by kubasik
I told myself I didn't want him to come. In fact, I begged the Passions—all of them, not caring which one heard me—to keep him away. If he didn't arrive, then it meant I was probably done with him forever.
Finally, the suspense and tension drove me out of bed.
Stepping as quietly as I could over the floorboards, I walked as far as the beads hanging in the doorway and listened. Nothing.
I parted the beads and looked through into the gathering room. Standing across the way, in the door frame of your bedroom, was your father, beads hanging down over his shoulders like frozen raindrops.
He'd already heard me, of course. He was like that. He heard everything, but no one heard him. Rut he didn't react.
I knitted my indignation into a tight and tense spine and marched across the floor quietly, so as not to wake you up. I reached him and still he did not turn. I looked past him.
Samael, your small hand gently rubbed your nose; Torran, you turned over, your lips softly moving, speaking the silent language of dreams.
"Why do you keep doing this?" I asked him quietly, tersely.
His body was so close. All I had to do was place my arm around his waist. He would place his arm around my shoulders. Do you understand? Even now, in my flesh— not in my thoughts, but in my flesh—I feel him so much. How our hands fit against each other, how his arm curled over my body when we lay in bed together, the touch of his lips against my neck. There are no images. Just the echoes of touch from decades past. That night, the echoes sounded even stronger, and I longed—I admit it—for the source of the echoes once more.
"I wanted to see them."
"Why do you sneak in?"
"That's what I do."
"Why don't you ask?"
"Would you let me in?"
"No."
"I love you."
I laughed. Not that what he said was funny, because I think he did love me. I know he did. But by laughing at him—without him first doing a pratfall—I put him on the defensive. I didn't want him to confuse me anymore. Leaving his side, I walked to the gathering table and sat on a stool.
He turned and followed, saying with great pain, "I do." The pain was fake. He added that to support his indignation.
"You want. You don't love." Cruel, but I wanted to hurt. I opened my hand and a golden flame burned from my palm. His dark eyes caught the light and they glowed like two stars. He looked handsome. "You're looking well. The smooth features of the young and insane."
"I try to have a pleasant outlook."
"Samael almost died of fever last season. Did you know that? Did any of your late-night visits reveal that to you?"
He remained silent. He didn't know that. Then, "He's all right now?"
My voice became louder. "Of course he's all right now, you idiot. If he were ill, I'd be up, worrying!" I caught myself, remembering you two, and dragged my voice down to a harsh whisper. "That's what parents do!"
"I can't be a father to them. You know that."
"I know nothing of the kind. In fact, I know nothing. Each day I live, I know less and less. Know, know, know. That's what you want, isn't it? You have to know everything will be fine before you take the first step. Coward." I closed my hand; the room fell dark.
"You've got to stop coming back here."
"Part of me is here."
"Parts of you are everywhere! If you want to be here, be here. But don't leave a scrap of yourself behind every time you walk out that door. Take all of yourself out, or stay."
He swallowed. "You'd let me stay?"
I hesitated, trying to stop the words from coming out. "Yes, I'd let you stay. If only so you might figure out whether you really wanted to stay. My guess is you'd learn you don't want to... But then we'd be done with this!"
"You don't know... ," he began, hinting once again at that dark past of his.
"No. No! I don't know. I've never been privileged. I have no idea what you've been through I doubt I ever will. Now get out and stay out."
He remained still.
"I mean it. Stay out. I will not tolerate this anymore. This is not your home. You left.
You're out. I'll have you killed."
He froze, stunned.
My face became a mask. The truth sneaks up on us now and then, mugging us like a rough thief. "I really can't put up with this anymore, J'role. You've got to get out. Please.
Never come back here. I think I meant what I said."
At that moment the moonlight through the cracks vanished and darkness filled our home.
Loud voices, shouts, came from somewhere. We remained motionless, expecting something terrible to happen, but having no idea what it might be. Then we went quickly outside.
J'role saw the castle first. It floated several hundred feet in the air, heading north. Voices drifted down from it, and the sound of drums as well. Long oars protruded from the base of the castle, rowing back and forth. He pointed it out to me.
"What is it?"
"I don't know. I've never..." His voice trailed off with boyish wonder.
The castle flew on.
"It's like an airship, like the crystal raider ships."
"But it's made of stone. It isn't shaped like a boat."
"The magical cost must be tremendous."
"Theran?"
As soon as he spoke the word, we looked at each other. I think he was as surprised at the thought as I was. But there seemed little doubting it. The Therans could do such a thing, if anyone could.
Excitement passed up and down my spine; my hand began to shake, as if I'd cast one too many spells that day.
I don't think you can understand exactly what this meant to us, to everyone in Barsaive.
You, of course, encountered the Therans at an early age, and your impression was forged during the subsequent events of this story. But for those of us from the first generation after the shelters, raised on the tales of Thera, the thought that they'd actually returned was overwhelming and exciting. They were the world's saviors, but also rich with strange customs, including slavery. They were the master magicians and adepts, but also the profiteers of despair.
"I've got to go find out," said J'role. His mouth formed into an excited, boyish smile—a smile that years earlier had given me so much pleasure, but at that moment filled me with frustration and sadness.
"J'role," I said, "I'm curious too. But we can't go out every time something interests us.
The children..."
He stared down at me. The hot life had vanished from his eyes, replaced by a cold analytic stare, as if I'd just spoken a strange language he did not understand, but found fascinating. It chilled me.
"But, we have to know."
"Others will find out."
"But I won't be there to know. I won't be there to live it."
"What about the life here?"
The stare shifted and he looked past me into the house. His voice tightened. "I know this, already. I don't..." He looked away.
I touched his shoulder. Suddenly he'd become the sad, silent boy I'd met in the underground prison of the elf queen. "How can you know... ?"
He turned from me and out the door. "Releana, I have to go," he said firmly. Manly.
Then he smiled again. "A castle that flies!" He looked at me for a moment, then ran off into the night, vanishing into the arms of the night-black jungle. A few moments later I heard Jester whinny and then the distant sound of hoof beats rushing away.
5
I stood a moment at the door, wondering what horrible thing I'd done in my past to acquire such strong feelings for such a ridiculous man. I wanted so much to be able to pluck all thoughts of him from my soul, like splinters from a fingertip. But our passions are not foreign objects, jabbed into our flesh. They are as much a part of us as hearts and lungs, and just as alive and blood-soaked.
For a long while I stared into the night, the huts of the village lit by gray-silver starlight, the jungle deep and dark.
Finally my thoughts came
to rest on the astounding sight of the castle floating through the air. Could the Therans have returned? A mix of thrill and fear bubbled up through my body. Then, agitated by not knowing what such an event might mean for you two boys, I turned from the door, from my thoughts, from the night, and returned to my bed. Alone or not, I was tired, and soon fell asleep.
The town buzzed, of course, when I told of what I had seen. Things had been quiet in the four months since the ork scorchers had raided the village. Theories abounded. The Therans had indeed returned; they would bring a new age of peace and prosperity. The Therans had been killed by the Horrors during the Scourge; the castle was a Theran vessel, but piloted by ghosts of the Therans. The Therans had become monsters, and were coming to finish the work of the Horrors. The Therans had been destroyed by the Horrors; this was just another strong magical empire come to claim land, as is bound to happen again and again.
Torvan the Scarred, Elasia Raven Hair, and a few others rode off in the direction I'd seen the castle flying, but came back a few days later, unable to pick up the castle's trail. I had wanted desperately to go with them. As village magician, it was, in fact, my place to do so, and arrangements could have been made for your care, as on other occasions. But I did not, and even then I knew it was only from an incoherent desire to spite your father.
By not going, I thought I was somehow proving he should not have left that night.
Yet as the days passed, my curiosity grew and I knew exactly why he had gone. I thought again and again of how lovely it would have been to ride off with him in pursuit of the castle, the night rushing by, closing toward the unknown.
Weeks passed, the odd event drifting to the back of our thoughts. We had run out of gossip and theories. There was nothing more to be said without new information, and getting that would require a traveler passing through our village. Of course, the world was even less traveled in those days than it is now, and visits by outsiders were few and far between.
A month after your father went chasing after the castle, we did in fact have a visitor; a swordmaster adept whose name escapes me now. She had fresh scars on her neck and arms, wounds made by sword blades. She told of how a town had hired her to defend against raiders from the north.
"Scorchers?" I asked. We had gathered in Tellar's home. You, as well as some other village children, lay asleep on a thick carpet before Tellar's hearth, the red firelight casting shifting shadows upon your soft cheeks. Also lighting the room were several candles. About a dozen or more villagers had gathered to listen to the adept.
"No," she answered. "They came from a town called Mebok, or so the villagers who hired me said. Humans and some elves..."
"Corrupted?" someone asked.
"The elves were not of the Queen's Court, if that's what you mean," the woman said with a rueful smile. "And no visible signs of corruption. But then Horrors do not always make signs upon the flesh." She shrugged.
"And they came for prisoners?" I asked.
"They killed, make no mistake about that. I haven't seen such fierce fighting for some time—not by folks not trained in combat. But their leader, he was a tough one. A swordmaster adept as well, from the way he fought. He rallied his people hard. The village I tried to protect... Well, they didn't have much money, and it was me, three other warriors, all mundane, and the village smith. They ran roughshod over us. A hundred or more charged us."
Several of those gathered gasped.
"And they came for prisoners?" I repeated.
"Yes. They stole some goods. But for the most part they tried to disarm everyone and gather them up. They succeeded quite well."
"You escaped?" someone asked.
“I did. When I'd taken so many wounds that I could no longer raise my sword, I retreated." She looked down. Shamed.
I touched her hand. "Did the villagers know why the people of Mebok attacked?"
She shook her head. "A few farmers from the village had gone to visit a neighboring village and found it empty. All of its inhabitants had vanished or lay as corpses on the ground. They became afraid, and hired me when I stopped at their village."
A silence wound its way through the room. I asked,
"And you heard nothing of such raids while you traveled?"
"No. But then, I am new to the area."
"While you traveled, did you hear any word of a..."—I paused, realizing how odd the idea would sound to someone who had not been speaking of it for the last month—"a flying castle," I finished.
She looked at me with surprise, and then half-smiled, curious. "Yes. But I didn't think anything of it. How could anyone get a castle to fly?" She looked directly into my eyes, the smile gone now. "Does such a thing exist?"
"Oh, yes." My chest tightened with anxiety. "What have you heard?"
"Some people said that someone they knew, knew someone who knew someone who'd seen a castle fly through the air the day before, or two days before. Some people knew someone who knew someone who was related to someone who had actually gone off to follow the castle. And none of these people ever returned."
6
That night I prepared to search for your father.
I left you in Tellar's care, the two of you still asleep on the floor. I planned to depart in the morning, saying goodbye to you then. Back home, I folded my traveling clothes, and gathered my magical components, placing them in small bags. It was late, I was tired, and every fifteen minutes or so I would stop, sigh heavily, and wonder why I was going to try to find your father. If he wanted to ride off into danger, that was his business. Why did I have to involve myself?
The reason was this: Although our reasons would be different, he would do the same for me. It was impossible to turn my back to him.
As I was placing the clothes and bags in Wisher's saddle bags, the first screams came.
Thoughts tumbled through my mind. I thought a wyvern, or possibly even a Horror, had entered the village. I started for your bedroom to make sure you two were all right, only to remember as I ran that you were at Tellar's.
I stopped, uncertain where to go next, listening. More screams and shouts filled the air, and I heard people calling for help. Then more cries, gruff and charged with the desire for battle. I grabbed my magician's robe and slipped it on. Barefoot, I rushed out the door and across the moist ground.
Across the village I saw dozens of torches, some bobbing in the darkness, carried by raiders on horseback.
Others rested on the ground, flung forward by the raiders and illuminating the eastern half of the village. Swords flashed harsh red. I heard screams. Someone in a white gown was being carried off by two of the raiders. Those who ran through the fields were chased down by raiders on horseback.
Two raiders, a thick-bodied man and a woman, rushed toward me along the small road through the village. They laughed, but only until they recognized my magician's robe.
That's when they pulled up on their reins, trying to bring their horses around.
Too late.
I grabbed two pebbles from my pocket and tossed them at the man. As the pebbles crossed the distance between us, I transformed them into maces of ice linked by a chain of ice. The man's eyes widened as the frozen weapon caught him around the neck. The maces swung past each other, the chain biting deep into the flesh of his neck.
The woman turned her horse back toward me when she saw her companion endangered.
She raised her sword, obviously no longer concerned with taking me prisoner. As she charged, the panic that always struck me in combat seized my mind. I thought of every possible spell I knew, desperately searching for the best way to use my magic, but meanwhile taking no action at all.
I gave up on thought when the woman was only a few steps away. I dropped to my knees and touched the puddle of water her horse was splashing through. I concentrated, opening my thoughts to the astral plane, where magic flows across our reality. As I had shaped the pebbles into maces and a chain, now I shaped the ground and water before me. It bent to my will,
the puddle becoming deeper and deeper until the horse finally fell forward, surprised.
Whinnying and sinking up to its chest in the mud, the horse threw the woman forward.
The sword flew from her hand, and she landed in the mud beside me. I pulled out a dagger from my robes, opting for a simpler method of conflict for the task at hand. As she scrambled to get up, I drove the dagger's tip down past the collar of her stiff leather armor and into her neck. Blood sprayed-up, washing me warm. She cried out for mercy, and I pulled the dagger away, releasing more blood from her body.
You see, I had only you boys in mind at the moment. And anyone who threatened you or who prevented me from getting to you, would die.
