The caravan passed through the gates just after noon, when the day was warm from a morning of clear skies and almost no breeze blowing down from the God's Tooth mountains. Like every other trading procession that entered the city, it was stopped by the guards at the gates and given a cursory inspection. It was clearly from the south. The men accompanying it were most certainly of southern decent. Nothing of the northern highlands about them. Nothing to arouse suspicion. The caravan carried mostly luxury goods that Sta-Veron grasped for hungrily. Fine western wines and ales. Dried fruits that could not be grown in the cold north. Bolts of silk and linen. Things for the most part that would find their way into the wealthier houses of the city.
No one noticed the old man. No one paid him the slightest heed. He walked in beside the merchant, so thin he appeared anorexic, a face that was lined and non-descript. The guards hardly looked at him and when they did they suddenly discovered other things to occupy their attention. He walked into the city as if he didn't exist and after he'd passed, the guards did not even recall his presence. He moved slowly, like an aged man. Leaning upon the sturdy length of his staff. The city moved around him, uncaring. He slipped through the noonday crowds like a wraith. The neatly cobbled streets eventually led inwards towards the tallest structure Sta-Veron boasted. The castle, which rested within its own walled boundaries. The old man stood on the street outside it, staring up at gray stone and limply hanging banners.
He did not remain long. No longer than any other tourist to Sta-Veron might in viewing the castle of its ruling lord. Cane in hand he made his way back into the commoner section of the city. He paid for a room at a moderately priced inn, in great need of rest. Physically, his body was weary from the travel. Physically he was failing with no easy way to halt the degradation. It was an annoyance that drove him beyond reason sometimes. That his body ailed when his mind was sharper than it had ever been. When he saw things clearer than he had ever seen them. Power licked at him from the inside, hammering at the mortal body that had never been meant to contain it. He held it at bay, being old enough and wise enough to have learned the ways to bypass it. To cheat when it came down to this eating away of mortal flesh. The decay was quickening now more than it ever had in the past. He did not have long before the body was gone completely and then, he had no notion what might become of the soul. He was not quite certain anymore that heaven would welcome it.
He slept the day through and woke when the chill of night drove away the last of the warmth. He found the cold distasteful. It made his bones ache. He wrapped a cloak about himself and wondered out of the inn, following the migration of the evening crowds to places of warmth where people gathered. He listened to the talk, finding bits and pieces of interest. He inserted himself into conversations with the smooth eloquence of a born speaker. Men listened to his words and eagerly volunteered information at his asking. They trusted him, the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, the aura of the personality that he let the world see. They always had.
He drifted from place to place and finally found himself at the door of a tavern where the lilting sounds of music seeped out onto the street. Not the bawdy tunes he'd heard in other taverns, but the sweet, melodic strain of a love ballad. He stepped inside, something hypnotic and familiar about the flavor of the voice.
Ah. He saw her seated amidst a half circle of other musicians. There was such a power that she radiated, sitting there with the attention of the crowded bar upon her, that he almost did not recognize her. But her voice could not be forgotten. It held an illusive magic all its own. Surprising to find her here. He had assumed her dead.
He needed to sit down and think and someone made a place for him without even knowing why they did it. He took the chair without a word, hidden by the crowd, one long fingered hand stroking his jaw.
There were many, many nuances alive in this city. Many patterns to ponder and he had never acted hastily or rashly in his stratagems. Even with the decay threatening to devour him, he had to take the time to find the best pathway -- the easiest route to his goal. And his eventual triumph.
It was full summer now. As warm as it ever got in the northern plainlands between two great mountain ranges. One could go outside in nothing more than a tunic and skirt and not even feel a hint of the cold. Children ran about shirtless, shoeless, reckless in the summer abandon. It would not last for long. No more than a fraction of the summer the south enjoyed. The minstrels were growing restless. They had been stuck inside the walls of Sta-Veron for the whole of the winter and wanted to stretch their wings. Lily wanted it too, she wanted to see the world from a perspective never seen before. That of a free woman. She wanted to choose her own destiny and yet the thought of leaving this city -- the very thought of stepping outside those great gates made her heart pound with dread. Made a ball of pain curl up somewhere between heart and stomach and perch there, tormenting her. She tried not to think about it, knowing it would make her days miserable, knowing that it would linger on her face when she did see him during the nights and remind him of it as well. Not that he didn't dwell on it enough.
Oh, he didn't ask her anymore. He was by far too proud to whine at her about it, and too honorable to pressure her when he saw that she was coiled into a knot over it. He was cold when the subject came up. But the cold was his defense. She did not take it to heart. She knew what was behind it. She thought she had never loved anything as much as she loved him. It frightened her beyond reason. She was so afraid that she would loose herself, her will, her own ideals if she let herself be encompassed by him. Sometimes she could hardly breath in the anticipation of seeing him. Sometimes it hurt so much leaving him that she almost gave in to his desires and stayed. Sometimes she thought it would be easier to urge the minstrels to leave now and get it over with.
She saw Yoko in the market and the two of them browsed the shops together, talking idly. Lily had the money now to buy a trinket if she liked it. To even treat Yoko to a sweetmeat and a glass of cold cider. It felt good to be able to do that. To spend money honestly earned -- her very own money -- on a friend.
"Are you still leaving to enthrall the south with your talents?" Yoko asked.
"Maybe. There are so many places I wish to go. My friends have been to all of them."
"Ah, the life of a bard." Yoko grinned, then it faltered. "I wish I could go back home. I hardly know what welcome I'd receive. Rushie is getting restless here. It must be catching."
"You'll go with him?" Lily asked hesitantly.
"Of course. You don't think I'd let him loose on the world without me there to keep him in line? He keeps talking about a villa by the sea that he's in love with. I've never lived by the sea, so it might be interesting. I suppose anyplace Rushie is can't be boring."
"Oh." Lily said, feeling awful and selfish.
"I don't know what Gara and Arshes are going to do, but I heard him talking about maybe heading east, back to the boarder where he had a lot of men left high and dry when he took off after me and Rushie last year. Goddess, its been almost a year since all this started. Hard to believe. I guess when we all take off Kall can have his castle back again and some peace and quiet. We upset his solitude terribly."
"I don't think he minded." Lily almost whispered it. A bit of moisture gathered in the corner of her eye. All of the people in the world he trusted gone their separate ways and he would be alone again in that great stark castle. And the ice would creep up because it was the only thing that protected him against loneliness. She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, miserable.
"Lily, what's wrong?" Yoko asked.
"I don't know if I can leave." She moaned. "Oh, gods, I want to, but I don't think I have the strength."
Yoko blinked at her. "Whyever not? What's keeping you?"
She looked up, one brazen tear rolling down her cheek. She wanted to tell someone. Someone other than the minstrels, who were biased one way, or Kall-Su, who was very definitely biased the other.
"If I leave, I'll be leaving someone I love. Who maybe loves me."
Yoko opened her mouth. Blinked in a moment's surprise before covering Lily's hands with her own. "Oh, Lily. That's wonderful --- uuhh, but maybe not, if you want to go on the road playing as badly as you do. Ohh, maybe not wonderful at all. Oh, what are you going to do? What does he say? Who is he?"
"I don't know what I'm going to do. He doesn't say anything anymore. He won't pressure me and that just makes it worse, because I know he's just being considerate."
"Well, how serious is it? Has he asked you to marry him?"
"What?" Lily almost yelped it.
"Some people do, you know? If they're not wizards above the rest of the world's idea of ethics and morality, that is." She said this last rather grumpily. Lily blinked at her owlishly.
"Okay." Yoko continued. "So do you think he'd wait for you to get it out of your system and come back?"
"I don't know." She admitted.
"Would he come with you?"
"He's - he's got responsibilities here."
"More important that you?"
Yes. Just tell her, Lily thought. Just tell her who and see if she thinks the same. No, don't tell her, she'll side against you then. She'll only back him and add her voice to those that want to make you stay.
"I don't know. Maybe." She said it dully, because her mind kept telling her that no matter what Yoko said now, she would not be her ally in this if she knew who her lover was.
"Then maybe its just as well."
"Maybe." She was tired of a sudden. Her head hurt and she wanted nothing more than to find the sanctity of her shared loft and release the pressure with sleep.
"Please, please talk to me before you make a decision. I want to help." Yoko offered. Lily nodded, slipping away. She rubbed her temples absently, trying to massage away the feeling that her head was suddenly twice its normal size. She walked blindly for a while and miraculously found herself in the loft. It was empty, all her erstwhile roommates out in the city. The shutters were open, letting in air to cool the room. It was still dim in the corner she had taken for herself. The corner where she had first slept with Kall-Su. She sank down upon the blankets, bemused at the extent of her weariness. She shut her eyes.
"You little whore." A voice hissed by her ear.
She gasped, startled. Tried to force awareness and energy to her limbs, but they were too leaden to move. She managed to pry her lids open and stared up into a shadow silhouetted face. A body that leaned over hers, one hand resting on the floor by her head.
"Dirty little slut." Again the hissing voice that was as much inside her head as something she heard out side it. "You lay with him when you knew he belonged to me. You knew the sin you committed."
Gods, gods, no. What she could see of the face was altered, but the voice was the same. The intimidation radiating from it made her shrivel up inside with fear. How could he be here? How could the Master have survived the destruction that took the Place Without Windows? Why had he come after her?
Then it occurred to her, though the horror that clawed its way through her body, that he had not come for her. That she mattered very little in the scope of the Master's desires. That he had come here for something else entirely. Then the fear turned cold and frantic, but try as she might, she could not even get a scream to pass her frozen lips.
The thought of another winter in Sta-Veron was unbearable. Schneider was not a creature by nature that thrived in the cold. Fire was his element, fire was his nature. Hemmed in by the snow for one long northern winter had liken to driven him mad. He had no wish to be trapped for yet another one. There were only so many places open for him to go. A fair deal of the south was off limits unless he wanted a series of small wars on his hands. A number of the places that had been his before the final days of Ansasla were gone. Cities destroyed, towns eaten up by the destruction, estates just flattened. He used to have a world open to him, now he found his options severely limited.
He hated it. Hated the notion of anything being declared off limits. If he'd been in a more irritable mood, or Yoko had not become an attachment he had no desire to shake, he would have ridden into Meta-Rikan or Judas or any of those other high and mighty jewels of the south and dared them to make an issue of his presence. He would have gladly taken on Larz and his high council, Geo Note and his self-righteous clerics and all, for what they'd done to Yoko. But she was adamant against that. She was adamant against any type of confrontation with the southern alliance. It was too tense a situation already, she preached at him, for him to insert his very volatile self into the picture.
So he thought about Keladedra on the coast, which he did favor, and which he thought Yoko would like very much. One would not mention that it had been his and Arshes Nei's getaway for longer than Yoko had been alive. One hoped the Thunder Empress would not see fit to mention it either. Fair was fair, after all. If he allowed the thing with Gara to go on unhindered, the least she could do was not find ways to make Yoko hard to deal with.
Yoko would have been perfectly happy to stay here. Yoko could make a home anywhere. She could insinuate herself into any situation and make herself welcome and cherished. He was not so easy to tolerate. He made people uneasy. He frightened people. It was not a characteristic that he found in the least annoying. He didn't have that niggling little need for acceptance that plagued Kall-Su. The apprehension in people's eyes did not in the least fracture his self-esteem. It bolstered it, if anything.
They would be just as happy to see him go as they would be sad to see Yoko gone. He'd had to promise her they'd come back. She had almost been in tears at the prospect of a permanent separation. Why she'd formed such an attachment to so drafty and rustic a place as Sta-Veron was beyond him. There was nothing here that he found in the least appealing, nothing that might particularly draw him back -- save perhaps for its lord, and one just did not go about boasting that weakness for anyone to hear.
Kall-Su was the only thing that made him hesitate in his plans for migration to warmer climates and that only because he was not completely certain the younger wizard was quite recovered from the ordeal with Angelo. That thing with the blood over the deaths of the merchant's family the other day was a sure sign of things not quite as stable as they ought to be. If the damned bandits would get their wits together and start plaguing the city and its outlying provinces things would get better. At least Kall would have something to focus on. As long as his people were competent enough to keep assassins out of the city. That had been a disconcerting experience. It had taken four days for the his body to finally convince his head that it was all right and to let the ghost headache fade away.
Yoko came into his room, fresh from shopping in the city while he was thinking about Keladedra. She had bought him a cloak clasp made from beaten bronze and silver, boasting six bear claws about its diameter. It was barbaric enough to catch his interest. She was pleased that he liked it, but preoccupied enough otherwise to make him inquire what was wrong.
"Oh, I'm just going to miss it here, is all. I've made so many friends."
"They'll still be here." He shrugged.
"Not all of them. Lily's probably going to leave. I spoke with her today."
"No loss there, she was imprudent. She compared me to the Prophet."
Yoko waved a hand at him, brushing away his opinions. "You deserved it. You were being an ass. Its so refreshing to see someone stand up to you once and a while."
He sniffed indignantly at that. Yoko did it constantly. She backed him down most of the time, which was frankly amazing.
"I'm going to go and listen to her tonight." Yoko said. "She was sort of upset when I talked to her today. She wants to leave so bad, but there's someone here she doesn't want to say good-bye to. I thought I'd talk to her again tonight. Do you want to come?"
He shrugged, half remembering the interest Kall had tried to hide in the girl. Kall-Su so rarely showed interest in trivial things like females, that when he did, it stuck in the mind. He wondered idly what had become of that.
"It might be entertaining." He admitted. Taverns full of drunken people generally were.
They decided to take dinner out since they were going, and as soon as the sun began to sit, were on their way. Schneider, for no other reason than sheer perversity, paused by Kall-Su's library on the way out and asked in a preternaturally congenial tone of voice.
"We're going to see your little slave girl sing, care to come?"
Kall just blinked at him owlishly, startled out of some passage or another he'd been scrutinizing, completely at a loss for words. He might have thrown a lightening ball, there was so much shock in the expression, which was as good an indication as any that Kall hadn't totally forgotten about the girl.
"Oh, guess not." He said with a blithe smile, and whisked away to catch up with Yoko.
They walked, the weather being nice. She took up his hand, which was just - foreign - and pleasant and made him feel not quite as intimidating as he generally liked. People stared, but people always stared at him, either covertly or openly. He was not an entirely unfamiliar thing to them, having wasted a good bit of time within the boundaries of the city before Yoko had admitted back into her good graces. Though he had by far a darker reputation than their own lord, he was somewhat more attainable, and a great deal more likely to mingle with common folk. With Yoko at his side, he was treated somewhat like a tamed tiger on leash. A hazardous, temporarily safe thing, to be treated nonetheless with utmost respect.
He liked the boisterous noise of taverns thought, they suited his nature. Someone cleared a very nice table for them, and a nervous, but bright eyed barkeep brought out what must have been his finest bottle of wine. Serving girls and girl's for hire flocked about their table, intrigued. Yoko glared and leaned against his arm possessively whenever one got too forward in her attentions. That jealousy amused him greatly.
There were two bards already playing, an effeminate little blonde and a tall redhead. They were singing a tune which blended tenor and baritone harmoniously. Yoko asked one of the hovering bargirls where the rest of the musicians were and the girl replied that the evening was just getting started and the rest would be out in due time to give the first two their reprieve. Gaming began at a fair number of tables. Dice and cards and Highjack stones. Nothing so sophisticated here as Pirates and Kings. Schneider found more interest in the games of chance than he did with the music for which Yoko had come to see. Even when the other minstrels came out he let himself be distracted by a card game. The other players were a bit apprehensive of his presence, superstitious wariness in their eyes, until he sincerely promised that cheating at cards was not one of the uses he put his magic to. It would have been rude not to take him at his word and no one in their right mind was purposefully rude to Dark Schneider. Besides it was a game of chance more than strategy and he lost as much as the next man and his coin, tainted by magic or not was just as attractive as any other.
He was a great success, once the drink began to flow freely and the patrons had decided he was not going to cast evil spells on them. For the most part he forgot Yoko's presence entirely. She was somewhere closer to the place the minstrel's were performing and he trusted no one in their right mind to molest her since she had very clearly come in with him. The only time he paid any heed to the bards at all was when the girl put down her lute and took up one of those sultry, gypsy dances. Most of the men in the tavern found themselves distracted by that. He lost a hand of cards because he wasn't paying attention. Won it back the next round and ended up with about the same amount of coin he'd started with by the time he'd finished.
Yoko drifted back to the table eventually, when the minstrel's had finished their set, and only one of them remained strumming a tune on his lute. She had a disconsolate expression on her face.
"She was too tired to talk with me." She said, pouting. Her eyes had the look she got when she badly wanted to pry in someone else's business. He wrapped an arm about her waist and pulled her into his lap, more than a little intoxicated from all the cheap ale he'd consumed after the one good bottle of wine. She wrinkled her nose at him distastefully, not drunk in the least herself.
"Some people don' need your guiding hand in their lives." He surmised, not at his most tactful at the present. He ran a hand up her thigh and she glared at him, primly removing the member from her leg.
"Well, be that as it may, she was abrupt and it just wasn't like her and I think she must be really upset for it to be effecting her like this."
"Lets go back to the castle. I've got an itch I need you to scratch."
"Rushie!" She blushed and looked around the table at the grinning faces of the other players. She wriggled off his lap, which in itself practically had him standing at attention and looked down at him, hands on hips. "You're drunk." She accused.
"I can be not drunk like this!" he snapped his fingers, or tried to and missed, then attempted it again successfully.
"Then why don't you?" she suggested dryly.
He grinned at her lazily. "Because it feels good this way. You should try it."
"My father taught me better."
"Figures." He waved a hand to dismiss the notion of Geo Note.
"And, I didn't come here to get smashed, I came to see a friend."
"Which didn't want to be seen." He reminded.
"Which is reason enough to assume she's unhappy."
"If she's mooning after a man, you sure don't have what it takes
to make her not
"Oh, shut up." She snapped, spun on her heel and stormed away from him, heading towards the door. Perhaps they might get back to the castle promptly after all. It was just a matter of lightening Yoko's mood.
He finished the last of his ale and surged to his feet to follow her. He brushed past an old man on his way without out even noticing. But the old man's eyes followed him. Stayed glued to his back until he was well and gone from the tavern, then slowly drifted back to the place where the musicians had been playing.
For a while, the old man hadn't been able to breath properly. The air had rattled harshly and unevenly in his chest, so eaten up by rage and frustration had he been. He'd sat at a booth against the wall and watched Schneider so intently that the barmaids who passed by gave him wide berth and anxious glances. Most everyone else, the folk that did not have the job of tending the tables, didn't notice him at all. Could have stared right at him and not realized he was there. He had ever been the master of shielding his true nature. It was nothing to shield the depth of his burning hatred, the vast scope of his seething power, even from those that should have been sensitive to such things.
He had not expected Schneider though. Had not expected the dry tinder of his hatred to be ignited. His head hurt from it. From the fact that he dare not act on it. That despite all his delusions of power, he could not overwhelm his enemy. Not with this mortal body, at any rate.
But soon he would have another. The pathway had already been paved and it would only be a matter of time.