Ancestor Songs – an Excerpt from The Lost Heir

Note: This chapter is excerpted from The Lost Heir:  An Unruly Royal, An Urchin Queen, and A Quest For Justice by Rivera Sun. You can purchase the book here. And find the eBook version here.

Hours later,
exhausted and happy to her bones, Ari Ara slipped through the side gate of the
House of Marin with Emir. Her feet hurt from dancing. Her cheeks ached from
laughing. The sound of the fiddle hummed in her limbs. The melodies of the
music jumbled into a medley in her mind, along with two words shouted over and
over by the urchins and orphans: Happy
birthday!

The first
well-wisher had been Rill, hollering it loud enough to cut through the cheers
and turn them into a chorus of chanting. The fiddlers wove the raucous chants
into a song as she struggled to hold back tears of emotion, overwhelmed. The
Fanten didn’t celebrate birthdays for the child, but rather birthing days for
the mother. At the monastery, no one had asked about her
birthday . . . and she wouldn’t have known what to tell
them anyway since she’d never known the exact date of her birth. Even earlier
this day, her duties as potential heir had dampened the fun she might have felt
on her first birthday celebration.

“Thank you
for everything, Emir,” she breathed fervently.

“You’re
welcome,” he answered. “We apprentices of Shulen have to look out for
each other.”

The black-haired
youth smiled and hugged her shoulders. A chill slip of wind ran through the
empty courtyard. Ari Ara tugged the edges of her black Fanten cloak tighter
around her frame. The sliver of moon emerged like a silver scythe between the
autumn clouds. At the door of the House of Marin, a member of the guard nodded
to them, his eyes sliding toward a glowing window near the training sands. Emir
followed the man’s gaze.

“Shulen’s
still awake,” he noted.

“Probably
worrying,” Ari Ara sighed.

Emir shook his
head.

“Don’t
forget how much he lost on this night.”

Ari Ara flushed,
chagrined to have forgotten. The heavy, mournful ceremonies earlier that day
had focused on the death of Queen Alinore, but Shulen’s wife and child had been
murdered on the same day by the mercenaries seeking the queen and unborn heir.

“I’ll stop
by and let him know we’re back,” she promised, thanking Emir again and
giving him a shove toward bed.

She crossed the
flagstones toward the lit window. The shutters had been left open and the
curtain flung back so Shulen could see them arrive. The glowing lamp
illuminated his room while the black night cloaked her, so she peered in.
Shulen’s quarters in the Capital were as sparse and tidy as at Monk’s Hand
Monastery. His lacquered trunk sat in the corner. A row of books lined a small
shelf. His battle armor hung on a wall next to a long painted scroll. A soft
blue rug covered the polished wood floor. A propped-open door revealed a room
with a sleeping mat. A fire blazed in the main room, and Shulen sat near it
with –

Malak.

Ari Ara blinked
in surprise. The Desert Hawk Keeper and Shulen conversed in low tones,
slouching in the manner of long-standing familiarity. The dark, angular man
leaned forward on his elbows and shook his head at whatever Shulen had just
suggested. The candlelight carved his bronzed features into a mask of
intensity. He rose and, to her alarm, crossed to the window. She ducked down,
leaning flat against the wall and holding her breath.

“I’m letting
in some fresh air,” she heard Malak say above her.

“Just mind
your words, the yard has ears,” Shulen cautioned.

“There’s no
one out there,” Malak answered, his voice muffled as he returned to the
table.

“There are
enough rumors circulating this island already,” Shulen grumbled.

“Ah
yes,” Malak agreed in a tone that rasped with dry irony, “I’ve heard
that you’re putting an imposter on the throne and that the desert demons you’re
in league with will be rising up any day.”

“Nonsense,
all of it,” Shulen dismissed.

“Not all of
it,” Malak answered with a chuckle, “but even without the rumors, I doubt
those nobles will confirm her.”

Ari Ara blinked
under the window, stung by the confession.

“It’s sheer
obstinacy,” Shulen grumbled. “Everyone can see she’s the spitting
image of Alinore and – “

” – Tahkan,
yes,” Malak interrupted, “and that’s exactly why the nobles won’t
confirm her. They’d never put his real daughter on the throne. That’s why we
have to be prepared to get her out of Mariana.”

Ari Ara’s jaw
dropped.

“You can’t
just whisk her away,” Shulen cautioned in a hushed tone. “The
Marianans will accuse you of kidnapping her.”

“She is
ours!” Malak retorted hotly. “If Brinelle had listened to Tahkan’s
message, she would be in the Desert now.”

“There’s no
point in trying to catch the river once it’s past,” Shulen answered
calmly.

“Maybe the
water workers should put credence to those rumors and rise up . . . just
to teach them a lesson,” the Hawk Keeper threatened.

“Don’t
unravel all the work your people have done in Mariana all these years,”
Shulen warned him. “If you must act, use the Way Between, not violence.
Even if you take her to the Desert, she is still the daughter of Alinore as
well.”

A stony silence
met his words. Shulen sighed.

“It’s
late,” he said to the Hawk Keeper. “You should rest.”

“Neither of
us will shut an eye until she’s back,” Malak refuted, shrugging his wiry
shoulders.

Shulen grunted in
agreement.

“Let’s go up
on the wall and keep watch for her,” he suggested.

Ari Ara heard the
sound of a chair being shoved back. Before she could be caught eavesdropping,
she rolled to standing and lunged to knock on the door. Her heart thundered in
her chest and her mind spun with what she had just overheard . . . an
uprising? The Desert People stealing her away? She scrubbed her face with her
palms to wipe away the shocked expression hanging on her features.

Shulen answered
the door with a worried scowl.

“I’m
back,” she said, squinting in the light and trying to look like she’d only
just arrived. “Emir said to stop by and tell you. Thank you for letting me
go, and . . . is that Malak?”

She blinked in a
show of innocent surprise as the man hovered behind Shulen’s shoulder.

“Let her in,
Shulen. The light draws attention,” Malak suggested softly.

Ari Ara scooted
through the doorway as they stepped back. Shulen shut the door and latched the
window.

“What are
you two doing?” she asked, hoping they’d include her in their confidences.

The two men
exchanged long looks. Shulen shook his head slightly. Ari Ara bit back her
groan. She knew that look; her mentor wouldn’t tell her anything.

“We’ve been
catching up on old times and painful memories,” Malak answered when
Shulen’s silence grew too long. “The Great Warrior and I knew each other
before the war, in happier times. I joined him tonight to keep vigil for the
lives lost on this night.”

She noticed the
altar set on the mantle above the crackling fire. Bright autumn leaves had been
laid out over a piece of fine desert silk. A portrait of two women leaned
against the wall. A row of candles flickered in front of the frame. The wax
pooled as the wicks burned low. Light flickered in gasps, sending the shadows
darting about the room. Each one, Malak explained, had been lit in memory of
the departed as he and Shulen passed the night.

“Is that my
mother?” she asked, pointing to the painting.

“Yes, and
Rhianne,” the men answered on the same breath.

The Fanten
Grandmother’s daughter stood beside a tall young Alinore. Ari Ara realized that
the beautiful white dress that fell to her ankles had been designed to reach
her mother’s knees. Rhianne, sleek and black-haired like all the Fanten,
reached only to her friend’s shoulder, petite as a child with a gleam of humor
and secrets in her dark eyes. Alinore hovered on the verge of a smile. A long
dark brown braid hung over her shoulder. The two stood on a ridge looking east
and west with shaded eyes. A burning sunset lowered over dunes and black
mountains.

“Looking forward, looking back,
two friends of the east,
came to the lands of the west.
There they met love and started life.
Where they walked, 
the water flowed,
and green grass grew in their footsteps,” Malak sang.

For a moment, Ari
Ara saw the women treading across the sands, flowers and birds following in
their wake. Then a dry wind rode the desert man’s sorrow and swept the images
away, leaving only the scouring sands. Tears stung her eyes.

“Come,”
Shulen urged, “light a candle for your mother, and join us in remembering
something beautiful or true about her.”

He handed Ari Ara
a small wax candle.

“I don’t
remember her,” she confessed in a quiet voice. “She slipped into the
Black Ancestor River even as I rode its crosscurrents into this world. I’m
sorry.”

She turned to
give the candle back, but Shulen caught her hand.

“She loved
you, even if she barely saw you – and the Fanten Grandmother says she did,
holding you for a moment before she slipped away. Your coming was anticipated
and celebrated by all of us: Tahkan Shirar, Alinore de Marin, Rhianne, and myself.
We hoped for a girl who would be a friend for our daughter, but it was not to
be.”

Shulen’s eyes
deepened with sorrow. Ari Ara lit the wick from the flickering flame of the
candle on the end of the row. The light blazed. The wax glowed. Another small
gleam rose up to illuminate the portrait.

“Will you
tell me the stories of these other candles?” she asked the two men.

They exchanged
startled looks. Then Malak smiled.

“If not us,
then who, Shulen?” he murmured before turning to Alinore’s daughter.
“I will tell you what I know, and more than that, I will sing our desert
songs about her so you will see through the eyes of our ballads.”

Shulen nodded. He
pulled a third chair over and gestured for her to join them as he swung the
blackened kettle over the fire for a fresh pot of tea. The embers on the hearth
gleamed blue-black and hissing orange. Malak tossed a fresh log on. The wood
crackled. A shower of sparks leapt up. The dark-bearded man stared at the
hungry threads of flames. The steam entwined its pale fingers through the
silver-gray smoke rising from the wood. Silence settled on the room like a
frost, etched with unspoken words. Ari Ara shifted on the chair, sensing the
ancestor spirits gathering on the chill edges of the night. The row of candles
shivered. She thought she sensed the weightless touch of a spirit’s hand upon
her head. Malak closed his eyes in his carved face and drew breath.

Malak began to
sing a haunting and eerie tune. The scales of the desert songs wove in forgotten
half-notes and chords the riverlands had ignored for centuries. The melodies
played the harp strings of Ari Ara’s heart so evocatively, they snuck like
thieves through the dark night and robbed the breath from her chest. She
blinked as a shape moved on the air. Shulen noticed her widening eyes and
nodded, pointing to an image that flickered in the corner as Malak sung the
first words of a saga ballad and the shifting desert sands rose visible. Ari
Ara gasped in startled wonder. The story in the songs came into sight, full of
shifting colors like the embers of a dying fire. Figures strode out of the darkness
for a flash of a second then dimmed as a new image emerged. Her mother rose,
young and beautiful, on the day she had first met the Desert King. Ari Ara’s
heart clenched in a tight knot as unnamable emotions swept through her wiry
frame, rattling her to the bones.

One ballad
threaded into the next in a never-ending saga, sung masterfully by Malak. He
lifted the melodies with great humility and reverence, as if he felt blessed to
have the songs play the instrument of his voice. Ari Ara stared at him, awed by
the sweeping mastery of the Hawk Keeper’s singing. His voice was not the
pitched perfection of the songstresses that performed at Brinelle’s evening
receptions. It was an expressive, utterly human voice, laden with subtlety and
humor, rich with emotion, captivatingly expressive, as if Malak had seen into
the soul of humanity and drunk the water of life, itself.

By dawn, Ari Ara
had seen visions of her mother journeying to the desert, falling in love, and
marrying. She’d witnessed the beauty of her two peoples coming together in
peace. She saw Shulen, too, whose hair had been as copper as hers, not gray as
it was now, and Rhianne, strange and different in her Fanten ways amidst the
nobility of Mariana and the fiercely proud Desert People. She saw Shulen’s
child, the one who had died along with her mother at the Battle of Shulen’s
Stand. The girl was laughing in the arms of her parents. Ari Ara’s shirt grew
damp with tears, yet her heart rose with the sun. She understood, at long last,
the beauty and the truth of their lives, not just the sorrow and grief of their
loss.

“A person who is remembered in Desert Song is never lost,” Malak said quietly as they bid her farewell. “We of the Desert have little in the ways of the material world, but we have riches of the spirit few here can even imagine. Go now, Daughter of our King, sleep, and dream in the songs of your mother.”

The Lost Heir - First EditionFirst Edition with Author Q & A. With all the fun of a sword-swinging adventure, but without the violence, The Lost Heir spins a spectacular story with strong female characters and powerful social justice themes. Young Ari Ara has been discovered to be the Lost Heir, the double royal daughter of two nations. When she learns that her mother's people have forced her father's desert people to sell their labor in exchange for water, she sets out on a quest for justice, 'armed' with nonviolence and love. Quantity:   Price: $19.99