Entr'acte
Paris, 839 c.e.
Never had Darius seen such a storm in this place.
The lightning crashed again and again in the night sky... offering a moment's illumination in the unending darkness of the night. The booming voice of the thunder crashed over and over as if there were no end to it. And the rain pounded, falling in what seemed to be solid sheets of water... as if the heavens themselves wept bitter tears for the world.
Shivering in the cold and the damp, Darius sat cross-legged against the willow wall of his shelter and concentrated on finding the peace within him that was lacking in the storm. He no longer heard the voice of the Ancient... he hadn't for centuries. Yet he still could feel a kernel of perfect peace within his soul if he concentrated. He could almost see it when his eyes were closed... almost touch it with his mind.
Like a small pearl buried deep within him it pulsed dimly. It had given him no answers in his life here... it had only offered peace. It had once spoken of love... but even that seemed illusory. There was no love for him... there was only the service he gave to others. He was alone and would remain so as long as he stayed in this place.
He had found the Ancient's old dwelling deep under the ground... in a cave covered with writings that made no sense. He had studied them by torchlight... seeking the answers that the old one's quickening had not revealed to him. But they remained a cipher. Whatever he had truly known... whatever the Ancient had learned and had lost... all these things were like that pearl... deep within him... just out of reach.
Darius opened his eyes with the stillness of the night. The storm had apparently stopped... as suddenly as it had begun. He could still hear rain drop slowly on the roof of this place and splatter on the earth. He could hear water in the nearby river rush by. He could hear the silence itself as though it were deafening in its very existence.
Then he felt the immortal.
Darius rose from his shelter and walked out into the night. Clouds still covered the sky... but a breeze was blowing from the west... and he could almost smell the tantalizing salt air of the faraway ocean. In his mind's eye he could almost see the heaving gray-green waves and feel the pull toward its murky depths. He smiled at the memory of the sunlit sea near his boyhood home... and his old desire to rule a kingdom that stretched from the seas of his past to the great ocean of the west. Foolishness, of course!
He found her huddled near the spring as he had known he would. It had to be Anya. She was cloaked in darkness as dark as the night itself and seemed somehow diminished... not the strong wandering woman he recalled from both his boyhood and his early days here. He reached to touch her and then pulled away.
Huddled on the ground was an aged crone with a face so lined that if it were not for those green eyes... he would not have known her. The white wisps of her hair blew in the wind. "Ahh... my little warrior... come to see me off?" Anya's voice cracked in the night as though words were hard for her to speak.
Darius knelt beside her and gently re-covered her head with the cloak. "Let me take you inside... I can build you a fire... warm you."
"No little warrior, no fire will warm me ever again... I had just enough life left to come... I've used it all up... given it away. I kept only enough so that I might return here to learn if I am yet forgiven."
"Whatever it was... Anya... the powers must forgive you." Darius offered gently. He pulled her up into his lap and held her. "You are an immortal... you cannot die. Whatever this aging is... we will find a way to reverse it."
"Oh Darius... all that live and breathe die in their time. My time has come. I have found them all and I have placed all the small ones reborn into the world. She was the last... I have given it all to her to heal the breach and end the division. Joy lives once more. Light returns to our world. My task is done... I have endured... I had sought to end the game... but the game outlives me... and I must leave its final outcome to those who remain. I had thought to bring her here for you to raise... but another opportunity presented itself. Yet still... she might come... someday. If she comes... guide her... teach her... love her... and send her out into the world to find the answers she must find."
"What other answers can there be Anya? Only by peace and by love can the game end. All of us must make that choice for ourselves. Can you who are so old, not understand that? Are you so old that not even immortality can sustain you?"
"I was when the world was young," she answered him. "Ask my beloved if he has forgiven me?" she pleaded. "I am at peace with what I did... I was young and foolish... I should have trusted his judgment. I should have listened to him. I did not and for that I lost him, and lost peace of mind and peace of soul. I have at long last accepted the guilt for my actions... can he not forgive me?"
Darius shook his head. Her words made no sense to him.
Anya lifted one hand and gently stroked his face with a smile. "You always were a surprise Darius... always the surprise." Her eyes glittered a moment. Deep within his soul, Darius felt the small kernel of the Ancient expand until it seemed as if it surrounded them both.
Love touched them and she smiled. She extended one finger and appeared to concentrate so that all the power of her life that remained surged into the light and joined with it. Even as it left her... she fell to dust as had the Ancient he had fought... Havron. All that remained of them flickered about Darius for a moment and then shrank once more into a pulsing pearl of light hidden deep within his soul.
He had them both now... love and peace. They were as one, deep within him and he smiled in contentment. There were no great answers to his many questions... the words on the cavern wall were still a mystery as were their crimes... their past... but the two were as one within him, and they were at peace.
By morning light he buried her cloak and ashes by the well where once he had buried Havron's ashes. Their remains would rest together for all time in this place even as what remained of their souls would rest in peace deep within him. One part was still lost to them... but it would come. He who bore the soul of the third would come one day and the three would at last become one. Darius promised to wait... for only by that final union could the sword itself be cleansed of blood and guilt and the opening moves of the final game begun. All the other swords had been lost to the ages... some broken... some melted down... some destroyed. Only that one sword... that one he had wielded without anger remained. He did not fear it... for when it came for him... he would welcome its stroke and face the consequences of both past and future. Somehow Darius knew it was possible... they could achieve peace and live... not as one powerful immortal... but as one people... united in peace and love... facing a future in which they could all live.
Darius prayed with all that was in him that he might live to see that day.
