The Spindle
a fairy-tale
by Mithrigil Galtirglin
-) . (-
The demon's hair is black, longer than hers, despite how many years she has had to grow it. He has had more years, though she has not asked how many, and his hair falls to the folded black tops of his boots, in a bead-banded rope like the vagrant heroines of storybooks used to escape from their briar-enclosed towers.
She passes him the tray of tea-cakes, and watches his pale fingers close around the edge of one. The powdered sugar stains him, somehow. He lifts the sweet but does not eat it, and she returns to her book, not expecting any voiced thanks. They sit in silence, breathing softly enough for the whispering candles to dampen their throats. She reads. He sips his tea and wonders at the window and the stars beyond it. Their faces are blank and cold, like the stained-glass acolytes that frame plaster saints.
She turns a page, and politely stifles a yawn, but does not otherwise acknowledge him. He raises the tea-cake to his lips then, to mask his smile with the powdered sugar.
(-
Winter, the year In Solis 484
Roland had left in the night. He had saddled up his horse and simply rode away. He'd been systematically distancing himself, Salome said, for the last four years. Apparently he was married, and had merely refrained from saying so.
Chris took this in stride with practiced grace. "Oh," she said, lowering her eyelids respectfully and staring at her gauntlets.
"Nei," Salome clarified, and the similarity of the elf's name to the call of a horse was not lost on Chris. "You recall her, the Jongleur at Budehuc."
"Yes," she answered, quickly, quietly, frustrated. "How long have they been married?"
"I do not know," Salome admitted. He paced before the window with his hands behind his back, measured as usual. "I recall her passing through here as many as four years past. I suspect that his request to assume an instructor's position two years ago directly correlates. His extended leaves date back as far as four-eighty-one--"
"Spare me, Salome," Chris said with a soft harshness to her voice, as if she were reprimanding a child, not a vaunted advisor ten years her senior. She sighed, and added, "I did not need this."
"With all due respect, it was not about you." Salome turned around, and the sun blasting in through the war-room's window made his expression difficult for Chris to read.
Chris agreed, and let the matter slide into silence. She was sure that the other three Knights knew more than she did, but less than Salome. She was sure of what she felt about Roland leaving the force and leaving Zexen; it was within his rights to do so, it was unfortunate, it was for honorable reasons, it was nonetheless going to send morale plummeting. And she was sure that Salome was right, and it was not about her, just as Sir Leo's marriage and subsequent retirement from his position in the Six Knights--could that have been six years ago already?--was not about her.
So she resolved not to think about it as if it were. "How shall I send him a letter of congratulations?" she asked, looking away from the winter sunlight that blocked Salome's face.
"I do not know," he answered. "I will look into where he may have gone."
"Do," she said in a heartbeat, then thought better of it and rescinded the order. "No. He shall have freedom," she amended. "The river carries us where it may."
Salome knotted his eyebrows, but could not voice his protestations before the war-room doors opened, and whoever was on the other side demanded their attention.
-)
In a city built staunchly on a bridge over a wide river, there lived a Knight. Her name was Chris, and she was very powerful, and very beautiful. Her people called her the Silver Maiden, for her hair and eyes were pale like the caps of waves. They also called her White Hero, for her armor glowed like a desert oasis in the heat of battle, which few of them had seen. For her part in putting down the schemes of a madman, she had been made immortal by the True Rune of Water, though that immortality was in now way intended as a 'reward', and the Rune was not a spoil of said war. This sacred Rune she wore on her right hand, and because of it her placid beauty never faltered, and her sword-arm never slackened, even as those who fought beside her began to stoop with age.
On the night of the first full moon of winter, in her thirtieth year, she sat at her window, brushing her long silver hair, staring out at the absence of snow and the stars reflected in the river's calm face. Perhaps she hummed to herself a tune, or perhaps she did not. Her heart was troubled by the recent departure of one of her brothers-in-arms, to make a new life for himself among his kin. She felt the passage of time, and ran the horse-bristles of her brush through the same locks of silver hair, over and over again. The minutes turned to hours, the strokes multiplied and knots divided, but she would not sleep.
Through hazy eyes, she saw a man on the water. He stood, in black chain-mail and tall boots, girt with a greatsword over his shoulder, and he bore the crest of a grey sphere on his chest. Under his arm he carried a great horned helm, its cap a gleaming obsidian and the bone-antlers red despite the moonlight. She could see none of his skin for the shadows around him; he seemed nothing but armor and dark hair, though his head was bared in respect.
He called her "Silver Maiden," as if he were stating the day of the week. She ran the brush through her hair again, and then he was gone, and the river's surface carried naught but the reflection of stars in his place.
(-
"My Lady," the old chambermaid whispered. "My Lady," she tried again, when Chris did not stir.
With what may have been a growl, Chris raised her head from her folded arms and groggily fought her eyes open through the thin layer of ice that had weighed her lashes shut. "I...who...?" She could see the river was flowing gently, and bare branches floated down it, despondent and prone.
"Come away from the window, my Lady," the maid advised, helping Chris to her feet with her ginger, gnarled hands on the knight's shoulders. "The morning dew's frozen over," she added. "Were you up watching that?"
"Yes," Chris answered hesitantly, sitting on her bed and leaving the hands of the chambermaid hovering where her mistress' shoulders had been. "I believe I slept, some."
"Come now," the maid said, waving toward and walking toward the tea-tray. "Today will be cold."
Chris warmed her hands on the coverlet and wondered if the maid had listened, truly listened, to what Chris had said. After a glance at the silvery tea-set, pale in the winter-dark room, she decided that she wanted to learn the noble art of not-listening.
The maid was old and carefree beyond her deaf ears, a song behind her lips that Chris may have known. Chris watched the woman bustle about, and the maid opened Chris' wardrobe and reached--strained, a touch--for the higher shelf full of sweaters. "Not that you'll need to worry if you wear the armor, my lady," the maid went on, "but there shouldn't be a need for that today. I'll send for James if you think you will be."
Chris waved a hand dismissively. "No, it is not that kind of day." Her focus drifted out the window again, farther away now from where she had last looked out of it. The sky was bright and clear, almost painful to look at; she realized that her eyelashes were still cold, having caught the dew and frozen with it. She had been prone to such things since acquiring the Rune; the chill itself did not bother her, but the disturbing likeness of the fresh water to salt tears did. There would be an empty seat at her meeting with the Knights this morning, and another young person would come to fill it. And soon there would be a ceremony, and the people would forget Roland, as they had nearly forgotten Leo when Aglovale took his place.
With what seemed a happy sigh, the maid brought out a sweater and a cloak, and set them on the cold stone ledge beside her. "I'll tell the boy to polish it, then," she chuckled, adding wool jodhpurs to the pile of cloth.
-)
That day saw the decision to exalt the Lady's own former squire, Sir Louis, to Roland's position within the Six Knights, as Louis had become an archer near-unrivaled among Lady Chris' people, and had grown into a fine young man. He was respected for his efficiency and passion, and renowned for role in strengthening the Zexen navy, and for his part in establishing outposts on neighboring islands that had been, until then, undiscovered. Lady Chris had not seen him for years. Louis was away, on one of those islands, but would be informed of his promotion by couriers, and Lady Chris saw them off westward toward Vinay del Zexay, from whose glowing harbors their ship would sail.
And that night, as Lady Chris stared over the cold river, unable to sleep, the dark Knight came again. She still could not see his face for the hair and shadows around him, but his mail, his greatsword, and the grey crest of the sphere were all the same as they had been the night before. "Fair," he called her, and disappeared. And in the morning, her chambermaid woke her, and lectured her about sleeping so close to the windowsill and catching her death.
Weeks passed, and turned into months, and spring surfaced over the river. Sir Louis accepted the promotion and returned to the City on the Bridge, and all who saw him observed that he had grown into a handsome and demure man. Sir Borus, Sir Percival, and Sir Salome welcomed him into the knights as a near-equal, despite his past as their squire, and he was introduced to Sir Aglovale. The two younger knights became fast friends, and Lady Chris was pleased.
But every night, the man in black appeared under her window, to look up at her and say whatever short words had come to him. If the night was windy, his hair whipped around him and wrapped around the red horns of the great helm he carried, and Lady Chris caught glimpses of heavy, dark eyes and skin as pale as a monk who'd spent thirty years in a cloister. "Silver Maiden," he might say, or "White Hero," like her people called her; but he also said "Just One" or "Foresighted" if her actions of the day proved wise, or call her "Brave" or "Valorous" if a more aggressive decision was in order. And she came to expect him, and the troubled nights at her window became nights of quiet vigilance. Every night, he would come, and in the silence after he was gone, Lady Chris would turn around, find her bed, and sleep, assured.
When the summer rains came, she could not pry herself away from that window, and stared through the storm. There was no surge in her chest, no willful pressure for the dark Knight to arrive; she had come to think of him as she thought of the bowl of sugar beside her evening tea. For although Lady Chris took her tea with only a few drops of cream, the sugar bowl was part of the set, and always must be filled, and always must be sent.
The night of that first heavy rain, he did not come to her window. Dry and tenebrous, he stood in the brightest corner of her stone-walled room, and asked, "Am I welcome?"
"Yes," said Lady Chris.
When she shut the windows to keep the floors dry, she turned to regard him, but he had already gone.
(-
Summer, the year In Solis 485
"So how does it work?" Aglovale asked of Louis as, on the other side of the range, Aglovale's arrow hit the pel-quintain Lizardman between the eyes.
Louis let his own arrow fly and lodge in the wooden target's right wrist. The creature rotated a touch, and one of the nearby squires refaced it during the pause. "They apply the same principle used in Kamandohl's small boats. They post a row of archers right at the front of the garrison walls, and then either cast wind spells or set up those 'fans,' or both. The archers have their arms in the wind and are trained to adjust how they shoot, but the arrows are unaffected because they have the most force applied to them at that point."
"And by the time the enemy's arrows reach the windbrace, they've lost enough power to be thrown off course by it?" Aglovale guessed. He was a short, powerful-looking young man with thick black eyebrows who wore his hair in a soft ponytail, fuller and shorter than Leo's had been.
"Exactly." Louis shielded his eyes from the sun with a leather-braced arm. "The wind spells might even make the garrison arrows stronger, depending on the winds, but I've found that if you actually try to achieve that effect, it ends up being too strong. It's a better defensive technique than augmentative." Louis was the tallest of the Six Knights now, as Roland had been, though he was not as gaunt as the elf. His years in the islands and at sea had browned him, and he wore rows of earrings, just as Roland had, but hid them under his hair.
Once the squire was a safe distance away from the quintain, Aglovale let another arrow fly at the wooden Lizardman, and the arrow struck, but did not stay in, the creature's tongue. "Have you told the Captain about this? She might be able to achieve a similar effect with her Rune, perhaps with rain. We should try that out."
"I..." Louis began, but shot his next arrow before continuing. This one took the pel-quintain at the thickest part of his tail, and spun it full around. "I don't want to bother her. She doesn't seem to be listening to anything lately."
"I thought she was always like this," Aglovale said.
Louis thought back to his time as a squire, squinted through the blazing sun, and aimed another arrow at the pel-quintain. "In meetings, yes, a bit...she always tended not to react to what people say. It's her way of appearing strong. But she was always listening. There's a real difference," he ended, and let the arrow fly. It found a home right under the one that remained in the Lizardman's right wrist. Again, it spun, but not the full way round, and the squire at the other end of the range had to right it.
"That's just an excuse to teach the men yourself," Aglovale offered, waiting for the squire to clear the space. "And then you can impress her if they get it, or hide it if they don't."
"You have a point," Louis admitted, watching his comrade's arrow fly. This time, when it hit the Lizard's tongue, it stayed there, and the training post did not spin at all.
-)
Summer became autumn, and autumn faded into winter. Louis formed his corps of archers and taught them how to shoot with the wind, and Aglovale took his and taught them about fire and gunpowder, and devised new ways to keep the mounts calm through the pyrotechnics. Borus and Percival together staved off a brief insurgence from the islands that Louis had left behind, and peace returned to Zexen in time for the first snow.
Lady Chris no longer waited by her window, as the man in black now appeared in that same brightest corner of her room instead, every night, inevitable as the sunset itself. Some nights, he would comment as he always had; some nights, he would say nothing. Now that he was closer to her, and she had more time to perceive him, she began to piece his face together from the nightly glances. He was like her, held still by time. She could never rightly see his eyes--he was always gone a moment too quickly, or the shadows fell one hair too far left--and even when he bound back his phenomenally long hair there were sections in front to hide those eyes. He never smiled, but did not seem to frown either.
The night she did finally see his eyes was that night of the first snow; she had thought to go to her window and watch at it, but sat up in bed like a thirsty child and awaited the dark Knight instead. He arrived, and she knew where on the wall to have her eyes ready for his. She proved to be correct.
This night, his hair was bound into a long black tail, baring his blank forehead and cheeks. His left eye was silver like the sphere-crest over his armor; his right was red like the horns of his helm. On this night, he said nothing, and like the earliest nights he was gone in a blink.
Rather than sleep, because she could not, Lady Chris made the connection that night in her heart. He was similar to a man she had come across many times ten years ago; another dark Knight, this one armorless and fair-haired, whose two-colored eyes were the mirror image of her visitor's. But instead of the rage that had once come over her at thoughts of that adversary, she felt nothing more than a subtle tremor, a ripple, an annoyance. It was as if the Knight's resemblence to Yuber were naught but the skitter of a mouse's claws across her stone floor.
The black-armored man came to her the next night, as he did every night.
"You are a demon," she said.
"Yes," he replied, and was gone.
(-
Winter, the year In Solis 485
Over the wet field the knights rode, their steeds leaving heavy hoofprints in the mud-caked snow. The men wore fur-lined cloaks over their freezing armor, but anger seemed enough to keep the fairer of the two knights warm. He drove his horse harshly onward, and the beast stumbled into the sunset, his shoes catching on the bare, fallen branches and crackled bones of dead beasts too late in getting home.
"Let up on that poor horse," the darker-haired knight snapped, his tone as cold as the twilight air. He edged his horse closer to his companion's, on a slightly safer path over the brief hill. The snow here was older than it had been down at Brass Castle, and the cold bitterer, which did nothing to help the mutual enmity the knights were feeling at the moment.
"Please," Borus shouted back dismissively, pressing onward at a canter, if just to leave Percival behind.
Rather than allow himself outdone, Percival carefully kept his mount within six feet of Borus', far enough behind the fair-haired knight that Percival did not have to take care with his expression. "You'd think you had a dragon snapping at your heels."
Borus sneered and slowed to a walk. "Pardon my desire to get away," he said, acrid. "The farther from that castle this horse takes me, the stiller my heart." He looked back at Percival then, with a stone face and thin lips, chapped by the cold and the pace at which he'd been tearing through it.
"What about the horse's heart?" Percival asked, summoning a smirk and guiding his charger to walk beside Borus'. The snow crackled under them, and their long shadows overlapped beyond their right shoulders, stretching yard upon yard to the East over the frozen plain.
"I think you fail to understand," Borus said.
Percival adjusted his cloak around his chest and shoulders. "We'll get to Iksay, which remains the same distance from Brass Castle whether you kill your horse or not." He raised an eyebrow at Borus and looked sidelong at him, from within the pale knight's shadow. "Unless you goal is to delay returning to the castle."
Borus glared with no pretense. "It is."
"You noticed."
"Yes."
"I'll race you," Percival offered, pinning the cloak under his elbows and snatching up the reins.
"Lets," Borus said, humorless, and surged forward.
They took off, pell-mell over the fields, two bolts of brown and silver over the similarly brown and silver ground. Percival's horse kept crafty and sure, Borus' galloped almost in fear of its hide. Here one was leading, and here the other, and neither rider knew rightly what distance had passed. The horses, at least, seemed to be enjoying themselves, and suspected the riders were as well. They were incorrect.
"You want this too?" Borus shouted over the pounding hooves when Percival took a brief lead.
"What?" the darker-haired knight shouted back, as if he hadn't heard.
"You can't stand the sight of it either?" Borus leapt his horse over a rotting bramble. "Of what you're doing to her?" He overtook Percival then, for a moment, but soon they were running parallel, more like Wotan and his Sleipnir than two horses and two riders.
"What do you mean, what I'm doing to her?"
"You heard me!" Borus yelled, his horse leading by a cold nose. They had come to a rockier passage of the plains, and treaded more carefully, but the idea of racing was still in both riders' heads.
"Just because I heard you doesn't mean I know what the Hell you're talking about!" Percival's breath was heavy and the words were almost caught behind it.
"It's as if she's poisoned!" Borus railed on, taking what seemed to be a concrete lead through his rage. The ground had not quite become safe yet, but Borus drove his horse recklessly onward. "She walks around in a haze! She barely trains!"
Percival drove his horse into and through Borus' wake, taking the safer path around his comrade's other side. "And what do I have to do with that?"
Borus cracked the reins. "I know it's not I who--"
"Has the guilt finally caught up with you? Did you finally catch sight of what you were doing and have to drown yourself in distance and wine?"
Borus faltered. "What I--?" He caught himself and tried to urge the beast onward, but Percival's voice was already echoing back to him from two lengths away. He demanded the horse run, and dug his spurs into the beast's haunches harshly enough to elicit a cry.
"When did you tell her?" Percival yelled over the thunder of the eight hooves and the flapping of two unfettered cloaks. "Is that what set this all off?"
"I never told her!"
"You--"
"For all I--"
Before Borus even knew what he was going to say, Percival and his mount threw on a burst of speed, kicking up snow to splatter across Borus' cheek. The speed at which both pairs pelted was enough to whip the filth off Borus' face, but Percival still beat him to wooden fences of Iksay, where he slowed to a wide arc of a stop. Borus made it there a hundred paces behind, his horse coughing and the rider fuming, his hot breath churning out through bleeding, angry lips.
"You're getting better," Percival panted, his tone too disgruntled to be dishonest and too tired to be tongue-in-cheek. "If you'll treat the beast with a bit more gratitude, you'll improve faster."
Borus refused to let him change the subject. "...It is neither of us, is it."
A moment passed, and Percival stopped his horse beside Borus' once the cool-down loop was done. "Seems that way," he admitted. "If you're not lying."
"How dare you insinuate that I would lie about this!" Borus shouted as if they were still riding, not moored outside the village.
"My apologies," Percival whispered with a solemn nod.
They sat there, mounted in silence, as the horses took longer to catch their breath. The cold set in around them again, and Borus wiped the last of the mud off his cheek with his cloak's edge. "Is she in love?" he asked.
Percival cast a longing look into the village. "Love shouldn't drain you like that," he replied.
"No," Borus agreed, though his eyes were south and east, toward the city he purportedly meant to escape, tonight.
"I think it might just be time," Percival offered.
"...I think you just have the better horse," Borus replied, turning away from the field and looking at his friend with sober, gold eyes.
Percival recrafted his smirk and wiped the sweat from his brow. "Don't say that where yours can hear you."
And the Knights dismounted and walked into the village, leading their panting, nearly-spent chargers to the stables near the inn. Borus' surreptitious glares at Percival faded, and Percival's narrow eyes softened as his self-restraint became less necessary. They left their horses, and lost themselves in the small country tavern, between several bottles of wine, lively and distracting songs, and willing farmgirls. All of these lasted through the night, but left them with heavy hearts and sore eyes the next morning.
-)
The demon came to Lady Chris again that night, as she stared out over the fields Borus and Percival had ridden out across for their leave. She could not help but feel there had been something unsaid between the three of them, but dismissed it as the same unvoiced sentiment that had colored their relationships for year upon year. She had seen them off at the city's West gate, into the white-capped forest, with a salute as always. Nothing was ill.
As she transferred her gaze from the fields to the river, the man in black stood beside her. His hair was bound back, though his forehead was not bare for the strands around it, and he set his helm down on the window's ledge. It was a frightening thing, the red horns grappling like unfed prisoners for the stars, the dragon-slit eyes heavily lidded in a permanent, admonishing glare.
"My name is Pesmerga," the demon said, as if to continue last night's answer.
Lady Chris nodded, though she did not know the name.
That night, the demon did not fade away so quickly, but stood beside her and watched the stars, floating down the river's face with yesterday's snow. She was not sure of when he actually left--perhaps an hour or more had passed in silence--but she watched his eyes close as he faded, lowering his head in respect. After that, she rose from the windowsill, and walked to her bed as if nothing had transpired at all.
In time, Borus and Percival returned from Iksay. They resumed their guard, and their half-hearted rivalry for Lady Chris' affection continued, but only as a ritual, like grace before supper. The winter drove on--it was particularly harsh this year--and the calendar year changed on the first day of the thaw.
And every night, the demon Pesmerga visited Lady Chris in her chambers, and stayed sometimes a minute, sometimes an hour or more. They sat and watched the stars, or she read a book and he sat quietly. One night during the clashes with those islands on the coast, as she polished her cuirass in her tent, she offered him a rag and he polished his helm, sitting beside her on the cot. On the night before the external conflict ended, she polished and he dried. There was something about his great helm that was similar to her armor in terms of how it carried, though it had not been shined in a long time.
The conflict with the islands ended in early summer, and a towheaded woman was waiting for Percival as the Knights returned to the City on the Bridge.
(-
Summer, the year In Solis 486
The new recruits drilled with unfamiliar horses and blunt swords, trampling the field in the last light of day. The sun was still painfully bright and six hours of heat filled every breastplate and the so-called cushioning within every helm. But the Knights trudged on through their drills, knowing that once the Sergeant-master approved, they could go back into the city and drink themselves back to a passable temperature.
Lady Chris and Sir Percival stood on a hill above the pounding hooves and shouted orders. The sun was setting in the west, behind them, and their long shadows stretched halfway down the hill to their men. After one last bellow from the Sergeant-at-arms, the men began to dismount, staggered about, and set the field back to rights.
"So I am to be married," Percival said, leaning on his sword and keeping his eyes on the field.
"Oh?" Chris said, next to him.
He continued to not look at her, not that she noticed. "Yes, I...I want to do right by her."
Lady Chris nodded. "The girl from Iksay?"
"Maura," he corrected. "Yes. She says it's mine."
"Her child?"
"Yes." At that, he subtly turned his eyes to her, but kept his face over the fields. His hair was matted to his forehead by the heat, and he brushed it out of his eyes with a heavy gauntlet, using it as an excuse to try and see if she seemed to care.
"Yes," she said. She watched the men clean up, and it appeared she did not care at all.
In the silence--well, the silence between them, as the men below were still loud--that followed, Percival looked at her sidelong and away, again. "Well then," he muttered, with another glance down the hill.
Chris repeated, "Yes."
"You're not going to lecture me on my dishonorable conduct?" he asked suddenly, standing up straight, not using his sword as a prop at all.
After a moment, Chris answered, quietly, "You've already chosen to remedy it."
"Yes," he admitted, and sheathed is sword. "...So when I tell you I love you," he asked when his eyes were down, focused on the scabbard, "you still won't call me dishonorable?"
He expected an answer. When one did not come, he suspected that Lady Chris had not fully heard him, by the way her reticence seemed to come from her and not the air around her.
"...Right," he said. "Well then, I...will see you later, Captain." He saluted, and started down the hill, hiding how perplexed and rather hurt he was with practiced grace. But with dignity above all, he paced naturally out of even the reach of her shadow.
The Lady Chris stayed on that hill, staring, until all the men below had gone home, and the sun was a hair from setting.
-)
Percival, to use his words, 'did right by' Maura. Their wedding was quick, and she assumed his surname and title. They moved into an old but spacious house on the West side of the city, which Maura filled with art of passable quality and hale but plain servants. She managed his house with an efficiency only a farmgirl as she could provide. Four months later, their first son was born--three more would follow--but Percival continued to serve with the Six Knights, not to be outdone by Sir Borus.
Lady Chris was present at the wedding, but only because Salome reminded her to be. Most of the details had been lost on her, but those who knew her fabricated romantic excuse after romantic excuse, and none dared lend voice to their concerns. The lower knights joked that she was jealous and possessive, the barflies called her lovelorn and (to put it kindly) lamented her chastity, and the stableboys and chambermaids whispered about a mysterious visitor, a man in black, who was surely either Borus or Percival, but the talespinners could not agree. And stories were told and satires were written, but by and large the gossip was washed down the river with the laundry.
A year passed, and then a several months more. Pesmerga and Chris continued to meet nightly, never really talking because so much seemed already understood. One particularly cold autumn night, Lady Chris sent up for tea to have with her book. She was a bit thankful for the sugar-bowl then, for Pesmerga apparently took sugar in his tea. The tea became part of her nightly ritual, though since no one else knew for certain of these meetings, the demon brought his own cup and saucer. They were simple, hardy things, nearly as old as he was, though, like their owner and his company, they did not look it.
(-
Spring, the year In Solis 488
Sir Borus waited impatiently, in the War Room beside Lady Chris' quarters, in the very early morning. He half-sat on the windowsill, darting his eyes between the room's two sets of doors. He did not look out the window behind him, but the first traces of sunlight stretched out from the East and set the hairs prickling on the back of Borus' neck.
Still strapping on one of her gauntlets, Lady Chris entered from the door nearest her quarters. Borus was on his feet in less than a heartbeat, and the word was out of his mouth even quicker than that. "Captain--" he began, but deemed the other words unworthy.
Lady Chris nodded a polite good morning as if nothing registered as amiss, and moved to sit in her usual chair to await the rest of the Six Knights.
Borus came forward from the windowsill to stop her. His armor seemed very loud, even to him. "I told the others to be a little late."
"What--" Chris started, looking up at him from where she had been prevented from sitting.
"I wanted time to tell you," he said, urgently despite himself. "They already know, and they know what I've resolved to do."
More confused than angry, Chris protested, "What is the--"
Borus grabbed her by the upper arms and kissed her rather violently. Their cuirasses clashed together, but that noise was familiar to both Knights and did not jar them. Chris narrowed her eyes but did not close them, as if she did not understand. It was something she had wondered about in the past, this moment; what she would feel when Borus gave up the pretenses she knew he held. Those once-dreams, though, were wispy and difficult to trace, more like parlor-tales and eulogies than memories.
The kiss went on for longer than either of them really wanted it to. Borus eventually let up, and it came across as shoving her away. After catching his breath, he turned back to the window, angry and ashamed with himself despite his resolve. Chris just stood where she had been, wiping her lips with a gloved knuckle.
"They knew I would do that," Borus said, clenching his hands on the sill and glaring out the window through gold eyes. "I knew I would do that. I am not sorry."
"...No need," Chris nearly whispered.
He did not look back at her--he thought he could not--and in fact closed his eyes and sneered inwardly. "I am getting married to someone who is not you," he said.
After that, she must have expected him to say something. Only because he did not continue did she give the matter consideration. "Yes," she eventually said, which made little sense to him.
Borus took offense at that and was unable to restrain himself from driving his left fist into the nearest wall. With his gauntlet ringing, he then turned to leave. "You're not yourself, Captain," he spat, storming out of the room. "You haven't been." And before he was gone, the words escaped: "I would not have fallen in love with this you."
Chris sat down and began to wait for everyone else to arrive, almost forgetting that Borus had asked them to be late. Behind her, the doors crashed shut, as loudly as their armor had during that kiss, but she did not rightly hear it.
-)
It did not take very much time for Borus to find a wife among the noblewomen of their country, as his father had died that winter and Borus was now the sole executor of his family's estate. He came across a true companion in one of Sir Leo's daughters. She was less than half Borus' age, but vibrant and enthusiastic, and unabashed to contradict him in public. Their wedding, which happened in the middle of the following autumn, saw nearly all of the City on the Bridge in drunken revelry, and the music thundered until the geese took off southward in the morning. Pesmerga and Chris watched that from Lady Chris' window, quietly sipping their tea.
The years edged onward in relative peace; there was a conflict with Harmonia in the Grasslands, but Lady Chris could not be persuaded to stand against the Council's decision to refrain from intervention. Sir Salome did everything he could, in his fashion, but few knew whose side he was actually fighting for. In the end Harmonia was victorious, and Lady Chris was informed of the disappearance of her former rival and comrade, Chief Hugo of Karaya. She took the news with remarkable docility.
It was this reaction of Lady Chris' that perplexed Salome the most of all Lady Chris' dismissals, for Lady Chris ought know and understand what kind of weight the disappearance of Chief Hugo, as bearer of the True Fire Rune, might entail. Salome's sleep was troubled and he was often ill--it is suspected that during these years, he contracted the heart-sickness that would eventually kill him--and he held a closer watch over Lady Chris than he had since her youth. But despite these efforts, he learned nothing as to the true roots of her mental isolation.
One night, as he lay awake, he decided that he would take the secret passage to her room, and see if she was likewise troubled in sleep. Dusk and slumber were the only lights in which Salome had never beheld Lady Chris, and he had no doubt that the new knowledge would aid him in his protection of her, at the very least.
So he walked through the 'well," as Nash had called it all those years ago, until he was only one stone wall away from Lady Chris' quarters. First, he listened through the catch, and heard nothing; then, stealthily, he edged the door open to the slight twinge of moonlight on the other side.
The man in black chain-mail raised a tea-cake to his lips, and ate it, as Lady Chris read. Salome was unsurprised by the role of a man in this. The only shock that touched his heart was that at the crest of the grey sphere on the man's clothing, and it was a shock only available to a man of lore as Salome.
In quiet fear, Salome closed the door, and then walked back to his quarters with a rather leaden gait. He did not sleep that night, nor the next, nor the next; the first night, he wrote a letter, and the third night he met with the person he had addressed, but the second night he simply could not calm himself sufficiently.
(-
Autumn, the year In Solis 495
In an arms-storage hold outside the City on the Bridge, Salome waited until night had fallen and the moon, three quarters full, hung gaping and pale in the sky like a judge on his pedestal. Only after the advent of that blue darkness did Nash come, creaking the stronghold door open and bearing one lantern and two bottles; one light, one dark. Nash had not aged since Salome had last seen him; like Lady Chris, Nash did not age, but for reasons quite different.
The contact sat beside the strategist, each man atop his own crate, with a third between them. Nash produced delicate, clear glasses to accompany the bottles; he poured for himself first, from the red, and then for Salome, white. The glasses and bottles, like the men, sat on their crate, and stared uneasily at each other, outwardly the same but for their coloring. Nash was pale, and Salome weathered to a noble gold, the first signs of greyness beginning to surface at his temples.
"Thank you," the strategist said, receiving but not drinking or smelling the wine.
Nash indicated the bottles. "You mean this? Or this," he posed, gesturing around him to the fact that he was present at all.
"Yes, to each," Salome clarified. "I am not certain how necessary either is."
"Heh. Well, if it concerns the Lady Chris, I've been known to need a stiff drink." With that Nash raised his ichorous glass, toasted ceilingward, and sipped without appraisal. The red liquid took time to seep down the edge of the goblet when he was done.
And Salome, too, came to drink of his own yellowed glass, and told Nash all he knew. He waited until the end of his tale, though, to reveal that the crest on the dark Knight's breast marked him for Pesmerga, Demon of Order, the fabled--or not so fabled--hound on the heels of the Chaosbearer Yuber. And Nash sipped at his own glass of the darker liquid, and listened, patiently, until interrupting:
"--Pesmerga, eh? But if he chases Yuber, what does he want with Lady Chris?"
"I can only imagine," Salome sighed.
Nash raised an elegant, blond eyebrow. "You don't think he's--"
"I do not want to think so," Salome admitted, his eyes dignified but the expedience of his words betraying his unease.
"...How long?" Nash asked after a long drawl from his red glass.
Salome closed his eyes. "Long. They seemed...well, married," he concluded in a deprecating whisper.
"They what?"
"They were sitting there saying nothing, doing nothing," Salome described, his hands holding the wineglass and its contents still. "There was understanding. The silence was not awkward in the least."
Nash nodded. "And an awkward silence only happens when there is something left unsaid."
"Precisely," Salome whispered. And as if to illustrate, one such silence overtook the strategist and his contact. They sat, and sipped their goblets--Salome's amber until it was drained, Nash's a thick, brassy red, dwindling--and refrained from giving voice to their concerns.
When Salome's glass was empty, Nash refilled it with the same pale wine. The gesture was enough to spur Salome to ask, "Did you send him?"
"No," Nash quickly answered, knowing the question before it had been raised. "Nor did his Eminence."
Salome panted after a sip that went on too long. "And Yuber?"
"Is still chained to Albert Silverberg," Nash answered with a smile.
"Who is in the process of converting the Island Nations into his own personal Ritapon tiles," Salome added, completing the picture with no humor in his voice or eyes.
"Is he now?"
"I'd swear the entire Dukedom of Gaien rolled over and cried 'Tsumo!'. Twice." Though the words elicited a small chuckle from Nash, it was almost at Salome's expense, as the Zexen strategist was clearly quite serious.
"Do you intend to do anything about it?" Nash inquired.
The strategist did not answer.
The crates ceased to creak, and the lantern ceased to flicker, if only for a moment. "You're drinking stronger vintages these nights," Salome observed, by the residue at the bottom of Nash's nearly-drained glass.
"Am I?"
Salome raised his wine. "You certainly brought me a biter."
"Yours," Nash explained, "is an elfin Village Marshgrounds, three-ninety-three." A tremor leaked into his voice, as if the information he was about to provide dried his tongue. "Mine is Karayan, four-ninety-three."
"That was a bad year," Salome stated.
"I know."
And at that, Nash tipped back the glass, and drank the remains deeply enough to bring an itch to his nose. Salome's eyes widened in horrified understanding, and he made a sign of warding in the dark, then raised his own glass in a silent toast to the dead. The silence remained awkward, edging beyond wordlessness and into denial. Nash poured himself another glass, and neither man addressed the matter of "vintage" again as long as Salome lived.
-)
Though it was quite late in his life, Salome married, in the interest of carrying on his name and knowledge and providing an heir that his allies across all nations could trust. He did not achieve this with his first wife, who died in childbirth. All of the ceremonies--the weddings and her funeral--were private affairs, and Lady Chris was not even present. She had taken to sleeping through large portions of the day, at odd times, and most of those who noticed believed it was the True Water Rune claiming her.
But by this point, it had been over twenty years since the war that had made their White Hero, and the people no longer saw her walking about on the streets of the City on the Bridge or the Town by the Sea. She was a thing of legend, and all the stories that surrounded her would have to be mystical in nature. It came to be said that when she slept, she insured that the next day there would be rain to feed the grapes and tomatoes in Iksay, and that if she did not rest the entire country would go to ruin. So the adherents let her sleep, and the Six Knights functioned as five, for the most part, though their role was largely ceremonial in this time of peace.
And the demon Pesmerga became as much a constant to Lady Chris as her own face in the mirror, perpetually young, night in, night out, for what came to amount to over twenty-seven years. He did not change, and if she changed at all it was slow and imperceptible as the deepening of a gorge.
(-
Autumn, the year In Solis 511
"He is like the spindle," Salome said, and his son wrote it down hastily.
"What do you mean, Father?" the young man asked, poising the pen over the vellum with urgent eyes. He did not know how many more words his father would say.
The urgency was undue; Salome took some time to breathe before explaining, "She has spent years making the same prick in her finger."
The boy forgot to write that down until several days later.
-)
Around her, her men aged. Louis bedded and married his kitchen-maid, who turned out to be quite the noble girl, and she bore him two beautiful daughters. Childless Borus took to drink and his loving wife went with him, and when she died of it he stopped. Percival's Maura proved a harpy, and their eldest son a wastrel, but the second, third, and fourth sons rose to prominence in horsebreeding, music, and the Knights, respectively. Aglovale died untimely and was replaced by a young woman from Budehuc whose name Lady Chris could never remember. And after five years, and a change in wives, Salome retired from the field entirely and resigned himself to strategy, and eventually came into two sons and a daughter to prop him up when his heart began to truly fail him.
All of this was lost on Lady Chris, in her half-awake and overcast world of late-night tea and strange company. Well, perhaps not all, as she continued to command and fight most effectively, when it was necessary. But such was rarely necessary anymore. Harmonia never invaded again, the islands were easily put down whenever they dared arise, and the Grasslands upheld their truce with Zexen, for the most part, until long after these events had been fictionalized. At some point, even the Rune on her right hand ceased to seem present to her.
So Lady Chris lived and did not listen through the day, if she was awake though the day at all, and sat quietly through the night with Pesmerga beside her. They would polish each others' armor, or he would shear the plants in the corner and she would read, or they would sit and watch the stars until, lulled, she would dismiss him without a word, and he would fade.
And then there came a day, mid-autumn in that twenty-seventh year of nightly visits, when Lady Chris sat at the window, brushing her long, silver hair, untarnished by time. And Pesmerga appeared beside her, as ever, his own hair also long and free. He took the brush from her hand, as if it were a tea-cracker, and she let him. Staring out over the water, murky with fallen leaves, she leaned aside and inclined her head in fatigue and respect. He ran the brush through her hair, over and over, and at some point she fell asleep. Her chambermaid found her in the morning.
That night, in his home, Salome died. For an entirely different reason, Lady Chris likewise declined to wake.
The people of the City on the Bridge, the Village with the Inn, the Castle on the Lake, and the Town by the Sea did not know what to make of this at first. Their Silver Maiden and White Hero (and all that) was asleep and could not be roused, and on the very same night her shadow and support was dead. Nobody knows who first suggested that divine providence was at root, but that soon became the overwhelming belief. To those believers, Lady Chris was the Goddess on Earth and must be protected, and her Salome had gone on ahead to outsmart and stave off death with the shields within his heart, so that the people's hero would never be taken from them. And her sleeping body was moved to a temple the people built just to house it, and they surrounded her with wards and guards and other substitutes for thorns.
And the Lady Chris slept, and the True Water Rune slept in her hand, and when Borus and Percival died (in the same week, though Percival remained the faster rider even at the end) they were ensconced under her sleeping quarters, back to back, to stand vigilant beside Salome's spirit. Louis' eldest daughter became the abbess of that temple, and tended to the sleeping Goddess whenever she nearly woke, and kept the skin around the True Water Rune soft, and brushed the Silver Maiden's hair as it grew, though there were never any snarls in it.
And Pesmerga, having learned much from these twenty-seven years, pressed on to remove the next player from the game in the name of Order. And though he knew his task would become easier with time, it would never again fall so pleasantly, and his heart was just a little sore for realizing that. He dismissed that notion, though, as the fleeting thing it was.
(- . -)
Author's Notes: A thousand thousand thanks to K'Arthur and TenshiKain for beta-reading, Leah-at-Work for her enthusiasm, and Daromaius for putting up with the vocal wankery.
If you are interested in the fanon in which this story takes place, by all means say so!