Night of Erna

by Fragorl

In a castle of outstanding beauty, a woman approaches her home and her husband with a sense of unexplainable foreboding. In another castle, a man accustomed to victory finds himself unaccountably afraid.

1. Chapter 1

This is an origional creation playing with the characters and settings provided by the wonderous Celia Friedman, and I am in no way doing this for profit. None of what happens here has any reflection on the actual novels! Just a fan playing around (harmlessly)

Something seemed wrong. He was never sure where the feeling came from, the conviction that had him setting down the piece and turning reflexively towards the door. The room was silent but for the slight shifting of his opponent's chair, but he never noticed that. No, not so...he noticed...but dismissed it because of another feeling, equally uncertain that there should instead be silence. Not the life filled rustlings of a household but ...silence. The quality that came only from the perfect insulation, the like of stone walls, or .... or underground? He was not sure what created the image that came to him then, of such unwarranted clarity, but it was there, so vivid in his mind that it seemed true right down to the cold. A cave like space in which the air itself seemed somehow dead, and the very silence an affront when heard in the wake of the.... Here the insight died, abruptly as though it had been cut off by some conscious brush of will. Left with the fleeting concept that this stillness was deceptive, Gannon shook himself inwardly and turned back to the fire lit room and the game where his partner watched with a half raised eyebrow. Giving the board a cursory examination he lifted the figure of a horseman- it seemed somehow appropriate- and set it down. A poor move, he knew that, even without the skilfully covered surprise of the other player. He tried to bring some order to his head while the game resumed, but a last fragment of the strangeness lingered only slightly. The cool surprise that had nothing whatsoever to do with himself of an ability to hear the sound of running water. Foreboding stayed with him for the remainder of true night, a presence that he dreaded and could not seem to banish with his reason. For the first time in many nights, Gannon played and lost.