But how? I … She stopped and looked at her hands. They were a child’s hands. Her nearest memory was sitting in Lord Arthur’s manse, eating from a fruit platter and drinking hot earl grey tea. Why was I there? Where is…
Then it struck her. She hugged Lord Arthur’s leg and he held her close.
She did not want to watch her father’s life end.
“The kingdom has been taken by treachery!” King Adrian’s voice boomed out. “It is this fiend that once brought counsel to my ears who bestows such sedition. As with all the others who sought ruin to our homes, he shall meet death!”
The crowd cheered louder at the words, and some men shouted, “Deny him the rites of the Mother!”
“The Mother shall not protect him!” the king called out as if in answer. “The traitor is cursed in the eye of Her divine will and mine own judgment! No, he goes instead to his ill-gotten master—to the Dark God!”
“No,” she whispered into Lord Arthur’s trousers. She did not hear her own words as the crowd grew louder. “No, not to Him. No. He must not meet with Mother. My mother. Mother…”
“Be strong little one.” Lord Arthur’s voice sounded like steel, cutting through the cacophony. “You must be strong. We spoke of it last eve.”
Justine felt her strength fleeting; she did not want to be strong; she wanted her father—not so far away, but close. “Do something, Lord Arthur!”
“I cannot,” he said, his voice cold as ice. “’Tis the king’s will, you know that.”
“Let it be done!” King Adrian proclaimed, shouting above the crowd.
“Stay with me child, and do not look,” Lord Arthur said to Justine, and he pressed his big hands against her head.
She wanted to turn so desperately—to plunge through the masses and plead for the king for mercy. Yet she did not think she could will her legs to move, even if the lord had not held her close. “No, let it not be. Let it not be!”
The crowd roared uproariously. Lord Arthur held her tighter, and Justine felt the tears roll down her cheeks. “Father…. Mother is gone, you were the only one left… no, Father you must protect me… Father…”
Lord Arthur kneeled, wiping away her tears. His brow furrowed, those strong grey eyes seemed less, as if dulled. “Obsession wrought this, but duty is what matters.”
Obsession? She knew naught of that; it seemed like she should, but it was so far away. “I do not understand.”
The kind lord held her chin with thumb and forefinger and smiled. “In time, dear Justine, you will learn of obsession that wrought this end, that I promise you.”
She nodded her head, and he went on. “I have found that adherence to duty aids us more than any words. Duty to the king. Duty to Trecht. Duty to the Mother.”
“D-Did,” Justine stammered, “Did my father not adhere to duty? What did he do?”
“Child, do not—”
“What did he do?!” she screamed, pushing Lord Arthur away. The lord rose to his feet, wounded.
“Should I not shield you, child?” he asked, frowning. “Would you abandon your duty?”
The lord suddenly vanished and a silence hung in the air. Justine looked around through teary eyes: the crowd was gone, too, though the stage still stood in the distance. Atop it, she saw the executioner’s block with a massive two-handed axe lodged within it, and her father’s headless neck gushing blood.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and walked towards it, shivering with every step. Her legs felt like lead, but she pushed forth, even though she wanted to run.
Mounting the steep wooden steps, she looked to the left, and her father’s deathly gaze looked back at her, teetering on the edge. Afraid, she held her father with both hands, resting him against her forehead—refusing to look at what become of her father, instead remembering what he was.
Her father had always been stern and hard, though there was a kindness behind every word. He taught her to read letters shortly after she could speak, and learned to respect the worth of steel before five seasons had come and gone.
“You must be strong and learned, Justine,” he said to her, his voice as real as it was in life. “There is much that changes in the wide realm—you must be prepared for that.”
“I do not want it to change,” she heard herself reply, not quite sure how or why.
“Nor do I, sweet one, but ofttimes change is thrust upon us. Such a time nears.”
“Only if you are so foolish,” Lord Arthur’s voice suddenly said, and he appeared at the foot of the steps, brow furrowed. “Would you endanger your daughter, Jonas?”
“I do what I must,” her father’s voice replied strongly, stronger than she ever heard it before. “I did not ask for your help Arthur, and I do not ask for it now.”
“Yet when you falter before the king, the care of your daughter will fall to me. Would you leave her fatherless?”
“And if I do not act, how many sons and daughters would be left without a mother and father? Too many. King Adrian cannot reign another day.”
“There are many affairs in play, more than you understand. And what if he turns his gaze to Justine? I did warn you of that.”
“I will not have you speak of him, not here.”
Justine wanted to scream out. They kept arguing as if she were not there. Yet she was, or at least the words were. The words felt near, not distant, like a memory freshly writ.
What, then, was all this?
“Conspire, then!” Lord Arthur shouted suddenly, before turning and walking away. “Meet the grave!”
“You must be strong,” her father’s voice said once Lord Arthur was lost to sight. “Obsession must end. Be strong Justine. Be strong.”
“My strength…” she began to say, holding her father’s severed head in front of her. He was unsmiling, his brown eyes closed, and somehow not as stern as she remembered. “My strength, Father, it is not enough.”
Tears kept pouring down her cheeks. “What is the obsession, Father? Why did it take you from me? Why must I see to duty for a king and kingdom that leaves me without you?”
Her father’s expression did not change, nor did he answer.
“What duty remains?!”
“Only one duty remains.”
Whiteness surrounded her. The stage and her father’s head dissipated, as if they never were. She looked at her hands: they were larger now and covered by plate gauntlets. She withdrew the sword sheathed at her side, and read the engraving on the steel: Duty-sworn, duty-bound. It was Resolution.
“Who goes there?!” she called out, extending her sword into the distance. No answer came. She walked forward, not knowing which direction she wandered.
The whiteness seemed endless, yet it felt hard as cobbled roads. Reflectively, memories hurdled back: Lord Arthur’s guidance in her continued learning, squiring for the lord’s eldest son, Ser Eovald, the day of her knighthood, and befriending Ladies Amerie and Tricia.
Then, the freshly writ memories hung in her mind, new and raw. They seemed to fit, somehow, but a wrongness permeated them.
None of it makes sense! Justine thought, but she prodded on through the sea of white.
Hours seemed to fade into hours, and she felt her legs ache. She sat for a moment.
“Is duty so hard for you?”
Startled, she stood, and somehow knew it was the voice from before. “Who are you?”
“A friend,” the voice replied.
“A friend does not hide.”
A tall man broke through the whiteness. His hair was short and sandy, framing a long face with clear blue eyes. Justine thought he wore long robes, but a shining orb lay in his left hand, its luminescence obscured the hue. “Is this more to your liking, Justine?”
She pointed the tip of Resolution towards the man. “How do you know my name?”
“The Mother blessed me with much before I came unto this realm.”
“The Mother?” she asked, recoiling, not believing a word of it. “The Mother spoke to you?”
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“I am her child,” the man said resolutely. “Her voice is clear to me.”
“I do not believe you.”
“Nor do I expect you too, not here, not yet. Instead I simply wish to give an answer that you have long sought: the truth of obsession.”
Justine sheathed Resolution. She did not believe a word this man had said—and certainly not that he was a friend—but her eyes and memories did not lie: she saw Lord Arthur, the crowds, and her father’s stoic face. This stranger wanted her to feel that again; and whatever else was beyond her power to stop.
“Is that consent, child?”
“I do not understand.”
The man chuckled. “You have been given answers, but you not heed them. Father Curtis had given you the answer, feigned as you were to hear it.”
“Fate does not rule my choices, and—”
“Do you truly understand?” he asked, cutting her off, but did not wait for an answer. “The Great Fate ebbs and flows as It desires, and you and I are as powerless as the trout swimming desperately upstream. Instead you must let it wash over you, and from the tides it brings, wield what it lays before you.”
The Great Fate. Fish. Streams. It made no sense to her. “Speak plainly.”
“Your father was fated to lose his head, Justine, as you were meant to fall into the welcoming embrace of Lord Arthur, who would succumb to the same temptations that befell your father, admittedly with a different outcome.”
“What do you mean?”
“You did not fail to note the change in Lord Arthur? That he was not the man who protected you?”
Justine could not deny that. Lord Arthur was never cold, hard, or even cruel. He was always kind, caring, and noble, noble most of all. Not a willing servant to madness.
But how did this man know that?
“How do I know what passes through your mind?”
Justine drew Resolution. “Out of my head.”
“You could not harm me here, even if you tried.”
“Do not push me.”
“I say only the truth.”
“Truth?” she could not help laughing. “I do not know who betrayed me, who amongst—”
The orb was no longer in the man’s left hand: it hovered above his head and travelled towards her. It shone so brightly, and she could not will herself to look away from it. Yet as it crept closer, it emanated a soothing warmth that cascaded from the tips of her fingers to the end of her toes. As it neared, it seemed more like a crystallized rock than an orb.
“Mother had a hand in its making, and by right it is yours, if you but heed the fate given to you.”
Justine reached out and clasped the crystallized rock in her hand. The serenity it wrought was so terribly seductive. Yet it seemed to churn and change—the calm turned to chaos, and from her hand wrought a fierce light that burned and seared, leaving naught but an ocean of bodies in its wake, and her atop it, proud and mighty. Then it ended suddenly, and she felt a numbness, as if there was naught there at all. She opened her hand and pushed it all away. “I am bound to no one.”
The crystallized rock floated back towards the man, and it seemed to dull and fade, until upon reaching the man’s hands, it darkened. She saw at last the long brown robes of the man and thought him a priest, but that seemed wrong.
“It believes you,” he said sullenly.
“I do not know what my father did to push the king’s hand so, nor would I believe any tale you might spin,” she said insistent, sheathing Resolution once more and crossing her arms. “I slew my sworn brothers because it is what honour compelled me to do, not some fate. I will carve my own path, not what you deem I should do.”
“Then you doom the realm.”
“You are a desperate man,” she scoffed.
“I am. I must be.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Yet if you do find your faith, know that I await you where Mother’s Light shines brightest.”
“Do not count upon it.”
The man turned, and walking into the distance he said, “Waver not whence he comes.”
“If you—”
“If I what, Justine?” Lady Amerie called out, her voice close.
Justine opened her eyes and saw the smiling face of Lady Amerie, the full light illuminating her graceful features. “Did I sleep overlong?”
“No, but you tossed and turned,” Amerie said, chuckling. “Talked to yourself a bit, but I will not hold it against you.”
Justine sat up and smiled. “The storm is at an end.”
“So is our voyage. Lord Theodore awaits without. He desires your counsel, though he still is not in the habit of asking.”
“Tell him I will be out when I have a moment to dress.”
“Do take more than a moment, for his own good, as well as ours.”
Justine nodded and smiled, and as Amerie shuffled out the door, she noted that Lord Theodore did stand without, speaking to a handful of nobles and Irwin Kole. Not much longer now.
She crossed the room and picked out some boiled leathers. Something lighter, more agile, seemed appropriate. Scooping up her scabbard, she withdrew Resolution from its sheath and read the engraving: Duty-sworn, duty-bound.
Is there really only one more duty remaining? she thought. The stranger offered naught but lies, forcing me to revisit the pain of the past. Yet, was he right about duty to the Mother? I will not serve King Adrian again, nor would I be welcomed in the kingdom again.
She decided such thoughts were for another day. Slamming the blade back into the scabbard, she cinched the sword belt to her waist.
Lord Theodore Rusels—and a new land—awaited.
Mother’s Light
Dusk
17 December 14810
Justine pulled back into the hollow of the tree when the tinder took the flame.
Lady Amerie and Ser Marcus huddled near in thick, fur-lined cloaks, fanning their bare hands over the low embers. The canopy above shielded them from the falling snow, but the wind surged hard, relentless.
As Justine put her own hands out towards the burgeoning embers, she did not regret the expedition. The cold and discomfort was preferable to the politics of the nobles, traders, and priests.
Lord Theodore Rusels had become intolerable; he chose to spurn counsels, lest it came from others of high birth. He thinks himself more than a lord, higher than a counsellor, yet not a king. Or mayhap he does, and will not admit it himself. Whatsoever the case, he was stubborn as old roots.
Irwin Kole was little better: he insisted on cutting down swaths of forests and building ports, strengthening their might at sea, despite the cold and the ice.
Justine thought that Father Curtis Lakin was the worst of the three: he seldom left the presence of his brothers and sisters, but when he did, his words only concerned sanctuaries to the Mother, to ward them all against the onset of a deepening shadow.
All the while the men and women they supposedly protected supped on roots and dew. Justine could not forget their hungry, worn faces as they lived their days in tents, fearful that it would worsen with the turning of the season.
This expedition felt like cowardice, but she knew that every breath would be vain and futile. So she chose to flee from the bickering, the in-fighting, the politics. Even if it meant the dreaded cold.
“This forest is endless,” Marcus said quietly, his cheeks a bright red. “Simple enough to traverse, but there are no sites to settle, even if this snow recedes.”
“Endless as it is, I do not think I gave Demetri, Brennon, and Tricia a more welcome task,” Justine said sullenly. “I would beg for the cold before I traded in this mail and leather and fur-trimmed cloak for the ceremonial plate they wear.”
Marcus flashed a brief grin. “You cannot explore for the rest of your days.”
“Oh?” Justine could not help but smile. “Irwin did say there are two more continents: one to the north, the other east. They will have to be explored.”
The knight moved to speak, but Amerie cut in befor
e he could say a word. “You know our captain’s resolve, ser, I would not challenge her on that.”
“None of that, now, Amerie.” Justine left the knight-captain rank behind in Trecht; she wanted no part of it. “We still keep to our vows, but there are no captains anymore.”
“You are our leader, there is no changing that.” Amerie said flatly. “Perhaps there is another title you would take?”
“When we settle, and our numbers grow.” Justine insisted, but still held fast to a smile. “There will be time for that. Yet I do not know if it will be here. I do not think Marcus is wrong in that.”
“There are still the western reaches,” Amerie pointed out.
“And they will change much from the north, east, and south?” Marcus asked with a hint of challenge in his voice. “The foliage is too dense and the trees are too old and thick. No, what we need are flat plains, inward, not as far out of land as Irwin Kole prattles on about. Southward, it will be southward past the forest.”
Justine did not think Marcus was far wrong, but every delay meant one less day in the company of Lord Theodore, Irwin, and Father Curtis. “South, once we explore the western reaches.” She reached into her pack, and passed out hard bread and cheese to her companions. “Eat, then sleep. I will take first watch.”
Amerie and Marcus ate silently, and Justine said not a word. Not long after the knights licked the last crumbs off their fingers, they pulled blankets over them and curled up by the fire.
Justine fingered a log from the pile and tossed it onto the fire, before rising and looking through the endless trees. Scarcely a sound came to her ears, save for the rustling of birds, rabbits, and squirrels. A few days past they had espied larger beasts in deep sleep—fangs six inches long, fur glistening as dark as night—but none of them seemed to come this far west.
Sighing, she pulled her fur-lined cloak tighter, wondering—not for the first time—what was truly different in this new land. Lord Theodore, Irwin, and Father Curtis rallied behind the king’s injustice, and she slew sworn knights behind that very call, but if affairs did not change, would one of them be like the king?
The Prelude to Darkness Page 9