Caelum gestured her forward, and Eliana stepped stiffly up beside him, suddenly distrustful of the young man she’d so blindly followed into the cit. “Mother,” he said, “this is Eliana. Eliana, this is my mother, Queen Ivi.”

The queen gave her a gentle smile and graciously extended a soft, pale hand. Eliana froze like a startled deer. What was she supposed to do? Otium certainly had never prepared her for meeting with royalty. Cautiously, she took the queen’s hand and made an attempt at a curtsy, which appeared awkward to everyone in the room, both because of her execution and her breeches.

The queen’s smile widened a little in amusement and she released the girl’s hand. “You look tired, Eliana,” she said. “Caelum, take your friend to the guest chambers. You will both need to wash and change before the feast celebrating your return.”

Caelum gave a short bow. “Yes, mother.” He looked at Eliana again. “This way,” he said. She followed him as the stone path curved around the base of the tree. On the other side, the pathway crossed more green grass and led to another set of large, carved doors. A fair-haired elf gave a low bow and opened the doors for them.

As they stepped out of the palace, the pathway turned to pebbles again, as it had been in the city. In fact, it looked as if they had stepped back into the city. There were half a dozen large trees before them, with the same doors, windows, and balconies that she had seen in the other trees in the city. Here, however, bridges of branches and vines connected the trees to one another. A tall wall of white stone encircled the courtyard, connecting it to the palace.

Eliana stopped and looked at Caelum. “No claim to the throne, huh?” she asked incredulously. It disturbed her that he had lied to her so boldly, when she had so blindly and faithfully followed him. What else could he have been lying about?

“Technically, I told you the truth,” he said with an irritated shrug. “Yes, I am the queen’s eldest son, and some of the elves still call me a prince, but I have no more claim to the throne than you do. I abdicated my rights to that several years ago.”

“Why?” she asked with a doubtful frown.

He sighed and lowered his blue eyes to the ground. “I suppose I was just never cut out for royal life. All of the rules, the bowing, all of the people looking to me, just because of who I was. I wasn’t prepared to have the weight of the entire elven kingdom on my shoulders. I wanted people to follow me because of my merits; not because of the blood in my veins. I wanted to choose my own path—not have it chosen for me. So I gave up the throne and joined Iterum’s army, to earn my right to lead.”

Eliana studied him uncertainly. She was still wary of him; he had still lied to her, if only by omission. But she understood his reasoning in a way. If anyone understood the desire to hide their lineage, to cast aside the blood in their veins and prove their own worth, it was her. She could think of nothing to say, so she simply nodded. Besides, regardless of what she thought of Caelum, she had no other place to go.

Caelum led her to the first two trees in the courtyard and gestured to the one on the right. “This will be your home for as long as you choose to stay in Iterum.” He gestured to the one on the left. “This is where I live.”

“What about the rest of your family?” she asked.

He gestured over his shoulder, back at the palace. “They live in Domus,” he answered, “the tree that is the center of the palace.”

“Why do you live in the guest quarters?”

He shrugged. “When I renounced my title and gave up the throne, I wished to move into the city, to live among the elves like any other citizen. My mother wanted me to remain in Domus with the family. The guest chambers were our compromise—on the palace grounds, but not within the palace itself.” He gestured towards the tree. “Now, you should go inside and get washed up for the feast, as should I. I’ll be just across the bridge if you need anything.”

With that, he turned to the tree on the left and disappeared into the rounded doorway. Eliana paused, then turned towards other tree and stepped inside. She stopped, looking around her in surprise and wonder. The center of the tree was almost entirely hollow, as she’d expected, but where she’d imagined she would find primitive furniture, she instead found a cozy sitting room with plush chairs, bookshelves carved into the trees’ walls, and books and vases of flowers throughout the room.

At the center of the tree, a wooden staircase spiraled upwards. Eliana climbed the steps to the next level where she found a large bedroom, round like the sitting room below. A large, comfortable-looking bed filled the right-hand side of the room, with a perfectly round window in the wall beside it.

Opposite the window was an open doorway, with the wooden bridge on the other side of it, leading to Caelum’s home. Against the wall opposite where she stood, hidden from view of both the door and window, were a small washbasin and a large tub. Beside the tub, a deep nook in the wall acted as a wardrobe, which was already filled with clothing for her—fine dresses, as well as trousers and comfortable tunics.

Eliana sighed as she sat down on the edge of the bed, trying to take in everything around her, everything that had happened throughout the day. She set the egg in her lap for a moment, looking at the golden shell. She couldn’t resist the temptation, and she pushed her thoughts towards the egg again, touching the mind that was as golden as the shell around it.

“We’re home now,” she thought. “We’re safe.”

She thought she felt the presence stir quietly, and she smiled. She lifted the egg, realizing suddenly that nobody—not Raena, Denio, or even the queen—seemed to have noticed that she was carrying it, and pushed it onto a shelf carved into the wall above the bed.

With a groan, she fell back onto the plush pillows, stretching her aching muscles. Exhaustion weighed heavily on her mind and her body, and she decided that she would close her eyes for just a moment.