DISCLAIMER: Redwall is © Brian
Jacques. All characters in this story are © me.
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Song of Beauty
a Redwall fanfiction by Sienna Revan
(sienna_revan@hotmail.com)
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Prologue : Deadeyes
He smiled to himself, thoroughly satisfied.
It had been a good night, involving the dining chambers at the former Baron
Dornquill's dining chambers and the whole lot of his peers. Between rounds
of generous drink and raucous laughter they had covered everything from general
politics to the idiocy of their kings to tales of rampant killings in cities
not too far from their own.
It had dismayed him, those accounts of a madbeast who committed the most
outrageous crimes, right in the houses of the most influential beasts in
the country. It had dismayed him not because he himself happened to be a
beast of influence-no, but because he would rather have discussed his own
conquests. Oh, nothing special, maybe the story of how his humble beginnings
had involved working as an assassin for some hotshot king. He killed a good
number of beasts, he thought smugly, numbering around maybe a hundred thousand.
Not that he ran each and every one of them through with his own cutlass;
but he did mastermind the ambush of their camps, the razing of their villages.
And when an army of particularly vengeful otters finally besieged his king,
he had slipped out through the backdoor and had watched the castle burn with
jollity in his eyes. Ah yes, everybeast of his breed knew how to appreciate
such an achievement, and would surely have celebrated him.
But tonight only a name dominated the conversation.
Lady Deadeyes.
He could have laughed, could have thrown his head back and howled with mirth.
The name brought the image to mind of a withered old gypsy, perhaps a vixen
or a like specie, bent and arthritic and eyes that were dead and rotted and
dribbling from empty sockets. Ah yes, funny, a classic figurativeness. On
the other hand he wondered just what kind of eyes could earn a beast such
a nickname.
And lo and behold, he found himself looking at them.
His footpaws froze in mid-step, his eyes blinking spasmodically, his jaw
slack. It was just his luck to be here, in this time and place; a few hours
past midnight in the dark, abandoned streets of the eastern part of the city.
And she was here with him, the monster who justified the apprehension of
a roomful of full-grown, hard-hearted beasts. Swallowing, he understood just
why.
There was an unearthly aura about her; pale and ominous and deathly, enhanced
by moonlight. Glinting at her side was a curious multi-bladed weapon, held
in a loose, confident grip. Though her face was swathed in shadow he could
see she was nothing like the bent harpy in his mind. Rather, the dress of
a noblebeast clothed her slender form, and when she moved, almost danced,
in her graceful, aimless gait she seemed to be floating, floating on air.
She was not advancing towards him, merely doing a little square-step as in
a waltz, surging forward and then withdrawing, twisting to one side and then
the other. An eerie, sinister little dance, a bit too fluid and unpredictable
and too much like the movements of one deranged. And while her body moved,
her eyes never left his.
They were the embodiment of everything he feared, those dead eyes: empty
and yet brimming, sightless and yet seeing, very well into the depths of
him, past his being and past his soul. They were a color he simply could
not put a finger on; all he knew was that they scared him.
Completely, totally terrified him.
Because there was a beautiful promise in her eyes.
One to rid the world of filth like him.
A blood-streaked sky heralded the death of yet another corrupt aristocrat,
identified to be Efram Yggrias, the ermine who had once worked as a king's
assassin long ago.
The townsfolk had stared dumbly at the carcass littered across the street,
taken by a morbid fascination. It was only when a good number of them began
to retch at the sight did they finally call on the authorities to dispose
of the body: five-foot strips of bone and sinew that somehow managed to get
plastered to walls, doors, windows. Surprisingly enough there was no trace
of the struggle that had taken place the night before. No pool of blood,
no trace of it anywhere. Even what remained of Efram Yggrias was completely
bloodless.
And well before noon the name Lady Deadeyes was thick on everyone's tongue.
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Author's note : "Song of Beauty" is my first fanfic on FF.net. Thanks for
reading, I hope you enjoyed it. =)
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