gasp Armaggedon has arrived! As well as the next chapter to The Words Between...will the surprises never end.
The Words Between - part 20
:Kyn, can you hear me:
"Kynfaellar. Do you heed me?"
He looked up at the gentle touch beneath his chin, blinked myopically at the duke's face, and with a breath that drew familiar scents deep into his lungs, he said, "Yes."
Aisner smiled - an expression that, at other times, might have seemed eerily indulgent - and lowered his hand, clasping it along with the other behind him. "Remain looking at me, Kyn...good. Do you know what a binding is?"
"Yes."
:Kyn:
A small sound of satisfaction, and the duke turned away. Steel whispered to stone, and the air's saccharine scent was accented by a metallic snap. The duke returned, bearing a dagger which Kyn knew intimately, yet had never laid eyes upon until now. "Do you know what a G'ao demon is?"
He grasped idly at the odd sensation of deja vu. "Yes..." he murmured in satisfaction as it came to him. The dagger looked heavy, nestled in the duke's grip...
...laying upon the stone bier...sliding across a pale throat...tucked neatly between his ribs...
His heart stuttered, and the prickle of sweat sprang out over his forehead and the heart of his palms. It was all too familiar...
:Kyn, Chosen! I know you can hear me - answer:
He tilted his head at that distant call, but grew distracted by the soft stroke of light along a keen edge. His eyes followed the hypnotic flicker while his thoughts squirmed fitfully from his clumsy graspings. Circles within circles within circles...
"Focus, Kyn. Do you remember how he traps the demon? Do you remember the circles he drew?"
Circles...
:Kyn, do you remember? Do you remember what happened:
Confused by the multiple streams of thought, he vacillated helplessly until the duke commanded his gaze completely and repeated his questions with clear impatience. Then, Kyn stated again, "Yes...yes."
:The dinner, Kyn...the dinner, and Mennifei, Nadia and Brin...:
His hand was taken and something pressed into it. Only when the duke said to look did he let his gaze fall from the man's face, down to the plain, silver flask. Its weight told him that there was no taint from inferior alloys, and that there was nothing so innocent as water within. It dragged at his hand, as if it sought the earth with a will of its own.
"Draw it. Draw the circle and the symbols...there."
Circles...
:They are still there, Kyn...they are waiting, I am waiting...:
Waiting...he had waited a long time for the end. He had waited at the table, too tensed to feel hungry, even as the scents of the feast beckoned...
He could only grant the food the barest glance before needing to look away again. His stomach roiled uncomfortably, and such was his state of mind that he could hardly tell if the upset was due to hunger or nausea - or, perhaps it was hunger-induced nausea. Yes, that would be fitting. It seemed as if everything was converging tonight...lives. Stories. Ambitions.
Magic.
It seemed as if his very bones itched, something thrumming through the air, setting people's laughter around the table ringing with an unnatural echo, the clatter of silver and dishware over-bright and tinny. He was rarely able to feel the weavings, particularly the smaller or more subtle ones, but sometimes it was otherwise. Sometimes, such as now, he wondered how anyone could resist simply stopping and staring, wondering at the source of the disturbance. It was a selective sensitivity - as if, having heard the background noise of hundreds of conversations all his life, he no longer registered its existence. Yet, as soon as its pitch or volume changed in any way, his attention latched onto it relentlessly, trying to pinoint the differences and their source.
So it was, living beneath the same roof as Master. Always something happening behind closed doors. Always something tingling in the air, shivering through the stones. Kyn may have felt it all, once upon a time, but such a sense had become dull with time and over-exposure. But he knew when it changed, when it became something serious. It was something serious now, in this hall of Lynxfinn holdings, at the table of his step-uncle.
Many of the guests had already been seated by the time he had arrived. Mennifei and her coterie were huddled near the head, to the left of the place reserved for the duke. She had sent a single, sullen glare toward Kin as he was placed opposite her, to the right of the table's head, before putting him out of sight and mind with a pointed turn of her head. Brin was not with her. Brin had still not arrived by the time the duke finally swept into place, and the feast officially began after a glowing speech that Kin paid only half a mind to.
:Where is Brin: he asked of Sianni as he spied Nadia sitting farther down the table, looking disdainful pinned between a sallow-looking woman in an unbecoming purple gown and a florid-nosed man who seemed to have already begun the celebration before he ever arrived at the table.
:I have not heard from Raoland of late...still searching...:
Searching. Waiting. Both contained the same anticipation, though in one, the ending was expected, while the other was mere supposition.
The dark, viscous liquid continued to pour from the flask endlessly, and though three circles had already been completed, the vessel seemed no lighter than before. Circles had no end and no beginning; they were infinite in points and sides. They were equal no matter which direction one faced, the strongest prison or the strongest shield one could make. Those who crafted bridges and supports knew the strength of a circle's arch. Those who crafted art knew the allure of its smooth edge, that drew the eyes around and down and over, again and again in a neverending spiral. Non-mortal eyes could be trapped that way, ever-following its seductive curve. Non-mortal beings could be trapped within, locked away for as long as the bindings that made the circle material to them lasted.
Bindings were another art altogether, apart from the shape of the trap itself. He drew bindings of one sort now, stroke by careful stroke, within and without the circles, but never crossing that essential boundary. There had been bindings of another sort at work tonight...
Still searching. How long did it take to find one woman who was supposed to be watching his back? She had certainly detached herself readily enough, unless someone had done the detaching for her...but there had been no alarm raised by the Companions over Brin. He was still wandering, probably lost, missing the sweets and culinary delights that he had such a passion for, while those least appreciative were forced to endure the false celebration. Perhaps it was a ruse to seperate their party, but if so, it was not one of the duke's devising.
The feast was interminable. Brin was searching, but Kyn was waiting; waiting for something to happen, waiting for the magic to snap, springing; waiting for the Companions to bugle warning, that something has happened; waiting for the guests to start keeling over from the heavy food - how could they stand shoveling the stuff into their mouths one bite after another with the tension and waiting so thick he could barely breathe - ?
And then the duke stood from his seat. The motion was so unexpected, Kin nearly started from his own in sheer reaction. "Please, continue," he assured his guests with an easy smile and a casual gesture. "I will be returning soon." And with no more explanation than that, he turned an inscrutible look upon his daughter who paused and blinked with a fork half-raised, before turning to depart the hall.
Mennifei dropped her fork, her chair scraping discordantly as she stood, and ignoring the questions pattering after her from her puzzled hangers-on, stepped rapidly after the retreating form of the duke.
:Brin found them:
:Them: he returned sharply to Sianni, his gaze whipping down the table to meet Nadia's, the healer looking equally surprised and concerned by the duke's interruption. :Who are 'them':
:I do not know...Brianna is amongst them...: Sianni sounded distracted, concerned, but not overly so, and that was all that kept Kyn from directing his whole attention to the conversation, mysteriously-acting duke or no. He stood, a look directing Nadia to remain at the feast while he palmed his unused dinner knife, and strode after the last glimpse of a trailing skirt as Mennifei turned the corner and was lost to sight. :They are heading back to the keep now.:
He nearly had to jog to catch another glimpse of the young woman, turning down unfamiliar corridors, ones that had not been revealed in the keep's building plans. He made no effort to conceal his trailing; the duke would know he was following. Se'Fannouel obviously intended something tonight, with a great hall full of guests busily eating and drinking themselves into a stupor, and a glance telling his daughter to follow.
:Where are they now? Who are 'they': Kyn demanded as soon as he had a sure sighting of Mennifei, who had to trot to keep up with her father's long-legged strides. They wound deeper into the keep...down a flight of stairs...
:They are nearly there...guardsmen...they are clearing the way for them...:
What Sianni said did not make sense, but the duke was pulling open a door now, ushering Mennifei through without so much as a glance back. Kyn ran forward as the door was about to close after them, catching the handle just before it could click shut, and with the knife 's grip rough and solid against his palm - the blade was dull, but it would have to do - he yanked the door open, crouched to one side, searching frantically for the threat he knew must wait beyond...
:Kyn, the way is barred! We cannot get in:
:Kyn, we cannot leave the keep! The great doors have been locked somehow:
There was a momentary flash of irritation that, so typical of the healer, Nadia had not seen fit to remain quietly in her seat, but had apparently tried to make her own explorations.
And then the smell hit.
There was an acrid rustle off to his left as the duke dropped another handful of dried stuff into a brazier, one of half a dozen scattered through the cavernous room's peripheries. Hexagonal, with a ceiling converging to a point high above, using the power of numbers when a sphere's efficacy would have been weakened or broken by the straight lines of doors. Three and three, an even division of the angles - the smell thickened, and his vision wavered.
Relax, boy, your work is almost done...
"Relax, Kynfaellar, you have done well."
Someone's hand took his, removed the flask, and tugged him forward, shuffling. He could barely feel his own body, caught within the net of herbs and magic that permeated the very pores of the stones beneath his feet, burned for who knows how long to have filled the entire space with its scent, enough to trap him within a single breath, before he even stepped fully within.
:Kyn, wake up! Something - someone's trying to intervene, there is someone there - :
Let go, boy. Do not clutch so tightly at opportunity that you choke it.
"Lift your step there - good. We would not wish to ruin all your hard work, would we? There is time yet. Your part is coming soon enough...rest."
Kyn gasped, whirling around, hands sweeping out in an instinctive search for threats nearly before he realized what he was seeing - and blinked.
He was in the garden, beside the pond, without consciously seeking it out. Swallowing his heart back down his throat, Kyn slowly straightened, turning with suspicious eyes to examine the scenery. What had he been doing? He had been snearing at the clothes the duke had thought to lay out for him for the feast...no, he had been at the feast...he had struggled with the smells and the sounds and then the bewildering events...
Everything in the garden was as he remembered it, and yet there was something subtly different. He couldn't grasp the source - merely the effect, a tingling chill of unease clutching at his spine, as if a stranger had wandered through the manse and his room, leaving tantalizing hints as to their passage but nothing overt enough to impinge upon the conscious mind. Someone had walked through those private places within him and left only enough disturbance to make him aware of their presence - a taunt. I was here.
It was a maddening itch that he couldn't quite pinpoint and thus, couldn't quite scratch, and if he didn't discover its source soon, he would -
"In this respect, boy - and distressingly many others - you have followed your father's example far too closely."
Kyn nearly fell, turning so quickly his panicked gaze slid right over the figure standing in the wall's shadow before abruptly fixing on it.
Jenner smiled thinly, both corners of an unflawed mouth rising to reveal the hints of matching dimples in two smooth, unmarred cheeks. And though his visage was shockingly symmetrical now, the expression was just as cold and frighteningly familiar as ever. "When Vinsen locked his teeth around an idea on how things should be, not even the gods themselves could pry him off."
Oh, the sacrifices I had to make in order to get this out! For an idea of just what I had to work with today in order to write chapter 20, go to my website and then tack on /brokenscreen.jpg to the URL.
New screen to come on Friday. Hopefully. crosses fingers
I can't believe how many people still find their way to this story despite its long period of inactivity. Thank you ever so much for continuing to write encouragement, both those who are new to this monster of a fanfiction, and to those who have stuck it out with me all this time. I admit it has been hard, trying to reestablish the voice that I used to write with, but I am trying to plod along to at least a semi-satisfactory conclusion before I give up the ghost. ) I suppose now that I have a spic-and-span new site that I should start populating it with chapters as well as updates on my RL so that people know that I'm still alive and kicking this story around.
Btw, I have been reading some concern lately about the "interactive nature" of reviewer-specific responses that some authors tack on to the end of their writings...I have no idea what the hell that's about on the part of but I'm supposing that if they slap my wrist for it, I'll stop doing so simply for the sake of convenience and try to set up a board on my own site so that if you have questions, you can get some answers. Otherwise, I'm still soaking up each and every comment you stick onto the review lists, even if I do not respond directly. Responses make my day!
M3m0rii - My dorm room window used to be filled with yellow post-it notes! Believe me, I had to do quite a bit of re-reading and digging before I remembered enough to finally pelt out this next section. laughs Well, if I managed to garner some secret technique from 12 years of polishing off nearly a book a day, I'm afraid I couldn't tell you which specific volume did the trick. But I'll keep my eye out for the most likely possibilities and let you know when I find it! And there is no greater praise for an author than loyal readers.
polywog - Yes, one of the many details that I keep tripping over. -.- I'm afraid that I named Brin and Kyn a little too closely, and when I'm really trying to dash out a new chapter, I overlook that far too often. It doesn't help that I actually know a guy named Kin in RL; it just helps to make things doubly confusing.