by Sean Rodden
The Halflord stared into the flames, swirls of blood and molten gold swimming upon the surface of his eyes.
“I do not doubt you, Shield. We all have cause for mourning.”
Ev lin Dar said nothing, only followed her Prince’s gaze, her strikingly beautiful face aflicker with shades of flame.
“Time does not simply pass, Shield – time is lost. Each moment, each hour that slips by, every day that dusks is a treasure taken from us. A gift given and torn away, never to be regained. We exist in a state of constant bereavement, of ceaseless forfeiture, forever clinging, clutching, worshiping at the dust-dulled altar of nostalgic reminiscence. But time does not hear us, no, time does not heed our prayers, however robustly we might plead. At best we are ignored, at worst we are heard, rejected, and callously mocked. Should we halt and listen, truly listen, we might perceive the laughter, that soulless mirth, unapologetically derisive and so very full of scorn. And still we cling, obstinate and adamant, until the blood dries in our veins and the skin shrivels from our bones. But all that to which we cling is illusion, Shield, gossamer ghosts condemned to wander the wastes of consciousness and the boundless desert of dreams, meagre shadows of the past – called memories.”
“I did not realize that memories were such feeble things, Prince Kor,” murmured Ev lin Dar. “Indeed, they possess power enough to have changed you.”
Their milky eyes met above the smoke and flame.
“Is it that obvious, Shield?”
She nodded. Once. And but very slightly.
“To me. And to Gren del Mor. The others have not noticed – or have done and said nothing, though that is unlikely.”
“You.”
“Yes. And Gren. But only because Gren del Mor and I are closest to you, Prince Kor.”
“Ah. Closest to me.”
“I mean…I mean we were positioned closest to you when you revealed to Tulnarron of Arrenhoth that you… remembered... that you remembered everything. You barely whispered it, but we could not help but hear.”
“Yet you have said nothing.”
“Who would we tell, Prince Kor?”
Shrug. “The other ’Spawn, perhaps.”
The Black Shield shook her head. “That is not our tale to tell.”
“No,” the Halflord concurred. “It is not.”
A silence settled upon them then, a silence sullied only by the slick wet hiss of burning render shit. The night enveloped them, embraced them as they gazed into the intoxicating dance of the flames, bringing them a certain peace, a tranquility, basic and primal, the serenity found only in firelight and the most fast of friendships.
“I did not intend to be unkind, Shield.”
Ev lin Dar met the Prince’s pearly gaze. “Unkind, Prince Kor?”
“Yes.”
The Black Shield shook her head. “I don’t – ”
“I have spoken little and less to you of late. And that which I have said has been wanting for courtesy. Some words, or the lack of them, can be as daggers.”
“You are the Halflord of the Bloodspawn,” she whispered past parted lips. “You need not apologize.”
“I do not offer an apology, Shield.”
“What then?”
“Advice. Precisely, I have found that a thicker skin deflects such daggers.”
Ev lin Dar’s shoulders sagged. Her breath heaved heavily from her breast. She looked away, around, into the consolatory darkness of the sleeping camp, at the starless sky, anywhere and everywhere but at him – and a peculiar paresthesia took her cheeks and lips, numbing her. I am mistaken, my Prince – the memories haven’t changed you all that much after all. But the words seemed so much safer left unspoken.
“Nevertheless, even a thicker skin cannot guard the soul when the blades of memory flay it bare. And my own soul is carved to the bone, Shield. I remember so much. So much. This is why I grieve. Memories are what make men mourn.”
Ev lin Dar gathered herself, looked back upon her Prince. His face was hard. Her face was harder. Tigress whiskers twitched toward a snarl.
“Are your new memories so terrible, Prince Kor? Are they so very horrible?”
“No.”
“Then why, Prince Kor? Why do you grieve?”
The Halflord slowly shook his head, a motion not of refusal but of sorrow, his eyes winking in and out like moons above wind-shaken boughs.
“I will tell you why I grieve, Shield. I will tell you, and you will change. Your understanding of things will change, your perceptions will change. And we will change. Nothing will remain the same – nothing.” His eyes narrowed, white slits behind black slats. “Ready your soul, Ev lin Dar. Your world dies this night.”
And so it did.
The warrior pressed his body and the flats of his palms to the ground. He willed his form to merge with the contours of the earth, with the frost-rimed grasses, becoming just another layer of the cold dark night on the Northern Plains. Blending. That was his word for it, for his facility to visually fuse with his surroundings, much as a chameleon might mimic the appearance of rock and leaf and bark and soil. For as long as he could remember, he had possessed this skill, this marvelous ability to become one with his environs – to be unseen. Even in the time before the pain. For on rare occasions, when the warrior’s soul had been well beyond weary, he had glimpsed frayed fragments of his lost childhood, visions of his own evanescent adolescence – and in those flashes of forbidden memory he had always been unseen and unseeable to all eyes save his own.
Needless to say, throughout his one hundred years or so this incredible talent had served him often. Often and well.
I am grateful, Pata.
The warrior did not remember his father, not at all, not even the shadow of a shade of a memory. Nevertheless, he was certain that his extraordinary aptitude for blending had been a gift from that faceless, voiceless, formless stranger. He did not know why he believed this to be so, only that he did believe, with all his heart, all his soul, that this intuition, this adamant insight was real. Real and true.
Yes, Pata. I will be your ghost.
There were others like him among the Bloodspawn. Well, not quite like him, but similar enough. Others with the ability to blend. Black Shields for the most part, though his own talent certainly far surpassed theirs. He was exceptional. Not only was he able to blend visibly, but he could also mask and meld his scent, his internal and external body temperature, his very aura. He could silence the thud of his heart, dim the glow of his eyes, attune his soul to his surroundings. Become where he was.
Invisible, imperceptible.
Gren del Mor craned his gangling neck, the diminished glimmer of his eyes peering past parted curtains of rime-greyed grass. He scraped his tongue along his needle-sharp teeth. The night smelled of ice and blood.
And betrayal.
The Black Shield watched the two conspirators scheming in the darkness. Their voices were little more than wisps of chill wind, hushed and hissing. Guilt spoke in whispers, he knew. As did bloodsuckers and serpents.
Urchin. And Sil kin Hesh.
I will see your guts ripped out, snake. I will see your brain spattered.
Gren del Mor had never liked Sil kin Hesh. Not even a little. But then, Gren did not much care for anyone – the Halflord and Ev lin Dar notwithstanding. The Shield’s disagreeable, dolourous demeanour was understandable, almost obligatory – when one spends as much time blending as Gren had done, one learns the secrets of others, their true faces, their real selves, and the inherent ugliness of their souls is laid bare. Oh, the vile and wicked things spoken and perpetrated when others are not perceived to be looking. Sufficient to blacken the heart, to sour the spirit, cause the hair to grow to a tapered spear-tip on one’s head.
Given, that last one is my own doing, but my point is made.
Gren del Mor grinned grotesquely for his own wit. My point is made. His tongue lashed at his spiked teeth to still a surge of laughter. Occasionally, the Shield managed to astound even hi
s own discriminating and disparaging self with his razor-sharp waggishness. But his smile swiftly withered as more whispered words, slick and odious, slithered like eels into his ears.
Sil kin Hesh. And Urchin.
Contriving, colluding in the darkness.
Treachery.
Gren del Mor did not expect any better from the despicable, contemptible, loathsome little blutsauger, but Sil kin Hesh was a warrior of the Bloodspawn. More, a Black Shield. Which made utter perversion of his perfidy. For the fealty of the Shields was sacred, inviolable. Sacrosanct. Any betrayal, however negligible or trivial, was utmost sacrilege. And the treachery witnessed by Gren del Mor that terrible night was no trifle, but the abominable obliteration of something holy. The Shield Wall had been desecrated.
Gren bit down on his tongue lest he voice his outrage. He had seen and heard enough. He would not do as he had done before. He would not keep this night’s revelation to himself. No, he would not allow it to twist and fester inside him, gnawing soundlessly at his soul, an oily black thing with neither vent nor voice. This time he would share what he saw, what he heard. This time he would tell someone.
This time.
The faithful Black Shield slipped back through the darkness with such flawless stealth that the stranger called Pata would surely have beamed with pride.
Tongues entwined. The hiss and heave of rushing heat. A long slow moan punctuated by short sharp squeals of release. Waves of wet warmth riding sudden surges of energy. Then falling apart, limp and spent, glowing a deep and pleasant ruby red. Waiting for death. Such is the fate of all fires.
Ev lin Dar stared into the embers.
Your world dies this night.
Oh, how very accurate her Prince had been.
Her world had indeed died, had been ripped and smashed and pierced through. Repeatedly. Her reality had been leveled and laid to waste. Her belief system, her values, her perception of self and all that surrounded her – obliterated. Her very soul had been taken, shaken and thrashed, but despite having been battered to the extremes of its endurance, the core of who and what she was had not shattered, had not broken. She remained whole, intact. She remained Ev lin Dar, a Black Shield of the Bloodspawn. Whatever that was.
“We are not what we are, but whom we are, Shield. The world deflects and deceives in order to define us. But the world does not define us. We define our world. Worlds, to be precise. For your world differs from mine as profoundly as I differ from you. We look upon this fire, but from different vantages. We each see the flames, the embers, the glowing coals, but your perspective differs from mine, and mine from yours, and so the fire in my reality is not truly the same as the one in yours. You and I are as prisoners to ourselves. You are bound to your consciousness, by your consciousness – Shield, you are your consciousness. You are your soul. And though you see things, perceive things, judge things in a fashion heavily influenced by experience, by the teachings of others and the lessons, conceits and deceits of your world, deep within yourself you remain you, unsullied and unfettered, without taint. You are your soul. Know that self, Shield, lest you know nothing of your world.”
Ev lin Dar stared into the guttering coals. Scarlet shadows stroked her sight, washing over her, through her, even as her lifeblood ebbed and flowed from the bonebound shores of her heart. And she whispered –
“All has changed, my Prince.”
“And yet nothing has changed. I am not what I was. But I remain who I was.”
“So your name is not Kor ben Dor.”
“No.”
The Black Shield nodded. Each dip of her chin was as a hammer driving a nail into the coffin of her dead world.
“But I am Ev lin Dar.”
“Yes.”
The Black Shield glanced up. “What is your name, then?”
The Halflord pulled a few strands of hair from his luminous eyes. Firelight played across his hard chiseled features like a sheen of lover’s sweat.
“My name is Ul dor Rain,” came his quiet reply. “After my father’s brother. Kor ben Dor is titular only.”
“A title? Like ‘Prince’?”
“Yes.” A pause, then the shrug of one muscled shoulder. “Well. Perhaps.”
“What does it mean?”
“I do not know, Shield. The tongue is unfamiliar to me.”
Ev lin Dar frowned. “But it sounds like all other ’Spawn names.”
“I suspect that is the intent, Shield.”
“Whose intent?”
“My father’s. I believe my title is a message.”
“Meant for whom?”
The Halflord retrieved the rusted tongs, absently poked at the stubbornly glowing coals. The light in his eyes was veiled, and not by hair alone. His voice, ever mellifluous and disarmingly soft, was the sound of ashes gliding in the night.
“I do not know, Shield. I can only guess. But I will not share that guess until it has been proven true. Or false.”
The Black Shield drew her knees up, rested her chin upon them, and hugged her legs – an oddly demure and intensely feminine pose for such a lethal warrior of the Bloodspawn.
“There is power in names, my Prince,” she whispered. “Vast power.”
The Prince of the Bloodspawn stared at the surpassingly lovely woman before him. He watched with some small pleasure as she worried her lower lip with her teeth. An old habit of hers, he knew, one which he had so long ago adored so very much. And evidently still did. He staved off a sad smile as the ghosts of his shared yester-life with Ev lin Dar rose to haunt the half-lit places behind his gaze. Images of youth, of first love and first touches, of breathless nights, of bonding, binding, being one with the girl he –
No. I will not go there. Not yet. No.
“Yes.” The Halflord’s face remained as readable as uncarved runes. “You are not the first to say so, Shield.”
“What…what shall I call you?”
“Kor ben Dor. Ul dor Rain remains only a memory. My memory.”
The Black Shield met and held her Prince’s white gaze. Communion. With only the night, a dying fire and strands of black hair between them.
“I envy you your memories, Prince Kor ben Dor.”
“You would mourn with me, Shield?”
Ev lin Dar swallowed hard, hugged her shins. She felt warm, so very warm.
“I suggest, Prince Kor, that were I to regain my memories as you have done, we would find little cause for grief.”
The Halflord shivered through a slow and sorrowful shake of his head.
“Even the fondest of memories might never be truly retrieved, Shield. And certainly not relived.”
The Black Shield sighed, a sough as supple as falling feathers.
“The garden of grief will wither and waste away, Prince Kor, but when the rains are gone the killing ground ever gives rise to new growth. Fresh memories can be cultivated. We need but nurture those tender shoots.”
Kor ben Dor looked away from the heat, the need, the plea in her eyes.
“The only memories to be made at Doomfall, Shield, will be of blood and death.”
“No.”
“No?” The Halflord blinked, then scowled, tattooed raven’s talons tightening about his face. The woman sounds so much like me. Does she tease me as was her wont and joy so long ago? Does she… remember? “How so, Shield?”
“The seeds – they are already sown, my Prince. And blood will only water them.”
The frown departed the Halflord’s features, yet his eyes remained narrowed, rapt, focused on a patch of night behind and to one side of the Black Shield.
“Ah,” was all he said, as though he had heard or seen a thing long expected. Whether the soft sound was in response to the Shield’s resolute words or for a perceived change in the darkness was unclear.
Ev lin Dar followed the shift of Kor ben Dor’s gaze to the night behind her.
“Ah,” she echoed, though her own interjection was laced with undisguised disappointment. “Gren del Mor comes.”
“Yes.”
“And he seems even unhappier than is usual for him.”
Yes.
The Prince lowered his head, sheets of hair shrouding his face. Behind that black veil his eyes burned star-white.
For which I suspect he has valid grounds.
Gren del Mor strode determinedly through the camp toward the night-blackened form of Ev lin Dar. His gait was long and strong, and he made no effort to suppress signs of his swift and direct approach. The anger in him drove him as surely as would whips of flame, lashing at his back in outrage. Red was the colour of his choler, hotter than fire, brighter than fresh blood on snow.
The ’Spawn across the campfire from Ev lin Dar noticed him, made a small sound. The female warrior turned, her aspect dark with dissatisfaction. She said something, likely something disparaging. It was her way, after all, almost as much as it was his own – they were far more similar than she would like to admit.
“Stow your acerbic wit, woman,” Gren del Mor growled as he drew up beside his friend. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Which one is that, Gren?”
“What one is which?”
“Which mood aren’t you in?”
Gren del Mor glared, put his fists to his hips. “Ev – ”
“You only have the two – cynical dolour and dolourous cynicism.”
“Ev – ”
“And your cone really is crooked this time, Gren.” Ev lin Dar smiled sweetly. Her teeth were white and sharp. “Honest.”
“Ev!”
The painted tigress paused, sniffed, her full lips twisting from a smile to a silent snarl, then falling slack. Milky white eyes narrowed.
“What have you seen, Gren?”
“I will tell you as soon as this clothingly challenged wretch is gone.” Without so much as a glance, he waggled his long fingers impatiently toward the bare-chested ’Spawn warrior across the campfire from them. “Go on. Shoo, you.”
An expression of sheer and utter horror immediately swept the beauty from Ev lin Dar’s face. The grey of her skin paled. Her eyes widened, luridly white, one hand flashing upward to clasp and cover her gaping mouth. Dark passions emanated from her like spears goring the night. Shock. Dismay. Dread.