THE CHILD OF LIGHT AND THUNDER
Aelin — July 17, 1958
Aelin was holding its breath.
The morning light washed the cliffs gold, the forests still, the sea below the Veil a flat and glittering silence. In the high tower of the Castle of Elders, Guardian Seamus Greene opened his eyes with a sharp, inward gasp.
He felt it. He had felt storms whisper, the Veil stir, visions approach with their soft quake. This was none of those things. This was deeper, older, woven into the marrow of every Guardian who had lived before him.
Somewhere on the island, the next Guardian had drawn his first breath.
Seamus rose and crossed the tower floor at a near-run, reverence and urgency driving him, the air around him shifting as the stones answered his energy. Behind him, two members of the Brotherhood followed: Miles Corrigan, the Sentinel, and Albert Oksana, the Warrior of their generation, each sensing the same tremor in their bones.
"Who is it?" Miles asked quietly, voice trembling.
"We will know soon," Seamus murmured. "A child of blessing has come."
They left the Hall and stepped into the morning sunlight, the path leading down toward the modest birthing house nestled near the Cardinal Point. Midwives stood outside the door, awestruck; the Guardian never arrived this fast unless fate itself had intervened.
Inside, the room was warm and dimly lit. Katherine Elias lay resting on a woven cot, tall even lying down, willowy, her features fine and almost elven in their delicacy. Medium auburn hair, damp and wavy, fanned across the pillow. Her sage green eyes found Seamus immediately, alert despite her exhaustion. At her side stood Thomas, broad-shouldered and well-built from a life of hard work, his long brown hair pulled back from a face that was all strong Paiute lines and quiet dignity. His amber-gold eyes, the same amber-gold the child would carry all his life, were bright with emotion he was working hard to contain. He held their newborn son against his chest, the baby squirming, tiny fists curling, voice soft with confused murmurs rather than cries. Pressed against Thomas's leg, half-hidden in the fabric of his father's shirt, stood Tobin. Three years old, with his mother's sage green eyes, watching everything with quiet intensity.
When Seamus stepped into the room, Katherine and Thomas both went still, in reverence rather than fear. Every Aelinian knew that the Guardian's arrival at a birth meant something extraordinary.
Thomas stood carefully, cradling the infant.
"Guardian," he whispered. "This is our son, Jason Beannú Elias."
At his side, Tobin stretched up on his toes to peer at his brother, then looked to his father with a question in his face. Thomas shifted the baby just enough for the boy to see, and said the word he had been teaching him since the morning Jason was born.
"Wanga'a," Tobin said carefully, getting it right. Little brother.
Thomas's jaw tightened with the effort of not breaking.
Seamus approached slowly. His breath caught.
The moment his hand hovered above the newborn, light rippled across the child's skin, a soft opalescent shimmer that touched the air and dissolved.
Miles inhaled sharply behind him.
Albert whispered, "Lord preserve us..."
Seamus sank to his knees.
"Father help us," he breathed. "The dragon stirs within him."
The silence that followed held all the weight of eight centuries. Not all Guardians possessed the inner dragon. Even Seamus himself did not. It was the rarest gift in the line: terrible in its power, singular in its cost.
He bowed his head over the child, eyes stinging.
"He carries the Guardian Dragon within him," he whispered. "This and more. Much more. I feel strength in him beyond any Guardian before. He will lead a very powerful Brotherhood. The most powerful."
Thomas held his son closer. Katherine reached out to rest a hand on her husband's arm, her voice trembling.
"Then it is as we always feared it might be," Katherine said, her voice barely above a breath.
"Yes," Seamus answered softly. "But the road before him will be treacherous."
Albert stepped forward, jaw tight. "Because of the Conqueror."
The name fell like a stone into still water, and the air went cold.
Aldus the Conqueror. Almost lost to legend, yet quietly a presence that had always menaced the Brotherhood of Aelin. He was whispered of in prophecy. Visionary Allĕn had received the same prophetic word in his own mind, the one handed down through previous Visionaries:
"A brotherhood five, tied empathic three, to destroy The Conqueror will be destiny."
"The Conqueror will return," Seamus murmured. "And when he does, this child will be all that stands between Aelin and ruin."
A sacred understanding settled over the room.
Looking at Thomas and Katherine, Seamus said, "Your son will be powerful and strong, and he must be raised as ordinarily as possible. It would not serve him well to fill him with his destiny at a young age. Let him be a child. Allow both of your sons to grow up with love, laughter, and happiness. Tell Jason of his destiny when the time is best. When he is a young man, he will be better able to prepare, though I have to say from my own experience... there will never be nearly enough to prepare him completely."
Thomas swallowed hard but didn't flinch. "Then we will raise him as you suggest, Guardian."
Katherine nodded. "And teach him to walk in the Creator's light."
Seamus smiled gently, warmed by their courage. "Today, he shall receive his first blessing, and the Brotherhood shall stand witness."
They carried the newborn to the Cardinal Point, where five ancient stones stood sentinel against the open sky, one at the center, one at each compass bearing, the sea air moving freely across the rocky ground. A pale altar stone waited at the center, worn smooth by generations of ceremony. Members of the Brotherhood gathered: five men standing in quiet reverence.
The Visionary, Allĕn O’Leary, stepped forward. His emerald pendant glowed faintly as he studied the child. His breath wavered.
"I see... fire."
He blinked. "A young man grown. Strong. Burdened. Standing among four others. Warriors. Brothers."
His voice softened. "And beside him... a woman with hair like flame. Her presence steadies him. Strengthens him."
Katherine's brows rose gently. "Is she... family?"
Allĕn smiled faintly. "In a way that matters most."
Then his expression shifted into something years beyond his own.
"I see my successor," he whispered, voice taut with awe. "A child not yet born. A boy of strong heart... powerful and steadfast. Fighting with the strength of a tiger and with Aelin in his heart. His power and strength will eclipse even my own."
Taking in a small gasp, he breathed, "Ronin...brother...I see your successor as well!”
Conjurer Ronin Langsley stepped forward reverently.
“Aye?”
“He’s but a wee lad now, Brother,” Allĕn told him, “A toddler, born only 4 years ago.”
Conjurer Ronin Langsley's eyes glimmered with emotion at this, asking, "A smart young lad?"
His gaze turned distant, as if he could see across time.
"Indeed, brother... brilliant... even now as a child,” Allĕn confirmed, “He’ll be a true Conjurer, with abilities that will far surpass even yours."
Seamus placed a hand on Alen’s shoulder. "The Visionary and Conjurer will rise new, strong, and loyal."
The Visionary bowed his head.
"They are the tied Empathic three of prophecy,” Allĕn said reverently, "This child, my successor, and yours, Ronin. They will be bound by the empathy of the Guardian. Of this boy. This is the Brotherhood that has been promised. God has directed the miracle Caelmor prophesied hundreds of years ago. This Brotherhood, with this child as Guardian, will one day send Aldus the Conqueror to hell."
This hit all of them hard enough to make each man kneel as Thomas placed the baby on the dais, stepping back to stand with his wife and son, failing to hold his emotion at bay. Little Tobin stood in front of his parents and watched in fascination.
One by one, the five men knelt:
Warrior Albert Oksana knelt first. He placed a broad hand on one tiny leg, his jaw set with quiet reverence, and murmured strength and courage into the child's bones.
Sentinel Miles Corrigan knelt and touched the other leg, his eyes closing as he breathed a blessing of protection and vigilance over the child's path.
Visionary Allĕn O’Leary knelt and laid his palm over one small arm, the emerald at his chest glowing faintly as he whispered insight and clarity into the infant's future.
Conjurer Ronin Langsley knelt and rested his hand on the other arm, his garnet amulet catching the light, and pressed a blessing of creativity and balance into the child's open hands.
Finally, Guardian Seamus Greene placed his palm gently on the newborn's head, kneeling solemnly. He did not speak nor did he need to. The white opal at his chest blazed, and what passed between Guardian and child was older than language.
All five amulets glowed at once.
Light spread like dawn breaking, rising, shimmering, enveloping the child. Jason's eyes fluttered open. Instead of crying, he stared upward, quiet and curious, as if recognizing something only he could see.
Katherine gasped softly. Thomas bowed his head, tears in his eyes. Tobin quickly grabbed his mother and looked at the lights with wonder.
The glow faded slowly, dissolving into the salt air like motes of stardust above the stones. Seamus stepped back, voice steady.
"He is marked by destiny. And by love. He will never walk alone."
As the ceremony ended, silence held the point, the kind of silence that feels like an answer. Then a cool wind swept through, unnatural, carrying the faintest echo of distant thunder. Seamus stiffened. He recognized that sound. Aldus's promise from the ancient texts:
"When the child of opal light is born, the Conqueror shall turn in his sleep."
A shiver crossed his spine.
"Let him rest while he can," Seamus whispered to the wind.
"For one day this child, Jason Beannú Elias, will rise to face him."
They left Aelin three months later, through the portal Ronin Langsley had set into the Castle of Elders. It opened, as it always had, into a modest house on the reservation outside Reno, the same house Thomas's family had lived in for generations, the same house that would one day pass to Tobin. Seamus's counsel had been clear enough to act on: if Jason was to be raised as an ordinary child, he could not be raised inside a court already watching for what he might become. Thomas carried his infant son through, Katherine at his side with Tobin's hand in hers, and stepped out into Nevada air already thinking of nothing more than getting both boys fed and settled for the night.
While Thomas moved through the home and opened it up to air it out, Katherine settled the boys in the kitchen. The house had been closed up for years, ever since Thomas and Katherine had moved to Aelin. Five years and two children later they were back to raise those children... one of which was destined to change the world.
Katherine placed Jason in the small bassinet the tribe had placed in the home in anticipation of their arrival, and moved about the kitchen as little Tobin sat by the bassinette and talked quietly to his little brother, telling him they were going on a "atvenshure," and that he would show him "everting."
Katherine listened as she puttered about, surveying the cookware, the spices, the contents in the refrigerator, which Thomas' sisters-in-law, Maeva and Lila, made sure was stocked with necessities to make a few good meals. With her assessment finished, she looked at Tobin, who was still happily babbling to his little brother, she said, "Toby, sit at the table and let your brother be. I'll make you a peanut butter sandwich."
"Wiff jay jay," Tobin replied, crawling up on one of the dinette chairs to sit at the table.
"You want jelly?" Katherine asked, "I see strawberry and grape jelly. Do you want strawberry?"
"Uh-uh," Tobin told her, "Gwape."
Katherine chuckled and replied, "Okay! Gwape it is!"
Thomas walked into the kitchen and went immediately to the bassinette, kneeling down to gently touch his youngest son. Katherine watched him as she made Tobin's sandwich, seeing the look in his eyes. She recognized that look. It was the look that said Thomas was conflicted, but in awe of his boy. She knew he had to be hearing the words Seamus Greene had spoken over and over in his head, and she could see the worry in his posture.
"Thomas," she asked quietly, "Are you hungry?"
Thomas didn't answer at first, but then he shook his head and replied, "Not right now. I need to go over to Marcus and let him know we're back and discuss getting back to work in the business."
"My love..." Katherine said, standing beside Jason's bassinette and placing her hand on Thomas' arm, "I know you, husband. You're troubled. Scared."
Thomas wanted to deny it, but doing so would be stupid. He gently caressed little Jason's cheek with the backs of his fingers and replied, "How can we prepare him...without telling him? Without him knowing who and what he will have to become?"
Katherine set the plate with Tobin's sandwich down in front of the boy, and then knelt down to survey the baby's sleeping face.
"We can tell him in time," She assured him, "The Guardian told us this when he was born. He must grow up without the pomp and circumstance of the Aelinian court. As any child should. He needs to be a boy first...not a future Guardian."
"But I know what the Guardian must face," Thomas said softly, "The terrible trials we've been told about Aldus the Conqueror, and what Jason will have to defend against. My little boy... Katherine, it's hard for me to..."
Katherine took his hand in hers quickly, firmly squeezing it and telling him, "We can only prepare him quietly, husband...until he is a young man. We can prepare him for Seamus... for the bestowal of the amulet. The trainer will do the rest."
"Seamus' son... Sidney," Thomas said.
Katherine nodded.
"The Guardian is preparing him even now to train the next Brotherhood of Aelin," she said, "Thomas... there is time. Jason is still an infant. We raise him as we promised the Guardian we would. As an ordinary child."
Thomas thought about this and finally nodded. His heart still unsettled, but he knew she was right. He knew the Guardian's advice was just. He would raise Tobin and Jason as he was raised. With family. With brotherhood. With love.
As Jace grew, Thomas taught him drumming. Around age 2 Thomas sat the toddler into his own lap and played within the family drumming circle, with his 5-year-old brother, Tobin, delighting in having his little brother drumming along with them now. To everyone’s amazement, little Jason thumped his hands on his own little legs to the exact beats of the circle.
By five years old, Jace claimed his own place in that family drumming circle, a moment of pride for Thomas and his brothers, Marcus and Ira, to have both Tobin and Jace in the family circle so young.
Reno, Nevada — August 14, 1974
Thomas's truck pulled into the yard before noon, which was wrong all by itself. Thomas never came home before dark. Not even for a meal.
Katherine knew something was wrong immediately. When she saw only Tobin get out of the truck, she knew it was bad. Then she saw the tears on his face...and knew it was devastating.
Thomas had fallen two stories from a beam he'd walked a hundred times before. Tobin had been working ten feet away. He heard the sound before he understood what it was, and by the time he reached his father, there was nothing left to do but hold him.
Jace was sixteen and home from school when Tobin came through the door unable to speak. Jace saw the tears, and his bones began to ache. He saw his mother sobbing in his brother's arms and witnessed his aunts race into the house to comfort them both.
Jace backed himself into the corner of the living room and sank down to the floor. His father was gone. Not left somewhere on a trip or vacation. Dead. The world seemed to fall apart around him, and the weight of the cumulative grief pulled him into a tight ball in the corner.
Jace had tried to be like his father. Thomas raised both his sons to be strong, to take no disrespect lying down, to fight for what they knew was right, to give everything to the people who'd earned their loyalty and never apologize for it. He'd taught them to be men their family, their tribe, and one day their own wives and children could stand behind without question. He'd taught them faith the same way, steady and unshaken, the kind that didn't need explaining because it simply was. What neither of them had inherited, no matter how hard they tried, was his stillness in grief. Thomas hadn't cried in front of them, not once, not through injury or hard years or the quiet grief of losing his own parents, and Jace and Tobin both tried to carry it the same way, steady, a wall for the family to lean against. Neither of them managed it for long.
It wasn't only his own grief pressing on him. Uncles Marcus and Ira, Thomas's own brothers, and their wives, Maeva and Lila, moved through the house hollow-eyed. Cousins arrived with children too young to understand why everyone was crying. Elders who'd been as close as family for as long as Jace could remember carried a grief of their own that felt, to him, indistinguishable from his mother's. He felt all of it, layered on top of his own, the way he always felt things nobody else seemed to notice, and there was no name yet for why that was, only the weight of it. It was too much for a sixteen-year-old to hold without cracking, no matter how hard he tried to be his father's son.
He shut himself away to cry where no one could see him do it. Tobin found him there more than once and said nothing, just sat beside him until it passed, since he needed the same thing and rarely got it either. They held each other and cried, the only witnesses to each other's pain.
Katherine watched her younger son slip away to grieve alone more than once that week, and each time, she heard the Guardian's last words to her again, landing differently now than they had that day at the Cardinal Point. He is marked by destiny. And by love. He will never walk alone.
She held onto that with both hands, because the alternative, that her son might carry all of this, and everything still ahead of him, without anyone beside him, was more than she could bear to consider.
But it was the other line that came back to her most, watching Jace disappear behind the shed so no one would see him cry.
"For one day this child, Jason Beannú Elias, will rise to face him."
She had no way of knowing if any of this, the accident, the grief pressing down on a sixteen-year-old boy who felt everyone's pain as if it were his own, was part of that road already, or only what it looked like to grieve as any family does.
She said nothing of it to Jace. There would be time enough for the rest of what he was, later, when he was ready to hear it. For now, he was only her son, grieving his father the same as any boy would, and that was the only truth he needed to carry.
The tribe came the way it always had. Elders sat with Katherine through the first nights, so she was never alone with the silence. Food appeared without anyone asking for it. Old songs were sung low in the dark, grief passed hand to hand until it was lighter than anyone could carry alone.
Katherine held both her sons through it, and somehow, in the middle of it, still found room to make them laugh when they needed her to.
It took months before laughter came easily in that house again. But it finally did.
The latest joke involved the strategic placement of an 8-legged invader in the mailbox. The invader wasn't real, but it might as well have been because the sight of anything that even remotely resembled a spider was enough to draw forth the most girly scream from Jace. Tobin told him to head up to the road to grab the mail since the rural post had probably already been delivered. Thinking nothing odd about the request at the time, Jace jogged out to the mailbox.
Tobin and their mother, Katherine, had been talking on the porch as Jace ran, but Katherine seemed to sense that her oldest boy was up to some mischief.
"Toby,” She said, warily, "You were a bit too chipper as you asked your little brother to get the mail."
"I have no idea what you mean, Mom," Tobin replied, eagerly watching Jace.
"I think you do, Tobin," Katherine admonished, "Tell me you did not put that Halloween decoration in that mailbox."
"I can't," Tobin said, who was now bouncing on the balls of his feet in anticipation.
"Because you did!" Katherine cried, now looking up at the trap her youngest son was walking into.
At that moment, Jace yanked open the mailbox and let out the loudest, most blood-curdling scream either of them had ever heard. It even caused a few other relatives to open their doors and peer over at the Elias home, wondering if Jace had just been axe-murdered. What they actually saw was Jace running at Tobin and Tobin trying to outrun Jace... both yelling at each other in Paiute. Because Jace's legs were longer, Tobin had to think quickly.
Unfortunately, quickly did not equate to acting wisely. Tobin bolted toward the above ground pool he’d set up for the family and tried to dive into it. From the ground. Without a ladder. The wall of the pool was 5 feet high. Tobin's leap was at least a foot short.
He ended up high centering himself on the pool's wall, which promptly buckled and gave way. It flooded the entire yard, and the wave from it managed to catch Jace in a way that his footing suffered and sent him onto his backside, with more small waves of pool water flooding over him. He sputtered as each wave passed over him, also calling out to Tobin, calling him a few derogatory names in both English and Paiute.
"Nayabü pabi'!" Jace grumbled at him, "Ya idiot!"
All Tobin could do was sputter and fight to stay standing on the now muddy yard. He tried to get to Jace but kept falling. Jace wasn't faring much better, and both of them eventually got onto their feet and stayed standing. They also look like they'd just finished a mud wrestling match.
Katherine stared at her two sons, covering her mouth for a moment. Then she promptly grabbed the garden hose, and did what seem logical. Her sons now needed a shower. She would provide the service. With a smile.
Neither Tobin or Jace were prepared to defend against the sudden onslaught of motherly "care" that ensued. The yard being muddy also did not make trying to flee easy. They were both back in the mud, with their beloved mother joyfully soaking them even more.
Once she was finished, Katherine turned off the sprayer nozzle and merely called out to them to quit torturing each other, dry off, and come in for lunch.
As Tobin struggled to get up from the mud, Jace managed to get to his feet and slogged his way onto the porch, holding his arms out wide to his mother.
"GIMME A HUG, MOM!" he gleefully cried, making Katherine yelp and dart into the house with her youngest, muddiest, and most soaked son right behind her.