Crying. Someone was crying in the distance. Pitiful, choked sobs that drifted in the air like summer pollen. He ignored it, as he ignored the screams of all the ghosts that haunted him, accusing him of their deaths. A thousand, hollow eyed faces that stabbed condemning, bone white fingers at him as he passed. A thousand victims he had sent to their graves. He had hardly cared when he did it; what cause for remorse now? What cause for anything but blind, unreasoning release. He sought after something that eluded him. He wanted -- he needed to find the utter darkness, the utter caliginous depths where nothing mattered. Where sensation ceased to be. Where emotion was swallowed by the void.
No matter how hard he tried, he could not completely overlook the guilt or the crying. It kept him from the place he sought. It pulled at him like thread thin chains, insubstantial, yet unbreakable. It made him feel and he did not want to feel. He wanted to die. But the only death here were the scattered corpses of his victims and his lethargy towards them was beginning to shatter. He was beginning to panic at their cloying reproachment, at the wealth of them scattered about the field of his making. The sky was inky black above the frost covered earth. The dead could not move to follow him because their legs were frozen to the ground. He moved through them, turning skirting sideways to avoid a hand here, a touch there. Occasionally they would topple in their eagerness to reach for him and the frigid limbs would break off at the ankles, sending the body toppling forward. He cringed and wanted out. Out! Out!
There were pathways to choose from. A cross roads that did not offer oblivion, but other less savory choices. Down one way echoes of religious exhortations drifted, and remembrances of agony and shame. He turned away sharply before the words could register in his mind, wanting nothing of that. Desperately wanting nothing of that path. Down another and something huge and all powerful lurked, waiting to devour any sense of purpose, of free will that he had left. It was hypnotic almost, the thrill of that call. Familiar and so easy to fall into. Almost an oblivion in itself. But, most of those corpses in the field he had flown from, had come from his association with that Omnipotence. No, better not to go that way.
Which left the path from which the crying emanated. Those plaintive sounds terrified him more than what the other two paths had offered. There was weakness there, and unmitigated acceptance of fear and pain. He did not want that awareness. Wished the opposite so badly he stood in the cross roads for what seemed an eternity, hoping some other choice would appear. But none did. So his choices were the guilt from behind him. The pain to the left. Subsumption to the center. Or awareness.
Gradual awareness. Warmth. Softness under his skin. The faint smell of lavender in the linen under his head. Lashes fluttered, but did not open. He was frankly afraid to look upon the world and find the pleasant sensations all a trick designed to torment him. He listened for tell tale sounds that might betray the illusion. The clink of chain. The almost silent scuttering of mice. The low, harsh breathing of his tormentor. Nothing but the quiet crackle of fire. The occasional shifting of charred embers.
So very appealing, those quiet, comforting sounds. He curled his fingers in the sheets. Wetness formed at the corners of his closed lashes. He had to blink to be rid of it, and held his breath in anticipation of what he might see when he did. But it was just a room. A familiar, darkened room filled with familiar, shadowed things. He stared at the things in his line of vision numbly, trying to fill the gap of events separating this place from the other. And couldn't. And found that he didn't care. The stink of the place still lingered in his nostrils. The feel of the chains still made his wrists itch. The words reverberated inside his head. But they kept their distance for the time being, only faint reminders in the background.
He pushed himself up, sheets falling off of clean, whole skin. He stared down at himself, at his unmarred wrists in dumbfoundment. He swung a leg over the side of the bed, discovered he was without clothing and took longer than he suspected was normal to conclude that fact needed to be remedied. He stood and dizziness assaulted him. His knees buckled and he caught himself on the side of the bed. Knelt there on the rug, with his face pressed into the mattress and tried to stop the spinning and the flashes of visions that pulsed behind his eyes. Angelo's face. Grandfather's face. Mother's dying eyes.
He gathered strength, pushed himself up and stood unsteadily. Put a hand to the bedpost to help him make the wardrobe. That stately piece of furniture proved an enigma. It's normally full insides bare to the cedar paneling. He leaned on one of the doors and stared at it in bewilderment, the vague notion crossing his mind that maybe he was dead and they had cleaned out his chambers. Perhaps he was only a ghost haunting these rooms. He'd rather hoped death would bring forgetting, not eternal remembrances.
He dragged a sheet off the bed and wrapped it about himself, opened the door and stepped out into the hall without a clear destination to guide him. He clutched the sheet together with one hand and used the other to steady himself against the wall. He stopped a dozen steps down and tried to focus his thoughts enough to figure where he wanted to go. A maid came down the hall carrying an armful of linens. If he were a ghost in reality, then she would pass right by.
Apparently he was not, for when she saw him, she squealed, dropped her load and exclaimed, "My Lord!" Before bolting back down the hall the way she had come. He stood there, as startled at her reaction as she had apparently been at the sight of him. A door opened down the hall, the maid's cry rousing its occupant. Gara ran out, his tunic unlaced and hastily thrown on, his hair ruffled as if he'd been woken from a sleep. He caught the hind end of the fleeing maid, muttered. "What the hell?" before he turned and caught sight of Kall-Su, leaning against the wall.
"Godsdamned." The Ninja Master breathed and started down the hall towards him. Arshes Nei came out of the same room, adjusting her own tunic, her eyes wary. He hardly had the presence of mind to ponder his own existence, much less what the Thunder Empress and the Ninja Master might have been doing to exhibit such a state of dishevelment.
"You're awake." Gara stated the obvious and put hands on him. He flinched, not quite able to help it. Gara seemed not to notice. He had his big hands on Kall-Su's shoulders and was staring down critically. "What are you doing out here in the hall way wrapped in a sheet."
Kall-Su stared up at him, eloquent speech beyond him. "My clothes are gone."
He must have sounded shaky because even Arshes Nei leaned in with concern on her dark face. "Get him back to his room, Gara." She suggested.
He started to protest, but Gara turned him around with an arm around his shoulders and walked him back to his room. He sat on the end of the bed, leaning against the bedpost, while Gara studied him like he was an exhibit at fair and Arshes stalked about the room as if she were on the prowl for something.
"I thought they fixed him." Gara said, talking to her about him as if he weren't there. It felt as if he weren't.
"Somethings you can't just fix." She said, sounding ominous. "Look at Yoko."
Look at Yoko? Look at Yoko what? Was she dead? Schneider had brought her back. Please don't let her be dead. Not one more guilt on his doorstep.
They both looked at the door as footsteps sounded in the hall. Then Schneider was filling the doorway, his predator eyes fixing on Kall-Su and all he could think about was what if something had happened to Yoko. Schneider blamed him. The last words spoken between them had been an assignment of guilt. He pressed his forehead against the bedpost, trying to block it all out.
"He's a little disoriented." Gara's voice said.
"A little?" Arshes Nei snorted.
A sleight weight settled on the mattress beside him. A hand touched his shoulder hesitantly. "Kall-Su. Are you all right?"
Sweet voice. A boundless feeling of relief swept over him at the sound of it. She wasn't dead.
"I don't know." He answered dully, the words drawn out of him because her hand was still on his shoulder and he didn't think she would remove it until he responded. And he could not quite convince himself that being touched was a good thing. "My clothes are gone."
"We'll get you new ones." She promised. He opened his eyes, swept them to look at her because he did not want to meet Schneider's. Schneider was hard to deal with at the best of times. But he got snared by them anyway. He hadn't realized Schneider had approached so close, practically standing over top him. Got caught by the intensity of the stare and blinked up, wide-eyed, at the scrutiny.
"What's wrong, Kall?" Low, pointed question. So very difficult to answer. A hundred things surged the the fore. He couldn't utter one of them. Tried to force them back because his hands on the bedpost were starting to shake. There should have been a shell, a protective layer of impassivity that he had always relied on -- but he couldn't find it. Shattered along with everything else.
He turned his face back to the wood of the bedpost because he was trapped by Yoko on the one side and Schneider standing before him. Schneider caught his chin in his fingers, forced him to look at him. Not roughly, but with enough pressure to say he was not willing to brook refusal. And it brought to mind the Prophet's fingers on him. He jerked backwards in sudden panic and Schneider's brows drew in displeasure.
"I'm sorry." Kall-Su mumbled, because he couldn't think of anything else to say and that supplication had seemed so often on his tongue of late.
Schneider cursed under his breath, spun on his heel and stalked out of the room. Kall-Su felt sick.
"What the hell was that?"
Gara chased Schneider out into the hall, catching up with him halfway to the stairs down. "You're not angry at him?"
"No, I'm not fucking angry at him! God, give me a little credit, would you?"
"Then what?"
Schneider stopped at the top of the stairs and waved a hand back down the hall. "What do you think, Gara? He's so fucked up he can't even stand to be touched. I should have made certain Angelo was dead."
"Yeah, well if you had, Kall and me both would be too. You'll get no complaints from me about being lax that once."
He was angry and he was restless. He paced a few steps back down the hall and then back again. There was nothing downstairs but the supper he and Yoko had left when the maid came bolting down with the news that her lord was awake and wondering the halls. He had no stomach to finish it. He hadn't expected to see Kall looking so damned -- abused. It was so clear in his eyes it was painful to look at. It was the look of the boy he had found on the road over a century ago, before he'd taught him that he was a step above the rest of humanity. Dazed and lost and guilty.
He glared sullenly at Gara from under his lashes. "Whatever. And stop assuming I answer to you."
"I never assumed any such thing." Gara managed a shocked look.
"You assume it all the time." Schneider brushed past him. Not downstairs, but down the hall and into Kall-Su's library, assaulted by a sudden onslaught of guilt over the state he had left it in. Kall was more fastidious about his precious books than anything else and Schneider had left them strewn about the room in his fervid search for the right components for the spell. There were a few broken spines where, he'd tossed various volumes away from him in disgust when they proved fruitless. There was one particularly thick book he'd spent hours going over because it had hinted that it contained information he wanted only to find it useless to his cause -- it had been the victim of a sleep deprived tantrum and lay in a pile of charred ashes against the wall. Boring book, really, pertaining to druidic rites and passages. Kall might not even notice it. He opened the windows and summoned a tiny wind elemental to sweep the ashes outside. He poked about the room, putting books up in an order that seemed rational to him, but honestly he couldn't recall where what had been.
"Housekeeping?" Yoko wondered into the study. Three days since she'd come back to her senses and he still had to stare into her eyes for a moment to assure himself she was all there.
"Just putting things back. I don't see why the servants don't come in here and clean up."
"They're all afraid to come in here. Too many books of magic and the black arts. Kall never lets them touch any of his collection. Oh my was this scroll torn before?" She bent down to pick up a yellowed scroll that had rolled under the desk. Schneider looked at it and shrugged. One suspected not.
"So -- what do you think?" he asked it idly, but the answer from her meant a great deal. Yoko had a way of reading souls.
"I think it'll be okay. Eventually. I think he's hurt and he's hiding things and that we ought to keep an eye on him. And I think that you intimidate him and you need to stop."
"Intimidate? ME? I do not."
"Oh, you are so full of it. You intimidate everybody. Nature of the beast and all that."
"Beast?"
"Rushie. Just be nice, all right?" She offered him the scroll. He took it sullenly and tossed it haphazardly on a shelf with like scrolls. He leaned on the sill of the window, while she continued what he'd started. She was more careful about it. Looking at titles and scanning the shelves for like subjects.
"He can rearrange it when he's got his head straight." She mused, sliding a book into place. "I suppose he can't complain about the disarray, since it got him home. You're very crafty, according to old Ayntha. But, of course I knew that."
"Did you?" he glanced away from the deepening night outside to watch her.
She grinned. "When you're not being dense or blinded by your libido."
"Libido? Me? I think you have me mistaken for someone else. Do you have any earthly idea how long its been since I've slept with a woman?"
"Well, I know you haven't slept -- is that what we're calling it now? -- with me for let me see, six - seven months. So that would leave Arshes -- any of the prettier girls in town, where else have you been in that time --?"
He really shouldn't have opened that line of discussion. He had truly been commendable -- so good he shocked himself. There had been a great deal of distractions and one of the surest ways to take his mind off of sex was anger and revenge. "I haven't touched a woman since I've been in this frigid place."
"Really?"
"Not even you." He stared at her pointedly. She sniffed and bent down to pick up a book half hidden under the desk. It presented a nice view of tunic covered backside.
"It must be hard." She commiserated, not sounding particularly sorry.
"It getting that way." He muttered. If anger and revenge distracted him from thoughts of sex, then the opposite was most certainly true. A little niggling voice in his head recalled him of the hideous bargain Mother had forced out of him. He honestly couldn't know whether she had collected or not. Whether she considered them even with the baby he'd had buried in the mountains that she might or might not have taken. It was his first born in a fashion. She had never clarified a live birth. He might be able to argue that if it ever came down to it. Deities and demons and the like tended to be sticklers for wordplay. Besides and he'd had a lot of time to mull it over once his head had cleared after the whole Mother incident and his idiotic solution to the problem. If he could pull a body back from the dead he could certainly assure that a child was not conceived. Yoko didn't ever need to know. And he wanted very badly to devour her.
"Shall we break this streak of chastity?" he grinned at her lazily, but his eyes were glittering. She wrapped her arms around a leather bound volume and looked at him warily.
"You've gone this long."
"Wouldn't you like to see how it feels to make love on a bed instead of on the forest floor?"
She opened her mouth, then shut it, a blush spreading over her cheeks. He took a step towards her and she backed one up. He tilted his head at the roundness of her eyes and the way she bit her lower lip in nervousness. It made him want to bit it. He caught her face and swooped down on her. She went a little stiff against him, the book pressing against his ribs. Her teeth were clenched, but her lips were soft and pliant.
"I don't think I'm ready yet." She murmured against his mouth. But she did not exactly pull away, so he pretended not to hear it, cupping the back of her head and letting his lips travel over the smooth line of her jaw. She shuddered and let out a little sound of pleasure -- it was a sensitive spot.
Almost she melted into him, until his hands roamed down to knead the flesh of her bottom, then she pushed against him and broke contact.
"I'm not ready yet, Rushie." She declared, louder and between labored breaths. She slammed the book against his chest with enough impact to force the breath out of his lungs. "And don't pretend you didn't hear me the first time." She stabbed a finger against the book he had been forced to grab, then whirled and marched from the study. Leaving him with an aching monument to how badly he wanted her. For a compassionate woman she was cruel beyond measure.
Mistress Keitlan brought Kall-Su something to eat and a finely stitched robe to wear that was a little oversized. She promised a selection of more appropriate clothing by morning. He belted the folds of the thing together and let the sleeves fall half way down his hands without bothering to push them back. The food he had vague awareness of. The smell made him queasy. He could not recall the last time he had eaten. He thought it had been a very long while, his body pulling at sorcerous reserves to nourish itself. But it wasn't the same. The selection she brought him was too rich to tolerate, so he quietly requested something simpler. She stared at him with frown lines between her brows, but he did not offer more than that request, so she went about his bidding, muttering under her breath things he had no interest in absorbing.
She came back with a porridge sweetened with honey. He picked at that listlessly, one side of him insisting that he needed it, another ambiguously wondering why he bothered. You should never have been born. I'll burn in hell because of your existence.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the vision of her face as she raised the Falchion over her head. Focused, stubborn concentration as she strove to eradicate her sin. You should have died. You deserve to die. I want to die. Voices echoed in his head. Hers, Grandfathers, Angelo's -- his own.
He shoved the table away. It toppled and the bowl went flying. Porridge spattered the carpet. The fire cackled at him, mindless and cheerful. He hissed at it, threw a hand out and the whole thing stonework and embers, iron grill and hearth stones grew heavy with ice. The weight of it sagged, splintering. The sound of splintering ice was as irksome in itself as the crackle of flame. He stared at it. He had not meant to do it. Had meant perhaps to put out the fire -- irrational action in itself. He had not intended to encase one wall of his chamber in a sheet of ice. Had his control slipped that much?
Chill seeped into the room. He didn't mind. Cold was not abhorrent to him. He retreated to the bed. Settled into soft goose feather pillows, tired and desperately wanting to fall back into the oblivion of sleep. He had overheard someone say he had slept three days straight, but it hardly seemed enough. Even when he'd slept in that other place, there had been no rest. No respite from the nightmares. He didn't remember any lately.
Mistress Keitlan exclaimed over the melted ice that soaked his floor. Her shock stirred him out of slumber. Other voices joined hers in conjecture over the reason and he wondered why so many females dared to intrude upon his rest. He peered at them from beneath his lashes. Keitlan, two of her maids, and Yoko who was complaining about the state of the rug. The two maids held armfuls of neatly folded clothing. Keitlan was looking at the ceiling as if she suspected a leak from above. Yoko was not so easily deceived. She marched over and shook his shoulder. He glared miserably, beset and besieged in the privacy of his own rooms, wishing then all gone.
"Kall-Su, did you do this?" Yoko demanded. She had no sense of decorum. He threw an arm over his eyes, hoping that if he couldn't see her, she'd go away and take the others with her. Yoko was not so accommodating. Her voice hammered at him.
"Kall where did all the water come from? Its an inch thick over the whole floor. The carpet is ruined. And this was the best of the lot. Do you know how much this carpet cost?"
He ought to, having paid for it. But he could not quite care. However, he gathered she would go on until he answered, so he said quietly. "The fire annoyed me."
"The fire --- ? Oh goddess, that sounds like something Rushie would say. Well its an hour past noon and you've slept too long as is. You need to get up."
He truly did not wish to. If they would go away, draw the drapes, shut the door and leave him in darkness he would almost be happy.
"We need to get somebody in here to mop up the water. Oh, I do hope the carpet isn't ruined." Yoko was saying. He heard the other women moving about the room. The doors of the armoire opened. "Look, Keitlan has laid out something to wear for you. Keitlan has your tailor in town working on more."
Even with the lassitude he had to ask. "What, prey tell, happened to all my clothes?"
A moment of silence. He moved his arm slightly to see if she were still there. She smiled a little guiltily and shrugged. "Rushie sort of burned them all -- for a spell."
"He burned -- my clothes?"
"It was for a good cause."
The maids were looking at him with round eyes, shifting from foot to foot in cold standing water.
"Get out." He said softly and the two girls started and scattered like rabbits. Keitlan gave him a dour look before following after them. Yoko eyed him a moment longer.
"Are you going to be okay? You were really unsteady last night. I can get somebody to help - - ?"
"No."
"I can get Rushie --"
"No!" More emphatically.
"Okay, but if you don't make some effort to get up I'm going to send him after you anyway." With that threat, she left, shutting the door in her wake. He found himself glaring at the door, thinking bad things about her. But the threat was enough to stir him into taking notice in what the maids had brought him. Plain, but fine material. No ornamentation, which suited his mood very well. He pulled on a pair of soft house boots -- Schneider had apparently not seen fit to burn all his footwear -- and slopped through the water on his floor to the door. His head still felt a little hazy. His balance was better. His knees did not feel as if they might crumble under him.
The water had seeped out into the hallway. It stained the long narrow rug that graced the stone floor. There was a maid and a boy with a bucket and mop coming up the hall now. They bowed their heads respectfully at him as he stood undecided outside his doorway. They stood a few feet away, looking nervous, even a little frightened, blocked from their destination, which was obviously his room, by his presence.
He moved down the hall, spurred by their anxious stares. Found himself in his study, which was another haven. He shut the door behind him and tried to find the peace that had always come to him in this room, filled with so many years of avid collecting. It would not come. Disquietude came instead. His interest in the arcane, all the trappings of the dark magics, the superstitions, all the things that grandfather had preached against. All the things that he had taken up like a crusade once he realized that with power came the ability to banish all the people that condemned him. Even if it meant cutting a swath of death behind him as he went. How many people dead? He had no earthly idea.
You should never have been born. Your death will absolve her sin. His head spun with the notion. Sinner. Sinner. Sinner. Flashes of pain and he pressed his palms into his eyes. Shame. A loss of dignity that could never be recovered. Do you want to die? Yes.
"My Lord?" Keitlan's voice from outside the door. She babbled something about breakfast. He couldn't listen to her. He jerked the door open and brushed past her startled face. Down the hall towards the tower stairs because the walls were a constraint that he could not tolerate. He needed to see sky above him. Limitless, uncondemning sky. She called after him. All he heard was the unintelligible sound of a voice raised in concern. The words made no sense. The ones in his head hammered at him ruthlessly.
Up the narrow stairs and he was winded by the time he'd reached
the top. The sky loomed above, scattered clouds marring the blue
depths of firmament. The wind made small whistling sounds. There was
a dark stained pattern on the stones of the floor, worn away in
places so that it was not recognizable. A
He found himself on the thick stone of the battlement. The wind whipped his shirt against his back, his hair into his eyes. He put a hand on the stone on either side of him, just a careful touch of fingertips to granite. The rocks were tiny beads scattered among the vestiges of snow so very far below.
He simply stepped off the edge.