The Will [on hold]

5000s - Episode 3

Lincia promised that she would, knowing full well that she would not be needing anything from Brontus or his mother.

She returned home to a hollow house and set her basket on the table, emptying it slowly as she set each item neatly in its place. There was no proper place for all this lettuce. Father would have loved it, Lincia thought, but he was not here. There was simply far too much of it.

She heaved a sigh, her green eyes lifting to the window.

Lincia suddenly stilled. She blinked and wondered if her vision was still misty from that morning’s tears—but no, that vision on the sea was starkly clear and startlingly certain.

There on the gray-blue sea, whose usual brilliance was dulled beneath a pall of cloud, there came a fleet of ships.

She had seen boats before, and smaller crafts. But she’d seen a ship only once in her lifetime. A single ship that had been passing by, on its brisk way from Trobilium to Daerion, sailing carelessly by Doroth as if the village did not exist. She had been very young then. Sitting with her father on the beach, she’d asked him what that monster was; she’d thought it was a monster from a storybook. He’d explained that it was a great large boat with great white wings, which harnessed the wind to make great distant voyages. He’d said it was nothing to fear, and had held her close, then brought her back inside and given her warm milk as he sang a gentle lullaby.

There was no song, this time, to lull her off to sleep.

The ships were speeding straight toward Doroth, an entire swarm of them. Their sails were bold and black. They looked like veritable monsters, and her father was not here this time to reassure her otherwise.

Lincia realized that she had been holding her breath; she released it. Eyes hard and bright like jade beneath her knitted brows, she determined to go out and face the monsters.

The pebbles on the beach felt colder and harsher today than usual beneath her unshod feet. That was good, she thought. The discomfort of her bare soles would prepare her for whatever cold, harsh menace she was about to encounter.

The ships at the front of the fleet soon drew in and dropped anchor. Shadows descended from the decks. They looked like men, Lincia mused in tentative relief. That was all.

The first man to have descended from the flagship was approaching her. Her stomach knotted. But most strangely, she felt the knot was loosening as he drew near.

In moments, he was nearly face to face with her. The knot was tightening up again. And yet she sensed that this was an entirely different kind of knot.

Eldor considered the girl for one brief instant: the rustic russet of her hair, the viridescence of her virgin eyes, the pallor of her face like an emergent rose. He knew instantly that Glorion was different. And his heart sank to know it; he wanted more than ever now to turn back whence he’d come and leave this place untouched.

But it was much too late for that. Garendor was here as well, and all the soldiers he commanded. Their presence on Glorion required that Eldor remain here, to counteract whatever imperial havoc they were set to wreak.

He bowed his head in greeting.

Lincia was wordless and transfixed. She knew that she should greet him, but did not know how. She knew that she should fear him, but in the place of fear she felt a thousand other things.

“My name is Eldor,” he began. “My men and I have come across the sea, from the city of Zoll Zora. The king of the empire has sent us to explore these lands.”

She tried to listen to his words, but found herself sinking too quickly and deeply into his eyes. Though as dark as new moons, they shone with all the light of full ones. She even thought herself more beautiful reflected there within them, those twin new moons like ebon mirrors in a foreign face. A face that was anything but monstrous—if anything, the most beautiful and most heartbreakingly human face she’d ever seen.