Chapter Five
Vale Stapleton had been one of the patients in the courtyard during Ryan’s outbreak, and he had seen it all: Emery watching at the window, Lydia being bounded into, the staff rushing to contain the incident. He had been close enough to Emery’s window-- partly opened because of the warm weather-- to hear the man’s mutters. At the same time, he just happened to be close enough to Ryan’s bench to hear some of the words he half-mumbled, half-sang. But he’d been far enough removed from the incident that he wasn’t considered an associated party.
Parts of him remembered being a journalist once, and he maintained that observational nature even as a patient in the asylum. He locked away all the information he could from what he had seen and heard from Emery and Ryan, the whole time sitting still and looking stoic, a picture of good behavior in a crazy world.
***
Around the edges of the greater plaza in Morena, capital of Gaern, the manor houses of the highest noble families were clustered together, packed in like beggars in the sanctuary on alms day. Seven great and powerful families, and no less than ten manor houses between them. It was enough to make Jaidyn sneer. His own family was as old as any of theirs-- older, probably-- and yet his father still did not occupy one of the great seats on the council that ruled the city and nation. That injustice was only one of the reasons he’d decided to abandon Morena completely and wear the braid.
The other reason was because he knew he would be the one to find Sonsedhor. He was Cheyne Firdin reborn; that had been a certainty of his for the last few years. The children of the sanctuaries taught the catechisms, all about the memories that came to everyone, of lives lived long past, and Jaidyn had come into the memories of Cheyne Firdin. He hadn’t told anyone yet-- he didn’t want to give himself away until he had his sword. Yes, his father would be upset when he found out his oldest son and heir had cast off his birthright to become a Seeker. He would get over soon enough, when Jaidyn came home triumphant, fabled sword in hand, and claimed rule of all of Gaern for House Huntley. Seven councilors be taken by the Dark Father, he would set things right.
One of his memories crept into his head, and it wasn’t Cheyne’s. This memory belonged to a more recent life of his, that of a former member of the council. Lexan Hallech had been unfairly dismissed from the council nearly a hundred years ago, and House Hallech had ended with him. But instead of House Huntley taking its place, no, House Advissen had been chosen to replace it. It made Jaidyn want to clench his fists and shout in anger, but his self-control prevented him. No sense in wasting energy. He would need all his strength to reclaim his sword. And it would do him no good when he returned if he was remembered as a foolish man who shouted at nothing.
The worse of it was, Lexan hadn’t deserved to be dismissed as he was. Not to mention executed. That he definitely hadn’t deserved. The teachers of history painted him as a tyrant, an arrogant power-driven man who sought to make himself a king. But Jaidyn had the truth of it from his memories. He had always been just and generous, and so selfless that the other noblemen grew jealous of his popularity. They brought him down simply because he didn’t seek personal glory and comfort like they did. He undermined them by doing what was best for the commoners, not for the Houses.
The memory was of one of the many land ownership disputes he had settled. A pair of neighboring farmers had come to him, each arguing that the strip of good land between their farms was his. What could he do but settle it the way he had all the others? The strip of land they were arguing about couldn’t be both of theirs, so why seem to favor one man over the other? He rejected both their claims to the land and claimed it for his own. All the money made from selling the produce from it went straight to alms and to the government coffers, of course. He’d actually gotten lots of “tax land” as he called it, this way, until by rights, nearly a fifth of the farmland around Morena had technically been his. None of it was a single stretch suitable to call a farm, though. An acre here, a half-acre there. But it certainly brought in the money.
And he’d been deposed for that! It was infuriating!
There was movement on the balconies of the great manor houses. Men in clothes even finer than Jaidyn’s own came into view, the councilors of Gaern, some with their sons. Endren Prake, tall and fair-haired with his sickly son Burgess; Rabian Hartume, darkly handsome with his son Meck; lithe young Fastolph Kerning; Lec Ravits, who wore a strange contraption of lenses and wire over his eyes he claimed let him see better; Berrot Larac, the woman who dressed in men’s clothing as though tt actually made her a man. Jaidyn thought it was silly, the way she paraded around in trousers and a coat; the woman was well old enough to be his grandmother. Her husband had been a councilor before her, but when he had died, she had insisted on taking his seat rather than her oldest son, the proper heir to the seat. What a to-do that had been. Riots, mobs, brawls, fighting… but there she was, among the men, wearing her men’s clothes, and no sign of her son. And what was worse, she refused to remarry and set a man in her place. For that, she should be deposed.
And there was the seventh Councilor: short, dark-haired Banjay Advissen. And next to him, his ridiculously tall son Zanthys. Jaidyn sneered at the young man he considered his rival. Two years younger than Jaidyn, Zanthys held the place that should have been Jaidyn’s, not to mention the romantic interests of half the young women in Morena. Zanthys was tall and lithe, with strong features but a bone structure so delicate it should have belonged to a woman. A ready smile sat underneath ice-blue eyes that by all rights should have radiated frost, but more girls swooned at a glance from him than even looked twice at Jaidyn. His chestnut hair was always clean and pulled back into a short ponytail that looked soft even from this distance. And even though Jaidyn was older-- nineteen years old!-- he couldn’t manage to grow more than scraggly whiskers on his lip, while Zanthys kept a well-trimmed patch of hair on his chin.
Zanthys had all the power and respect that by rights should have been Jaidyn’s, and there he was, up on the balcony, waving and overlooking the Seekers and Gaernin people he would one day share the rule of. Jaidyn wasn’t sure how the insufferable man-- no, at seventeen, Zanthys was still a boy!-- managed to pick him out in the crowd, but he saw the look of recognition and acknowledgement in his eyes, and knew that one flick of the hand-- was that supposed to be a wave?-- was directed at him. Jaidyn let his lip curl into a sneer. House Huntley stood behind House Advissen. Jaidyn’s own father was a supporter and advisor for Zanthys’s father Banjay. As a result, he had actually met Zanthys, even played with him a bit as a child. And as much as he wished Zanthys’s manners and politeness were a façade, the simple fact was that he was a truly nice and honorable young man. There wasn’t a drop of arrogance in him, even though he was a notorious gossiper. If he had a fault, it was his fondness for gossip.
“Zanthys is waving at us!” came a familiar voice behind him. And there was stout Hoeth Karzark, the sixteen-year-old son of Viddad Karzark, Rabian Hartume’s right-hand man. Hoeth was of the same noble station as Jaidyn himself, and he had been a much closer childhood playmate than Zanthys had been. That still didn’t mean Jaidyn had to like him. As third son of his House, Hoeth’s chances of inheriting anything worth having were slim, so the silver braid on the boy’s arm was not a surprise. He was stretched up on his tiptoes-- at least he was shorter than Jaidyn-- and waving frantically at Zanthys and the other councilors’ heirs.
“Quit stretching like that,” Jaidyn snapped. “You’ll give yourself a hernia.” His eyes went back to the braid on Hoeth’s arm. He plucked at it. “Did your father approve of this?”
“He suggested it,” came the reply. The younger man’s boring brown eyes contemplated Jaidyn’s own braid. “What did your father say?”
“He doesn’t know yet, but I need to go on this Search.” Darting his eyes around to make sure no one was listening, he leaned in close to Hoeth. “What I’m about to tell you is in the strictest of confidence, Hoeth. It’s not something you can tell anyone else. Do you understand?”
His eyes brightened. “I love a good secret! What is it?”
“I am Cheyne Firdin reborn, Hoeth. I have the memories. But I don’t want to publicly come out with it until I have Sonsedhor. But all those times you and I and your brother Jairome played at being heroes when we were younger, you remember? Those weren’t made up adventures. I drew a lot of those out of the memories I have from Cheyne. They wre stories of things that really happened-- that I really did in my past life!”
Hoeth’s eyes went huge, making him look like a child hearing stories at his mother’s feet. “Really, Jaidyn? You’re really… So what happened to you? To him? Cheyne? Why did he… you… he disappear all of a sudden? And Sonsedhor-- where is it? Where did you leave it?”
It struck Jaidyn suddenly that his memories didn’t answer those questions. What he remembered told him nothing of Cheyne’s disappearance or the location of the great sword. But he wasn’t about to let Hoeth know that. He would doubt, and then he would spread the story. “Look, Hoeth. Those memories aren’t something I’m emotionally prepared to deal with right now. Just thinking about actively remembering them is making my throat close up. I have so many wounds tied to that old life that I can’t really deal with-- can’t really talk about, anyway-- until I have the sword and come into my own. I know where it is, though, and I’m going to get it; I just can’t talk about it. But don’t ask me to talk about them. It opens up a lot of old scars.”
Turning away from the fervently-apologizing Hoeth, he let his eyes wander back across the milling crowds and up to the balcony where the councilors were. Some were still there, the masses apparently forgotten by them, as they were chatting among themselves. The others were gone, Zanthys Advissen being one of those missing. He didn’t do anything to suppress the sneer that curled his lip.
“I’m going to leave this afternoon,” he said, interrupting what was probably Hoeth’s twentieth apology. “You can come along, if you like. Maybe you’ll get mentioned in the tales the storytellers spin.”
“Really?” his mouth spread into a broad grin. “Which way are we going? Where’s Sonsedhor?”
“I told you not to ask. Especially here. Others might hear if I were to answer you, and they would go after the sword themselves. We can’t have someone unworthy taking hold of Sonsedhor now, can we?”
No one will get what is rightfully mine, he thought. Part of him wondered if that thought was his; it almost made him think of Lexan Hallech.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Mere Acquaintances- Chapter Four
Chapter Four
In an effort to understand exactly what had happened in the courtyard, Dr. Carolyn Anderson had the three involved patients brought together under her supervision. Ryan Pellin the musician, and Emery Landers the former policeman, were both out of breath from their running and were now under the watchful supervision of a few of the burlier nurses. Lydia Rhys, the woman Ryan had barreled over in the courtyard, had voluntarily followed after Emery without being told to accompany them.
The three patients sat in chairs facing each other in a bare-walled room. A two-way mirror sat on one wall, and behind that Dr. Anderson and her intern Becca Smitts observed their interactions with each other. The conversation baffled them both, though for a long time at the beginning, none of them said a word.
***
“I want to know exactly what happened out there.” Lady Ara Fusica said from her high seat on the dais of the audience chamber. It wasn’t a throne room, nor was her chair a throne; she was no queen. Lady of the Land, yes, but no monarch. “I want the truth, from one of you at a time, with no interruptions from the other. Is that clear?”
Before waiting for the Keidenelle man to agree, the dark-haired man stepped forward. “My name is Jonal Keffinen, my Lady, and I am the owner of the great menagerie outside the very walls of this grand city. If my Lady hasn’t yet seen the wonders of my Traveling Sights, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to a private showing-- free of charge, of course-- anytime you wish.” Keffinen made grand gestures as he spoke, making many flourishes of a cape he wasn’t wearing. The young Lady looked bored with him already, but she made her thank-you and bade him get on with his explanation of his actions in the streets.
"I have known this man since he was a child,” Keffinen began, letting his voice boom as if he were introducing performers in his tents and addressing his story not only to Lady Ara, but to all those in attendance. “Some years ago, while traveling-- this was before my show grew to its present grandeur, of course-- I came upon a squalling child in the wilderness. The baby had been abandoned by his savage parents and left to die. I expect he was meant as a sacrifice-- you all know what those Keidenelle are like, of course. But I could not, of course, allow an innocent, helpless baby to die alone like that. So, even knowing of his bloodlines-- for he had a bit of that pale hair even as a baby, my Lady-- I took him into my wagon and vowed to raise him as my own son.”
Even though none of the three patients had spoken a word yet to provoke him, Ryan made a protesting sound.
“Did you not agree to listen to each other’s story without interruption, sir?” Lady Ara snapped the moment Draegon opened his mouth. He got out no more than a grunt. Keffinen gave him a wry look.
“For years I raised him, until as a young child, he showed a desire to learn a trade. My show was growing splendidly at this point, my Lady, so I had many performers of many different skills. He was showing that he had indeed become civilized under my careful parenting, so I wasn’t afraid to let him to his own devices. My performers taught him anything he wanted: tumbling, high rope walking-- I have an exceptional trio of high rope walkers I’m sure would delight you, my Lady-- animal handling, fire eating…”
Draegon suppressed a grin at Lady Ara’s annoyed expression. Keffinen noticed as well, though his only response was to develop a tightness around his eyes and cut off the list of his performers abruptly.
“By the time he had reached his teen years, he had shown an aptitude for music, so I bought some instruments for him to learn with. As his talent grew, I allowed him to perform a bit and even let him keep a percentage of the profits as his own pay. But the price of the instruments had yet to be paid off, since his profits have been rather measly of late.
“Imagine my surprise seeing him walking the crowds of the city when I had expressly told him to remain in the menagerie area and perform! And with my instruments, no less! The ungrateful wretch must have thought to bolt today, thinking he could simply disappear into the crowds. It’s a good thing I never tried to hide his heritage by using color on his hair, or else he might have gotten away! And it’s another good thing that I happened to be making my advertisements in the plaza and saw him as he tried to escape. You see, he has the instruments on him, my instruments, the ones I so generously bought for him. They are still my property, you see, and worth a great deal.”
Ryan’s jaw clenched along with his fists. Still silence between the three patients, but he looked absolutely furious. That was when he spoke.
“The truth of matters, my Lady, is not in any word he has said. I was sold to him by a slave trader when I was a child, and Master Keffinen made me an attraction in his menagerie. He made no efforts to civilize me, much less treated me as his son. Ask him to name me, and he wouldn’t have a name for me. I was nothing more than a savage to him.”
It was Keffinen’s turn to open his mouth to protest, and Draegon did his best not to look gratified when the Lady ordered him quiet.
“The onset of Search fifteen years ago found his show in Gaern, and it was there that man broke open the cage that held me. I will not lie and say I completely understood everything at the time, as I had no semblance of a civilized education, but the man was my liberator. Now I know he was a particularly greedy man, a bard, and he was only kidnapping me to use me for his own profit. It was that bard who taught me music and made the efforts to civilize me. And he gave me my name, Draegon.
“But I was still little more than a means of moneymaking to him, and some years ago, I managed to make my escape from him and begin building my own life. The instruments I carry were bought honestly, with money I made myself.”
Ryan finished his nonsensical story, spoken so quietly Dr. Anderson and Becca Smitts could only completely make out one sentence in every three. Emery kept his eyes on him, then flicked them to Lydia when she began speaking-- more loudly, but no more understandably.
The woman merchant whose wagon had been hit said very little. “This Keidenelle man was running and my cart happened to be in his chosen path. Obviously, being pursued as he was, he wasn’t able to take time to pay me back for what was broken, but he did take the time to apologize for his actions, even if it was only in a look. I had some wares broken, but I don’t think the price of what was lost is worth anyone being imprisoned over, my Lady.”
Draegon’s eyes widened. She wasn’t angry? Keffinen’s eyes were wide, too, but more likely he was surprised that the thought of money could be so easily put aside.
For a long few minutes, Lady Ara thought over what she’d heard. “Here is my decision,” she said finally. Draegon was glad; he was growing tired of the nearly murderous looks Keffinen was shooting him. “No matter which of your stories is true, they do agree on one point. Master Keffinen has been derived of property that was rightfully his. But whether that property was taken by Master Draegon or it is Master Draegon is of no matter. Either way, he is responsible. Personally, I do not approve of the slave trades, and I have outlawed them in my own lands, but it is not in my power or right to free a slave that is not mine.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Draegon saw Keffinen’s smile grow more and more. No doubt thoughts of money were running through his head.
“I give you three options, Master Draegon. Number one, you may return to Master Keffinen’s custody. You admitted freely yourself that you were his slave, and I admire your honesty in that. I would think any other man would deny it, especially since it was something your accuser didn’t mention. Slavery is a touchy subject for all. So your second and third options will allow you your freedom. Your second option is to simply give Master Keffinen your instruments. They are, after all, the property he claimed. Your third option is to pay Master Keffinen the full value of either the instruments or yourself as a slave, whichever price is lower, to offset the costs of the property he lost. Mistress Merchant?”
“My name is Gossard, my Lady. Mistress Gossard.” The merchant woman looked frightened.
“Mistress Gossard, you do not wish recompense for your lost wares?”
“No, my Lady. As I said, it is not worth someone losing his freedom for a few broken vases.”
The young Lady nodded as if pleased. “Then all I have for you is a small request for your services. If you would, please appraise Master Draegon’s instruments. And if you are comfortable with it, appraise Master Draegon, as well. We need to know a fair price for him to pay Master Keffinen if that is what he should choose.”
Draegon felt awkward as Mistress Gossard looked him up and down, judging him as one would a horse. At least she didn’t check his teeth. He didn’t want to part with his instruments, but a single reassuring look from the merchant made him more willing. She turned the carved wooden hand dulcimer, his silver-chased flute, and his rather plain tambour over in her hands one by one, gently plucking out a few notes on the dulcimer for tone and thumping the tambour twice to test them before handing them back.
“Considering the fine quality of his instruments and the physical shape Master Draegon is in, I would judge them to be of comparable value. Somewhere around seventy-five gold marks.”
Keffinen’s eyes glittered while Draegon’s fell. Seventy-five marks? And gold marks, too! He didn’t have that kind of money.
“Master Draegon? What is your decision?”
Draegon looked at the lords and ladies lining the walls of the audience chamber. Each of them avoided his eyes as if he were a fearsome animal, even though it should have been obvious from his behavior during this whole interval that he was no savage. No matter what, he wouldn’t go back to being one in their eyes. No one would cage him again. He fell to one knee and put a hand over his heart.
“Before the eyes of those around me and the ever-graceful and loving eyes of the Great Mother, I pledge myself to the Search for Sonsedhor. I will speak no untrue word. The innocent will fear no harm from me. It is for righteousness that I Seek, not for glory. Until the fabled blade is found or I pledge myself to another cause or master, I will Seek. This is my oath.”
Keffinen burst out with a string of obscenities that caused Lady Ara to have him removed from the chamber. “You realize what you have just said, Master Draegon?”
He only held out his hand in response. “My braid, my Lady.”
Sighing, Lady Ara produced a silver braid of the Seekers from somewhere about her and placed it in Draegon’s hand. As he tied it around his arm, he repeated, “This is my oath.”
“The oaths you have just made free you from all debts and obligations for the time being, Seeker Draegon,” Lady Ara said with resignation. “But do not believe it puts you in my good graces. It is a coward’s way out you have chosen, and I place no trust in cowards. Your oath only frees you from my verdict until the sword is found, until you die, or until you give up and begin again paying taxes to some lord or lady. But I will not even let you get away with that. If you are ever seen without your braid, you forfeit your oath, and you will be required to pay twice what you owe to Master Keffinen: a sum of one hundred and fifty gold marks. And to ensure that you don’t simply return to a life of performing and make your escape, my man Roark will accompany you on your search.” A single glare at Roark from Ara ensured he did as he was told.
Emery let out a grunt that could be taken for surprise, then mimicked Ryan’s behavior in kneeling with his hand over his heart and murmuring something neither the doctor nor her intern could hear.
In an effort to understand exactly what had happened in the courtyard, Dr. Carolyn Anderson had the three involved patients brought together under her supervision. Ryan Pellin the musician, and Emery Landers the former policeman, were both out of breath from their running and were now under the watchful supervision of a few of the burlier nurses. Lydia Rhys, the woman Ryan had barreled over in the courtyard, had voluntarily followed after Emery without being told to accompany them.
The three patients sat in chairs facing each other in a bare-walled room. A two-way mirror sat on one wall, and behind that Dr. Anderson and her intern Becca Smitts observed their interactions with each other. The conversation baffled them both, though for a long time at the beginning, none of them said a word.
***
“I want to know exactly what happened out there.” Lady Ara Fusica said from her high seat on the dais of the audience chamber. It wasn’t a throne room, nor was her chair a throne; she was no queen. Lady of the Land, yes, but no monarch. “I want the truth, from one of you at a time, with no interruptions from the other. Is that clear?”
Before waiting for the Keidenelle man to agree, the dark-haired man stepped forward. “My name is Jonal Keffinen, my Lady, and I am the owner of the great menagerie outside the very walls of this grand city. If my Lady hasn’t yet seen the wonders of my Traveling Sights, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to a private showing-- free of charge, of course-- anytime you wish.” Keffinen made grand gestures as he spoke, making many flourishes of a cape he wasn’t wearing. The young Lady looked bored with him already, but she made her thank-you and bade him get on with his explanation of his actions in the streets.
"I have known this man since he was a child,” Keffinen began, letting his voice boom as if he were introducing performers in his tents and addressing his story not only to Lady Ara, but to all those in attendance. “Some years ago, while traveling-- this was before my show grew to its present grandeur, of course-- I came upon a squalling child in the wilderness. The baby had been abandoned by his savage parents and left to die. I expect he was meant as a sacrifice-- you all know what those Keidenelle are like, of course. But I could not, of course, allow an innocent, helpless baby to die alone like that. So, even knowing of his bloodlines-- for he had a bit of that pale hair even as a baby, my Lady-- I took him into my wagon and vowed to raise him as my own son.”
Even though none of the three patients had spoken a word yet to provoke him, Ryan made a protesting sound.
“Did you not agree to listen to each other’s story without interruption, sir?” Lady Ara snapped the moment Draegon opened his mouth. He got out no more than a grunt. Keffinen gave him a wry look.
“For years I raised him, until as a young child, he showed a desire to learn a trade. My show was growing splendidly at this point, my Lady, so I had many performers of many different skills. He was showing that he had indeed become civilized under my careful parenting, so I wasn’t afraid to let him to his own devices. My performers taught him anything he wanted: tumbling, high rope walking-- I have an exceptional trio of high rope walkers I’m sure would delight you, my Lady-- animal handling, fire eating…”
Draegon suppressed a grin at Lady Ara’s annoyed expression. Keffinen noticed as well, though his only response was to develop a tightness around his eyes and cut off the list of his performers abruptly.
“By the time he had reached his teen years, he had shown an aptitude for music, so I bought some instruments for him to learn with. As his talent grew, I allowed him to perform a bit and even let him keep a percentage of the profits as his own pay. But the price of the instruments had yet to be paid off, since his profits have been rather measly of late.
“Imagine my surprise seeing him walking the crowds of the city when I had expressly told him to remain in the menagerie area and perform! And with my instruments, no less! The ungrateful wretch must have thought to bolt today, thinking he could simply disappear into the crowds. It’s a good thing I never tried to hide his heritage by using color on his hair, or else he might have gotten away! And it’s another good thing that I happened to be making my advertisements in the plaza and saw him as he tried to escape. You see, he has the instruments on him, my instruments, the ones I so generously bought for him. They are still my property, you see, and worth a great deal.”
Ryan’s jaw clenched along with his fists. Still silence between the three patients, but he looked absolutely furious. That was when he spoke.
“The truth of matters, my Lady, is not in any word he has said. I was sold to him by a slave trader when I was a child, and Master Keffinen made me an attraction in his menagerie. He made no efforts to civilize me, much less treated me as his son. Ask him to name me, and he wouldn’t have a name for me. I was nothing more than a savage to him.”
It was Keffinen’s turn to open his mouth to protest, and Draegon did his best not to look gratified when the Lady ordered him quiet.
“The onset of Search fifteen years ago found his show in Gaern, and it was there that man broke open the cage that held me. I will not lie and say I completely understood everything at the time, as I had no semblance of a civilized education, but the man was my liberator. Now I know he was a particularly greedy man, a bard, and he was only kidnapping me to use me for his own profit. It was that bard who taught me music and made the efforts to civilize me. And he gave me my name, Draegon.
“But I was still little more than a means of moneymaking to him, and some years ago, I managed to make my escape from him and begin building my own life. The instruments I carry were bought honestly, with money I made myself.”
Ryan finished his nonsensical story, spoken so quietly Dr. Anderson and Becca Smitts could only completely make out one sentence in every three. Emery kept his eyes on him, then flicked them to Lydia when she began speaking-- more loudly, but no more understandably.
The woman merchant whose wagon had been hit said very little. “This Keidenelle man was running and my cart happened to be in his chosen path. Obviously, being pursued as he was, he wasn’t able to take time to pay me back for what was broken, but he did take the time to apologize for his actions, even if it was only in a look. I had some wares broken, but I don’t think the price of what was lost is worth anyone being imprisoned over, my Lady.”
Draegon’s eyes widened. She wasn’t angry? Keffinen’s eyes were wide, too, but more likely he was surprised that the thought of money could be so easily put aside.
For a long few minutes, Lady Ara thought over what she’d heard. “Here is my decision,” she said finally. Draegon was glad; he was growing tired of the nearly murderous looks Keffinen was shooting him. “No matter which of your stories is true, they do agree on one point. Master Keffinen has been derived of property that was rightfully his. But whether that property was taken by Master Draegon or it is Master Draegon is of no matter. Either way, he is responsible. Personally, I do not approve of the slave trades, and I have outlawed them in my own lands, but it is not in my power or right to free a slave that is not mine.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Draegon saw Keffinen’s smile grow more and more. No doubt thoughts of money were running through his head.
“I give you three options, Master Draegon. Number one, you may return to Master Keffinen’s custody. You admitted freely yourself that you were his slave, and I admire your honesty in that. I would think any other man would deny it, especially since it was something your accuser didn’t mention. Slavery is a touchy subject for all. So your second and third options will allow you your freedom. Your second option is to simply give Master Keffinen your instruments. They are, after all, the property he claimed. Your third option is to pay Master Keffinen the full value of either the instruments or yourself as a slave, whichever price is lower, to offset the costs of the property he lost. Mistress Merchant?”
“My name is Gossard, my Lady. Mistress Gossard.” The merchant woman looked frightened.
“Mistress Gossard, you do not wish recompense for your lost wares?”
“No, my Lady. As I said, it is not worth someone losing his freedom for a few broken vases.”
The young Lady nodded as if pleased. “Then all I have for you is a small request for your services. If you would, please appraise Master Draegon’s instruments. And if you are comfortable with it, appraise Master Draegon, as well. We need to know a fair price for him to pay Master Keffinen if that is what he should choose.”
Draegon felt awkward as Mistress Gossard looked him up and down, judging him as one would a horse. At least she didn’t check his teeth. He didn’t want to part with his instruments, but a single reassuring look from the merchant made him more willing. She turned the carved wooden hand dulcimer, his silver-chased flute, and his rather plain tambour over in her hands one by one, gently plucking out a few notes on the dulcimer for tone and thumping the tambour twice to test them before handing them back.
“Considering the fine quality of his instruments and the physical shape Master Draegon is in, I would judge them to be of comparable value. Somewhere around seventy-five gold marks.”
Keffinen’s eyes glittered while Draegon’s fell. Seventy-five marks? And gold marks, too! He didn’t have that kind of money.
“Master Draegon? What is your decision?”
Draegon looked at the lords and ladies lining the walls of the audience chamber. Each of them avoided his eyes as if he were a fearsome animal, even though it should have been obvious from his behavior during this whole interval that he was no savage. No matter what, he wouldn’t go back to being one in their eyes. No one would cage him again. He fell to one knee and put a hand over his heart.
“Before the eyes of those around me and the ever-graceful and loving eyes of the Great Mother, I pledge myself to the Search for Sonsedhor. I will speak no untrue word. The innocent will fear no harm from me. It is for righteousness that I Seek, not for glory. Until the fabled blade is found or I pledge myself to another cause or master, I will Seek. This is my oath.”
Keffinen burst out with a string of obscenities that caused Lady Ara to have him removed from the chamber. “You realize what you have just said, Master Draegon?”
He only held out his hand in response. “My braid, my Lady.”
Sighing, Lady Ara produced a silver braid of the Seekers from somewhere about her and placed it in Draegon’s hand. As he tied it around his arm, he repeated, “This is my oath.”
“The oaths you have just made free you from all debts and obligations for the time being, Seeker Draegon,” Lady Ara said with resignation. “But do not believe it puts you in my good graces. It is a coward’s way out you have chosen, and I place no trust in cowards. Your oath only frees you from my verdict until the sword is found, until you die, or until you give up and begin again paying taxes to some lord or lady. But I will not even let you get away with that. If you are ever seen without your braid, you forfeit your oath, and you will be required to pay twice what you owe to Master Keffinen: a sum of one hundred and fifty gold marks. And to ensure that you don’t simply return to a life of performing and make your escape, my man Roark will accompany you on your search.” A single glare at Roark from Ara ensured he did as he was told.
Emery let out a grunt that could be taken for surprise, then mimicked Ryan’s behavior in kneeling with his hand over his heart and murmuring something neither the doctor nor her intern could hear.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Mere Acquaintances- Chapter Three
Chapter Three
In the courtyard, on a stone bench, another patient sat calmly, looking around blankly at other people and humming softly to himself. He was squat but slim with a hollow quality to most of his features. His hair was brown so light it was almost blonde, his eyes green, and a small, neatly trimmed beard circled his mouth. He had enough control over himself that he could maintain his facial hair with an electric trimmer-- under supervision, of course. He never complained about being watched like a child.
Now, sitting on his bench, he continued his humming, the one thing he did constantly. His professional background in music still showed through in his mannerisms: constant noisemaking, either hums or whistling. Sometimes it was Mozart or Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky or Bach or Wagner, or even Webern or Berg although no one wanted to be around him when he whistled the noise they called music. But sometimes, when he whistled something and was asked what it was-- a question he always answered in detail-- he would simply respond, “Mine,” and go on with it. He had once been a composer and music teacher for a college two towns over from Ighosia Falls.
***
Draegon had come into Necras two days before the official onset of the Search, planning to perform at the ceremonies, or at least on the street corners if he couldn’t get onto the official center-of-attention platform in the center of town. There were prizes for the best musicians and storytellers, especially for the best telling of the legends involving the renowned sword. On the day of the official onset, the contests began at noon. He had already added his name to the lists of storytellers, but he had yet to get up and tell his chosen tale; the tellings would go on late into the night. In the meantime, he had already made a decent handful of coins just from playing his hand dulcimer on a street corner.
People tended to walk wide of him in the crowds, at least once they registered what he was. He knew it was because of his hair. Only the Keidenelle had hair any shade lighter than golden-brown-- excepting the white and grey that came with age, of course-- and his was whitish yellow, marking him as one of the uncivilized nomads that wandered the land, brutalizing and robbing whatever people they came across. Even with him alone, and dressed as well as any successful bard, and acting and speaking just like any civilized person, the people avoided him. If no one else noticed, at least he knew he was not a savage, although he didn’t like to think about what he had to go through to become civilized.
A man on one street corner stood on a small wooden box, shouting advertisements for the menagerie, Jonal Keffinen’s Traveling Sights of Wonder. Had he not been standing on the box, he still would have been tall. He had a semi-tamed mop of black hair, a slightly crooked nose, and blue eyes that missed nothing. He looked like a man used to spotting trouble in a crowd. He spoke easily and cheerfully and with many grand gestures of the arms, and frequently stopped his advertising to banter amiably with a passerby. Draegon knew this man; he was Jonal Keffinen himself, the owner of the menagerie. He tried to step wide around him, but his own height and the fact that his pale hair marked him out in a crowd worked against him. He almost felt the moment Jonal’s eyes fell on him, and the shout came aimed right at his shoulder. “That’s my property! Stop him! Guards! Stop him!”
Just as suddenly as with the man on the balcony and the woman in the common room, the musician’s behavior changed. He jumped up and shouted at the tp of his lungs and darted away from the bench, running at top speed across the courtyard, through the flowerbeds, and even plowing through people milling about.
“I’m no man’s property!” Draegon dared to shout back before breaking into a run, careful to keep hold of his instrument cases so they didn’t wind up lost or damaged. He pushed his way through the crowd; suddenly they no longer wanted to part for him. He cursed the days he had worked for Keffinen in the Traveling Sights. Those days were years gone, but they still haunted him. He cursed under his breath. He was no savage to be displayed anymore, no attraction to be viewed by gawking patrons for a few measly coins he would not see so much as a penny of. Not anymore. He was going to preserve his freedom even if it meant running.
One of those he ran into was another patient, a mild-mannered and constantly sad woman with dark hair and almost purple eyes.
Before he could slow down or turn, he barreled headlong into a merchant’s wagon, throwing what looked like some rather expensive-looking porcelains and mechanical toys into the road, breaking them into pieces on the stone road upon impact. His momentum halted, he couldn’t help but make eye contact with the dark-skinned and dark-haired woman sitting atop the wagon. Rich azure eyes stared into his, seeming to delve into his core.
“Someone caught you and tamed you young, didn’t they?” she said, sounding more amused than he was comfortable with. Too out of breath to reply, he gave her an apologetic look before beginning his run again.
The salt-and-pepper policeman took it on himself to stop the ruckus, running through the halls and plowing over people himself to get at the running musician.
More and more he ran through the crowd, plowing past people and mumbling out-of-breath apologies whenever he could. The crowd seemed to be thickening around him. Jonal Keffinen’s condemning shouts still followed him, ringing in his ears and threatening a cage again. He refused to let his screaming legs rule him and make him slow; the crowd was making him go slowly enough.
He ran headlong into a solid wall, and arms wrapped around him immediately, keeping him from continuing his sprint. A guard looked down at him, stern face glaring and accusing. “You’ve been called before Lady Ara of Melistrat.”
The crowd around him was silent. All eyes were on him and the guards; a wide empty ring had opened up around them. Three guards-- that was what they had sent to capture him.
“Mother punish that damned Jonal Keffinen,” he muttered under his breath. Whatever punishment the Mother sent to him would be too good, he decided as the guard holding him released him from the tight bear’s hug he’d had him in and marched him towards the largest building edging the plaza. Behind him, another guard called, “Anyone else who is involved with this man, come before Lady Ara.”
Draegon could hear both the sound of wagon wheels-- the merchant woman’s cart-- and Jonal Keffinen’s slimy voice trailing after him.
In the courtyard, on a stone bench, another patient sat calmly, looking around blankly at other people and humming softly to himself. He was squat but slim with a hollow quality to most of his features. His hair was brown so light it was almost blonde, his eyes green, and a small, neatly trimmed beard circled his mouth. He had enough control over himself that he could maintain his facial hair with an electric trimmer-- under supervision, of course. He never complained about being watched like a child.
Now, sitting on his bench, he continued his humming, the one thing he did constantly. His professional background in music still showed through in his mannerisms: constant noisemaking, either hums or whistling. Sometimes it was Mozart or Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky or Bach or Wagner, or even Webern or Berg although no one wanted to be around him when he whistled the noise they called music. But sometimes, when he whistled something and was asked what it was-- a question he always answered in detail-- he would simply respond, “Mine,” and go on with it. He had once been a composer and music teacher for a college two towns over from Ighosia Falls.
***
Draegon had come into Necras two days before the official onset of the Search, planning to perform at the ceremonies, or at least on the street corners if he couldn’t get onto the official center-of-attention platform in the center of town. There were prizes for the best musicians and storytellers, especially for the best telling of the legends involving the renowned sword. On the day of the official onset, the contests began at noon. He had already added his name to the lists of storytellers, but he had yet to get up and tell his chosen tale; the tellings would go on late into the night. In the meantime, he had already made a decent handful of coins just from playing his hand dulcimer on a street corner.
People tended to walk wide of him in the crowds, at least once they registered what he was. He knew it was because of his hair. Only the Keidenelle had hair any shade lighter than golden-brown-- excepting the white and grey that came with age, of course-- and his was whitish yellow, marking him as one of the uncivilized nomads that wandered the land, brutalizing and robbing whatever people they came across. Even with him alone, and dressed as well as any successful bard, and acting and speaking just like any civilized person, the people avoided him. If no one else noticed, at least he knew he was not a savage, although he didn’t like to think about what he had to go through to become civilized.
A man on one street corner stood on a small wooden box, shouting advertisements for the menagerie, Jonal Keffinen’s Traveling Sights of Wonder. Had he not been standing on the box, he still would have been tall. He had a semi-tamed mop of black hair, a slightly crooked nose, and blue eyes that missed nothing. He looked like a man used to spotting trouble in a crowd. He spoke easily and cheerfully and with many grand gestures of the arms, and frequently stopped his advertising to banter amiably with a passerby. Draegon knew this man; he was Jonal Keffinen himself, the owner of the menagerie. He tried to step wide around him, but his own height and the fact that his pale hair marked him out in a crowd worked against him. He almost felt the moment Jonal’s eyes fell on him, and the shout came aimed right at his shoulder. “That’s my property! Stop him! Guards! Stop him!”
Just as suddenly as with the man on the balcony and the woman in the common room, the musician’s behavior changed. He jumped up and shouted at the tp of his lungs and darted away from the bench, running at top speed across the courtyard, through the flowerbeds, and even plowing through people milling about.
“I’m no man’s property!” Draegon dared to shout back before breaking into a run, careful to keep hold of his instrument cases so they didn’t wind up lost or damaged. He pushed his way through the crowd; suddenly they no longer wanted to part for him. He cursed the days he had worked for Keffinen in the Traveling Sights. Those days were years gone, but they still haunted him. He cursed under his breath. He was no savage to be displayed anymore, no attraction to be viewed by gawking patrons for a few measly coins he would not see so much as a penny of. Not anymore. He was going to preserve his freedom even if it meant running.
One of those he ran into was another patient, a mild-mannered and constantly sad woman with dark hair and almost purple eyes.
Before he could slow down or turn, he barreled headlong into a merchant’s wagon, throwing what looked like some rather expensive-looking porcelains and mechanical toys into the road, breaking them into pieces on the stone road upon impact. His momentum halted, he couldn’t help but make eye contact with the dark-skinned and dark-haired woman sitting atop the wagon. Rich azure eyes stared into his, seeming to delve into his core.
“Someone caught you and tamed you young, didn’t they?” she said, sounding more amused than he was comfortable with. Too out of breath to reply, he gave her an apologetic look before beginning his run again.
The salt-and-pepper policeman took it on himself to stop the ruckus, running through the halls and plowing over people himself to get at the running musician.
More and more he ran through the crowd, plowing past people and mumbling out-of-breath apologies whenever he could. The crowd seemed to be thickening around him. Jonal Keffinen’s condemning shouts still followed him, ringing in his ears and threatening a cage again. He refused to let his screaming legs rule him and make him slow; the crowd was making him go slowly enough.
He ran headlong into a solid wall, and arms wrapped around him immediately, keeping him from continuing his sprint. A guard looked down at him, stern face glaring and accusing. “You’ve been called before Lady Ara of Melistrat.”
The crowd around him was silent. All eyes were on him and the guards; a wide empty ring had opened up around them. Three guards-- that was what they had sent to capture him.
“Mother punish that damned Jonal Keffinen,” he muttered under his breath. Whatever punishment the Mother sent to him would be too good, he decided as the guard holding him released him from the tight bear’s hug he’d had him in and marched him towards the largest building edging the plaza. Behind him, another guard called, “Anyone else who is involved with this man, come before Lady Ara.”
Draegon could hear both the sound of wagon wheels-- the merchant woman’s cart-- and Jonal Keffinen’s slimy voice trailing after him.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Mere Acquaintances- Chapter Two
Chapter Two
There was a certain window that looked out over the walled-in garden-slash-courtyard at Ighosia Falls, and it was there that one particular patient liked to spend most of his time. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and tall, with salt-and-pepper hair and stony blue eyes. Once a formidable member of the police force, he now held no gun, had no uniform. He spent his time staring out into the courtyard, babbling softly to himself, occasionally shouting “Don’t!” or “Please, stop!” The doctors knew the shouts were linked to the incident that broke him.
One intern just happened to be looking in his direction when something came over his eyes. So she was the only one to see his mouth clamp shut mid-babble, to see the sudden change in the look behind his eyes. He’d gone quiet, the abrupt change in behavior happening without warning, just as with the woman in the wheelchair. His change was certainly less violent and even less noticeable. But the intern was convinced there had been a change. Silence surrounded the big man; the cold look in his eyes became the only indication of life.
***
Ara Fusica leaned over the rail of the balcony overlooking the main plaza of Necras, her feet a few inches above the ground as she hoisted herself up to look at the rabble-rousing below. All she could see were heads covered with many different colors of hair and the colorful splashes of their clothes.
“My Lady, you shouldn’t hang over the edge like that. You’ll fall, and then where will we be?”
Ara let her feet come back down to the marble floor of the balcony and looked up to her sworn guard. Roark Dow was a broad-shouldered man in the prime of his life. He didn’t wear all his steel battle armor here in the city; rather a set of thick hardened leather protected him. His coal-black hair, usually disheveled and spiky with sweat from being kept under his helmet at all hours, was now dry and sitting neatly on his head. His chin was smooth as a boy’s despite his thirty-five years. His eyes looked down on the milling crowd, appraising everyone and generally disapproving of the carousing in the streets below.
This was the first time Ara could really see the onset of the Search; it only happened every fifteen years, and at age fifteen, had only experienced the last one as an infant. She was amazed now at the sight of all the men wearing the silver braid of Seekers. So many-- it looked like nearly every man in the city wore one.
“Every fifteen years, the Seekers of Sonsedhor set out from the four capital cities of the world to search for the sword that was lost,” she said, her words almost a recitation. “I never imagined there would be so many.”
“And there may not even be one among them all who will find it. There have been nearly sixty Searches set out since Cheyne Firdin vanished, and they began long after his mysterious disappearance.” Roark spoke matter-of-factly, his lips barely moving but his voice firm and commanding. Should the need ever arise, he would lead soldiers into battle to defend her.
“Have you ever thought of joining the Search?” Ara asked, looking up at her guardian. “Did you go on the last one? You would have been old enough.”
“At the time of the last one, you were a babe in swaddling clothes in your mother’s arms, my Lady,” he replied, his voice remaining level, as if he were lecturing. “From the moment of your birth, I was bound to you, sworn to protect you, to give up my life to defend your own. I was not free to join the Search then, nor am I now.”
“I could free you from that bond if you wished,” she said, still looking up at him. She was not short-- not for her age, anyway-- but he still stood head and shoulders taller than her. “At one word form me, your oath could be undone. Do you wish it? To search the world for Sonsedhor?”
He turned his eyes back down to the rabble in the plaza. “I am not looking for glory,” he said simply and firmly, ending the conversation.
She refused to let it end. “Then what are you looking for?”
He let out a loud sigh, but she thought he was about to answer, when below them, a hubbub began. A man shouted, his voice carrying over the raucous volume of the crowd. “That’s my property! Stop him! Guards! Stop him!”
She jumped up to lean her chest against the rail again so she could really see what was below her. Roark mumbled something, but she couldn’t make it out. Probably something about not leaning over the rail again. She ignored him and looked for where the trouble was.
Among the multi-colored heads, a pale-haired man seemed to be the center of attention. “Now what is happening down there?” she asked. “Go find out, Roark. Take some guards and sort this out. I won’t have thieves in my city.”
There was a certain window that looked out over the walled-in garden-slash-courtyard at Ighosia Falls, and it was there that one particular patient liked to spend most of his time. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and tall, with salt-and-pepper hair and stony blue eyes. Once a formidable member of the police force, he now held no gun, had no uniform. He spent his time staring out into the courtyard, babbling softly to himself, occasionally shouting “Don’t!” or “Please, stop!” The doctors knew the shouts were linked to the incident that broke him.
One intern just happened to be looking in his direction when something came over his eyes. So she was the only one to see his mouth clamp shut mid-babble, to see the sudden change in the look behind his eyes. He’d gone quiet, the abrupt change in behavior happening without warning, just as with the woman in the wheelchair. His change was certainly less violent and even less noticeable. But the intern was convinced there had been a change. Silence surrounded the big man; the cold look in his eyes became the only indication of life.
***
Ara Fusica leaned over the rail of the balcony overlooking the main plaza of Necras, her feet a few inches above the ground as she hoisted herself up to look at the rabble-rousing below. All she could see were heads covered with many different colors of hair and the colorful splashes of their clothes.
“My Lady, you shouldn’t hang over the edge like that. You’ll fall, and then where will we be?”
Ara let her feet come back down to the marble floor of the balcony and looked up to her sworn guard. Roark Dow was a broad-shouldered man in the prime of his life. He didn’t wear all his steel battle armor here in the city; rather a set of thick hardened leather protected him. His coal-black hair, usually disheveled and spiky with sweat from being kept under his helmet at all hours, was now dry and sitting neatly on his head. His chin was smooth as a boy’s despite his thirty-five years. His eyes looked down on the milling crowd, appraising everyone and generally disapproving of the carousing in the streets below.
This was the first time Ara could really see the onset of the Search; it only happened every fifteen years, and at age fifteen, had only experienced the last one as an infant. She was amazed now at the sight of all the men wearing the silver braid of Seekers. So many-- it looked like nearly every man in the city wore one.
“Every fifteen years, the Seekers of Sonsedhor set out from the four capital cities of the world to search for the sword that was lost,” she said, her words almost a recitation. “I never imagined there would be so many.”
“And there may not even be one among them all who will find it. There have been nearly sixty Searches set out since Cheyne Firdin vanished, and they began long after his mysterious disappearance.” Roark spoke matter-of-factly, his lips barely moving but his voice firm and commanding. Should the need ever arise, he would lead soldiers into battle to defend her.
“Have you ever thought of joining the Search?” Ara asked, looking up at her guardian. “Did you go on the last one? You would have been old enough.”
“At the time of the last one, you were a babe in swaddling clothes in your mother’s arms, my Lady,” he replied, his voice remaining level, as if he were lecturing. “From the moment of your birth, I was bound to you, sworn to protect you, to give up my life to defend your own. I was not free to join the Search then, nor am I now.”
“I could free you from that bond if you wished,” she said, still looking up at him. She was not short-- not for her age, anyway-- but he still stood head and shoulders taller than her. “At one word form me, your oath could be undone. Do you wish it? To search the world for Sonsedhor?”
He turned his eyes back down to the rabble in the plaza. “I am not looking for glory,” he said simply and firmly, ending the conversation.
She refused to let it end. “Then what are you looking for?”
He let out a loud sigh, but she thought he was about to answer, when below them, a hubbub began. A man shouted, his voice carrying over the raucous volume of the crowd. “That’s my property! Stop him! Guards! Stop him!”
She jumped up to lean her chest against the rail again so she could really see what was below her. Roark mumbled something, but she couldn’t make it out. Probably something about not leaning over the rail again. She ignored him and looked for where the trouble was.
Among the multi-colored heads, a pale-haired man seemed to be the center of attention. “Now what is happening down there?” she asked. “Go find out, Roark. Take some guards and sort this out. I won’t have thieves in my city.”
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Mere Acquaintances- Chapter One
Chapter One
Ighosia Falls Insane Asylum-- the board of directors had yet to change the name to Ighosia Falls Mental Institution even though there was a bill on the board-- housed numerous patients who milled about aimlessly. Their behavior was placid enough that they could be allowed to roam the buildings and grounds without endangering themselves or others. The big common room that also served as game room and sometime cafeteria had enrobed patients scattered around tables, sofas, and the obligatory ping pong table. Most of them chattered with themselves or visitors or staff-- those that were coherent or thought they were coherent. Some still had enough of their minds to be able to interact, but those that spoke in gibberish still wanted to be heard. Volunteers had grown used to the ones who just wanted to be listened to while they babbled on about God-knows-what. Some of the patients who had no desire to listen or speak simply sat, staring at a wall, a TV screen, their hands or laps, or nothing in particular.
One patient sat in a wheelchair, her back to the wall, watching with uninterested eyes the color of chocolate. Auburn hair tumbled to her shoulders. She was always quiet, often unresponsive when addressed, but the doctors, staff, and volunteers had grown used to her and no one tried to interact with her anymore. She was content to sit in her chair, sometimes with a book or a magazine in her lap that she did not read, and while away the hours simply being, in a silent and lonely world.
Without warning or any sort of catalyst, she suddenly tried to stand in her wheelchair, struggling against legs that didn’t want to work. Her voice burst from her, hoarse from disuse. “I’ve lost it! I’ve lost it!”
Heads whipped around to look at her questioningly, a pair of nurses rushed to her to calm her down. A psychiatric doctor watched everything, immediately postulating what this sudden change in behavior meant. Was it, perhaps, the first sign of regained sanity, of awareness of surroundings? Or was it a delirium, with the lost “it” being something conjured in a fractured mind?
***
Necras was teeming with people, and they pressed in on Senne from all sides. Rumor that Cheyne Firdin had been reborn had reached her ears, leading her first to one city, then to another as the rumors developed. He was in Morena! No in Abem, or in Estria! No, he was in Necras! Wherever he was, the rebirth of the hero meant one thing: that the cursed sword Sonsedhor might again be within her grasp, or come within her grasp.
The crowds in Necras weren’t encouraging. The rumors had only pointed to one thing: the Search. The celebration of the great hero’s rebirth was nothing more than the setting forth of Seekers: men who believed they might be a rebirth of the hero, each one of them planning to go reclaim the famous blade and make a name for himself as a hero.
She pushed through the crowd; everywhere she looked were men wearing the silver braided cord of a Seeker. The cord came along with the oaths they made: to be honest, to do no harm to the innocent, and to seek it for righteousness rather than for glory. Those oaths freed men from all debts and obligations until one of three things happened: either they died, the sword was found, or the Seeker gave up and returned to paying taxes. Senne thought it all silly. Why should any man need to make oaths, or search for the sword? Whoever had once walked the world as Cheyne Firdin should know what had happened to Sonsedhor, hidden or not.
“He’s here.” The voice burst into her head like the boom from a firework. “The one who will find the sword. The one is here!”
In the middle of a crowd as she was, she fell to her knees from shock and elation. It had been so long. After her failure to bring him Sonsedhor back when Cheyne held it, she had been cut off from him completely and without mercy. Now, to hear his silken gravelly voice again was ecstasy.
As if he could read her thoughts-- which he probably could, actually-- his voice echoed in the back of her head again. “You are not in my favor yet, child. Do not believe you are. But perhaps you might redeem yourself. The one who will find that cursed blade is here. Bring him to me. Find the blade, and you may prove what little worth you actually have.”
As suddenly as it had come, the voice was gone, the itching buzz in the back
of her head abruptly disappearing. Shaking, she got to her feet, her eyes doing more than just passing over the individuals that made up the mass. Now, she actually saw them.
The plaza was filled to bursting with men and women, but her master had given her no way to tell which one of the men around her was the one. She picked out a chestnut-haired man not ten paces from her, but there was no guarantee Cheyne’s rebirth would look like Cheyne himself had. The man around her were all as different as people could be. Dark-skinned and fair, blue-eyed Gaernin and brown-eyed Melistrati, black hair and red hair and brown and all shades in between… she even thought she spied a pale-haired Keidenelle savage among the rabble. She gave a start at seeing the man she thought was a Keidenelle. Either they were attacking and no one cared because there was only the one, or he was an attraction escaped from some menagerie or showman who had set up outside the city. She had seen menageries boast of captured savages before, but most often they turned out to be fakes, men or women who had drained all the color from their hair by a means Senne didn’t know. This man’s hair wasn’t drained of color; it was more of a whitish-blonde, like fresh buttermilk or a none-too-clean linen shirt. He wasn’t dressed like a savage either; his clothes fit in perfectly with the crowd. Perhaps he had drained the color from more normal brown hair himself, to instill fear in competition for the sword. No silver braid of a Seeker adorned his sleeve; the man wasn’t out for the glory that would come with Sonsedhor. Senne dismissed him from her thoughts.
She worked her way through the crowd, her eyes darting around at man after man, wondering if perhaps her lover’s relationship with Cheyne before would help her recognize his rebirth. A thought struck; would he recognize her? Would that be one of the memories that came to his rebirth? Had she been recognized already, and he was simply avoiding her? There were too many questions. He was here, but where?
Musicians were playing on every corner, and jugglers and acrobats performed wherever they could find space. Half the people in these crowds were drinking, the other half mostly drunk already, even though it was not yet noon.
She found herself among a cluster of braid-wearing Seekers close to one of the gates to the city. Outside the walls, the colorful sides of a tent stretched towards the sky. The menagerie. She sneered; she hated menageries. A painted wooden sign named this Jonal Keffinen’s Traveling Sights of Wonder. A long line of Seekers were strolling among the large tent and the few smaller tents surrounding it that housed smaller attractions. She sauntered through the crowds herself, dropping a coin in the box near the entrance arch to pay her way in. Money was easily come by; she could waste it on this, even though she hated them. Cheyne might be among the crowd.
The smells of horses and mules reached her, and she wrinkled her nose. She let it stay wrinkled as she looked around and saw the people who wore vests made of the same colorful material as the tents; the vests marked them as workers of the Traveling Sights of Wonder. She glared at every one of them she saw. Menageries were peopled by nothing but con artists and freaks. Within one small open tent, a woman was contorting herself into all kinds of different positions that should have been impossible. Freak. In another, a man was “eating” fire and blowing it back out of his mouth. A small boy not wearing a vest darted among the crowd surrounding the fire eater. Senne saw the quick movements that showed he was picking pockets. No doubt he was employed by the performer. Con artist. A woman standing on a makeshift platform open to the air was swallowing daggers and knives and swords-- nothing any honest person would do to make a living. Strange animals were in cages, strange items in large glass bottles and jars were lined up on a table, being watched over by a man with eyes far too large for him. He looked like an owl. A man with no arms wrote on a giant slate with his feet, his handwriting neat and perfect. Freaks and more freaks.
And the other people were eating it all up. Any man who was truly Cheyne wouldn’t be taken in by all this. He was not one to be entertained by the unnatural. She walked purposefully out of the menagerie’s roped-off grounds.
Back within the walls of the city, she got lost in the crowd and stood in one spot, looking around. Cheyne Firdin’s new life was in here somewhere, but where?!
Ighosia Falls Insane Asylum-- the board of directors had yet to change the name to Ighosia Falls Mental Institution even though there was a bill on the board-- housed numerous patients who milled about aimlessly. Their behavior was placid enough that they could be allowed to roam the buildings and grounds without endangering themselves or others. The big common room that also served as game room and sometime cafeteria had enrobed patients scattered around tables, sofas, and the obligatory ping pong table. Most of them chattered with themselves or visitors or staff-- those that were coherent or thought they were coherent. Some still had enough of their minds to be able to interact, but those that spoke in gibberish still wanted to be heard. Volunteers had grown used to the ones who just wanted to be listened to while they babbled on about God-knows-what. Some of the patients who had no desire to listen or speak simply sat, staring at a wall, a TV screen, their hands or laps, or nothing in particular.
One patient sat in a wheelchair, her back to the wall, watching with uninterested eyes the color of chocolate. Auburn hair tumbled to her shoulders. She was always quiet, often unresponsive when addressed, but the doctors, staff, and volunteers had grown used to her and no one tried to interact with her anymore. She was content to sit in her chair, sometimes with a book or a magazine in her lap that she did not read, and while away the hours simply being, in a silent and lonely world.
Without warning or any sort of catalyst, she suddenly tried to stand in her wheelchair, struggling against legs that didn’t want to work. Her voice burst from her, hoarse from disuse. “I’ve lost it! I’ve lost it!”
Heads whipped around to look at her questioningly, a pair of nurses rushed to her to calm her down. A psychiatric doctor watched everything, immediately postulating what this sudden change in behavior meant. Was it, perhaps, the first sign of regained sanity, of awareness of surroundings? Or was it a delirium, with the lost “it” being something conjured in a fractured mind?
***
Necras was teeming with people, and they pressed in on Senne from all sides. Rumor that Cheyne Firdin had been reborn had reached her ears, leading her first to one city, then to another as the rumors developed. He was in Morena! No in Abem, or in Estria! No, he was in Necras! Wherever he was, the rebirth of the hero meant one thing: that the cursed sword Sonsedhor might again be within her grasp, or come within her grasp.
The crowds in Necras weren’t encouraging. The rumors had only pointed to one thing: the Search. The celebration of the great hero’s rebirth was nothing more than the setting forth of Seekers: men who believed they might be a rebirth of the hero, each one of them planning to go reclaim the famous blade and make a name for himself as a hero.
She pushed through the crowd; everywhere she looked were men wearing the silver braided cord of a Seeker. The cord came along with the oaths they made: to be honest, to do no harm to the innocent, and to seek it for righteousness rather than for glory. Those oaths freed men from all debts and obligations until one of three things happened: either they died, the sword was found, or the Seeker gave up and returned to paying taxes. Senne thought it all silly. Why should any man need to make oaths, or search for the sword? Whoever had once walked the world as Cheyne Firdin should know what had happened to Sonsedhor, hidden or not.
“He’s here.” The voice burst into her head like the boom from a firework. “The one who will find the sword. The one is here!”
In the middle of a crowd as she was, she fell to her knees from shock and elation. It had been so long. After her failure to bring him Sonsedhor back when Cheyne held it, she had been cut off from him completely and without mercy. Now, to hear his silken gravelly voice again was ecstasy.
As if he could read her thoughts-- which he probably could, actually-- his voice echoed in the back of her head again. “You are not in my favor yet, child. Do not believe you are. But perhaps you might redeem yourself. The one who will find that cursed blade is here. Bring him to me. Find the blade, and you may prove what little worth you actually have.”
As suddenly as it had come, the voice was gone, the itching buzz in the back
of her head abruptly disappearing. Shaking, she got to her feet, her eyes doing more than just passing over the individuals that made up the mass. Now, she actually saw them.
The plaza was filled to bursting with men and women, but her master had given her no way to tell which one of the men around her was the one. She picked out a chestnut-haired man not ten paces from her, but there was no guarantee Cheyne’s rebirth would look like Cheyne himself had. The man around her were all as different as people could be. Dark-skinned and fair, blue-eyed Gaernin and brown-eyed Melistrati, black hair and red hair and brown and all shades in between… she even thought she spied a pale-haired Keidenelle savage among the rabble. She gave a start at seeing the man she thought was a Keidenelle. Either they were attacking and no one cared because there was only the one, or he was an attraction escaped from some menagerie or showman who had set up outside the city. She had seen menageries boast of captured savages before, but most often they turned out to be fakes, men or women who had drained all the color from their hair by a means Senne didn’t know. This man’s hair wasn’t drained of color; it was more of a whitish-blonde, like fresh buttermilk or a none-too-clean linen shirt. He wasn’t dressed like a savage either; his clothes fit in perfectly with the crowd. Perhaps he had drained the color from more normal brown hair himself, to instill fear in competition for the sword. No silver braid of a Seeker adorned his sleeve; the man wasn’t out for the glory that would come with Sonsedhor. Senne dismissed him from her thoughts.
She worked her way through the crowd, her eyes darting around at man after man, wondering if perhaps her lover’s relationship with Cheyne before would help her recognize his rebirth. A thought struck; would he recognize her? Would that be one of the memories that came to his rebirth? Had she been recognized already, and he was simply avoiding her? There were too many questions. He was here, but where?
Musicians were playing on every corner, and jugglers and acrobats performed wherever they could find space. Half the people in these crowds were drinking, the other half mostly drunk already, even though it was not yet noon.
She found herself among a cluster of braid-wearing Seekers close to one of the gates to the city. Outside the walls, the colorful sides of a tent stretched towards the sky. The menagerie. She sneered; she hated menageries. A painted wooden sign named this Jonal Keffinen’s Traveling Sights of Wonder. A long line of Seekers were strolling among the large tent and the few smaller tents surrounding it that housed smaller attractions. She sauntered through the crowds herself, dropping a coin in the box near the entrance arch to pay her way in. Money was easily come by; she could waste it on this, even though she hated them. Cheyne might be among the crowd.
The smells of horses and mules reached her, and she wrinkled her nose. She let it stay wrinkled as she looked around and saw the people who wore vests made of the same colorful material as the tents; the vests marked them as workers of the Traveling Sights of Wonder. She glared at every one of them she saw. Menageries were peopled by nothing but con artists and freaks. Within one small open tent, a woman was contorting herself into all kinds of different positions that should have been impossible. Freak. In another, a man was “eating” fire and blowing it back out of his mouth. A small boy not wearing a vest darted among the crowd surrounding the fire eater. Senne saw the quick movements that showed he was picking pockets. No doubt he was employed by the performer. Con artist. A woman standing on a makeshift platform open to the air was swallowing daggers and knives and swords-- nothing any honest person would do to make a living. Strange animals were in cages, strange items in large glass bottles and jars were lined up on a table, being watched over by a man with eyes far too large for him. He looked like an owl. A man with no arms wrote on a giant slate with his feet, his handwriting neat and perfect. Freaks and more freaks.
And the other people were eating it all up. Any man who was truly Cheyne wouldn’t be taken in by all this. He was not one to be entertained by the unnatural. She walked purposefully out of the menagerie’s roped-off grounds.
Back within the walls of the city, she got lost in the crowd and stood in one spot, looking around. Cheyne Firdin’s new life was in here somewhere, but where?!
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Mere Acquaintances- Prologue
Prologue
The river Swen was banked on one side by high, grassy ground peppered with brush and stunted trees, and on the other by black nothingness. For about two paces, the far bank looked just like the one Cheyne was standing on; rich dirt sloped up to contain the lazily flowing water and finally leveled to the same high grass and various foliage that could have banked any river anywhere. But after those two paces on the far side, it all just stopped, like a long sharp blade had simply cut through the earth and trees and peeled them away, leaving nothing but a black as dark as a murderer’s heart. Even from this distance, Cheyne thought it looked thick, like molasses, like he could put out his hand and be enveloped in it. Staring at it made him feel more like a child than the hero others thought him to be. He wiggled his fingers, just to make sure they were still attached to his hand. Even knowing that it was on the other side of the river, for a moment, he had almost felt as though he had put his fingers into the black, and they had gone numb.
He lifted the heavy steel helmet from his head and ran a hand through his chestnut hair. His hand came back covered with sweat. His eyes never left the darkness on the other side of the river. It was broad daylight-- just an hour or so after noon-- but the darkness was complete. He squinted, trying to penetrate it with his gaze, but at the same time not quite seeing it. He could remember remembering a time when that blackness wasn’t there, when plains-- he had the vague idea it had been plains-- extended far on the other side of the river, but the memories were not even half-remembered. A grimace tugged at the corners of his mouth. It was frustrating that his memory didn’t extend as far back as it used to. The memories from some of his past lives, the ones he had lived longest ago, were fading. Decades were missing, decades of experiences he could remember remembering and thinking on, but that was all there was anymore. Still staring at the nothingness without seeing it, he began to wonder how much his next rebirth would remember. Who would that man be? What would he be like?
How much of the land will blackness like that cover then?
The grimace that had been tugging at him made its appearance, and he put a hand on the sword at his hip, gripping the hilt tightly as if afraid the blackness would attack and he had to be ready for it. It didn’t waver. The one thing he was certain of, the one thing that was always a part of his lives, of all his memories, was the sword. Sonsedhor. Fine brown leather cord wrapped the hilt from pommel to the plain steel cross guard that separated hilt from blade. The blade itself was a bit wide, straight and double-edged, but tempered in a style that made it look like waves radiated from the center to the edge when the light hit it right. For all the old stories told about his former lives that involved Sonsedhor, all the legends that turned his lives and himself into a hero of legend, all the tales that made the famous sword into a brilliant weapon worthy of heroes, it wasn’t really much to look at. It was a tool, made for a purpose, and no more. But it was a constant; it made Cheyne certain of who he was. Sonsedhor had always been connected to him, and him to it, for hundreds of lives-- maybe thousands-- even though there were only a dozen or so he could actually remember in detail.
The sword was centuries old, and had never been wielded by anyone but himself. His predecessors took pains to hide it before death took him, so only the next incarnation of himself would be able to find it. Whenever he felt death at his back, he would do the same, and wait until the Mother gave him birth again to find it.
The sound of footsteps-- both human and horse-- approached. His grimace turned into a smile without his thinking about it, and he finally tore his eyes away from the blackness across the river. The horse was the color of dust, a well-tempered mare with calm eyes that matched her owner’s in color. But the similarities ended there. Above her own calm brown eyes, Senne’s hair was deep brown, pulled back into an intricate pattern of twists and curls that would normally be seen on a lady in a city, not out here at the edge of the world, days from any settlement. Even her gown was more suited for city business than traveling, except that the fine silk of her skirts was in fact divided for riding. It was deep sapphire blue and covered with hundreds of tiny glass beads. Pure snowy white slashed her sleeves and the middle of her bodice, all of that too encrusted with beadwork. It was a gown made for court, but Senne would have nothing less than the finest, even on the road.
“So it’s true, isn’t it, love?” she asked, her voice as soft and sleek as the silk of her gown. She left her mare to graze and strode next him, her hard-soled leather riding shoes making almost no noise in the grass that led up to the bank. Her arm went through his; he loosened his grip on Sonsedhor’s hilt.
“So it seems,” he replied. “There’s nothing on the other side of the Swen. It just… stops.”
“I was afraid to believe it when I heard the rumor. Thank you for bringing me out here.” For a long time he watched her as she stared at the blackness, almost without blinking, until he found his own eyes locked on it again, trying to see through it.
The sound of rustling fabric broke him from his staring, and he turned to see Senne had stepped out of her shoes and taken off her stockings. Her hands were reaching behind her back, undoing the row of buttons that ran up the back of her bodice.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to see it up close. The river isn’t flowing too heavily, now that the spring thaws are long past and it hasn’t rained in nearly a fortnight. In fact, it’s been so dry for the last month the Swen can’t be very deep. So I’m going to swim across and see it up close. Are you going to come with me?” She shrugged her shoulders out of the bodice and slid her arms out of the sleeves. The fine gown cascaded to the ground, piling around her ankles. Even clad only in her shift, she was able to somehow look more commanding than any monarch he had ever met. Without waiting for his response, she crossed her arms beneath her breasts and continued, “You’ll want to remove all your armor before you go in. It would weigh you down and drown you.”
Ignoring the tone in her voice that made him feel like she saw him as a child, he methodically worked his way out of his armor and set it on the bank next to his own mare. She ignored him. Once he was stripped down to his simple cloth breeches, with a sheathed dagger at his belt, he and Senne plunged into the river together.
The water was cold but not icy, deep enough that he couldn’t touch the bottom, but slow enough that it wasn’t an issue. A few minutes of swimming saw him and Senne clambering up the far bank not too far downriver from the horses. He helped Senne to her feet on the grass, ignoring the fact that the water had set her white shift clinging to her every curve, that it being wet had made it almost completely transparent. Even with trying not to look, he could see every bit of her. She smiled slyly at him and brushed past him half a step.
Clinging to each other, they inched closer to the edge of the void. Cheyne found himself leaning forward, his nose reaching to the wall of blackness while the rest of him stayed further back. He straightened and pulled Senne back just a bit with him. He saw her reach out a hand toward the nothingness and somehow could not make himself reach out to pull her hand back. He held his breath as Senne’s fingers came up to the blank wall of blank. For a long minute, her hand and the blackness sat there, suspended, frozen, and then one finger extended and breached the boundary of the void.
The black didn’t swallow her hand like Cheyne thought it would. Instead, her hand stayed perfectly visible, the edges sharp and vivid as if he were looking at it in broad daylight. It seemed, for a moment, that her hand gave off its own light to break the blackness.
“It feels… thick, but empty at the same time,” Senne said, moving her hand slowly around and wiggling her fingers. “I wonder…” Again, before he could move to stop her, she was leaning forward, her head broke into the darkness, and she was looking down. “Oh, my…” Her hand moved from his arm to his back, settling against his skin between his shoulder blades.
Cheyne had never been an easily frightened man , but he hesitated before carefully leaning forward himself and peering over the edge of the black. Beyond the edge, the world just ended. The ground beneath him didn’t even have any thickness to it. It was more like a sheet of parchment, stretched and scraped thin. He was suddenly overcome by vertigo and the feeling that the earth would break under his weight. Other than that thin crust that was the land he stood on, there was nothing in the black. Pure nothing, in every direction. He felt sweat breaking out on his still-clammy skin and realized he was trembling. As slowly as he had extended his head, he drew it back until green grass was beneath his eyes. Only then did he straighten up again.
On the return swim, the water felt warmer. When they emerged from the river, the sun was warmer, the breeze less bracing. The whole world seemed to be warm and more colorful, as if it were showing off how it was different from the abyss. He was grateful for the walk back upstream to where the horses were; the warm sun and wind dried him as he walked.
He helped Senne do up the buttons on the back of her gown before he started donning his armor. He straightened from fastening the last of his greaves and was reaching for Sonsedhor on its belt when a loud crack rang in his ears. A heavy weight slammed into him, pushing him bodily toward the river. His arms and legs became tangled in branches and leaves, and as he twisted to see, rough tree bark was all that was before his eyes. Completely winded, he tumbled down the bank and into the water, the tree dragging him with it. The weight of all the steel encasing his body dragged him down at the same time the tree tried to keep him on the surface. Water filled his lungs as he desperately tried to keep his head above water. He tried to free his arms from the tangled branches, but they were pinned too tightly. He whipped his head around as well as he could underwater, but the strap that fastened his helmet under his chin wouldn’t move. It dragged his head down, keeping it under the surface. His lungs screamed for air. He could feel the current pulling him downriver. The water was suddenly freezing.
***
Senne watched emotionlessly as the uprooted tree floated downriver with Cheyne tangled in it. “My master thanks you for the kingly gift,” she said sweetly to the drifting log. Before it was anywhere near out of sight, she turned away and reached for the sword belt with the scabbard and blade still in it, right where he had leaned it against one of the stunted trees. Without so much as a backward glance, she mounted on her mare and rode away.
She had not even gone a mile into the open plains when the late afternoon sun disappeared and she was swathed by darkness. Swirling black and gold and blue surrounded her, some of it moving so fast that it made her feel dizzy and sick. She reined her mare to a halt, practically throwing herself out of the saddle even before the horse came to a complete stop. Immediately she went to her knees, the sword in its scabbard on the ground below her chin.
Glancing up, she saw the swirling colors come together, solidifying into a man. His breeches and boots were black, his coat blue, all of it embroidered in sparkling thread-of-gold, even the boots. Black lace spilled from his cuffs and collar, bordering against the pale skin of his hands. The short hair atop his head was golden; his ears and the sides of his face pale. But where eyebrows, eyes, nose and mouth, cheeks and chin should be, there was nothing. Like the abyss on the other side of the river, his face was blank. Flat and empty.
One of the pale hands reached out. Hastily, she grasped the sword and proffered it to him, resisting the urge to jerk back once it was out of her grasp. He took the sword and wrapped stick-like fingers around the hilt, drawing the blade from its scabbard. “You have done well.” A voice that was at the same time smooth and gravelly came from the blank face. The eyes that weren’t there looked at the blade as he turned it this way and that to set light glinting off the steel. “You will go far in my service.”
The air was pierced with a bone chilling scream before Senne could thank him. It came from behind her, where the river washed over a man doomed to die, his body tangled in a tree. His head could never have broken the surface, weighted down as it was by his heavy steel helmet, but the scream was as loud as if she were right next to him. The air shook with its force. At hearing that cry, Senne knew Cheyne was dead.
At the very moment the shriek ended, the bare blade wrenched itself from her master’s hand, the scabbard flew from where he had discarded it by his leg, and both flew through the air back toward the Swen, a trail of smoky blackness dotted with gold trailing after it.
Senne stared after it, completely stunned until an iron grip surrounded her throat, choking her. She managed to turn her eyes up; her master’s hands were motionless by his sides; his empty face turned down, looking at her.
“You will go back and get it, or so help me, you will die a thousand deaths before I’m through with you. Don’t call my name unless you have it in your grasp.” The grip tightened on her throat. She was lifted through the still air and felt herself be thrown, her rough landing ripping her gown at the same moment it knocked the breath from her. Looking back, there was nothing but uninterrupted plains. Her mare came trotting up to her, looking as if nothing had happened.
Tired and shaking, she got to her feet and then into the saddle, turning her horse’s head toward the river Swen. Something in the deepest part of her knew she wouldn’t find the sword there, or anywhere.
The river Swen was banked on one side by high, grassy ground peppered with brush and stunted trees, and on the other by black nothingness. For about two paces, the far bank looked just like the one Cheyne was standing on; rich dirt sloped up to contain the lazily flowing water and finally leveled to the same high grass and various foliage that could have banked any river anywhere. But after those two paces on the far side, it all just stopped, like a long sharp blade had simply cut through the earth and trees and peeled them away, leaving nothing but a black as dark as a murderer’s heart. Even from this distance, Cheyne thought it looked thick, like molasses, like he could put out his hand and be enveloped in it. Staring at it made him feel more like a child than the hero others thought him to be. He wiggled his fingers, just to make sure they were still attached to his hand. Even knowing that it was on the other side of the river, for a moment, he had almost felt as though he had put his fingers into the black, and they had gone numb.
He lifted the heavy steel helmet from his head and ran a hand through his chestnut hair. His hand came back covered with sweat. His eyes never left the darkness on the other side of the river. It was broad daylight-- just an hour or so after noon-- but the darkness was complete. He squinted, trying to penetrate it with his gaze, but at the same time not quite seeing it. He could remember remembering a time when that blackness wasn’t there, when plains-- he had the vague idea it had been plains-- extended far on the other side of the river, but the memories were not even half-remembered. A grimace tugged at the corners of his mouth. It was frustrating that his memory didn’t extend as far back as it used to. The memories from some of his past lives, the ones he had lived longest ago, were fading. Decades were missing, decades of experiences he could remember remembering and thinking on, but that was all there was anymore. Still staring at the nothingness without seeing it, he began to wonder how much his next rebirth would remember. Who would that man be? What would he be like?
How much of the land will blackness like that cover then?
The grimace that had been tugging at him made its appearance, and he put a hand on the sword at his hip, gripping the hilt tightly as if afraid the blackness would attack and he had to be ready for it. It didn’t waver. The one thing he was certain of, the one thing that was always a part of his lives, of all his memories, was the sword. Sonsedhor. Fine brown leather cord wrapped the hilt from pommel to the plain steel cross guard that separated hilt from blade. The blade itself was a bit wide, straight and double-edged, but tempered in a style that made it look like waves radiated from the center to the edge when the light hit it right. For all the old stories told about his former lives that involved Sonsedhor, all the legends that turned his lives and himself into a hero of legend, all the tales that made the famous sword into a brilliant weapon worthy of heroes, it wasn’t really much to look at. It was a tool, made for a purpose, and no more. But it was a constant; it made Cheyne certain of who he was. Sonsedhor had always been connected to him, and him to it, for hundreds of lives-- maybe thousands-- even though there were only a dozen or so he could actually remember in detail.
The sword was centuries old, and had never been wielded by anyone but himself. His predecessors took pains to hide it before death took him, so only the next incarnation of himself would be able to find it. Whenever he felt death at his back, he would do the same, and wait until the Mother gave him birth again to find it.
The sound of footsteps-- both human and horse-- approached. His grimace turned into a smile without his thinking about it, and he finally tore his eyes away from the blackness across the river. The horse was the color of dust, a well-tempered mare with calm eyes that matched her owner’s in color. But the similarities ended there. Above her own calm brown eyes, Senne’s hair was deep brown, pulled back into an intricate pattern of twists and curls that would normally be seen on a lady in a city, not out here at the edge of the world, days from any settlement. Even her gown was more suited for city business than traveling, except that the fine silk of her skirts was in fact divided for riding. It was deep sapphire blue and covered with hundreds of tiny glass beads. Pure snowy white slashed her sleeves and the middle of her bodice, all of that too encrusted with beadwork. It was a gown made for court, but Senne would have nothing less than the finest, even on the road.
“So it’s true, isn’t it, love?” she asked, her voice as soft and sleek as the silk of her gown. She left her mare to graze and strode next him, her hard-soled leather riding shoes making almost no noise in the grass that led up to the bank. Her arm went through his; he loosened his grip on Sonsedhor’s hilt.
“So it seems,” he replied. “There’s nothing on the other side of the Swen. It just… stops.”
“I was afraid to believe it when I heard the rumor. Thank you for bringing me out here.” For a long time he watched her as she stared at the blackness, almost without blinking, until he found his own eyes locked on it again, trying to see through it.
The sound of rustling fabric broke him from his staring, and he turned to see Senne had stepped out of her shoes and taken off her stockings. Her hands were reaching behind her back, undoing the row of buttons that ran up the back of her bodice.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to see it up close. The river isn’t flowing too heavily, now that the spring thaws are long past and it hasn’t rained in nearly a fortnight. In fact, it’s been so dry for the last month the Swen can’t be very deep. So I’m going to swim across and see it up close. Are you going to come with me?” She shrugged her shoulders out of the bodice and slid her arms out of the sleeves. The fine gown cascaded to the ground, piling around her ankles. Even clad only in her shift, she was able to somehow look more commanding than any monarch he had ever met. Without waiting for his response, she crossed her arms beneath her breasts and continued, “You’ll want to remove all your armor before you go in. It would weigh you down and drown you.”
Ignoring the tone in her voice that made him feel like she saw him as a child, he methodically worked his way out of his armor and set it on the bank next to his own mare. She ignored him. Once he was stripped down to his simple cloth breeches, with a sheathed dagger at his belt, he and Senne plunged into the river together.
The water was cold but not icy, deep enough that he couldn’t touch the bottom, but slow enough that it wasn’t an issue. A few minutes of swimming saw him and Senne clambering up the far bank not too far downriver from the horses. He helped Senne to her feet on the grass, ignoring the fact that the water had set her white shift clinging to her every curve, that it being wet had made it almost completely transparent. Even with trying not to look, he could see every bit of her. She smiled slyly at him and brushed past him half a step.
Clinging to each other, they inched closer to the edge of the void. Cheyne found himself leaning forward, his nose reaching to the wall of blackness while the rest of him stayed further back. He straightened and pulled Senne back just a bit with him. He saw her reach out a hand toward the nothingness and somehow could not make himself reach out to pull her hand back. He held his breath as Senne’s fingers came up to the blank wall of blank. For a long minute, her hand and the blackness sat there, suspended, frozen, and then one finger extended and breached the boundary of the void.
The black didn’t swallow her hand like Cheyne thought it would. Instead, her hand stayed perfectly visible, the edges sharp and vivid as if he were looking at it in broad daylight. It seemed, for a moment, that her hand gave off its own light to break the blackness.
“It feels… thick, but empty at the same time,” Senne said, moving her hand slowly around and wiggling her fingers. “I wonder…” Again, before he could move to stop her, she was leaning forward, her head broke into the darkness, and she was looking down. “Oh, my…” Her hand moved from his arm to his back, settling against his skin between his shoulder blades.
Cheyne had never been an easily frightened man , but he hesitated before carefully leaning forward himself and peering over the edge of the black. Beyond the edge, the world just ended. The ground beneath him didn’t even have any thickness to it. It was more like a sheet of parchment, stretched and scraped thin. He was suddenly overcome by vertigo and the feeling that the earth would break under his weight. Other than that thin crust that was the land he stood on, there was nothing in the black. Pure nothing, in every direction. He felt sweat breaking out on his still-clammy skin and realized he was trembling. As slowly as he had extended his head, he drew it back until green grass was beneath his eyes. Only then did he straighten up again.
On the return swim, the water felt warmer. When they emerged from the river, the sun was warmer, the breeze less bracing. The whole world seemed to be warm and more colorful, as if it were showing off how it was different from the abyss. He was grateful for the walk back upstream to where the horses were; the warm sun and wind dried him as he walked.
He helped Senne do up the buttons on the back of her gown before he started donning his armor. He straightened from fastening the last of his greaves and was reaching for Sonsedhor on its belt when a loud crack rang in his ears. A heavy weight slammed into him, pushing him bodily toward the river. His arms and legs became tangled in branches and leaves, and as he twisted to see, rough tree bark was all that was before his eyes. Completely winded, he tumbled down the bank and into the water, the tree dragging him with it. The weight of all the steel encasing his body dragged him down at the same time the tree tried to keep him on the surface. Water filled his lungs as he desperately tried to keep his head above water. He tried to free his arms from the tangled branches, but they were pinned too tightly. He whipped his head around as well as he could underwater, but the strap that fastened his helmet under his chin wouldn’t move. It dragged his head down, keeping it under the surface. His lungs screamed for air. He could feel the current pulling him downriver. The water was suddenly freezing.
***
Senne watched emotionlessly as the uprooted tree floated downriver with Cheyne tangled in it. “My master thanks you for the kingly gift,” she said sweetly to the drifting log. Before it was anywhere near out of sight, she turned away and reached for the sword belt with the scabbard and blade still in it, right where he had leaned it against one of the stunted trees. Without so much as a backward glance, she mounted on her mare and rode away.
She had not even gone a mile into the open plains when the late afternoon sun disappeared and she was swathed by darkness. Swirling black and gold and blue surrounded her, some of it moving so fast that it made her feel dizzy and sick. She reined her mare to a halt, practically throwing herself out of the saddle even before the horse came to a complete stop. Immediately she went to her knees, the sword in its scabbard on the ground below her chin.
Glancing up, she saw the swirling colors come together, solidifying into a man. His breeches and boots were black, his coat blue, all of it embroidered in sparkling thread-of-gold, even the boots. Black lace spilled from his cuffs and collar, bordering against the pale skin of his hands. The short hair atop his head was golden; his ears and the sides of his face pale. But where eyebrows, eyes, nose and mouth, cheeks and chin should be, there was nothing. Like the abyss on the other side of the river, his face was blank. Flat and empty.
One of the pale hands reached out. Hastily, she grasped the sword and proffered it to him, resisting the urge to jerk back once it was out of her grasp. He took the sword and wrapped stick-like fingers around the hilt, drawing the blade from its scabbard. “You have done well.” A voice that was at the same time smooth and gravelly came from the blank face. The eyes that weren’t there looked at the blade as he turned it this way and that to set light glinting off the steel. “You will go far in my service.”
The air was pierced with a bone chilling scream before Senne could thank him. It came from behind her, where the river washed over a man doomed to die, his body tangled in a tree. His head could never have broken the surface, weighted down as it was by his heavy steel helmet, but the scream was as loud as if she were right next to him. The air shook with its force. At hearing that cry, Senne knew Cheyne was dead.
At the very moment the shriek ended, the bare blade wrenched itself from her master’s hand, the scabbard flew from where he had discarded it by his leg, and both flew through the air back toward the Swen, a trail of smoky blackness dotted with gold trailing after it.
Senne stared after it, completely stunned until an iron grip surrounded her throat, choking her. She managed to turn her eyes up; her master’s hands were motionless by his sides; his empty face turned down, looking at her.
“You will go back and get it, or so help me, you will die a thousand deaths before I’m through with you. Don’t call my name unless you have it in your grasp.” The grip tightened on her throat. She was lifted through the still air and felt herself be thrown, her rough landing ripping her gown at the same moment it knocked the breath from her. Looking back, there was nothing but uninterrupted plains. Her mare came trotting up to her, looking as if nothing had happened.
Tired and shaking, she got to her feet and then into the saddle, turning her horse’s head toward the river Swen. Something in the deepest part of her knew she wouldn’t find the sword there, or anywhere.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Welcome to the Blogject
I would like to take a minute (and a post) to welcome all my readers to 2010: The Year of the Blogject. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the project, here's a breakdown.
In Fall 2009, I had the idea: to find out what my friends and other readers want to read about, and to take their ideas and make a coherent whole, using as many of their ideas as possible, and to write a novel, posting it chapter-by-chapter here, free for anyone to read and comment on. The ideas I received were outstanding and of great variety, and I was actually able to use most of them. As thanks, each one of the contributors will have one character named (loosely) after them in the novel, as well as mention here. Here they are, and what they contributed:
Dawn H.- character background
Cheyenne F.- character and place names and descriptions
BJ D.- place names and descriptions
Erin K.- moral support and character backgrounds
Theo K.- item descriptions and character names
Alex L.- plot ideas
Clara A.- plot ideas
Clara R.- character ideas
Sami F.- plot ideas and character names
Misty B.- character names
Becky S.- character names
Andrew P.- character names
Kirsten S.- character names
Brian B.- character names
Jon K.- place names
Sarah K.- place names and descriptions
Jade A.- character names
Laura P.- title ideas
Travis C.- title ideas
Chuck N.- title ideas
Mary Lee F.- title ideas
Thanks to everyone who participated! You're the ones who made this possible, and this is your story! If this goes well, perhaps I will do another in the future.
Anyway, here's how this is going to go down. Wednesday, Jan. 6, the prologue for this novel (I'm not releasing the title yet) will be posted right here on the blog. Every week, a new chapter will be posted, most likely on a Wednesday. To keep this from taking the entire year (which by the length of my plot outline, it would) I will post two chapters a week now and then, so sometimes there may be a Saturday post.
So to my readers, contributors, and anyone else who happens in on this blog, welcome to the Blogject! Tune in Jan. 6 for the prologue!
In Fall 2009, I had the idea: to find out what my friends and other readers want to read about, and to take their ideas and make a coherent whole, using as many of their ideas as possible, and to write a novel, posting it chapter-by-chapter here, free for anyone to read and comment on. The ideas I received were outstanding and of great variety, and I was actually able to use most of them. As thanks, each one of the contributors will have one character named (loosely) after them in the novel, as well as mention here. Here they are, and what they contributed:
Dawn H.- character background
Cheyenne F.- character and place names and descriptions
BJ D.- place names and descriptions
Erin K.- moral support and character backgrounds
Theo K.- item descriptions and character names
Alex L.- plot ideas
Clara A.- plot ideas
Clara R.- character ideas
Sami F.- plot ideas and character names
Misty B.- character names
Becky S.- character names
Andrew P.- character names
Kirsten S.- character names
Brian B.- character names
Jon K.- place names
Sarah K.- place names and descriptions
Jade A.- character names
Laura P.- title ideas
Travis C.- title ideas
Chuck N.- title ideas
Mary Lee F.- title ideas
Thanks to everyone who participated! You're the ones who made this possible, and this is your story! If this goes well, perhaps I will do another in the future.
Anyway, here's how this is going to go down. Wednesday, Jan. 6, the prologue for this novel (I'm not releasing the title yet) will be posted right here on the blog. Every week, a new chapter will be posted, most likely on a Wednesday. To keep this from taking the entire year (which by the length of my plot outline, it would) I will post two chapters a week now and then, so sometimes there may be a Saturday post.
So to my readers, contributors, and anyone else who happens in on this blog, welcome to the Blogject! Tune in Jan. 6 for the prologue!
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