#Ildanan Histories

[houseildanan]

Histories - Docks on Departure Day, c. 7300 before the Dark Portal

The ships rose and fell gently on the waves, bumping quietly against the docks.  Even in the sheltered harbor, there were waves, born of a storm well off the coast.  He knew. He’d been watching the storm for days in a scrying glass—a duty assigned by a someday king to ensure the safety of an expedition that would never return to these shores.

There were so many of them. So, so many of them—so many souls, so many ships, so much cargo.

The cargo surprised him. Here they were, stepping off into the great unknown, traveling across the sea to lands they had never seen, and they were carrying so much cargo in the holds of the ships—so many things that struck odd, the goods of entire households—that he couldn’t fathom how they’d transport it all, or if they’d manage it.

They didn’t know what they’d find across the sea, not for certain, though what little he did know reassured him.  What his friends had told him reassured him.

And yet, if not for the warning of one of those friends, he would have remained firm in his decision to stay.  He would not have sunk into the planning of this departure, of the highborne exile.

He would have given up nearly anything to stay except for the safety of his children.

One of the boards creaked and suddenly his son was beside him on the docks, following his father’s gaze to the ships and beyond them to the vast ocean.  “Your pensiveness is making the others nervous,” Lucanus said softly.  “It’s cutting into the excitement of the prospects of being able to practice unfettered once we reach our distant shore.  They wonder if you know something the rest of them do not—that Sunstrider doesn’t.”

“You can tell them truthfully that I do not,” Ildanan said, matching his son for volume and tone, though there was a thread of weariness in his voice.  “I simply have both more and less doubts than the rest.”

“We’ve had this discussion,” Lucanus began.  Ildanan shook his head slightly, cutting him off.

“We have,” he admitted. “At least a dozen times.  And if the three of you hadn’t agreed to this, I would not have, either.”

“Auntie made a solid argument, you said.  If she thinks it safer and wiser for us to go with them, then so be it.  She said you understood the reasons better than any of us.”

Ildanan closed his eyes. “I do.  Goddess help me, I certainly do.”

“It won’t be all bad, will it?”  One corner of his son’s mouth lifted into a smile.  Though unbound by blood, that smile always reminded Ildanan of Keydyn Silverstag, a man none of his children ever really knew but a man more important to their father by half than any that would be sailing away from these shores with them.  “After all, none of them will have to make any more grand gestures in an effort to prove a point to the druids, will they?”

He couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up in his throat.  “That was ill-advised.”

“You told them it was ill-advised as soon as you heard.  I told them it was ill-advised when I heard it was being planned and told them I’d have no part of it.  Roiana said it was missing some finer elements and key points and ridiculous to a fault.”

“She only stayed to watch them.”

“As you say,” Lucanus said, still smiling.  “She takes after Auntie.”

He’d named his daughter after that auntie both to spite his wife and to make a point.  He wasn’t sure if Annissa had caught it or not, or if she even cared.  It was so long ago now that it didn’t matter anymore.

They were fully grown, now, but as close to him as his friends had been in those long-ago days before the wars, before the Sundering.  His children were everything and more and for them, he’d do anything.

Even this.

His gaze drifted back to the ships.  “Fine rugs, furniture, all sorts of—I can’t even begin to list them,” Ildanan said softly. “What do they actually think we’ll find there?  Homes just waiting for us to just move right in?  Castles to rival Azshara’s palace, great libraries like the ones we lost two thousand years ago?  What are they thinking, Lucanus?”

His son’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug.  “I don’t know,” he said, staring up at the sails, most of them furled in the morning sun. “I don’t know that they are beyond the promise of being out from under the weight of all the rules made to prevent another Sundering.”

“And what about you?”

“Me?”  Lucanus blinked, then shrugged, smiling slowly. “I suppose it’s a grand adventure. And you’re one to talk, Father. How many books will we be carrying?”

Ildanan allowed himself a slow, rueful smile.  “No more than we can manage.”

“An entire library and more magicked into a few packs,” Lucanus said, shaking his head.  “And what else?  Do they know?”

“Most don’t,” Ildanan said, shaking his head.  “Nor will they until they must.  Perhaps not ever, or perhaps not until we’ve found a place to call a new home.  Thank you for helping carry them.”

“They’re your legacy,” Lucanus said quietly.  “And ours. It’s a burden that we as a family should share—we all agreed.”

“That we did,” Ildanan said softly.  “There is so much left to tell you, Lucanus.  All of you.”

“Well, I imagine we’ll have time for some of it, it perhaps not the privacy you’d hope,” he said, squinting at the ships.  “They’re going to start boarding in a few minutes—that’s what I came to tell you. They’re loading the last of the cargo and supplies now.”  He paused, then said, “They’re not coming, are they?”

Ildanan tore his gaze from the docks and glanced back, toward the sea of figures that lined the streets and stalls fronting the small harbor.  Not all of those faces would be boarding the ships.  Some were here to watch, to ensure that the Highborne were really leaving.

Others were here to say a last good-bye.

“No,” Ildanan said softly, even as his gaze swept over those crowds, hoping that his eyes would put a lie to the words that tasted like ashes on his tongue.  There was little he wouldn’t have given to see them one more time, even like this—or better yet, to have them tell him to stay, he and his children to stay, that the danger they feared was an illusion, that they would be safe.

That everyone would be safe.

He took a quiet breath. “That’s why she came last night, Lucanus.  That’s why you all Dreamed last night, too.”

“You—I didn’t tell you.”

“Kaiden did,” he said quietly.  “And if it was him, then it was all of you.”

“Will we still—”

“I don’t know,” Idlanan said, pain tightening his throat, his words.  “There’s a lot I don’t know, Lucanus.”

His son wet his lips and reached up to squeeze his father’s shoulder.  “It’s all right,” he said.  “We’ll find out together.”

Throat too tight to speak for a moment, Ildanan simply nodded.  They stood in silence for a few moments more, as Ildanan finished surveying the crowd and turned back to the water, forcing down the welter of emotions that rioted inside.

There had been hate and fear and love and hope and resignation in so many of those gazes behind him.

And relief.

It made him ache.

“Lucanus,” he said softly, even as the announcement rang out from one of the ships to begin boarding. “What promise did you make her last night?”

“That’s between us and Auntie,” his son said softly.  “Don’t worry about it, Father.”

Ildanan opened his mouth to press, then caught sight of a beckoning hand and a stern gaze.  He closed his mouth, drew a deep breath, then touched his son’s arm.

“Come,” he said quietly. “It’s time for the speech.”

And then it will be time to go.