5000
The village of Doroth was a charming place. Its quaint, homely charm was straight out of a Zoll Zoran storybook. Much like the neighboring city of Daerion, its streets were filled with smiling faces and devoid of crime. The small coastal village possessed all the beauty of Daerion, but none of its splendor: in the place of shimmering spires and marble villas, there were wooden huts with low thatched roofs. These sat in humble rows along the cobbled roads and earthen paths that took the place of Daerion’s wide paved avenues.
One cabin did not line the streets of Doroth. Set quite apart from the town center, it stood atop a shallow knoll, at the eastern foot of which the verdant grass grew sparser, bleeding into rocky sand. This hillock and the house upon it overlooked the pebbled beach of Doroth.
At the hillock’s western foot, there was a square stone tablet jutting from the loamy earth. It had been placed there just that morning, at the head of a pile of soil that evidently had been shoveled up and packed back into place. There had been a gentle rain that morning, and those fresh drops on the soil were mixed with the salt of warm tears.
Lincia wiped the back of her frail hand against her eyes as she took up her basket, descending the knoll and heading toward town. The rain had since abated. If the gray clouds overhead could hold their tears, she thought, then so should she. She did not want the people at market to ask. She could bear this grief alone; there was no need to burden anybody else with it.
It would be one loaf this morning instead of the usual two. Half as much of everything: only three damsons, two disks of cheese. The basket was half its usual weight today, but it felt heavier in her trembling hands today than ever.
“Lincia, dearest!” the lettuce vendor called, waving and smiling as Lincia passed quietly by.
Lincia approached the stall to return the kindly woman’s greeting with a hollow smile of her own. “Good day.”
She pretended to look at the lettuces.
The vendor asked how she had been, remarking that she hadn’t seen Lincia at market in the past several days. “And your father?” she inquired. “I hope he is well, that his health is improving?”
Lincia winced inside, though one would never know it from her steady face. “He passed. Last night,” she stated levelly.
The lettuce vendor’s face exploded with empathy. Lincia knew that it would, and she was sad to see it; she hated to cause anybody pain, even if it was only vicarious.
The vendor expressed her warmest, sincerest condolences, which Lincia took with thanks.
“We could take you in, you know,” she offered, handing the poor girl a bushel of lettuce, each crisp leaf a token of her sympathy. “Brontus has always been fond of you.”
“You’re too kind. I would not impose that burden,” Lincia declined; she was all too aware that the vendor’s son fancied her. “I like the cabin, besides. It’s always been my home.”
“Oh, a lovely thing like you would be no burden to us,” the woman insisted. “And Brontus just adores you, he’d be thrilled to have you! And at any rate, you would get awful lonesome out there, all on your own. If you won’t live with us, we’ll have to come and live with you!”
Lincia smiled halfheartedly, at what she knew was really not half a joke. All this love and kindness and compassion—it was altogether lovely, but too often quite a burden in itself.
“I think I’d like to be alone,” she professed. “For just a while, at least.”
The kind woman’s lips pursed into a frown, but she finally acceded. She was decent enough to know when to give up. “Of course,” she acquiesced, crushing Lincia in a close embrace before she let her leave. “Let us know, then, if you need anything.”
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.
Her reverie was shortly interrupted. Most of the other strangers kept their distance well behind this man, staying at the edge of the tide or even up on board the ship. But one of them strode quite deliberately right up to Eldor’s side. This man’s face was no less human, but it had much less effect upon her heart.
“And this is my brother, Garendor, high general of the imperial army,” Eldor introduced.
Lincia’s eyes, which had been wide and bright as they gazed upon Eldor, presently narrowed and darkened. Imperial? Army? Empires and armies happened only in the storybooks…
“What is this place?” Garendor demanded, his eyes like ice-cast pools beneath which lurked a livid fire. Those eyes were so unlike his brother’s.
Most everything about him was unlike his brother.
Lincia was certain that these two men were of very different species. Both human, though, she realized. Mayhap humanity comprised more separate species than she’d thought.
In any event, those cold, arctic eyes were demanding an answer.
“This is Doroth,” she humbly announced. “A small village, on the eastern shore of Glorion.”
Garendor’s dark gold brows were furrowed deeply. They seemed permanently etched onto his face that way. He nodded toward the house upon the hill. “A village? Consisting of only one hut?”
“Well, the…” she replied, unable quite to comprehend this man, “…the rest of the village is further inland. There is the town center; the market; more houses…”
“Show us,” Garendor directed.
Lincia was utterly and visibly confounded.
“We would like to see the village,” Eldor interposed. “Would you please show it to us?”
Eldor was smiling, she noticed. A soft and subtle smile, every ounce the opposite of his brother’s surly scowl. That smile made all the difference; she could not help but mirror it.
“Of course,” she assented gladly. “I shall give you a tour. Will… will all the men be coming?” She looked past Eldor’s shoulder at the hordes of strangers waiting at the sea.
“That won’t be necessary,” Garendor answered. “There are hundreds, besides. Probably wouldn’t all fit in this village of yours. It’ll be just the highest officers.”
He turned back to summon the highest ranked soldiers for the tour.
“And your name?” Eldor asked Lincia, genuine interest in his eyes.
She very nearly got lost in them again, but caught herself this time. Barely catching her balance between those two new moons, she managed two soft, breathless words. “I’m Lincia.”
“Lincia,” Eldor echoed. “Thank you, Lincia, for welcoming us onto the shores of Glorion.” He inwardly shuddered at the thought of how that welcome was about to be repaid. He prayed, in the name of all that was good, that he’d be able to protect this place from the bloodlust and ambition of his own men. He prayed that the light in this young maiden’s eyes would not have to be put out.
Garendor had gathered a handful of officers. Lincia, with Eldor at her side, led them past her house upon the knoll and into town.
There was not much to show, but for the Zoll Zorans, Doroth was starkly unlike any place they’d ever seen or conquered. It was not merely the simplicity and modesty of the place—there were plenty of small, humble villages across the sea. It was more so the simplicity and modesty of the smiles upon the faces of those they passed. Even in their sinister sable armor, trooping through the streets with helmets in their elbows and swords at their sides, the soldiers saw that they inspired more wondering smiles than frightened frowns.
The Zoll Zorans did not know what to make of it. They were uncertain how to react to the fact that they were not inspiring fear.
Lincia spoke very little as they moved about the town. There was not much to tell.
“Who is in charge?” Garendor queried.
Lincia looked at him blankly. “In charge?”
That blank look disconcerted him. Garendor wondered if everyone here was so stupid. “The leader,” he explained. “The one who lays down the rules, resolves problems, commands respect.”
She blinked. “Then everyone here is in charge.”
In spite of himself, Garendor sensed somehow that he was now the stupid one.
“Lincia!” a young man exclaimed as the troop passed through market. As he ran up to her, his grin stretched past the limits of his face. He flung his arms around her.
“Brontus,” she greeted him, the utterance muffled against his shoulder as he squeezed her.
When he withdrew from the very one-sided embrace, the smile in his eyes had been replaced with a depth of compassionate sorrow. “Mother told me. I am so deeply sorry.”
Brontus did not so much as notice the squadron of armored strangers at Lincia’s heels. He effused every possible condolence, reminding her that she was welcome to come and live with them, imploring her to please at least consider it. Lincia insisted politely against it.
Garendor cleared his throat ungracefully.
Brontus looked up and met a scathing ice-blue gaze. “Oh! These men are with you?”
The Zoll Zorans now saw the first twinge of fear on a Dorothan face. It was a very unselfish fear—fear felt wholly for another’s sake. That was somehow not as satisfying to them.
“Yes, Brontus,” Lincia affirmed. “This is Eldor, and this is his brother Garendor; they come from across the sea, and I am showing them the village.”
Brontus had one arm still encircled about her, and as she introduced these foreigners, his grip on her shoulder turned viselike. She shivered. The tighter he held her, the less safe she felt.
“Across the sea?” he repeated.
“Yes. From the city of…” her voice trailed off in disremembrance.
“Zoll Zora,” Eldor finished.
Brontus’s umber glare darted up to this tall, winsome stranger. Those dark eyes were too bright and too deep, he thought. Much too deep.
Lincia was beaming at him, as if in admiration that he’d recalled the name of his own city.
“But why have you come here?” Brontus inquired, honestly alarmed that anyone would cross the sea to come to Doroth.
“It’s where we landed,” Garendor stated plainly. “My father the king sent us to explore these lands, and our ships pulled into this village. Which is clearly not very important. Is there a nearby city? Someplace bigger, with a bit more… infrastructure?”
Brontus paused, somewhat reluctant to respond. But Garendor’s arctic eyes demanded it. “Daerion is just a ways away,” he answered. “A bit south of us, and not very far. It is the largest city on the Glorian shore.”
“Good. You know the way to Daerion?” Garendor asked.
Brontus nodded, again visibly reluctant. “Yes. I have family there, and visit once in a while.”
“Then you will take us there.”
Brontus felt himself a lamb beneath that cold, hot gaze. A lamb petrified in ice, then set on fire. Removed from the fire once he’d been roasted to a perfect crisp, then swallowed whole.
“Do you think you could take us there?” Eldor requested, sensing the need for translation.
Beneath this gaze now, the lamb tumbled into the depths of an ebon abyss. That fathomless fall was much more terrifying for Brontus than the shallow ice and fire. He knew well which brother he detested more: the monster who was trying to be a man.
He had to be a monster! Some dark sorcerer, at least. He had cast such a dark spell on Lincia.
“Yes, he could,” Lincia replied readily on Brontus’s behalf. “But you must stay the night! If you go today, you’d surely not arrive till nightfall anyway. We’ll host you here in Doroth for the night, and lead you all to Daerion tomorrow morning.”
Brontus stared at her, agape and horrified at just how darkly she had been bewitched.
But he could not rescind her invitation. Besides, she would not have it any other way—Eldor insisted that the Zoll Zorans ought not impose such a burden, but Lincia convinced him that it would be no burden at all. They could set up camp along the beach, and the village would merely provide a bit of food and drink for them. It would be no trouble whatsoever, and the Dorothans would be delighted to have guests, as visitors were very rare in these parts.
Eldor eventually accepted, if only because he knew his men were in support of the idea. It was true that they were all tired from the voyage and could use some food and rest. But he accepted with a heavy and reluctant heart. It was not so much his reluctance to impose upon the villagers; it was rather his urge to leave Doroth as quickly as possible. The very presence of his army on their shores was such a threat to them—even more so because they did not know it.
Then again, he mused dourly, if the whole Glorian continent was soon to meet its doom, then Doroth was doomed to fall with it in any event. If Garendor had his way, it would be a mere matter of days before the entire eastern coast of Glorion was conquered and destroyed.
Well, Eldor silently resolved. Then Garendor must never have his way.
Lincia bade Brontus spread the news throughout the town that there were to be festivities that evening on the beach, in honor of the great horde of guests who’d arrived. Never in his life had he been more disinclined to do her bidding. But it was Lincia, and so he would do as she willed.
Affixed to Eldor’s side, Lincia helped him and his soldiers set up camp along the coast. All the while she entreated him to tell her all about the city across the sea. She wanted very much to hear about his home, and was not sated with the vague, evasive answers that he gave. He assured her that Doroth was a far better place than Zoll Zora, and that there was nothing about his home worth telling.
He wished that Lincia would understand: he did not want to keep her in the dark—he wanted to keep her away from the darkness.
After a while he urged her gently to return to town, as she would be of much more help preparing for the feast than pitching tents. She wept inside to hear it, but she smiled and did his bidding. For he was right, of course! And it was Eldor. Of course she would do as he willed.
Now that she’d gone, the men were free to speak about her village.
The officers who had been to see the town related their impressions to the others. All of them deemed Doroth different and strange, and effortlessly conquerable. Some found the place disturbing and despicable. A handful of them whispered that they found it charming. Garendor loudly pronounced it a silly, backwards little place that begged to be razed to the ground.
Eldor was silent. Most of all, he listened to the whispers.
Garendor, deaf to the whispers and bored with discussions of Doroth, had turned to talking of Daerion. “I am sure this larger city has much more infrastructure, and certainly much more weaponry. Glorion can’t make it so easy for us.”
“Infrastructure, yes,” Eldor put in. “But I would not be so sure about the weaponry.”
Garendor’s ice-blue gaze fell hard upon his brother, whose own eyes remained calmly fixed on the tent he was pitching. “You honestly suppose, O Prince, that every city in Glorion is as quaint and defenseless as this shabby village? Surely a land so ill-equipped for war would not be able to survive. Not even a day.”
“The village gets on without a leader. Mayhap the land gets on without war.”
“Ah, indeed. Indeed,” Garendor scoffed. He wanted to prove that Eldor’s suggestion was stupid and impossible, but found that he could not come up with such proof. “Well, then, if we arrive in Daerion and find it built upon a bed of daisies, it will be that much easier to destroy.”
A tense silence followed these words. Ostensibly, it was the silence of agreement. But in the minds of several soldiers, voiceless whispers hummed.
One of these soldiers was Osus, a lean youth with modest but well-sculpted muscle showing through his pastel skin. “If Daerion is anything like Doroth, though,” he posited, clear eyes lowered timidly beneath a shade of honey-chestnut curls, “… destruction might not be necessary.”
“What?” Garendor barked in reply to the young daisy’s sacrilege.
Osus cringed and bit his tongue.
Others spoke in his place, incited to speak now that first mention had been made. Most of them tried to disguise their mercy as cold, practical concern.
“Since we can so easily conquer this place, why waste the effort of war? We need not so much as raise a sword. We could subjugate these people with our eyes closed, and they would willingly obey. They lack the resources to put up any fight,” Mohrdon reasoned.
“And if we burn this land to the ground, we’d then have to rebuild it from the ashes,” Hark anticipated. “Why not take the people as subjects, and make use of whatever structure they already have in place? We could build upon these humble rudiments, rather than starting from dust.”
“At any rate, it might be wise to learn the land a little more closely,” Claron suggested. “To see whether or not this place calls for destruction.”
Garendor looked at them with the fury of a violated dog. “Do none of you remember why we came here?” he spat. “Our king sent us abroad on a mission, a mission that you would abandon out of mercy for these vulnerable idiots. Beware, men, for every seed of sympathy you sow will spawn sedition against the empire.”
He turned upon his heel and stormed away, directionless but determined to express his rightful rage. The raging dog luckily had a pack of faithful followers who were equally disgusted at the blasphemy they’d heard. They trailed after him blindly, casting obligatory glowers back at the few seditious whisperers who remained behind.
Eldor inwardly laughed at their vain show of anger. They had left with their tents only half-pitched. No one else was of a mind to finish that job for them.
To Osus, Hark, and Mohrdon, to Claron with his wise, dark walnut eyes, and to the handful of other warriors who had chosen to stay by the high prince instead of following the general, Eldor voiced a whisper of his own. “Sympathy is not sedition. Sympathy is strength.”
The veil of dusk began to slip across the earth as the last tents were pitched on the beach. At the northern shore, nearer to Lincia’s house upon the hill, the Dorothans had set up a humble but very hospitable feast. The feast now ready for the honored guests, several of the villagers headed toward the camp to welcome them. Lincia’s wide eyes spotted Eldor from a mile away, standing apart from the tents and looking out upon the sea. She began toward him with a mile-long smile.
“Pardon, my lady,” a soldier interrupted at the midpoint of her route.
She stopped short, the stranger’s heavy hand like deadweight on her shoulder, keeping her in place. The palm was calloused and the fingers thick and meaty, much unlike any human hand she’d ever felt or hoped to feel upon her skin.
“Pardon,” he repeated, baring his beige teeth in a hideous, carious excuse for a smile. “My brother is feeling very ill, and so cannot attend the feast. But he is thirsty. Could you please fetch him something to drink?”
In that initial moment, everything within her urged her to refuse him—the ghastly shudder that his touch sent down her spine, her ardent desire to continue on her way across the camp. Two visceral magnets pushed and pulled her in the same direction: one away from this man, and the other towards the shoreline where her deep-eyed prince awaited.
But then there was the compass of her conscience. The conscience of a Glorian, which rendered her heart ever open, ever trusting in its limitless, selfless compassion. Lincia scorned herself for having looked upon this man and seen a monster. So his hands were rough, and so his teeth were in decay. But that was not his fault! That was no reflection of a rough, decaying soul. He was a compatriot of Eldor’s—and Eldor was human, so surely this man was as well. Her momentary fear of him had been small-minded, and small-hearted, and unfair. Fear was a very inglorious thing.
His brother was ill and required her service. She could retrieve the high prince from the shore, she reminded herself, as soon as she had done her duty as a kind and helpful hostess.
“Oh, of course!” she answered nervously, sensing that she had taken a couple of moments too long to navigate those moral and emotional magnetic poles. Until today, those poles had never come in conflict with each other.
The soldier had not noticed any delay in response. Had he noticed, he would not have cared.
Lincia smiled at him, toothlessly. “I will bring him some water, and mayhap some wine. And something to eat as well; he must be hungry.”
“Thank you, my lady,” the Zoll Zoran cooed in a voice thick with slime.
That voice! A dragon mimicking a dove. She fast dismissed the thought. Man, not dragon.
“But just a drink, for him, should be enough. I could accompany you, if—” he began to offer.
“No!—” she gasped. “No, that’s quite all right!” Despite herself, Lincia turned desperately and quickly on the stony sand, never in her all her days more eager to get an errand over with.
She promptly returned, bearing a small jug in each hand, one of wine and one of water, and an empty cup cradled in the crook of her elbow. She had picked up an apple at first, but decided against it—this man had said that food would not be necessary. Lincia did not want to push unwanted fruit on anyone. That would be unduly insistent. She’d recalled the insistences of Brontus’s mother at market. And the insistences of Brontus, the crushing chokehold of his hug. She had learned, today: lettuce and apples and love and kindness were not always welcome things.
It would have been too much to carry besides.
The soldier was waiting, just where she had left him. The same position; the same smile; the same fleshy fingers grazing hers, as he thanked her and took up the jug of wine. That sameness unnerved her in a way that she could not, and did not try to, understand.
She extended the vessel of water towards him as well, but he made no motion to take it. He was nodding toward a nearby tent. What, she thought—could he not handle both jugs, as had she?
“My brother is in that tent,” he stated, the shadows of the campground’s torchlight lengthening across his pockmarked face as he cocked his head, beckoning her to accompany him.
Each pockmark suddenly looked like a gaping abyss, into which she might fall headlong any second. That fall, she knew, would be nothing like the willing tumble into Eldor’s endless eyes.
The deeper the horror of her reaction to this man, the harsher she condemned herself for it. Such foolishness! Man-monsters who threatened to swallow you whole in the holes in their face. That was so whimsical and silly. If Father were here, he would remind her that this man was no monster, that those shallow scars on his face were not chasms at all. Father would say that it was very wrong, this projection of ugliness onto a man whose soul was certainly pock-free. And she was grown now; she ought to know better than that. A pockmarked soul! So silly. Only in the storybooks.
Lincia forced a smile at the soldier. She then realized of a sudden, in one fleeting second, that this was not the first time she had seen a pockmarked face. Nor did this man’s smile mark her first glimpse of a cavity. Nor were his the first rough, beefy hands that she had ever felt upon her skin—perhaps the roughest and the beefiest, but that seemed beside the point. All these things, she’d seen before on Glorion. And yet she’d never once projected outer ugliness onto a Glorian soul.
But that reflection came too late; already she was following the stranger toward the tent.
He pulled the flap aside and let her enter first.
Lincia blinked. In the dimly guttering firelight within the tent, she saw the shadows of a group of men. Too many men for a tent of this size. All standing, or sitting upright. None recumbent. None looked ill. Not physically ill, at least.
“Which… which is your brother?”
The floor of the tent had been covered in a sprawling rug, a pale nude rug, on which she saw a patch of spilt red wine was bursting into bloom. But the stark sight of this blood-hued blossom struck her, in some deep and visceral core, as quite the opposite of a flowering.
The wine had been cast to the floor. The water soon followed, dropped from another and much frailer hand. The wine had been thrown down in careless violence; the water was now dropped in careful fear.
The empty cup, too, tumbled from her elbow to the bloodstained rug. No, she reminded herself, that was wine. The jug of water lay on its side in the sand, near the tent’s entrance, at the margin of the rug. Its spilt contents seeped forth onto the rug and diluted the blood. The wine.
The empty cup was in the middle of the mess. It stared up at her, sidelong from its capsized mouth, begging to be filled but somehow fearing that same fullness. And fearing its own fallen openness. Lincia felt that same fear.
This symphony of sights and thoughts in one mere moment, climaxing in fear.
Fear was an inglorious thing! But life on Glorion had never called for fear, till now, she thought. Till now. Till this.
This, this—whatever this was—this did not happen; no, not even in the storybooks.
If she shut her eyes, her mouth, her ears, her mind, her heart quite hard enough, mayhap it wasn’t happening at all. But there were openings she was powerless to close.
She wondered if her heart was one of them. A closed heart…! No matter the circumstance, no matter how fearsome or desperate or dire, a closed heart seemed unforgivably inglorious. She fell faint, at that last thought of a closing heart.
But then—but then, it was open, all over again. Her heart had reopened, or else never closed. She was waking up, a little. She was falling, but this was a different fall. The thick knot in her stomach, in her womb, was loosening and now recoiling into an entirely different kind of knot. A beautiful fall, a beautiful knot. Two ebon mirrors. Twin new moons.
The pale coarse rug had turned into the pallet of her own bed, so beloved and familiar. The shadowy flaps of the tent had turned into the warm wooden walls of her home. Her home. She was at home again, here in the house upon the hill. There were no monsters here. Only a man, heartbreakingly human, with a superhuman hold over her open heart.
Her heart was in his hands, and he’d protected it. He had protected all of her.
She knew the men would all have torn her open, in all the wrong ways, had he not burst into the tent just ere they could burst into her. He had shut them down. One word from him, one look, and it’d been over. He had taken her up, told her that he would take her home. Her lolling head must have nodded toward the house upon the hill as he carried her away. She had been faint as it was happening, her consciousness and conscience put to rest, so the remembrances returned to her with all the gilded haze of dreams.
How had he even known, she wondered? What had led him to that particular tent, at a time so precise and so perfect? She wondered just how many magnetic pulls were at work in this world. Such a magnetic multiplicity in each human soul—mayhap the monsters’ souls, too?—and so many men and monsters on this earth! That was a lot of pull, she mused and softly smiled.
She was awake now, though still nestled halfway in the dream. “Eldor,” she murmured. She murmured a thank you; she murmured garbled, unintelligible things; another thank you. Murmured questions, to some of which she murmured her own answers.
He was silent, seated at her bedside. His silent presence set her world aright again. Her magnetic poles of virtue and passion seemed realigned. The compass pointed north, into his eyes.
Her murmurs subsided at length, and she echoed his silence awhile.
Her silent eyes asked him what they had been trying to do to her.
“We are a different breed of men, come from a place of sin,” he answered heavily. “We are not like you, Lincia.”
“And you are not like them.”
He smiled invisibly.
They sank back into silence, her limpid green eyes locked on his, and his eyes lowered to his hands. His hands were clasped and locked together at his knees, each strong hand full of the other.
Lincia’s hands—one of which hung listlessly over the side of the bed, its frail fingers drooping by visceral gravity toward Eldor’s, toward her moral and emotional north—were empty.
“I am going, too, tomorrow,” she spoke, her voice once more lowered to a half-dreaming murmur, “to Daerion.”
Eldor considered this a moment. “You don’t want to be parted from Brontus?”
“Not Brontus…”
Silence.
“Please,” she beseeched.
Much unlike King Xor, Eldor noticed, Lincia took silence as reluctance rather than assent. Rightly so. He did not think it would be best for her to come with them. She would be safest here—if there was any safety for her at all upon these doomed, defenseless shores.
“Please,” she repeated, her eyes closed in near-slumber, her hand beside the bed suddenly extending of its own accord and grazing his, “I feel safer with you than anywhere else.”
He would not deny her hand. He opened his, and took hers in.
He would not let it go till morning. If she could open her heart to him, to the prince of a people who had tried that very night to violate her openness, then the least he could do now was open his hands.
The sun crested the knoll, limning the house upon it with a halo of brilliant honey, turning blades of grass to blades of gold, recasting jaded hopes in amber. As some of the soldiers took down camp, packing gear for their visit to Daerion—many wondering and inquiring as to where the high prince had gone—Brontus followed the sun up the hill and burst breathlessly into the cabin.
There she was. Fast asleep, in the shadow of a dark sorcerer with deep eyes, who sat at her bedside and dared—dared!—to clasp her hand. The audacity of this stranger, to turn his head and smile at Brontus, while he wreaked some foreign magic on this fragile girl!
Brontus’s own eyes deepened at the sight of it. Well, he thought in relief, at least Lincia would be separated from this monster very soon. Brontus knew just as well as Lincia that fear and projection were very inglorious things. But in him, these were for her sake, not his own; it was all borne of love, he justified to himself. That had to make it beautiful, and Glorious.
“Your men are looking for you,” he reported to the prince.
Eldor did not react.
Brontus stared him down. “I came to say farewell to her.”
“No need,” Eldor replied. “She is coming with us.”