The Twilight Lord

by Bertrice Small

  “Where will you send the lad?” Liam asked. “I can certainly think of a few places,” he added with a chuckle.

  “To Sholeh in New Rivalen. She is kin to you both and as headwoman of her village, she has both authority and strength. Cam could be put to work in the fields until the harvest. That should keep him busy and out of trouble,” Lara said.

  “Aye, he is old enough,” Liam agreed. “We will have to send a faerie post to Sholeh and request her aid in this matter.”

  “Nay, I will go myself, for we are asking a great favor of her and it is in my interests that we need her help,” Lara said. She stood up from the table. “Would you mind if I went now, Liam?”

  “Shall I have Dasras caught and saddled?” the lord of the Fiacre asked her.

  “Nay,” Lara told him, and with a delicate wave of her hand she disappeared in a faint cloud of mauve smoke.

  Liam stared and then he laughed weakly. How long had he known her, and still Lara’s growing magic always surprised him.

  But he was no more surprised than Sholeh, the headwoman of New Rivalen, who jumped back as Lara suddenly appeared before her in her chamber. “Gracious!” She jumped to her feet, dropping the brush in her hand for she had been in the middle of brushing her long auburn hair. “Lara! Is it really you?” She immediately embraced her visitor.

  “Aye, ’tis me, Sholeh,” Lara said.

  “How can I serve you, Domina?” Sholeh was suddenly very formal for she was more than aware Lara’s visit was hardly a casual one.

  “I have come to ask a great favor of you,” Lara began.

  “Anything!” Sholeh responded.

  Lara laughed. “Wait until I have told you what it is I want,” she said. Then she explained what Bera and Cam had been doing to her little daughter. “I came to the New Outlands with the express purpose of visiting and then returning with both of Vartan’s children to Terah. It is time they were with me again.”

  Sholeh nodded her agreement and then listened as Lara continued.

  “It would be too difficult and cause great dissension between my daughter and me if I had to keep her from Cam. I can only keep them apart if Cam is not there. I would have you take the boy until the Gathering. He is young, but he can be put to work in the fields, and herding cattle. Keep him busy. Hopefully that will keep him from getting into trouble. He will be so charming and polite with you that you will wonder to yourself why I sent him away. But believe me when I say that Cam, son of Adon, is filled to overflowing with wickedness,” Lara said.

  “I know he is,” Sholeh responded. “I saw him with his grandmother as he twisted poor Bera’s words and thoughts. I am not fooled by his soft-spoken demeanor, Lara. Aye, I will take him and keep him tightly reined. You will want him gone quickly, I assume. What will you do with Bera?”

  “We will find a good woman to live with her for she really is no longer capable of caring for herself. The woman will remain when Cam returns home after the Gathering,” Lara told Sholeh. “Will you return with me now to New Camdene?”

  “I suppose we will be transported by means of your magic,” Sholeh said nervously. “Well, no matter. Come into the hall with me, and we will tell the servants so they do not worry when I am suddenly gone.”

  The two women left the chamber and went into the hall where, seeing Lara, the servants greeted her with smiles.

  “I am going to take your mistress with me to New Camdene,” she said. “I will return her on the morrow.” Then with a wave of her hand they were gone from before the servants’ startled eyes.

  As they rematerialized beneath the pergola in Liam’s hall, Lara said, “There now, Sholeh, that didn’t hurt at all, did it?” And she laughed.

  Sholeh laughed, too. “It is a convenient mode of transport, I will admit, but it still makes me nervous and you know I fear nothing.”

  “It is getting cool out here and the sun is setting,” Lara remarked. “Let us go into the hall. I smell food and if there is one thing about me that is solely mortal it is my appetite. I am ravenous, Sholeh, and could eat an entire side of one of Liam’s cows.”

  Warned by her husband, Noss showed no surprise when the two women entered her hall. She greeted Sholeh respectfully as an elder of the clan family and as headwoman of New Rivalen. Then she beckoned the two to be seated at her high board. There were only the four adults, Noss’s children and Lara’s having been fed earlier. They had already gone back outside to play in the long summer twilight.

  “Sholeh has agreed to take Cam until the Gathering time,” Lara told Liam and Noss. “I will transport them back to New Rivalen in the morning.”

  “And I know just the woman to care for Bera,” said Noss. “She is newly widowed, and her son would like to wed but what woman will come into a house with another woman in it? This will solve both of their problems and when Bera has departed this life we will give the woman her own cottage.”

  “Make certain she you have chosen is not easily deluded by Bera—and later, Cam. I do not want the history of Vartan’s life destroyed by their lies,” Lara said.

  “You can speak with the woman yourself and make the decision tomorrow,” Liam suggested. “It was bad enough when they poisoned little Anoush’s mind, but we cannot have their prevarications harming our people. There are always those who are quick to believe the worst or who enjoy blackening the reputations of heroes. It is five years since Vartan’s death. His legend remains but his influence has faded from the Fiacre. And there are those, too, who never trusted you, Lara, because of your Hetarian birth, although they have certainly profited by your faerie nature. Any rumor begun among us will eventually spread to the other clan families. We cannot allow divisions to separate us now that we are relatively safe once again.”

  “Thank you, Liam,” Lara said to him. “Your friendship is precious to me. You are as safe as any peoples here, but I am concerned not just with Hetar but with the Dark Lands to our north. Hetar is an ocean away. But the other…” She sighed. “Does anyone know of the people who inhabit that place? It seems to be all mountains.”

  “None of our folk have ventured north,” Liam said. “Those mountains, unlike the Emerald Range that separates us from Terah proper, seem threatening. All the clan families have enough lands where we are. Our territories are at least twice as large as those we held previously. Why do the Dark Lands concern you, Lara?”

  “I am not certain, but I sense a threat from them,” she answered. “The first time I saw them, I was on Dasras’s back and observing the sea creatures frolicking in the sea we call Obscura. Those mountains drew my eye, and I was almost overwhelmed by the aura of darkness that emanated from them.”

  “We have never seen any signs of life from them,” Liam told her. “I wonder if they are even inhabited. They certainly appear to be inhospitable.”

  “Aye,” Lara replied slowly. Then she shook off the feeling of gloom that had come over her when she spoke of the Dark Lands.

  Dillon came into the hall and went to his mother. “Anoush has gone to our grandmother’s house,” he told her.

  “I will fetch her,” Sholeh said standing up. “I want to see how Bera is faring.”

  She hurried from the hall with Dillon by her side.

  “You see how it is?” Lara said to Liam.

  “Cam will be gone on the morrow,” Noss soothed, “and you will not have to see him again. Frankly I’ll be glad to have him out of the village. Whenever he ventures out he always manages to cause trouble among the other children. There are several who are fascinated by him, but then there are always those who cannot help being drawn by the darkness and then into it.”

  “You are such a tattletale,” Anoush complained to her brother as they returned together to the hall.

  “You were told not to go back there,” he countered.

  “You are not my master, Brother. I do what pleases me,” Anoush snapped.

  “You are not old enough to do as you please,” he replied.

  “I am six,” An
oush answered, “and that is old enough.”

  “Ah, children, here you are,” Lara came toward them smiling. “I believe it is time for you to go to bed, Anoush.” She took her daughter by her hand and led her away.

  Dillon grinned after them. “My mother is surely the cleverest woman alive,” he said with a chuckle.

  “And you are much too wise for a boy so young,” Noss told him, ruffling his hair.

  “My soul, I think, is as old as time itself, dearest Noss,” he answered.

  “You will do well one day with the Shadow Princes,” Noss said.

  “My mother says I am not yet ready,” he replied sadly.

  “Do not stop trusting your mother now, Dillon,” Noss advised. “She has never failed any of us. If she says you must wait, then accept her decision and be patient.”

  “I will,” he told her but his tone was reluctant.

  “Go and fetch the boys for me,” she said. “It is time they went to bed, too.”

  With a quick smile he ran off to do her bidding.

  Noss looked out over the darkening landscape. A warm summer breeze touched her cheek and pushed at a loose strand of her hair. It sometimes seemed only yesterday she was a frightened girl from The City sold into slavery by her parents. So much had happened in the years that had passed. She often wondered if her parents still lived, and considered what they would think of the good fortune that had given her a wonderful noble husband, three healthy sons and a respected place in her community.

  And Lara. Without Lara she might have ended up a concubine to a Forest Lord, only to be killed when she had delivered a healthy son for her master. She shivered and shook off the black thought. She was the lady Noss, wife to the lord of the Fiacre. She was loved, and she was safe. There was peace and they were far from Hetar. It was enough, she thought as she rubbed her distended belly and felt the child within move lustily. “I am going to call you Mildri,” she whispered softly to herself, smiling. And then her three sons came running toward her and Noss laughed with her happiness.

  2

  THE CHAMBER WAS A square one. Its walls were black marble veined with silver. Tall silver censers burning fragrant oils lined the room, their flickering flames casting shadows upon the walls. The floors were wide boards of ebony edged in strips of pure silver. At one end of the room, a square throne of gray and silver marble had been placed upon a matching marble dais beneath a silk canopy of purple and silver stripes. To the right of the throne, a colonnade of shining, veined black marble offered a view of the surrounding mountains between its pillars. The sky beyond was reddish-dun colored. On the wall opposite the throne were great double doors of silver. And directly in the center of the chamber had been set a footed silver tripod holding a wide black onyx bowl filled with crystal clear water.

  Kol, Twilight Lord of the Dark Lands, waved a languid hand over the vessel. The water roiled for a moment, grew dark and then cleared once again. “Ahh,” Kol said, staring down at the beautiful woman revealed to him in the water. “Soon, Lara. Soon you will belong to me and I shall have your magic combined with mine. I shall take both Hetar and Terah, and our worlds will be one.” He smiled a dazzling smile.

  He was a very tall man, his skin faintly bronzed, his hair midnight-black, his eyes a dark gray that sometimes seemed almost black. His face was a very masculine one, yet he could almost be called beautiful rather than handsome. His cheekbones were high, his nose long and straight, his mouth wide and sensual. He had thick, bushy dark eyebrows and long, dark eyelashes that were tipped with silver. He wore a simple dark robe with a round neck and long sleeves embroidered with silver at his wrists.

  “Will it be soon, my lord?” asked the man who stood by Kol. He was a dwarf with the wrinkled brown visage of an old man. His back was slightly crooked, his fingers gnarled with age, but his brown eyes were sharp with curiosity.

  “Aye, Alfrigg, soon, for I feel the mating lust beginning to rise within me,” Kol answered his chancellor’s question. “The Book of Rule says when that happenstance occurs, I must take the faerie woman for my mate. She is destined to give me my son.”

  “She will not come willingly, for she has a mate whom she loves,” Alfrigg said. “And faerie women will not give children to those they do not love.”

  “I have summoned the Munin,” Kol replied.

  “The Munin? My lord, that is dangerous. What do you want of them?” Alfrigg looked concerned by his master’s news. “The Munin are not easy creatures and can be treacherous if provoked.”

  “If I steal the faerie woman from her world she will resist me. But what if I have the Munin steal her memories before I take her?”

  “What good is she without her knowledge of magic, my lord?” the chancellor asked. “No matter that she is the woman fated to birth the next Twilight Lord, you need her magic, as well. If she has no memory of her magic then she is of little use to you other than as a life bearer.”

  “The Munin will place her memories in an alabaster jar and restore them to her as I require, but first I must convince her to trust me so completely that when I return her knowledge of magic to her she will be only too glad to aid me in my conquests. Her recollections of her husband and her children, I will not restore to her. She will have no need of them. For Lara her life will begin with me and me alone, Alfrigg.”

  “She is light, my lord,” Alfrigg reminded him. “You are dark.”

  “She will have no memory of the light,” he said with a smile. “And when her fears have been calmed, she will believe everything that I tell her. I will not show myself to be a threat to her in any manner. Indeed, I will be her savior.” He gazed down into the bowl. “Is she not beautiful, Alfrigg? Is she not perfection?”

  The dwarf stood on his tiptoes and gazed down into the water. “Aye, my lord, she is an excellent specimen of female loveliness,” he agreed. “But once you restore her magic to her she may not be as easy to manage as previously. Women should not be allowed to have magic. They are emotional and unstable beings!”

  The Twilight Lord laughed at this. “Women do have a certain intelligence, Alfrigg. In Hetar and in Terah they manage commerce and even speak their minds,” he told his chancellor who looked properly shocked.

  “It is obvious there is no order in Hetar and Terah,” Alfrigg replied sourly. “Women of high caste are for breeding purposes only. Women of low caste are meant to be servants but can also be bred if the serving class is to be perpetuated. Only men of high caste can be considered fit to serve the Twilight Lord. As for the others, they serve as they are told to serve. The appropriate order must be kept, and those who would defy it must be punished so others not be encouraged to disobedience.”

  “You are a hard man, Alfrigg,” his master told him with a small smile.

  “Thank you, my lord,” the chancellor said with a short bow to his master.

  The Twilight Lord returned his gaze to the surface of the water. Krell, Lord of Darkness, he thought to himself, I can hardly wait to have her! He felt his rod twitch beneath his robes, and fought back down the feelings of desire that threatened to overwhelm him. Just a little while longer, he reminded himself.

  “My lord.” A serving man was bowing before him. “They have come.”

  The Twilight Lord nodded. “Let them enter,” he said and then turned to Alfrigg. “Secrete yourself behind my throne and listen, but do not reveal yourself.”

  Alfrigg nodded and did as he had been bid.

  The doors to the chamber opened again; suddenly the room was cold. Kol sat motionless watching the Munin as they drifted to the foot of his throne. He had never before seen them and he was amazed by their appearance. They were spectral creatures, almost like shadows. They seemed to have no legs, but he was able to distinguish the arms, hands and faces of the Munin, who ranged in color from the palest to the darkest gray. They traveled toward him in a cluster.

  The largest of them now detached from the assemblage, bowed politely and asked in a high, wispy voice, “How may my b
rethren and I serve you, great Twilight Lord? Your kind has never before called upon us.”

  “Thank you for coming, and welcome,” Kol greeted them politely. “I would ask a great favor of you, lords of the Munin.”

  “And what will you give us in return for this favor, Twilight Lord?” the Munin murmured.

  “You have no home,” Kol replied. “You wander the worlds with no place to call your own. Help me and I will give you the valley we call Penumbras for your own. It is set between two of our tallest mountains where the sun’s rays never reach. It is a cold, dark and secret place. It will be yours for all time.”

  “Will you build us a castle there?” the Munin lord demanded.

  “A castle and a place beneath the earth where you may store your treasures,” Kol promised them.

  “The favor you seek from us must be great. Tell me what you desire of us that you would be willing to part with some of your own lands?” the Munin lord said.

  “Do you know of the faerie woman, Lara of Hetar, who was first wed to Vartan of the Fiacre and is now the wife of Magnus Hauk, the Dominus of Terah?”

  “The daughter of Ilona of the Forest Faeries and the mortal man John Swiftsword? She who undid the curse of Usi upon the men of Terah?”

  “The same,” Kol replied. “I want you to steal her memories and store them here in this jar that sits by my throne.”

  A humming sound erupted from among the Munin and then the Munin lord said but one word. “Why?”

  “You are aware that the Twilight Lords possess the Book of Rule, brought to us centuries ago by our common ancestress, Jorunn. With each new Twilight Lord, the words and instructions within the book change. It has been predicted since the days of Jorunn that the twelfth generation after Khalfani would take for his mate a woman, half-human, half-faerie, with great powers. Her powers combined with his would allow him to rule over all the lands. Lara is that woman,” Kol said.