AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm sorry for the delay, but I'm rather overworked at the moment. I could do with a couple of reviews to cheer me up (hint, hint).
jtbwriter: Yes, Erik won't go mad from his nightmares, not just yet. Maybe his nightmares make them care even more for them, or at least for some of them… well, you'll find out later.
Beregond's Girl: Whoops. I didn't mean to make Meg a lesbian. What I meant was that she wanted a fiancé, not to marry Christine or something. Hmm, a longer review sounds good…
Pertie: As for the messages, you'll see in the next chapter already. As for the bond… the comparison to vampires is interesting, it didn't yet occur to me.
Bea: I know you, after all. A tip about Roger: Try to get hold of a Leroux and read the introduction, and it might give you a hint… Nosy, are you? And naughty, too, it seems…
Morleigh: Another Garfield, eh? I'm a sucker for that stuff. Enjoyed your meal?

-.-.-

II. Unchanging as the Sea

"Turmoil still. And getting worse."

Lászlo glanced over at his master, or at his liege-lord, as he preferred to call him. Sitting his dust-coloured mare as straight as any cavalryman, Aeternus possessed a bearing that made him appear a nobleman – if he wanted to be noticed at all, that was. More often than not, he preferred to remain unnoticed. And if he wanted to remain unnoticed… he became invisible.

Of course Lászlo knew that it was nothing but a mind-trick, but all the same, after all these years he had known Aeternus, it still seemed like magic to him. Well, in a way it was, though Aeternus would surely laugh at the suggestion. There was no explanation for a mental power like this.

Well, to be exact, there was. Lászlo knew the stories, after all, the legends of the world of old, of the War of the Shadow and of the fall of the Fateless, the Lost Ones. And he knew that there were others out there in the world, not only Aeternus, and each had his own history, and his own sentence of punishment.

The Wrath of the Gods, Sándor had once called it in a poetic moment, and Lászlo had smiled at it, especially since the moments in which Sándor actually achieved more or less acceptably poetry were rare. Not that his nephew was a stupid lad, but sometimes, far too often in Lászlo's opinion, he struck him as a blunderer.

Of course, he was being hard on him. His nephew was a keen lad, though a little bothersome at times. Lászlo's elder sister's son, Sándor had always considered him his favourite relative, and when he had set out with Aeternus, who had incidentally been that very same sister's lover for some time, Sándor had insisted on coming along. And there he was now, a young man of twenty-three, looking for adventure.

Himself, Lászlo thought he had seen quite enough of adventure, but Sándor was not sated that easily, it seemed. Once the silly boy had even tried to run away with a married woman, but normally, he restrained himself. Well, normally.

"How long until we reach the city?" he asked automatically, feeling Aeternus's gaze on him. Sometimes he truly got the idea that he could physically sense it when his liege-lord was looking at him; it made the back of his head tingle somehow.

"It's hard to say," Aeternus replied as Sándor urged his horse forward, eager to hear the answer. "We don't know yet how many encampments and armies there are to avoid. But it should be a matter of a week now."

Lászlo nodded. A troop of cavalrymen had given them trouble before; they had been forced to take a long detour through a forest to avoid detection, and Lászlo was sure he still bore the marks of a wild ride through low-hanging branches… Yet he did not question Aeternus's orders. He rarely ever did. And it was not a matter of obedience. It was a matter of trust.

"But, my Lord," Sándor spoke up, his normally so smooth brow furrowed, as always when he did not quite understand something. "You said that the city is besieged. There must be a ring of encampments around the city. We can't avoid them all at once."

Not looking at the young man, but ahead at the gentle hills in some distance, Aeternus smiled. "And we won't. But leave those worries to me."

And Lászlo knew they would reach the city eventually. If Aeternus said they would, then they would. It was as simple as that.

Seemingly of its own accord, Aeternus's horse began to move along the dusty road again, and Lászlo and Sándor hurriedly heeled their own horses to follow its lead. But Lászlo was not fooled by what seemed to be the horse's decision alone; Aeternus had a way of communicating with it that would go unnoticed by everybody else.

Except another one equally gifted, perhaps.

At once the image of the young man they were bound to encounter at their destination appeared before Laszlo's mind's eye. Young man? Well, no, actually that one was several years older than he was himself, but he did not look like it. And from what Lászlo knew, his features would not change for many a year yet.

It was a strange thing, but one got used to it more or less after spending considerable time with a man who was over four hundred years old and looked just as if he were in his forties, like Lászlo himself.

And all the knowledge and experience Aeternus had collected as the centuries had passed, and all the powers he had developed… Awe took Lászlo every time he considered it. Especially when thinking about the fact that Aeternus could not only look back into the past and behold the present, but also glimpse what lay ahead…

"My Lord," he asked, "can you tell how long this war is going to last?"

For a brief moment Aeternus closed his eyes, and Lászlo thought he could hear him exhale over the sound of the horses' hooves. "Not long," he then said. "Not this single one. The world will have peace again… but for a short time only."

There was a little gasp from Sándor, and as Lászlo turned to look at his nephew, the lad pressed his lips together and stared at his horse's untidy brown mane. The fading sunlight playing on his youthful features made his furrowed brow a pattern of light and shadow. Like his uncle, Sándor knew better than to doubt what their liege-lord perceived.

Aeternus continued softly, as if to himself, but Lászlo knew that it was directed at him really, at him and Sándor. Aeternus never denied an answer to those who kept him company, the only thing he sometimes did was to postpone it. His voice was strangely raspy, but maybe it was just the cold wind arising, stirring the leaves on the road, whirling up spirals of dust. "The world is changing. Even as we speak, time is running out. This age is dying, irrevocably drifting towards the gathering shadows. War will tear the world apart. And from war it shall be born again. This is just the beginning of the end."

The sound of a branch snapping nearby seemed unnaturally loud in the ensuing silence between them, like a whipcrack amid the hoofbeats, giving Aeternus's words a cold, clipped sense of finality. Then Sándor voiced the question which lay on Lászlo's tongue, but which he somehow dreaded to ask, maybe for fear of the answer. "Is this the end of the world, then?"

"What? No." Aeternus laughed softly, and the sudden gloom lifted a little. "Just the end of an old age, the age of imperialism, of kings and queens and patriotism and honour and old glory. For only a few decades from now, all these countries' conflicts will culminate in a greater war than the world has ever seen before, fought with new strategies and weapons, a war that will be carried out into the colonies, that will set the entire world on fire. And when it's over, the world will have changed, the borders drawn anew, sometimes beyond recognition. And then, for a short period, an unsteady peace before the nations will arise yet again to march to war, a war that will even surpass its predecessor, and, in imperialism's last agonies, shake the earth to its foundations. I can already feel the vibrations so much death and destruction cause in the flow of time, millions and millions dying, entire cities wiped from the face of the earth. And after that... a new age will rise out of the ruins of the world, a strange, godless age where everyone pursues his own idols."

"And then the world will have peace again?" But more than that, Lászlo hoped that he would not live to see what his liege-lord had predicted.

"No. The world will never have peace, and you know that. It never had, and it never will. In fact, some of us were created for this purpose alone at the very dawn of time, because war is part of the nature of the world. You know of whom I speak."

"Him?" Sándor asked, and they all knew who he meant. "Will he then take part in this war?"

"He is bound to," Aeternus replied, "ever since his creation. He was made to be a warrior, and to defend the world of old against all evil."

"And yet he didn't." Sándor knew the stories as well as Lászlo did.

"No, because a man is not a war machine, even if you use one of my own kind as such. You met him yourself, after all; he possesses all the qualities a warrior needs, but his wild nature and his consuming passions, resulting in dire hatred and an obsession close to madness, have always been his weakness."

"True, he didn't exactly strike me as a nice person," Sándor muttered, and Lászlo, slightly amused at his nephew's wording, nodded in agreement.

"No, and he never was. Before he built the Pillars of Heaven, the Keeper of the Gates spent long ages in exile, waging war upon the creatures of the Shadow at the rim of the world, together with his loyal companions, who formed an army known as the Black Legion. Wraith they called him, and several other names, most of them not too pleasant, I might say. He was honoured for what he did, and by mortal men equally adored as he was dreaded. But he came close to an outcast amid his brethren, for he was known for his dire, passionate nature, his lust for domination and his cruelty. He travelled every known corner of the world of old, from the Lonely Plains to the Sundering Mountains, and even to the place from where the strange vessels of the Divine set out to sail the void, and it is said that he also stood above the Gate of Night, gazing out into the one shadow that is eternal. But he never returned to his place of birth, if you will call it so, until after the defeat of the Bearer of Light. For when this first self-proclaimed master of darkness was cast down into the Abyss, my kind realized that we would need protection, that the war was carried into the very heart of our realm, and so the Keeper of the Gates devised and built the Pillars of Heaven, and together with those loyal to him he kept unceasing watch on the high, parapet-crowned ramparts, thus earning his name. And because he did his duty so well, because of his valiance and bravery, he was chosen over the Hunter as the leader of the Armies of Light."

"But, my Lord," Sándor interjected, his eyes narrowed, though it was hard to tell if this was because of what Aeternus had been telling them, or just because of the wind, "how could they make him Keeper of the Gates if he was wild and power-hungry and cruel, as you say?"

"It's not as simple as that." Aeternus absent-mindedly patted his steed's bowed neck. "He was not only known for his flaws of character, but also for his honour, and for his loyalty most of all."

"And yet he foreswore his oaths and destroyed his own world by his betrayal," Lászlo interjected before he could stop himself. Whatever Aeternus was planning, and for whatever reason he had been helping this fiend, back then when they had been with Créon and his acolytes, Lászlo could not bring himself to trust the one known as the Phantom.

"Yes, he did. But less for his own hunger for power than for his unrequited love."

"But Créon wanted power," Sándor stated, "and he was with Créon then."

"Indeed. But this is precisely where our one-time companion went wrong with our young friend, a couple of months ago. He did not see that he would not be swayed by being offered the chance of standing at a powerful man's side, that this was not what had lured his desired victim so many ages ago. He attempted to use the girl as well, yes, but he did not truly see what had led the Keeper of the Gates to join league with the Shadow: a mad, passionate love that drove everything else out of his mind. You see, the Herald of Fate – or Créon, as you know him – was a mighty man when he still served the Lord of Shadows in his sacred hall, before he deserted his loyalties, but his pride always was his weakness, for it kept him from perceiving what it truly was that others moved in their hearts. He only ever saw himself. As you know, he and his fellow conspirators, most of all the Lady of Dreams, but also, I must admit, I myself, turned to the darkness because of what forbidden promise it held; we desired power above all else then, whereas the Keeper of the Gates wanted one thing only: to have the love of this mortal girl who loved another of her kind."

Plucking a twig out of his horse's mane, Sándor flicked it away over his shoulder. "Why would any woman take a mortal when she can have a god?"

"You underestimate true love," said Aeternus, smiling, his bright eyes briefly flickering towards the edge of the road, the direction the twig had disappeared to. "Besides, we were powerful, but we never were gods."

Sándor shrugged. He was too young to understand, Lászlo thought. "Anyway," he said, "he didn't get the girl, or did he? I mean, Créon could change fates or something apparently, at least back then, but I doubt it worked, or did it?"

"No, because the Lady of Dreams longed to possess him herself, and from what I know, she persuaded the Herald of Fate to kill the girl."

"Bitch," Sándor said sympathetically.

Aeternus laughed. "Oh yes. You had the pleasure of knowing her, after all. As Créon said himself, but did not truly understand, some things never change."

"Niobe," Lászlo helped his nephew as he saw his blank expression.

At once Sándor's face lit up with realization. "Niobe? Of course! She wanted him! I saw her, in that underground hall at the Opera House, always ogling and pawing him... I bet he didn't want her back then already, though she's the best-looking woman I've ever seen. But she's just... nasty."

How fitting, Lászlo thought. While Niobe had been a woman of great beauty, she had also been overly power-hungry as well as heartless, her coldness surpassed only by that of Créon himself.

Some things never change…

"When the Keeper of the Gates realized he had been betrayed," Aeternus continued, "he turned against his former allies and fought them bravely, and I believe he saved much that would otherwise have been lost, if he cannot even be considered the one who stood in the way of the ultimate triumph of the Shadow on that day. Yet it was too late; his treason could not be undone. And so he and the others, including me, were shorn of much of their powers and cast out into the world, condemned to live forever among mortal men, reborn endlessly until the end of time or, perhaps, until the Gods had mercy on us, forever marked with what brands us as outcasts, even among mortal men."

As Lászlo looked sidewards, he saw that Aeternus's gaze lingered on his black-gloved right hand resting on his saddlebow. On his left, with which he held the reins, he wore no glove.

"But he's remembering now, and it's tormenting him, more perhaps than any other of us. We must reach him, before it is too late. As I just said – some things never change."

Hearing the urgency in his liege-lord's voice, Lászlo hoped that they would be in time. Not that he truly understood what this was about, why Aeternus had been in such a hurry to leave Bavaria so suddenly, and in times like these, and neither did Sándor, he was sure, but he fervently hoped that they would not be too late.

Could the Gods truly be so cruel, to give a man an unchanging fate that might make him drag along all the world into ruin over and over again?