A Soul of Steel

by Troy A Hill

  I couldn’t picture that in her character. But the guild was a new player in the land. A force unknown here.

  Even though I hadn’t eaten in over six-hundred years, the bottom fell out of my stomach. I had butterflies the size of pigeons in my gut as I weighed the options of what might happen if she learned my secret and rejected me.

  The Witch Hunters were only a messenger ride away. If she sent such a rider, I’d have to abandon everything I was learning to love. Gwen… Emlyn… our dance of the blades… Gah! I had just found him, and my sword. Not now. Lady Penllyn couldn’t… wouldn’t ruin that, would she?

  Rhian watched me, waiting. She was a strong woman. The powerful Lady Penllyn. Hers was a political force, though, not preternatural. Gwen could exert the same type of power. Greater even, since she outranked Rhian in nobility. But, she’d need to reveal herself for who she used to be. And her husband, Arthur, was long dead.

  “Do you want to go down this path, milady?” I said with a glance back at the door to her chambers. It was shut. “I guarantee you will hear things you don’t expect. What I say cannot leave this room. Ever.”

  Her gaze held mine for another beat.

  “Yes, I believe I need to know,” she said, her tone flat, yet with an undertone of caring. “Gwen said we face a new storm of some sort, and now we’ve had ghosts attack our people. We have some beast killing our herds. Who knows, some old tales might be true. The dead might walk our lands.” She laughed at her exaggeration.

  “And inside your Caer.”

  Her gaze darted to me.

  “You’re not jesting,” she said after a beat. Her gaze was steady and her back straight.

  “No,” I said.

  My gut instinct said Lady Penllyn was loyal to her friends. With the Witch Hunters in the land that might change in a heartbeat. The power of the church could overshadow bond of love and friendship. Lady Penllyn’s own brother was the bishop of this See.

  I sent another prayer to the Goddess again. I was too far to turn back in this conversation.

  “What I am about to say, I ask that you share with no one other than Gwen, Ruadh and Bleddyn. It could mean my life and a lot of pain for your people at the least.”

  “I cannot promise more, but I will hold your confidence as long as it does not jeopardise our people or our land.” Her eyes were still on me, steady and firm. Waiting.

  “I died when Augustus was Caesar.”

  Rhian absorbed that statement with a couple of blinks.

  “My former master brought me over, allowed me to drink his blood. I died in his arms and awoke three nights later.”

  Lady Penllyn nodded as her mind sorted the details.

  “Dead, but not dead?” she asked. “There are tales of such demons in our folklore, but most of those stories have died out. Now, the children pass them down, to scare their younger siblings.”

  “Stories exist in many cultures around the world,” I said, watching her. “But, like all such tales, there is a reason the old tales exist. We’ve lived in the shadows for many centuries.”

  “Is that why you don’t eat or drink?” Lady Penllyn asked. “And avoid the full sun?”

  “You are very observant,” I said.

  “I have to be,” she replied. “Too many people count on Bleddyn and I to make the correct choices about our lives.”

  “What made you suspect?” I asked.

  “I noticed the first night you wouldn’t even drink. Your cup was at the same level every time I came to chat with you.”

  “But I do drink. My life is based on magic. It is fuelled by blood,” I said.

  If she was taken aback, she didn’t show it. She was Lady Penllyn now, and her emotions didn’t matter as much as the safety of her people.

  “So, the old tales are true,” she said.

  “Not demons," I said with a shake of my head. "Like any other person, we can be good or evil. The tales are likely because one of my kind was here and went bad. Sometimes, the mind can’t handle the change. Or a master is killed when a new child that hasn’t fully adjusted. I’ve hunted a few of those down. I saved one, brought her back to the sane side. But I've killed others that were too far gone.”

  “You kill your own kind?”

  “The change is… difficult,” I said, and remember my first few weeks waking with the blood hunger upon me. “My master was the one who shared his blood with me, who made me undead, I am his ‘child’ in our parlance.”

  I paused again, wondering how much to share. “There is a hunger inside of us. The blood-hunger is very strong… dominant… when we first awaken. Two fortnights passed before my master would let me awaken alone. Until then, three of my brothers, other undead my master created, with me each time I awoke. They held me until I regained my senses.”

  “You drink every day?” Lady Penllyn stayed stoic and straight. She reached up to brush her hair back. A small tremor in the gesture betrayed her emotions. She quickly folded her hands back in her lap. The offending hand gripped tightly by her other hand.

  “At first, yes,” I said. “My master kept a household full of willing donors, who would lie with us and let us feed.” I shifted my gaze down. “I was one of those donors for my master for several years. We build a connection, our mind with theirs. The feeding is pleasurable for the undead. If we combine that with sexual pleasure for the donor, each of us shares the pleasure with the other over the mental link. The pleasure is intoxicating.”

  “Oh, my,” Rhian said. She didn’t meet my gaze for several seconds. She shifted in her chair and pulled her Lady Penllyn persona back on.

  “I am very careful with strangers when I negotiate for a meal. The words of my master are burned into my soul,” I said. “When a donor doesn’t know my nature, I cloud their minds and hide the fact. But, I always ask permission for what I’m about to do with them, in a round-about way. The few times I’ve had to take from an unknowing donor, I feel as though I’ve violated them.”

  “Unknowing?” she asked.

  “I always try to negotiate, warmth for pleasure… I tell men I want them inside of me,” I said. Rhian grinned after a beat once she realised my play on words. “They’re usually content to agree without negotiating exactly what that means. I can build memories for them. Pleasurable memories of just what they expected to happen.”

  “And with Gwen?” Her eyes were defensive now.

  “Gwen is special,” I said. “What Gwen told you was true. The guilders captured me because of what I am. They were to take me to the Seeker of the guild.”

  "That Bechard fellow? He seems harmless. Annoying, but harmless."

  "They have a dark side," I had to fight to hide a shudder. "One they don't show publicly. Death is the best I could hope for in their hands. Torture in the name of what they say is Holy, probably for generations would be my lot."

  Rhian bit her lip, then nodded for me to continue.

  “Gwen found me dead, covered in blood. My two captors lay dead around me.” I remembered the fight, and hugged my arms across my chest, to help hold in the shudder at the memory. Rhian's gaze softened a little.

  “I was almost gone. The true death. But Gwen saved me.” I looked at Rhian, and held her eyes, but didn’t try to influence her mind. She would make up her own mind. “Gwen gave me her blood, repeatedly. I was raving. My mind gone. She said I awoke each night screaming. I wasn’t even aware for those two weeks.”

  “And Gwen… and you…?” she let the question hang in the air. She was hinting at our relationship.

  “I owe my undead life to Gwen and her…” I decide that if I was sharing, I’d go the entire way. Lady Penllyn had heard enough to indict both Gwen and myself with the guilders. “Gwen’s goddess. It’s the goddess that brought us together. For what I don’t know. But I don’t want anyone but Gwen at my side when we face that. I’ve never found a person like her. I don't want to lose her.”

  Rhian her Lady Penllyn persona drift into the background. She gave me a smile. Ev
idently my feelings, my desire to be with Gwen was enough to allay her fears.

  “You were captured by the Witch Hunters before she found you…” She glanced at the sword on my hip. “Your skill… you said you have abilities… and yet you were almost dead?”

  “They caught me right as I rose for the night. I had no weapons,” I said and repressed a shudder at the thought of Onion Breath and his silver knives.

  “I cut my way loose, but one of the Witch Hunters noticed me in the process and raised the alarm.” I said. “Their blades could hurt me, silver, and fought hard once I escaped. I was already at the edge of going mad. The additional wounds they inflicted were enough to let my hunger rage and take control of me. The silver blades wound deeply.”

  “Ruadh has said as much about his condition,” she added. I felt some of my tension relax. If Ruadh shared his aversion to silver with Lady Penllyn that meant he trusted her with his life. I could tell that Gwen trusted Rhian, but I wasn’t sure how much she shared of her own nature and background.

  “Gwen almost left me for dead. But her goddess interceded, and Gwen nursed me back to health… with her own blood. I would have died the true death then if she hadn’t almost killed herself so I could survive.”

  Rhian looked puzzled. “Wait… how did she…? You really do drink blood?”

  I touched Rhian’s wrist, about where Gwen’s bandage had been.

  “Gwen bled herself over and over to fill my cup and feed me. She said I was raving mad and screaming until I tasted her blood.”

  “You poor dear.” There was pity in both her eyes and her voice. I sensed then that both Gwen and Ruadh were correct in placing their trust in her. Now I could build on a budding friendship with Rhian.

  Rhian shifted to a more comfortable posture in her chair. “Surely Gwen can’t provide all of the blood you need."

  I shook my head, not sure where she was going.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “And you and Emlyn… you are like two side of the same soul on the weapons field. I thought you were going to rip his tunic off of him that morning when you fought… oh, dear.”

  “Was it that obvious?” I would have blushed if I had fed recently, but I didn’t have enough of Gwen’s blood left in me. She nodded with a large smile.

  “Being with him will help hide your relationship with Gwen. But, is he aware of your…” she left her statement hang.

  I shrugged. “He’d be a fool not to, and I suspect he knows much more than anyone about me.”

  She still seemed puzzled.

  “As we discussed downstairs, Bleddyn told me the name of his teacher, the sword master that trained him.”

  “He trained you too, correct?” she asked.

  “Yes. He is my brother from the same master.”

  “But you’re… centuries,” she said. “Oh dear! And Emlyn was his student…”

  I reached out to grip her hand. “If Aemi, my undead brother, kept Emlyn there for ten years, that meant they had a special relationship. Emlyn would have lived in the academy. For him to stay a decade meant my brother thought your Penteulu was special beyond just arms training.”

  “Now I understand,” Rhian added, “why you are so good with the blades. And so evenly matched with him.” She thought for a few seconds. “You said you have special…?”

  “When Emlyn asks me to go faster in our meditations, or even when we spar, there is still plenty of speed left to tap.” I said. “But, a dance of the blades with a true master like he, is not about winning the match. The joy is in the challenge of the dance.”

  “That morning we watched, and he kept telling you to go faster, did you use your special… You don’t think your brother made him, well, one of you?”

  “You’ve seen him eat and drink?”

  She nodded. “But, how did he keep up with you?”

  “I wasn’t much into my special range. I’m a century out of practice… And, Emlyn is that good.”

  She turned her head to the side and stared off into nothing. I expected that she’d heard more than she thought she would, judging by the length of the pause. Finally, she smiled, and the normal, friendly twinkle returned to her eyes.

  “Gwen trusts you,” Rhian said, a hint of a smile on her face. “Ruadh knows what you are?” I nodded at her question. “And Emlyn must know, he’s not a fool… Oh, Mair.”

  She stood and pulled me in for a hug. She held me tight and pressed her cheek into mine.

  “I am so glad that Gwen found and helped you. You have a home here as long as you like. I am proud to call you friend, more so since you put yourself in harm’s way for our people,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said, tears forming in my own eyes. She wiped them for me with the end of her sleeve. I chuckled and showed her the red stains on the fabric. “Should you need more proof that I live because of other people’s blood. It is in every fluid in my body.” Her eyes widened. This time, though, she didn’t shudder or even twitch.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ve not felt this welcome for many years…”

  “It must be near midnight. I understand you have a dance to perform tonight.” She laughed a light, lilting laugh. “Perhaps more than one if I don’t miss my guess.”

  She smiled again and let my hands drop. “Go and dance, dear Mair. Make our swordmaster swoon with your talents.”

  14

  Dance of the Blades

  Overhead the moon was full. The air was chillier than normal. The mist rose in thin shafts from the hilltop. The tendrils ebbed and curled in the night’s breeze. By morning fog, thicker than normal, would cover the land.

  I sat on my wool cloak, with my legs crossed and my palms face up on my knees. My altered dress had more than enough room now for me to sit this way, though my knees stuck out from under the fabric. I’d have to check with Rhian about having her seamstress work on a few roomier dresses for me.

  I closed my eyes and turned my thoughts inward, since I was in the mood to reminisce about my brother in the undead, Aemi. This was one of his favourite postures. He said he found it more comfortable to sit in, than perched on a stool or in a chair.

  Aemi and Emlyn. Aemi often went by Emilius. Emlyn's choice to take a name so close to Aemi’s spoke volumes about the esteem he held for my brother. At first, I thought I might just be reconnecting with Aemi through Emlyn. But, as I revisited the memories of the times I danced with Emlyn, I saw that my soul had found a missing part of itself. Aemi and I shared a special bond, created by the same master, lovers of the dance of swords… but in Emlyn, I sensed something more. There was a piece of my soul inside him, and he in me. That connection awoke again, just as I heard the crunch of a footfall. I opened my eyes. Emlyn stood before me with his head cocked.

  “For a moment you looked like…”

  “Aemilianus.” I interjected.

  He seemed surprised for an instant, then smiled. A real smile, not the little dodgy ones he’d been letting leak through his tough exterior.

  “I knew him as Emilius,” he said and set the practice swords off to the side of the field. He turned to one of the iron fire baskets and opened a coal box he brought with him.

  “How long have you known who I am?” I asked. Emlyn coaxed the tiny coal he had brought into a small flame that spread to the wood in the iron basket.

  “Since the first time we danced the meditations.” He stepped close and offered me a hand up. I took it to enjoy his touch. “But I suspected from the day you arrived. Your eyes wouldn’t leave my blades whenever you saw me. Your hands twitched each time.”

  His eyes ran up my dress. He cocked an eyebrow, but said nothing. His warrior eye assessed the slitted seams, calculating their effectiveness

  “Rhian and Gwen’s idea,” I stuck my leg out the slit on one side, then the other. His eyes followed as I twisted my leg, then bent to let more of my thigh show. His face stayed neutral though. Damn! He was hard to tease.

  “They thought it might give me enough extra room,” I said,
“until I’m able to get dresses with wider skirts made. I’m sharing Gwen’s dresses, and she’s so skinny, I hardly have room to walk, let alone fight in them.”

  “I thought you were just trying to distract me by showing me your legs that first time we sparred,” he said. His eyes sparkled with jest, even though the rest of his face had returned to his normal, stoic expression. At least he had noticed. He wasn’t made of clay, no matter what his lack of expression hid.

  “This way,” I added, “I can leave the keep and not need men’s clothing. I’d like to test it tonight and give them feedback before they alter any more of Gwen’s dresses.”

  “Wearing trousers would be more efficient,” he said. “But, with the Guilders in the area, we shouldn’t give them any reason to look closer at you. They might question why a sister of a holy order would want to wear men’s clothing. That would draw attention you don’t want.”

  Before I could comment, he volunteered his own question.

  “How are your students?” he asked.

  Always to business, with Emlyn. Still, asking now was better than asking me when he and I had our passions inflamed because of our sword dance.

  Damn! I was already imagining running my hands across his naked chest. I didn’t want to entertain the guards on duty tonight with that kind of show.

  “Enid is gifted,” I said, “and your guardsman is catching up to her now that he stopped trying to be the biggest braggart around.”

  “Your fight with him in the great hall had more effect than I thought,” he said. “I always expected I’d have to find a larger, stronger man than him to best him, to get his attitude in check. I didn’t expect you to be the one to do it.”

  “You couldn’t do it yourself? Best him in a fight and prove he’s got no room to bag?”

  “I’m the old man of the teulu,” he shrugged. “If I were a normal Penteulu, the cantref’s master at arms, I’d be expected to knock a few heads for respect. But I have another reputation. Me besting him wouldn’t bring him down a notch. I’m....”

  “A class by yourself,” I said. “They respect you, but, you’re too good. No one can beat you so that wouldn’t make him regret his attitude.”