Ch. 15

Ch.1, S.1
Ch.1, S.2
Ch.1, S.3
Ch.2, S.1
Ch.2, S.2
Ch.2, S.3
Ch.3, S.1
Ch.3, S.2
Ch.3, S.3
Ch.4, S.1
Ch.4,S.2
Ch.5,S.1
Ch.5,S.2
Ch.5,S.3
Ch.6,S.1
Ch.6,S.2
Ch.7, S.1
Ch.7, S.2
Ch.8, S.1
Ch.8, S.2
Ch.9, S.1
Ch.9, S.2
Ch.10, S.1
Ch.10, S.2
Ch.11, S.1
Ch.11, S.2
Ch.12, S.1

Ch.12. S.2

Ch.13

Ch.14

~*~

“Did you hear her laughing?” Wrec asked the air, for his only living companion was deaf to him, kneeling on the floor in despair, the object of his mourning lain peacefully upon her bed.
Trygg lay on the bed near Belle’s cold, ivory feet. It was his place, as it always had been, only now he did not seem like he would ever get up. Either the effect of twice-bewitchment had stricken him, or the beast was actually heartbroken.
 Gerrin had climbed the stairs in silence when he had entered the cottage moments before. He had carried his lifeless burden up them slowly and softly laid her on her bed. When he had lowered her head gently on her pillow, he had leaned close to her face and whispered half-formed words to her, his voice lost in lament. She alone would have comprehended them. But she could not hear him.
After a while, he sunk down beside her and openly wept, holding her lifeless, still-warm hand against his lips.
“She was laughing,” Wrec said, shock and anger in his tone, as if the substance of Mirielle’s laughter had become more and more offensive to him as he remembered it. “You didn’t hear it?” Again he went unanswered, and left the room abruptly, but Gerrin did not look up or notice.
He returned after while, dripping wet, with an open bottle of wine in hand, to find Gerrin had not moved from the floor beside the princess’s bed.
“I’m sorry Gerrin, but there’s something more you must know,” said his uncle, before ceasing to move or look at his nephew for several moments. But Gerrin was not looking away from his fallen princess and thus did not see the anguish with which Wrec’s news was brought forth. “The sorceress has taken Cora.”
Then came a pause that was filled with the harried sound of wind and rain against the house and the smell of the wine Wrec then swiftly quaffed with a look of distaste.
“I know,” Gerrin finally replied, his voice faint but audible, full of resignation. “I was too late for them both.” His head, already sunk, fell even lower in defeat.
Wrec put the bottle down. “Don’t throw aside all hope, lad. Cael’s horse is gone. He pursues them, I’ve no doubt.”
“Why would he do that?” Gerrin asked. “I saw his heart laid bare in an instant, and it was for Clarabelle and no one else.” There was no jealousy in his voice, just a cold statement of fact.
“‘Cause the lad’s both brave and foolish. And perhaps also in the discouragement that Belle would never love him back.”
Gerrin looked up, but not at his uncle. He stared at the wall, his eyes bloodshot and heavy with tears. “How do you know she did not love him in return?”
“She loved you.” Wrec took another long draft of the wine.
“You cannot know that.”
“I know you’ve protected her from the queen with the utmost of your power; you’ve loved her with sacrificial love. You’d do anything for her. You’d die for her. How could she face that reality unaffected? Of course she loved you.”
“Leave me Uncle, I cannot bear to have half-comforts that no longer matter. She is gone.”
Wrec stepped back a few steps. Unlike Gerrin, his feelings about the night’s events were held under an inward burden, as of heated stone. The stone was heavy, lending to calm, but it heated that which it pinned down, so that the anger, the regret, and the guilt would all eventually boil into a vendetta. Under it, he saw his nephew’s pain, and tried not to relate it to his own.
He drunk deep and finished the bottle, dashing it to pieces on the floor. Gerrin did not even flinch, though it was a motion violent enough to stir Trygg from his trance for an instant.
“I can’t stay here long, Gerrin.” Wrec said, his right hand finding his brother’s deer in his breast pocket. “I’ll follow Cael or seek the queen my own way, but I have to see Cora safe and the witch-queen destroyed.”
He looked over his nephew in silence for a moment. “The only thing staying me is you; I’m not leaving until you look at me.”
Gerrin turned his face to him unseeing.
“Can I tell you the rest of my story, Gerrin? Will you here me out just once, before I leave you?” He said it as if he would never return, and his eyes were beseeching.
Nodding his head faintly, Gerrin agreed.
Wrec walked across the room slowly, shards of glass crunching beneath his boots, until he stood looking out the window that faced part of the sea, and part of the wood. He could decipher little of the dark world beyond, but he still looked.
“When I was here last…” he paused, as if recalling the lifetime that had passed since then. “… I was with Tobias, my advisor. He had become steward of the manor for me, so my wife Jane and I could move to this plot and live a humbler life than the Lordship offered. We both hated it, having servants and balls and such. She was a timid woman, and happier left to herself. And I was happier without the reminders of my brother I saw everyday in the manor.”
As he paused, he looked at Gerrin, who might have been listening but whose countenance was so dejected, he could not tell. And he looked at the glass on the floor, briefly regretful, as if wishing the bottle would reform from its shards and refill itself. The mental digression passed, and he went on.
“On the last morning I would dwell in this land, Tobias brought me news of pirates offshore. We overtook them at sea and managed to blow a few holes in their hull before they escaped. When we returned to shore, I had a dread I couldn’t explain, an’ it made me anxious to return to my wife. I arrived to find her... nearly dead… there was nothing to be done.” Wrec’s voice faltered, though he seemed to be trying to tell the tale quickly and get it over with. “I held her until she passed, whispering in her deaf ears my undying love for her.” He stopped again, too choked with emotion to continue for the moment. “She had been killed by pirates… whom I had been foolish enough to let strike while I attacked their decoy at sea.”
He clenched his fists until he nearly broke the deer, but stopped in time to drop it before it was rent in two.
“Perhaps you understand the rage that filled me.” He turned from the window to look back at Gerrin. “Perhaps you understand why it was not long before my mind began to go down a dark road upon which there was no return. I was lord in Vodaglas, responsible for the safety of everyone in my borders, answerable to the king, but even more so to myself, and I could not stay and allow this to happen again or go unpunished. I thought of going to your father, but I was too stubborn. My need for vengeance was all that was left to take full hold of my mind.
“I kissed my wife one last time and laid her on her bed, as you have done with your princess.” He looked away again, as if remembrance was too strong at the sight of the girl so still and silent before them. “Then I took a torch and set the thatch of my home on fire, leaving it to smolder with the impression of my death. They had taken away the last reason I had not to abandon my life. So with only my sword, I hunted them down, one by one.
“I pursued the trail they left through the woods, as they made their campaign west and north without any in Vodaglas aware besides the poor wretches around the outskirts on whom they quietly preyed.
“Such wrath had never belonged to me before or since; I wiped them out. It neither slaked my blood lust nor brought me pride to find such thorough victory. When I had finished my pursuit of the scattered marauders, taking each of their lives to pay for the one they took from me, I had a new mission. Resuming the name I had long denied, I felt somehow I would purge my guilt in the blood of the wicked. But I was lost to my rage.
“I became a captain of those willing to join me from each of the small towns I came to in pursuit of the pirates. Men who had lost as much as I had or who had the spark for adventure I had once known in my youth. These were my new family. All that remained was to get a ship and take our fury out to sea, and leave our memories behind us. It was not long before this too was accomplished.
“I had spent all of my days in this obsession, until I began to fear for my brother’s safety in Dunarii. But I was too late in reaching him. I had spent too much time pursuing the Southies on their own shores. So I ask myself day after day why I did not go to him sooner; why I have failed, over and over again.”
Wrec’s visage, already dark under the weight of confession, was further blackened by the need to answer his own question. “I’ll never stop asking,” he said. “I was too late in finding my wife, in defending my brother’s shores, and in finding you to make the amends that would settle my heart at rest. Now all I can hope to do is devote myself to finishing the battle I’ve been destined for—the battle against my weakness.
“I’ll prevail at last. I’ll go out in glory and I’ll renew my honor, but even if I don’t—even if my end is miserable or humiliating—I will not fail to see Cora safe. I will not fail to unite the last remnant of my family, even if I have to fight every pirate scourge that trespasses on these lands.”
“This is no pirate, Wrec,” Gerrin said. “She will destroy us all. We cannot dare to hope.”
“Nay, my lad. All we can do is hope.”
Gerrin blinked twice then held his eyes shut. “Then I should come with you. My sister will need me…” he said it as if talking in his sleep, but his uncle interrupted.
“Nay, nay. Your princess is here.”
Gerrin stood up suddenly as if jolted awake and approached his uncle, grabbing his shoulders so the two men were eye to eye. “Belle is gone,” he said through clenched teeth. “Do not torment me!”
Wrec gently removed Gerrin’s tensed hands from his shoulders and wrapped his own arms around him in a fatherly embrace. “Gerrin, you must remain here. Powers I can neither know nor stifle are lingering here. I feel it in my bones… like I feel the tempest as it sweeps closer to shore. I know as well that you need to remain with the princess as I know the sun will rise.”
“And if it never does?” Gerrin asked, his question sincere in all its bleakness. They each looked to the window, out to the dark world.
“It will, lad. It will.” Wrec’s confidence thinned in the assertion, but Gerrin did not hear as much in the old man’s firm voice. He stepped back from his uncle slowly. Beneath Gerrin’s eyes there moved an indescribable change, but it was obscured, only evident for an instant. He turned around and went back to his beloved, kneeling at her side, holding her limp hand to his cheek.
“Godspeed, Wrec,” he said, his voice weak but resolute. “Here I will stay.”
As Wrec was about to leave the room, he turned back to his nephew once more. “Wrec never existed,” he said. “I am Shane.”
 And with that he was gone.
 
~*~

Ships lined the horizon, too numerous to count, but each decipherable by their black or crimson sails, lit occasionally by flashes of silent lightning. “Southies,” Shane said to himself, staring out across the sea. The rain had ceased, but everything about the sky was as black as it had been all night, aside from frequent streaks of unnaturally noiseless lightning. A disturbing sight, Wrec wondered if this deviation from natural order boded that the night would stretch on without end, and that his own assertion to his nephew about the coming dawn had been based on unreality. He found himself in a new reality, one in which he could make few assumptions.
But there was one assumption he knew he had to make.
The ships that lined the horizon—vessels he had somehow been afraid of seeing all night—these were not a coincidence. The war that they were bringing was not their own. It was hers. And in light of all he had committed himself to do for his niece, and against the queen, and the position he found himself at the feet of the war and lost in the dust of the queen’s trail, he knew of only one immediate course.
His horse brayed and tossed her head, unwilling to go down the sloping prairie toward the shore. So Wrec dismounted and pulled her, heading toward the manor.
When he arrived he did not knock, but procuring a key, unlocked the kitchen entrance, having tied his horse to the garden fence, and entered the darkened kitchen for the first time in over a decade.
Familiar smells swept memories with them into his head, and he quickly left the silent room to escape the barrage. He could not linger to recall times long past, whether in pain or in sweet recollection.
He worked his way up staircases and halls he knew well, to the master’s suite, where he knew his old friend would be at rest.
He knocked this time, rather impatiently.
“Maddock? Are the grounds disturbed?” Tobias’ nervous voice came from within, growing louder as he came to the door and opened it, holding aloft a candle.
“No old friend, it’s your own Master come to beg favors,” Shane answered in his usual unaffected way, as he took in Tobias’ startled face by the light of the candle that the old man held unsteadily. He nearly dropped it, but Shane took hold of it, and of Tobias himself, who nearly collapsed. He helped him to a bench outside the bedroom.
“Perhaps you should post guards inside in the future,” Shane said casually.
“I hadn’t thought I would need them to guard me from ghosts,” Tobias replied.
The men looked at each other for a solid moment; perhaps they would have laughed together at such a strange encounter at some other time in their lives. But neither did now.
Tobias broke their mutual stare as he rubbed his eyes. His shaking was easing, but he was still disheveled from sleep, his face sagging with age and fatigue. “How can this be, my friend? Do not tell me you have come to bear me away with you to the world beyond.”
“Nay, my friend, I bring news that is not much better, but I must give it nonetheless. The usurper queen is preparing to unleash a force, as we have never seen; one to subdue the land and enslave the people of the known world.”
Tobias’ shock was not hard to understand. He had not yet been reconciled even to the reality of the man before him he had long thought dead, and now he was expected to receive further news of greater portent, almost in the same breath.
“Wrec, my old friend, if it’s truly you, tell me how you have come to be here and how you can possibly know of war plans?”
“I’ve been dead, Tobias, several times, but never in body. Wrec indeed is dead, and I won’t bring him back. Now Shane stands before you with an urgent purpose, and we can’t linger over explanations.”
He arose from his seat beside Tobias on the bench and ran to the end of the long hallway, where a large, curtained window stood facing out to sea. “Come quickly,” he said. He threw open the curtains and pointed to the horizon.
Even with his bad eye and in the midst of darkness, Tobias saw instantly from the window’s view the realization of his friend’s words. Alien sails filled the sea with menace, each ship a silent shadow gliding into the bay.
“We must act now or never,” Shane said.
“The queen is behind this?” Tobias was shocked.
Shane nodded solemnly.
“Wrec…”
“Shane,” he corrected.
Tobias looked even more bemused but pressed on, “What do you expect me to do?”
“I expect only that you do what is right. If you gather men, I’ll be among them. If you do nothing, I’ll gather ‘em myself and lead the defense, but I’ll sorely regret your absence at such a time as this.”
“The world is madness,” Tobias said in a daze.
“I’ve no delusions, Tobias. I’ll see my death in this business, but no force of madness or reason could sway me. I intend to complete my purpose before my final breath. So I come to ask, are with me?”
“You give me the choice? In living do you not retain the title of lord and master of this city? I will do then as you ask.”
“I told you, Lord Wrec is dead. You are lord here. But we can’t remain another moment. Give me your answer, man, and be quick.”
Tobias looked at his friend, squinting, as his wife came quietly into the hall and handed him his monocle and a heavy robe. “What is going on?” she asked before she was able to recognize Shane, who swiftly turned his back to her and drew the curtains.
“Fey, go back to your chamber,” Tobias said with full command, though dread marked his tone. “You will stay there. I will send the servants to you. Keep them with you in the room and lock the door.”
His wife’s face blanched. “What is going on? What time is it?”
He guided her gently back to the door to her room and Shane watched him speak gently to her until she began to cry. He heard nothing of their quick words of parting except the morbid question Fey could not help but voice.
“Why is it so dark?”
He did not hear Tobias’ reply.
He watched them embrace and reluctantly part. When her chamber door was shut, Tobias turned and looked at his friend. The new Lord of Vodaglas was now fully steadied in visage, his eyes clear and full of decision. “We make haste,” he said. “Follow me.”

~*~

For the rest of what was naturally ordained as night, Gerrin did not sleep. He kept watch. To what purpose, he was uncertain. The stillness about him implied no disturbance to be anticipated, and no conceived danger was expected to further rob his lifeless charge. What more could be done to her? Nothing; the blow was complete. Yet all through that solemn night, he remained alert beside the absent frame of his love.
He had stared at her through those hours of unswerving darkness, and for a while, he had held her hand so that it would stay warm to counterfeit the warmth of life. It was a desperate clinging to what he suspected was delusion, therefore his heart could withstand it only shortly.
Before long he had to release her and turn away, distracting himself with inner musings that the morning had died with his beloved. The intensity of this night gave no room for a glimpse of dawn.
He wondered if perhaps he was caged within an eternity that he alone perceived, where the night was unending, and his love would lie lifeless forever, and he utterly alone in the company of her abandoned shell. For even his living companion, his loyal beast, seemed a haunting of himself, as if the beastly soul of the wolf had gone vacant at Clarabelle’s departure.
These mental distractions were neither fruitful nor encouraging for Gerrin, so instead he paced, trying to think of nothing at all. The darkness continued to move eerily outside the windows, casting variegating patterns over the glass like liquid smoke, but the strange darkness could not reach Clarabelle’s bed, as it lay in the soft cast of candlelight. A dozen candles burned, and Gerrin continued to light and replace them as they melted away, a useful distraction, though not engrossing.
His mind would not settle on passing moments, but found either thoughts of gloom and despair, or glimpses of memories. It brought back to him pictures of Belle in her quiet beauty, the light upon her face; the small, fragile vulnerability of her as he carried her away from the queen’s first attempts to harm her. Then his mind was quick to recall the way she had lain limply in his arms as he had carried her away from the queen the last time, just hours before, having failed her despite everything.
Suddenly his mind needed more distraction.
It was when he had gone to get another batch of candles from the cellar that he realized he maintained a fear for Clarabelle. He felt a pull to remain near to her, beyond the mourning and resignation that would otherwise bind him there. When he was out of her presence, a frigid emptiness closed in around him, and he was desperate to be rid of it. The only response he could have was to rush back to her, but he warred within himself over the strange compulsion. He told himself again and again that she was dead, but his heart rebelled and forced tormenting hopes. It was not a calm struggle within him, but a vicious battle, which raged within and brought forth on the surface a physical response of fire and ice in his throat and a vise cutting into his stomach.
When he returned with more candles, each trembled as he lit it and set it atop the puddle of wax that it replaced. He willfully stilled his trembling and returned to Belle’s bedside, but he found that he could not touch her anymore. The creeping thought that something more was happening made the hope of her return to life and fear of his own heart breaking again in disappointment all the worse.
He felt a fool. The certainty of his mental downfall was not unconscious—he was all too aware of encroaching madness. To even consider that there was a chance for Belle, for some unearthly resurrection... no, he could not allow the delusion.
It was only now, several hours since Shane had left, that he felt an urgent need to take her lifeless hand in his own again. Yet he was not ignorant of the touch of ice it would now return, so many hours since her passing. He resisted the urge and looked instead upon her pale face, still and soft and peaceful. It was smudged with dirt, her hair dried in soiled clumps that brought to remembrance the fowl ground upon which her enemy had caused her to fall.
At last turning his eyes from her, Gerrin stood looking at the floor, watching the dark streaks of night warring with the sheaths of weak candlelight upon the floorboards, and listening to Trygg’s continual whine. It was a sorrowful, regretful sob—if such a thing could come from a wolf.
Gerrin went to Clarabelle’s water basin and placed a cloth in it, carrying it over to wash her face. He was reluctant to do it, fearing somehow that she would melt away at his touch. But he managed to wipe her cheek without faltering. When her face was washed clean, he brought the entire basin to the side of the bed and washed her feet, trying to still his emotion. He had to stop and suppress a sob into the folds of her skirts, dropping the cloth…giving up.
Trygg stood up and quietly stepped down from the bed. As he looked at his wolf’s eyes, Gerrin sought a comfort or understanding that in them he could not glean, and the beast lowered his head and walked slowly out of the room.
It was then that the first notion of burying Belle came into Gerrin’s mind, appalling his senses and twisting his stomach in further pain. A vision entered his mind of the falling dirt, thudding softly as it encased her in the earth, and gave him the sudden compelling to take her hand. He rushed to her side and took the pale fingers in his own, kissing them, forgetting the dread he had for their cold and lifeless touch.
Almost before his fingers had found their hold on Belle’s, Gerrin could sense Trygg behind him, coming back into the room. They both knew at once, Gerrin because he held her hand, and Trygg because the beast was of the inhuman class of creatures able to know beyond their comprehension, that the hand Gerrin held was full of life.
It had been unknown hours that had seemed eternal to Gerrin since he had brought her here, and now he did not believe his senses. The hand he held was as warm as his own, if not warmer. There was still no pulse, nor even the slightest movement, but the frozen hand of this lovely young woman was permeating with the warmth of life.
Gerrin could not react. He realized he was probably fabricating his own sign of a hope he wanted to believe in more than anything. Trygg was still behind him, slowly approaching. Gerrin turned to him for confirmation, watching as the creature came to Belle’s side and nuzzled her cheek. He licked her and whined softly, and Gerrin almost expected her to awaken. When Trygg had returned to his place beside her on the bed, his countenance was altered, his whine merely a whine, and no touch of hopeless mourning remained to it. Had he been observant of it, Gerrin might have recognized it as a whine of impatience, but he was engrossed by one thing only.
 Gerrin felt Belle’s face—it was as warm as her hands, though all the glowing shades of pink had been stricken from her cheeks. She had the look of death; she ceased to breathe; and yet this warmth remained—this teasing, unfathomable warmth.
Gerrin started pacing the floor, wonder, delight, fear, awe, dread, all mingled within him. Three or four steps were all he took before he rushed back to Belle’s side and took her hand in his once more, holding it against his face. 
There was no need for consideration, every fiber of him was now certain of his purpose, and somewhere under the misery his heart still would not release, a hope was rekindled. He would not fail again to protect her.
He knew what had been the intention of the queen. This was not a trick. Her purpose had not been to harm alone, but to kill Clarabelle. She would not have left her work unfinished unless she had failed unknowingly. But if the princess were restored, unless in this restoration the queen was destroyed, it would be for naught.
Gerrin paced again, his mind reeling, but his heart sure. There was no physical work to be done. Any and every measure to restore her by human means would fail, for she was not held in half-death by human measures, but a dark power that the queen herself, as a human, could not possibly command. If Mirielle had been the commander of this power, Gerrin wondered, would not her will have made the blow fully fatal? But this darkness was beyond even Mirielle to control, and likewise its antithesis beyond the human means of a man such as Gerrin, or any other.
As Gerrin blew out the candles and tied on his cloak, he was not certain of the path he had now chosen to take. It had not been the result of great thought, or even complete thought. But he knew nothing else to do, and he could not be stagnant and wait for a miracle that might never come on its own. Half-death was not a natural state, and for all Gerrin knew, it could collapse in on itself and become true death without warning.
Like so many times of greater hope, Gerrin lifted Belle once more from her bed and carried her down the staircase, out into the darkness of what might have been midmorning. It was a truly indecipherable sky. Though hours had passed far beyond the span of night, the darkness had only deepened.
The world as it was, in its unnatural tilt, sustaining life in the most precarious of states, made urgency of the essence. Time was a subtle enemy, preventing Gerrin from considering taking the wagon. Instead he carefully sat Belle on the saddle of his horse, climbing on behind her so that she was sitting up, her limp head resting against his chest. When he had covered her with his cloak, he urged his horse forward, and they rode into the void that had overtaken the woods, heading north.

In the midst of his striving and making haste, Gerrin did not think upon the wolf. Trygg had watched his master take the princess away on their horse, and when they were gone, the beast was left standing in their field, frozen in what a human might recognize as indecision. He looked with his uncanny sight over the path of his master through the darkened woods, then turned his sage gaze to the shores of Vodaglas, being quietly overrun with unfriendly sails. Then at last the beast set out, heading northwest, skirting between the southern edge of the woods and the northern edge of the town. His strength only diminished enough in the aftermath of his twice-cursed encounters with the queen to make him more the equal of a lesser beast, he still made his way with stealth and speed, and as keen a purpose as any human actor in this battle of darkness and light.

~*~

The tide was ebbing as Shane listened to Tobias give orders to his men in harsh whispers, in the dark. They were behind the westernmost portion of the south wall, which was so close to the bay that during high tide the arms of the sea embraced the wall up to half its height.
Only the men on overnight duty and in Tobias’ direct command were able to join them; there was not enough time to gather any more. Their little party of twenty-nine stood behind the wall and watched through its embrasures as the pirates approached the bay.
Tobias would give the signal and the entire town would be alerted at once, the highest alarm sounded, should the pirates take to the city, but for some reason, Shane did not expect it. He had simply advised Tobias to make certain men ready, hidden, and quietly watch.
So there they stood at the wall, watching and waiting. The pirate vessels came silently to the shore, one by one, orderly, silent as the softly lapping waves. The first ship to loose men on the shore made everyone nervous, Shane holding his sword as if it was molded to his hand, Tobias poised to give the alert signal, the other men terrified at the sight of so vast a party of foreign intruders.
Shane held his breath as he watched the captain of the first ship jump from the hull he had climbed down, landing knee-deep in the Vodaglas Bay. He looked around him and signaled his men to come down, and down they came, arrayed in gear of war, not piracy. Heavy metal armor and feathered helmets were donned by most, thick leather on others, many bearing swords, though most carried axes and still others spears with toothed tips.
When the first wave of southerners had set their feet ashore, many more began to follow with a different kind of cargo in their possession. Men, often in groups of at least three, led down the docking planks wild creatures as had never been seen on northern shores, chained and whipped with cutting cords. Beasts no man could tame; large cats, beasts with horns and armored hides, wolf-like creatures of grand proportions and regal coats. Some were caged in gigantic iron-barred crates that had to be wheeled carefully to shore by a half dozen men.
“What manner of creature are these?” Tobias quietly asked.
“Common carnivores in the jungles of Gefahr and Suntha, and some rare tigers from Myrkrii,” Shane replied. “Creatures we shall have against us. It will be a shame to put a blade to any such beast.” 
As the last of the first ship’s crew were finishing unloading their strange cargo and leading them up the shore and over the hill into the woods on the outskirts of the town, the next two ships made anchor. Shane and Tobias watched with slight relief as the rest of the fleet was dispersing further down the shore.
“You are right. They are war troops, I can see that for certain,” Tobias whispered to Shane. “Where are they going if not Vodaglas?”
“They march to the queen’s bidding, and her favored dwelling is in the North. I presume that is where they go.”
“Then they will leave this place unmolested?”
He received no answer, but kept watching. Sure enough, men from each of the three nearest ships, when they had finished unloading supplies, formed a party that began to quietly break off from the others who headed north through the woods. These men headed northeast, on the other side of the Western Wall. Shane knew then that the town was not going to be overlooked, at least by some of the pirates.
“Should I give the signal?” Tobias asked.
“Nay. If we alert the town, the swine will have warning; time to escape and tell their compatriots,” Shane replied. “I count four and thirty headed toward the wall’s gate. We can meet them before they reach the city and prevent them from harming anything or alerting the other ships.”
“Tell my men what to do,” Tobias replied.
The group was quickly, quietly instructed and they spread out around the only western gate of the city, where the potential plunderers were headed if indeed they would attack. Tobias deferred to Shane in arranging their men and waiting, but after only a few minutes, they all seemed to perceive that something was wrong.
“They do not approach,” said the scout, who had been placed at the front of the party to spot them.
Shane groaned as quietly as he could and then cursed. “Everyone, follow me, they do not strike the city.”
Tobias shivered, he now knew what Shane knew. The pirates would take loot and lives as they pleased on the outskirts of town before meeting with the larger groups heading north. But Shane would make it his duty not to let them succeed.
Under Shane’s orders the band spread out and checked on all the homesteads and farms in the area, at least three men in each dispersing party. When they reached a farm that had not been attacked, they recruited all able-bodied men and boys within their homes to join them. And when they came upon the marauders in the act, they swiftly and succinctly routed their efforts. By the end of an hour, twenty-one pirates had been apprehended and killed, seven wounded and taken captive, and the other half dozen escaped or were not found at all.
When his group had reassembled, Shane questioned one of their bleeding captives. “What purpose guides your foul corpses to our shores?” he asked, feeling he already knew the answer.
“Our war is against your whole people,” the pirate replied, “Even your Queen.”
“Then why did you come at her beck and call?”
“We’re led by fools, who think they’ll join her, but I know better. She’ll see she uses us and then destroys us, like she destroys all the dogs she reigns over. Especially your ugly race.”
Shane slapped him for his final statement, though he knew the man spoke truthfully about the queen and her dealings.
“Where do your leaders go?”
The pirate began to laugh deeply, though blood ran from his mouth.
Shane drew his sword and put it to the pirate’s throat. “Where do the beasts of war and soldiers go?”
The pirate laughed, coughing, no dread at facing his end and his maker, though both were imminent for the loathsome creature. “An’ who’s it thinks he’s the right to know?”
Shane threw the man down and tore off his own cloak and shirt, tossing them aside and standing tall and fierce before the dozens of younger men before him. It was too dark for anyone to see what marked his form, until someone brought forth a torch. When it was brought near and held over the captain, it shone over skin almost wholly engulfed by burn scars that stretched from his chest downward, though his face, neck, and arms were free from marks.
This was a part of Shane’s history he had not shared with Gerrin, for he knew it would not help him, and perhaps only tempt him to emulate his uncle’s extremes.
Long after he had taken his vengeance on the pirates who killed his wife, so long after that he was already at sea, Shane had been driven to wanton abandon. He had left his crew behind him with only a rowboat, telling them not to expect him to return. Stranding himself in Gefahr, the southern haven of pirates and murderers, Shane began a campaign of burning.
He was stealthy, setting fires to important buildings and palaces of the wealthiest liege lords and getting away before he could be apprehended. But eventually he succumbed to a great madness and decided to remain in the meetinghouse he had set ablaze one summer night. He had decided as much at the open door, as he was about to leave. So he just stood there until the smoke overwhelmed him and he collapsed unconscious on the floor, his upper body actually landing slightly outside the door.
It was not an easy task for providence to spare Shane’s life. The blaze would have destroyed him utterly if not for two unique events, the first being that it began to rain, and the water poured over his face and arms, preventing them from burning, and retarding the fire that crawled along his torso. The second being that his men had followed his trail of fire along the shore and had finally decided to join him in his madness that very night, and the same came upon him before any pirates had the chance.
He had awoken as the rain hit his face, struggling to pull himself out the flames without any aid. His men found him writhing in pain a few feet from the blazing structure, which moments later collapsed. Had he been inside, there would have been no chance of survival.
They took him back onboard his vessel and tended his burns until he was well again. His body recovered, as did his mind, but his unsatisfaction had grown. He had gained new respect among everyone, becoming in their eyes something more than human. One who could burn everything he touched yet never be engulfed.
It was after he recovered that he and his men began new tactics of warfare against the Southies, burning relentlessly when they could.  Shane, as their leader, earned quite a reputation.
Now in the torchlight, as his scars were bared for all to see, the pirate’s face was stricken with fear and unbelief. He suddenly forced himself up from the ground, crawling on his knees, his wrists bound behind him, until he knelt below Shane. “If you are ‘he that burns,’ kill me quickly.” 
All around them were hushed.
“I am he. Tell me where the six who escaped will go to meet the rest, and I may yet let you live,” Shane replied.
The man showed new reverence, bowing to the earth as he answered. “They told us, ‘Go north and leave the woods behind, and as the blackness grows, follow the lightning to the mountain pass.’”
‘He that burns’ found his sword tip at the pirate’s throat again. “Name the foul meeting place,” he commanded.
“The Valley of Ash,” said the pirate.
“Can you walk?”
“Kill me, please, kill me quickly,” he replied, coughing again, and shriveling into a heap on the ground.
Shane looked upon the miserable pirate unmoved. His eyes dulled so it was not a cowering man before his face, but a minion of evil. He could have struck the fatal blow the man so desired, but he never had the chance.
“Maddock!” Tobias called his manservant to where he stood near Shane and the pirate. “Take a few others, you will bring our captives to the town. Keep them in the jail. Gather every man in town not already with us, and every man you can gather on your journey. Bring as many horses and supplies as can be brought and meet us to the east of the Ashen Mountain pass as quickly as you can reach it.”
Shane looked at Tobias, wondering at his old friend’s compassion. Shane was ready to kill his captive, out of pity, if for no other reason. But it was not to be, and it did not matter, he told himself. He began to put his shirt back on, then his cloak.
“Send scouts ahead of you when you are near the Ashen Mountains,” Shane said to Maddock and his men, who were ready with their captives to head back to the city. “You’ve two days at most or you work in vain. And don’t judge the time by the sky. It won’t cease to deceive ‘til the battle’s over.”
Maddock led the coughing pirate away, the fiend looking back all the while at ‘he that burns,’ with eyes that burned in reverence and agony.
After this strange skirmish was resolved and the small party sent back to town, those who joined from the farms and outskirts made the total of men under Shane and Tobias forty-three, with forty horses and some odd supplies. So insignificant a force, it would seem, when facing an army of unknown vastness, but they set out nevertheless.
Their supplies were few, their men meagerly accoutered for battle, but they made their way north with as much will and steadfast purpose as would men in the ranks of royal armies a hundred times as great. Perhaps it would not have been so, had not Shane been their leader, together with Tobias. Some of them knew him by memory, others only by legend, but his presence was unifying in a way that melded the spirits of the men together to follow him anywhere, even into flames such as those he was now revered for embracing. And with such united intent, they rode through the forest without stopping until they came upon the plains of Serenic and had to rest their horses.

~*~

Ch.14

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Ch.13

Sorry that the formatting is yet again messed up. I don't know how to fix it in any easy way.

More coming hopefully sooner than I have been posting thus far. I said I'd be done revising in a few weeks, right? Ha. I laugh at my continual self-deception. I shall finish revisions...I just don't know how long it will take me while I'm in school.

<3Libby


Chapter 14:
~*~

Perhaps it was the way the news of her father echoed with fatality; perhaps the contemplation of the trauma of the past few months; but whatever it was, Clarabelle felt, as she sat with her wolf on the floor of her new home, that she was somewhere else. It was not that she had no interest in Cael or the stranger he brought with him to find her, but despite all her trying, she had no ability to either turn her mind or ears to the news they brought. 
The fire heated the room and tossed shifting light across the faces of those who spoke and those who listened, but Clarabelle sat in shadow. She was trapped within. She could not even turn her eyes up from the floor, so saturated was she in growing sorrow. She was sinking deeper and deeper within herself, the only response she could muster against the forceful burden. The only other response would have been a collapse; a full release of the control she had clung to and wielded for so long—the only shield she had against her pain and fear.
But the first sensations accompanying her sorrow—absorption, repression, and sinking inward—had been growing into heavier, more tangible sensations as she sat on the floor and Cael’s companion’s long speech eluded her hearing. At first it was a numb sort of feeling in her feet, as if they were asleep. It barely registered as anything until it began to move upward and trickle through her arms, then her shoulders, neck, and face. Soon it tingled behind her eyes.
She kept trying to shake it, breathing slowly and closing her eyes, grasping tufts of Trygg’s heavy coat as an anchor of comfort. Breaths taken deeply into her lungs… and slowly exhaled. Warm, matted ends of fur poking between her fingers.
Her hands were feeling normal again, clinging to their comfort, but the rest of her was still fading. Striving for focus, she tried to hear the conversation around her, to become adhesive to the words being said. “…I hadn’t even the favor of a name. I lived…” the words faded in and quickly out. Soon they were faded from hearing entirely and her head was in a mire, unable to move of it’s own accord.
No one around her noticed, so inward were these effects; so unexpressed. But within her frozen form she was struggling against the attack of what she could only presume was her sorrow.
But this affront was more than sorrow; it was all enveloping. It had to be more, for it spanned from her emotions to her senses to her ability to control her movements.
She tried to open her eyes, and found it a struggle. A focused burst of effort and that first struggle was overcome, but just barely. Once they were lifted, she had to force her eyes to stay open. But the next, the fight to open her mouth and call out, or ask for help, or say anything that might gain attention, failed. Her lips were fused, and it did not take her long to see that it was not from her own tendency to withdraw and to hide. Nor was it any other tendency of her own, or result of her own condition.
That which caused her struggle was wholly an outside force.
As this reality sunk in, she was helpless to prevent it from taking full control. She felt it working even as she looked down at her hands and saw them still clinging to the fur of her sleeping wolf, though she no longer felt his softness or warmth. Then her limbs were no longer petrified but began to move against her will and without sensation. Watching from her seat beside Trygg on the floor, she saw her own body—or a phantom copy—stand up and turn around to the wall, walking through it into the night, leaving her half-self behind with no senses but sight.
She did not know where she really was anymore, whether in the cottage, with her mind, or beyond the cottage walls in another place. She could not know. She felt nothing.
She had no time to panic inwardly or wonder if her companions had noticed her seizure or the ghost of herself escaping through the wall, but felt her eyes being taken over again by the force. They were fading into darkness and out of the warm room of the cottage to follow the rest of her.
Suddenly, she felt herself beginning to grow drowsy and strove against it, desperate to keep the sight that was the last of her control. At that moment any outward expression she could have made would have been welcome, anything—a scream, a tear, or a burst into sobs—would have been a relief. But she knew it was as likely as cloudless rain.
Her eyelids fell, and she was snatched fully away.
The black behind her eyes was amplified as she opened them to the black path she was being pulled over through the forest, and she now felt certain that her body was materially present. Replacing the warmth of the room she left, she felt her hair whipping her face and neck in the wind, the cold rain penetrating to the bone, and the surreal footfalls of her bewitched bare feet over the muddy forest floor.
She could not move or turn her head, but her eyes could shift a little around her and she perceived that she had some little control left—if only over where to direct her eyes. They watched with disbelief at the swiftly passing silhouettes of trees and the rapidly darkening sky overhead. An invisible cloak was shrouding the stars and moon, of a denser, darker substance than even storm clouds, enveloping the entire sky.
Princess… an eerie, mellifluous voice pierced her mind’s fog. Come into the dark... Your lifeblood is owed to me.
Her self-possession almost fully gone, Clarabelle did not know if she had the power to respond, but even if she did have it, she dared not utter a word.
It was all too clear to her now that this was not anything like the episodes of omen and compulsion she could recall from countless nights of her past. She now knew beyond a doubt that her running had availed nothing and her hiding had been useless. The queen had found her, and she was powerless to defend herself.
She would die, and join her mother—and she felt certain, her father as well.
The cloud over her mind was thickening, like the shroud over the sky.
Her body was still moving smoothly over the forest floor, but her heart throttled her breast. Like the semi-freedom of her eyes, it was an untamed resonance of her will, refusing to beat calmly in line with her bewitchment.
She began to hear laughter, slippery and jagged at the same time. The queen was going to send vile words into her head once again, but she couldn’t let her. She wouldn’t.
With every fiber of her strength, she pushed through the cloud in her mind and tried to harness her vision and manifest the cottage she had left behind her. She knew she was not fully here, in the darkness, separate from the safety Gerrin had built for her. Her heart was resisting this physical frame because it was not fully her own, and she knew she was truly dwelling within the half-self she had left in the cottage.
Risking to lose all control in the process, she closed her eyes and began to seek the image of the cottage she had left behind, feeling her heart thud louder and louder, fighting through the fog in her mind.
Briefly, only briefly, she had won. She was back in the cottage, back in her body, but it was a false victory, and she knew it. She could not feel her body, and as she looked at herself, she saw the transparency of the mirage she was now occupying as she looked at the hands in Trygg’s fur—looked through them.
It would be futile to try to pull herself wholly into the cottage, but in a desperate, last effort before the power of the witch-queen overcame her, she nailed her eyes into Gerrin’s, forcing him to look back at her. She held them there, even as she felt the fog in her mind pulling her away. She held them there, even as she realized Gerrin could neither feel her presence nor note her absence. She held them there, even as her vision was blackening around the edges. And at last, she held them there until he looked up and met her eyes, though she knew he saw nothing. She was no longer there in any way—no mirage, and no half-self.
All was black and silent once more, and she was somewhere unknown to her.
For a moment it seemed to her that she ceased to exist, here in the bleary void. But the haughty laughter had returned, reverberating through the hollows around her, shaking her bones and nearly knocking her off her feet. Yes, she was on her feet; they began to have feeling again and it was a cold, heavy feeling, as if she would never be able to lift them again.
“You used to be such an obedient child,” the voice of the witch-queen achieved a false maternal tone, more empty and evil sounding than the dulcet tones of her former words and laughter. Furthermore, this voice was clear and audible, spoken aloud into crisp air. The tones were thick, no longer hollow shafts of sound as they had been when in Clarabelle’s head.
“But this little rebellion is actually endearing, my child. To imagine you can resist me when I come for you.” She laughed again, deeply and without mirth. “It is just so useless.”
Clarabelle could still see nothing. Looking up, she saw no stars or variation of shadow; either the sky had been fully shrouded, or she was not beneath it at all, but in some otherworldly place where light did not exist. But droplets of water were still blanketing her face and neck, and the faint sound of wind brushing leaves and branches could be heard. This was no cave or chasm beneath the earth, and such knowledge made the darkness all the more disturbing. This was the forest; the same forest she had found comforting solitude in just hours before—hours as far removed from her now, it seemed, as this place was from sunlight.
“Have you nothing to say, my child? Perhaps you’re frightened of … the dark,” said Mirielle, and Belle could sense her moving forward through the thick black that might have been air, though she still saw nothing. All around her it was as if Mirielle’s presence pressed against her, tauntingly close and oppressive and in every direction at once.
“You can feel the way my power has evolved, can you not?” The voice was clawing into her, attaching her to the moving presence. “I am the Immortal. I no longer need to veil my strength, for the elements show obedience to my sheer will.” The constricting cyclone that was striking at Clarabelle in the darkness suddenly halted, and footsteps sounded receding from where Clarabelle stood helpless. Directly in front of her, a cloud seemed to take form, a shade less dark than its surrounding blackness, but nothing akin to light. In fact, this undulating apparition was bleeding darkness, as if it was the center of whatever it was blotting out the lights of night, those absent lights that would have seemed bright and revealing in contrast.
This nothing, which was now the only thing visible, was changing form, condensing its rippling edges like smoke becoming solid. Its shape became definite, the eerie bodily form of Mirielle, clothed in the very darkness she seemed to fashion herself from. She was just a silhouette at first, with high, square shoulders and a more impressive height than Clarabelle remembered. She was standing, which was clear from the puddles of murk that seemed to flow beneath her feet like shadows. But only light casts shadow, and there was none present. Nor was their color, though clearly Mirielle formed counterfeits as she could, adorning her robe and mantle with visible variations that might have been colors in the light, but being counterfeit, would undoubtedly manifest lacking if seen truly. Clarabelle felt certain that if she could see any color in Mirielle’s flowing clothes, it would be the same shade of purple she had seen the night not so long before, when she had seen the glimpse she now knew had been of Mirielle.
Clarabelle was rigid, not wanting to look, but being compelled.
Around Mirielle’s torso was a form molded to her frame, hard and unrelenting, not moving like her vaporous robes or having any mutation of tone. It was alike to the emptiness, which surrounded them both—hard, cold, without reflection. She bore something like it on her head, a helmet of sorts with lofty plumage that billowed as she moved.
After her basic shape had taken form, dark and unnatural, her face began to be definable in the gloom. It was as black and menacing as the rest of her form, but amplified around her mouth, which curved in wicked delight. Then her arms appeared, long and sleek and uncovered, with her feminine hands reaching toward Belle. Her left hand was empty, the fingers curling toward her body, but in her right she held a small black comb, which had about it an aura of devilry not unlike the queen’s.
“I have a gift for you, my child,” said the witch. “I put a bit of myself into it.” She relished a sigh. “My beauty.”
Clarabelle did not want to look at what abomination Mirielle had wrought from twisted things, but she felt her eyes forced to Mirielle’ open palm. She wished she had not even seen this version of Mirielle, embracing the darkness that made up her soul, even less the object she was sure Mirielle would use to end her life.
Fighting against her eyes again, if only to close them, she saw the comb in the light of her mind’s vision, as if forced there. It was made of ebony, inlaid with swirls of whitest ivory and encrusted with rubies. She had seen it before. She knew she had.
“With this comb… you will kill me.” Belle’s first words of reply were colored with certainty and resignation.
“Yes. I will kill you.”
Belle did not respond at first, but she opened her eyes and looked at Mirielle without resistance. They stood staring at each other in the anti-light surrounding them. Belle had never felt so cold, and yet without the slightest trembling.
These were her final moments. It was not a question for her, yet she somehow breathed it in without fear. It was what was to be—what had to be. She had run from it, she had drug others into the mire with her, but she would be the one to pay, and somehow she felt that she deserved her fate.
“Will you end me slowly, as you surely did my father?” she asked, emotion beginning to spring up and coat her words.
Mirielle smiled, her every feature showing her mockery of her captive. “He ended himself,” she replied, sure she was inflicting further wounds.
Clarabelle felt her eyes filling with hot tears, which spilled quickly down her face. No enchantment pulled her emotions out, as none could have done like the finality around her. She had no further reason for suppressing what she felt.
She still breathed normally, calmly, as before, even as she wept. She had become so accustomed to the control she held to for so long, that when she had let go of most of it, she was still composed. There was not enough time or cause for more expression than this flood of silent tears, but it was sufficient of itself to give her a kind of relief before she faced what evil the queen had prepared for her. It was enough to know that in her last moments, she was free to weep.
“Do to me what you will. If he is dead, I am as well.” She said, and hung her head.
Mirielle answered with the same laugh as before, cold and mocking, but this time ineffectual to the resigned princess. Her words, however, were not as benign.
“My child, have you really forgotten about the other reason for your living? Really, I overestimated you. You can not have overlooked your true love.”
Suddenly Belle’s mind was overcome with panic. In that instant she realized the queen had obtained stolen knowledge of a truth she herself had never been brave enough to see. Her heavy head lifted and her tears streamed down her neck as she tried to meet the queen’s eyes. The words were unbearably hard to get out, for now she was truly sobbing, her chest heaving and her throat painfully constricting, all her composure collapsing at last. “Please, take me as you will, torture me, kill me again and again… but leave Gerrin alone.”
“So you are in love with him… your hero. Enough, at least, to warrant this blabbering, pathetic display. How very depressing—to love. It is a pointless endeavor.”
Clarabelle curled her lips inward and bit them, shaking her head in defiance.
“No? You do not believe the truth when you hear it? Shall I educate you before I finish you?” Mirielle was walking slowly around Clarabelle, using the comb to brush the tips of her raven hair with mock-affection. “Love is either unrequited, false, or fatal. In your case, it is fatal.”
She stopped in front of Clarabelle, putting her sharp fingers on Clarabelle’s face, her thumbs tracing the tearstains on her cheeks while she still grasped the comb between two of the fingers on her right hand.
“Love killed your nursemaid ever so long ago, you know. And it was your fault, just as it will be this time.”
Nadia. How Clarabelle ached, as each new infliction struck her.
“Yes, Gerrin will die as well: without mercy or relief, he will waste away by a curse, doubly inflicted through the death of his love. The irony of it is,” she added, grinning and lifting her chin, “if you had not named him, he would have had too little significance for me to bother ending his life.” She released her hands from Clarabelle’s face, stepping back to take in this new blow.
“Now he will die because of you. Because of your love.”
Clarabelle could see no more of the queen than her vague outline and the evil turn of her mouth, but she felt certain, as she withstood this further painful blow to her heart, that the queen could see her perfectly. Here in this place devoid of light, where she was in her element, Mirielle took in the whole view of her final victory over the princess.
Belle did not want to believe any of it, but she knew she already did. Her sobs silently erupted with too much strength to produce a sound, only racking her body violently so that she fell to her knees and wished the end would come quickly.
“Please…” she tried. A vain effort, she knew.
“Do not hope you can save him, or yourself. I have no time for bargains.” The queen rose up to her fullest height, the amusement on her face mutating into a more focused hatred.
“I sought to own the heart that beats within you once before, but now I will be satisfied in halting it forever.” She lifted the little comb high above her head and uttered unholy, almost inhuman words until it began to float above her. She slowly lowered her arm, still speaking the incantation. Into the floating comb the layers of darkest void seemed to be gathering and seeping, each pulse of darkness going into the comb getting displaced by vague, dim light in its surroundings.
Soon the queen’s weapon was invisible, enshrouded with all the darkness it had sucked from the air and from the veiled sky, and the copse of trees Belle found herself in was awash in the returning lights of night. The trees were crowned in halos of starlight, and even with the moon hidden behind clouds, it brightly suggested its presence overhead. While all the deviant darkness accumulated into the queen’s instrument, Clarabelle knew the relief of the stars was fleeting, for all the oppression of darkness would soon be used against her in one fell blow, and she would never see light again. It was a last, tormenting taste of beauty.
Still, she had a thread of time left before her end, and along with her surrender to her emotions, she had one last, uninhibited effort with which to leave this world. She had done it once this night, and whether it had truly happened or not, she tried to call again inwardly to Gerrin, in these, her last moments. She closed her eyes but could not see him, and oh, how it pained her more than anything did, that she could not see his eyes one last time. She breathed his name and broadcast her heart to him from the unknown distance she had been taken from him.
Gerrin… Stay away from here…Gerrin…
“I love you.”  The final words had been more than internal, escaping her lips just as she felt her body again forcefully possessed and she was drawn forward, toward the levitating comb. Swallowing her throat, holding her breath, she let herself go, detached from herself as she stopped before the comb, reached up and took hold of it. She felt it, heavy and sucking the warmth from her hand—and now in the semi-light, she saw it was purely shadow. Its teeth were as needle tips formed of liquid darkness.
Gerrin…
Controlling her arm, the comb lifted her hand, and Mirielle stood back and watched in silence. It stroked itself once through her hair starting at the crown of her head, her arm freezing as the comb’s teeth came halfway down her scalp.
Gerrin…
Icy spikes of pain cut through her body from the point of the piercing comb to the bottom of her feet. She was blind and dumb, unable to move, barely to think. She did not notice that she had collapsed, only that her arm had fallen and the comb had fallen out of her hand.
Gerrin…
Separated from it like a dream, she felt that her heart had been stilled, knew she was not breathing, and felt her last, slipping moment of life.
Belle.
Gerrin’s voice was the last thing she sensed, faint and far away.

~*~

The rain came in erratic bursts, one moment the strength of a tempest, the next only vapors in the wind. Gerrin hardly noticed, running by way of a deer trod through the forest, barely keeping up with the wolf that led him. Trygg was leading him farther into these strange woods than he had ever been, farther than the deer trod reached, farther than he could have endured under lighter circumstances. When there was no longer a path, he still pressed forward, avoiding the trees as best as he could. Ahead of him the immensity of night struck him blind, it seemed, so dark were his surroundings. No lightning or thunder disturbed the air, and though the wind and rain were now subtle, the air held oppression not carried physically.
He pushed forward on other senses than sight, laboring in his movements as if treading through water, until he could no longer hear Trygg ahead of him. Still he pressed on, managing to find a path, though he now had nothing to guide him. He had to keep going, for there was evil woven into the darkness, and somewhere in its grasp was the woman he loved.
He went until he could sense neither his direction nor how far he had traveled. He fell to his knees with stifled breaths. He could only wait and hope for a break in the clouds to reveal the moon that he knew lay somewhere above him, all its light kept barred from the earth, or for a sign of Trygg. Catching his breath, he remained knelt, the menacing possibilities building on each other in his mind.
If Belle was hurt, he knew he could not bear the weight of his guilt for letting it happen, or his misery in losing her. The piercing resignation in her eyes as she had taken his promise of protection had made him want all the more to show her he could live up to it. That same resignation in her eyes had been what he had seen—or thought he had seen—when in the cottage he had realized she was missing. Only her eyes, pleading, full of doubt, hovered in his vision. They had followed him through the darkness, and while he stood to his feet, striving for strength though helpless in the dark, they returned, encompassing his mind’s eye.
He looked up and the darkness ahead of him in the distance was giving way under an emerging moon, still veiled, but faintly brilliant through the clouds. He ran forward, toward the place in the distance where the light increased. It was then that he saw the true contrast between the vivid nightscape immerging ahead and the rest of his surroundings, blackened by no natural cause. He slowed his pace, coming carefully closer to the source of light, the eye of this storm of darkness. It must be here, he thought. The origin of the sky’s bewitchment, or else its one point of impenetrability. Here would mark his point of no return. He would either stand against evil and win, or he would fall into its trap. Be it either, or be it just a trick of the sky without real portent, he would willingly face it.
He stepped forward, vines and bushes thickening the area he walked through, each step bringing the glade beneath the moonlight into clearer view, though still obscured. Around the glade the diffused light illuminated the falling rain with sparkles, and he was drawn nearer, picking up pace.
Gerrin.
Suddenly and without knowing why, he stopped, though his gaze remained intent upon the growing light ahead.  He heard nothing, but felt somehow that he should be listening. He was silent and still for some time, his tense body struggling against his instincts to wait.
Stay away from here.
No sound or word entered his mind, but somehow he felt them; understood them; trusted their impression. For a split second he thought about turning back.
Then there was a flash, but not of light. The faint shimmer of night that had been spreading ahead of him was gone, replaced by darkness so black it was distinct amid the gloom, like a chasm in the fabric of the world.
Almost he heard again the voice, beseeching him by name, compelling him to flee. Not palpable enough to be recognized or truly perceived, it was only felt. No more than a feeling, it had no power to sway him; it was too late to save him from the same fate that suddenly made it silent.
All about him sinking again to stillness, the rain had ceased and the clouds retreated. The world was suddenly as calm and faintly illuminated as if another night of moonshine had swept in to replace the former one of dark turbulence.
As he pushed past brush and stepped into the lighted clearing, the first thing that caught his vision was a flourish of purple cloth, fine and light as it floated around its wearer. It wove itself through the air in the center of the glade, stretching out from the rigid figure it adorned.  She was clad in gear of battle, sharp as it came in and out of view beneath the sweeping mantle of royal color.
How long had she haunted these shores preparing to strike, plaguing her victim with vanishing shadows of her intent? And now in full manifestation of her evil, he knew Mirielle stood before him.
Before her feet Trygg was crouched, his teeth bared and eyes sealed open, intent on the object of his wrath but held under that object’s control. The wind disturbed the fur over his frozen form, and Gerrin could not bear to think what measures the queen had used to turn so insatiable a beast as cold and still as stone.
Mirielle was just standing there, ignoring Trygg and staring at Gerrin but making no move against him. “You’ve failed her,” she whispered, gliding to the edge of the glade to watch him react. When she had stepped aside, Gerrin saw Belle’s lifeless form upon the grass as she came into view from behind the queen.
He ran to her, falling to his knees beside her and immediately forgetting the presence of Mirielle. Belle’s pale face was calm, her head cradled atop her tangled hair and the muddy grass. Gerrin slipped his fingers under her head and lifted it up a little, mud soaking through his garments and running down his arm. He took her hand, still filled with some remnant of warmth, and held it tight, but not even a flicker of life pulsed beneath her skin. When he leaned close to her face, no breath escaped her lips.
Gerrin’s lungs relinquished any will to breathe, his chest filling with the weight of his grief.
“So, you saw it,” the queen forced her words into Gerrin’s thoughts, “how the shadows were bent to my will, drawn from every surface of the earth to eclipse your love in darkness and destroy her. My timing was sublime, to end her when you were so close as to save her… but not…close…enough,” she mocked.
Gerrin’s only thought was to ignore her, to forget she was even there so he could just hold Belle and wait as long as it took for her to wake from death. Even in his strained delusion of hope he knew the vile queen had not lingered without cause. She could not be ignored anymore than he could ignore that he had been too late; that he had failed the woman he loved. He rocked her gently and kissed her forehead.
“Ultimately, you killed her, Gerrin.” Mirielle let her words seal themselves in Gerrin’s mind. “She was not blind; she knew I would take vengeance on the man who dared insult me by harboring her.  She begged for your safety, pleading without any dignity for the sake of her delusion of love. But she crumbled when she realized that I would kill you. She put up no fight. It was almost unsatisfying.”
Amidst his rage and sorrow, the danger Gerrin was in did not cross his mind. Mirielle’s words did not even merit his immediate reply, though she seemed to defer to him that, if nothing else. What plagued him was the stinging sense of finality, which quelled the dull sense that he could still save the delicate girl he was cradling in his arms. His whole body was tense and he felt compelled to lift her from the ground, though he did not know what good it could do. He folded her arms gently upon her breast and picked her up. He held her much like he had that first night when he had stolen her away, her cheek resting on his shoulder, her arms cradled against his chest so they would not hang lifeless. But now her stillness was not of sleep.
Finally Gerrin looked up to answer the queen. “Do not speak, if your only design is to kill me,” He said, no fear beneath the direct look he gave her. “Do what you will, go about your fowl purposes and watch them as they turn against you, but your words are nothing.” Then he stood and waited for her to retaliate.
“I am no longer human, that I should fail in my plans or that I should be blasphemed from the mouth of a peasant; I am the Immortal. No man can stand against me and succeed,” she replied, and as quickly as she had spoken, she had produced a sword from what might have been the air, or the darkness itself.
Gerrin held his feet in place and his gaze upon the armed figure about to strike her deadly blow. She poised her sword in an arch above her head, and the moment hung stagnant in the air. Her hands did not tremble, and no misgivings could have held her back.
At once a new fear struck him, just as if Mirielle had thrust the blade deep in his flesh, a terrible dread seeping into him. Darkly but with grim clarity he saw his sister, vulnerable and weak beneath the power of the queen; he saw his uncle, valiant should he have to face this evil, but doomed to fail; she would kill them both. Perhaps every people in the land would face the same fate. Perhaps this was the end.
He held Clarabelle close and shivered, though the air was still. He watched the queen, her stance still unchanged, until she slowly brought her sword down and turned her back on him. Her mantle hung limp behind her as she stood silently looking out into the darkened forest from which Gerrin had come. Scathing laughter erupted from her and a gust poured over the clearing, lifting her mantle until it fully encompassed her. Like paper in a fire, her mantle seemed to disintegrate and in seconds it was gone, taking her with it.
Gerrin felt his lungs burning and he gasped in a breath—the first since Mirielle had drawn her weapon, he realized. He coughed in the air mingled now with a fowl smoke left behind the vanishing queen. He tried to step backward, but his knees were weak beneath him. His previously stifled sense of movement had suddenly become loosed, like he had just immerged from underneath the force of a waterfall. Righting his own balance, refusing to collapse or let go of the princess, he did not know if he had been held there before the threat of death of his own will or the queen’s, so strange was this after-effect. After a moment the smoke had cleared and he was able to step toward the place where he had seen Mirielle engulfed into nothing. He looked closely, as if to be sure she had truly gone.
There was no trace of her.
The moonlight that lit the pale face of his beloved was dimming again beneath the bewitched sky and Gerrin looked to Trygg before the darkness enclosed upon them. The wolf was unmoved from his previous place and it might have been the final blow to Gerrin’s heart that would have made him give up, but the wolf, he realized, was not frozen. A weak growl was half produced from Trygg’s throat and the latter half of the leap he had intended to attack Mirielle with was suddenly resumed, the wolf falling on his jaw in the mud. Mirielle’s curse on him was broken. Gerrin watched him pick himself up on shaky legs. His whole body was a tremor and he whimpered in pain, trying to remain on his feet.
“Trygg, hurry, we can’t remain here,” Gerrin said.
The wolf’s ear perked up and he was stilled again, shooting his head toward the way Gerrin had come, where Mirielle had been looking before she disappeared.
His first few steps uneven and labored, Trygg started to run through the glade and into the woods and Gerrin was quick to follow. But it was not long before the wolf had found his strength again and was lost in the distance ahead, and Gerrin was forced to work his way slowly through the utter darkness. He held Belle close, trying to forget that she did not breathe, ignoring the idea that there was nothing that could be done.
She can’t be dead…she can’t.
Even as his heart was thus consumed in denial, his fears were only increased. Mirielle’s abrupt exit was anything but mercy. She had chosen another means of revenge—a means she must have deemed more severe than simply taking his life. What greater evil she had planned, he could not fathom, but it was enough to warrant panic. Everything in him needed him to get to the cottage. Everything in him needed to find out what Mirielle would do, and what he could do to stop it. But now, in the impenetrable dark, he could only carry his lost love in his arms at a pace of such intensity it might have killed him in itself, and try not to think.
Before his mind could carry him to further agony, a lilting wolf’s call sounded through the darkness and pulled him with ever more urgency toward the cottage.
“Heaven help us.”

~*~

Cora had spent the first twenty minutes since Belle’s disappearance weeping, the third or fourth occurrence for her that day. Her weariness soon overwhelmed her, and all that was left for her was to give up, her tears all wrung from her like there was not a drop left, and allow her exhaustion to envelop her.
As she had been under so much strain, Wrec was not surprised, though slightly relieved, when he realized his niece had fallen asleep on the hearthrug. She had collapsed there and lain whimpering before her breaths smoothed out and he knew she was finally resting in the escape of slumber.
At least she could find such relief, even if it was unreachable for Wrec. Empathy made him slightly comforted to see her under this artificial peace; he knew how bleak and dark were the pains of remaining helplessly back while evil worked its purposes.
He sat beside her and thumbed the ends of her silky hair, feeling at that very moment caged and helpless himself. Something worse than a moonlit walk had taken the princess from the cottage into the darkness. Everything about it bode of evil. It worked itself viciously on Wrec’s mind, calling out his nature to act, despite his duty to stay with his niece.
Even as he realized his temptation to leave, he rebuked himself for it; he could not leave Cora. He would not. His part was to protect her, even if it felt to his very core that it was inaction, that he was being held back from his rightful part in facing the villainy at work.
He stood and went to the window in the main room, which faced out to sea. Its wood shutters were latched tight against the night, and he dreaded opening them to the wicked air outside, though he felt the need to see what lay behind them.
Turning to his niece, he saw that she was sleeping soundly, curled up without any other covering than her wool shift and apron. When he had taken the thick blanket she had given him earlier and spread it out over her, he felt sure she would not awaken until the others returned, and again his restlessness set in. When would they return?
He pulled on his boots, if only to better pace the floors. Something about his boots felt active, ready. But two minutes in them only served to increase his desire to follow the others.
The main door was on the same wall as those seaward windows and he felt compelled to it. Since he could not keep open the shutters and let the night air disturb the calm inside, he could instead stand himself outside the door to sate his curiosity. Yes, he would have to do this, or his imaginings would get out of control and he would betake every creak or whisper of the night for a party of scavengers or pirates outside their door. So he opened the door slowly and stepped out, shutting it behind him.
Though there was no rain directly over him, Wrec could see the night was fitful by the way the sea roiled in the distance and the sky was darker in patches where the rain moved. As he surveyed the Vodaglas horizon, he saw no ships, only the white edges of the bristling waves, yet his heart was not calmed.
Turning his head toward the forest, his attention was immediately drawn toward the immense black that covered it. It was spectral, seeping southward over the edges of the forest, toward the town and the sea. He stepped backward, away from the cottage, to watch it in dumb fascination. He was at first detached as he watched the black sheath eclipse the cottage itself, covering it in darkness, until the shadow crept toward him through the grass; a predatory aura.
Instinctively, he stepped backwards, keeping under what was left of the moonlight. He feared this darkness would swallow him up with it. The shadows quickened and he stepped away from them stumbling, finally turning on his heels and running toward the sea.
He had not forgotten that he had left Cora behind, and it was only this that halted him and forced him to turn back and face the dark.
He had said he would not leave her.
His trembling hand found its anchor on the hilt of his sword, still securely at his belt. He wasted no time in watching the dark mass approach but charged into it, sword drawn.
When he was under the shroud, he saw nothing. Ahead of him he knew where the cottage was, not too far in the distance, it was only a matter of getting there. He did not stop to think that the glow of the hearth and candles within should have been visible even in the dark; he somehow expected the blindness that betook him when he entered into it. So he kept moving forward, aware now that his impatience for action had been unnecessary—he should have stayed where he was, it still would have come to him. Now this manifest darkness was threatening his only niece, and this was enough to outweigh his satisfaction in finding usefulness, but any feelings of guilt would have to wait.
In the cold darkness a howl echoed all around him, coming not from a single direction, though distinctly singular. He called out, and heard the same echoing effect rip his voice from the air and tear it about.
Then a familiar voice intoned in malicious laughter cut through all other sound. It pierced for several seconds and was abruptly carried away in the darkness, which at once rose into the sweeping south wind, diluted in diminishing sheaths of smoke that were gone as quickly as they had come. 
Wrec did not know what had happened, but he saw the cottage again, twenty yards ahead of him, like a bad memory reincarnated.  He ran toward it, fearing what he would find within.
Halfway there he halted. He could not take a step closer or a step back, he was merely frozen there, his sword unsteady in his hand. Memories, images, a cottage ablaze; he stood there without knowing how long he had, without seeing who entered or who left the cottage before him, only seeing the cottage of his past that smoldered over his vision of this one. He did not stir for several moments, and when he returned to a state of self-possession, at the call of the wolf, he knew he had been too late.

~*~

Like the others, Cael had found himself at the mercy of a prevailing dark. He could not have told anyone how long he had been in the woods, dreading his fears, suppressing his stake in the safety of the princess. But it was not as long as he would be proud to admit before he turned back, realizing the futility of his search. There was nothing to go by in the enchantment that beset the forest—but he knew nowhere else she would have gone. Her insatiable fascination with woods and solitude were well known to him, but he could not believe she was really under the shades of this maddened canopy.
    The darkness was not stifling to him in any physical or emotional sense—it was merely an unsurpassable barrier, and in it he realized that if Clarabelle had come here, into these woods, it was not on her own, and he was all together helpless to retrieve her.
This was what stifled him—this disappointed understanding of his limits. All he could do was turn around and walk as fast as he could in the direction he had come from, hoping he was not lost. He would seek out a torch and take his mare from her shelter, and then… he could not say what next he would do, and he was beginning to gnash his teeth at the futility of the prospect.
    He was headed in the right direction, he knew, because it was getting a little lighter as he walked. Now that the deer trod he followed was visible below and in front of him, he sprinted, looking ahead for the tree line. When he saw it, he forced himself forward with even more intensity, his eyes seeking the cottage. He shot out of the woods in time to see Trygg ahead of him, just reaching the door to the cottage, which was wide open and swaying on it’s frame though the air was then still.
    An unsettling sign, he slowed as he approached the door. He drew his sword as he heard Trygg’s deep growl within. The second before he charged in himself, he saw the captain in the corner of his eye, across the field, looking toward the sea. Cael did not stop to wonder at Wrec’s obliviousness to the scuffle inside the cottage, he just charged in himself, sensing darkness at his heels which seemed to move through him.
The moment his foot hit the threshold and the dark overwhelmed him where there should have been light, Cael knew he had stepped into the presence of evil. He was overcome by a weight that took his movements captive; he was free only to look, and what he saw was not what he expected. The darkness surrounded everything but a pocket of firelight near the hearth, which illuminated only the girl on the hearthrug beside it, lost in sleep. Clarabelle was nowhere to be seen, but the queen was here—the queen was overpoweringly here, even while invisible, and the focus of her presence was on the still form of Cora.
Trygg had ceased to growl and the same force that held Cael back seemed to hold Trygg back, but even more oppressively. He did not even blink—the wolf just stood there, helpless, frozen at the edge of the light.
Cora began to stir just as the darkness overcame at last, concealing everything.
“Gerrin? Uncle? Where are you?” Cora’s voice sounded weak and afraid.
“Say goodbye, little girl,” said the shadow-hid Mirielle, and Cael heard the girl struggle.
“No, I won’t let you!” Cael forced the words out and forced his limbs forward, sword in hand, somehow gaining ground… but not enough.
“Do not jest with me, creature, lest I end you before your time,” Mirielle replied.
“Leave the girl! Take me instead,” he replied, feeling his sword arm seized and manipulated until it held the sword below him, pointed up at his own chest.
“Don’t try to be the hero. I make no bargains, and I am certainly capable of taking you as a third victim. Be thankful you get to be my messenger. Tell Gerrin his payment is rendered,” said the sorceress.
Though he knew no details, the biting certainty of her words made his hopes for Belle crumble, his heart shrivel for an instant of unwilling acceptance, and finally stretch again to receive what was before him; Cora in peril.
“What will you do with her?”
But she did not answer. The darkness around them converged in the center of the room and swirled around the queen and her captive, and just as they were about to disappear, Trygg broke from his magical bind and leapt forward, landing in the smoke that remained behind the vanished captor and captive.
The room was lit once more, and for a moment, all was perfectly silent. But the most piercing of mournful cries could not have outstripped that which came forth then from the trembling wolf. It ascended into the air and reverberated through walls and around trees, over hills, and out to a few leagues distance over the sea.
When the cry was ended, Cael felt cold. Numbly, he went to the hearth and worked the tinder with shaking hands until the fire was rekindled. He just stood there for a moment, tormented by indecision, the weight of Belle’s sapphire heavy in his pocket.
Without thought, he went to the door and walked out onto the grass. All around him was the darkness of a night without moon or stars, the eerie blackness lingering, though that which drowned out all light had fled with its bearer and vague shadows were again distinguishable.
Another lingering howl came from behind him, and in it something pled with his heart. With only that, the decision was made, but even as he knew he had chosen it freely, he squeezed the gem in his pocket with longing.
In a few moments, he was in the outbuilding where the horses were in dismay. His mare had eaten and had a few hours of rest, and though she too had been shaken by the invading presence of the queen, she submitted to Cael’s rushed saddling and carried him forth into the forest.
He had naught to go by but a feeling, and nearly no energy with which to progress, but forward he went. The sense that he had abandoned Clarabelle without truly knowing her fate was only outweighed by the compelling of his heart to rescue the sister of her guardian, whatever the outcome.
And flashing in brief remembrance, he realized had not even thought to convey the queen’s message to Gerrin. But it did not matter now. The message would be received with or without the use of his words.
After he had come to the northern edge of this arm of the forest, when the rolling plains leading north to Serenic came into view, Cael felt a slight seizure, like his sword arm’s forced aim at his chest back in the cottage, only fainter. He felt it in his hands as they held the reins of his horse, as though they would direct the mare back toward Vodaglas. He resisted the weak spell with only a small effort of will. Perhaps he was close to the queen, he thought, for how else would she be able to influence him in that manner? And if not her, then who?
He surveyed the sky. Still dark, he wondered if the sun was going to rise at all. As he was about to drop his gaze and push onward, he glimpsed a streak in the sky as black and unvarying as the overcoming darkness had been. It was before him and veering to the west, into the depths of the main portion of Meliam forest with its tail diminishing behind it. With this pretense of a trail, and the heavy sense that he was on the periphery of the power of the witch-queen, he turned to the west and hurried his pursuit. What he hoped to do to prevail against such a great power, he did not know, but neither did he falter.

~*~

When Wrec came into the cottage he stooped and picked up the blanket he had spread over Cora. It was cold.
His heart sank as he understood. She had been taken.
The wolf lay upon the lonely rug, whimpering quietly. He had faced the evil that had come to this place.
There was nothing he could yet do. Wrec could simply stand in silence until Gerrin returned. And when he did, he was breathless, Clarabelle in his arms, and death in his eyes.

~*~

Ch.13

Ch.1, S.1
Ch.1, S.2
Ch.1, S.3
Ch.2, S.1
Ch.2, S.2
Ch.2, S.3
Ch.3, S.1
Ch.3, S.2
Ch.3, S.3
Ch.4, S.1
Ch.4,S.2
Ch.5,S.1
Ch.5,S.2
Ch.5,S.3
Ch.6,S.1
Ch.6,S.2
Ch.7, S.1
Ch.7, S.2
Ch.8, S.1
Ch.8, S.2
Ch.9, S.1
Ch.9, S.2
Ch.10, S.1
Ch.10, S.2
Ch.11, S.1
Ch.11, S.2
Ch.12, S.1

Ch.12. S.2

I finished the rough draft of Clarabelle at last! I will therefore now be posting chapters a couple times a week until I've posted it all! Exciting, huh? I finished at 11:30pm on 12/31/07... 30 minutes before my FINAL final deadline. (yeah, I had like... 20 deadlines, didn't I?) Ironically, I am not finished enough to post the entire thing at once. I'll be revising the final chapters in increments as I post them. So if the revision process goes smoothly, it should only take a few weeks for the whole thing to be up. I'll keep you posted.

By the way, I had formatting issues posting this. For no apparent reason other than microsoft Word and/or Xanga are being mean to me. So I hope it's not too hard to read.

And without further ado, Chapter 13:

~*~


Cael stood holding the bridle of both horses and staring through the dark streaks of water that passed in front of his eyes at the small house Shane had led them to. He stood rigid, his muscles tense from the journey, in awe of the vigor that kept his elder on his feet.
They had spent thirty-six hours traveling nearly without stop on a journey that should have been spread out among three or four days. Their horses had been nearly dead on their feet when Shane had suggested they dismount and lead them for the rest of the way, once they had arrived in Vodaglas. By some hidden miracle, Shane had recovered his will to lead since then and had brought them through the city and over a hill into a wood. This supplied Cael with only enough confusion to quietly protest once or twice, but not enough to defy. His fatigue had caught up with him, and only the thought that Shane’s instincts might lead them sooner to Clarabelle than his own impatience had kept him from turning back and finding an inn, with or without the captain.
In his tumultuous, exhausted mind, the whole endeavor was graying with the sky. His force of will and resolution of purpose was contending equally against his realization of uncertainty. His hopes of finding Belle seemed now obscure and far away, even after coming so near to the only clue of her whereabouts.
A dark sense of certainty was growing in him that he would fail. He couldn’t be rid of it. All there was left to do was to follow and to give no mind to his darkening thoughts. And that he did.
They had been in the strange woods when the storm struck, barely shaking Shane out of some trance he seemed captive to as he led Cael in no apparent direction between rows of ethereal trees. But the storm had refocused Shane somehow and he had been able to lead Cael out of the woods only shortly after the weather had partly abated. That was when they saw the cottage and a gleam lit upon Shane’s eye that Cael recognized from the last cottage they had encountered. He made little of it in his state, but followed Shane with slightly more trust until they came to the door of the cottage and Shane unabashedly knocked.

“Who goes there?” said a strong voice from within. The horses began pacing a little where they stood. Cael wanted to ask Shane what they were doing here or how he had led them to such a secluded place so out of the way, but Shane had looked back at him before he had answered the man within, and his eyes were still glowing.
“Make yourself known or find another house to disturb!” the voice continued with more force than before, and Shane’s face was still unperturbed, even calm.
When Cael heard Shane answer, inquiring of Gerrin and Cora, a strange jolt awakened him from the daze of gloom he had begun to succumb to.
Gerrin.
He knew that the protector of Clarabelle up to this point had been a man named Gerrin, though he could remember nothing of anyone named Cora.
“Gerrin? Is that you?” Shane asked in a firm, confident voice.
Cael watched and listened to Shane in astonishment, like a child discovering that a hand was hidden beneath the folds of a cloth puppet and there was no real magic inside. Only with Shane, there seemed the potential for limitless new realms of magic, and Cael in that moment was unsure if he were flesh or ghost, man or magician. He wondered if he knew Shane at all.
“I am he, sir, but who are you?” the man Cael assumed was Gerrin replied.
“A friend, an’ one who’s come to warn of danger and give help if only he could find the door opened.”
“I open my door to no one uninvited, especially after dark. If you’ve been told by a townsman that I’m easy prey, you’ve been misinformed.”
“I know you myself, and I have a token to prove it,” Shane replied, taking the wooden deer from his pocket and holding it up as if the person inside could see it. In that moment, Cael sensed movement and turned his gaze to a small window beside the door, where a shy, pretty visage was peering out from between the heavy shutters she had just unlocked. She was holding aloft a candle, whose light reached the figurine still sitting in Shane’s outstretched hand and illuminated a slight shock in her expression.
As quickly as she had appeared, the girl was gone, but the shutters were left ajar and through them the motion of the candle-bearer could be detected by the shifting of light and shadow.

~*~

“It’s Father,” Cora whispered, trembling so that Gerrin had to take the candlestick from her. “We must let him in, we must!” she said, struggling with the bolt Gerrin had not removed. “Help me, brother!” she said, too weak in her trembling to have any effect on the door.
Gerrin gently stopped her hands and took the bolt in his own, but paused. He looked at her and said, “Cora, Father is dead,” but the normal confidence of his tone was lacking.
Slowly he lifted the wood beam from the door and held his breath as he opened the door and for the first time beheld the faces without. Of the two men before him, the younger face went unnoticed, for the face of the older man, the one to whom he had been speaking through the door, was in the exact likeness of his father.
Stunned, Gerrin could do naught but stand and stare.
“I knew your voice,” Cora wept. She rushed out and found herself in the arms of this man she had no explanation for; this man she hoped beyond reason was her father. Whether he was or not, he welcomed her into his arms without hesitation.
Gerrin still stood in the doorway, meeting the stormy eyes of the man holding his sister as she sobbed. He stared long enough, holding up the candle to the man’s unmoving face, for the mirage of paternal recognition to fade away. There were subtle differences in feature that made clear the man before him was not his father—though he was as like him as anyone could be. It was his eyes; so similar as to be identical, yet of a completely different color. It was not until the candle had struck those eyes and shone their brown hue that Gerrin was sure; his father’s eyes were ever and always green.
Gerrin swallowed hard, unsure if the constriction in his throat was from disappointment or relief. “Who are you?” he asked.
A swift wind picked up suddenly, snuffing the candle’s flame and pelting them with another wave of rain.
“May we come in? Your sister should get out of this damp,” the man deflected.
Gerrin knew not what to say. There had to be some link between them and this man, though every idea of such a link was more impossible than the next in Gerrin’s mind. But it was there. He could not refute it as a mirage or invention of magic. And with this strong sense of recognition through bafflement, he could not refuse the man admission, despite his anxiety for Belle.
Before Gerrin made any move to cease barring the doorway and let the strangers inside, he turned to where Trygg stood inside the main room and tried to make out Belle’s form in the shadows. She immerged slowly and stood next to Trygg, petting his head. Her face was a veil over untold depths, but her eyes were set. Her look was calm and direct, as if to tell Gerrin she was willing for the strangers to come in… as if she was resolved on that point, though her face was more resigned than it was hopeful. Still her guardian hesitated, until she nodded once and squared her shoulders in readiness.
“Come in,” Gerrin heard himself say to the strangers as he stepped aside. The older man and Cora came in straightaway, but the man behind them looked at Gerrin and blankly asked if there was a stable. Receiving Gerrin’s direction to the outbuilding he could use for that purpose, he led two wet, ragged-looking horses away while Gerrin turned back to follow the others inside.
“Come in, sit by the fire, warm yourself,” Cora said, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. She fetched him blankets, and a hefty portion of the evening meal from the cauldron over the kitchen fire, fed the fire in the main room, and thus busily occupied herself in tending to the man while Gerrin and Belle stood quietly and watched from opposite sides of the room.
Gerrin was patient and quiet while Cora served the man, but his mind nervously worked to resolve what had still gone unsaid. Glancing over to Belle in his contemplating, he saw her shyly reach for the carved deer the man had set on the hearth beside him. Gerrin had recognized it immediately—his father had carved it before his death. It was among many others of similar kind which Gerrin and Cora had to leave behind in their former cottage when they escaped with Belle. Returning now to them in the hands of this man who was so like his father—it was surreal.
Belle gently rubbed her fingers over it with a crinkled brow. “This is very much like your own carvings, Gerrin,” she said, looking up at him.
“Then he has his father’s hands,” the stranger said softly, as if speaking to himself.
Gerrin might have replied then, giving voice to his mind’s turmoil, but the second stranger entered the room just then and stopped in his tracks at the sight of Belle.
With his arrival a new tension held the room in suspension.
“Clarabelle…” the man’s weary face had taken on an expression that rendered him transparent. His perilous hopes were now as close to fulfillment as his heart could handle at once. “Can it be you? Truly?”
Clarabelle returned his look for a moment without recognition—so greatly had he been altered by two years. Then suddenly her face changed in such an inscrutable way that one could have no certainty of the feelings within that crinkled her brow. “Cael?” she asked, keeping her feet firmly placed. Her lips moved for a moment bereft of voice, and then only a whisper, “It cannot be…”
“It is I,” he replied and stood as firmly in his place as before. His legs were paralyzed, from restraint or from shock, none could tell. “I… I have come to secure your safety.”
“She is safe here,” Gerrin said as if in retort, but Cael did not acknowledge him with so much as a look as he waited for the reply of the princess, who herself only barely noticed Gerrin’s words.
“Please, tell me of my father,” Belle asked, feeling each word as it escaped her lips as hot as embers. The way she had spat them out made her wonder if anyone around her understood the difficulty with which she brought them forth.
No answer was given her for a moment. Cael’s face was full of so much conflicting emotion that it was unclear what he would say. “Your father has not been seen outside the castle since shortly after you went missing,” he finally replied. “The Queen has taken over as sovereign.” He paused. “We cannot be certain that she has killed the king… but it is our fear.”
Clarabelle’s face went blank. Blinking, she half imagined she felt tears burning from the corners of her eyes—but none were present. There she stood as if alone, unable to perceive of anything or anyone around her.
Father. It was like losing him again.
What little hope she previously had took a mortal blow with the nigh certainty of her father’s death. There could be no doubt for her now, that Mirielle had spared no mercy for him. And at that moment died in her that which she had scarcely allowed to live. Clarabelle could hope no more.
Cael crossed the room and looked as if he would take her in his arms, but she did not acknowledge him or take his comfort. She just turned away and slid down against the wall until she reached the floor and barely noticed Trygg slide into her lap. Keeping her gaze frozen on nothing, she could not know the wound she had inflicted; her own was too great.
Cael stiffened and backed away a few steps. He cleared his throat. “Shane and I have come because we have learned what the Queen knows; that you still live, that you dwell in Vodaglas, and that since you live, you are still the object of her hatred. There is nothing that can stop her. She will come for you. You are not safe here.” He turned and faced the others. “None of you.”
Cora began to cry softly. The others took in Cael’s warning quietly, each face marked with inward reactions. The room was absent of speech for a long moment. Gerrin was watching each person from his stance in the corner of the room; his eyes wandering mostly between Belle and the man so like his father, with a few curious glances thrown at Cael.
The man yet to name himself had sat quietly without a word since Cael had come in, and as he had been referenced by that person as ‘Shane,’ he had made no move to speak or explain himself. The siblings did not fail to perceive that he was hesitant to disclose himself.
Gerrin might have broken the silence then and there to get answers for the questions that would not cease coursing through his mind, but yet again the scene before him played out so that he had only to watch and listen. Like a stone guardian, no move did he make but with his eyes.
“Shane?” Cora asked, seeming to have picked that one detail from Cael’s speech and mulling it over through the entire length of silence, only now gaining voice to express it. “If that is your name, you who are so familiar… then you cannot be my father,” she said, picking up the carved deer and standing with it clutched tightly in hand. “The only other man I would think you could be… is dead.”
Shane stood. “It’s time I tell you all the truth,” he said, but rather than expounding, stood staring at Gerrin. A sufficient hold on each other’s eyes seemed to pull forth unspoken understanding between them. It was as if Shane was silently asking permission of Gerrin to go on—to fully submit a truth that would bear weight on Gerrin’s life and the lives of his sister and ward. And in that silent glance the captain found the approval his voice had been pending under.
 “I can’t say I’m Shane,” he said obscurely, turning to place his hand over the tense hand of Cora, which still clung to the deer.
He looked into her eyes and warmly he said, “You know this little carving? Your father Jaemis must have given it to you. I shouldn’a taken it… but I had to.”
“Your eyes,” she said, interrupting. She stared into those brown eyes wishing for a glint of green. “They are so like his I had not seen their color.”
“No, they were never like my brother’s. It was our greatest contrast,” he replied. He flashed his sullen eyes from Cora to Gerrin, noting the awakening under each of their faces. “Aye, you can believe what you see; your uncle Wrec stands before you.”
When he had arrived, though he had not given them a name, their uncle’s identity had somehow seeped into them slowly as his presence settled under their roof. It was a reality acknowledged slowly enough, and the seeming impossibility of it tangible enough in Wrec’s presence, that the blunt declaration of it did not leave the siblings in so much shock as to be incredulous. The faces of each told Wrec that they knew he was who he claimed to be.
Cora let Wrec take her under his arms again as she softly released more tears, pressing her face into his chest. “It’s alright that you’re not my father,” she said and tried to smile. “I knew you couldn’t be… I just wished it.”

Wrec’s eyes narrowed under his brow, telling of a struggle yet unexpressed.
“You remind me of my greater purpose,” he said. “I’ve journeyed with the young Oxcelion for more than the obvious reasons. Providence made us companions, but we sought different ends. I’ve been searching… that is, I’ve come this night to look for… my brother,” he finished his sentence abruptly, as if feeling awkward in saying it.
He released his niece and she handed him the deer as he stepped back to receive news he seemed only half inclined to learn. “But finding you here, being received as I was… it’s as I feared, isn’t it?” He now looked only at the deer in his hands, his face cinched between his eyebrows. “My brother is dead.”
Gerrin’s throat was tight. “Our father and mother were killed by pillagers three years ago in Dunarii.”
Wrec sank down to the hearth, his hands hanging between his knees. “No,” he whispered, shaking his silver head. “‘Twas vain… all vain… I’m sorry.” He was holding the deer and quietly weeping so that the only signs of his lament were the heavy rise and fall of his shoulders and his short, quick intakes of breath.

In the midst of this exchange Cael had watched quietly. He rubbed his hands through his hair and found no occupation for his body or rest for his mind. He was all too aware of his separation from those around him. He found that he did not know the captain at all. But no matter how astounded he was by the revelations of his traveling companion, they were peripheral to what really occupied his heart.
He could not keep his eyes off of Belle, no matter how he tried. The subject of so much agony, so much hope, in more than two years of separation, and now she was just across the room, serene even as her comprehension of safety was again shaken.
As he looked at her sitting at the rim of the firelight, her shining eyes as large and lovely as ever, Cael found his hand in his cloak pocket, smoothing his thumb over the rough sapphire he kept there for her. He could not give it to her yet. She was not ready to receive him; that was clear. After such a cool reception from her, it pained him to simply stand there and feel her presence more than anything else, yet have no ready means of relief. A look, a word, a smile would be enough to sate him, at least for now.
So he gazed upon her for an unguarded moment, waiting for her acknowledgment, but she remained frozen within herself and Cael had to look away. He would wait. He would protect her.
He would wait.
But for now, he would have to look away, or be driven mad.
Even while he was forming this resolve, he saw that the other woman, who he now knew was the captain’s niece, was the only one looking at him. She smiled and he found sympathy in her soft eyes. Watching as she stepped past the others, wiping her tear-stained cheeks, Cael was surprised when she returned from another room after a moment and put a heavy wool blanket over his shoulders. A moment later she had brought him a steaming bowl of stew and some fresh bread, pulled up a chair for him from the kitchen, and asked him to sit. He thanked her weakly and watched her return to Wrec’s side. Though he was not perceptive of the selflessness of her actions, he was momentarily distracted from his own mind, and was unconsciously thanking her for it.

For some time the room had been without disturbance. The captain had composed himself by now and a slight change had made its mark on his face. The poignant lines around his eyes and brow seemed now more distinct, as if they had full release, but his face also had new warmth as he sat with his family. If this man when known as Shane had seemed a mystery, his features never quite at ease to share the same face at once, then this man when known as Wrec was marked with every answer to the contradictions in his eyes. The captain seemed to have found himself when he found his family, even in discovering loss. His looks now had meaning behind them, and though his kin could not note the contrast, his jovial perplexity was replaced with something else. His aura of mystery was shrinking away to reveal a man of much experience and grief, calmly accepting fate for what it was.
Breaking the silence around the fire as he saw an opportunity to change the atmosphere in the cottage, Wrec made introductions between his niece and nephew and the Oxcelion, and allowed Gerrin to introduce him to the princess.  Wrec bowed to Clarabelle, who met his eyes with dignity and restraint, a blank expression conveying the struggle within her more eloquently than her affect could display. She retreated back into herself almost before she had acknowledged him, but the captain took no offence.
“And who is this wolf?” Wrec asked, eyeing the beast with clear admiration.
“Trygg,” Gerrin answered. “Our loyal friend and guardian.”
After the introductions, the room went uncomfortably silent.
“I owe you further explanation, now don’t I?” Wrec said, finally, with marked sincerity and a deepened tone. “Did you even know you had an uncle?” he asked his kin.
“My mother told me we had an estranged uncle named Wrec. She did not reveal the bitter circumstances that caused the rift between yourself and my father, but I knew enough to never expect to meet you,” Gerrin replied.
“Aye. Bitter circumstances indeed.” Wrec affirmed. “They’re more galling now that I see they can never be redeemed.” His face downcast, he looked at the floor. “I suppose you’ll want the whole story, but it is long and there is much to say.” Pausing, the captain closed his eyes, shaking his head.
“Please, I want to hear it,” Cora encouraged.
 In beginning to express something for which words had never been assigned, the captain himself could hardly guess how lengthy the telling of his history would be. He settled himself against the hearth and twirled his thumbs together, as he seemed to reach for words, drawing in the attention of his listeners. 
“Your father and I were raised here, in Vodaglas,” he began. “Your grandfather, Lord Clayton, governed here under King Edgrin. He was a good Lord. He loved all his people, though none as dearly as his wife. She was a fragile lady, and were it not for the need of an heir, she would never have tried to bear my father children. The one attempt she ever made was her last; she bore two sons at once and it was too much for her.
“When my elder brother was born she held him close to her through her agony and wept. Knowing her life was nigh its end, she handed the babe to my father and gave him his name, Jaemis, and implored my father to love him well and not hold against him the fate she foresaw for herself. He gave his promise, but he took it only for my brother.
“In the next few moments, my mother breathed her last, right as I entered the world.
“My father was bitter at the loss of his beloved, and that bitterness had to be inflicted upon someone. It fell therefore upon the second son, the child born just minutes after his mother’s last words and his father’s promised care for only the eldest son. Jaemis was wanted, but I was worse than unnecessary. I was the bane of my father’s happiness. I was the unwanted burden—that which in simply living took all that remained of a gentle lady… and all that was worth living for from her husband. And my father made this clear to me as far back as my first memories can tell.
“Thus my days began, and for years I hadn’t even the favor of a name. I lived in the shadow that brought me forth.” He held his breath for a moment, peering at the sympathetic eyes of his kin, whose attention he had fully captivated, and then slowly let it out and cast his eyes again upon the stone under his feet.
“Yes, though a son and heir with my brother, I was scorned,” he continued. “Lordly as he was, and esteemed righteous in his own eyes, my father was to me but a cold master. He was Lord Clayton to me—naught else.
“I found sympathy from no one… save the one I followed in birth. He and I were knit of more than the same flesh, Jaemis and me. Our blood ran alike; our tempers in equal heat, and our minds alike disposed to heights and depths of feeling. Aye, we were like separate souls of the same mold.
“He was the one what gave me my first name—Shane.” He looked up at Cael without pausing as he said this. “It was the first of many, but never forgotten by its bearer. Jaemis chose a new name for me from time to time, whenever one struck him as suiting me. Aye,” he said, and his eyes were glimmering, “my names always fit me, Jaemis made sure o’ that.
“From early on, Jaemis was intent on righting the balance of our father’s esteem, but it didn’t last forever. Before manhood had crept up to spoil what was between us, my brother and I had perfect balance. Though he excelled in accomplishments and favor, receiving every good gift my father could bestow, and I, the rejected cur, could only stand in the shadows and hope for discarded bones to be thrown in my direction, still we had no conflict between us. No matter how vast the expanse that separated us in our father’s eyes, to each other we were equals—only because of Jaemis. He used to try to evoke in our father some acknowledgement of my existence, but it was never to any avail. Still, his trying was enough to give me hope that someday my father’d see me the way my brother did.
“But time and bad fortune did not fail to work evil on my young mind. The childhood Jaemis and I shared was quickly passed, and the bond between us transformed as we aged, from that of devoted friendship to that of only blood. At least, that was the only reason I could find to reconcile the new view I had adopted o’ my brother.
“Just after he’d been named sole heir and future Lord of Vodaglas, that’s when everything changed. I thought he was forgetting me in his climb to renown. When I brought it up with him, he got me work as an apprentice under a fisherman—as if keeping me occupied would fix anything. He just didn’t understand—but neither did I.
“That year he met your mother, and in his pursuit of her, he stopped coming to see me at all. In fact, he did not even tell me about Karyn, I had to find out about her when Lord Clayton gave their marriage announcement. She was the loveliest girl I had ever seen, and the moment that I did, among the crowd in the town square, just like any stranger, my heart was sealed with bitterness. I was darkened within, filled with assumptions. I thought Jaemis had been ashamed to introduce his lowly brother to his betrothed. I wasn’t even a member of his household anymore, just a fisherman’s apprentice living humbly at a distance. I wondered if Karyn even knew I existed. 
“But I didn’t even give Jaemis a chance to explain. I was gone before the wedding—took the first position I could find on a ship and took to the sea to forget my early life.” Wrec then stood and paced in front of the fireplace, the heat of recollection wetting his brow.
“I spent several years on board that first vessel, learning the rites of my religion—the sea. Soon my ambitions in that new life led me to ports farther and farther from home, and I became acquainted with all kinds o’ seafarers and their ways. Ever pursuing greater success, I eventually found my way onboard pirate vessels, learning quickly the skills I admired in those sea-tamers and also to recognize the monster I could become as one o’ them. When I
 realized I couldn’t abide by my conscience in that life, I took the first opportunity available to get out.
“I remember only vaguely the journey that led me home, so preoccupied was I on what awaited me. It had been more than ten years since I had been home. I went directly to the manor, thinking that surely our aged father was dead, and my brother and his wife would be governing as Lord and Lady. I hoped I would be able to present myself in a way that would give me honor in my brother’s eyes, and I hoped I would find him regretful of our separation. Instead I found my father on his deathbed.
“Jaemis was away with his wife in the home he had built for her in Dunarii. I had the impression that he did not know our father was so nigh his death because of how suddenly he had taken ill. I was brought to his bedside before I could protest.
“I felt I couldn’t bear to face him. But having no choice, I was led into his curtain-shrouded bedchamber. He betook me for Jaemis when I came in, and for a moment I was tempted to allow the mistake to go uncorrected—with the light as dim as it was. I remember though, too clearly, that I couldn’t let him pass into death without giving me an answer for the wrongs he’d done me. Bitter and angry that he had caused me so much pain, I wished to get revenge before he could escape me in death—if only in seeing him humbled in my presence. But I was unprepared for his dying confession.
“ ‘Jaemis?’ I remember him saying.
“I told him his nameless son stood before him.” The Captain ceased his steps as he spoke, frozen before the fire and halting his speech as if straining through the memory.
“He reached for me, ‘come nigh and be blessed, my son,’ he said. But I staid where I was standing at a distance and felt my anger burning ever stronger, untrusting of whatever it was that produced warm words from my ‘master,’ and toward such as myself, never receiving their like in all my life.
“I told him that his nameless son demanded he give account of his wrongs. I said, ‘I won’t give you leave to pass into death before the cause of your shame has been declared. But the last thing I want is your blessing.’
“My scorn could have endured to this day had he not had the strength to tell me what he then did. And he told me through weeping—an expression of emotion he had never shown me before—the whole history leading up to my birth. He told me of my mother, and it was the first time I’d ever heard her spoken of from his lips. He told me what had been his hopes for fatherhood, and how they were mislaid in the death of my mother, twisted into a vendetta against his own flesh and blood. He told me he thought he could ignore me at first, pretend I was never born, but he couldn’t forget why his wife was dead.
“My mother gave me her brown eyes,” Wrec seemed to add, evoking his own melancholy smile.
“I listened to my father with much conflict of mind. When he had finally lifted the burden of his sins from his chest, his strength seemed depleted, and his face had changed. He asked for my forgiveness, and I granted it in shock. Then he asked what’d become of me, what life I’d made for myself, and what name he could use to give me his blessing. And when I’d said the little I could find to say, he gave me the first and only gift he’d ever give me. In his last moments, he bequeathed me his entire fortune. Everything under his name and title was mine, including that very title.
“He called his scribe in and had his will revised, making it official with his signet ring. He asked me to help him, and with my hand over his trembling one, we pressed his official seal into the crimson wax on the parchment. I can still remember it—the first and last time I’d ever touched his hand; I didn’t even think about what I was doing. Then his final, weak movement of limb was to hold out that ring to me, giving me his lordship.
“In his final words, he called me by the name I’d given him.
“‘Shane,’ he said, ‘tell Jaemis to love his wife, and to love her offspring.’ And then he passed out o’ life without any pretense of lingering.
“Soon afterward I heard the news of my brother—that his wife was soon to bear their first child—and I understood my father’s last words. So I sent Jaemis word of my return and hoped to see him before long. As I waited, my father’s steward convinced me that my father’s place should be filled and his last will honored. So I took my inheritance and failed to realize it would drive my brother further from me than when we had parted. I suppose I didn’t want to think on it. In the meantime I went about assuming the role that had been lain out before me.
“As if my departure into the world had been just a part of the training required for my destined life, I found that I was fully prepared to be Lord of Vodaglas. Jaemis did not come for a few months, since Karyn’s condition was fragile. In those months, the first of the pirate attacks along our shores took place, the very first skirmish targeted at an outlying town under the jurisdiction of Vodaglas. I was quick to assemble a ship and crew and lead a successful pursuit of the pirates, as was my duty. It set the tone for my Lordship from then on. My people may never have embraced me, the wayward son of their former lord, had not this victory made them secure in their safety under my government.
“Shortly thereafter, my brother arrived at the manor. He had come alone, leaving his wife and infant son as soon as he was able. When Jaemis’ arrival was announced, and before he could be shown inside, I was in the courtyard to greet him myself. The bitterness I had felt toward him had melted, for the most part, in my reconciliation with my father, and so I was not expecting the cold greeting he gave me.
“‘Brother,’ I remember calling him, my arms outstretched. But the look he gave me with those green eyes, the stinging accusation in his face... I had never seen him look at me that way. ‘Jaemis, won’t you receive my embrace, won’t you call me by name or give me one fitting?’ I asked. His only reply was to ask to see the will. He walked past me into the manor and demanded that my head servant get it immediately.
“It was brought out and he examined it over and over. ‘Where is the ring?’ he asked, shaking his head as if in disbelief when he saw it on my finger. He seemed stunned, for he didn’t move or talk for some time, but when I tried to explain, he walked away and refused to hear. I followed him out to the courtyard where he began to prepare his horse to leave.
“I implored him to come inside and share my meal, tell me of his wife and child, let me give him the words our father left him. And then I remember the chill that settled over me, when he turned and looked through me. ‘Stay away from my family, usurper.’
“I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t hear. He accused me of mistreating him, leaving him without word only to return and steal his inheritance.” Jaemis stopped to let his brother’s words return and renew their bite in his memory, not speaking them aloud.
“I had to explain to my bride why I could not introduce her to my only brother, why I spent the first months of our engagement away, searching… for you. Then when I thought I had successfully forgotten you, I got word that you returned, not to reconcile with me, but to crawl up and take my inheritance from under my feet.”
“Jaemis, I didn’t intend to take anything from you…”
“I loved you, and you repaid me with scorn, taking the first chance you got to poison our father against me. You forced him to sign a will of your own conception… to repay me with evil for the kindness I gave you for all our lives.”
“My only brother wanted nothing more to do with me. He would not listen to me, but even if he had, I had not known what to say. His words decay in my memory, but I can’t bring myself to repeat them. I can only tell you that he renounced me, wishing never to see me again.
The captain held his breath, his eyes closed, his lined brow rising and contorting with the memory. He just stood there for a while and all present thought his tale might be done, until he opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and let out his breath soundlessly.
“To him, I was the ruin of our family. He said I had scavenged a wreck of a life. He told me to take whatever name such existence deserved.
“From that day on I chose to be known as Wrec. I was the ruined and ruining Lord of Vodaglas. Only few had known me by any name besides ‘Lord’ before that day, and those who did, knew the changeful nature of my names. Under my new name I put to death every name of my past, every name my brother had playfully given or proudly called. I buried them along with my regard for him.”
He picked up the deer once more and tried to smile, not even achieving a sad one. “Now that this truth belongs to you, my kin, do you begrudge me my folly?” he asked.
Throughout his telling, Cora had looked like she felt his pain, and now she put her hand on his arm and shook her head. “I only wish you’d have had the chance to make amends after you came to regret what happened,” she said.
Gerrin said nothing, but he felt no kindling of resentment on behalf of his father toward his uncle. He merely watched Wrec hold the deer with trembling hands.
“Jaemis learned only one thing from me in his childhood, and that was carving,” he said. “And he only did it when he was happy.”
“He carved that five years ago,” Gerrin said.
“Then it is a comfort to me,” his uncle replied.
“Did he ever hear of your father’s last words?” asked Cora.
“I sent him a letter—just one—after he left. In it I disclosed our father’s final words, gave my intention of staying out of his life, and signed it ‘Wrec.’”
“He must have read it, because the only name we ever knew you by was Wrec,” Gerrin said.
“How did you know our names?” Cora asked.
“Through various manner of spying when you were both children, truthfully.”
“You called yourself Shane when you came to the aid of my ship,” Cael broke his own silence. “First, what made you revive the name you claimed to have put to death? And second, how much of the Shane I met in Dunarii is the man I see before me?”
“Forgive me for adding another question of my own, but how is it that you are alive?” Cora asked. “We thought you died in a fire.”
Wrec, seeming burdened under the weight of everything he had yet to explain, even after such an already vast telling of his history, sat himself again on the hearth with sunken posture. He looked up at the Oxcelion, whose eyes regarded Wrec with patient expectation, and at Cora, who seemed almost to regret having added her own question. “The answers are in another tale as heavy on my breast as the first. I don’t know if I’ve the energy to tell it tonight, my friends.”
“It’s alright, we will have time for that tomorrow,” Cora began, but before she could say more she was halted in her speech by the sudden jolting upward of Gerrin from his seat, overturning the chair behind him.
He said nothing, but everyone in the room saw Gerrin’s eyes on the place where Trygg lay sleeping on the floor. Beside the wolf a strange emptiness was growing beside the wall, where Belle should have been but was not.
With an uncanny mirroring of his master, Trygg shot upward from sleep. He seemed awakened by nothing: only the absence of she he guarded. The wolf had not stood staring but immediately began sniffing the floor and dashing from the room with intent as obvious as the reason for the sudden startling of everyone. He was up the staircase in an instant, heard by those below by his claws tapping rapidly across the wood floors above.
“How did she leave without any notice?” asked Cael.
“Well, I suppose my tale was longer ‘n a young girl can stand,” said Wrec, clearing his throat.
“No, she was just tired from her long walk this afternoon, I’m sure,” Cora replied, unconscious that her eyebrows had joined eachother over her forehead, unconsciously showing her worry. “But why did she not say goodnight?”
“She’s not in the cottage,” Gerrin said almost inaudibly, staring intently on the spot Clarabelle had left, as if seeing some shadow of her remaining. He took one immediate step toward the spot with his hand outstretched, as if to grasp the shadow or the ghost, either as likely to be touched as they were to actually exist. He halted himself and turned around in time to see the wolf descend the staircase in a single leap, land half-twisted on his forelegs, righting himself as quickly as he had leapt, and thrusting his entire body into the cottage door.
As Trygg clawed madly to be let out, Cael tightened his sword belt and threw on his mantle. “The princess will not be lost,” he said with fierce resolve. He turned and ran for the door, which he found open and swinging in the threshold, swirls of rain blasting in on fierce winds.
Gerrin and Trygg were already gone.
Cael stood for half an instant in the threshold looking at Wrec and Cora, the cold wind tossing his mantle and hair around him. “Stay here,” he commanded, and then he disappeared through the door, slamming it shut against the violent night.

~*~

Ch.12, S.2

A small taste of what's to come. I haven't really proofread this, so sorry if it's sloppy or rife with typos. This is, after all, a first draft (now matter how long it's taking me to write!) I've had this written for a while now, but I wanted to be sure of the order the scenes flow in and the content therein, so I wouldn't have to cut it all to shreds later and confuse you lovely readers. Anywho, I think I'm sure of everything as it is.

And to give an update on those four lost pages I mentioned in my last post, I rewrote them, and they flowed perfectly into a scene I did not forsee, but which suites my purposes. So it turned out to be a blessing in disuise to have to write that scene over again! And I wrote eight pages beyond the four, so I'm slowly making progress.

Oh, and by the way, I switched to double-spacing on recommendation of two writer Rachels (you know who you are ) so everybody let me know if it's more readable, mm-k?

Comments encouraged.

Four weeks till my deadline! YIKES!

<3Libby

Here are links to the sections of Clarabelle leading up to this one:
Ch.1, S.1
Ch.1, S.2
Ch.1, S.3
Ch.2, S.1
Ch.2, S.2
Ch.2, S.3
Ch.3, S.1
Ch.3, S.2
Ch.3, S.3
Ch.4, S.1
Ch.4,S.2
Ch.5,S.1
Ch.5,S.2
Ch.5,S.3
Ch.6,S.1
Ch.6,S.2
Ch.7, S.1
Ch.7, S.2
Ch.8, S.1
Ch.8, S.2
Ch.9, S.1
Ch.9, S.2
Ch.10, S.1
Ch.10, S.2
Ch.11, S.1
Ch.11, S.2

Ch.12, S.1

~~~~~~

~*~

So this will be my end, alone and in darkness.

The king had felt the slow depletion of his strength over the last month, and the last few days since command had been uttered to his doom, these were the days most harried by shame. The final week of his life had passed in more pain than he had ever felt as starvation slowly took the last remnants of his strength, but this starvation was nothing to that of his dignity. The rats that were his only companions seemed froth with life and purpose, even freedom, as they went about their scurrying among his cell and between the iron bars that held him captive—how starkly superior to this fallen king.

            It had been less than half of that terminal week before Edric knew his fate was sealed. He felt it more surely with every passing hour. Hope had long abandoned him and it would make no return. Each day that passed he expected to slip into the relief of oblivion, and each night that passed and he awoke, he cursed his consciousness. Oh, that he could simply sleep until death stole him from this world without his waking observation.

Occasionally a guard would open the barred door and come in to nudge Edric’s motionless body, seeming each time surprised to elicit a reaction implying life.

            When the time finally came for Edric’s heart to cease beating and his soul to stir from its shell, he was utterly alone. Even the rats that kept him company were absent and the guards had disappeared.

A fitting end; that is what my people shall say... They will be right. 

~*~

“Edric is dead.” The words of the messenger from the dungeons lit upon Mirielle’s ears like a sweet melody. “What do you command be done with the body, my lady?”

            Mirielle’s cold eyes gleamed as she turned them to the servant. “Nothing. It will rot in that cell like a forgotten prisoner.”

            The messenger bowed in obeisance and left the usurped throne room that was now the Queen’s. No sooner had his footsteps faded beyond the hall doors had Mirielle risen and begun to pace the marble floor of the opulent room. She was alone save for the two guards outside the open hall doors and the two servants kneeling behind each side of the throne, there to fulfill her every whim. She passed them as she made a second lap around the great room, now passing the high windows that overlooked her vast domain. Here she stopped and took note of the Ashen Mountains to the south, barring from view the lands beyond that would soon become part of her empire. Then she edged closer to the window and turned her gaze to the southeast, where Vodaglas lay, small and defenseless in the invisible distance below the evening sky. A yearning for the vengeance she would enact in that insignificant place took an impatient hold of her mind and forced her to control it beneath the immediate workings of her will. She now fully knew the hiding place of her weak enemy, and it would be only a matter of timing for her to find revenge and not lose sight of the bigger plans she was brewing for her dominion.

            “Send for the Archtain,” she commanded without turning around. “He is summoned to my war room without delay.” One of her servants rushed out of the hall by way of the back entrance and the room was left in silence. With eerie grace the queen slid over the floor to her throne, ascending the velvet-covered steps leading in three tiers to the carved ivory throne. It had been the king’s throne from four generations of Edric’s ancestor’s, and now it was hers and hers alone. What had served as the queen’s throne before Edric’s fall, she had deemed a paltry chair, unfit for a dog. She had it removed and burned leaving only the gold embossing to be salvaged. This throne was superior to all others, even more so now that she had improved it. She caressed the throne’s high back, her fingers gliding over the edges of a perfectly formed rose surrounded with heavy thorns of emeralds dripping with blood-like rubies. It was exactly as she desired and was set just above where her head rested while she sat on high. Complimentary to her new crown, which was formed of thorny gold vines as the coronet, set with rubies, diamonds, and sapphires, and trimmed with the richest of red velvet, the opulence of the queen was without question when she sat on her throne in all her splendor.  

Placing herself there, she leaned back and closed her eyes, picturing how she must look beneath the fierce rose. The symbol of beauty and love intermingled with those of pain—how fitting, she thought, for it to grace her throne. For all would soon behold her beauty, and all would love her with a fearsome passion, because those who did not would perish.

            “Your majesty, the Archtain awaits you in the war room.” The servant who had left announced, taking his place behind her throne once more.

            Mirielle arose, her attendants quickly coming behind her, one on each side to carry her heavy train behind her out of the hall, into the great foyer where her litter would carry her to the war room. It was not long before she was brought to her destination via the dark halls, like a serpent pushed by her subservient scales through her murky lair.

“Gormunder, it pleases me that you do not evade my summons,” said Mirielle as she entered the dimly lit meeting place and dismissed her servants with a wave of her hand. “My former Archtain would have found benefit in your example.” She held out her hand and the Archtain wasted no time in putting it to his lips.

            “My lady, I will please you at all costs,” said the stout, well-bearded man before her. His voice resonated with the echo of battle cries and hoarse commands. His face wore more weathering than his age could vouch for, though both were enough to render him fearsome. The grim set of his mouth was matched only by the marks of war he bore on his face, and the pocks of a disease barely overcome. No attire fitting his newfound rank in Meliam was to be found on his person; instead he wore dirty folds of foreign garb, a heavy black mantle, and multiple weapons of odd make and origin. All this, and the rich mail that protruded from under his sleeves along with his rings of gold and gems, which were to be found through his ears and nose as well as at his fingers, were such as made up his outlandish appearance. Only the most favored of the queen knew of Heath Gormunder, and few of these knew what distant people had sired him, why he had come, or of what use he would be to the queen.

            “How was your voyage?” asked Mirielle, pouring the Archtain strong black liquor from a crystal vial.

            He took it graciously and answered, “The Sea and I have struck a truce of late—I expect your powers to have played a part.” He lifted his goblet and quaffed it with vigor.

            “I temper the waters when it suits me—as in your case,” she replied. “I trust bringing you here will not disappoint me?”

            “You have only to command, my lady, and I will obey.”

            “Have your men your full allegiance, and therefore mine? Or have they weakened like spoiled dogs in blood-lust and greed?”

            “They will obey, or they will pay in their own blood. This is the standard they live and die under. The generosity of their queen has won their allegiance, and the ferocity of her wrath will keep them from forgetting.” Gormunder took the liberty of pouring himself another goblet full of rancid liquor and emptying it before the queen had parted her lips in reply.

            “I am satisfied. My army is ready,” the queen said slowly, her eyes glinting with cruel fire.

            When Gormunder had set down his goblet, he knelt at the queen’s feet and placed his ax-head on the floor in front of him, his head bowed. “Nothing will please me, my lady, until I have carried out my first command.”

             “Then I now give it and relish your pleasure.” Mirielle’s mouth curved in an arrogant grin, already seeing the effects her tainted liquor worked in the Archtain. If he wasn’t fully subdued before, he certainly was now that he had taken two deep draughts of her potion.

“Three days—that is the time I give you to gather your brats from their indulgences and bring them to me. I want them in place within the Ashen Mountain Pass and ready for the wrath I have prescribed on those who have not yet learned to pay me homage. Go by night, with as much stealth as may be procured from the filth you command. Use the tunnels when you can, and separate legions under the delegation of only the most able of your minions.”

            “Yes, my queen.”

            “When all are gathered, await me under the shadows of the mountain—I will arrive on the third day, at midnight. On that night the moon will be obscured and this darkness will lend us strength. Do not seek me until then, or I will take that as sign that you are not the warrior I thought you were and you will be killed for your weakness.”

            Gormunder lifted his head and peered up at his queen with an offended furrow to his brow just controlled enough not to warrant his death. “You need not give such warning; I am fully all you require to subdue the lands between these seas.” And so he meant, despite the blood that had risen in him at her threat. Whether he would have reacted as calmly if untainted by her victuals, none can say.

            “Excellent.” She stroked the side of his rough face. “And remember, for the next three days I will be invisible. You will do the work I have commanded, and I will do work of my own. When you await me under the mountain, do not seek me from the North. I will come from the South in my perfect time.”

            “Very well, my lady.” Gormunder took and kissed her hand once more. Then he arose and she turned from him in dismissal.

            When he was gone and she was alone in the faint light of the war room, surrounded by shields and weaponry of ages past, she smiled at her own brilliance. She took six steps forward to the end of the long room and stopped to admire a suit of armor on the wall. Edric’s father, King Edgrin, had been the last to wear it fifty years prior. Cast from iron and plated in silver and gold, it was the most resplendent suit of armor in the kingdom.

            “Yes, this will do,” Mirielle said to herself. And so she took it with her out of the room by way of a back passage that led to her chambers, where she would go about one final task before she took to the shores of the south sea.

Ilyomë had served her well—in schemes, in beauty, and most of all, in rendering her impervious to death. She could feel its dark power flowing through her with every unnatural beat of her heart. She had mastered the thing she saw as the greatest power in the universe; she had become the power, and Ilyomë merely the tool. Now it would serve her again in the small task of forming to perfection her armor of war—of no real use besides its gleaming glory of gold and silver on her frame.  Then Ilyomë would serve the purpose most pressing in her rushing blood and aching will…. It would carry her in power to the cottage where her hatred would be made manifest in quenching the life of she who had slipped from her grasp.

~*~

Dawn’s blunt light shot through the spaces between the trees at the edge of the forest as Shane and Cael came thither from their half-night’s rest. The latter trotted ahead, leading the way down the grassy hills that leveled out into miles of open plains before the gates of Serenic. He wore a scowl of impatience and shadowed lines of restlessness upon his face, urging his horse forward without mind to the difficulty of the pace. While Shane could have reigned in his young companion with enough persuading, he made no attempts of that nature but followed as closely as he could. The morning was passed in this arduous manner until they reached the gates of the city.

            “We will rest an hour in a tavern, refresh our supplies, and hasten south before the midday sun descends,” Cael informed Shane as they passed under the gates of Serenic. The guards posted had stopped them briefly but were satisfied by the scroll Cael presented and had not barred them further.

            “Well, if you intend such haste, I intend to get new horses,” Shane replied, without any traces of opposition or jest.

            Cael ran his fingers through his sweaty hair, barely noticing the heat of his brow as he dismounted from his horse. “So be it, I will get the supplies while you see to a barter. Meet me at that tavern,” he said, pointing to the meeting place and hoisting the saddlebags from off the mares. He headed off with the flow of traffic. Shane grabbed the other horse’s bridle and led her with him down the wide avenue. A little ways down the road Shane could see an old woman sweeping dust out of her little house.

            “Ho there, good madam,” he said to her as he approached. “Can you direct me to a stable nearby?”

            The woman’s back was turned to him, facing the open door of the little house. She did not say a word or even turn her head, but raised one hand from her broomstick and slowly pointed a gnarled finger down the road.

            “Thank you, dear woman,” said Shane.

The woman nodded her gray head slowly and stepped into her little house, turning to shut the door behind her. Shane caught but a glimpse of her as she ducked into the shadows, and was surprised to note a certain beauty about her aged face, though he did not get a look at her eyes, for they were cast down—or perhaps closed.

Turning in the direction the woman had given him, Shane led the horses away. He had gone only a few yards when he felt compelled to turn and look on the little house once more. Stopping completely and looking back, he tried to shake whatever it was that was drawing him there. He turned back to his course and ignored the strange compulsion until he was out of sight of the little house and arrived at the stable to which he was directed.

Bartering was not difficult for Shane. He had made friendly introduction with the stable master, a man named Maisley, and traded the two tired mares and the single nugget of gold he had found in the abandoned cottage for a pair of sturdy horses, freshly shoed. When he had the saddles of the former horses fitted to the latter, he made his way to the tavern where he was to meet Cael. On the way he was tempted to stop again at the house of the old woman and give her something by means of thanks, but he decided against it as he recalled the way she had not faced him. Perhaps it was better if he did not disturb her, but she remained poised at the edge of his thoughts for the rest of the day and on into the night, as Shane and Cael took up the road south to Vodaglas.

Cael rode silent and intent, as he had since Shane had allowed him to ride in the lead from the plains to Serenic and until they reached their destination. Much thought was in motion beneath his focused visage; much he wished to cast away with the dust behind him. Shane did not see the facial affects of the building tension in the Oxcelion’s mind as he followed in the rear, but he somehow understood. If Cael had glanced back but once, he may have found the captain’s countenance altered in similar fashion. No jokes were attempted from the captain—not since they had left the cottage in the forest behind them. If Cael were not captive to his own anxiety, he may have noticed the stark change in Shane; the silence he made no attempts to disturb, the heavy pace he made no complaints over, and the settling of sobriety he made no defense against. But Cael made no observations of the sort. Cael was as good as alone on the long road to Vodaglas, and it wasn’t until they had striven to the point where endurance gave way and their horses required rest and replenishment that Cael even acknowledged Shane’s presence.

“Will a short rest suit you?” Cael asked.

“Aye,” replied Shane, but he said no more.

They settled behind a small hillock off the roadside, away from view of whoever might travel by way of night. Simple repast was taken and the travelers took themselves to whatever sleep they could attain. It was entirely elusive to Cael, whose bout with insomnia seemed permanent, at least until his mind could rest in confirmation of Clarabelle’s safety. And it was now equally elusive to Shane, who lay motionless under the stars and smoked a pipe until the rosy light of dawn gave signal to arise.

There would be two days hard ride before they reached the hopeful end to their journey, and the tone was now set. Heading off with the sun ascending to their left, the silent sojourners pressed on to whatever they would find in the south, each keeping unvoiced the fears within them.

~*~

A certain level of surreal numbness had accompanied Belle through the week since she had been disturbed in the night. The debate within herself over whether or not she had really seen that flash of purple cloth or not was almost constant, and her very uncertainty made this incident worse than any other she had experienced on somber nights in the past. This omen would not cease to plague her mind until its portent would come to pass.

Cora and Gerrin had seemed nearly as shaken as she was over the disturbance and the lack of answers to accompany it. Everyone was on edge the week following the incident, though each displayed it differently. Gerrin’s unease was plain enough in the way he had meticulously searched the grounds with Trygg every evening before the full settling of night, checked and rechecked the locks on the doors and windows, and the way his face had begun to display the effects of sleepless nights.

The disquietude of Cora was just as obvious as she had set aside much of her over-zealous housekeeping in favor of waiting on Belle, never leaving her side, and paying Trygg more attention and deference than ever before.

But Belle’s anxiety was of a kind more remote and suppressed, as her general emotional affect was wont to be displayed. Outwardly, Belle appeared no more anxious over the foreshadowing of that night than she was about whether or not the fruit trees on their property would yield a good harvest, or whether they would receive visitors from town. Cora would ask her if she was all right a few times each day, and each time Belle would answer with perfect ease, “Of course. How could I be otherwise?” If not this answer, she would give another of the same nature. But had she skill to articulate her true feelings, she might have answered Cora, “No. I am anything but all right. I have narrowly escaped an enemy that can tear me to pieces and may return at any moment to do just that. Now the only warmth and respite I have felt since my Father’s decline dangles over an abyss I am helpless to bridge, and I am too afraid to do anything but wait and ignore my fears lest they prove more real than anything else.” However, skill to express her self was not all that was needed; it was courage as well. Therefore she fell to the default of feigned peace of mind. It was not intentional deceit, but an act of one whose powers permit no more.

And so the week had worn on with relatively undisturbed peace. Belle spent many pensive hours in the garden, with Cora by her side and Trygg not far off, keeping guard. Gerrin staid as close to them as possible, keeping alert to their safety as he went about an outbuilding construction project. All had gone well that week and served to progressively ease the tension in the minds of Gerrin and Cora, but Belle’s inner torment did not wane. Still, the mental relief achieved for the siblings was enough to keep them from guessing that Belle was not likewise relaxing from her fears. This easing of their constant attention on her was of slight relief to Belle, lending to the side of her inner conflict that wished to believe that danger was long past.

It had been two days since Cora had kept constant company with Belle, and she had resumed her obsessive chores and cooking. Now she was occupied in keeping her home comfortable rather than keeping near Belle, who seemed the very example of peace and calm—a façade that was more powerful than Belle knew. Though Gerrin had also eased from constant watch over Belle, he still retained shreds of paranoid fear—mainly in light of his promise to protect her, though his feelings for her played more of a part than he realized. This paranoia made Gerrin reluctant to go far from the cottage, though he knew the scenario would eventually be unavoidable.

At this point Belle’s inner turmoil had worn ragged her sensibility. She awoke on this particular day, only two days after the ease of her companions in their watchfulness over her, to find herself yearning for the outdoors. The garden did not qualify as ‘the outdoors’ in her current frame of mind, having spent so much supervised time there over the previous week. She was intent on exploring the woods, though she knew to be discreet in relaying this desire to her guardian.

Gerrin was thatching the roof of the new outbuilding and was thus preoccupied when she had come by to inform him loosely of her intentions. In his focus on his work, he had not realized that Cora was not with her. Had he known this, and that her intentions were not limited to walking the grounds and remaining within them, he would have done other than smile at her and wish her a pleasant walk. But he did not at first perceive the truth, and so Belle was undisturbed as she set out on that breezy morning to find solitude among the trees.

She wandered in contemplative silence among the broad-headed trees of the forest, whose limbs hung low and whose roots jutted up in knotted twists above the sandy earth. Their silhouettes were unusual compared to the tall, narrow frames of the trees in the north. Even their bark was smoother and of lighter tone. They were formed like bunches of white snakes, frozen together in upward reaching swirls strewn with cobwebs of waxy leaves.

Belle stopped as she neared an especially interesting arboreal specimen, her hands tracing their way over its serpentine trunk, which twisted in a nearly perfect spiral from the base of its roots up until it branched out in four strong arms just above Clarabelle’s head. One thick branch hung low and curved slightly upward, like a perfect seat formed as well in nature as any carpenter could have wrought with tools. When she had exerted weight upon it with both arms and noted its unmoving strength, she lifted herself up onto it so that her back leaned against the curvy trunk and her skirts fell like a curtain over the branch and just dusted the grass. Here she sat and took in the soft sounds of the wind playing in the trees and rustling her skirt as it brushed through the grass below, the melodic notes of the forest birds, and the distant rumble of the ocean. The peaceful sounds and soft breeze drew Clarabelle into a gentle repose of a kind she had not known for weeks. No fear plagued her in this place where the sun, the air, and the wildlife were blended with such perfect calm.

She lay undisturbed for hours, well into the evening. The sorcery of sleep had held her captive in a world she was not free to escape. She remained in its power until her physical presence was made to supercede those magic bonds as rain began to kiss her face. The third droplet to light her cheek was also that which stirred her eyelids open. Claps of thunder and bursts of fearsome light soon overpowered the gentle awakening, sheets of water now streaming down to the earth.

Clarabelle had lingered momentarily, trying to collect herself in the new darkness. Once she was out of the tree and looking around her, water began soaking through every inch of her clothes and chilling her bones. Her breath quickened and she had to restrain panic as she realized she had no idea where she was or how she could get back. There were no paths to take, and even though the trees around her were not so tall or close together as they were in Meliam, there were enough of them and she was far enough into the forest to see no signs through them as to which direction to take. To worsen her predicament, the increasing darkness would reveal no signs, and her solitude would make help inaccessible.

She cried out once, only to be drowned out in a string of harsh, scolding thunder. She might have sunk to the earth and let loose the torrent of emotions buried within her, which were of the sort only to be loosed when so alone and under such helplessness. She might have wandered through the forest and kept as brave a countenance as her royal pride would permit until she found some clue as to her whereabouts or some kindly stranger to guide her. But neither of these were recourse she was required to choose, for as she paused in thought a sound struck her ears, faint but distinct enough through the stormy din to warrant attention. She might have thought it only the wind plying an old branch from its place and its creaking reply if the sound had not recurred with greater strength. It was repeated again, a muffled sound of three syllables.

Now it was joined by the unmistakable howl of a wolf.

Before Belle had time to realize her own relief, Trygg had burst into sight, streaking fluidly toward her with a silver sheen over his black fur. Trembling, she wrapped her arms around his neck and let him lick raindrops from her face.

A streak of light burst to illuminate momentarily Gerrin’s stiff form at the edge of the clearing ahead of her, then going dark as thunder shook the earth. What little she could see of him as he approached through the misty shadows was enough to make her relief blend with regret. His breathing was intense. He spoke not a word as he helped her to her feet and led her through the rain with his hand guiding her back. His silence was as unsettling to Belle as the fact that Gerrin’s face was stony and set straight ahead, focused on getting out of the woods and nothing else. But what lay unreleased inside him in his focus was what Belle feared—his possible anger at her, or disappointment.

As soon as the forest was behind them and their own cottage was a warm sight just ahead of them across their field, Gerrin halted. Clarabelle had taken two steps ahead of him when she realized his guiding hand had vacated its place between her shoulder blades and she turned around. Facing each other, they stood with the rain running down their already soaking frames, neither adding to their wetness or their cold, but merely sustaining it. Both were out of breath and stared at each other as if waiting for the other to speak—Belle to explain running off alone, and Gerrin to give voice to the tension he had brought with him to retrieve her.

“You’re angry with me,” Belle spoke first, looking only at Trygg, as she stroked his head, to lesson the intensity between Gerrin and herself as they spoke.

“I am… puzzled by you,” he answered. “You put Cora and myself through an agony I wish never to repeat.” Looking down, he shook his head and his dark, wet locks fell across his face in dripping tendrils. “It is hard to understand why you would evade my protection.”

“That was not my intent,” she replied, leaving her response where it was, so short of what she felt and wished to express.

Silence fell between them again and was little disturbed by the storm as it began to soften and the rumbling of thunder sounded now distantly removed. Gerrin walked ahead and opened the cottage door for Belle, motioning her in without word or look. She stepped over the threshold and stopped in the small foyer between the kitchen and sitting room, watching Gerrin bolt the door in agitation. She caught his eyes as he turned from the door and she longed to find an explanation to give him, but even her thoughts fell short and whatever words could have been given voice would have been as unintelligible to herself as to anyone else. It had plagued her all day, this oppressive weight in her chest. As if it had been there for years, culminating into the crushing burden it now was; and nothing would lift it. No words could be produced from within this heart so burdened, and in their utterance find the load lessened, no matter how fiercely she wished to conjure them.

Instead of pursuing the vain thought that she might be able to force herself into the expression of all that pressed upon her from within, she turned her mind to the fierce cold that was making her body tremble and her jaws chatter, as she stood drenched in the foyer.

At least now, as if a gift of consolation, she required no words, and nor did Gerrin, as he came to her side and took her sopping cloak from her back and wrapped a dry blanket over her shoulders. Neither spoke for those first long moments in the cottage, but the dominance of their silence was broken when Cora had come down from her room bursting with tones of reproach and relief. She had ushered Belle upstairs to change, and had her situated in the sitting room near the fire with a steaming bowl of stew before all her concerns and questions were finished being aired. Clarabelle’s tight-lipped replies served to distill the frenetic atmosphere until the room settled into a compromise of quiet, intermittent conversation.

The rest of that evening wore on in a fashion not altogether unexpected. With Cora’s constant doting upon Belle and seeing to her every need, Belle’s calm inward retreat, Gerrin’s pacing about in thought, and Trygg’s curious gaze over them all as he sat by the fire letting his fur dry. But what is expected and naturally occurs can, as fate will have it, be interrupted, as when all of this was interrupted by a strong succession of knocks on the front door.

Gerrin was already on his feet and at the door by the time the last knock was struck, his whole weight leaning into the thick wood with his ear pressed against it. Even as he listened, he found his hand instinctively reaching for the pitchfork he had been using earlier to thatch the outbuilding.

“Who goes there?” he called when the tool was in his hand, motioning with his free arm for the women to retreat into the shadows. Trygg took his instinctive place as sentinel before them in the half-light of the fire.

Since they expected no visitors, nor trusted whoever might make an unannounced visit in the middle of the night, their caution was well warranted. There was, after all, a fugitive inside that cottage, whose life would be at the mercy of whomever had the most power if she were to be discovered. That fugitive was prudent enough to remain in the shadows, but Cora was not; she had left Belle and Trygg behind and was slowly approaching the shuttered window beside the door, though Gerrin did not notice her doing so as he addressed the strangers.

A long pause had followed Gerrin’s words, in which the soft pattering of rain and occasional clomping of horses’ hooves were the only sounds to be heard. Even the wolf was silent, which might have lent Gerrin some confidence had he been less paranoid; the beast did not even bare his teeth or let a single low growl free from his throat. Cora was silent as well, in her curious place by the window, quietly shifting the shutter’s lock.

In that suspended moment, listening past the rain for the delayed answer, Gerrin saw his promise and its weight visibly before him, to never let Clarabelle fall into the hands of evil. He could not let any force overpower his own, or he would fail her. He set himself, as if mustering every fiber of strength that could be derived from resolve, and spoke again to the unknown party at the door.

“Make yourself known or find another house to disturb!”

Another silence answered, and Gerrin thought that perhaps the strangers would leave, but then a gruff voice made its reply. “I am looking for Gerrin and Cora of Dunarii.”

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