Saturday, October 25
Morgarath startled awake as if he'd heard a crash of thunder. The starry sky was clear and calm. His heart pounded under his ribs, and there was a second beat alongside it. His brooch, which he now wore as a pendant on a chain, looked inert atop his black silk pyjamas, but he heard the magic item pulsing inside his mind.
The brooch was dark green and appeared black in the night. Bronze wire wrapped the circumference. Truth be told, the brooch didn't look like anything special. Morgarath thought it was ugly. What mattered was the magic stored inside.
He'd found it in the Mountains of Rain and Night, before that final confrontation with Duncan and the over-sized boy who'd … Morgarath refused to believe he'd been defeated — killed! — by an orphan peasant child masquerading as a knight. Only the brooch had kept him alive.
The brooch had given him a second chance for revenge. For sixteen years he had suffered in the Mountains of Rain and Night. Now he forced his enemies to do the same, while his allies lived in comfort and ease and power. There were others that had been pulled into the spell; it wasn't hard to tell who would have sided with Duncan and who would have shared Morgarath's lofty goals.
Morgarath didn't understand how the brooch's magic worked; it was a relic of the people who'd inhabited Araluen before even the Celts or the Scotti had invaded. All Morgarath needed was knowledge that his enemies would never know happiness.
That was why the brooch had woken him. His enemies weren't suffering as much as they should.
Morgarath opened a small knife beside his bed. His partner for the night, Sandra Reach from the flower shop, didn't wake. She was a nice enough woman, he thought, but he liked her more because that dimwit Arald wanted her. With a smile, he sliced into his thumb and pressed the blood to the dark green stone.
Make them suffer, he thought. Turn back until they do.
Thanks for reading!
AreiaCannaid - Thanks for the review! Henry's role is a bit more amorphous in this story. This chapter alludes to it, in how the curse may eventually be broken. Glad you've enjoyed the byplay between characters. Writing Gilan and Pauline is so easy. Frankly, writing Pauline with anyone is easy; I wish we'd seen more of her in the books.