Yurrein Nelendor and Teigan Sollit
Trying to fill gaps in Fire Forged Key and we get sucked into the secret society within the secret society instead...
"You can leave us." He waved off the men that flanked Teigan. "Just wait outside the door, I'd like a few words with Mr. Sollit."
"Yes, sir." The two men stepped out and shut the door behind them.
Teigan stared hard at the man, but said nothing. The man fingered the spines of the books on the shelves, casually browsing the titles, but not committing to one. "Teigan Sollit." The man started. "You wouldn't be related to Kijoth Sollit, son of Ruleth Sollit?" He looked over. His eyes were pale, hard to judge the color in the light, and his hair a straight, sandy blonde.
Teigan frowned back at the man. "What are you talking about?"
The man continued, undeterred. "Did you ever wonder why Kijoth Sollit went by the family name of his mother's father instead of his father's?"
"It is not something I ever thought about." Teigan admitted.
"So you are one of his descendants?" The man questioned.
"How do you even know those names?" Teigan asked back.
He leaned against the back of a chair. "You answer my question and I will answer yours." The man promised.
Teigan tried to read the man. He was completely relaxed, no worry or tension. Every Human Teigan had encountered here had carried some level of nervousness. Klamon made them nervous. There was something odd about this man and Teigan sensed that knowing the names of long-dead Klamon was just the start. "Kijoth Tafatei Sollit was my grandfather's grandfather. Ruleth Sollit Pelkuhr was his mother."
"That is what I hoped to hear." The man smiled. "Now to keep my end of it." He stepped around and sat in the chair. "You may want to sit," he invited, motioning to another chair, "it takes some explaining."
Teigan didn't move. "No, thank you."
"Very well," the man settled in his seat. "Your children are not proof that the experiments, such as they were, could work because a straight cross between Man and Klamon is not enough to bring the Mime power to the surface. It has to come from both sides."
Teigan looked at the man with suspicion and confusion. "What are you saying?"
"Kijoth Sollit, or Kijoth Tafatei Sollit as you called him, your great-great grandfather, was sired by a member of the Brotherhood of the Mime. The man's name may have been lost in the chaos that set Kijoth and his mother free, but he was hybrid as your children are and you, Tiegan Sollit, have a bit of Man in you, as many did who were the children and the children's children of those taken by the Mime."
Teigan stood very still, his eyes locked on the man sitting so casually before him, rattling on as if commenting about the weather instead of revealing secrets even Teigan didn't know about his family. "A whole branch of your line ignored, and I imagine, forgotten." The man paused a moment, meeting Teigan's steady gaze. After a minute he broke it off and continued, leaning on the chair's arm. "The Klamon took in the hybrid children of their stolen generation and brought them up as full Klamon, mixing them in, but never openly admitting that they brought Human blood in. The Humans would not have taken them, the Klamon had more compassion, but did not want to dwell on how they came to be. Spare the fragile minds of their daughters that they may have never fully reclaimed from their ordeal.
"Your children are not capable of weilding the Mime's power because their mother was a Hillenbohn, although that didn't hurt. It is because you are not fully Klamon."
"Who are you?" Teigan asked.
"I am getting to that," the man assured him. "Not all of the hybrids ended up in the arms of the Klamon. The experiments were ongoing. There were Human women, willing volunteers, unlike their Klamon counterparts. They were free to come and go, some still pregnant at the time Keishan Sollit and his fellows liberated your three-times great-grandmother and others of the lost generation. Some of the hybrid children did not survive. They came early compared to Humans babies and their needs are intense those first few months without a pouch to hold them. Perhaps the idea of having a hybrid child soured with the wars as well. The women fled, joined together, betrothing their children to each other for who else would they marry? Who would want to marry a hybrid after what the Brotherhood made it appear the Klamon did? The women and their children formed their own group on Lunais, protecting the secrets of their origin, but not forgetting. They took some of the records with them before they could be destroyed, names like Ruleth and Kijoth on them.
"The first generation had no Mime ability, but the second, and third, fourth and now," he motioned to himself, "the fifth have quietly worked our way back into the Brotherhood, a secret within a secret."
Teigan tilted his head and moved to speak, but stopped and folded his arms and stared down at the seated man. "Kijoth Sollit was hybrid."
"Yes," the man confirmed.
"You are hybrid."
"Fifth generation."
"Prove it."
"My word isn't enough?" The man asked.
"No, because I knew Kijoth."
The man smiled broadly. "Long lived was he? Outlived his own children, I imagine, perhaps a grandchild or two. Hardly ever sick, right? Probably just slipped off into the great beyond as his body finally wore out. Sure signs of a hybrid, but if you insist," he pushed up his sleeve and raised his hand, "not as crisp and defined as some earlier generations, but we still have discernable markings." His hand paled and slowly darkened towards his wrist before blending into a moderately tanned tone. His face was also marked, a pale lower jaw with a soft-edged, darker line curving along his cheek, and a blurred, darkened dorsal starting between his pale eyes. "My two-times great grandparents, all 16 of them, are a bit over half of that first generation of hybrids. The last one died when I was a teenager at 125 years old." He pushed the sleeve back down and his skin shifted back into an even tone.
"I wouldn't say we are proud of our three times great-grandmothers' part in the Mime's ignoble experiment, but without them we wouldn't be here now, would we?"
"What do you want?"
"First, I want you to keep my secret. There is more than one like Alekandler Triden who would wish to exploit us. Second, well, honestly, I just wanted to meet you. You might imagine how excited we all were when word got out about your daughter, Sray Hillenbohn and then later to find her sire line was a Sollit, well." He shrugged. "You just happened to cross my path first."
"You still haven't told me who you are." Teigan reminded him.
"Oh, sorry, got a bit pulled into explaining the what. I am Yurrein Nelendor."
"How many of you are there?"
"Between Lunais and mainland Alast, less than 300, scattered hither and yon." he waved from one side of the room to the other.
Teigan's eyes widened a moment.
"The war divided the Brotherhood just as it divided Man and Klamon. What you see today is a shadow of what was. A broken organization that patched itself together amidst the chaos of war.