For Love of Light and Shadow 3
The dappled horse stalled at the edge of the forest, its eyes showing white with fear. Quatre leaned forward and stroked its neck comfortingly, peering deep into the shadows of Eald. Strange things chittered in the darkness at them, the two figures standing in the lighter New Forest. The horse shied away from the dark, finding the light of the fading mortal sun safer and warmer. The golden haired man sat and urged the steed forward, along the border of the New Forest and Eald.
It had been several years since he had last passed this way, along the banks of the forest river that wound its way through haunted forest and bright alike. Years since he arrived, and left the holding in the hills to fight with his father to take back Caer Elfoar. Years since they emerged victorious through the rebel bands and lords who tried to take the Caer for their own, and their bones and blood were now the soil of the green fields. There was peace in the vale of Elfoar, peace enough for a lord and his family harried for years as criminals. Peace in the vale, but without, in the forests and mountains, roamed the robber bands and those who would make war.
The golden boy, now fully grown, took it upon himself at his father's leave to patrol the lands for such evils. It was not simply concern for his family, but a restlessness in his heart that brought about the long rides in the forests. Quatre's brow furrowed at the memory, or lack of it. A shadow of a memory, more like, of silver leaves, a pale sun, and a soothing voice with moss-colored eyes. His heart ached with the thought of it. He had felt something that night, something beautiful and intangible that left him empty and yearning. Sighing his discontentment, Quatre shook his head of such thoughts and with soft sounds guided his steed through the darkening twilight.
Under the light of the dawning elfish sun, Trowa watched the golden Man travel along the river, keeping the small things of Eald at bay with a warning glance and a word. The moonstone at his breast warmed at the sight of him, Quatre, remembered harp song and a light voice. The tall Sidhe swiftly walked the shadow ways at the edge of Eald, keeping the Man in sight, wishing that he might venture into the Eald. Trowa doubted this, but hoped the same. He didn't care to walk under the Mortal sun just yet. He stopped when Quatre stopped, watering his horse on the opposite bank of the river.
I would that he came into the Eald, Trowa inadvertently thought, the intensity of his feelings startling him once again. The folds of his cloak swirled about his lithe form as he passed from the elfish Eald into the mortal, wishing to be closer to the beautiful Man. He did not move beyond the boundaries of his forest though, and in due course Quatre mounted the dappled horse and rode on, unaware of the Sidhe's watchful eye. The stone grew cold as the vision parted, and Trowa's isolation sharpened into focus. He didn't even lend an eye to the figure that stood at his side, all darkness and mocking laughter.
"You pick your loves badly, my friend," teased the dark figure, a fiendish smile touching its lips. A wicked scythe blade glinted in the fading twilight. "That Man travels in to danger, and soon enough to My arms."
Trowa did not turn to the darkness. "Be gone from me, Death. You and your brothers have no hold over me and mine."
Death laughed, a manic sound, cold and hollow, and full of dark mirth. "He is not yours yet, dear friend, and not likely ever to be. You will not even step out of your domain to retrieve him!"
The Sidhe turned his back to Death and walked into his forest, stung by what the godling said but unwilling to let him see it. The Dark Lord followed, and walked beside him, lonely for company.
"I apologize," he said at length, keeping pace with the swiftly moving Trowa. "I am too cruel at times ."
They had passed many trees, Trowa touching each one as he went, drawing awareness from each. In due time, the two, Sidhe and god, came in sight of the river once again. There Trowa paused, his hand resting on an aged willow at the river's edge. "Cruel, perhaps," the tall Sidhe spoke softly, watching as Quatre rounded the bend. "Cruel as my kind were, and more truthful."
Lord Death heard the pain lacing the quiet voice, and so resigned himself. "An ambush awaits yon fair Man, Trowa. If you would save him, act now, for I shall not guarantee that he will pass through without feeling the kiss of my blade."
For once, Trowa cast his glance upon Death, his eyes shining coldly. "Tis not like you to have compassion, young god."
"Nor like you not to act upon your desires, old friend," Death gently retorted, smiling. His smile softened as the Sidhe turned away once more. "I have a lighter face..."Ê
But Trowa only ignored him, and after it seemed like an eternity passed, Death went along his way. He felt him go, sensing Death's path through the trees like a dark echo that soon faded away. Full night had fallen in moral Eald, and the forest sang with the harmony of living things. Trowa closed his eyes and unfolded the awareness of the forest and made it his own, drawing on the life around him. He felt Quatre's dappled mare, who quivered at the touch, and Quatre looked about, suspicious. He felt the taint of iron on the steed and the young Man, and shrank from it.
Casting further, the Sidhe tasted iron in the New Forest, a group of hard Men looking for blood. Trowa withdrew and turned back to the golden Quatre, calling to his heart: /Ambush!/
Quatre fidgeted in the saddle and lifted his shield, emblazoned with the rising sun, closer to his side. He cast his clear azure eyes into the dark forest around him, feeling the pressure of eyes upon his body. /Safer in the Eald.../ He set this hand upon the sword at his side, and rode on. He didn't care to travel into the depths of Eald again. /"Might I have a bit of harp song?" "Beautiful..."/
The mare danced nervously away from the bracken lining the rushing waters, stroked by the tension palpable in the air. Quatre did nothing to quell its fear, feeling the call of Eald like a pulse throughout his body. The river sang with a whispering chorus behind him as he urged the horse further into the thicket of the forest.
Then two pale moths came flying, a whipping of arrowsound... Quatre flung up the shield and a blow jarred it, while the horse reared and leaned and cried with a sudden loosening of life.
He sprawled clear of the dying horse, shield lifting, jarred by a second shaft thumping into the wood while others hissed through the brush and his back hit the thicket. He scrambled desperately to cover himself and to run, tearing his right gloved hand on thorns, while the crash of brush warned him of enemies coming. Quatre's back net a tree, and he braced himself there on his feet. He had his sword from sheath, and they came on him in a mass in the forest dark. Blows battered at his shield and he hewed at them with every stroke that his tiring arm would allow him--the blade bit and there were screams. They tried to come at him from behind, and he swung with his shoulders still against the tree and killed one of them and another, rammed his shield under a bearded chin, washing the sun with blood. He cleaved with his sword again, but with ebbing strength, for there was a quick numbing pain in his aide and he knew something had gotten through, in the joinings of his armor.
His shield was cleaved by an axe and held fast to it. Quatre let the shield go and swung the sword two-handed, clove ribs and wrenched the blade free in backswing, while a staff came down on him. The blow dazed him, but he rammed the blade's point into that one's belly and slew him too... while brush crashed and cries were raised beyond--"Ho! help, we have him!"
He took to the brush and began to run blindly, and staggered across the thigh-deep rush of the river. Chilled and sodden, he waded ashore and set out running on the opposite bank, seeking the bracken again when arrows hissed after. Voices cursed in the gathering dark. Quatre sought higher ground with a wildling's instinct, not to be driven into some hole against the stream's banks. Branches tore at him and snapped. His limbs turned leaden with the weight of the armor, and his side ached. A veil seemed fallen over his eyes and the little light in the heaven was dimmed, yet for a time he ran with hope, for it seemed his pursuers had fallen behind. He climbed, took ways closer and closer with brush and twisted, aged trees, through tangles so thick it seemed no bracken could grow. He hoped, and then the brush around him crackled to a dry chuckling, and the wind stirred through the branches like a rising storm. He ran farther, until all the sound in his ears was his heartbeat, and his own harsh breath tearing his throat.
But another breathing grew at his heals, the whuff of a running horse, the beat of hooves which broke no brush as it came
Quatre spun about to face attack, but there was nothing but the blackness, and the wind. Then the hounds belled and his heart froze, and he feared as he had never feared in battle. Quatre turned back and ran as if the effort before had been nothing. The ache in his side was more than the need for breath; he pressed his hand to his side and felt the ebb of blood.
He was weakening. He heard aÊ chuckling and then knew the name of the rider that followed him, and the name of the wood into which he had strayed. Shadow came, and a spattering of rain, a rattle of thunder and the baying of hounds. Shadows flooded among the trees, black bits of night which rushed and leaped for him. Quatre swung his sword, but it swept through them, and a coldness fastened and worried at his arm. numbing all the way to his heart.
He cried aloud and tore free, leaving a fragment of himself in the jaws, and the sword was no longer in his hand. The shadows coursed behind him, and the hoof beats rang like a pulse in his ears and the hoarse breathing was like his own. The enemy was not behind him, but lodged in his side, where the wound worked at his life. A part of his soul was theirs, and they would tear him to nothing when they came on him again, a rending far worse than the first.
Rain spattered into his face and blinded him, dampened the leaves so that they clung to him and his armor was soaked so that he did not know now what was blood and what was rain. Quatre stumbled yet again, then in a crash of thunder he conceived of safety in the trees ahead, where it seemed there seemed to be a mound, a swelling of the land with life, where the trees grew vast and stretched out their limbs in sympathy.
He reached it, entered it, sped in a strange freedom where the trees were straight and crooked at once, barren and flowered with stars and aglitter with jewels, with silver laid upon the white branches, swords and shining mail, cloth like the morning haze, spiderweb among pale green leaves.
ÊA sword hung before him, offered to his hand... Quatre tore it from the leaves in a scatter of bright foliage, and the brightness about him faded, leaving him along with the dark and the shadows, and the dark rider, who burst upon him, absorbing all light like a hole in the world. A manic laughter rung through the glen, and Quatre held the illusionary blade trembling before him, and shuddered as its light drew detail from the dark, revealing jaws and eyes of hounds. He was drawn to look up, to lift his face unwilling, to face the rider--he saw something, a flash of a wide, terrible smile, which his dazed mind would not recall even the instant after beholding it.ÊÊ
The rider came closer, and all his flesh chilled except the hand which held the blade. He lost the brightness, could not hold even his vision of this grim place. The hounds became to overcome Quatre, but he slashed at it and the hounds yelped aside from him, bristling and trembling.
"Come," a voice whispered to him, very softly. His heart leaped, and his mind's eye clouded with remembrance of another chase, and a quiet voice. The blade wavered and sank, and yet a warmth broke like a breath of spring at his back. "Stand firm" the someone said.
"He is mine," the shadow said, his voice like shards of ice.
"Be off," said the other, soft and without doubt.
"He has stolen from you. Do you encourage such thefts?" And for a moment the world was bright, and the shadow was a blight upon it, a robed shadow which stood in an attitude of amazement. "Ah," the cold voice breathed, peering at the golden Man. "Ah. This is why you would keep him from me."
Light blazed. Quatre staggered in it, and his knees hit the ground, a shock which wrung a sob of pain from him, and he could no longer tell earth from sky, shadow from light. Rain beat down into his face, chilling his torn soul.
But the shadow was gone, and the thunder stilled. It seemed the moon shone down. A face confused itself with it, and with the sun in a strange, fair sky. He still clutched the sword. Slim, cool fingers pried his hand from it, eased his limbs, and covered him with a downy peace in which the only pain was in his heart, an ache of yearning and a memory of loss.
The dappled horse stalled at the edge of the forest, its eyes showing white with fear. Quatre leaned forward and stroked its neck comfortingly, peering deep into the shadows of Eald. Strange things chittered in the darkness at them, the two figures standing in the lighter New Forest. The horse shied away from the dark, finding the light of the fading mortal sun safer and warmer. The golden haired man sat and urged the steed forward, along the border of the New Forest and Eald.
It had been several years since he had last passed this way, along the banks of the forest river that wound its way through haunted forest and bright alike. Years since he arrived, and left the holding in the hills to fight with his father to take back Caer Elfoar. Years since they emerged victorious through the rebel bands and lords who tried to take the Caer for their own, and their bones and blood were now the soil of the green fields. There was peace in the vale of Elfoar, peace enough for a lord and his family harried for years as criminals. Peace in the vale, but without, in the forests and mountains, roamed the robber bands and those who would make war.
The golden boy, now fully grown, took it upon himself at his father's leave to patrol the lands for such evils. It was not simply concern for his family, but a restlessness in his heart that brought about the long rides in the forests. Quatre's brow furrowed at the memory, or lack of it. A shadow of a memory, more like, of silver leaves, a pale sun, and a soothing voice with moss-colored eyes. His heart ached with the thought of it. He had felt something that night, something beautiful and intangible that left him empty and yearning. Sighing his discontentment, Quatre shook his head of such thoughts and with soft sounds guided his steed through the darkening twilight.
Under the light of the dawning elfish sun, Trowa watched the golden Man travel along the river, keeping the small things of Eald at bay with a warning glance and a word. The moonstone at his breast warmed at the sight of him, Quatre, remembered harp song and a light voice. The tall Sidhe swiftly walked the shadow ways at the edge of Eald, keeping the Man in sight, wishing that he might venture into the Eald. Trowa doubted this, but hoped the same. He didn't care to walk under the Mortal sun just yet. He stopped when Quatre stopped, watering his horse on the opposite bank of the river.
I would that he came into the Eald, Trowa inadvertently thought, the intensity of his feelings startling him once again. The folds of his cloak swirled about his lithe form as he passed from the elfish Eald into the mortal, wishing to be closer to the beautiful Man. He did not move beyond the boundaries of his forest though, and in due course Quatre mounted the dappled horse and rode on, unaware of the Sidhe's watchful eye. The stone grew cold as the vision parted, and Trowa's isolation sharpened into focus. He didn't even lend an eye to the figure that stood at his side, all darkness and mocking laughter.
"You pick your loves badly, my friend," teased the dark figure, a fiendish smile touching its lips. A wicked scythe blade glinted in the fading twilight. "That Man travels in to danger, and soon enough to My arms."
Trowa did not turn to the darkness. "Be gone from me, Death. You and your brothers have no hold over me and mine."
Death laughed, a manic sound, cold and hollow, and full of dark mirth. "He is not yours yet, dear friend, and not likely ever to be. You will not even step out of your domain to retrieve him!"
The Sidhe turned his back to Death and walked into his forest, stung by what the godling said but unwilling to let him see it. The Dark Lord followed, and walked beside him, lonely for company.
"I apologize," he said at length, keeping pace with the swiftly moving Trowa. "I am too cruel at times ."
They had passed many trees, Trowa touching each one as he went, drawing awareness from each. In due time, the two, Sidhe and god, came in sight of the river once again. There Trowa paused, his hand resting on an aged willow at the river's edge. "Cruel, perhaps," the tall Sidhe spoke softly, watching as Quatre rounded the bend. "Cruel as my kind were, and more truthful."
Lord Death heard the pain lacing the quiet voice, and so resigned himself. "An ambush awaits yon fair Man, Trowa. If you would save him, act now, for I shall not guarantee that he will pass through without feeling the kiss of my blade."
For once, Trowa cast his glance upon Death, his eyes shining coldly. "Tis not like you to have compassion, young god."
"Nor like you not to act upon your desires, old friend," Death gently retorted, smiling. His smile softened as the Sidhe turned away once more. "I have a lighter face..."Ê
But Trowa only ignored him, and after it seemed like an eternity passed, Death went along his way. He felt him go, sensing Death's path through the trees like a dark echo that soon faded away. Full night had fallen in moral Eald, and the forest sang with the harmony of living things. Trowa closed his eyes and unfolded the awareness of the forest and made it his own, drawing on the life around him. He felt Quatre's dappled mare, who quivered at the touch, and Quatre looked about, suspicious. He felt the taint of iron on the steed and the young Man, and shrank from it.
Casting further, the Sidhe tasted iron in the New Forest, a group of hard Men looking for blood. Trowa withdrew and turned back to the golden Quatre, calling to his heart: /Ambush!/
Quatre fidgeted in the saddle and lifted his shield, emblazoned with the rising sun, closer to his side. He cast his clear azure eyes into the dark forest around him, feeling the pressure of eyes upon his body. /Safer in the Eald.../ He set this hand upon the sword at his side, and rode on. He didn't care to travel into the depths of Eald again. /"Might I have a bit of harp song?" "Beautiful..."/
The mare danced nervously away from the bracken lining the rushing waters, stroked by the tension palpable in the air. Quatre did nothing to quell its fear, feeling the call of Eald like a pulse throughout his body. The river sang with a whispering chorus behind him as he urged the horse further into the thicket of the forest.
Then two pale moths came flying, a whipping of arrowsound... Quatre flung up the shield and a blow jarred it, while the horse reared and leaned and cried with a sudden loosening of life.
He sprawled clear of the dying horse, shield lifting, jarred by a second shaft thumping into the wood while others hissed through the brush and his back hit the thicket. He scrambled desperately to cover himself and to run, tearing his right gloved hand on thorns, while the crash of brush warned him of enemies coming. Quatre's back net a tree, and he braced himself there on his feet. He had his sword from sheath, and they came on him in a mass in the forest dark. Blows battered at his shield and he hewed at them with every stroke that his tiring arm would allow him--the blade bit and there were screams. They tried to come at him from behind, and he swung with his shoulders still against the tree and killed one of them and another, rammed his shield under a bearded chin, washing the sun with blood. He cleaved with his sword again, but with ebbing strength, for there was a quick numbing pain in his aide and he knew something had gotten through, in the joinings of his armor.
His shield was cleaved by an axe and held fast to it. Quatre let the shield go and swung the sword two-handed, clove ribs and wrenched the blade free in backswing, while a staff came down on him. The blow dazed him, but he rammed the blade's point into that one's belly and slew him too... while brush crashed and cries were raised beyond--"Ho! help, we have him!"
He took to the brush and began to run blindly, and staggered across the thigh-deep rush of the river. Chilled and sodden, he waded ashore and set out running on the opposite bank, seeking the bracken again when arrows hissed after. Voices cursed in the gathering dark. Quatre sought higher ground with a wildling's instinct, not to be driven into some hole against the stream's banks. Branches tore at him and snapped. His limbs turned leaden with the weight of the armor, and his side ached. A veil seemed fallen over his eyes and the little light in the heaven was dimmed, yet for a time he ran with hope, for it seemed his pursuers had fallen behind. He climbed, took ways closer and closer with brush and twisted, aged trees, through tangles so thick it seemed no bracken could grow. He hoped, and then the brush around him crackled to a dry chuckling, and the wind stirred through the branches like a rising storm. He ran farther, until all the sound in his ears was his heartbeat, and his own harsh breath tearing his throat.
But another breathing grew at his heals, the whuff of a running horse, the beat of hooves which broke no brush as it came
Quatre spun about to face attack, but there was nothing but the blackness, and the wind. Then the hounds belled and his heart froze, and he feared as he had never feared in battle. Quatre turned back and ran as if the effort before had been nothing. The ache in his side was more than the need for breath; he pressed his hand to his side and felt the ebb of blood.
He was weakening. He heard aÊ chuckling and then knew the name of the rider that followed him, and the name of the wood into which he had strayed. Shadow came, and a spattering of rain, a rattle of thunder and the baying of hounds. Shadows flooded among the trees, black bits of night which rushed and leaped for him. Quatre swung his sword, but it swept through them, and a coldness fastened and worried at his arm. numbing all the way to his heart.
He cried aloud and tore free, leaving a fragment of himself in the jaws, and the sword was no longer in his hand. The shadows coursed behind him, and the hoof beats rang like a pulse in his ears and the hoarse breathing was like his own. The enemy was not behind him, but lodged in his side, where the wound worked at his life. A part of his soul was theirs, and they would tear him to nothing when they came on him again, a rending far worse than the first.
Rain spattered into his face and blinded him, dampened the leaves so that they clung to him and his armor was soaked so that he did not know now what was blood and what was rain. Quatre stumbled yet again, then in a crash of thunder he conceived of safety in the trees ahead, where it seemed there seemed to be a mound, a swelling of the land with life, where the trees grew vast and stretched out their limbs in sympathy.
He reached it, entered it, sped in a strange freedom where the trees were straight and crooked at once, barren and flowered with stars and aglitter with jewels, with silver laid upon the white branches, swords and shining mail, cloth like the morning haze, spiderweb among pale green leaves.
ÊA sword hung before him, offered to his hand... Quatre tore it from the leaves in a scatter of bright foliage, and the brightness about him faded, leaving him along with the dark and the shadows, and the dark rider, who burst upon him, absorbing all light like a hole in the world. A manic laughter rung through the glen, and Quatre held the illusionary blade trembling before him, and shuddered as its light drew detail from the dark, revealing jaws and eyes of hounds. He was drawn to look up, to lift his face unwilling, to face the rider--he saw something, a flash of a wide, terrible smile, which his dazed mind would not recall even the instant after beholding it.ÊÊ
The rider came closer, and all his flesh chilled except the hand which held the blade. He lost the brightness, could not hold even his vision of this grim place. The hounds became to overcome Quatre, but he slashed at it and the hounds yelped aside from him, bristling and trembling.
"Come," a voice whispered to him, very softly. His heart leaped, and his mind's eye clouded with remembrance of another chase, and a quiet voice. The blade wavered and sank, and yet a warmth broke like a breath of spring at his back. "Stand firm" the someone said.
"He is mine," the shadow said, his voice like shards of ice.
"Be off," said the other, soft and without doubt.
"He has stolen from you. Do you encourage such thefts?" And for a moment the world was bright, and the shadow was a blight upon it, a robed shadow which stood in an attitude of amazement. "Ah," the cold voice breathed, peering at the golden Man. "Ah. This is why you would keep him from me."
Light blazed. Quatre staggered in it, and his knees hit the ground, a shock which wrung a sob of pain from him, and he could no longer tell earth from sky, shadow from light. Rain beat down into his face, chilling his torn soul.
But the shadow was gone, and the thunder stilled. It seemed the moon shone down. A face confused itself with it, and with the sun in a strange, fair sky. He still clutched the sword. Slim, cool fingers pried his hand from it, eased his limbs, and covered him with a downy peace in which the only pain was in his heart, an ache of yearning and a memory of loss.
