In the Hands of Darkness

Chapter One

"Cyn!" A cold voice barked an order. "Get in here." The young woman, Cyn, was a tall o'rant of around five feet, seven inches, and had waist-length, light auburn hair that had tints of black in some of its strands. Her eyes were a bright golden-brown in color and had a look of sorrow and hardness in them. She sighed and got up from the chair she was in. Fifteen years she had put up with his calling, and in those fifteen years she had had enough. She still moved toward where his voice had boomed, though she really didn't want to.

"What is it, Milord?" She asked in a voice that had the same tone as a dragon's song. Cyn combed her fingers through her hair and walked into a set of large wooden doors. A tall man covered himself in a large black cloak, only showing her the bottom half of his face. She kept her face expressionless as she looked upon him.

"That Paladin has caused trouble for me again. I'll be gone for a few days at least. Don't get into any trouble while I'm gone. Do you understand me? I don't want to have to rebuild another part of the castle." Cyn rolled her eyes and waved her hand dismissively at the comment about her setting half of the castle on fire the last time he had left her alone. Ire let out a short growl and disappeared in a plume of smoke.

"Finally, the old codger is gone." Cyn sighed and walked back to where she had been. She picked up a book that she had pulled out of a shelf and started to read. The entire time that she was reading, she felt as if something was pulling at her. It was like the pull that she felt when she wandered too far away from the castle. Cyn's brow furrowed in confusion and she put a mark on the page she was on and stood up.

The golden-eyed girl walked towards where she thought that the pull was dragging her towards. Suddenly, she found herself outside the castle and still walking. She turned around to go back inside, but then turned right back around and walked towards the pull.

"Hey now, feet, we've got to get back inside the castle! You know as well as I do that Lord Ire won't be happy when he finds out that we went outside. Come on, let's turn around." She begged her still-walking feet. She turned around and took two steps in the other direction and then was forced to turn and walk back the other way.

"All right, fine, be that way. We'll go where you want to go. But then I'll have no sass from you at all do you here me?" Cyn sighed and put a hand to her forehead. "Oh, wonderful, I'm talking to my feet. What has the world come to?" She murmured sourly to herself.

She continued walking until she got past the courtyard and into the forests beyond the castle. Now she was starting to get nervous. The forests were so overgrown and dark and she was used to being in the castle and in the tidy, well-kept courtyards of the castle. Why was she being pulled out of her comfort zone?

"I know, it's Paladin's fault! Lord Ire always says that Paladin is out to get him! Maybe he's found out about me when he wasn't supposed to! Maybe I'm being spelled!" That seemed like a good-enough explanation to her, but she still couldn't be sure. Kat'al, one of the bisonbecks that frequented the castle, had told her of once incident where Paladin had turned back a whole flock of dragons with a word. She hadn't really believed him then, but if it was true, she wouldn't put anything past the evil force of Paladin.

She continued walking until the castle was just a distant speck to her. Her whole body shivered in fear. She had never been this far away from the castle and Lord Ire was sure to find out about what she had done.

But he can't blame me if it's Paladin's fault and not mine, can he? She paused for a moment to think about it. Yes, yes he can. She finally answered herself. He will say that I was too weak to block out the enchantment that that scourge Paladin put on me. Oh, this will end in disaster. Feet, please, let's go back! She yelled at her feet mentally and then sighed at the insanity of it all.

She couldn't even remember the way back to the castle now, though she thought that she had gone in a straight line since leaving. Maybe if she just turned right back around and kept going, she would find it again. Her feet let her walk two steps before turning around again. She threw her head back in exasperation and groaned.

Lord Ire will have my head if I go any farther. I'm no use to him now, so I don't see why he keeps me around anyway. Maybe he can't see the same thing. Maybe after this, he'll kill me. She shuddered in fear though her feet kept walking unperturbed. I don't want to die. Feet, I'm begging you to go back to the castle!

As her feet ignored her and she kept going, she looked at the bruises around her wrist that were still purple though the beating had been almost a month ago. She had seen the bruises around her neck and on her back that morning. They looked much better than they had been, but they were still ugly bruises. She sighed and imagined what he would do to her this time, when Sauftaughepper, the tumanhofer maid that had raised her from the time she was young, told him that she'd run off not an hour after he had left. He might even be there now, looking for her.

The pull was getting stronger and stronger and she found herself near a humongous bolder on the side of a hill. There was just enough room for her skinny form to crawl underneath it and into a passage behind it. She did so, though she really didn't know why. When she got into the cavern, it was filled with light golden-yellow glowrocks. She looked around her in awe and then noticed something in shadow in the far corner of the cavern.

She tilted her head to the side, her now-dirty reddish-black hair falling over her shoulder, and moved toward it. The pull was extremely strong now and she feared that in that corner would be a trap-holding gateway, though she couldn't see one. She kneeled down at the edge of the light and reached forward. In a small niche in one of the rock walls was a whole catch of small, oval stones that were a pale yellow. She touched one of them and picked it up and the color turned in the light. It was now the same yellow as the glowrocks.

Again, without knowing what she was doing, she took off the sash that tied her long tunic to her waist. She pulled each stone out of the niche and laid them in the sash. She tied it back around her waist, pulling one out to hold. The enchantment was gone.

So it was little stones that were enchanting me? I've never heard of that before. I guess I'll ask Hep when I get home. If I can get home. She crawled carefully back out of the passage that she had used and began her long trek back to the castle. She noticed that when she got back out of the cavern that the sky had turned from the light of day to the dark of night. Her legs ached for rest and she decided that she would sleep back in the cavern and go home tomorrow.

Yes, I'll explain everything to Hep then. She'll understand, she just has to. She knows everything that I do and then some. She'll know that it wasn't my fault that I wandered. She comforted herself with those thoughts and curled up to go to sleep, the odd, color-reflecting stone held tightly in her hands.