Chapter Ten –
Violation of the Mind
The dust is swirling,
A mist is fallen,
The world is broken,
Sad and cold –
There is anger and tears,
The people are lonely…
East wind, oh my East wind,
Where have you gone?
I hear their crying,
Can't you feel our pain?
East wind, where have you gone –
Will you come back…
I am a sojourner –
Life is my name,
Chasing dreams is all I can do.
For what is a world without dreams?
Can you tell me?
I wish you would…
East wind, oh my East wind,
You've gone, but you're not far –
I'll find you somehow.
For chasing dreams is all I can do,
And you're not gone,
And I won't let you go…
For you're not gone,
And I'll not let you go.
High and sweet was the voice that sang these words, but in the ears of the still, comely form that lay in a deep sleep upon the sepulcher of black marble, it was like the mind-breaking shattering of glass, and the howling of many winds. It wound itself through the hot, thick air of his desert realm and insinuated itself into his head, even into his very mind: mocking and taunting him like the buzzing of a horrid little fly. A song to rend his very consciousness…
With a terrible cry, Jaedin, the Dark Lord, opened his eyes and flew up in bed. His eyes of violet-gray instantly tore across the room to the window that looked out onto the landscape of his realm, Sytherria, to the tower of black adamant stone that stood far off in the distance. From thence, his sensitive ears could tell, came the song that so mocked and tormented him. From thence, came his torture.
No more!
His action following this mental shriek, he threw the silky gray-black sheet that had covered his form aside and stood. At a thought from him, the doors of the chamber swung wide open and he strode out into the room beyond, where a score of the Antari awaited his slightest bidding. Violet-gray eyes nearly alight with furious lightning, Jaedin snapped out his orders to them.
"All of you – to the Tower – now!"
Even as they moved to do his bidding, he returned back into his chambers and went to the balcony that led out of his room – his crypt – into the night air. Then, without a second's pause, the silent sleep of Dranthiris-Ankhar's residents was split by the earth-sundering shriek of the black dragon that suddenly rose into the air from the palace and hurtled towards the spike-lined tower that stood far off in the distance, outlined by the indigo velvet sky, wings swooping on the air.
* * *
The Antari whom he had ordered to meet him at the tower were already there when he arrived. There were many things that Jaedin had learnt about his elite guard force in the millenniums that they had served him – they had always been in his life, for as long as he could remember, and that was past reckoning in some minds – but they were still a great mystery to him, by and large. One of the things that he could not understand was how they, who were neither sorcerers, wizards, or otherwise, could move with such incredible speed: speed that rivaled even that of a dragon, or magic itself. But that mattered little now.
With a cold, fey anger that would terrify even the most powerful being of either the Dark Realm or the White sparking in his eyes and turning his face to stone, he passed through the ranks of the Antari, who had formed flanking lines on either side of him, moving towards the tower. Rákkhed, as his captain of the guard, followed in his wake, silent and grim; however, at the last moment before his lord reached the doorway that led into the tower, he spoke.
"My lord – she's but a child."
Instantly, the ice of those terrible gray eyes fixed itself on him: poisoning him with the venom of their pure hatred and loathing.
"Must I now begin to doubt your allegiance to me in this hour, Captain?"
Rákkhed bowed low, paying homage before his lord.
"Never will the Antari desert their master," he replied, repeating the words of the ancient oath. As one the rest of the black- and scarlet-cloaked men said with him, "In the East nor in the West, in the South nor in the North; through any time, any place, anything will we serve him, and him alone. This we pledge, and hold as sole vow in our lives, surmountable by none other. May our swords turn against us and our souls be devoured by the black underworld if we break it."
Then Rákkhed stood and his black eyes met those of his master.
"We are for you, or for no one, my lord."
Jaedin was not so forgiving as any other lord of evil, however, and he did not release his closest companion and most trusted – up until that moment – warrior from the pure venom of his gaze. Still staring into the impassive face of the Antari captain, he said, "Await me here."
Then, under the doorway he stepped, and into the shadows of the winding stairway he disappeared, leaving them to do as he commanded.
* * *
This girl. This girl this girl this girl.
If Jaedin had had any hair, he would have pulled it all out at that very moment as he stood, looking down upon the sleeping form of the faery princess whom he had captured.
What had he done to his Lady to deserve the punishment of this? How had he possibly failed her, or displeased her, that she would curse him with such a task?
The Dark Lord of Sytherria had never willingly had any sort of dealings with faeries, or any other residents of the White Realm, since the very beginning of his lordship. When he had been commanded, by the heads of the Dark Realm, to attack and subdue with his forces the peoples and places named to be their opponents, he had done so, and with a good will.
But tracking and then taking captive an actual faery, and not only a faery, but a seventeen-year-old princess of faeries, at that—!
It was simply too much. He was fairly sure that he had done nothing to merit such a loathsome task.
Once more, he turned his fulminating, violet-gray gaze down on the sleeping girl.
Upon entering the tower, he had attempted to insinuate his own mind into hers, in order to stop her from calling out to her friends and allies from within her dreams – and had immediately been slammed back away from her, as if he had run into a wall of solid stone! Obviously, she was even more powerful than he had thought. Not only did she have the weight of an ancient prophesy that had named her as the doom of all evil in the world on her head, but she had also managed to create a barrier of the mind that had kept him, the lord of evil, from entering her subconscious.
Oh yes, he thought, his gaze traveling the length of her still form as she lay there, sleeping, You are very powerful indeed, princess – even more so than I had anticipated…but will that save you from me?
Days had passed since he had last seen her directly – after that first rather interesting introduction that they had had when she had awakened to find him there with her. He still chuckled to himself at the thought of her two escape attempts, both botched and failed miserably! But now he felt anything but amused.
He wondered what else she had been doing to pass her time during those past few days. Most princesses, he knew, would spend the hours despairing, sobbing and crying and begging for mercy to the air in general. This princess, it was obvious, who threw his own words back at him and then dared to call him names to his face, and rude names too!, she was very different. He remembered well the attire she'd been wearing when he had taken her from her friends too – certainly not the typical princess garb.
Yes, very different indeed.
She couldn't have tried to escape again. If she had been intelligent to any degree, which he wagered she was, she would have listened to him when he had told her not to attempt another escape. And that sort of intelligence both intrigued him, and put him on his guard – he couldn't trust her to behaving in a silly, mindless manner.
That song though – that song that had awakened him rudely during the middle of the night, driving him from the everlasting black void of sleep…it had been a subconscious call to her comrades. Already, her Pegasus had found his way to her, across uncharted miles of stretching and treacherous lands; what would be next? Her two friends from the forest that night, or her brothers and sisters? Her exalted mother and father, with all of their doomed forces behind them?
No, princess – that would not do.
His orders had been simple: find the princess, bring her to his castle, and keep her there until the Queen herself could come to deal with her. Then, with the girl held as bargaining power and sole determining factor, the Dark Realm could approach the White Realm with any ultimatum that it might conceive. Jaedin could imagine what that might look like…
But this princess – she wasn't going to make it easy for him.
The princess stirred in her sleep, just as he thought this, and suddenly Jaedin found his gaze riveted to her again. You know exactly what you're doing, don't you? he thought at her. You will do everything within your power, everything possible, to escape me, and then when that fails, you will make both me and everyone in my realm as miserable as possible until you get what you want.
But I know what I want.
Gently and ever so softly, ever so noiselessly, he lowered himself until he was sitting on the edge of the bed beside her. Wide, entrancing eyes of gray tinged with pale violet, delicate as a fresh-bloomed iris of the hill-country, eyes rimmed with thick lashes of darkest brown, but eyes that were also outlined in menacing black kohl of a Dark Lord, gazed down upon the sleeping princess's face.
She was so young, so fresh, so absolutely and irresistibly innocent – so pure.
And that was what made him feel so oddly around her, he then realized, as suddenly as if a lightning bolt had just struck down through the roof and hit him. That was why his inner self responded to the sight of her with such strange, unfamiliar yearnings…longings…desires. She was everything that he was not: his exact opposite. He had the darkness of a sealed tomb, stained throughout his entire being until not one shard of light was left to taint the ether; she was light, pure and radiant, untouched and dazzling, like a sun taken on the form of a faery. She was only a very young seventeen-years-old; he was the denizen of the centuries, millenniums, hundreds of thousands of years that had passed before she had ever been born.
And yet, they were tied by a prophecy…
She was beautiful. He had recognized the inherent loveliness of her face and form when he had first seen her, but now in this moment of revelation, he saw it even more clearly. Perhaps this was because she was lying there, totally unaware of him in her sleep, and he could at last see her at rest. Whenever he had looked at her before, she had been either pacing back and forth like a young caged tigress, or standing still at her balcony, staring off into space, or sitting on the floor, stern and unbending as a young willow tree sapling.
Now, in her sleep, she was unrestrained and softened: melted like ice, and he could see through the cold, pale spring that was in her features…
Her face was heart-shaped, youthful and clever, and he could tell that she was most likely mischievous as well; her forehead was high and well-rounded, intellectual, with a short, pert nose that tilted up just ever so slightly at its tip, full cheeks that blushed at their apples, and a classic faery chin. Her eyes were, as he had noted at that first meeting, large, and wide, and infinitely sea-green: not quite jade, but of the exact hue of the ocean itself at midday. She had the most incredible lashes, and her eyebrows spoke volumes of character, almost irritating in their little quirk. And her mouth: that full, blooming, soft-as-spun-silk mouth, with its rosebud lips and flawless white teeth behind them, and that little dimple that etched into the corner of her mouth when she smirked, even at him—
Jaedin leaned over her, propping himself up on one elbow as he tilted his head to look at a better angle into her face, his shadow falling over her, one black-gloved hand moving to stroke gently into her pale blonde curls. He had never actually touched her hair with his bare hands, but he could imagine what it felt like.
What he felt for her within he wasn't certain of; however, many others of the thinking races would define it as the inherent desire for the affection and devotion of another, at least. What he did know, however, was that he felt himself inexplicably drawn to this princess, and that no woman or any other female had ever drawn him to her in such a way. He wanted to be with her, forever, and this she would rail against with all her might, knowing him as evil and cruel. Both of these he was, but he wanted her for himself – wanted her with a deadly desire that could not be denied: he, the Dark Lord, and she, the captive princess.
Milady would never allow this, he thought, with a smirk, as his fingers continued to caress themselves into the pale curls of the maiden before him.
The Queen had had him convinced that the faery princess whom he was to capture was the scum of the earth, deserving only to be eliminated, or simply held prisoner in such a way that she was kept only barely alive.
But now that he had seen this princess, and had her before him…
Well, many of the ladies in his court would be jealous, if they had been there to see the way he was looking at the princess of faeries right at that moment.
Very jealous.
Jaedin moved closer to her, lowering his face until it was so close to hers that he could feel the even, subtle warmth that was radiating from her peaches-and-cream skin, so close that his eyelashes brushed against her cheek. How could she have captivated him so, doing what no woman had ever done before? How was it that she had brought him to this?
Had she awakened in that moment, Elowyn would have seen a much different specter before her than she had last seen: neither the masked figure in black nor the living corpse was with her now, but a real, live, incredibly beautiful person, whose only evidence of his ever having been less than fully living was the faint, vein-like marks that lined his face, fading off into the skin of his smooth, shaved scalp – whose eyes gazed at her with a pure, liquid gray fire that would have very much frightened her had she looked into them…
Her magic would have to be dealt with.
If he couldn't directly break into her mind…well, then, he could take his time. After all, he had plenty of it, and then some to spare.
Running one gloved fingertip along the side of her face, then cupping his palm underneath her chin, so that his thumb could caress the fullness of her lower lip, still gazing intently into her face, the red- and gold-garbed specter remarked lightly, in a tone that was as silky and soft a whisper as anyone could imagine…
"No more games, Princess…I'm not ready to let you go yet."
Then, there was a pause as he leaned closer to her, so that the bridge of his nose nearly touched hers, and he whispered to her sleeping form, "And I am not entirely certain that I ever will be…"
* * *
In her dream, Elowyn saw herself in a thousand different scenes, all of her life previous to her kidnapping: memories from her happy life in Avalennon, with her beloved friends and family. She hadn't realized just how carefree it had all been for her until it was too late…
Then, it became as if her outer form had melted away, until she became a half-transparent ghost of herself, who could see everything around her, and yet be unseen by the eyes of those who walked by her, and walk through walls herself. She found herself straying through the darkened halls of Avalennon: remembering how it never seemed to be dark there, even when night had fallen… There was a sweet music of bubbling fountains that splashed their cold, clear water into the silver, white sandstone, jade, and other kinds of basins, and of the night wind, and nightingales as they flew up into the branches of the magic-ridden trees.
Silent and unseen, she walked through her families' bedrooms. Everyone seemed to be there, from her oldest brother, Taiven, to Elladine, who was the youngest of the family but for Elowyn herself. Her cousins, others of her extended family, and even friends of old were there as well: Sala, Robbie, Arilyn, Orlando and Arielle, Griffith, and others, all sleeping…but all with the marks of worry and grief etched into their faces.
Why…
Last of all, she came to her parents' room. There, she glided through the wall and came to stand, ghostly, beside their bed.
Orandor and Vahlada slept with arms around one another, and neither looked as if they had slept in some time. There were traces of tears on her mother's gentle, lovely face, and, wanting to take away those tears, to ease the pain, Elowyn reached out a hand to brush them away – only to remember, in a rare, offbeat moment of reality in the midst of a fantasy, that this was a dream: she could not touch them.
From somewhere within her, a great, inescapable pain began to well up, pulling at her heart within her breast, and she wanted to tear it out and fling it into the ocean, if only to rid herself of the aching sensation that was now filling her. And the reality dawned on her again: she was pained by grief, and she was grieved because she was not with them. No, instead, she was trapped in an endless labyrinth, trapped and held in her cage of black adamant-stone by a faceless phantom that she could not escape, not even here in her dreams.
She called out to them, desperately, as the vision began to fade, the darkness returning, begging them to come, to come and find her…
Then she was in the midst of the labyrinth, and she was looking about herself, at the seeming hundreds of passageways that led off into the shadows: knowing that only one would take her out, and all others would lead her directly into the embrace of death.
But better to face Death than to awaken in the arms of a demon.
Shining as a star fallen from the heavens to earth, she began to move down one pathway, hoping blindly, vainly, that it would be the one to take her out of this Light-forsaken place, but soon its twists and turns became too much for her, and the sandstone walls began to blur before her eyes; she put up one hand to her head, overcome with a sudden dizzy feeling that invaded her mind. No, wait, this wasn't right, something was different here, there was someone there, someone with her, someone waiting just around a corner, just behind her, in front of her, everywhere…
"You shouldn't run from me, princess…" a hauntingly familiar voice called out to her from the shadows: distant and yet near.
She ignored it and began to run, but the Voice followed her. It sang musically from the shadows, morbidly cheerful and awfully, horribly brilliant, like the flash of light in one's eyes upon awakening from a lovely daydream.
"Don't run, princess – don't run, or I'll have to come after you…do you like to be chased, princess? Because I will chase you…if that is what you want…I'll even let you run for a while before I try to catch you… Do you really want that, princess? Do you?"
"Leave me alone!" she shouted angrily at the shadows, clapping both her hands down over her ears – as if that would keep the Voice out of her head.
But it wouldn't go away.
"I don't want to leave you alone…I want you." it hissed, remaining playful and singsong, but with an edge of menace coming into its tone as well.
This made Elowyn run all the faster, fear beginning to lay hold of her, tainting the blood in her veins with ice. She sped along the passageway, which seemed to twist and turn, like the thrashing body of a gigantic, wrathful basilisk: writhing in the dust. Still, the Voice: musical, vibrant as that of any supremely well-trained singer, and, again, hauntingly familiar in its cool, elegant, cultured tone, which seemed to ring in her head like a bell.
I want you I want you I want you.
She stopped, refusing to run another step further, and screamed at the bloodstained sky—
"Why? Why are you doing this to me?"
Then, from right behind her—
"Why not, princess? Don't you want it as well? For although you think that you are aware of your heart's innermost desires, you've not really even begun to read them…to know them. But I can read your heart – I can, if you would let me, and I could tell you of things beyond your wildest dreams…"
And suddenly, a pair of long, coldly powerful, and very possessive arms came around her, from behind; she felt herself pulled backwards, up against someone – someone who was very much taller than her, who was slender and yet hard as rock all at the same time, and cold, so very, very cold…
Then, a whisper in her ears: "Well, don't you, princess? Don't you want to know the things I could tell you? There's so much I would have to say…so very much, and we could have all eternity to say it in…I could give you anything, princess, did you know that?"
His lips were right next to her ear now, brushing against it as they moved with his words. Elowyn felt as if she was being compelled to conform to the wishes of the person who stood behind her…and all at once, she wanted to.
She wanted to lean back against him, to let him tell her about everything that was in his heart, and hers as well; she wanted him to caress her with his words, and hold her close, and whisper in her ear little nothings that meant everything and anything…
"There is nothing I couldn't give you," she heard him whisper. "I won't let you go…"
She closed her eyes, leaning against him, her shoulder blades pressing hard into his chest, as her arms sought his.
"Don't let me go…" she whispered back.
East wind, oh my East wind,
You've gone, but you're not far –
I'll find you somehow.
For chasing dreams is all I can do,
And you're not gone,
And I won't let you go…
"No." she heard the one behind her rasp, as if he had just been struck in the heart by an arrow, and then the whole fantasy began to slide away, to fall away like the cracking outer mold of a statue, weathered with age. The light began to sweep in, chasing away the shadows like bats, clearing the cobwebs from her mind and the blur from her vision: tearing off the veil…
And she could see again…
Without a moment's further hesitation or blindness, she did exactly as her reawakening mind told her to do: she shoved the one who held her violently away, jabbing him viciously in the stomach with her elbows, and whirled around.
He had fallen back, away from her, and was now backing away, into the shadows, both arms wrapped tight around his slender, hard stomach, nearly bent double. She could see him, but only just: he was a vague form in the darkness, but she knew that something was different. This one was not like the specter who had first come so close to her in the Tower: this was the voice from the woods, and yet, she at last felt as if they were one and the same.
Glaring at the form with fulminating eyes alight with jade-green fire, she bit out the words: "You release me right now."
Suddenly, the whole scene before her shuddered: sandstone walls, pathway, blood-red sky and all, and then she felt the cold air of her prison room upon her once more, and she was conscious again. Someone shrieked out what had to have been a vehement curse of pain in some language that she did not know, as the spell that he had placed on her in order to hack into her mind recoiled on him, shooting his mind out of hers.
Elowyn opened her eyes, sitting up in that same instant.
Sitting across from her on the bed, holding his head in both of his arms, was the one who had bewitched her, and for such a dangerously long time. Elowyn knew that if she hadn't somehow managed to break free of his enchantment – and she still didn't know how she had done it, or if it were even her doing – something awful would have happened.
He would have had control of her mind.
Drawing her legs up to herself and draping her hands over them, she watched with quiet, morbid amusement as her companion rocked back and forth where he sat across from her, wracked with what appeared to be waves of great, agonizing pain.
But so awful that pain seemed to be that she felt pricked by pity…
Although that was before she remembered just who and what she was dealing with.
On her hands and knees, she crawled over to him and grabbed one of his gloved hands by the wrist, holding it in a vice-like grip, and with cold, determined sea-green eyes, she looked into the shadowed face of her captor. He made a strange, high-pitched sound that might have almost been considered a wail, or a sob, of some sort, but she allowed him no quarter.
"You unbelievable idiot," she murmured. "You really are absolutely mad, aren't you?"
From beneath his arms, which – she now realized – were acting as a sort of shield for him to hide his face from her, he replied in a voice hoarse and strained with pain, "You don't really think that I let you go because you forced me to, did you?"
Elowyn smirked, still amused by his pain.
"What else could have made you release me?"
The arms jerked down, and she found herself staring into a pair of violet-gray eyes that seemed to be alight, even in the early predawn shadows. Somehow, they were entrancing now…
"You have quite a distracting beauty – didn't you know that?"
Now, that was an underhanded stab in the gut right there.
Elowyn had never experienced the pros and cons of either a high self-esteem or an exceptionally low one, but she had never once in her life had any misconceptions about her appearance. Faeries were generally fair of face as far as the world was concerned, but she had always felt that she was one of the more or less bland lot: the faeries who were good enough to look at, but were really rather far from dazzling, or unnervingly, peerlessly beautiful. She was no Ella or Vahlada, and no Arielle or Galena, and certainly no Odessa-Gadriel. And so now her gaze went from the sharpness of penknives to daggers.
"You unbelievable—"
And, without giving him a moment's time to react, she lunged forward and knocked him – lovely, both of them – off of the bed. But, in spite of her cat-like fighting tactics, he had her beaten within two seconds.
The dim outline of his face looked down on her as she reclined there on the cold, hard black floor, hair flying about her face. In that moment, she at last noticed something about him: that he no longer wore the hood and burial mask, she had already seen, but now she saw that his skull was completely bereft of hair, shaved so closely that not a hint of it could be seen. His chin was very close to her eye level.
"You know, oddly enough, I find it incredibly intriguing when you call me the most indescribable names, princess – it simply breathes of excitement and adventure, and it certainly makes your lips form the most alluring syllables, quite enchanting me…"
"I could bite you again."
A warm, velvety, truly amused and mellifluous laugh from the shadows above her.
"Oh no, my sweet one; I don't think we have time for that, at least right at the moment. For, you see," Then his hand was running its fingers alongside her cheek again, caressing her so that she felt absolutely enraged by even that simple touch, "I have a realm to attend to, and distracting as you are, I simply cannot indulge you at every moment."
Then, to his feet he swept, bringing her up with him as if she was a fine lady of the court, and he the handsome swain who had just gallantly rescued her. Elowyn found herself deposited once more onto the bed, in the most irritating, patronizing manner. Her companion backed away, long red and gold brocade cloak swirling around him like a desert mist, as he raised one hand to his lips, kissing it softly with a gesture to her as he moved off.
"So now I must bid you farewell, my little fiery one, and never fear – I'll not leave you entirely alone. Look out your window when the sun has risen, and you will see that I've requested that some friends stay behind to watch over you."
"And when will you be back for the pleasure of another visit?" she spat, venomously.
In dark amusement, which chilled her to the core, "Oh, I would not worry about that, little princess. For I am always near to you, whether you are aware of it or not…"
Then he was gone, and a dragon flew up in the sky in his place.
Elowyn began cursing in old-fashioned faery again.
* * *
A/N: Read on! A few more details about Jaedin will soon be revealed – try, within the next few chapters…? Review, I implore you!