by Steven Drake
After another hour of quiet meditation, Darien finally decided to sleep, a decision he would come to regret. His memories of his time as a Shade were blurred, muddied, hidden like mountains whose peaks were obscured by clouds, clouds that parted only in dreams. On this night, the clouds receded to reveal something that should have remained hidden.
When his awareness came back to him, he was twelve. His hands were smaller. He was thin and wiry, and his black hair was spiky, untamed. He was sitting on a bench in a small courtyard at the training grounds near Shade Castle in the Black Forest, a place he had frequented often, and there was someone with him. Someone he had almost forgotten about. Someone whom he did not wish to remember.
“You mean you can do it too?” the young Darien asked.
“Yeah, want to see?” a young girl answered. She was about the same age as he, with long, flowing, wavy brown hair and dark eyes to match, pale skin and a youthful body, thin like his own. Still, to his eyes, she was beautiful. She had been a friend, someone his own age, someone with much in common, someone he could trust. The young girl’s thin lips curled up in a smile that seemed warm and familiar. Then, the girl held out her hand, and the spinning ball of emptiness took form. The young Darien had never seen anyone besides his teacher and himself form a shadow void.
“Mine is bigger.” The young Darien extended his hand, and conjured his own shadow void, and it was indeed larger. The girl’s eyes narrowed and her face turned downwards in a frown. “See Kendra, I told you.” Kendra. Yes, that was her name, Kendra the Twilight.
“So what? I bet I could beat you in a fight,” Kendra challenged.
Without any delay, Darien drew his short blade and leapt to his feet. Kendra drew hers as well, and the swords clashed. The two wiry young Shades fought for several minutes. Darien clearly had her outmatched in strength and magical ability. After several minutes, he threw her back against a wall, and laughed.
“Do you give up?” Darien snickered, but Kendra gritted her teeth, and lunged forward in another attack. She kept close, too close for spells, until she missed with a strike and stumbled forward, apparently leaving an opening. Darien charged at her with a ball of fire in his open palm. Suddenly, his feet failed him, and he slipped. As he fell, he noticed the sheet of ice that had formed beneath his feet. A moment later, Kendra had her dagger at his throat.
“Well done, Kendra. Lina will be pleased with your success.” The cool voice was Kirin’s. Darien turned to see his instructor, long blond hair and pale green eyes with a power and concentration behind them that he longed to understand. Kirin’s cold, emotionless demeanor was a form of perfection that the young Darien pursued night and day. “As for you, Darien, you must learn to expect deception and trickery. You rely too much on your superior strength, and you show your opponent too much of it. When a clever opponent realizes they cannot match your strength, they will switch to more indirect attacks to gain an advantage.”
Then the scene blurred, and the world swirled around him, as time lurched forward. Years passed, and again he sat on the bench with Kendra. This time he had grown to a young man, and Kendra was a beautiful young woman. They must have been about sixteen. Long, silky brown locks cascaded down her back, impractical for combat, yet quite useful for espionage and infiltration, Kendra’s specialty. Her body had matured, filling in at all the right places. She wore black leather that was far thinner than his own, thin enough that every curve and line was clearly displayed, and Darien remembered how he loved to examine each one. Her dark eyes were inviting, irresistible, intoxicating. Darien remembered how he had wanted to disappear forever into the shadows of Kendra’s eyes, and never again emerge. She possessed a wild, vibrant, unconquerable beauty, like a solitary flower growing amidst the ruin of a battlefield. Darien had forgotten how lovely she was, how her face seemed to shine even in the darkness of the forest.
“It is forbidden,” a teenaged Darien spoke to an unknown question. “I know how you feel. I feel the same, but we cannot. You know he’ll find out. They’ll make us fight, to the death. I care for you. I want to be with you, but not if it costs your life.”
“You assume you would win,” Kendra said.
“I would,” Darien solemnly declared. “I am not the foolish little boy that fell to a simple trick.”
“We could run away,” Kendra said. “The two of us together, we could run. We’re both strong. We could make it.”
“To even speak so is treason, Kendra,” Darien rebuffed, turning away and looking at the dust around his feet.
“I don’t care. It’s what I feel. We can leave tonight.” Kendra leaned in close as she spoke. He could feel her magical energy draw near, a powerful force that was at once both familiar and strange. He was unaccustomed to letting anyone get so close. Kendra’s lips were inches away, and he could feel the heat of her breath on his neck. Finally, his resistance faltered, and he turned toward the young woman. She was ready, and she kissed him, and it was as though his entire body was on fire. Everything in the world melted away except for her warmth seeping through him, the feel of her soft moist lips, the pressure of her tongue forcing its way into his own mouth, more wonderful than anything he could have imagined. How had he forgotten it? He knew he had said yes. He would have said yes to anything she asked of him at that moment.
As the world finally refocused, he was with Kendra again, this time in the forest, somewhere. They were locked in a passionate embrace. The feelings flooded back into him, and he lost himself to the dream. Her warm body pressed into him, skin against skin, and he could feel so much more of her than before, but still he wanted to be closer. As he stared into her dark eyes, his feelings found words, and he declared. “Oh Kendra, I… I think I love you.”
She smiled back at him, but something was wrong. There was something dark and wicked in that smile, and then he heard it.
“Oh really, Darien.” The low, booming voice of the Demon King admonished. “How disappointing, and after I granted you the privilege of my personal tutelage. How easily your loyalties change.”
“Wha… What’s going on? He’s found us… I… I’m dead…” Darien stammered. It was over. They would die, miserably, painfully. “Oh master, I have failed you. I, please, don’t make me kill her. Please, have mercy, grant me a quick death.”
“Now, now Darien,” the Demon King bellowed back. “Then you would learn nothing. There are many lessons a Shade must learn, but this one is perhaps most important. There will be punishment of course, for how can we learn our lessons without punishment? But death teaches nothing. No, I think pain, special kinds of pain like you have not experienced before, will teach you well the dangers of women.” The Demon King smiled, a sickly, devious smile. “And, I think I know the perfect person to administer your punishment.” He turned towards Kendra, who, at some point, had gotten to her feet. She still smiled wickedly. Why… “You’ve done well Kendra. Just as I expected from Lina’s student.” No, no, not that, it couldn’t be, he thought. It was all a trap, a lie. None of it was real. All those shared moments, all those feelings, all a farce. Everything that she had said, all that passion, those secrets shared in darkness. Darien’s heart fell, and he knew it would never rise again. He learned his lesson in that moment, before his body felt a single sting of the whip. “Soon, Kendra, you will go out into the world, and use your talents for the good of our order, but first, I believe that we should return to Shade Castle, where you will teach Darien a lesson that Kirin should have taught him better.”
“Of course, Master,” She grinned evilly. The world spun away again, and the pain of the dungeon flared into him, but it was not the physical pain that hurt the most. That pain was nothing. No, what hurt this time were her words. Even as she ravaged his body, her words cut him still deeper, as she told him over and over again how stupid he was for falling for her deceptions, how she never cared for him, how quickly how easily he had fallen for her pretty words and pretty face. She laughed, and laughed, and each laugh, each giggling
taunt, each snicker, pierced his soul like a dagger of ice. Oh yes, he would remember this lesson. The laughter and taunts got louder, and louder, until it was painful, and the world shifted out of focus, blurring until it was nothing but gray shapes, and then it faded to darkness, and only the maddening laughter remained. Stop, please stop, make it stop, his mind cried out to the emptiness, but there was no reply. He felt his mind sinking into madness and then…
Darien bolted upright in his bed. A cricket sang just outside his window, and in its innocent chirping, he was sure he could hear her laughter. He felt as though his blood had frozen in his veins, yet he dripped with perspiration. His black cotton undershirt and pants, along with the sheets of his bed were all soaked with sweat. He shivered with cold as he struggled to anchor his mind back in the present, where he was and what he was doing. He got out of bed and steadied himself. By now, he was accustomed to nightmares, but this one was new. He had forgotten about Kendra, the trauma somehow purged from his mind. But now he would never again forget. It must have been all that talk of love that triggered it. How he wished now that Jerris had not started that foolish conversation. He would have preferred not to remember this experience, even if he never forgot the lesson he learned from it.
As his breathing slowed, and the warmth began to return to his body, Darien sought the peace and calm of the darkness outside. He slipped silently out the window, and into the night, out to the edge of the field, where he leaned on a wooden fence, and gathered his thoughts. How many other experiences like this one had been purged from his mind, and why?
“Difficult night?” asked a familiar voice.
“Ezra.” Darien looked over, and the old man stood a few yards away with his staff in hand. The time had come to ask the old man an important question. He truly feared the answer, but he had to ask anyway. “When you put me under the spell to protect my mind from the Demon Sword, you placed an enchantment on me, directly upon my mind. What, exactly, did that spell do to protect me? It has affected my memory. I have forgotten things, things that I can’t imagine how I forgot, but they come back in nightmares, and I know they aren’t just nightmares. I remember all the lessons I learned, the words of my teachers, all my magic, my combat training, but I don’t remember how or when I learned most of it. The lessons and the skills remain, but many, perhaps most, of the experiences are missing. Do you know what’s going on?”
“I was afraid you would ask that sooner or later,” Ezra replied grimly. “Are you sure you wish to know the answer?”
“I feel I must know,” Darien replied.
Ezra sighed deeply, and began to speak. “In ancient times, the first demons came to possess elves and men by exploiting their weaknesses. They prayed upon fear, anger, hatred, despair, and all those other emotions that weaken a person’s soul. They use a person’s most terrible experiences to destroy his confidence, to turn against his fellows, to weaken his resolve, and finally to make him so desperate that he prefers the dark oblivion that they offer to more pain. In order for me to protect you, it was necessary for me to seal away those parts of your memory that were most damaging. I did the best I could, but my own magic cannot hold forever against such evil.”
“But I’ve done everything you asked,” Darien protested bitterly. “I’ve resisted the temptation to use the sword. I’ve protected those around me as best I can. I’m even risking everything to find a way to destroy the Demon King. Still, the spell is weakening, isn’t it?”
“Your own waking mind is focused, disciplined, and well-equipped to aid the spell in resisting the demons. You have done all I expected and more than I ever dreamed.” Ezra’s voice sounded soothing, and affirming, but also tinged with regret, as he continued. “However, in sleep, your conscious mind cannot protect you, and the demons can use your nightmares to undermine the spell, and so, yes, it is weakening. It is a most unfortunate coincidence, that in the same day, your deceiver was mentioned by name, and then your loyal young companion, in his well-meaning attempt to comfort a friend, inadvertently turned your mind to a thing best left forgotten.”
“Can you cast the spell again? Reseal the memory?” Darien begged. “Please, I would do anything to forget that again.”
The old man shut his eyes, and the look of hurt on his face told Darien the answer was no. “I truly wish I could, but it would accomplish nothing. The spell remains on your mind, just as it always has. It holds the corruption back like a dam, but like every dam, it has cracks, and the corruption seeps through. Rebuilding the wall cannot put back what has already gotten through. Even if I could reseal the original memory, the nightmare would remain, and would repeat, just as all the others have. I am truly sorry. All I have given you lately is bad news, but it is better to face a harsh truth than to cling to a pleasant illusion, is it not?”
Darien hung his head, and chuckled grimly. “You have nothing to apologize for. If it were not for you, I couldn’t have come this far. I can only hope that the spell holds long enough for me to find and retrieve the Star Sword. After that, it won’t matter, will it?” His mind leapt forward again at his own words. Ezra was gone again, but he hardly cared, because another idea had come to him. He did not know why the words came to him now. He had not given the grim warning of the Faerie Queen a second thought, but now, her words rang in his ears like bells heralding an execution. Lucca said I would face a trial, and that there would be a sacrifice. The prophecy says I’m supposed to die. The Star Sword is what they need to defeat the Demon King, not me. When we retrieve the Star Sword, is that when I’m supposed to die?
Chapter 23: The Marshal’s Second
After the nightmare, Darien remained awake, practicing basic sword forms Kirin had taught him long ago, not because he needed the practice, but simply to focus his thoughts and push aside the memories. The pasture behind the inn was empty, and the village was silent. Darien saw no one until Jerris appeared at the back door of the inn soon after dawn, and nodded to his teacher, without any further question. Darien’s nightmares were nothing new.
After a hearty breakfast, they resumed the march. Traiz continued to lead. Darien kept to himself, and brooded on what other horrors might lurk in his memory. What revelations could possibly be worse than what he had already witnessed? Sometime around mid-afternoon, Darien noticed that he was riding in the Shade. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the massive form of Oswald looming ahead of him, blocking the sunlight.
“Well Oswald Olivier,” Darien spoke just above a whisper. “While I appreciate you so kindly blocking the sun for me, I can’t help but wonder why. If you’re trying to intimidate me, you may as well give up, and if you have something else to say, just say it. I probably won’t kill you just for speaking your mind.”
The big man chuckled slightly, obviously amused. “I wanted to thank you, for showing mercy to my commander.”
“You mean the trial by combat? Mercy had nothing to do with it. I kill who I mean to, when I mean to. In that instance, I simply felt killing the man served no useful purpose,” Darien scoffed.
“I see, so you hold no grudge against him then?”
“I do not hold grudges, Oswald Olivier. I settle them. My only business with your Marshal was his detention of my companion. When I beat him in the arena, that business was concluded,” Darien answered in a disinterested tone.
“And yesterday, at the inn?”
“What about it? I wasn’t the one to injure him.”
“Yes, I know, and that’s what impresses me most. It’s been less than two years since Rana left to chase after you. When she left, she was a good recruit, but by no means the best. Now, to beat the Marshal. How did you teach her so much?”
“I barely taught her anything. She possesses a natural talent for combat and a violent spirit. Your training, your rules, your codes, your endless moralizing, it restrained her natural instincts. You wasted the most useful tool.”
“What use is a soldier without discipline? How can we command without being able to con
trol our armies?”
Darien chuckled coldly. “How does a wolf pack hunt a wild ox?” Silence followed. When Oswald would not answer, Darien sighed and continued. “Always in a wolf pack, there is one wolf that leads, one who is the strongest. The other wolves follow instinctively. When the strongest are allowed to rule, there is no need for discipline, it simply follows naturally. You assign rank based on nobility, status, wealth, experience, all meaningless. You make your soldiers into obedient sheep. The Shades are made into wolves.”
Oswald furrowed his brow and frowned. “You liken men to animals, as though we were equals.”
“On the contrary, I explained the difference, and pointed out the inferiority of your order to the natural order,” Darien said curtly.
For a moment, there was silence, then something unexpected. Oswald laughed. “So you did. Perhaps Rana would have made a better Shade than a Shield Knight,” the big man said. “I suppose there is a certain brutal reasoning to your philosophy. Not very practical though. Civilized men would never submit to such rule. Perhaps that is why so many of the enemy’s armies are made up of the demi-human races.”
An astute observation, and the point was valid. The Demon King considered most humans to be inferior soldiers. Far better to use them as simple workers and servants. Unlike Geoffray, this shield knight seemed to have at least a glimmer of intelligence. “Was this really what you wanted to discuss? Training techniques and command styles?”
“Not exactly, but it may have served the purpose,” Oswald said, as he reached over and rubbed the back of his neck. “You have quite a reputation in our Order, as one of the most powerful Shades, and a skilled strategist. I hoped to gain some understanding of the enemy we fight.”
“Sensible enough. Pity that your Marshal lacks such foresight.”
Oswald sighed, then leaned in close and spoke in a lower voice. “Geoffray does what he feels he must, but the truth is that our struggle goes badly. We have lost much of our territory these past decades. The Saldean barriers are all that hold the enemy at bay now. We fear soon they may not be enough.”