Uh... I would have had this up yesterday, except for the fact that my AOL account got banned. All of it. -.-;;; I did absolutely nothing illegal. (this time ;-)) I've never even recieved a warning! Whyyyyyyy...

Fimbrethil- Yep. As soon as I get the motivation to write it, I will. Which hopefully will be soon, whenever I stop worrying about that magazine submission...

Fireblade K'Chona- Didn't know that.... O.o anyway... he had someone (probably either Sa'heera or another Bard, given the description) describe the colors for him. As for the actual physical features, when he did that 'I touch your face' thing, he got a pretty clear picture. It's how a lot of blind people find out what you look like. Poor Julian doesn't have Daredevil-like powers to see things when it rains. No Firecat, either, so I just went with the finger-touching thing. It added a bit of intimacy to the scene, too, so that's another reason I did it. And I just went off on a tangent, so I'll shut up now.

Thanks are due to Sarah, Amber Stag, Wizard116, and lachrymose. And a big hug for Mischakitsune for betaing.

Disclaimer: One day, I'm going to finish my book, get it published, and then write fanfiction for it. Then I can legally say 'ha, I really do own everything that you recognize.'

Notes: If Tremane had a castle, I've never heard of it. So in here, I'm taking artistic license and naming it myself.

No peaceful bed exists for lamb or lion,

Unless on some world out beyond Orion.

Do not instruct the owls to spare the mice.

Owls acting as owls must is not a vice.

-The Book of Counted Sorrows

Chapter 16: Assassin

The dark figure made his way along the small lip running around the wall of the new castle, clad in dark grays and browns to blend in with the stone. The architects building Castle Freegryph had put much work into making it impenetrable, but they obviously hadn't done their best, seeing that he was able to slip in so easily. After passing fifteen windows, scaling up to another story and climbing carefully under a lit, open window, he made it to the windowpane that shielded his prey from the outside world. Using his small Gift of Magesight, he peered at the window and then through it, attempting to detect any small traceries of magic indicating a trap. There was nothing. He opened the window without a creak and stealthily crept into the room of his second victim, the Lord Rhandon, who oversaw relations with the people of Hardorn. The assassination of their leaders in such a public fashion and in such an order should swiftly result in rioting among the commoners, or so the plan went.

As he pressed himself against the outer wall of the room after closing the window, a dark shape moved against the opposite wall. He automatically tensed, and flicked his wrist, feeling one of the extra poisoned darts kept in an arm sheath drop into his hand. They were kept for just this purpose; unwanted company. With the skill of a master assassin, he drew his hand back and let the small, deadly missile fly, striking his target and killing him before the pain could even register. He waited for precisely three minutes to make sure that the poison had worked, and crossed the room without a sound to investigate the shadow. As he bent over the tiny form, he could vaguely make out fur and a long tail, with pointed ears on top of its head. Just a kitten. Just an ordinary housecat. He pushed the small body away into a corner with his foot, and released another dart, poising it and moving into the lord's chamber.

On the opposite side of the room stood a bed, and sleeping on the bed was the target, entwined in the arms of what had to be a mistress. She couldn't quite get her arms around his bulk, but it looked like she had tried. Undoubtedly she was doing it for money. The figure smirked. She smiled now in sleep, but undoubtedly wouldn't be very happy when she woke up to find herself sharing the bed with a dead man.

He snapped his wrist back and flicked it forward, letting the tiny dart fly to bury itself in one of the folds of the old man's neck. Rhandon took in a deep breath and exhaled it in a small sigh, then relaxed completely, going passively into the dark arms of death.

Job complete.

The figure made his way slowly out of the room, back through the dark outer chamber and out the window. His presence wasn't required right now; he still had time to go back out onto the grounds and change back into his courtly persona, mussing himself just enough to make the alibi that he'd just come back from a brief ride to a tavern plausible.

He untied and mounted the horse that he'd left tethered outside the castle walls, cantering about a bit to make the beast sweaty from the 'ride.'

When he came back inside, the halls were almost completely silent, with the only movements coming from solitary pages wandering the hall, the occasional ineffective guard patrolling the hallway, and once one of the few ratha left behind while the rest went to Castogol. The beast passed him silently like a wraith, deep gray in the shadows, but its tawny fur shimmered in a lone square of moonlight. The assassin had forced himself to continue onward as if nothing was wrong, but he'd immediately thrown up his tightest shields, and the construct had gone by without a word. He breathed a silent sigh of relief when the ratha turned a corner, and then the assassin continued onward, back to his rooms, and his bed. He certainly couldn't report back to the Emperor from here, not with those damned kyree with that unnatural ability to sniff out magework, so he did something completely unassassin-like. He went to bed, determined to get some sleep before the shrieking of the mistress woke the castle.

In another room in the same section of the palace, a Bard stirred uneasily in his sleep, dreaming not of death, but of rejection.

"You what?" Rowen asked blankly.

"I love you, Rowen," Julian replied steadily. "You are the only one that could ever fill my life. You and you alone are my love. No one else has ever sent my heart into painful spasms when they enter a room; no one but you can make me smile when I feel down. You almost make me see again, and I only wish that I could see you, just once-"

"Save it," Rowen told him. "I could never love you in that way, Julian. I'm sorry, but I just don't feel the same way about you-" he gave the Bard a pitying stare." That you feel for me. I'm sorry, Julian."

At Rowen's rebuff, Julian felt his heart tear. He'd just poured his heart and soul out to the warrior, and all the man did was refuse him? Reject all that he was offering?

NO!

The sky split and the ground crumbled beneath Julian as he struggled to find a foothold. He reached for Rowen- to find that the Changechild was on the other side of a wide chasm that Julian was sure hadn't been there before.

"Rowen, help me!" he shouted, attempting to stay upright on ground that he could not see.

Rowen gave him another pitiful look. "I'm sorry, Julian. I don't love you."

I don't love you.

Echo

I don't love you.

Echo

I don't love you.

Julian screamed his pain to the Havens, but no one answered. He was alone on a dusty, windy plain with no one anywhere.

I don't love you.

The cursed words had followed him here.

'I don't love you.' The wind mockingly took up the cry all around him, simultaneously as soft as a baby's breath and as loud as a crack of thunder.

I don't love you.

Julian clapped his hands over his ears.

"Stop it!" he cried in vain, knowing it was useless.

I don't love you.

"Stop it!"

Stop it! Stop it, stop it, stop it stop it stop itstop itstopitstopitstop

Silence. The words were gone, and he heard nothing but the soundless moan of the wind. He was truly, truly alone. He could not see. He had no shelter. He had no friend. He had no Rowen.

In that lonely room in the diplomat's wing, a lonely young man twisted the covers about him and cried silently in his sleep, wanting to confess his love to a person who would never accept it.

The convoy was taking too long! Julian squirmed in his seat. Rowen was in the convoy, oblivious to the world, and it was late! What was taking them?

Masaan laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"It's alright, Julian. They're just a little late."

"A little late? They're a candlemark late! Where are they?"

"Relax, please. You're making me nervous. You know that a Healer can't perform his duty unless he's calm," Masaan chided him.

The Healer had established himself as Julian's chief friend in the Hardornen Court, and kept him up to date on updates from the convoy. The conversation from four days before had been forgotten by both, though Julian still felt some guilt about rejecting Masaan outright.

Later, he'd had one of the recently befriended pages describe Masaan. The little page was only too happy to, for Masaan was apparently his younger uncle, a Healer who had come with Tremane's forces to take over Hardorn. When the plot failed, and the soldiers were stranded in Hardorn, Masaan's older brother, one of the soldiers, had fallen in love with a widowed tavern maid, who'd had only one son- Sendan, the page. Sendan now had a little brother, but he was still the intelligent boy that had been able to become a page, and now he was intelligently helping Julian.

He'd described Masaan as a young man, twenty-one years of age but already an established Healer. Slightly short of stature, but not of heart, he had a neat brown goatee with a slim moustache, and his hair was medium-brown colored, wild and curly. His eyes were a steely grey-blue, and in demeanor he was a comedic young man, with a gentle temper and a smile that could charm a gnat off an ass. He was the exact person that Julian would have been looking for before, but after Rowen... after Rowen, he could never bring himself to love another. His confession had allowed him to realize the exact depths of his feelings for the wild Shin'a'in, and let his inner feelings come into the light.

Rowen was always on his mind; if not on the top, then he would be hiding in the shadows, waiting to burst out in unexpected moments; always there, always lurking.

Before Rowen, it seemed, there had been a void, never fillable by any man woman or child. Now that void was full, and Julian knew instinctively that if the hole appeared again, then he would die. Somewhere in his mind floated the possibility that if their positions were reversed, Rowen would die, too, but it was only half-formed.

Right now, they awaited the appearance of the convoy carrying the dead and injured warriors and Heralds, and the abused women and children of Castogol. All of the men of the town had apparently insisted on accompanying the rescue force to the other towns to help reinforce the imperativeness of the evacuation. A few of the less battered women and children had elected to go with them to establish the ruthlessness of the Empire, and it was working wonders on the bordertowns. Already two of the villages had decided to pack up, and one was already gone. On a dimmer note, several of the farms that the detachment had passed had been found to be ransacked, with no indications to the whereabouts of the inhabitants. One of the farms had obviously been interrupted in the middle of dinner, for there had been plates on the table and food in the ovens, and all of the cattle and horses had been missing- a bad sign. It looked as if the Empire had raided those farms, leaving no survivors.

The assassin still hadn't been caught, and Tremane was still worried, and half of the nobles feared that they would be next. One older man, Lord Rhandon, formerly involved in populace relations had been found dead in his bed three days agone by the mistress that he'd been sleeping with. They'd had their pleasure and gone to bed together, but she'd woken up with a dead man.

Alarm was slowly seeping throughout the castle, palpable to even Julian's weak Empathy. The guards and the mages had no idea of who the killer might be, and the noblility were one and all making up excuses to visit their country estates. It hadn't really affected him, panicked as he already was about Rowen, but he still sensed it. It puzzled everyone. How could the Empire have gotten a spy in this far?

A steady stream was pouring inland from Castogol to the western side of the country, being joined by trickles of other people who had heard of the takeover of Castogol and wished to avoid it. Now Julian and Masaan were waiting in the Entrance Hall of the castle, the taller of the two occasionally getting up to pace up and down the length of the Hall anxiously.

Masaan was about to chastise Julian for worrying so much when Sendan came tearing into the Hall. "Julian, Masaan, the convoy just entered the city walls! There are a lot of wagons, and King Tremane wants every Healer possible on duty to assist the wounded."

Masaan nodded. Obviously he had been expecting this. He bent down to the boy's level- only a few inches, really. The page was tall for his age, and the Healer was short. "Sendan, can you take Julian to the convoy while I go join my fellows?"

The page regarded him scornfully. "Of course. Julian wants to see his lover, and you want me to take him there."

There was an audible gasp from Julian, and Masaan spared him a quick glance to see that the Bard was blushing. That tiny part of him wished that Julian was blushing for him, but he brushed it aside. "Right, Sendan, but just... don't say that to anyone else. If anyone asks where you are taking Julian, tell them that you're taking him to see his friend." He winked at the boy, and Sendan winked back.

"Right." He cleared his throat. "Julian, Sendan, I'll see the two of you later. Good luck with Rowen."

"And you, Healer."

Hiro: Okay, so this chapter was a bit off the wall...