Author's Notes and Disclaimers: Hope ya'll have had a good couple of
weeks... Drop me a review!
inspiredthoughts@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/keitree

Standard disclaimers apply

Name Index:
Serena-Serenais
Selenity-Selenai
Lita-Leinta
Rei-Rhi
Mina-Minka
Ami-Aimes

Darien-Darius
Kunzite-Kunzath
Nephrite-Nepran
Jadite-Jadreth
Zoicite-Zaite


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Nightmares Chapter Four~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


"I don't understand Valan, why you?" Her lover grimaced and turned
away from her words, angry beyond reason at her questioning.
"Leinta, just leave it be! Accept that I was sent for and that I will
go!" She hated it when he spoke to her like that, like she was a
child, and not the woman that shared his blankets and guarded his back
in a fight. She glared and let her hands ball into fists at her
sides.

"Why damn it! You're good Valan, I'll give you that, but you're not
the best, not by a damn long shot. Why would the Queen request you,
specifically?" Valan's jaw clenched and he wore the black look he
always did when she crossed some unspoken but always understood line.
He stared at her for a long moment, his dark eyes flashing, before he
made a visible effort to clam himself.

"Leave it be Leinta. Leave it be." There was warning in the
undertones of his deep voice and she sometimes wondered if he knew
how truly frightening he was sometimes. Valan wasn't a physically
imposing man, not by any means. He was well built, of average height
and weight, though more lean than most. His face was agreeable, in a
rugged battered way that matched many of his fellows. His hair was a
sable mass that was several shades darker than her light auburn.
There was nothing outwardly fierce about him, nothing, besides his
scars, that would suggest a fighter's life. But his eyes...

People feared him for the depth of those intensely black eyes. He
never meant to frighten but when he turned the full power of them upon
someone few could withstand their strength. Leinta was one of a hardy
few. She loved a challenge, and bitter Valan, bitter-loving Valan was
most definitely that. He was so tender, so passionate in a way that
roused her nature even as it confounded her because, she loved him but
it was the love of the moment, not a lifetime, and he knew it. He
held her so tight sometimes she wanted to weep.

But Valan was a man and men glorified in secrets, in shadows. He was
nearly twice her age, a fighter nearing the end of his prime, while
Leinta was just now entering hers. He treated her as an equal; it
rarely mattered that he was thirty-three and she was a mature
nineteen, except for times like this... When Leinta discovered traces
of his past and dug...

"How would the Queen know you Valan?" He fumed and she knew, had she
been any other, he might have struck her, but she was his partner.
She knew his every strength, his every weakness, and one move that
caught him flat on his back, panting, every time she used it on him.
The Defensive Mounts were a well-trained military unit, but a well
trained, disciplined group used to settling arguments with brawls.
Valan had never had a reason to restrain his fists with his fellows,
but Leinta, who had endured her share of black eyes from group fights,
refused to sport bruises given by her lover. The one time he had lost
his temper, when she had pushed him too hard about some trivial
question and he had tried to slap her, she had whirled and in the
blink of an eye he had gone from the aggressor to the victim... As
Leinta straddled his chest and toyed with a dagger, face clam, eyes
furious.

He did not strike her but he did try to intimidate her by placing
himself nose to nose with her, letting the full force of his satanical
gaze rest on her light brown eyes. "Don't push," Valan repeated
roughly, low voice full of carefully restrained anger. "I was called
and I shall go." Leinta stared at him, speculatively, for a moment,
before laughing with something that sounded nothing like amusement.

"You know her, Queen Selenai." It had been a guess but, once said, it
had the ring of truth, truth echoed by a flash of alarm in Valan's
face, before he managed to render his features into a mask of barely
reined fury.

"How?" Leinta insisted, against even her own better judgment. Valan
growled and she knew that she had struck a nerve; eagerly, she
continued, with little concern for her own safety.

"You served in the Palace Guards, didn't you?" Valan's eyes
brightened for a moment, flared with some inner memory before fading
again to that charcoal darkness. He set his jaw against answering her
and Leinta rested her fists against her well-shaped hips as she
waited, impatiently, for her lover to break the acid silence.
Finally, something within Valan's face broke and he grimaced before
stepping back, his anger still there but less dangerous, less
fearsome.

"The Royal Guards." Leinta raised surprised brows. It was one thing
to be part of the Palace Guards, men whose duty was to protect the
inner city of Blanchant, Bleserd's capital, it was another thing
entirely to be accepted to the Royal Guards, elite of the elite, who
protected, not the city, but the heart of the city, the royal family,
from harm. Valan swallowed before continuing.

"I... I was sent for because I used to be one of the Royal Guards."
Leinta narrowed a piercing green gaze and pursed her lips,
speculatively.

"Very well lover, that explains why you were called and how you know
Queen Selenai, but it doesn't explain why you are not longer part of
the Royal Guards, and why you are a farmer's brat's lover in the
rugged mountains that separate Bleserd and Roshana."

"And if that's one secret I don't wish to reveal before I leave
Leinta?" Valan demanded, face suddenly pinched, tired. She wasn't
fooled, there was more.

"Valan?" She made a question, and a demand, of his name as she
stepped forward to put one steely grip on his arm. He tensed under
her touch and flinched.

"Valan...

"Valan, I've shared your bed for two years, been under your command
for three. I've killed grown men and made it in a profession that
discourages women. I'm not a child. We're not in love, not like soul
mates, I'm not fool enough to even dream of that... but we have
something solid, something real. You can turn your back in a fight
because I will always be there, always, until you send me away. But
until you do, what sort of man am I protecting Valan? What sort of
man am I holding in my arms at night? Who are you Valan? Who?"

His gaze wavered and broke before hers. He leaned forward, kissed her
brow, smoothed back curls with roughened hands, and touched his
forehead with hers. There might have been tears in his eyes but
Leinta wasn't sure. She was suddenly afraid of the response she knew
was coming, the answer to her questions, but she didn't know how to
stop it... How to stop him, after she'd broken his protective walls.
When he finally, for the last time, answered her question his voice
was broken, detached, cold. She was no longer beloved; she was no
longer loved. He would tell her his secrets but he had closed himself
to her.

"I am the man you have known for three years. But I am also a father,
and fathers have duties." Silence held them there, for another
moment, before Valan rose to his full height. He stared at her, gaze
sad but assured. He would not change his mind.

"Goodbye Leinta," he said softly before he picked up his pack and
left. He didn't have to send her away, he had sent himself. Numb
legs brought Leinta to the blankets they had shared that morning. She
sunk onto them, face a careful blank. She mourned his loss already,
not deep mourning, but grief none the less, for the man who had taught
her so much. She ached, but she was also reeling. Her pain would be
temporary, that Leinta knew, but her astonishment, her bafflement, her
disbelief...

The Queen had sent for Valan because he was Serenais's father.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Verl, King of the Five Kings, breathed deeply, smelled the earth as it
had become, and smiled. He stood in a redwood's shadow in a forest so
overgrown that little darknesses bled into each other and formed one
huge blanket that covered the entirety of the forest itself. It was
warm here, with a hint of heavy mists and the coming of winter.

Verl placed on hand, palm down, against the rough bark of the
redwood. The trees weren't part of a darkness that he was used to.
They were vibrant, alive, and despite the faint uneasiness the forest
created it was nothing... nothing... and would be nothing the moment
he reclaimed what was his.

Before trees, before grasses, before humans, he had walked. And where
he and his fellows had trod, the earth had bled red. The ground had
been molten, and rivers had steamed. Verl had come before time,
before life, and he had been master of that hell. And he would be
master of it again.

Fingers curled, became claws, and gouged deeply into the heart of the
trunk. Warm sap oozed sluggishly from the wounds he had rent as it
slowly covered his hand. Verl curled the hand into a fist and gazed
at it a moment before looking up, golden eyes finding the sapphire
blue of the sky. And for a moment the blue warped, changed, and
became cerulean eyes... Innocent eyes...

A man stared at him sadly, even as he bled from the wounds Verl had
inflicted upon both his body and his soul. His clothes, once white,
were muddied, torn, unrecognizable. The face, beautiful and masculine
at the same time was serene, despite the cuts, and the burns. Singed
hair, more golden than Verl's eyes, caught the breeze, bringing him
the man's scent; strength, vitality, life.

"Sandere..." The name escaped from curled lips, through fangs that
promised death to all who dared breath. And then the image was gone.

Verl blinked, sighed, and uncurled his fists, his control once more
absolute. The wind touched him, brought him the smells of this new
world that had sprung from the ashes of His, while they had slumbered,
helpless to stop it... The Sleeping Ones...

There was more than just life in the air though, more than
civilization, there was something else... Traces, trails, lines of
spider silk... The Five were alive... They flashed before him, those
who had banished him and his to eternal sleep, for not even the Five
had possessed the power to serve them death. Four men and one woman,
Five who had ruled just as absolutely as they...

They had not been the heroes that the world of today had imagined.
Heroes didn't exist in that time. All who survived were marked by a
certain amount of tempered cruelty, by blood stained hands. There
were no true innocents, except for perhaps Sandere.

Verl knelt and scooped up a fistful of the earth. The ground teemed
green and rich browns but even as he held it, it withered, died at his
touch. He hissed in a frightening version of laughter. This earth
remembered him, remembered his rule. It feared him, and it had
reason. He stood again and cast the gray dirt down.

He placed his palm once more against the redwood and smiled,
terrifyingly.

The forest froze and turned to stone between this breath and the
next. The grass and leaves withered, died, and became ash as the
mighty oaks and redwoods hardened and died, bare branches entreating
heaven for aid. Birds, wolves, and bears cried out and flared, each
one a brief burst of flame that left nothing but oily smoke in its
wake.

With a thought Verl levitated and rose above the tortured treetops.
He surveyed his work and chuckled. He saluted the barely visible
castles of Roshana and Bleserd before reclaiming his place among the
clouds. He had sent his message. The next time he touched the ground
it would be to celebrate more than revenge, it would be to toast the
Sleeping One's bloody triumph. This land would die, burn, and once
more be His.



~Kei