The Various Shades of Fangline

XVIII - Blood

2009-12-17T09:44:00.000-08:00

Some time later, a month or so, the Duke of Ward returned to Schloeffelonia with a brownie in his wake. The majority of those aware of such proceedings caused much hullabaloo over a brownie, as those creatures hadn’t been heard of in the world for centuries and were thought to have been extinct. The brownie, however, remained a mystery, as the Duke didn’t allow him to be put up for questioning, and the Duke was already known for his silence on most matters.

In Schloeffelonia there was also, among the nobler classes, much talk about the dubious strain of Schloeffel blood in the Duke, who, though coming from pure Schloeffel stock on one side, was known, like a spread of wildfire gossip, to be the product of a solid human parent from the North. A few mentioned that men of the North had once carried many noble qualities, but it tended to fall on deaf ears. The noblesse had one general condition: jealousy. It ran through them like a vein in a rock; in some it ran heavier and harder than others, but it hinged on owning something that no one else could, for a man cannot change his blood.

Half of the Duke of Ward’s blood was pure gold; the other half useless clay, and so the judgment of him came down to who saw the glass half-full and who saw it to be half-empty. It drove a certain thorn into the side of nobility to know a man could come from nowhere to rule over them all. The Duke had come from nowhere, it seemed, and was next in line for the throne of their kingdom. To many it didn’t seem right. To others it seemed a cheat. To others still, it was vulgar, as the man had never been trained properly and surely owned an embarrassment for an education.

His silence and brusque nature didn’t help matters, though it did manage to instill his aura with a type of mystique that the general droves found fascinating, and left them helpless to circle in endless conjecture.

Further strangeness to those who watched and noticed every detail (who consisted of more than a few) was the great affection the King held for the Duke, apparent in his every move and word, and the affection given His Majesty in return, when the Duke showed no level of concern for anyone else. Any thought that the Duke showed his cousin special attention because of his absolute status was dismissed by anyone with half a wit; the Duke showed no recognition of status in any circumstance. Kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, comtes and comtessas, viscounts, barons, lords and ladies; all were ignored in the Duke’s eyes, and that served to further rankle the noblesse. It appeared that the King truly loved his cousin, and this to some represented a frustrating barrier, and to others it represented exploitative opportunity.

King Sangwine himself still possessed the princely naivitee that, through some inexplicable means, ends up a positive trait for a man thrust into a position of leadership. Perhaps it is this state of obliviousness that keeps a man sane when viewed under a magnifying glass at all hours, or perhaps it is the measure of intrinsic luck that those types of men invariably possess. Perhaps each quality comes with the other, as a consequence of each, imbuing a man with what he requires to lead without madness, but few possess it, as most leaders are either mad, or go mad through the processes and temptations that accompany leadership.

This absence of madness was perhaps what kept the Schloeffel blood so coveted for all of the long elven years, but that proved, like most things, a poor failsafe in the case of Fangline. Sangwine, however, seemed to be a chip off the old block, and the elves were, in general, pleased with the return to millennia-old normalcy.

Later, within a room that wasn’t very fancy, the King, the Duke, the brownie, and the butler were in a state of repose. Only the butler showed any measure of deference towards the others, it being so injected into his veins that he could not forget status or blood, regardless of what familiarity was tossed around him. Even the smallest act, like the idea of calling the King anything but “Sire”, regardless of having known him since birth and being perhaps one of his closest friends and allies, would crack the senses of the butler and, no doubt, drive him to a state of utter confusion and chaos, wherein no rules nor morality lay.

However, Geeves reposed as well as he might, which is to say he also sat in a chair (instead of standing) while the King and the Duke lounged on a couch, and the brownie perched himself within a second chair, his slight weight making less than a dent in the cushion, as if he was outside of the rules of such things as gravity.

The brownie was a strange creature, magical by nature, and a relic of the past. Geeves found his presence to be a boon, as knowing the unknown was always an advantage, and even though the brownie might not appear to have any use at this particular moment, the butler was always in the act of filing things away in the catalogue of his extensive mind.

“This is not what I expected,” said the brownie to King Sangwine, regarding Schloeffelonia in general. His accent was one that Geeves determined needed the expertise of the half-ogre to attempt to dissect; it sounded like nothing Geeves had ever heard. “It is referred to as Schlöffelonia, and was once not like this.”

“Like what?” asked Sangwine, looking unlike a king in the way he reclined on the couch, though kings were allowed to do that at times when it didn’t matter.

The brownie thought for a moment and then replied, “Human.”

Geeves had to resist the urge to choke, and he saw Sangwine’s eyes widen at the answer. It wasn’t much of a reaction, though, considering what past elven kings might do, were their kingdom suggested to be akin to the constructs of humans. Xylic seemed to have no reaction whatsoever, and was intent on tying a bit of string into little knots for no reason Geeves could discern.

“Our city seems human to you, Brown?”

“Quite.”

“In what way?”

“Virtually every way, methinks.”

Geeves found this very odd, and Sangwine pursued further.

“Would you be more specific?”

“I find little difference between the city of the north and this one. Both are filled with dwellings, smells, this and that, bric-a-brac, useless, needless things after which humans have always pined.”

The brownie appeared oblivious that anything he was saying might offend the king, and he went on.

“What is the point of building things that will fall ruin and are dead? These human cities; they are all in a constant state of death and ruin, for no sooner have they built one construct when the other begins to decay. And to build these constructs they cut down life. I have never understood it.”

“Civilization is like a flower, Brown,” said Sangwine. “It buds, blossoms, and dies. That is the way of things.”

“Is yours dying?” asked Brown.

“Perhaps,” said Sangwine. “But, in its death lies the seeds for another bloom.”

“A different kind of bloom?” asked the brownie.

“In the details only,” said Sangwine. “They’re all the same.”

“That can either be perceived as depressing or glorious,” said Xylic from aside, his string strung through his fingers.

“I prefer the latter,” said Sangwine, who seemed light for the gravity of such a discussion. He fell against the back of the couch and took his cousin’s arm.

“The kingdom of the elves is fading,” remarked the brownie.

“It has faded since its inception,” said Sangwine. “I have no answers as to how to preserve it, for I don’t believe it should be preserved.”

Geeves knew any number of elves who would scream with alarm to hear such a thing from the mouth of their king.

“We are what we are,” said Sangwine, “and that is mostly human. Despite our longevity and our beauty and our proclivity for trees, or whatever you might say differentiates an elf from a human, we are, all of us, almost entirely human. Hope alone is different among us. The only thing that truly differentiates us from humanity is our culture. I lived among humans for a short time without arousing a huge amount of notice. Xylic lived among them for all of his life without anyone knowing what he was. The differences between our races are so minute that it is only the things we choose to do; our dress, our manner, our traditions, that hold us apart, and those assimilate too, though slowly.

In the past we have assumed that because we are elven, we are better. I know from experience that we are not. Possessing whatever miniscule part of fairy blood within one’s veins does not imbue one with automatic superiority. We have seen both brilliance and terror come from the same blood, and I, you, those present, and the rest of the elven kingdom must admit to ourselves that it is not the mere possession of blood that separates us from the depths of chaos, but what we choose to do with it.”

The brownie sat through all of this, thinking. His high, childlike features showed an intensity of contemplation that could never be on the face of a child.

“It seems Schlöffelonia has managed a wise king,” he said.

“Ha!” said Sangwine, smiling at the brownie in his chair.

“He approves,” said Xylic in monotone, more interested in an intricate series of knots in his hands.

“I shall sleep soundly tonight,” announced Sangwine.

THE END

~ Thus ends the period of Three Months between the end of Lint Chapter 15 and the beginning of Lint Chapter 16, wherein Bactine appears to Sangwine in his dream. ~

XVII - Collision

2009-12-17T09:41:00.000-08:00

Dinner was a quiet affair that night, as Fang had a lot to think about and Zedwig left him to it, although with more than a little curiosity lingering at the mage’s edges. The food’s taste was pale next to Fang’s roaring thoughts. James was opportunity.

Before him Zedwig sat, unassuming as he always was, and Fang continued to feel guilt, which was a new feeling for Fang, and not one he was comfortable with. After consuming the adequate quantity of food, Fang rose and went outside.

Zedwig followed.

It was dark on that night, though dark with a colorful blue tinge, lit by the broad range of stars that illuminated the high elevation heavens with brighter light and color than anywhere else in the world. Though just outside the cabin was their magnificent garden, it brought Fang no pleasure to see it and he turned away for the woods.

The woods were filled with the noise of night; insects that chirped, night birds, and, on occasion, the soft, lush, downy call of an owl. The woods were alive and not at all dark or sleeping, and as trees passed him by he could hear his steps on pine needles and acorns and ancient leaves, and the sound he made seemed wrong in the forest’s palette, or out of place, and he felt the desire to tread unnoticed and in silence, though it wasn’t to be, for after he’d passed into the woods some distance, Zedwig’s hand touched his arm from behind.

Fang turned and saw him, close and inquisitive, haloed by his silver hair that was cast deep silver-blue on a background sprinkled by fireflies.

Zedwig’s mouth opened to speak, but what he had to say was much more than could be put into a few words, and so instead Fang sensed it from him, as if one word was said, but a word filled with meaning like a bow resonating a wide, full tone on the string of a cello. It was all at once, but it meant something like this, yet more:

What is wrong with you I am concerned but I don’t want to push you I feel responsibility for you, you are dissonant and distant and I don’t like it, it makes me afraid, and afraid of my attachment, and afraid of my past and my future and you and if you should betray me it would be worse now than ever before, and why are you behaving like this?

Those were the bare bones of it, although to better understand, it would have to be accompanied by sound and color and sensation. For Fang, he knew and understood it in a second, drew comfort from Zedwig, and was further endeared to the mage, if that was possible.

At this point he felt an immense divide form within himself, and wondered if, by some means, they might be reconciled in a way that would satisfy both.

“Zedwig,” said Fang, though his voice felt clumsy after their prolonged silence. “If I decided I must leave this place, would you come with me?”

“I think you’ve forgotten who is in charge, here,” replied Zedwig, his mind coursing through Fang’s for answers. Fortunately for Fang, they couldn’t exactly read each other’s minds, at least not with precision… most of the time.

Fang moved to a tree and leaned upon it.

“You are stronger in some ways,” said Fang, leaving his implications unsaid.

“I’ve been foolish, I see,” said Zedwig. “Believing I’d come so far with you.”

“You have,” said Fang. “Quite far.”

“It doesn’t seem to be so.”

“What do you expect to make of me?” asked Fang. “A toothless monk? A spineless farmer, whose only concern is when the first frost will lie? A man with no drive and no ambition? Is that who I am, Zedwig? If you should take from me everything that makes me who I am, what would be left? I would be nothing but a shell… empty and barren. Devoid of life, because change is what gives me life.”

“What is the change that you want?” asked Zedwig.

“I don’t know,” said Fang, and he shifted. “I want to leave, to go to the east, and to … see what opportunity lies there.”

“Opportunity,” said Zedwig.

Fang glanced at Zedwig as the mage came closer, as if nearer proximity would make Fang more transparent to his scrutiny.

“What would you do for opportunity?” the mage asked him, as if this were a test.

“You want to know if my morality has changed.”

“Yes.”

“You want to know if, given the opportunity, I would enslave you again and go on a murderous rampage.”

“It had crossed my mind,” said Zedwig’s voice, which twitched.

Zedwig continued before Fang could say a word and his voice grew soft and poignant.

“Do you think it might be better if I were dead?”

It was a question asked in honesty, almost as if he wasn’t questioning his own mortality, but instead asking about the state of casual affairs.

“Zedwig, absolutely not, I-“

“Think about it,” Zedwig insisted. “If I were dead, you would suffer no more temptation and neither would I, and there would be no further danger of an unstoppable, powerful force opposing the world. Everything would be so much simpler.”

“Except you would be dead,” said Fang.

“Grief passes in time.”

“No… it doesn’t.”

Zedwig gave him a very intent look.

“It becomes less potent,” Zedwig amended.

“Your death would curse me,” said Fang.

“Stop saying things like that.”

“Would you like me to lie?”

There was a pause wherein Fang knew he had won the point, and so he spoke again, softer, and more earnestly:

“If I leave this place, will you come with me?”

A pained look passed across Zedwig’s face, but his voice softened as well.

“It is too early, you cannot leave.”

“Zedwig-”

“I cannot let you go.”

“If I leave this place,” Fang repeated, more insistent, “will you come with me?”

“After all the heinous things you have done, that I have done under your hand-”

Fang took Zedwig’s arm, determined to find an answer from the mage, who recoiled, and yet there was something else in his eyes that Fang latched onto with his best instinct. “When I leave this place-”

“You’re murderous and dangerous, do you think I’ve lost my mind-”

“Will you come with me?” Fang demanded of Zedwig.

“Madness!”

“Madness, of course,” said Fang, “and we revel in it, don’t we?”

“Stop,” said Zedwig, but Fang didn’t want to stop, being gripped with a certain madness that was his greatest weakness and strength.

“Tell me,” he said while maneuvering Zedwig between himself and a tree, his intimidation coming with such ease it felt like an old pair of shoes, “that you will come with me when I go.”

“At this rate, I will never let you go,” said Zedwig, though his breath was short.

“Come with me when I go,” he insisted, wedging his will into a tiny crack.

“You’re not going-”

“Zedwig-”

“I will never let you-”

“Come with me!”

The wedge drove true; the crack spread across the wall; the wall shifted and crumbled and it was one of the most beautiful things that Fang had ever seen. Zedwig slumped against the tree; his eyes closed; his face turned aside until the pale light brightened the sinuous line from his ear to his chin, and he was pulled, in exquisite repose and defeat, to breathe: “How could I do anything else?”

Fang could not control the trembling that overtook his hands as the triumph spread through his body, filling him with adrenaline and dampening his hesitations. It was slow, though perhaps it wasn’t, as his shaking fingers reached forward and up towards the face of Zedwig, and it was clumsy, at first, the way he touched that sinuous line along his jaw.

“Please, Fangline,” he sighed. “I beg you never to use my powers to your advantage again. Please…”

“I love you,” said Fang, almost as if to himself, and as if in another conversation, one where he wasn’t imposing his will on Zedwig, and where it had only just been discovered. His hand touched the silver hair and his fingers fell through it, and within it, tangling in its braid and pulling it free.

“I could not bear it if you did,” said Zedwig, though Fang was caught by the way his hair tumbled across itself as the braid fell to nonexistence, and his hand sifted it like wondrous quicksilver.

Something turned in his mind; it was a lever in the boiler room that released long-pent steam, and Fang could not help himself. He moved towards Zedwig with one goal in sight: to kiss the mouth that had long eluded him, to own it, and to possess it, and all of its returns.

From Zedwig, however, there came a sharp change, a shift in aura, in his mind, in the unseen colors that surrounded him. It happened in the briefest of moments, as if one moment he had been surrounded by a transparent golden glow, and the next a thick, blind smattering of blue and green. There was a catch in the mage’s breath and he turned his face aside, evasive, elusive, and in ultimate judgment.

The pregnant pause that followed held all the weight of a hundred castle walls.

There was a tremendous wave that had risen from the depths without Fang’s knowledge that it was there, but here, in this moment, it crested and, after a tiny, sparse, and dreadful window of awareness, it crashed upon him, burying him in the churning waters of rejection coupled with shame.

His hands fell away from the mage and his senses went blind to everything but the slash that now maimed him, though no physical blood fell, but if it could have, he would have died there.

They were like two rocks that collide in mid-air and whose opposing forces cause them to fire in opposite directions, or two fish that meet in the water and barrel elsewhere in swift, seamless, neat lines. Zedwig shot away in a straight line towards the garden or the cabin, though Fang didn’t notice which, and nor did he want to know, for he turned to the forest’s depths. He strode away, the length and force of his stride filling his thoughts in an instinctual act of self-preservation to save his mind from what must be realized and known and agonized over, though he couldn’t block it out for very long.

At last it caught him, the monster that had chased him through the woods, in a tiny clearing that held leaves upon the ground. He fell on the pile of leaves as one who is washed ashore after being arrested by the sea, and then, with no resistance, allowed it to pull him back and drown him.

After a time, perhaps a long time, someone sighed.

Fang looked up and he saw James, leaning against a tree as he always did, as if he couldn’t be bothered with expending the energy required to hold himself upright. Irritation washed through him, as he despised being seen vulnerable, and this was as vulnerable as he had ever allowed himself to become. He stood.

“James, take me from here.”

That made James straighten.

“You want to leave?” he asked.

“Now,” said Fang, feeling the mantle of command fall upon him in the defense of his sanity.

To James’ credit, he didn’t question him further, but instead revealed his white wings, a beautiful, angelic pair of wings that juxtaposed his muddled morality like a halo on a snake. He took Fang into his arms and, with strength that wasn’t real or expected, rose at once with powerful beats, through the canopy of trees and above.

There, above the trees, came into view everything that Fang hadn’t seen before. There, though it was only a small distance upwards, the breadth of Fang’s understanding was widened, though kept out of his knowledge for all of his life previous. He saw the treetops, the clearing, the garden, small beside the forest that sloped away and downwards, across the mountainside that joined mountainsides on either side, all sloping downwards to the valley wherein lay the great castle of Schloeffelonia and twinkling, soft lights of the city. Beyond it was nothing, a silent, dark plain that stretched towards some smaller hills far in the west. Surrounding Schloeffelonia was emptiness, vast, untouched and devoid of man or elf, and he viewed it at once as if the life that clung in tiny pockets was insignificant; it was the flame of a candle with its tremulous glow at the mercy of a great window. How easy it would be, he saw, to snuff it out.

---- ---- ---- ---

In the other direction, Zedwig somehow came to be near the cabin, though he had no recollection of how he got there, or in what manner, or for what purpose he had come, and instead suffered from an intense bout of nausea that drew to its ultimate end within a small copse of shrubbery near the firewood.

His body shuddered; a cold sweat broke out on his face and he was wracked with chills and a sudden feverish anxiety. He was willing to do almost anything for the greater good, but he had limits. Now he was certain that he had failed.

He wondered if it would have been better if he had killed Fangline that day earlier in the summer, thus removing from the earth the uncertainty that he presented just by existing. The idea of Fangline’s death always caused him to recoil, but perhaps it would have been better. Perhaps… except he wasn’t certain he could have kept his sanity.

He wasn’t certain he had his sanity, anyway.

Again he wished, as he sat on the slight rise near the wood pile, for his own death, for the cool, cold emptiness of it, for the removal of angst, for the resolution of his weaknesses, for sleep, for escape, for nothing. He sighed like a child dreaming of cakes and fell back, numb and longing.

After a time, perhaps half an hour, he began to be able to wonder about Fangline again without shuddering, and so he sat up and, with legs crossed, he let out a small pulse, palest blue in appearance, which circled out from him and into the surrounding environment, used to sense Fangline’s presence and where he might be.

He wasn’t there.

Zedwig stood, realizing that Fangline had left, or at least tried to, and knowing Fangline had hardly a chance to survive in the mountains alone, he let out a greater pulse, one that would scour the mountains in all directions, further than a man can run in half an hour, at least.

It passed out from him, blue, pale, translucent, with a sound that was almost like an absence of sound, and rolled outwards as if he were a tiny exploding sun. As it moved towards the ends of his limits, he began to feel fear.

Fangline was gone. Somehow he had disappeared, and with that realization were both relief and agony.

XVI - Mud City

2009-11-22T11:07:00.001-08:00

The outskirts of Mud City were not pleasant to the casual observer, or to the unfamiliar, but to Xylic it held the sense of homecoming. There was a familiarity in the shape of each landscape, of each untended tree, of the slant of the sun through smoke and dust. The buildings, constructs, and walls were his; they belonged to him because they were in his earliest and longest memories. The people and their northern accents were as comforting as warm stew on a cold and rainy day, and though Mud City sprawled and spewed forth from itself, littering the countryside with the derelict and the unfinished, it was the one place where he relaxed down to his bones.

He had spent sixty years here, among humans, among squalor, but it wasn’t all squalor. It wasn’t at all squalor, to him.

The elves might dislike it, as humans had a horrible time regulating themselves, but it wasn’t easy when they all lived such a short time. As it was, the city was full of a certain constant shifting and turmoil; it was a steady, pulsing, vein of life, turning over and over, raw and open, unreserved and unapologetic. Humans were creatures gripped by desire and desperation, and Mud City was filled with them.

“It smells funny here,” said the brownie from beside him, whose name Xylic had learned some weeks ago.

It was perhaps their second or third day together before Xylic bothered to ask. They had been sitting on either side of a fire, drying out from a wet and miserable day of travel, and the brownie was holding a sock on the end of a stick near the flames.

“What’s your name?” Xylic had asked, not bothering with any sort of lead-in to it.

“Brown,” said the brownie.

“Your name is ‘Brown’?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Is that wrong somehow?”

“Your name is ‘Brown’, and you’re a brownie?”

“Yes,” said the brownie named Brown, looking as if he wasn’t sure what Xylic was getting at.

“Your parents weren’t very creative, were they?”

“Yours were too creative,” replied Brown in his strange accent. “Who names the child ‘Xylic’? It sounds as if it is a nasty condition.”

“Hey!”

The brownie held up his hands in surrender, including the one with the sock-on-a-stick. “It could be my culture is archaic and I do not understand current name trends among the hybrids.”

“Hybrids?”

“That is what elves are, neh?”

“Yes…”

“You stand half in one world and half in another, with the blood you have mixed.”

“And where did brownies come from?”

“Oh, brownies are as old as the world,” said Brown the Brownie. “We sprang from the earth itself, bound by its laws.”

Xylic looked Brown over and replied, “Whatever.” That ended the conversation.

Here in the present, Brown was wrinkling his nose at the scent of Mud City, which Xylic found to be a mixture of earthy, derelict, and sensual.

“Get used to it,” replied Xylic.

Brown made some kind of grumbling noise, though it didn’t register with Xylic, as he was being washed clean by a flood of memories.

There was where he and Bactine had walked a hundred times, and there was the old-wood fence that surrounded her property, with one post leaning out too far, another too short. There was her home, old, bowed, with a porch covered by wooden shingles and with boards swept clean. There was a cat in a chair. A white cat. He loved that cat.

A flash of color sprayed from behind the house as laundry blew in the wind on long, curved strings that stretched from the house to the tree. The grass was not at all even and intermixed with wildflowers. It was all gray and brown and, to Xylic, beautiful. His recollection was sharp and painful.

He tied his horse to one of the fence posts.

“Um…” said Brown.

“Wait here,” said Xylic without looking at the brownie, and he walked through the gate. The cat raised its head as he approached, and, jumped from the chair in instant recognition to rub against his ankles. He stooped and pulled the cat into his arms.

“Snowball,” he said to the cat with affection. “You remember me.”

Snowball made a soft purring noise and gave Xylic a slow blink that made him smile.

“Who is there?” called a voice from inside, and Snowball jumped from his arms.

“Mrs. Gallagher?”

“Xylic?” was her reply, and she appeared in the door, her eyes wide and unbelieving. In her face, in her movements, and in her voice he saw shades of Bactine, and it caused his body to tremble.

“Yes, it’s me,” he said, though he was aware all at once that he would appear very different from how he once looked. His clothes were finer than even those the highest nobility wore in Mud City, his hair was long, and he was, by appearances, very elven.

Though her eyes passed over him, there was never an instant where they lacked recognition. He found that comforting, though it was shredded by what he knew had to come next.

“You’ve come back!” she cried, and she took his hand. Then she looked beyond him to the road, where his horse was tied and where Brown the Brownie sat, perched, somehow, on the top of a fence post.

“Where is Bactine?”

The shaking in his body grew greater and he was dismayed by sudden tears in his eyes and a haze in his mind. He looked aside, to look anywhere but her face, but she was pulling his hand and asking, and asking again, and he couldn’t stop the tears from spilling over, down, onto her other hand; her hand that clutched the front of his coat with fingers so like hers that his breath shuddered, caught, and sounded loud and wrong and unstable when he told her that Bactine was gone.

---- ---- ---- ----

“What do you mean, you couldn’t protect her?” demanded Mr. Gallagher.

Mr. Gallagher, a head shorter than Xylic, stood like a shadow over him while Xylic sat in a chair. It was as if he were on trial, and, Xylic felt, rightfully so. He hadn’t seen Mrs. Gallagher’s face for some time as she had been weeping since he told her. Still now, she hid her face in her arms on the table before her and he felt a certain lancing, helpless pain from her grief.

“There was a war,” said Xylic, feeling his explanation could never be adequate. “It was chaos… she sacrificed herself to save the King.”

“You should have stopped her,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Gallagher, I did what I-“

“Who is this worthless king I’ve never heard of?”

“He is the king of Schloeffelonia.”

“What?”

“The king of the elves.”

“Elves!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I suppose you think you’re one now?”

“I am, sir.”

“You’re not!” yelled Mr. Gallagher, and he turned away.

There was silence for a time, broken only by Mrs. Gallagher’s weeping. Xylic’s shoulders slumped and he felt a certain intense agony brought on by both the grief of Bactine’s passing and the anguish he was causing her parents, whom he loved.

Mrs. Gallagher looked up at Xylic, and perhaps it was that she saw his miserable state and had pity, but she reached across the table and grasped his hand.

“Xylic, dear,” she said. “We don’t blame you.”

Mr. Gallagher made a noise and stalked out the back door. It slammed shut.

They both glanced at the back door and Xylic left unspoken his surety that Mr. Gallagher did indeed blame him for Bactine’s death, at least to some degree. He would accept it, though, and hope that forgiveness would come in time.

“Mrs. Gallagher, I would have died myself if it could have saved her.”

“I believe you, Xylic.”

“I … loved her.”

“I know,” she said. Unfortunately, the admittance and her prior knowledge of it made him cry.

Then it was that Mrs. Gallagher pulled Xylic into her arms and comforted him, though perhaps drawing comfort from him herself, and he perceived, at last, that he did have a mother, and had for some time.

She held him, and he cried against her shoulder as he hadn’t been able to thus far, as before it was Sangwine who needed to mourn, not him. But he was the one who had known Bactine down to her last corner and shadow, and he was the one who had been part of her family.

Her hand smoothed across his hair as she said, “Don’t mind Mr. Gallagher. He loves you, and I believe he’s very upset to find you’re an elf.”

“It isn’t as if I could change it,” said Xylic.

“I suspected all along,” said Mrs. Gallagher. “I can’t believe more people didn’t suspect you.”

“I kept to myself.”

“Except in the case of Bactine,” she said.

“Weakness, perhaps,” said Xylic. “I wonder if I had never become friends with her, if she would still be here.”

“I doubt that,” said Mrs. Gallagher. “You and I both know she would never have stayed here, in Mud City. She had to go, for whatever reason, and find something.”

“She did, and she found something.”

“It looks as if you did, too,” she said.

“I did,” whispered Xylic.

They leaned away from each other, gathering their respective selves and exchanging sniffs, finding their chairs and the corner of a table between them.

Mrs. Gallagher waved a hand, gave Xylic a watery smile and said, “Well, tell me about it.”

And so he did.

XV - Nothing

2009-11-21T20:06:00.000-08:00

It was an unassuming day later in the summer when Fang laid in the sunshine on the side of the creek, sprawled and drying, and stared into the blue sky. Above him and above the ridge a hawk circled, its rise and fall lazy, and he watched it and allowed his mind to drift.

Nearby was Zedwig, asleep by all appearances, and it allowed him to consider the mage as much as he wanted.

He had become aware of the things he had done, and it had been a miserable experience. It was something he preferred never to experience again, and he assumed he had two choices on how to avoid that eventuality. One, he could make sure never to repeat his past actions, which meant reform. Or two, he could either avoid or silence his conscience. His conscience was Zedwig, but Zedwig was also the source of his greatest power. Such weakness and such strength came from one man whom he wasn’t sure he could live without.

He wondered how soon he could leave this place.

It isn’t to be assumed that he didn’t like it there; he was quite content, after a manner of speaking. Zedwig had been a brilliant teacher and mentor and the things they had accomplished had opened his eyes to a new world he’d never seen before. There was, however, a certain silence of action that left him restless, and he knew with no doubt that he and Zedwig could not stay there forever. Fang was a man who liked movement in his life. He thrived on change, and was stifled by predictability.

Fang shifted and began to dress, and as he did so, Zedwig, always the light sleeper, began to stir. He continued as if he didn’t notice, and after a moment, as if he didn’t notice the mage’s amethyst eyes following his movements.

“Curious,” was what Zedwig said.

“What is that?” Fang replied, tying his waist.

Zedwig sat up and sighed, reaching for his own garments. “I sense dissonance.”

Fang didn’t say anything for a time, not being sure what to say, and feeling guilty for some reason. After some moments of Zedwig’s peripheral dressing, Fang decided to be direct.

“How long are we going to stay here?” he asked.

Zedwig’s hand halted on his tunic and he glanced at Fang. The look in his eyes shifted from surprised to something deeper, and then he continued fastening his buttons.

“When you’re ready,” was all he said.

“What exactly are you trying to do to me?” asked Fang.

The mage finished dressing and lay back down in the drifting grass.

“Reform you,” he said without pretense, lacing his hands behind his head.

“You know how that displeases me,” said Fang, though it was strange how he couldn’t be displeased with Zedwig at this moment, like this.

“I know,” said Zedwig. “But it must be done.”

“Imagine then, for a moment,” said Fang, moving closer to sit next to Zedwig while he reclined, until he could look down upon his face, “That you succeeded. You reformed me.”

“Alright, I’m imagining,” said Zedwig.

“Now imagine how incredibly dull I would be.”

Zedwig laughed, and Fang enjoyed the mage’s laughter, smiling without knowing it.

“You don’t want me entirely reformed, now do you?” he asked.

“Perhaps not entirely,” Zedwig admitted with a half-grin.

“So when can we leave, dear master? When? When?” he asked, with overwrought enthusiasm.

“Where would we go?”

“Perhaps the east.”

Zedwig placed an arm over his eyes and said, “I don’t know. At least here I know there are no artifacts to tempt you.”

Fang took Zedwig’s wrist and pulled it away from his face. “I won’t use them on you.”

“You won’t?” asked Zedwig, with honest curiosity piqued.

“No,” said Fang, and he pressed Zedwig’s wrist into the earth as he looked into his face. He was surprised to find his breath had gone short. “No, I won’t.”

For a golden moment wherein the sun shone, and as a few errant puffed dandelion seeds floated between them, Zedwig considered Fang with a piercing intensity.

“You mean that,” said Zedwig, seeming as surprised by it as Fang was, and then he went on, softer, as if speaking out loud to himself, “Even if you may not be able to carry through on it, you mean what you say.”

“I do,” said Fang, feeling weak.

He then felt something change between them; it was something only discernable because of their mental connectivity, but it was as if a wall fell away and something new and warm replaced it. The change occurred because, to some degree, Zedwig began to trust Fang.

Zedwig smiled at him.

“Even if there are ten artifacts sitting in the same room as you are?”

“Even if!”

“Along with myself?”

“Getting more difficult…”

“And they’re all the most well-cut coats you’ve ever seen?”

Fang finally laughed.

“When can we leave?” he persisted.

Zedwig reclaimed his wrist from Fang’s hand, sat up, and then touched his face and said, “Soon.”

It was almost condescending the way he said it, and as Fang watched Zedwig walk back towards the cabin, he wondered if “soon” meant in a week or in a year. Or ten years. It was impossible to discern, and it did little for his impatience.

He was, however, at the mercy of Zedwig, and though there was no one else he’d rather be at the mercy of more than Zedwig, he’d much rather be at the mercy of no one at all.

A few minutes later, he stewed on that while he traversed the woods with an axe, until he came across the fallen tree they’d been using for firewood.

The movements were automatic; he hefted the axe above him, counterbalanced, and used inertia and gravity to cut from the log beneath him. It was all so simple and mindless, yet it was complicated beyond understanding, if one were to try to dissect each miniscule movement required. His axe struck the wood with a *thunk*, bits flew in chaos to the sides, and then his axe felt soft, stuck, wedged in the wood. He pulled, and the muscles in his back and right shoulder went taught.

It was then that he noticed a hawk watching him beside a nearby tree.

Though he thought it was odd for a hawk to behave in such an inquisitive manner, he returned to his task, only glancing back to the hawk after he’d performed another swift yank to free the axe. It was still looking at him.

Being in no particular hurry, he observed the hawk, and it, in return, observed him. Nothing happened. Fang went back to chopping.

It was when he hefted the axe above his head and was just at the apex of driving it downward that the hawk spoke.

“You know, you’d have a lot more success if you came downward and at an angle,” said the hawk.

Fang dropped his axe.

“And go with the grain,” it finished.

“James!”

The hawk turned into a man wearing brown and cream, tallish, human, with rich brown hair and palest ice-blue eyes. On his chin was a goatee that perhaps gave his face its devilish, mischievous bent, but Fang believed it was something else instead: something in his eyes. His heart leapt to see him again, and it was because James represented one thing to Fang: opportunity.

“How did you find me?”

“Oh, I have my ways,” said James, leaning on a tree.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell them to me?”

“It’s all very dull, you wouldn’t enjoy it,” said James. “How’s Zedwig?”

Fang hesitated for an instant before replying, “Fine.”

“Yes, he looks well from the air,” said James. “Sane, and all that. Healthy, too. Quite a miracle, I’d say. Who had to die for that?”

“No one.”

“You mean you figured out a way to heal the destructive sickness?”

“No,” said Fang. “No, I mean, it wasn’t anyone important.”

“Hmn,” said James, and he glanced at Fang. “What are your plans?”

“My plans?”

“Right, where are you going from here?”

“I don’t know,” he said, glancing back through the woods, in the direction of the cabin, and Zedwig. “He is … ah…”

“Calling all of the shots?”

“For now,” said Fang, feeling somewhat indignant.

“Ah,” said James, and he leaned back on the tree. “You know, if you got another artifact, you could-“

“No,” said Fang.

“No?” asked James, surprised.

“No,” said Fang again, with finality.

James groaned, and then he ran a hand through his hair.

“He’ll come around,” said Fang.

“Or you will,” said James. “Compromise doesn’t become you, Fang.”

That statement made something rise in him that felt very akin to outrage. Instead of confrontation, his upbringing led him to ignore the offender, and so he took his axe again, in a hefty way, and prepared to chop wood, although adjusted a bit to cut with the grain.

There was some time that passed while James leaned against a tree and Fang attacked the log with his axe. After he had cut enough wood, he gathered it and prepared to return to the cabin, but not before turning to James.

“What are you going to do?” he asked him.

James shrugged one shoulder and said, “Keep an eye on things.”

Fang glanced over him, not altogether finding James trustworthy.

“What things?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said James. “I won’t watch you too closely. I know how you hate to be viewed under a magnifying glass. I’ve found some interesting things in the east.”

“In the east?” asked Fang.

“Perhaps I’ll tell you sometime,” said James, but just then he appeared distracted by something over Fang’s shoulder.

Fang turned to look, and he saw Zedwig coming through the forest. He looked back to James, and instead found a small, very dumb-looking sparrow. It chirped, squawked, and flapped away.

“What is it?” Zedwig asked him as he arrived.

Fang looked at Zedwig.

“Nothing,” he said.

XIV - Triumph and Fear

2009-11-20T06:43:00.000-08:00

Zedwig had done it.

He had overcome Fangline within a matter of weeks, made him beg and suffer for everything he had done, and brought him to worship Zedwig with a consuming and subservient passion. Fangline didn’t know the extent of Zedwig’s calculation, but the mage had laid each careful step to bring him here.

It had long ago been established that Zedwig was a powerful manipulator; he’d become aware of it himself with the aid of Fangline before any of this had happened. He had controlled the man when he was a prince, reveling in the ability, and back then he was only a beginner. After years of seasoning and self-awareness, he had become brilliant. It was undiscovered by others as of yet; he had been under Fangline’s control until a few weeks ago, after all. He did use it then, while under proverbial lock and key, but it was so diluted with insanity and compulsion that his manipulations were never as effective as he wanted them to be.

That, perhaps, was one source of his insanity.

Now, however, he was in full control of himself and gloried in his triumph over Fangline.

Despite that, he never lied to Fangline, and his actions were not as malevolent or underhanded as they might appear. He did love him, in a sense, though he wouldn’t have told him as much except in the case that it was the precise moment that those words would break him. There was little sentiment in Zedwig, at least for the time being, in regards to Fangline. For Zedwig, Fangline was a force that must be stopped, and he would do everything within his power to stop him.

Except kill him.

Zedwig wouldn’t kill anyone. He would never kill anyone, ever again. Even to think of it, of the days and nights of killing and slaughter, sent a chill, a rapid, thin wave of short frequency, from his fingertips to his shoulders and then in a spread throughout his body, filling him with cold and anxiety. It nauseated him still, and he was forced to spend hours in meditation, or otherwise he would starve or die of sleep deprivation.

He had not once spilled blood of his own free will and choice, and he never would. Manipulation, on the other hand, was another game altogether.

Beyond that, he was a natural teacher. He wanted to teach Fangline what no one else had ever succeeded, though his aunt and his father, and possibly even his brother, had tried. He was certain an education would be a far better solution for Fangline than the death or incarceration he would suffer at home in Schloeffelonia, and Zedwig was intrigued by the challenge of administering it.

There was one thing he realized during the time that he had been dealing with Fangline these past weeks: Fangline craved the full attention and affection of another man and he had a desperate fear of loss of the same. At some point, Zedwig had understood in a flash it had come from the loss of his father’s affection with the birth of Sangwine. This revelation came with both enlightenment and a peculiar feeling of responsibility towards knowing something so vulnerable about another person, but regardless Zedwig had used it against him. He had done it, he told himself, with an eye on the greater good.

After all, it had forced Fangline to see the errors of his past ways. It had opened his eyes, and that was something Zedwig, at times, hadn’t thought possible. And greater still, it had happened far faster than Zedwig had anticipated it would. He was pleased; he was satisfied… he had found happiness.

Today Fangline stood near, beside him, and was a tremendous source of limitless, beautiful power. Fangline was a dragon in a garden, but now the dragon had been tamed and was benevolent, and the garden around him had blossomed into a paradise. With the short summer season Zedwig had taught Fangline the potential of magic through creation, and though they toiled, it wasn’t work to either of them for the pleasure it brought.

Each day Zedwig drew magic from Fangline, using him in what he considered must be the true purpose of magnifiers, to buoy up mages in their work and intensify their results. The results here were something to marvel. The field had become a full garden with all manner of flowers and fruits, ripe and blossoming, chaotic yet organized, with a cacophony of colors against a backdrop of rich, humid green. A butterfly or a bee lilted by here or there in a flash of flitting color or a tiny haze of meandering brown, and birds were drawn by the scent and the beauty to sing in the pines each day. The place was magnificent and serene; a place created by love, in the sense that Zedwig considered it.

“I used to think it was a waste of time to spend your magic on the blooming of flowers,” Fangline said, his arm resting against Zedwig’s to augment the magic they both wielded. It was a comfortable action, and pleasant.

“Do you still believe that?” asked Zedwig, though he knew the answer.

Fangline didn’t bother replying, as they were united and it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t still believe that, and would be a fool if he did, considering the lush garden around them.

His pale blond hair had grown, enough to where he had begun tying it back again, though much of it fell forward. Still, Zedwig liked it that way, as it was closer to the prince he once knew than the overlord he’d despised. It was tied back with sparse ornament; he used a plain piece of leather, but to pull it back like he did favored the pleasing, masculine angle of his jawline more than usual. Strands of his hair were paler than they’d ever been, having been lightened further by the sun and they looked even paler next to his darkened skin. It was compelling, and somewhat exotic; Zedwig could not recall an elf with such coloring in his memory.

Fangline’s green eyes, though unchanged in hue, changed in a different way. They were once tight, cold and hard, and they now held a measure of happiness.

He was not cured by any means, and Zedwig didn’t delude himself into thinking it was so, but Zedwig had found a soft spot and pressed on it within the psyche of Fangline as much and as often as he was able.

That day was the same as most days. They worked in the garden, they bathed in the cold, clear stream, and shared a meal and quiet conversation.

Supper and the day had passed, and as the evening fell they laid on a small hillock in consideration of the universe. It wasn’t very cold, being full summer, but the elevation kept them in coats at night regardless, should they choose to be outside. Zedwig relished it, having a deep-rooted love for the mountains and the climate since it had nurtured him in his youth.

“How did you come to acquire this place?” asked Fangline’s dense and direct voice towards Zedwig’s side, from beneath a blanket of stars that drove across the midnight sky in a smattering stripe of white and milk. “And for that matter, how did you even find it?”

“I grew up here,” said Zedwig. He heard a shift of fabric and the movement of weight against grass, as if Fangline had moved to regard him.

“Here?” asked Fangline, his inflection incredulous. Zedwig didn’t have to turn his head very much to return his look, though he was shadowed and Zedwig couldn’t tell what his expression was at all.

“Yes,” he replied, with no explanation.

“You have to give me more than that,” said Fangline, sounding exasperated.

Zedwig laughed. “What do you want to know?”

“Why were you here, in such ridiculously humble circumstances? How did you get to where you were, the Chief Royal Mage, if you were so… so…”

“So plebian?”

“Well, I didn’t want to put it like that.”

“You’ve grown so kind.”

“But yes, plebian. Poor. Degenerate.”

“’Degenerate’?”

“Perhaps not degenerate.”

“Thank you.”

“So,” said Fangline. “Care to enlighten me?”

“I was raised by my mother here,” said Zedwig.

“Your father…?”

“Was nonexistent,” said Zedwig, and he didn’t care to go into that, so he moved in another direction. “We had very little, but I learned early on how, if not to live entirely off the land, to nearly do so. We were very self-sufficient. I spent the first twenty or so years of my life in relative seclusion.”

“How often did you leave this place?”

“All the time,” replied Zedwig, “If you count exploring the mountains as leaving.”

“I mean for … civilization.”

“Twice a year. Once before planting and once right after the autumn harvest. Those were the only times we could leave and not be stopped by either snow or a garden that needed our full attention.”

Fangline laid back.

“Where is your mother?” he asked after a while.

“She is dead,” said Zedwig.

“How did she die?” Fangline asked, his voice showing no hesitation to ask such a question.

“I don’t know.”

Fangline let that lie in silence.

“It was some kind of sickness,” said Zedwig, shifting his weight and failing to see the starry sky for the moment. “It was long after I’d become part of the Royal Mages. I was living in the city, and only came back in the summer months, since you can’t get up here in the winter for all the snow. One time I came back … and… it had been some time.”

He didn’t want to finish explaining, really.

“Perhaps… it had happened in the spring…”

It wasn’t pleasant. He turned his head and looked away, away from the stars and from Fangline, and willed something else into his mind, though the recollection wouldn’t leave, no matter what he did. He concentrated on steadying his breathing.

“I was there when my mother died,” said Fangline’s voice, quiet and somehow comforting, “But I don’t think that made it any easier.”

“She didn’t want to leave, and I didn’t make her when I had the chance,” said Zedwig. “I could have. I could have made her come with me, and allowed her to enjoy at least some comforts before she died, but I didn’t. I was too wrapped up in my own studies; in my own wants… in myself.”

Fangline took Zedwig’s arm and laced it through his in a gesture of reassurance, but he said nothing.

“Why are we here?” asked Fangline.

Zedwig knew not how to respond, as he had no idea what Fangline was getting at.

“Why are we here and not somewhere more comfortable?” continued Fangline. “Do you love this place? Do you not come here when you need solace? Perhaps that’s why your mother wouldn’t leave. Perhaps this is where she wished to live… and die.”

Zedwig made a soft noise.

“I like it,” said Fangline, in a way a prince or a king would declare his approval of a good spot. It made Zedwig begin to smile.

“Are you happy?” Zedwig asked Fangline, as he discovered the forthcoming answer to this question was rather important to him.

“There has never been anyone who has made me happier than you,” said Fangline. “I daresay we could be in the middle of a stone cold desert and I’d find some measure of happiness in the knowledge of your company.”

Zedwig barked a laugh and said, “Ridiculous.”

“It’s true,” said Fangline, defensive, yet not. “Granted, you have the ability to make me more miserable than anyone else I’ve ever met, too.”

“Perhaps that negates its worth,” said Zedwig.

“Hardly,” said Fangline. “I’d rather die than be separated from you.”

“That’s a dramatic thing to say.”

“Perhaps it isn’t wholly accurate,” said Fangline. “Let me amend.”

“If you’d like.”

“I believe that, should I be separated from you, it would kill me.”

“Kill you?”

“Yes, I would die.”

“Die how? A withering death?”

“Pining away.”

“At a window?”

“Yes, whilst gazing mournfully into the sunset,” said Fangline.

Zedwig laughed.

“What would you do?” asked Fangline, as his elbow nudged against Zedwig’s side.

“I don’t know,” said Zedwig as he contemplated. “I don’t know,” he repeated.

He didn’t like the idea; it repelled him like a backwards magnet.

“I can’t imagine it,” he said. “Even when I loathed you, I wouldn’t have wanted to leave your presence, not once, because our… mutual acuity…”

“… is unique” said Fangline.

“Quite,” said Zedwig, “And not easy to imagine living without.”

“Once gotten used to, it’s very difficult to give up.”

“Yes,” said Zedwig, but his voice went quiet. “Will you promise me something?”

Fangline took a moment to respond, but he asked, “What is it?”

“If you should ever find another artifact like the one you had before… don’t use it against me.”

There was again the sound of fabric and grass and shifting, and the feel of Fangline’s arm moving within his. Fangline’s forehead came to rest on his upper arm and he released a slow exhale. Zedwig let the stars engulf his vision as he waited, and though it was only a few seconds, time felt suspended as it seemed Fangline was torn between promising Zedwig something he wasn’t sure he could deliver, and adopting total honesty. Either way, Zedwig knew the answer without hearing a word. He closed his eyes.

Fear gripped him in a way it hadn’t for some time. He never wanted to kill again; he couldn’t bear the idea of killing again, and his body and mind filled with anxiety. He stiffened, a sheen of sweat broke out on his temple and he drew away from Fangline, disentangling his arm and covering his head with his hands.

“I can never trust you until you can promise me that,” said Zedwig, disliking the way his voice trembled.

“Zedwig…”

“Fangline!” he said, shooting upright to face Fangline. “How could you even consider such a thing? Is it that you still wish to cause me harm?”

“No, Zedwig,” said Fangline. “It’s your power. It’s incredible, and magnificent, and … it tempts me beyond what I can bear if I’ve the means to control it. How could it not?”

“Does our friendship mean nothing to you?”

“It means everything to me,” said Fangline, his voice helpless. “Everything!”

“Surely not everything,” replied Zedwig.

He stood and left then, hoping that to do so at that moment would make Fangline sit on that hillock and think, but he wasn’t certain, and that brought him a disarming level of fear.

XIII - Kindness

2009-11-17T21:06:00.000-08:00

Zedwig had been kind to Fang.

It was something that hung in the back of Fang’s mind at all times, during the length of each day. The mage had, he admitted, nearly killed him at least once, and caused him pain and suffering on numerous occasions, but he was kind. Zedwig had, in fact, caused Fang more suffering than anyone else he’d ever known, and yet, there was the swing of a pendulum. Did it make him love Zedwig more, that he opened the door of suffering in such an acute way? Was it the quixotic happiness that seemed to only brush the tips of his fingers, just out of grasp, that made him forgive the suffering again and again? For him it was only a moment, though horrible, because he knew that after the suffering would be warmth, and in truth he loved Zedwig.

His love for Zedwig, as powerful as it might be, was overgrown and entangled with corruption, though Fang wasn’t aware of its flaws. He only knew the intensity of it, and how it caused him euphoria and torment in turn. It was, in actuality, like a tree with silver bark; true and beautiful, growing straight and marvelous, but it was corrupted by a vine filled with thorns of poison. The vine itself had grown in a subtle way with the tree so he couldn’t tell the one from the other and mistook them both for one entity (love), but it was the source of his dissatisfaction.

It was the source of his desire to possess Zedwig, to control him, and the fear that gripped him whenever he thought he might lose any minute fraction of his association with him. He wanted Zedwig, and it was the vine that made him want him. It was the source of want.

He didn’t know, and so the vine continued to grow, at times overshadowing the tree, and at times threatening to overwhelm it.

Today, though, the vine was subdued.

“There,” said Zedwig, rising from a row and stepping back to survey the big picture after staring at the little picture too long. Fang was working on another row, and had been considering at length the subtle rise and fall of potato leaves in a breeze that he couldn’t detect.

They had spoken very little that day as it wasn’t required or even desirable while they worked in the field tending the rows, watering the growing shoots, and moving rocks. They’d begun another few rows in the field, this time for a later crop that Zedwig had decided would be beans.

For some time now Fang had obeyed Zedwig to the letter, offering little resistance. He knew why but decided to spend as little time as possible thinking about it. He was afraid. Zedwig had brought him close to seeing things he didn’t want to view; things that he knew would be so terrible to comprehend that he feared it might tear the fabric of his spirit out of his body and shred rags from his existence. At times he would wake in a smothering of cold sweat and anxiety, and of all this Zedwig was aware. He was aware and he had been kind, because he had left Fang alone.

Instead they worked, though it wasn’t very hard. It was nothing compared to running an empire. It was actually very slow, and beautiful, and serene. They had spoken very little that day, but no, it wasn’t required. They knew each other’s thoughts.

There were times, like now, that Fang began to fall into a sense of peace, and experienced a deep level of happiness, but he was capable of dipping into it only, because something always drew him back. It was a dissonance that lived inside of him, a dissatisfied fear.

Zedwig moved near, his hair tied into a silver braid, and held out a hand to him while he sat upon the ground. The mage was wearing gloves; he always wore gloves when he worked, and a hat in the sun. Though it might seem to be due to vanity, Fang knew it for what it was. Zedwig possessed his own fears and neuroses, and it was an outward manifestation of his guarded nature.

Fang, however, never bothered with either. His hands had become calloused and his skin dark from the sun, and he didn’t mind at all.

So at this moment, he put his calloused hand into Zedwig’s gloved one, and felt the strength inherent in the mage’s wrist and arm, shoulder, and entire body as it balanced and counterbalanced, raising him up with strength and ease. His hand was rigid, sinew and bones, and tight as Fang moved upward. Then it was suddenly lax, soft, and gone.

The action in and of itself satisfied some deep, buried need that Fang possessed, to some degree.

“How long does it take for these to grow?” Fang asked about the potatoes, though his mind played with deeper subjects.

“That depends on the size of potatoes we want,” said Zedwig. “I like them smaller, so I usually pull them up early.”

“How often have you done this?” asked Fang. “When did you have time to grow potatoes?”

“In my youth, mostly,” replied Zedwig. “But I’ve returned from time to time over the years, when I needed solace.”

A light went on in Fang’s mind.

“This is where you went…” he said, thinking out loud, “When you left me.”

“I left you?” asked Zedwig appearing amused.

“Yes,” said Fang, casting Zedwig a look. “You did. And I was very displeased about it. You were teaching me about destructive magic and left in the middle of everything.”

“Just when it was getting good?” Zedwig inquired, leaning back to one side.

“It was all good,” said Fang.

“You conveniently forget that it was driving me crazy,” said Zedwig.

Fang didn’t reply.

“You were using your ability as a magnifier to tempt me to it,” said Zedwig, and Fang’s insides flinched. “I knew from the beginning it was wrong; I was betraying the law and my King every time I taught you. I rationalized, I gave a little here and a little there, until I began to lose my compass.”

“You gave me the first feeling of freedom I ever knew,” said Fang. “I had to have more, you must understand, I had to have more.”

“I had to leave,” said Zedwig.

“You had to save yourself.”

Zedwig exhaled. “Not this, again.”

“No,” said Fang. “Not that. But you left and it tore me to pieces. I wanted to die, I despised everyone and everything around me, and eventually it drove me out of Schloeffelonia.”

“I did not cause that!”

“I hated you for it,” said Fang. “I hated you enough to relish every moment of suffering I caused you upon my return.”

Zedwig stared at Fang for a long moment and then his voice lowered as he said: “I paid wages enough. You saw to it.”

Fang found his breath short as he said, “You did.”

He had to turn away. It didn’t matter, though, because turning away from Zedwig wasn’t as easy as that. Even with his back to the mage, he was still there, present, lingering near his mind, and he hadn’t found a good way to give the cold shoulder on that front. He perceived something from Zedwig, though, and that was some level of understanding, even if Fang didn’t at all understand himself.

“Do you hate me for it?” asked Fang, asking a strange, vulnerable question that he would have never asked in any other circumstances that he could fathom. At the moment, though, surrounded by mountains and aspens and potato plants he had planted, powerless and brown from the sun, in coarse cloth and with lengthening hair, he felt like he must.

It took some time for Zedwig to answer.

“No, Fangline,” he said. “I love you.”

It was as if an earthquake struck the spot where Fang stood. His legs weakened, and a trembling ran through his frame and into his soul, and he fell. He fell at the feet of Zedwig and was unable and even unaware of the possibility of stopping the geyser of emotion that wracked him at that moment, as if he’d been beaten with a staff to weakness, wrung by a tempest near to his death, drowned and brought back with the breath of life. The door, even the gaping maw of hell, had been thrust open at last by Zedwig’s words, and Fang clutched the mage’s leg and began to weep in anguish.

“Oh, my God,” he cried, for Zedwig was his god, “My God, forgive me… forgive me!”

He felt as if perhaps the fibers that made up the matter of his being would come apart, disintegrating with the strain and he went on, but could not know what he might have said though it was rife with a burning that he felt he could not bear. He felt no fear, but only anguish, misery, and a sharp white-hot pain of conscience and made him wish, not for death, but for annihilation. He desired with an acute intensity that his existence would be eradicated, or to crawl into a hole deep and dark enough to consume him and hide him from the face of his god.

He begged for forgiveness, he asked to die, and he sorrowed under the full brunt of everything he had done. In time Zedwig’s hand rested on his head, and its weight comforted him, if only a little.

Eventually his mortal limitations left him in an exhausted sort of sorrow, and the after effects of numb wherein he still knew the bad, but could see a few glimmers of good around him. His hands, which had fallen from Zedwig’s legs like autumn leaves, pressed into the cool, rich dirt instead. He felt like an empty husk wherein nothing was left.

Zedwig knelt beside him. A glove fell to the brown earth beside Fang’s fists, and then a light, slender hand brushed his hair back from his face.

Fang didn’t want to look into Zedwig’s face, for shame, for misery, for being unable to bear it, and so he trembled and clenched the earth in his fists. Zedwig waited, though, because this was exactly what he wanted.

Knowing that was what Zedwig wanted gave rise to a certain independence in Fang, a type of disconnect or ego, a distant anger linked to fear, and it buffered him just enough to allow him to look into the beautiful face and remain intact.

However, what he saw there was kind. There was the instant sensation of unworthiness and a knee-jerk reaction to shrink away, but he was stopped by Zedwig’s hand on his face. Zedwig looked at Fang and he knew him; Fang was made transparent, there was nothing that he could hide. Zedwig knew every page, the underside of every rock, every corner and bend of Fang, and Fang was lost, known, his ego torn from him and his most vulnerable parts left exposed. He waited for judgment.

Zedwig’s face filled with light, and as his finger fell like a petal across Fang’s cheek, a smile blossomed on his countenance.

“My magnifier,” he said, with affection.

XII - Lord Orthridge

2009-11-16T03:37:00.000-08:00

When Al’bert entered the room, Camilla was wearing pale blue and bent over a table littered with a jigsaw puzzle of papers and scraps, each leading into the others with arrows and crosses and words with scratches. He found it instantly intriguing.

“What is this?” he asked, approaching his sister and looking over the papers, trying to make sense out of the mess.

“The beginnings of what will be a pedigree and wealth chart for the inhabitants of Schloeffelonia,” she replied, switching one scrap with another. It was true that Schloeffelonia needed one, at least if anyone in Schloeffelonia wanted to know this sort of thing. It’s not that it hadn’t been done before, but Fang had ruined so much blood and wealth that no one really knew where anyone stood anymore, at least not very clearly, and this is what Camilla seemed to be working on.

“So, who looks to be the most advantageous for your advances?” he asked her.

“Lord Orthridge, but I’d sooner kiss a goat.”

Al’bert smiled, and then took to wondering. He wondered a lot about things these days, as he had a lot of time to think in the riding field.

“Do you think, maybe, this isn’t necessary?” he asked her, leaning one hip against the table. His sister blinked at him.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” she asked.

“Well, you know,” he began. “This sort of thing is advantageous when we’re high on the list, but now… isn’t it perhaps best to leave things muddled for the time being?”

“Al’bert,” said Camilla, smiling at him. “I don’t plan on sharing this, at least, not yet. Not until I’ve used it to my full advantage.”

“Good,” said Al’bert, and he looked out the window.

Some time passed in quiet, familiar silence. Camilla made a few thoughtful noises here and there, there were the sounds of paper, sometimes of a quill, and Al’bert watched the out-of-doors, considering the difference between this view of a side-street of Schloeffelonia city as compared to what he used to see outside of the study window of the Fromage estate. He wondered what had become of the estate. It hadn’t been long. Did someone else occupy it? Could he get away with investigating the place?

“You know, if you could somehow manage to marry Senna, you’d do well,” said Camilla from the side.

Al’bert groaned.

“You don’t like her?” she asked, though with little inflection, as most of her mind was occupied with her puzzle.

“She’s fine,” he replied while watching a cat walk across the street.

“You’d rather be a stablehand than marry.”

Al’bert glanced at Camilla and gave her a little smile that said he’d been made known.

“So would I,” said Camilla.

“That isn’t true!”

Camilla sighed and went to sit in a chair, flopping down in a pale blue fluff of skirts.

“There’s something else I’ve been working on,” she said quietly.

“What is it?”

She pointed to a little book nearby, and Al’bert went straight to retrieve it. He opened it to find the names of places, dates, and people. There were interviews. Things crossed out and notes scribbled in the sides, all regarding a particular person whom she sought.

“What is this?” he asked.

“You know what it is,” she replied, her eyes elsewhere.

“You’re looking for Fang,” he said, and then put the book down. “I told you not to look for Fang. It’s dangerous. He is dangerous. The company he keeps is dangerous!”

“I have to,” was her reply, and then she added: “I love him.”

“You don’t love anyone!”

“Except for you?”

Al’bert faltered.

“Am I not allowed to fall in love, Al’bert?” she asked. “Merely because you haven’t managed to do it, yet?”

“It’s a hassle I don’t care to be bothered with,” said Al’bert, his words coming out clipped, and the window taking his vision.

“You’re bent out of shape,” said Camilla, a grin playing across her face. “Because I’m disregarding your commands for someone else.”

“I’m ‘bent out of shape’, Camilla, because Fang is dangerous and you won’t listen.”

“You think I’m choosing him over you!”

She had the gall to laugh.

“Camilla!”

Camilla leaned back in her chair and gave Al’bert an affectionate smile. She sighed.

“You’ll fall in love, Al’bert, and then you’ll know how it is.”

“How do you know I never have?”

“Have you?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

“I don’t know,” replied Al’bert, feeling ridiculous for having baited the question and then failing to have an answer for it. He thought of Alice, for some reason, but knew it didn’t matter. She was dead. The thought brought a pang of loss but also a shadow of relief.

There was a knock at the door.

“Message for Miss Camilla!” chirped a courier. Camilla tipped the courier well; better than a woman of her current station should be able to, but she didn’t suffer for patronage seeing as how she could control most men with her voice.

“What is it?” Al’bert asked, after the door was closed and the seal on the missive had been broken.

Camilla gave a little grunt and glanced upwards. “A message from Lord Orthridge.”

---- ---- ---- ----

“And this is my study,” said Lord Orthridge, giving Camilla the grand tour of the place.

“Oh, how nice,” she said, at her most convincing. She studied the books as if they interested her. “The Frozen North: Why It’s Impassable. I didn’t know the north was frozen.”

“Oh, indeed, Miss Camilla, it is,” was Lord Orthridge’s reply, which could only be described as “jolly”. He was a rotund man, but of what race she couldn’t determine. He looked human, had lived far longer than any human she’d ever heard of, and yet only seemed to be of middle age. He was decidedly unattractive to her, but that was hardly the issue here. At least he had some measure of the mysterious about him.

Lord Orthridge’s estate was somewhat close to Schloeffelonia, past a bench of mountains to the north, and secluded. Though secluded, Lord Orthridge was well-known for having his finger in all sorts of business, though most people couldn’t quite say exactly what it was he did, and neither could Camilla, not yet. It wasn’t particularly easy to get to the estate, but if Lord Orthridge sent for you, it was. He had sent for her, but she found herself wishing dearly that Al’bert could have come as well.

“You just have to go far enough north to get to the frozen parts.”

Camilla said, “Ah,” as if that were interesting.

“Would you like to borrow it?” he asked.

“Oh, no, my lord,” she said, feigning just the right amount of humility. “I couldn’t, but thank you.”

“Suit yourself,” he replied.

Just at that moment, Camilla thought she heard someone sneeze and there was a change in the room; a sudden faint scent of honeysuckle.

“Henry!” exclaimed Lord Orthridge.

Camilla turned to see someone standing nearby, where no one had been an instant before. This someone appeared to be a young human, with auburn hair and in a gray coat. He looked apprehensive at the way Lord Orthridge clapped him on the shoulder, but he held out a tightly-rolled parchment tied with a midnight blue bow.

“Message for Lord Orthridge,” said the young man.

“Yes, yes, thank you boy,” said Lord Orthridge, showing a great measure of fondness for the messenger he called “Henry”, which Camilla found curious.

Henry, for his part, noticed her after the letter was delivered, and then he noticed her again, which gave some not unwelcome padding to her ego. Humans were generally transparent and inexperienced, and she liked that in a shallow way. She smiled at him.

For whatever reason, propriety or manners, he didn’t speak to her, and instead appeared to be studying Lord Orthridge’s every movement as he sat at his desk and read the message. Lord Orthridge didn’t seem to be doing anything unusual at all from what Camilla could discern, and so she couldn’t fathom why Henry would survey him with such scrutiny. Overall, though, she waited to be introduced to the messenger so she could pry for answers, even subtly. He was, at least, vaguely interesting.

She sighed and turned to the bookshelf.

“Ahem,” said Henry, and Camilla turned to look at him. “I… You don’t want to read that.”

She glanced back at the copy of The Frozen North: Why It’s Impassable she’d half pulled from the bookshelf and then back to Henry.

“I don’t?” she asked.

“No,” said Henry, looking very much like he wasn’t telling her everything, at least not in the presence of Lord Orthridge. “It’s… dull reading. Chapters and chapters of nothing but snow.”

She smiled at him, deciding he was more than a little delightful.

“Well, that isn’t a problem,” she said, in direct conflict with his warning. “I like snow.”

Camilla pulled the book from the shelf and opened it, noting the stress on the young man’s face as she did so. He almost looked as if he thought the book would explode. She found him to be a great depth of amusing.

Meanwhile, Lord Orthridge had become absorbed in a return letter, with a number of parchments, quills, ink wells, and a bag of some sort of powder having appeared on his desk while they had been talking.

“Who is your master?” she asked Henry, leaning back on the bookshelf with The Frozen North open and pressed against her beneath her crossed arms.

“My master,” he said, with his eyes on the book and his face apprehensive, “is Teitnl.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” she replied, then turned and put the book back on the shelf. She heard Henry exhale, perhaps from relief. “What does he do?”

Henry said nothing. One of her eyebrows twitched and she turned to face him, waiting for an answer, though the time for one passed and then moved into awkwardness on the part of Henry. It was all well, though, because Camilla found herself enjoying Henry and his discomfiture very much.

His lips parted to say something, but just then Lord Orthridge intervened.

“There you go, my boy!” said Orthridge, handing over a letter in an envelope and once again clapping Henry on the back with too much gusto. “And don’t mind Miss Camilla; she likes to play with her prey.”

Camilla’s mouth dropped open, which is something that had perhaps happened to her three times in her life. For Lord Orthridge to say something that was so outright and accusatory was only one part of the shock; but it was all the more effective because he was spot on. Camilla suffered a genuine flush of embarrassment.

“Yes, sir,” was all that Henry could say.

“Give your master all my best,” said Lord Orthridge, with no hint that he’d caused tremendous levels of discomfort all around, and perhaps with a tinge of glee.

Henry pulled a multicolored and silken handkerchief from his pocket, and then looked at Camilla, but to say he “looked” at her would be an understatement. His gaze was short but intense, as if he were memorizing every detail of her presence. He lingered, but it was only a moment, and it was as if that moment extended and she was an artifact, catalogued, and known intimately through sight. She caught her breath and he sneezed.

The study was then empty, except she and Lord Orthridge were still in it.

She glanced at Lord Orthridge, still recalling his statement regarding her methods, and felt as if she’d like to leave his estate. Even though he was right. Lord Orthridge smiled at her.

“Why do you think I summoned you here?” he asked her as he returned to his desk.

“For the company?” she asked.

“Come now, we can be blunt, I think,” he said. “I’ve called your hand, haven’t I?”

Camilla gave Lord Orthridge a flat look, and decided to give him blunt, if that’s what he wanted.

“You’ve the desire to use your wealth and status to acquire a young and beautiful wife.”

Lord Orthridge looked amused.

“Well, yes, that’s what anyone will think who knows about this meeting,” he said. “But alas, Miss Camilla, in the end we will not come to terms, and all will assume that it is either your elven bloodline snobbery nonsense or the fact that you are just too beautiful for me, regardless of how powerful I might be.”

Camilla considered.

“Then why did you summon me here, my lord?”

“You are a powerful woman in a position to wield even greater power, though you might not fully realize it.”

“What is it you want of me?”

“How was it, being in that tower for all of those months?” he asked her, instead of giving answers.

“Boring,” she replied with truth.

“Who was it that put you there, again?” he asked as an elbow, a round arm, claimed his desk, and his body pressed forward.

“Fang,” she said, though her voice came out very soft.

“He put you there himself?” asked the man, his questions starting to chafe on her.

“Yes,” she replied, glancing elsewhere.

He leaned upon his desk and a clock on the wall ticked soft and loud; one or the other by perception and circumstance.

“Do you think he’s still alive?” he asked her.

“I hope so,” she answered, and then he smiled, though she didn’t know why.

Lord Orthridge rose from his seat at the desk.

“You hope so,” he said. “You hope that a man who caused wanton destruction all over the countryside and killed generously with abandon for his own enjoyment is still alive.”

He laughed to himself.

“There’s more to it than that,” Camilla interjected.

“I’m sure there is,” he replied. “For one thing, he’s a genius.”

Camilla blinked.

“In a manner of speaking,” he continued. “But like most geniuses, he lacks considerably in other areas as a result.”

“Lord Orthridge, I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“Weaknesses, my dear. He has great weaknesses to go along with his great strengths. That’s how he lost the war.”

Camilla stared at Lord Orthridge, wondering what he might be getting at.

“Now, if those weaknesses could be neutralized, or even reduced somewhat, he’d be unstoppable.”

“Why would you want that?” asked Camilla.

“Oh, I don’t,” said Lord Orthridge as he began busying himself with stopping an inkwell and replacing a few quills. “But it’s always good business to be well informed about these things.”

“Ah,” replied Camilla, in a non-committal way.

“More to the point, or to matters that press us here, I can perhaps be of assistance, should you desire to find him.”

Camilla’s breath left her, but she regained it to say, “My lord?”

Lord Orthridge smiled at her and then called a servant into the room. “Miss Camilla, I hope you enjoyed touring the estate. I know it was brightened considerably by your beautiful presence. Write to me, if you would. I would enjoy it very much.”

Camilla recovered herself and curtsied to Lord Orthridge, adding a smile.

“Yes, my lord,” she replied.

XI - Red and Brown

2009-11-13T12:41:00.001-08:00

The route directly north of Schloeffelonia was a direction in which Xylic had never traveled, and though he was well equipped, or perhaps overly equipped (at the insistence of Sangwine) with maps, compasses, written directions, and several different interviews with older elves who had traveled this way in years past, it seemed a lousy trip and to him it seemed no wonder the elves never went this way.

He was traveling on the Red Road, a rather large, old, and scarcely used byway that cut through most of the lands between Schloeffelonia and the North, and so named for the red hue of the dirt that made up the road. No one had bothered to pave it, or at least not for a large number of years, though he did find, in some spots, some ancient and derelict stones lining the road in broken patterns. On the whole, though, it was unpaved and uncared for, and after a rain it made for horrible traveling.

His horse’s legs were a reddish hue to the bends, having slopped through endless red mud and puddles, and there was nothing resembling civilization in this part of the world. For some time he was on watch for bandits, seeing as how this would be an ideal place to be ambushed since he was far from civilization, far, far from civilization, but there weren’t even any of those, and after several days of utter nothing, he settled into a steady state of boredom. He decided the bandits couldn’t make a living on a road that no one ever traversed.

After some time of travel, he’d decided that the Red Road had once been traveled by an extensive amount of constant traffic, on account of its size and how long it had lasted during the time of its disuse. There were only a few major civilizations on the western side of the Twisty Mountains that he knew of; Schloeffelonia, Mud City, and the Narmans. Schloeffelonia was inhabited by the elves, who kept to themselves, so they didn’t use the road at all. In Mud City, he’d never heard of it once, nor of Schloeffelonia, neither of the Narmans. The extent of common human knowledge in Mud City consisted of the Forest of Darkness, more distantly, the City of Sol next to the Twisty Mountains, and tell of a few smaller groups of men who lived further north and along the mountain range, in the canyons and who came to the city to trade once in a while.

There were always stragglers, of course. Land didn’t require civilization in order to have inhabitants, and there were people here and there who dotted the land and lived more solitary lives, hermitous, silent, and he assumed with the belief that rubbing elbows with other people was not a necessity. He might have considered that himself for a brief moment, but that was all it took before he knew that he needed people. He might never show it, but he did.

Still, it was pleasant to be alone for the first time in ages. It was a novelty now, though its sheen wore off and he found himself suffering bouts of loneliness here and there.

Since there was no civilization on the Red Road, there were no inns. Xylic was roughing it in the most primitive fashion, although he was used to this sort of travel and it hardly bothered him, except when it rained. With the change of seasons, there had been lots of rain. He hadn’t been entirely dry in several days, now, and felt rumpled beyond repair. He thought about the castle, and how comfortable it was, and stopped himself suddenly when he thought of it as home. He’d only been there for a week, and wasn’t certain how it could be considered home after so short a time. Something about it bothered part of him, but it was; the people he cared about the most were there. And who cared about him. It was strange having family.

However, there were two people in Mud City who he cared about a great deal, and he had never let them know. For that matter, he’d never let their daughter know he loved her, and for that he supposed he could feel a lifetime of regret. He didn’t know if he would. For now, he was still numb, a little, as it hadn’t fully processed. It’d been only just over a week that he hadn’t seen her. It felt like he would see her again, that she wasn’t really dead, and that she’d show up, as he walked into Mud City, carrying a basket of laundry, grumbling about it, and shooting him the clandestine smile he’d always liked. He felt a pang and his shoulders slumped, and he felt as if a burden weighed him down.

There was the wet sound of his horse’s hooves in the mud, the light, stream-like noise of the wind through the summering leaves, and there were birds; a few of types he’d never heard before. Often, as he rounded a bend or topped a hill, small animals would scurry away, sometimes seen, sometimes only made known by the rustling noise their small bodies made as they scampered through the underbrush. Now, one rushed away from the road, though he hadn’t seen it, and a branch cracked.

Xylic was quite aware that a small animal didn’t make a branch crack with such resonance, and within a moment he was off of his horse, behind it for cover, and an arrow was poised in his bow. As he studied the forest, he was almost grateful for the rush of adrenaline to break the boredom he had experienced for days, if he’d had time to think about it, but he didn’t, as there was someone in the woods, in this place where no one lived for miles upon endless miles, for a week of travel in either direction, and he had to figure out who it was. The thought occurred to him that maybe it was a bear. Either way, he felt he should probably figure out what it was.

“Who is there?” he called, prepared to shoot at whatever it might be.

There was a sound of underbrush moving, just a light noise, but he heard it and it told him precisely where the movement was coming from. He rushed into the woods and heard more; steps, fast, running, and there, there in the tapestry of tree trunks and brush was a blur, an arm, dark hair, brown clothes. Xylic was swift and grabbed the arm, which was slender, and pulled it around to face him to see eyes, large and blue; the eyes were strangely large and afraid.

A long moment passed wherein breathing ensued on the part of them both and he took in this person who was in his possession. At first he had no idea what its gender might be. In the way elves were somewhat androgynous compared to humans, this person was twice that, but after some moment’s scrutiny he came to the conclusion it was male, mostly due to the fact that he was wearing pants. He didn’t seem to be an elf, though. For one thing, he was shorter than most elves, his form slender like a tall older child, with skin darker than he’d ever seen on an elf. It looked like the color of caramel, and his hair was brown, cut somewhat short, but curling on the ends and weightless like the fine hair of a very young child.

“What are you?” he asked, though he’d meant to ask “who are you”, and the other came out. There was an immediate defensiveness that came into his blue eyes, and he didn’t reply, only pulled on Xylic’s grip with a swift yank. Xylic was far stronger, though, and he couldn’t pull away.

Whatever he was, he was fast. His movements were quick and dexterous by just enough to seem otherworldly and surreal, and suddenly Xylic found himself wondering if this person was an anomaly, or if there were more like him in these remote woods.

“What are you?” he asked again, bending over him in a way he was fully aware would come off as ominous and threatening. The large blue eyes narrowed, and though the fellow said nothing, he jerked back again. The possibility occurred to Xylic that he might not even speak the common language, though such a thing was unheard of in the known world.

Xylic sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and changed tactics.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, rather slowly and perhaps with unnecessary volume, in case common was unfamiliar to his catch.

The brown arm relaxed somewhat in Xylic’s hand, but only somewhat. After a moment he spoke with a rather quiet and very tenor voice.

“You are fast,” he said, as if it was an admission, but his enunciation was strange.

“Thank you,” was all that Xylic replied. His counterpart appeared confused.

“Strange fast,” he said, looking Xylic over. “You are elf, part, but stronger.”

Xylic wanted to mention that all elves were part this and that, and so calling attention to his half-ness was moot and tiresome. It always seemed to come up anywhere he went, anyway. Besides, it was starting to irritate him that the elephant in the room wasn’t being addressed.
“Fine, you are aware of what I am,” said Xylic. “But I’ve no idea what you are.”

“I tell you what I am if you let go,” he replied.

“Are there more of you?”

He went still and his blue eyes flicked deeper into the woods, just for a moment.

“There are,” said Xylic.

“Let go,” said his captive with an insistent voice.

Xylic let him go, releasing his grip on the slender arm and stepping back. The act seemed to surprise the little man, but he had scarcely blinked before he turned to bolt, skipping through the underbrush, over roots and brambles with movements that called to mind a deer.

“Hey!” yelled Xylic. “You said you’d tell me what you are!”

The fellow had disappeared.

Xylic stood there for a moment before adding, “Liar!” though he might have been yelling it to an empty forest for all the evidence of the smaller man’s passing.

It didn’t matter. Xylic didn’t bother with pursuit, and instead decided the entire occurrence had been a large scale irritation, boring trip or not. He returned to his horse, which had been making a meal of some grasses growing in the middle of the ill-kept road and grumbled as he prepared to spend the rest of the day in the saddle.

“I am a brownie,” said the voice with the strange enunciation.

It took Xylic a scarce moment to find where he was, but it made a bit less sense that he’d be over there, on the other side of the road, and casually reclining as he was, as if he hadn’t just run off in the other direction at high speed just a few moments ago.

“A… brownie?”

“Is what you call us.”

“I’ve never called anything a brownie!” said Xylic. “Except a certain moist and dense cake made of choco-“

He paused and realized he was having a stupid conversation.

“If I call you a brownie, what do you call yourself?”

“I fulfilled my obligation,” said the brownie, aloof on the roadside, leaning into the little bank behind him. “I owe nothing more.”

Xylic rolled his eyes and, having his patience spent, took the reins of his horse to continue on the road.

“I would not go that way, were I you,” the brownie said with his strange accent.

Xylic continued, ignoring the brownie.

“I would not go that way, were I you!” repeated the brownie, a little higher pitched, and not quite so aloof.

It was getting more than tiresome, but Xylic turned to face the brownie, anyway.

“There are two ways on this road, brownie. One is back towards where I came from, and the other is towards where I need to go. I choose the path of least redundance.”

He began moving again, northwards. Always northwards.

“There are the oligog in that way,” said the brownie, leaping up from his roadside recline. He began to follow along behind Xylic’s right shoulder with skipping steps, his feet hardly touching the ground it seemed, and his tread tidy and light as a feather.

“What are the oligog?” Xylic asked, though it felt as if he were taking some form of bait.

“The oligog are bad. Fierce. You die. Ignominiously.”

If only Xylic had a penny for every time he heard that.

“Describe them, would you?” he asked.

“Big, strong, smell bad. Crooked teeth,” said the brownie.

“You wouldn’t be describing mountain trolls, would you?”

“That what you call the oligog?” the brownie asked.

“I don’t know!” said Xylic.

“Do not go this way,” the brownie said, returning to his previous insistence. Xylic stopped and faced his nagger.

“Why should you care if I get eaten by the oligog? Maybe I want to get eaten by the oligog!”

“The oligog do not eat people.”

“Well then, they can’t be all bad, can they?” replied Xylic. He pulled his horse onward, leaving the brownie behind, and though he was in a sour mood, he had to admit it was a rather nice day. He’d suffered through rain for the better part of the last week, and this day was as dry as a bone. It gave him a certain level of happiness that couldn’t be denied, and as he lifted his gaze to the shifting tops of the trees he exhaled over the golden sunshine.

There was a certain nagging feeling, though, and so he looked over his shoulder to see the brownie was still there, keeping pace easily, though his legs were much shorter than Xylic’s. The brief moment of lightness passed like a cloud.

“Why are you still here?” asked Xylic.

“Because you do not listen,” said the brownie, his face condescending.

“Is this a public service? What is this?”

“The oligog-,”

“Yes, I heard you. If the oligog are indeed mountain trolls, I have been warned by not only you, but countless others, and in far more detail than you can possibly impart in a day’s time. I have, despite what you might believe, encountered mountain trolls before, and escaped them. I know what they look like. They’re dumb and slow and I don’t believe they’ll cause me any trouble, at least not the sort I can’t easily avoid.”

In a fateful way, at just that precise moment, Xylic and the brownie were ambushed by a large party of mountain trolls.

They came from everywhere, it seemed, out of the woods from both sides, and Xylic would be furious in recollection that he hadn’t heard them because of the constant warnings of the brownie. For now, though, he hadn’t time to think about it and felt fortunate he’d been wearing his bow already as he took down several trolls in a row. In a sinking way he knew it wasn’t enough, as it would only be a few seconds before they were too close for him to use his longbow.

He let fly one last arrow, which met its mark; his favorite mark: the eye. It might be gruesome, but it was instantaneously effective. There were two, maybe three of them left, and he felt ridiculously small as he backed into his horse and drew the shortsword he had strapped to his saddlebags. His quick disposal of four of the trolls had given the others pause. Two seemed torn between fleeing and revenge and plunder, but one braver soul had charged him and he ducked.

One thing he had, in close quarters, was speed. It wouldn’t mean much if he were caught by the thick, corded arms of the troll, but so far he was free and quick, and used it to his advantage. He swiped at the arm of the troll, but his blade made hardly more than a scratch on the thick skin, and so he realized he was in for a far worse time than he’d expected.

His horse reared, losing all semblance of calm, and bolted forward, leaving Xylic’s back exposed. It was then that he saw the brownie in the hands of a troll on the other side of the road.

He hadn’t time to think about it though, as he was being furiously attacked by two other trolls and was barely managing to stay out of their reach. He cut the first’s arm again and then a third time before it gave up and the second hesitated with what he could only assume were thoughts of self-preservation.

“Put down sword or friend dies!” yelled the third troll, the one holding the brownie; the brownie who was not Xylic’s friend, not in the slightest.

“What?” Xylic asked, the question more a reaction than an actual question.

The troll held a tight grip on the brownie’s slender neck, and in that moment the brownie looked unusually delicate and helpless. His eyes were larger than normal and reflected the fear that he was mostly certain that Xylic would let him die.

If Xylic were to be honest about it, he would admit later that it was indeed his first gut reaction to let the brownie die. But, after waffling on the wall about it, he knew he couldn’t. He groaned, his shoulders slumped, and he realized he disliked that brownie more and more all the time.

“What do you want?” Xylic asked the three remaining trolls.

“Drop sword!”

“No!” yelled Xylic, but then he pacified himself… at least a little. “But I will parley for the brownie’s life.”

The trolls looked confused.

“What ‘parley’?” asked the troll nearest Xylic, who was now having his arm carefully bandaged by the second troll.

“It means to barter, in a sense,” explained Xylic, laboriously. “In times of war.”

“Oh,” said the troll holding the brownie, who was the spokesman of the group, Xylic supposed, so he addressed that one with his terms.

“You release the brownie,” said Xylic. “And I won’t kill the rest of you.”

“That lousy parley!” yelled the troll, and he tightened his grip on the brownie’s neck. The brownie’s face turned red from the pressure, and probably also from fear and anxiety. Still, Xylic sped things up.

“What is yours?” he asked the troll.

“Gold.”

“And then I can kill you?”

“Gold and no killing!” amended the troll.

“How much gold?” asked Xylic.

The troll’s eyes darted, as he clearly hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“Ten!” yelled the troll.

“… Ten what?” asked Xylic.

“Ten pounds of gold!”

“That’s preposterous!”

“I meant ten coins!”

“Fine!”

Xylic went to recover his horse and then returned as the second troll was tying the injured one’s bandage into a neat little bow. They each picked up the feet of two of the dead trolls and began dragging them back into the woods, Xylic supposed for burial. They didn’t seem all that broken up about it. He approached the third and the very red-faced brownie and handed him a pile of gold coins.

The troll dropped the brownie face first onto the dirt road. He pocketed the money, muttered thanks, and then dragged two more dead trolls by their ankles off into the woods.

There was a moment of quiet where nothing was said, and the only evidence that anything had happened was a few spots of troll blood on the roadside and the disheveled appearance of the brownie lying nearby. Red dust from the red dirt powdered his brown hair and irregular spots of his brown clothes, and as he turned over, half of his brown face as well.

Xylic asked the first thing that came to mind.

“Was that the oligog?”

The brownie coughed.

“That was the oligog.”

Xylic thought.

“You’re too fast to be caught by them. Why didn’t you run into the woods?”

The brownie didn’t reply.

“What is wrong with you?” Xylic demanded of the brownie in a way that didn’t demand a real answer.

Nothing was forthcoming, and Xylic was exceedingly tired, so he prepared to mount his horse and continue on. As he spurred his horse forward, the brownie sprang up and began to follow, moving like a windblown leaf and not at all as if he’d just been nearly throttled to death by a mountain troll.

“Stop following me,” said Xylic, his eyes on the road.

“I cannot,” was the brownie’s simple and entirely incomprehensible reply.

“Yes you can,” said Xylic. “Just walk in the other direction until you can’t see me anymore. It’s very easy.”

“It is not possible,” said the brownie. “You saved my life, and now I am bound.”

“Bound?” asked Xylic. “Bound to what?”

“To serve you,” replied the brownie. “Until my debt is repaid.”

“Fine, I say you’ll repay me by leaving me alone. There. Now you can go.”

“It does not work in that way,” he said. “It must be repayment of equal.”

“What does that mean?”

“I must serve you until I save your life in return,” said the brownie.

Xylic, upon consideration of this brownie’s lack of strength, combat ability, and common sense, had a sudden fearful vision which filled his mind; a vision of being stuck with this brownie for the rest of his mortal existence.

He sighed mournfully.

X - Love and Hunger

2009-11-06T02:22:00.000-08:00

Over the course of several days, though Zedwig returned with a measure of silence, he cared for Fang with great attention to detail, and Fang didn’t quite know what to make of it.

The mage also wasn’t prone to much conversation, though Fang did try, and often. Where Zedwig went when he wasn’t tending to Fang’s needs was unknown to Fang, and it wasn’t until he was able stand without a tremendous level of pain and dizziness that he found out.

It was three days later; his ribs still ached, but just a little now, and his head still pounded, but he could move. For Fang, being rendered immobile was like a prison. He did stand, regardless of feeling his pulse against his forehead pounding like a soft mallet, and his vision fading black and back again. It faded black once, hard, and he wondered if he would pass out, but then it returned, faded once, soft, and he was back.

He exhaled and perused the room for clothes, all of which were plebian. It wasn’t easy to put something together that pleased him on at least a minute level, but he managed it, since for Fang, clothes were far more than just a basic covering; they were a shell and a projection onto the world which displayed his intentions as well as bolstering the intentions he desired to possess. He felt wrong at times when he was deprived of this necessary form of expression, and beyond its cradling of his ego, he found a distinct pleasure in dressing as an art form.

So though what he wore was very basic in theory, a few pieces in earth tones and rough fabrics, he combined what he had well and punctuated it with a russet sash at his waist.

Dressing, though immensely satisfying after having been deprived of the pleasure for days and days, exhausted him and he made it out into the front room and sat in a chair, intending to stay for only a moment.

Some time later, he awoke, his head cradled in his folded arms on the table in front of him, one cheekbone sore and probably red from resting on his wrist, and nothing had changed in the silent cabin. He stood too suddenly, forgetting his head, and nearly blacked out, grasped the table, and fought back a wave of acute nausea.

Once it was over, he decided to investigate where Zedwig might be, and moved to look out of the window.

The window looked out over the meadow that Fang had tilled perhaps a week ago, or perhaps it had been longer. He had lost track of time, now. He saw that the meadow had been kept neatly, and there were no weeds encroaching on the newly tilled section. It possibly looked better than it did before, and near the end of a row, Zedwig was bent, kneeling, and working on something. He looked quite white in the bloom of sunshine.

---- ---- ---- ----

“What are you doing?” asked Fang from behind Zedwig, once he managed to get out there, which was a lengthy process full of a number of near-blackouts.

Zedwig, all along knowing Fang’s proximity, turned and regarded him. His critical eye moved over Fang’s attire as he rose, and Fang wasn’t certain what his thoughts might be.

“I’m planting,” he said simply.

There was a long pause where they did nothing but measure each other and calculate what would happen next. Fang’s life seemed to be full of these.

“Why?” inquired Fang.

“Have you ever done it?”

“No.”

“It can’t be explained,” said Zedwig. “I could try, but there is no method of language that can express the reason why I choose to do this or why I find pleasure in it. The only way to understand it is to do it yourself.”

Fang looked down at the ground with some doubt. It was rather low, the ground, and moving vertically tended to make his head swim at the moment. He wasn’t the least bit interested in planting. He’d rather be doing something more action-oriented, like taking over a kingdom.

It was as if Zedwig read his mind.

“And that’s exactly what you’re going to do,” said the mage.

“What? Plant?”

“Yes,” said Zedwig.

Fang groaned.

“You’ve two choices, Fangline,” said Zedwig. “I can either deprive you of food, water, and shelter again until you comply, or you can go willingly.”

“Willingly? That isn’t willingly. There is no concept of free will in this scenario. I will do what you ask, or I’ll suffer.”

“I’m doing it for your own good,” replied Zedwig, and Fang thought that was just bonny.

“My own good? You, Zedwig?” Fang asked. “Do you mean to reform me?”

“Yes,” replied Zedwig, bluntly honest, and for a moment Fang appreciated him, like he’d always appreciated him, though he didn’t support in the slightest his intentions.

“You, of all people, should know that’s a lost cause,” said Fang.

Zedwig took a long, strange moment to reply. “We’ll see.”

The mage knelt again, and then motioned for Fang to join him on the ground. Fang, for his part, though he did a bit of eye-rolling, very carefully knelt beside Zedwig, working hard to avoid blacking out or vomiting.

For the next little while, Zedwig proceeded to instruct Fang on the process of planting, in this case, potatoes, and Fang, for the first time in his life, planted something that, he reluctantly admitted somewhere in his mind, he wanted to see grow.

It was an odd sensation, so opposite from that which he had taken pleasure in for years. Fang had loved destroying things. For some reason, for him, wanton destruction allowed him to forget things he’d like to forget in the pleasure of the moment. The only problem was it never lasted very long. This, in contrast, wasn’t anywhere near as sensational, but it was like a low murmur that stayed; not enough for the impatient, but it would do for now.

It was also all he could do for the time being. His vision began to swim even when keeping still, and when Zedwig noticed his struggle to stay vertical, the mage’s hands braced him with unusual strength and led him carefully inside.

“I managed to dress myself and plant three potatoes today,” said Fang with a large measure of the wry as Zedwig laid him down.

Zedwig looked somewhat displeased as he sat near him on the bedside.

“What is it?” Fang asked. “I did what I could.”

“No, it isn’t that,” said Zedwig. “I can’t help but be miserable over what I’ve done to you.”

Fang might have laughed if his head didn’t hurt like it did.

“How many times did I bring you near death, Zedwig?”

Zedwig leaned back a bit.

“I suppose I never considered it that way.”

“If I were you, I would have killed me right away.”

“Yes, if I were you.”

There was a pause where it didn’t need to be said that he was not, in fact, Fang, and then something strange happened. Upon his next exhale, there was a searing sensation that crept through his conscience during the consideration of Zedwig and his difference. It was only faint, and likely augmented into existence by the intensity of his emotions regarding the individual bending over him, but was an altogether new feeling for Fang, and alarmed him exceedingly.

He saw him, perhaps, as the individual he was, and not as something to be manipulated. There was still the latter, of that there is no doubt. The world for Fang was nothing but a series of objects to be manipulated to his own ends, but now he stood on the tremulous, dangerous edge of empathy, and it terrified him because with empathy, if left unchecked, came the open door of full realization of all he had done. For now, the door was only cracked enough to leak faintly through, with the distant threat to open and swallow him whole. He closed his eyes tightly and willed himself to think of other things.

Zedwig’s hand gently slid beneath his head and warmth ran through it, augmented by magic, used to reduce the pounding pain that never left, but sometimes receded. There was some relief.

“I’m not a healer,” said Zedwig. “But I wish I were. It isn’t easy to feel powerless.”

A sudden catch escaped Fang, and as he opened his eyes, he was horrified to find they filled rapidly with tears. The door leaked more and more, opening further with the presence of Zedwig nearby, made more intense by his compassion, and increased by Fang’s physical weakness. He closed his eyes and willed the emotion away, trying to stamp it out like so many ants, though doing so did nothing about the multitude of ants swarming underground.

“Fangline,” said Zedwig, inquiring in tone, and Fang threw a wall around himself, clutching the edge of a precipice and desperate not to fall into the depths. The mage mistook Fang’s motivations and said, “I suppose ‘powerless’ describes your situation well, and while I don’t believe you should possess any power at all, considering what you do with it, it bothers me to see you suffer.”

Zedwig’s free hand stroked Fang’s face, a movement that made Fang turn his head aside, and suffer further in his own way.

“It’s true, though, that control is only a temporary illusion. A person can guide events, and I suppose we must for survival, but the universe is a certain type of chaos. Trying to control it is not only impossible, but only leads to unhappiness. It can’t be done for long,” said Zedwig. “Everything is a certain controlled chaos. A tree grows and can be guided, but every branch can’t be forced to grow in one way or another. Every leaf can’t be forced to fall at a certain time, and every seed can’t be forced to grow.”

Fang found Zedwig’s voice and hands both soothing and piercing as something red and warm and wrenching built in his chest. He had grown unable to hold back at least some of the tears, and a few leaked downward, bizarre, to creep across his temple in a sudden hot-cold that dropped down onto Zedwig’s wrist. Zedwig seemed to be waxing too philosophical to take much notice, though his hands continued to be horrible and gentle.

“If I were to take that tree and attempt to force its every action to my will, it would die, as will anything,” said Zedwig, and Fang tried not to think about Zedwig, near death, after being bent under his will for a time. “But take that tree and train it, prune it, and dig around it, and then let it grow as it may, and it will possess greatness and beauty.”

He looked up at Zedwig, as torturous as it was, and considered the mage’s immense beauty as a whole, tainted and corrupted by Fang’s influence, and for a moment he felt the unfamiliar feeling of regret and wonder at where other paths might have led. It hurt physically to consider such a thing, and the door creeped open another inch to fuel a rising panic.

“That is what love is,” said Zedwig to Fang. “The pure kind. The kind of which perhaps you are not even aware or have not once experienced.”

“And have you?” asked Fang.

“Yes,” was Zedwig’s immediate answer.

Fang fell into his tremulous thoughts.

“It isn’t just one thing reserved for one person,” Zedwig told him. “It is like this.”

And then he began to illustrate by using his magic, which Fang could sense he drew from the room and from Fang, like a soft inhale. Then he released it outward, in a stream, pulsing gently and golden in all directions.

“I don’t understand,” said Fang.

“Love is a state of being,” replied Zedwig. “If you possess it, it lands on anyone and anything you might encounter.”

The warmth from Zedwig’s hand on the back of his head made Fang want to cry inconsolably, though he couldn’t exactly put his finger on why, and he managed to keep himself from doing so.

“So if you possess this particular state of being, you might guide things around you, but never force your will. Beauty flourishes in freedom.”

Fang rubbed his forehead with a hand, conveniently covering his eyes.

“You have always been a teacher at heart,” he said.

“From the beginning,” said Zedwig, his face crossed with a smile, and Fang wondered at it, this smile. It was rare. “I have always tried to instruct you properly.”

“And I have always tried to control you,” replied Fang, and his voice weakened. “But it was never enough. I could never control you enough, not to entirely possess you. I was caught with want; I wanted the entirety of you in my hand, but it was like trying to take a candle’s flame. It can’t be done without snuffing it out. So controlling you, that exquisite beauty which is your existence, would compromise it, and if held tightly enough, kill it. I could never find satisfaction in it for longer than a short moment. It was… and is maddening.”

Zedwig considered Fang’s words for a long time.

“There are two sides to a person,” said Zedwig. “One which gives and one which consumes. The consuming side is always hungry, and the giving side never wants. One can control the other, and dictates that person’s state of being.”

Zedwig looked down at Fang, perhaps with some measure of distress, and said, “You are aware of both in me.”

It took Fang by surprise, as he was certain the finger was going to be pointed at himself, but instead was faced by a Zedwig without any barriers. Their mental acuity combined, although it wasn’t necessary, but Fang welcomed it. He knew and was aware of both in the mage, and it was how he had manipulated Zedwig in the past. He had played on his compassion to gain his pity so he would give in to him, and then he had used Zedwig’s hungering pride to keep him under his thumb. Though it had always been instinctual before, he saw now very clearly what he had done. His breath caught.

“You see it,” said Zedwig, and Fang found himself unable to reply. The door creaked and tried to open more, behind it a shuddering, gaping maw he feared more than anything in the world. Zedwig smiled at him, a brilliant thing, but Fang turned his head aside and screwed his eyes shut.

There was a sudden embrace, a kiss to his temple, and a whisper from Zedwig, “Sleep.”

And then he was gone.

IX - Poisonous

2009-11-02T08:56:00.001-08:00

It was later that day, when Al’bert had very little to do except ponder the countryside, that Sangwine and his cousin showed up.

He’d been put under a type of arrest. It was like he’d been put on probation, as it were, and his choices were either to care for the royal stables or go back to the dungeon. The choice was evident and clear, and it wasn’t terrible, except at times like these.

Al’bert saw them coming from far off, since the stables were at the edge of the great riding meadow used by the royals and anyone else lucky enough to be in with the royals. Here it was that Sangwine learned to ride, and his father before him, and again back. Al’bert had learned on his own estate, which had boasted its own decent lands which the Fromages could do with what they would. That was gone, and though it stung, he spent all of his time here, practically possessing the riding meadow for the time he spent in it above all others.

They were a small party, Sangwine, Xylic, the ever-present Geeves, and the half-ogre, and seemed to find great pleasure in each others’ company. That was something Al’bert missed, although he hadn’t experienced it for a long time. He never had much comeraderie with his companions during his travels; they were too much like hired mercenaries. The last time he could recall real friendship was with Fang, and that made him want to go shovel things with extra-violent fervency, so that’s what he did.

“How long will you be gone?” Sangwine’s voice carried just within earshot as they approached the stables.

“If I go straight north, it’s at least four weeks of travel, and beyond that, I don’t know,” came the voice of Xylic.

Geeves arrived close to Al’bert and showed no difference in speaking to him as if he were speaking to a man who had worked the stables for ten years.

“The Duke requires a fresh horse for a long journey,” said Geeves. “Have one saddled and readied immediately.”

Al’bert did as he was told, but not before giving Geeves the sort of lingering look that expressed as much as he could of his belief that this entire situation smacked of the ridiculous. As for Geeves, his face was impassable as always, but Al’bert knew nothing was ever lost on Geeves, whether he showed it or not.

Readying a horse took some minutes, and it gave Al’bert time to eavesdrop, if he did it quietly enough.

“Be cautious of the mountain trolls,” came the half-ogre’s low voice through the stable. “They tend to be extra angry this time of year.”

“Must be the change of the seasons,” replied Sangwine.

“It’s true, they have a low tolerance for seasonal changes,” said Derf.

“Avoid the mountain trolls,” Sangwine said with finality, which Al’bert assumed was in Xylic’s direction.

“Fine, I’ll avoid traipsing around with mountain trolls,” said Xylic, sounding impatient.

“Good,” said Sangwine. “Also… I want you to take this to her parents.”

Someone sighed. Al’bert wondered what it was.

“It is nothing to replace her,” said Xylic. “But, they need it. It’ll take the edge off, I guess.”

Xylic never sounded like he was telling what he really thought, and he seemed to always hold his true intents close to him like a jealous secret. He might not have been trained as a royal, but he had his own sort of rigorous training; the kind one can’t learn from a tutor, but from life experience. The man would be excellent at the clandestine, and Al’bert might like working with him in that regard, if he wasn’t certain Xylic would shoot him if ever given half a chance.

“Tell them they’ll be well tended for the rest of their lives,” said Sangwine.

“Right,” was Xylic’s reply.

Al’bert realized the package was wealth. Well, he supposed it was the best thing to do, and besides, keeping a pair of peasants out of poverty wouldn’t be much of a drain on the country, considering the average human standard of living.

Geeves returned to inquire after the horse, which Al’bert had just finished. The displeasure of the situation struck him all at once, and he ignored Geeves entirely, handing the horse over with scant recognition and no eye contact.

“The Duke will be pleased,” said Geeves, though Al’bert left in the other direction and gave no hint he’d even heard, finding himself wishing the Duke would trip in a hole in the road. A normal servant would be berated for acting in such a manner, and that Geeves did nothing except take the horse and go was very telling.

He left the stable, desiring to get away from Sangwine and his friends and his royalty and wealth and kingdom as quickly as he could, but as he left, he could still hear them talking.

“Come back quickly,” came Sangwine’s voice. “I… need you here.”

“I will be back soon,” said Xylic, sounding strangely reassuring.

There was silence, the sort of silence Al’bert was sure had to be full of hugging and the warmth of family and friendship, and he began to feel ill. He worked hard to walk quickly up a grassy rise and be out of earshot by the time anything else was said.

He sat on the rise, once he’d reached the top of it, and overlooked the meadow and much of the valley of Schloeffel. He supposed it wasn’t something he could fight, being in the valley of Schloeffel and the kingdom of Schloeffelonia. Sangwine was going to have it all, and he was merely a Fromage. Not even that, anymore.

He wanted that back. Though he was sorry to see Bactine go, as she was a remarkably interesting woman, and not terrible at kissing, he wished she’d hung on long enough to make good on her deal to get him his wealth and titles back. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much he could say to get Sangwine to believe how integral Al’bert had been to putting the good King in the ambrosia of comfort and delirious joy he was currently experiencing.

Al’bert supposed he was lucky his head wasn’t on a pike, but he was discontent. Maybe earlier he was content, but now, no… he was discontent. He wanted his estate, his sister, his best friend, his bloody hair. He heaved a sigh and smothered his face in his hands over all he had lost.

It was then that he understood why Camilla wanted to find Fang.

---- ---- ---- ----

Fang faded in and out of consciousness for a long time. He didn’t really know how long it was, but he was inspired with an urgency to wake long before he managed to open his eyes. He wondered where he was. At times, he thought he was at home, in the castle in Schloeffelonia, and at other times, he believed he was in a tent, on a war campaign. Each place filled him with differing emotions and he missed both horribly once he realized he was in neither.

At long last, he began to regain real consciousness and his body came back to him, aching everywhere, but especially in certain places, like the back of his head and the front of his chest. Breathing was subtly painful, and moving his head was something he tried once, and then gave up for later.

He opened his eyes and the world came in as a bright glow, and then slow colors seeped into the mélange, revealing a small room, rustic, and then he recalled where he was, though he’d never been in this particular room before. Calico curtains swayed in the window above him, there was a small wardrobe with weathered wood, and he was lying on a bed, beneath a quilt of varying summer hues. It might have been comfortable, and he supposed for most of his body it was, if it wasn’t for his aching head.

He shifted and gasped as a sharp pain lanced through his ribcage. Letting out a groan, he decided to wait on escaping.

Suddenly Zedwig arrived like a leaf blown in by the wind, one hand grasping the doorway and a face full of what might have been concern. Fang found it bewildering, though Zedwig’s expression quickly changed to indifference. It was nice to see him, though. It was always nice to see him.

Except when he’s trying to kill me, he recalled. He groaned again and wanted to go back to sleep. Zedwig stayed, though, and Fang found he couldn’t sleep with Zedwig lurking over him like that.

“What,” said Fang, opening his eyes and regarding Zedwig with scant patience, which was ludicrous as he seemed to have all the time in the world, being injured as he was.

He saw Zedwig shift, and he liked the movement. He always liked watching Zedwig move. The mage was graceful, swan-like, silver-haired… and so bizarre. He’d never met a more bizarre person. Was that what intrigued him so? In his tired state, he couldn’t count the reasons. It was too exhausting. He settled for visual appreciation.

Zedwig came to sit on the bedside, near Fang’s hip, his weight shifting everything and causing a number of painful jabs throughout Fang’s body.

“Gnnh!”

“Calm yourself, you’ll be fine,” said Zedwig as if he were chiding Fang, though he straightened and smoothed the quilt over Fang’s chest in a movement that was delicate and careful.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Fang.

“I almost killed you.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Zedwig looked away, and that made Fang smile.

“Yes,” said Zedwig. Fang’s smile dropped.

“Then finish me off,” said Fang. “This is unpleasant.”

“It’s what I wanted in that moment,” said Zedwig. “I barely stopped myself from killing you.”

“At this rate I’ll be dead by autumn,” said Fang.

“You’re just so,” said Zedwig, balling up in tension. “Willful!”

“Hunh,” replied Fang.

“I don’t want to kill you,” said Zedwig, turning to Fang with a look of desperation, though Fang had no idea how he was expected to fix the situation.

“Then, ah, don’t kill me.”

“It isn’t that easy!”

Fang let out a long sigh. “You could let me go.”

“I can’t possibly let you go, you’re dangerous!”

“And you’re not?”

Zedwig drew back, perhaps never being told directly what he had become, perhaps never realizing it, or perhaps simply never admitting it to himself. A cloud passed Zedwig’s face and Fang wanted to touch his hair. Instead, he could only reach a thin sash at the mage’s waist. He touched it, running his fingers across it, pulling the fabric through his fingers, sifting it like light, silken sand.

Zedwig faced him again.

“I’m going to have to take you back.”

“Where? Schloeffelonia?”

A little panic rose in Fang’s mind, somewhere back where his head hurt, though not fully realized. He squelched it with calculation.

“Yes,” said Zedwig. “It’s the only thing I can do. And then… rehabilitate myself.”

Fang laughed, but it hurt so he stopped suddenly and covered his head with his hands to groan. He felt Zedwig’s hand light on his forearm.

“At the very best I’ll be put in the dungeons to rot for the rest of my life,” he said from beneath his hands. “More likely I’ll be put to death, and I’d rather you do it if it’s going to be death.”

“But I don’t want to kill you,” said Zedwig’s voice and hand.

Fang dropped his hands and said, “Not right now.”

Zedwig had nothing to say to that, so Fang took the mage’s hand in his and kissed it. He calculated.

“You don’t want to kill me because you’re afraid if you kill someone willingly that means you’re as bad as I am. You’re deluding yourself, Zedwig. You want to kill me. There’s no altruism in you. You want to return me to Schloeffelonia to save yourself, if there’s anything to be saved, and how is that act any better than killing me, if everything you choose to do is merely done to serve your own ends?”

Zedwig stared at him, but Fang hung onto his hand tighter.

“I’ve never known you to be anything but selfish. You were shy when I first met you, but you coveted the happiness of others like a craven coward. The instant I gave you the chance to have power over others you grabbed it, loved it, and reveled in your own greatness.”

Zedwig’s eyes widened and one eyebrow twitched. It was working.

“Why do you think it was so easy for me to rule you?” asked Fang. “You wanted power, greatness, and to be the center of everything. There is half of you that loves destruction as much as I do, perhaps even more. Nothing you’ve ever done was selfless, Zedwig. You love yourself more than anything in the world, and are altogether a selfish being. We are the same, you and I, and the only difference between us is how long it’s taking you to admit what you are.”

Zedwig stood and yanked his hand out of Fang’s. His frame began to shake, and Fang wondered for one strange moment if the mage was about to cry.

“You’re poisonous,” said Zedwig, his voice quiet and restrained. He turned and left, and Fang didn’t see him again for a long while.

VIII - In between shoveling manure

2009-11-01T07:35:00.000-08:00

It had been a few days since his “release”, but it had been forever, and that was made all the more clear by the light, floral scent of the woman in his arms. Women smelled phenomenal, and he didn’t know why he’d never noticed it before.

Oh sure, he’d noticed, but he’d never really noticed, like a person who is deprived of his favorite food for months only to gain it back with a new appreciation. A new, acute, cutting appreciation. She smelled phenomenal. Well, he supposed she had a name.

Senna had, apparently, been worried beyond reason over Al’bert’s detainment, for reasons that were difficult for him to comprehend. They’d never had much, really, not from what he could gather, and though she had always been very attentive, what with the seven-page letters proclaiming undying love and all, he’d had her pegged for one of those girls that falls easily in love and just as easily and suddenly out of it. Instead, she’d been the first, inquiring after him with a sense of urgency, asking to see him with perhaps a tinge of desperation, and throwing herself straight into his arms before anyone else had the chance. She didn’t even seem to care that he was no one, now, without the smallest tinge of wealth to his plain name that meant nothing and held no status.

Yes, there was the way she smelled, like the spring that had waned into summer already, its golden leaves turned to a deeper green. He drew it in and there they were; he had her pushed against a wooden post, and for a brief time the searing knowledge that it was a stable post faded from him and she surrounded him with her arms and delicate hands and fragrant hair and soft neck and …

He lost it. It was, perhaps, the poorest showing of Al’bert du (or sans) Fromage of all time, but it wasn’t something he could stop, because there was something that happened to him, with the combination of months of drought added to the sharp scent of her hair and neck. The smell of her cut through him and the river raged, grew, coursed, and it was sudden, and before he knew it, it had already reached the unstoppable point. Perhaps it was lack of practice, but at the moment, there was no time or inclination to consider what it could have been as it pulled him under its depths and the white noise began, slow and unyielding and then sudden as all of his senses filled to blindness; he was blind, rampant, ignorant, at one with everything in the universe for one short, empty-full-white-black-all-encompassing moment; he was a star, explosive, a point of light, firing in the blackness of space a halo, a dazzling aura, in all directions at once. As it began to pass, the realization came back to him that he wasn’t a heavenly body, but a mortal made of clay, and his frail body was tense with a faint cramp in his left shoulder, and he noticed he was holding Senna perhaps tightly enough to hurt her, and then he began to process thoughts normally, again.

He released her a little. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Senna smiled at him, her smile being warm and affectionate and unchanged from the previous minute. It passed through his mind that perhaps she had no idea what had just happened to him.

“No,” she said, and then she kissed him again.

He allowed it, since kisses were rarely bad, but his heart just wasn’t in it, as they say. He took the time during the kiss to consider, with perhaps a bit of horror, how poor of a lover he was turning out to be currently. First, they were both fully clothed, in a remarkably plebian setting (a stable), and had only embarked on a short series of kisses. Now, he was spent and feeling, to be honest, like a eunuch, and really, mostly uninterested in Senna. She was like a painting that, at first view, was full of vibrant colors, but had now faded to the plain and ordinary.

Well, he wasn’t a poor actor, though acting is never as convincing as the real thing, and he showed her at least a strong measure of affection in return.

“Senna, you should be getting back soon,” he said, hoping to sound regretful over the idea.

She sighed in their mutual embrace.

“I know.”

It had taken some time after that to extricate her from his person and actually move her out into the field and on her way back to where she should be, but it was finished at last and he leaned against the post and regarded the field in consideration after her passing.

The first thing he had done after the war ended was, well, be detained by Geeves and some elf whose name he didn’t know. At least he’d escaped being shot against the wall by Xylic, which he had seen as a distinct possibility in the other man’s eye, but that was a brief triumph as he’d heard about Bactine shortly after, through Hope. Being despised as he was, Al’bert wasn’t allowed to ask questions, see her, or attend her funeral. It was as if it was leverage used by the rest of them to injure him, or that they thought he wasn’t worthy to mourn, or that he didn’t know her, not like they did.

Perhaps he knew her in a way none of them did. Al’bert considered that, his face bearing an unconscious and lopsided type of smile.

“Al’bert, Al’bert, what were you doing with that poor, innocent Senna?”

He turned to see his beloved sister, the sight of whom was always welcome and pleasant. She looked stunning, wearing a blueish-lavender much like the shade he liked to wear, and he had to admit that perhaps it looked better on her. At the moment, she looked the part of the Lady and he the Swineherd, but he just smiled.

“Hardly a thing, Camilla,” he replied. “I seem to have lost my edge.”

He took a shovel that was leaning against a nearby wall, though he had no real intention of breaking into heavy labor with his sister nearby.

“What have they done to you?” asked Camilla, mostly to herself.

“Turned me into a stableboy,” he replied with less regret than would seem normal.

“Well, I’ve been busy,” she said.

“Have you?”

“It isn’t easy finding the wealthiest man in Schloeffelonia anymore. Fang ruined so many fortunes, it’s hard to tell who is rich and who is only rich under pretense.”

“There’s always the King,” said Al’bert with a grin, and he began to poke at a bale of hay with his shovel in a half-hearted and ineffectual attempt to break it up for spreading.

“Sangwine? Please.”

“Alright, it was a poor joke. What about his new cousin?”

“It’s impossible to separate him from Hope,” said Camilla with her hands on her hips. “It’s as if she knows. I swear that fairy is a thousand times more wily than she pretends to be.”

“Hmm, well, I’m sure you’ll ferret out the best option,” he replied as he knocked a little hay off of the side of the bale.

The day of the uprising, it’d taken some time of begging for Geeves to allow him to go find Camilla. It wasn’t easy to find her, either, locked high and away, in a turret above the trees, in a forgotten passageway he only remembered from one very long game of hide-and-go-seek in his childhood. Fangline had hidden there, once, long ago, laughing at how long it took Al’bert to find him and they had smiled, hanging out of the window with a bird’s view, and considered whether dropping things from this height on unknowing pedestrians below would be merely hilarious or fatal.

But on the day of the uprising, he’d found Camilla framed by that window, alive, well-kept to his relief, and beautiful. He would never forget her face when he saw her first; open, shocked, delighted, relieved, her blue eyes wide and lighter than usual, her sable hair pulled by the wind from the open window, and the only family he possessed. Alive. He’d only realized at that moment how desperately he had wanted her to still be alive for all this time. They’d embraced for seconds, minutes, wordless, until she pulled away and said:

“Ugh, Al’bert… you need a bath.”

He sighed with happiness. It made little sense for him to be pleased at any level with his current state, but he was. Maybe it was the euphoria of being out, after months of confinement in the dungeon. Maybe it was finally getting a bath, though he got ridiculously filthy every day in this stable. It could be the high of hard labor. His sister was safe, too. It had, also, only been less than a week since his release, so he hadn’t been doing this long enough for it to chafe. He suspected it would chafe. He certainly didn’t want to be shoveling horse dung in a year, or even in a few months, but for now the status quo would do, and it gave him plenty of time to devise a plan.

“What are you going to do about Senna?” asked Camilla.

“What do you mean?”

“She’s in love with you, isn’t she?”

“Well, she’s got to be practical at some point, don’t you think?” replied Al’bert. “There is no scenario in which her father would allow her to marry a penniless stablehand. We’re simply not meant to be.”

“You wouldn’t marry her, anyway.”

“No, probably not.”

“That poor girl,” said Camilla.

“Since when did you gain a heart?” said Al’bert with a laugh. He leaned on his shovel. “You’ve always been the cold one among us, neh?”

“Well,” replied Camilla with a dodgy eye. “It’s never easy for a woman who has fallen in love with the wrong man.”

She colored as if she regretted saying the last, and Al’bert regarded it with great interest, because he knew what and who she was referring to, and he saw, at least, a sliver of suffering cross her face. He turned and began working on the hay bale with earnest.

“And he kept you in that tower for all that time,” he said.

Camilla remained silent.

“He did seem to keep you well,” he continued.

“Yes.”

“Fang does nothing out of charity.”

“Never.”

“And so why did he make sure you were well cared for, though exiled in the tower, and for that matter, why didn’t he kill you?”

“I suppose the same could be asked for his decision not to kill you, too,” said Camilla. “There are some things of which I’m sure. He put me in that tower because he knew I was powerful, and it was the best way available to him to render me powerless, aside from killing me.”

“He didn’t kill you because he cares about you, on some level, in some way. I’m certain of it,” said Al’bert. “It’s the only reason, as the only other reason would be if he thought he could use you somehow towards his own ends.”

“It could be a combination of both, Al’bert.”

There was a long moment where Camilla leaned on the infamous post as Al’bert took a pitchfork to the hay.

“You know Zedwig took him, don’t you?” asked Al’bert.

“Yes, do you know where?”

“Of course not,” he replied. “I know nothing, am allowed to know nothing, and will know nothing, unless I yank it from the maw of knowledge by myself.”

He didn’t mean for that sentence to come out sounding so bitter. Maybe the status quo wouldn’t do for very long, after all. Camilla’s voice came out quiet as she spoke.

“I want to find him.”

Al’bert groaned.

“Camilla!”

“What? What, I do!” She answered, her posture, voice, eyes, all defensive.

“You’ve more important things to do than to chase after a missing Fangline in the possession of an insane mage. Find a rich husband with a title, Camilla. It’s a benefit your sex allows you that mine does not. Make something of yourself. Our family has been ruined, and you can at least redeem yourself.”

Camilla heaved a sigh and Al’bert knew she was thinking more about how to go about finding Fangline than finding a rich baron because he knew her and knew once she was determined to do something it was very hard to derail her, no matter how idiotic it was.

“Camilla, I don’t want you anywhere near Zedwig. Ever. He is ridiculously dangerous. I can’t imagine what he would do to you if you tried to reclaim Fangline.”

“Zedwig isn’t like that.”

“Isn’t like what?” Al’bert asked, although it was near a yell, as he was growing alarmed at his sister’s obstinance and perhaps ignorance.

“He seems rather compassionate.”

“He is insane!”

“I don’t think he’s that crazy.”

“Do I have to mention he can do anything to anyone? In addition to being insane?” asked Al’bert, though he knew she was only listening half-heartedly. He ran the pitchfork deep into the hay and turned to his sister. “As your brother, I forbid you to entertain any thoughts of finding Fangline, or coming within any distance of Zedwig. Stop thinking about it and focus your energies on what is before you. Schloeffelonia has a number of wealthy men of high status and you are a beautiful woman. The most beautiful woman in Schloeffelonia, if you ask me. The world is yours.”

Al’bert finished and stared at his sister in a way of measuring out if any of his words had found purchase. She smiled at him.

“As you wish, dear brother,” she said, and turned away.

VII - Blubbering Men at a Funeral

2009-10-24T12:27:00.001-07:00

“It doesn’t matter,” said Xylic, an aged letter in his hand, open, the faint whisper of handwriting fading but still legible.

Sangwine was sitting with him in the passageway, in front of the painting of Xylic and his parents, leaning his shoulder into Xylic’s in his familiar way. Sangwine had the grace not to argue about the importance of Xylic knowing his mother, and so as Xylic folded up the letter and placed it back with the rest in the old wooden box he leaned in return, his own shoulder an equal partner in what was familial affection.

There he sat, knowing at last the thing that had always eluded him; the identity of his mother. He knew it, and somehow it felt remote. He’d never known her, and so he had little to lose in the realm of mothers. More present was the warmth of his cousin beside him, the sunlight streaming through the nearby window, and the motes of dust that sparkled in the small passageway. The way the dust fell was slow, like stones falling through water, and it seemed that time expanded as they sank. He watched it with a certain floating pleasure, and discovered he’d found happiness.

“Where should I have these things placed?” asked Sangwine.

Xylic gave the question a lazy consideration.

“In my rooms,” he said, “for now.”

A quiet noise of acknowledgement came from Sangwine, and though Xylic desired further elongation of the previous moment, it wasn’t to be.

Sangwine shifted beside him and said, “The funeral is in an hour.”

“Which one?” asked Xylic with dry, meager humor, though he knew well which one. There had, however, been several already, as the past few days had been nothing but funerals, death, and conversations about death and dead people. It was enough to make a live person feel like a painful minority, rather like a small stick adrift in a river of dead. Too many had died in the war, from the beginning to the end, but one of the casualties had hurt a lot more than all the rest combined. He wished Sangwine hadn’t reminded him of it, not yet, since he’d somehow managed a moment without the sharp lance of her death.

He’d lost her, but he’d never had her. Sangwine’s forehead came to rest on Xylic’s shoulder out of grief, and stopped him from falling any further into any sort of self-pity in which he might wallow. He’d lost her, but he’d never had her.

Perhaps Sangwine had never had her, either. Not really.

He had probably seen Sangwine cry twenty times since the overthrow of Fang, and that was more than any person should spend crying in the span of a few days. Sangwine spared it for Xylic’s presence, and Xylic supposed he did feel a certain unique happiness in being so important to a person to have such an emotional act reserved solely for him. Not that he liked crying. He liked having family, though. Immensely.

Thus it was only Xylic who was aware of the vast extent of Sangwine’s grief over Bactine’s death, and he knew his own, though barbed, paled in comparison. He couldn’t complain.

Sangwine sighed beside him; a weak sound. Xylic knew what Sangwine wanted to say. He wanted to say that he didn’t want to go, that he was afraid of falling into the dregs of emotion in front of all who would be there now that he was the King, but at the same time he wanted to go, more than anything, to pay his last respects to the woman he loves and who died for his survival. After several years of being with him all the time, Xylic pretty much knew everything Sangwine was thinking before he said it, and so he turned and surrounded Sangwine with one arm to allow his cousin to loose his grief again in hopes that it would be enough to last through the ceremony.

---- ---- ---- ----

The day really was turning out to be beautiful, though it was a strange juxtaposition against the context of what was occurring.

There hadn’t been time to communicate with Bactine’s parents in the north to discern their wishes in regards to her remains, as that would have taken weeks either way to send word and receive it, so Sangwine had dictated it himself, and from the finality and strength with which he ordered her funeral arranged, Xylic suspected Sangwine preferred it that way. Xylic, for his part, insisted that he would take word himself to Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher following the funeral. Sure, it would take a month or more to travel, but it was the only way to do it, as far as he was concerned. They were family. They weren’t, but they were.

She was to be buried next to Sangwine’s future burial spot, and this raised more than a few eyebrows, though all were inclined to admit her role as the savior of their king. That fact took the sting out of it for the standard Schloeffelonian, hiding the reminder of their fading blood behind an assurance that even humans can act nobly, and perhaps be capable of the ultimate sacrifice. It comforted them that, though they were sliding down a slope towards what they reviled, a grain of hope lay at the bottom. Xylic knew better; he knew that even though there was greatness in the elven civilization, there was also a swing to the other side that some of them fell into unaware, its first fruits being the assumption of being better somehow by possessing elven blood.

Fang was perhaps the greatest culmination of the swing towards the wrong side, although Xylic had only seen him in portraits and read reports about him and heard countless stories. Though he had no personal acquaintance, his loathing for Fang was personal and acute, since he considered the once-overlord responsible for Bactine’s death. Xylic had high hopes that Fang was in pain, constant pain, in the hands of Zedwig.

They were lined up, all of them, all those who had loved her, or at least liked her, perhaps tolerated her in some cases, and they watched the casket as the pallbearers brought it close-by. Sangwine was king and center, in regalia, his pale blue sash pressed and pleated, crossing his right shoulder and pinned at his waist with a silver cross, where another sash of Schloeffel burgundy was laid around his hips. His shoulders were rigid, his back straight; he wore a coat of pristine white wool with an undershirt of bright red showing at the cuffs and collar, trousers of pale gray, and polished, perfect black boots to his knees. His father’s sword, but it was really his father’s father’s sword, but no, it went back, all the way back to the first king of Schloeffel; it was strapped around his waist with a black belt and sheathed, the amber stones of the hilt warm and opalescent in the sunlight, and it went unmentioned that its first owner was human. His golden circlet shone around his head and he looked very much like a king, but Xylic knew him.

At Sangwine’s left hand was where Xylic stood, wearing the same pale blue sash across a deep sea-green coat, infantile royalty, to the joy of all of Schloeffelonia, a hidden diamond in the rough found and returned, prodigal, to his homeland. Regardless of jubilation, there were still too many who looked at him with fear at first glance, as if his similarity to Fang in his physical form would translate to his psychological form and they’d all be slaves again under the thumb of a madman.

He could feel Derf’s bulky arm brush against his in the line, since the half-ogre stood on his other side, and he knew Bactine’s passing had injured his friend like a gash. Derf had no trouble with expressing whatever emotions he liked in front of those gathered or all of Schloeffelonia if he must, and he’d made liberal use of the linen handkerchief in his hand for the past ten minutes at least. It didn’t matter; Derf could do whatever he wanted in front of the elves, since they were so unfamiliar with half-ogre society that anything he might do they would assume was cultural and excuse it straightaway. Xylic envied that. The man could cry his eyes out, like the rest of them wished they could, and no one would bat an eye.

On Sangwine’s other side, and back a little out of respect for status, was Geeves, ever prepared, never changing, always in a neat coat of Schloeffel burgundy and a modest ribbon in his deep brown hair. He unnerved Xylic in his way of being ever present, omniscient, and lurking like a piece of décor in the background, ready to pounce, except he never did. Sangwine had told Xylic that’s what servants were supposed to do, and Geeves was the best at doing it. Xylic would rather be left alone once in a while.

Next to Geeves was Stump, who wore the same thing he always did and looked not a whit different except something only those who knew him best would notice, and that was a hardness in his face that was never there before. He stood close to the old elf beside him, in a spirit of confidentiality and friendship, and Gaffer, who he supposed knew Stump in a way none of them did, stood with his hat off, sorrowful. He, too, was allowed to cry, but where Derf’s grief was large and evident, Gaffer’s was silent, limited to two streams of tears down his long face and expressed a hollow, aching sadness. It was enough to make Xylic wonder how Gaffer came to know Bactine well enough to care to this degree, or if this was really about Bactine at all.

As the casket arrived, it was open, and though she had been arranged beautifully, with flowers in her hair and wearing a dress of pale, delicate seafoam green, it wasn’t Bactine. There was nothing of her in the clay she left behind, to Xylic’s eye. It was an odd and convoluted moment, one where longing was neither relieved nor made more severe by the sight of her body and instead breached the surreal, and he found himself wondering where she had gone. In the instant he began to wonder about her whereabouts, though, pain struck, neat and hot, like a scalpel, and he bled for her again.

Hope arrived, trailing the casket like a pale pink and fragrant wisp or a thin petal on a flower through which the sun shone, and as the pallbearers backed away she placed a bouquet inside and moved, weightless, towards them. Her eyes passed by his and she knew better than to split Sangwine and Xylic from each other, so she moved to stand on Sangwine’s other side. He felt a tension release inside of him, just a little.

As for Sangwine, Xylic was aware that for every tear his cousin wanted to shed, he only held himself higher, with more regality, and it caused Xylic to wonder at his training, for it was truly very good. What he had always seen as pretension and ridiculous pomp in the wilderness he realized as necessary here, because not just anyone could play the part of a king, and Sangwine did it well. As far as Xylic went, he wasn’t sure he could do it, as there were a ridiculous number of rules for royalty and, having never been taught the least of them, Xylic was certain he’d already broken at least half by now.

He moved closer to Sangwine, and as they closed the casket he pressed his arm behind his cousin’s in a gesture of empathy. Though his eyes never left the casket or the grave and his face never lost its smooth regard for the proceedings, Sangwine’s immediate hand took his and clung to it.

VI - Dissonance

2009-09-26T17:08:00.000-07:00

The next morning Fang was on the hillock again. It might be supposed that after several nights in the cold that it would get easier, but that wasn’t the case at all. It got harder, and with each passing day Fang became more exhausted by lack of proper sleep. By now his frame constantly ached, and it grew difficult to think a cohesive thought. At the present moment, however, he was inside a warm cocoon of unconsciousness, during the only pleasant hours of the day when he could bask in the sun.

He dreamed strange dreams.

“Fangline,” said Camilla.

She was there, purple-clad, all pale skin and sable hair flowing back as if suspended in the air. She seemed weightless, and that in itself was cathartic, but most of all she looked at him as if she’d forgotten about how he’d locked her away for all of that time. It relieved him. He wanted her embrace.

“You’re going to be the King, aren’t you?” she asked him as if she hadn’t witnessed all the things that had transpired over the past several years. He didn’t want to be the one to tell her, but he was the only one who could.

“No,” he replied. “I’m not going to be the King.”

Her eyes widened in a way that Camilla’s never did in reality and she regarded him with innocent curiosity. “Why not?”

“I…” he began but knew not what to say. She smiled at him with a warmth that seeped through his body like sunlight.

“You were made to be King,” she said to him.

He looked aside, considering his failure. When he looked back, Camilla had become his mother, green and gold, soft and sad.

“You were made to be King,” said his mother.

Fang choked and turned away until a sob wracked him.

“Fangline,” said a third voice, and he turned to see it was Zedwig. The mage was looking at him with concern as Fang discovered the tears on his own face. Fang felt stretched, his lungs burned as if he’d been running in frigid air, and his head was thick with spent emotion.

“Fangline?” asked Zedwig again. His silver hair elongated, curving and swirling into a great, sparkling river; his ivory clothes were hills of a fine weave; his smooth skin was the sky; his amethyst eyes, though, were ever out of sight in Fang’s peripheral, but he knew they were there if he could only turn to see them.

“I was made to be King,” Fang said.

“You gave up that right long ago,” said Zedwig from above.

Fang’s eyes opened after his consciousness, and there was Zedwig again, the same as yesterday, a dark silhouette blocking the sun, and nothing like the sympathetic Zedwig in his dream. This one had harder edges, experience, and a certain fatalistic nuance. The one in his dream was, perhaps, who Zedwig could have been… if. Fang didn’t go on with that train of thought.

“I… was dreaming,” mumbled Fang, turning over and surveying the hillock in the way waking people orient themselves to reality.

Zedwig was courteous enough to pretend he didn’t notice that Fang had been crying as he sat up and wiped his face, and Fang was grateful. His head pounded with exhaustion in tandem with his pulse and he closed his eyes, hard.

“I’m going to make a deal with you, Fangline,” said Zedwig.

“I wasn’t aware there were deals to be made here,” replied Fang as he glanced up at Zedwig, whose head was haloed by the sun.

“You will refrain from using your magnifier ability on me, and I…” said Zedwig. “…won’t hurt you.”

“Have I done anything of the sort?”

Zedwig replied with a sudden scalding sensation striking Fang on the cheek.

“Blast it, Zedwig!” yelled Fang, clapping a hand over his stinging face.

“Don’t act innocent!” yelled Zedwig, before calming, but only on the surface, like a roiling ocean under ice. “You seem to forget that I can read your thoughts. I know you. I know your thoughts, your motivations, and your secrets. There is nothing you can keep from me, and when you try, I will discover it. Your days of manipulating me are over. It is I who rules you, now, and it will never be the other way again!”

Fang was never one to flourish while being told what to do, and so, with his rebellious nature coming to the forefront, he opened his magnifier ability to the full extent he was able. He rose, and as he did so, he knew that, to Zedwig, he would glow with a rich depth of power and then felt a certain sense of satisfaction when he saw the mage take a small step back. He knew the power he offered Zedwig was both addictive and compelling and so he hung it there, just out of reach, teasing him with the edges of it and attuned to the most miniscule changes in the mage; his shortened breath, or the small, faint, sheen of sweat that broke out on his temple.

“Here we are,” he said to Zedwig. “There is no one around, and we are free to use the power as much as we like.”

Zedwig’s breath caught, and his gaze became severe. “Your days of manipulating me are over,” he said, with little inflection this time.

“And what of your days of manipulating me?” asked Fang, rife with power.

Zedwig replied with magic, drawing it into himself, from everywhere but from Fang. He hung it in the air, poised to strike at Fang, like a snake, and said, “Don’t force my hand, Fangline.”

But Fang wasn’t the sort to back down once challenged, and he became intent on turning what could have been a pleasant morning of planting beans into an epic battle of willpower.

“You are ignoring the fact that I know you, and can read your thoughts, Zedwig,” said Fangline, stepping closer. Zedwig moved backwards, down the hillock, in tandem, unwilling to allow Fang to get close enough to touch him, which, Fang conceded, was a good strategy. “I know how you feel about this ability I have, and how it empowers you.”

“I can easily live without it,” said Zedwig, his magic still readied and focused, prepared to attack Fang at any moment.

“You want it,” said Fang. “Not on the surface, no… you won’t admit it, most of the time. You’ve the idea that it’s wrong, somehow. But it isn’t. In theory, it isn’t wrong at all. In fact, the only wrong or right about it is in the execution.”

“I’ve no delusions about your sole desire for destruction,” replied Zedwig.

“You know I’ve changed, Zedwig,” said Fang, in what he considered to be a reasonable voice. “I’m not what I used to be.”

“Neither am I.”

“And so,” Fang said, “We could even use it to grow things. Isn’t that what you studied before I came along, anyway?”

Zedwig’s reply was tense and distrustful, though honest. “Yes, and defense.”

“Fascinating.”

“I know you don’t think that,” said Zedwig.

“Just… once,” said Fang, and they both knew as it hung in the air.

“No!” yelled Zedwig, and he struck at Fang, his magic coiling outward in a blue and silver streak and knocking Fang off of his feet and into the wildflowers. Fang gathered himself and, though he sat, he was unrelenting, still fully magnified, and he hovered on the edge of Zedwig’s consciousness. He could feel a tension and a dissonance in Zedwig; Zedwig, who continued to deny him that which he had begun to feel he had always wanted and never had, because of Zedwig and his stubbornness. His cruelty. He had a sudden flash of arrogance and impatience, and with it a flash of hate.

“I owned you once,” Fang said to the mage, “and I will again.”

It proved too much for Zedwig, from whom spikes of hatred lashed and he drew magic from Fang, but not in any way he had ever experienced. He drew it from him all in one swift drag, like getting the breath sucked from his lungs in the span of a second, and then Zedwig used it against him. He pulled Fang up and threw him across the entirety of the field, trails of blue magic shifting and coursing around him, weightless and powerless, until his back struck the wall of the cabin. The blow was hard; his vision swam and faded and light spots swirled across his eyes, but he saw Zedwig coming, and not in a normal way, but gliding faster than any man ever walked or ran, across the field and close, strangely close. His delicate hand gripped Fang’s shirt with more strength than expected and lightning flowed through it into Fang, and Fang screamed at the shards and tremors and dissonance, but after a time, he forgot why.

V - The Shovel

2009-09-23T20:53:00.000-07:00

That night it was cold, and Fang suffered with it. There were many occasions during the night when he thought with a great degree of irritation about Zedwig’s warning. He certainly didn’t need to be warned that it was going to be cold. He already knew it. What he needed was something to build a fire, or some sort of shelter, and he had neither.

Another night passed with very little sleep for the cold, but Fang, though having grown up with privilege, wasn’t made of weakness. A man doesn’t become an overlord by being weak, and so Fang’s physical form continued to suffer while his mind continued to see things in his own willful way.

Once the sun rose over the mountain, Fang could be found lying on a small hillock which angled the whole of his body to face the falling sunshine, fast asleep. The morning was a glorious time, meaning he had survived another winter to doze in the summer again, and he relished it.

“Fangline,” said a voice into the thick darkness. The voice appealed to him. It was moderate, gentle, and made him think of the wind in the trees. The word it said faded and Fang waited, wrapped in warmth, for more, but it didn’t come. He tried to ask for it, but was too deep in the trappings of sleep to speak.

“Fangline,” was said again, and Fang woke a bit more. He loved the voice, now, and wanted to hear it say a thousand words, not just that one.

Then he was given a blow in the side by something very hard.

“Ahh!” yelled Fang as he woke and sat up, ruffled and irritable. Zedwig, who was standing above him, blocked some of his beloved sunlight and was holding a shovel.

“What do you want!” demanded Fang.

Zedwig held out the shovel.

“I’m not shoveling your pox-ridden field!”

The mage rested the tip of the shovel on the earth, and then he released the handle and it dropped. Fang sat, glowering at the ground, tired and more or less hungry and even a little thirsty. He wouldn’t have minded a bath, either. Everything was lousy from his perspective, and now Zedwig wanted him to go dig around in a field. He began to reconsider trying his luck in the wilderness.

“You’re going to dig up the field, Fangline.”

“I’ll die first.”

Zedwig laughed, which Fang didn’t like at all. He looked up at Zedwig and noticed he had changed. His clothes reminded him of Gaffer, simple and plebian, and it was odd. For the past few years, he had insisted Zedwig’s wardrobe be made by the finest tailors to be found, and it seemed he could never recall seeing Zedwig this way. His hair was braided, like a peasant, and he wore a brimmed hat the color of wheat against the sun. Fang almost couldn’t recognize him, for as he squinted up into the sun to see Zedwig, the shadow made him look darker, and if it wasn’t for a certain characteristic movement here or the unmistakable timbre of his voice there, Fang might have wondered who this person was before him.

“Sometimes you forget I know you better than anyone,” said Zedwig. “And I daresay I know you better than you know yourself."

That last stung a little, but Fang wondered if it were true.

“It’ll take a lot more than the threat of using a shovel to persuade you to give up the ghost,” said the mage, his voice more jolly than Fang would have liked. “Now, get up.”

Fang was tired, and deigned not to move.

“I said, get up.”

Now it was just dissolving into Fang staying there to be stubborn, and he knew it, however, he stood his ground. He heard Zedwig sigh above him, and had not long to wonder what was coming next. There was a sudden warmth at the crown of his head, and then it coursed down through his body towards his feet, then back up again, and though at first it was pleasing and warm, it sped towards hot, and then scalding, like holding his hand in a teakettle’s stream.

“Aah!” he screamed, and then: “Stop it, Zedwig!”

Zedwig stopped.

Fang looked at the shovel.

“I’ll need to change first,” he muttered.

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----

At the end of the day, as the sun was passing down behind the spiked tops of the pine trees, Fang sat on the pile of firewood and watched a hawk rise and fall on a headwind over the ridge. He was filthy, exhausted, wearing coarse cloth, near to collapse, and companioned by a shovel at his knee. The field, though, now had a small part of it prepared for planting.

Zedwig wasn’t a cruel taskmaster. He didn’t treat Fang as a slave, but instead instructed him, like a student, on how to prepare a field to plant using only a shovel and hands. They’d first removed the rocks from an area, then pulled up the flowers and weeds, and then, at last, turned the soil, breaking it up to a suitable depth. No, Zedwig had been reasonable; more reasonable than Fang had ever been.

The mage approached from the side of the cabin, firewood in his gloved hands.

“Go bathe in the stream before it gets too cold, then come inside,” he said, and then he went into the cabin.

Fang, in his exhaustion, was beyond becoming rankled over being ordered, and so he did what he was told, perhaps made more willing by the fact that he really did need a bath. It was cold anyway, the stream’s waters having come from glaciers and snow-pack, the sun no longer hitting the clearing, and shadows creeping purple all over the place. He was struck with a bout of rapid shivers as he redressed in his better, warmer, original clothes and approached the cabin. As he entered, Zedwig was working in the fireplace.

His silver hair, though pulled back in the braid Fang found distasteful, fell across his forehead on one side, made loose perhaps by wearing the hat earlier, and he wore an expression of intense, but placid concentration unique to one who is building a fire.

“I need water,” said the mage.

Fang took two buckets and retrieved some. While the buckets sloshed by his legs in the field, it crossed his mind that it was easier to obey Zedwig without question the second time, like a crack made in a dam makes it weaker. He pushed that thought away and promised to consider it later, after he’d eaten and slept.

The preparation of dinner proved to be a cascade of orders taken from Zedwig, and executed without question by Fang. There was something comfortable and pleasant about it, though, that Fang couldn’t quite put his finger on, that he experienced while working at such a simple, domestic necessity. Zedwig did the majority of the work himself, as he was the knowledgeable one, but Fang did the grunt work, or the plain things that couldn’t be easily destroyed by inexperienced hands.

At last glorious food was placed on the table and Fang found a tremendous amount of pride and beauty in it, though on another day, a week ago or more, he would have viewed it with pity.

“Tomorrow you’re going to plant,” said Zedwig, and as he was bent over the table, the errant lock of silver fell free across his face, and he had to gather it back in a swift movement behind his ear. Fang, caught up in the euphoria of cooking his first meal, watched the graceful movement with appreciation as the mage went on. “We’ve only so much food in store, and it’s always a good idea to grow when you can.”

“You could always use that bizarre teleportation of yours to get supplies,” said Fang, and as Zedwig took a seat across from him, his eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you could do that?”

Zedwig cast him a glance in the midst of placing a napkin across his leg, and as he smoothed it out, his eyes were elsewhere. “I wasn’t aware of the ability.”

“What?” asked Fang. “So that could very well have ended with the both of us killed?”

“Or maimed,” replied Zedwig, who seemed more concerned with eating the soup.

“That’s madness!”

“You put me there,” was Zedwig’s direct reply. Fang faltered for a moment, and then Zedwig went on with a certain reckless quiet about him. “Do you think I cared at the time whether either of us lived or died?” And it was very clear to Fang that he did not.

“Do you now?” asked Fang.

Zedwig shifted in his chair and said, “I am feeling more myself, now.”

It seemed a small end, of sorts, to words, and as they both fell to, Zedwig was either caught in his own thoughts or had no desire to share them. Fang, left to his imaginings, considered how Zedwig was different that what he remembered.

“You’ve changed,” said Fang to Zedwig.

Zedwig didn’t even look up as he said, “No, I haven’t.”

“Yes, you’re a different person than you were before,” said Fang.

Zedwig looked up this time, and there was even a mirthless smile at the corner of his mouth when he asked, “Before what?”

“Before…” began Fang, but he stopped. Zedwig propped his chin in his palm and waited.

“Please… go on,” said Zedwig, as if this were a polite conversation about tea.

Fang narrowed his eyes at Zedwig and said, “Before the war.”

“Oh, the war,” said Zedwig, as if it hadn’t occurred to him, and he went on with his meal. “War has varying effects on different people.”

“You were so different before,” said Fang, barreling through Zedwig’s indifference. “Tremulous, almost like a feather a person can’t catch. Afraid, but of what, I do not know.”

Zedwig gave Fang a guarded look.

“Unsure of yourself…” said Fang, and then he couldn’t stop a lopsided grin. “Easy to manipulate.”

The mage flushed at the last and Fang saw the anger rising in him, rising at Fang’s insolence, at his past advantage, at his cruelty, and, of course, at his constant manipulation.

“Get out,” said Zedwig.

IV - Then Again... Perhaps Not

2009-09-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

Fang finished, and feeling sated and grateful, he was ready to go outside and worship Zedwig. Somewhere in his mind, he didn’t find this alarming in the slightest, or even as any sort of a relent. He only saw it as a matter of course. Zedwig was, for all Fang could see, a god. He was more powerful than any mortal of which he was aware; and in fact, it was true that Zedwig possessed more raw power than any living being on the earth, although perhaps that isn’t the right way to put it.

Zedwig was, indeed, the most powerful individual in the world, but it wasn’t because he carried mass stores of power within him, or was somehow born with great power. Zedwig’s power wasn’t his at all. He was brilliant in a certain way, like millions of flowers might bloom in their variations, and then one, single flower emerges from the primeval field with just the right combination of colors, texture, and shape to bloom in a unique way that may never happen again. This was Zedwig; the single unusual grain of sand on the shore, the star that formed with a flashing aura, but it was yet unknown whether he would flourish with brilliance or collapse into his own great gravity.

Fang had seen and known this long ago in Zedwig, before he’d done anything spectacular, when he was only the Chief Royal Mage under his father. He was already at that time, on some level, “spectacular”, as even then those around him knew he was unusually talented and was the youngest Chief Royal Mage that anyone could remember, but his talents, from Fang’s perspective, had been largely ignored and wasted under the service of the former King.

So it would be if Zedwig went back to Sangwine to serve the kingdom, who, Fang admitted to himself, was now King Sangwine. He had no doubt that Sangwine would only put him to those bland and mundane tasks all the other Royal Mages did in the past: studying defense and how to make the flowers grow. It was ridiculous and just the thought made Fang rankled. A twisted sort of protectiveness lashed out of him when he thought of Zedwig’s talent being wasted and he wanted Zedwig to be pushed to his limits and to grow greater and greater in his abilities. Perhaps now, the mage would be more pliable.

These thoughts all shot away, though, for when he walked outside he was knocked off of his feet, across the tiny lawn and against the large trunk of a towering pine. It took him a long while to regain his breath, and his footing was nowhere to be found, as he was at least several inches above the ground and held, not too surprisingly, by magic of a luminous blue.

Zedwig approached him, and he did not look kind.

“You work for me,” said the mage.

There was a long moment during which Fang didn’t know how to reply. Zedwig broke it first, by looking over the wildflowers that dotted the old field.

“Have you ever used a plow?” asked Zedwig, and as this question sunk in, Fang thought he saw something like a smile, like a shadow, cross the mage’s face. There wasn’t a trace of a smile on Zedwig when he turned back to give him a direct look, though.

“No,” said Fang, as if that was a ridiculous question. And then he went on: “You’ve known me for most of my life, have you not?”

Zedwig considered him, and for a moment Fang thought he was going to say he hadn’t.

“Know and know…”

Fang was starting to wish Zedwig wouldn’t act so ambiguous.

“Well, when do you think I had time to work a plow?” he asked the mage.

Zedwig replied by tightening his bonds against the tree, like a warning, and Fang took it, swallowing the rest of his words. Then, the blue magic released him all at once and he thumped to the ground. Zedwig went into the cabin.

Fang straightened himself, feeling indignant again, regardless of food or drink or lack thereof, and remained so until Zedwig came out again, carrying some things made of rough cloth, the sort that Fang had never worn in his royal life, in his hands. He handed them to Fang.

“I doubt you’ll want to do heavy labor in that coat,” said Zedwig.

There were two words in that sentence that caused Fang quite a bit of princely alarm.

“Heavy labor?” he inquired.

“Yes. You’re going to work.”

“Is this your idea of torture?”

“Who said anything about torture?” asked Zedwig, his eyes sharp, and, admittedly, amethyst.

“Well,” said Fang, although he realized he’d never heard Zedwig actually mention torture, per se. “You said I would suffer, didn’t you?”

“Life is suffering,” said Zedwig in a morose sort of reply, and it was then that Fang saw it again, that side of Zedwig that he had known for these past years, the one of tragic, beautiful sorrow, like dripping paint he wanted to smear with his bare fingers across a canvas. It was then that he began to venture again into the magnifier’s unknown, a step, a tiny step, and then another, to drift at the edge of Zedwig’s consciousness.

He felt a sudden tension on the surface of the collective that was Zedwig, like a meniscus, and he didn’t dare pursue it, though he remained there, poised, as the echoes of past years came back to him and he longed for it; for that which he once had with the mage. He was unaware of anything else, of the sound of birds in the pine above, of a squirrel rustling in the woods, or of the wind that picked up only a little, but enough to pull at them as they stood. The physical realm was forgotten, for the moment, as Fang considered what he now lacked.

It has been said before how singular the ability to connect was between Fang and Zedwig. There are few mortals who ever experience such a thing, though most long for it for their entire lives, in fact, experience such an acute longing for oneness that they cover it with other things that are simpler to digest and address. Though these two might, under other circumstances, have possessed something rare and magnificent throughout their lives, they also suffered great misfortune from being able to know and accept each other to the smallest degree.

For good or ill, though, it was something not easily sacrificed, and perhaps impossible to overcome, because as Fang had always held others at arm’s length and disdain, and as Zedwig had suffered the constant pains of his social lack, they were each a veritable gold mine for the other.

Fang remained there, in longing, for a time, though it wasn’t clear at all how long it might have been, and could have been only seconds. He recalled shades of the past, though Zedwig’s meniscus remained, and the mage neither withdrew nor relented. It was a silent dance like a flame flickering shadows on the wall, outside of a sphere, but in time Zedwig spoke, and the timbre of his voice was richly hued, made all the more vivid by Fang’s ruminations.

“Prepare yourself,” he said. “It’s going to be cold, tonight. Tomorrow you’re going to start on this field.”

III - The Hunger Games

2009-08-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

Fang dropped the filled bucket on the table without grace or graciousness; it was the table at which Zedwig was sitting, minding his own business, although there was no feasible way he was minding his own business, since his business was interwoven with Fang’s no matter how one looked at it.

The mage cast a glance towards the water that had sloshed onto the wood of the table due to Fang’s intentional carelessness, then continued what he was doing without looking up at Fang at all. Despite being ignored, what Zedwig was doing became very interesting to Fang, for he was cutting a wedge of silvery-white cheese. Fang counted and realized he hadn’t eaten anything for two days. He felt a lurch, a faint wave of nausea, and a sudden weakness at being faced with the scent and sight of food. He certainly wasn’t going to ask for it, though.

Instead, he looked around the cabin, taking in what was and wasn’t there. It wasn’t a miniscule cabin by any means. There was a large room, being the one he was standing in, that held a fireplace, a smallish wood stove, a wooden supply cabinet, a table, a couple of chairs, a faded beige and red braided rug, two crossed windows on adjoining walls, a bench, and a door that led into another, smaller room, wherein he could perceive the edge of a quilt on what was doubtless the bed where Zedwig slept. On the wall near the fireplace were hung a number of tools for cooking and fires, and Fang began considering which could be best used as weapons and in what capacity.

Zedwig stood and moved to the wood stove, opening the door and pulling out something that threatened to kill Fang where he stood. Somehow, Zedwig had made bread. It smelled ridiculous, torturous, and he didn’t have any idea how one would go about making bread in the first place, let alone in such rudimentary circumstances. He watched as Zedwig placed it on a piece of wood on the table, and then cut it with a knife. He cut it slowly. Fang’s stomach twisted and he broke out in a sweat.

Still, Fang did have such a thing as pride, and quite a lot of it, so he remained, standing where he had entered, refusing to take even a seat without it first being offered, and hardly accustomed to not being treated, at the least, like a prince.

Meanwhile, Zedwig began humming and ignored Fang as he took a slice of cheese, placed it on the steaming bread, and then took a languid bite. Fang turned and walked out of the cabin. He may or may not have slammed the door with his exit, as sometimes details get hazy when overwhelmed.

Studying the landscape, Fang wondered if he were to set out on foot in any particular direction how likely it would be that he would survive his way to civilization. He was aware of the not-uncommon occurrence of hapless wanderers getting lost in the wilderness of these mountains, and they could be harsh. Sometimes those lost were never seen again. Then again, he was certain if he just followed the stream downwards he’d eventually reach the river that flowed through the valley of Schloeffel, but there was a problem with that.

The valley of Schloeffel was no longer his homeland. He would be taken into custody of the kingdom and put the dungeons, or perhaps even executed. Worse yet, he’d have to see his brother again. It would be a lousy plan to go that way, though it was his best bet for escape. Going the other way would require scaling the rest of the mountain range to reach the wilderness on the other side. He already had hunger weakness assailing him, and wasn’t nearly woodsman enough to sustain himself off the wilderness. No, he was stuck, for now, although he kept a hope that once he gained more strength he could set out in secret, if that was what he desired.

He went back to the stream, removed his coat, and laid it in a neat fold beside him on the bank as he drank again. At least he had water, and for now, warmth. The sky was pale, pale blue, filled with the white light of high elevation and the white sun warmed the deep green linen of his fine shirt until he rolled up his sleeves. There was a hawk, and he fell into a moment of watching it; it was a moment of quiet, filled only with the sound of the stream and the lilt of the hawk on the current and Fang’s mind released something; a tension, a knot, a tiredness. It was a tangle created by one who rules an empire. His was a mind that never stopped, but in this moment it deigned to pause. He laid back on the bank, closed his eyes in the warmth of the sun, and fell into a deep sleep.

-----------------

Fang woke in the late afternoon, and could not remember having slept with such fog and submersion for a very long time. It was hard to rise; he felt empty and weak, but was possessed by a strange sense of peace. He groaned and rolled over, lifting himself on his forearms, then up to his knees. Through the tops of the waving wild grass, he could see Zedwig some distance away, leaning back in a wooden chair against the side of the cabin, and writing in a book.

He took a moment to consider asking him for food. He hated the idea.

Then he thought about attempting to take the food by force. The very idea was a joke. A sordid joke.

Then he considered ways to trick him into giving him food. Stealing it while Zedwig slept briefly crossed his mind and his royal blood resolved to die first, almost as an instinct. There wasn’t a way around that he would either have to ask Zedwig for favor, wait for who-knows-how-long for Zedwig to offer, or starve to death. He and his ego settled on waiting for now, with the other two possibilities kept in the wings.

Still, he decided to approach Zedwig at the present, as he was ever looking for opportunity. He rose, though it was difficult, took his coat in one hand and began to cross the field. Zedwig saw him coming and closed his book, rose, pocketed his small graphite pencil and went into the cabin.

Fang wondered what he could be about, and felt a sort of mild, hunger-sedated anger at the possibility that Zedwig might be continuing that ridiculous shunning business of the first day. He opened the door of the cabin and went inside, prepared for the sweltering fury of his mind to flare at whatever awaited him. Although, in this case, he wasn’t prepared for what he found.

There was food on the table, on a plate. Bread, cheese, some kind of soup; simple food. Wildly simple food that he hadn’t eaten very often, but found delightful in its simplicity at this moment. With water. Zedwig put a spoon on the table, and as Fang entered, the mage walked past him and left the cabin without a word.

Fang knew it was for him, in the same way he knows anything Zedwig might intend, and as the realization swept through him it melted across his body like a braise of shimmering gold. He came to the table and fell to; it was the best food he’d ever eaten. The pleasure was beyond nearly all he’d experienced, and through the meal he rediscovered what he already knew: he loved Zedwig with an open air that knew no bounds. He worshipped him, and his present gratitude was greater than any he had ever known.

II - Torture, Perhaps

2009-08-26T06:34:00.001-07:00

Some part of Fang muttered assent that he probably deserved that, but not loud enough for the surface of his consciousness to recognize it as a valid voice. The rest of his consciousness was numb; numb from losing his empire, from losing his weapon, his control, his everything. All in one morning. There were probably some things he could have done differently, but Fang wasn’t the sort to allow regret to enter the picture; at least, it was a rare emotion for him to experience, and he didn’t experience it now. He only experienced numbness.

Zedwig’s right hook had packed a lot more wallop than Fang would have expected from the mage, knocking him off of his feet and landing him on his knees, looking down into a number of grasses and flowers. He took a moment to wonder where they were, but it was interrupted as Zedwig began wielding magic beside him, and so he braced himself for whatever it was Zedwig would do to him, resigned to whatever it would be, but incapable of begging for mercy.

It turned out he did nothing to Fang, not exactly. There was a blue flash and a faint blue cylinder winked into existence around Fang, with a diameter of about six feet. Following this, Zedwig gave Fang a sharp glance and began striding to the cabin, some yards away beneath the pine shadow. He said nothing.

“Zedwig!”

The mage only took a moment to turn and point at Fang, and Fang found he could no longer speak. He tried regardless, as his tactile body couldn’t seem to remember even from second to second that he wasn’t able to speak any longer, so entrenched is the act in the subconscious from birth to make noise of some kind. To suddenly be bereft of it was alarming and made him feel even more powerless than he already did. It was only the slam of the cabin door that stopped him from falling into a panic, or what might be considered panic for Fang, which wasn‘t much, really. Regardless, now that he was alone it didn’t matter anymore.

He watched the cabin for a few minutes and nothing happened, so he decided, since there was really nothing else to be done, to take an account of his life and measure his possibilities. From the sun he assumed it was mid-morning. The attack had taken up the latter end of the night and about half of the morning. He knew the plants and was aware that he was in the same southern front of the Twisty Mountain range that surrounded Schloeffelonia, and from his shortness of breath, he detected either extreme tiredness on his part, or high elevation. It was probably a measure of both; he’d been up through the night (and several previous), thrown against a wall and nearly electrocuted by Zedwig, kicked in the nards by a girl, beaten in a swordfight by his brother, and now here he was. He really was exhausted now that he thought about it.

Taking account of his surroundings, he next measured the landscape for escape routes. There were really a whole slew of directions he could go, if given the chance. It was a forest, after all. Forests were easy to get lost in. However, it occurred to him that perhaps he didn’t want to get lost. With that, he decided to watch Zedwig carefully before devising escape. Fang didn’t believe Zedwig was really capable of what he threatened in front of his brother, and in fact wondered if it was some kind of ruse. Zedwig wasn’t currently torturing him or anything of the like. If anything, he was sort of jailing him. At least, that’s what it looked like.

It was a six-foot diameter pale blue field which encased him, although so thin it was mostly transparent, except when he tried to touch it and it seemed to gather in that point, strengthening itself against his tests. The harder he pushed on it the hotter the side would become, until it began to burn and he was forced to pull his weight away. Yes, he was jailed for the time being, and so he laid on the ground, watched the sky and waited for Zedwig to return.

The day passed. There were occasional noises from the cabin, although Fang couldn’t imagine what Zedwig might be doing in there. It became hot, at least too hot for wearing the velvet coat he had on, and besides; it wasn’t the sort of thing one wears to lie on wild grass, so he took it off, but left his shirt sleeves long, as, now that he was well reminded of it, insects are particularly boisterous during high elevation summers. It was unpleasant, and he grew not only hot, but parched by the time the sun began to bear down on the sharp tops of the tallest pine trees in the west over the cabin… the cabin that held Zedwig whom he had yet to see again, and it had been hours. He tried to remember the last time he’d had anything to drink. It had been last night, and only one lousy cup of tea, right before coming to wake Zedwig. He found himself wishing he’d drunk a pitcher of water just as a preventative measure. He made a mental note to do that in the future, previous to an attack of any kind.

Dusk began to fall and Zedwig came out with an axe. Fang watched from his distance and, seeing the axe in his hand, felt a measure of alarm pass through him in disbelief that Zedwig would use such a barbarous sort of weapon on him, but the mage didn’t walk towards him, and in fact, he completely ignored him. As far as Fang could tell, he didn’t even look at him once. It was starting to get infuriating. Fang opened his mouth to call out, but was reminded, when nothing was forthcoming, that he had been muted. Muted! Two clumps of grass were uprooted in his fists as he watched Zedwig walk to the side of the cabin and chop wood. He seemed very good at it, and for a moment Fang wondered where Zedwig had learned to chop wood so well, although it was a fleeting thought because most of his mind was growing more and more angry at Zedwig and whatever this passive-aggressive nonsense was he was doing to him.

All Fang could do was watch and yank grass from the ground, because Zedwig gathered his firewood, his axe, and went back into the cabin without a glance. He realized this was terrible, in a sudden flash of discernment, because Zedwig had taken everything from him. Fang could lose armies, battles, war, and empires, because they were always there to reclaim again, somewhere, somehow. What Zedwig had done is taken away his strengths: his words, his proximity, his influence. He’d never known how much he relied on his influence. The mage was better than he realized. Smarter than he realized. Oh, cripes, he was a genius.

The night was cold at that elevation, and Zedwig had obviously known what he was doing to cut firewood before the night fell. Not only was the elevation high, the air was thin and Fang was vulnerable and exposed to a sky that froze at night, moving like a glacier in a slow, slow circle, the stars brilliant and beautiful and cruel and cold. He was grateful for his velvet coat, although it didn’t do much, being thin and hardly lined except with the best silk to be found on the continent. The quality of the silk, though very stylish, wasn’t doing him much good that night. He tried not to notice the faint orange glow coming from Zedwig’s windows, or pay attention to the crisp scent of wood smoke in the air. A few times he used the magic to warm himself, pushing on the barrier until it would burn, but that proved to be too inaccurate a science, and he ended up with a few burn marks.

So there he was. Cold, exhausted, thirsty beyond anything he’d ever experienced, and irritated. He hadn’t slept at all for two days, and, out of absolute necessity, he fell into a fitful, shivering sleep once, perhaps twice or thrice. He would sleep, somehow, for a time, dreamless, the ache of cold biting into him from all directions and always there but closer and further, ebbing like a tide with his unconsciousness. Then he would open his eyes and breathe, his warm breath brushing across the wild grass in a pale puff. He expected to see crystalline frost form on the stems and leaves around him when the dew struck, but it wasn’t that cold, though to him it felt as if it were.

Morning came and it warmed with agonizing slowness. He was so thirsty his head had become numb and he was beginning to have trouble focusing. He could, however, hear the distinct sound of a rushing creek across the field. Torture, indeed. Warmth came to him at last with the late, mountainous sunrise, and though he was lacking food, and worse water, the gift of warmth brought him a strong sense of pleasure and he passed out on the ground without a care for what insects may or may not consume him in his unconscious meantime.

---- ---- ---- ----

He woke to the unmistakable sound of a person walking through the grass. It still took him some time to register it, even after most of his brain had long known what and who it was. It had grown hot while he was asleep and he’d probably sweated whatever fluid was left in his body out while sleeping. It was a terrible feeling, being dehydrated and covered in sweat. The sun was blocked by a shadow and he looked up to see Zedwig observing him while holding a bucket. There was brief moment of hopefulness when Fang thought perhaps the bucket was filled with water and perhaps meant for him, but it turned out to be empty. He decided right then that Zedwig was completely useless. He sat up.

Zedwig pointed at him in the same way he’d muted him the day before and Fang realized he was free to speak. He began, but nothing came out, except a vague, twisted, dry sound made by too much thirst. He cleared his throat, determined not to be lowered to croaking, swallowed, and finding it painful to do both and unsure that he’d be able to speak anyway were he to try, he remained silent, glowering at a pink flower below him in the grass.

The shield around him dissipated.

“Follow me,” said Zedwig, and he began walking to the stream with his bucket.

Zedwig seemed not to be concerned in the slightest that Fang might either try to escape or attack him from behind, and that rankled. Regardless, Fang jumped to his feet and followed; well, he wobbled to his feet, and his head felt like it perhaps weighed sixty pounds, and he sort of leaned to the right somewhat while walking, but he was spry if one were to consider the circumstances. He felt indignant, anyway.

“You know I was going to kill you yesterday,” he said to Zedwig’s back.

“Were you,” replied Zedwig, as if Fang had mentioned he was going to wear blue socks instead of black ones.

“Yes,” he said. And then for good measure: “I was.”

“Well, why didn’t you?” asked Zedwig.

“Oh, water!” was Fang’s response, for they were near the stream and everything else left his mind. He fell to his knees beside the stream and made for it, but, cruelty of all cruelties, Zedwig placed a blue, burning barrier between him and the water, just so, and Fang was denied that which he most desired, though he could watch it, smell it, hear it, and even feel its faint mist passing up from the rocks it rushed through. Torture!

“Zedwig!”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Fang couldn’t really think anymore. “What question?”

“Why didn’t you kill me yesterday?”

“Because I didn’t!”

“That’s a terrible answer,” said Zedwig, who looked as if he had a very comfortable night in his cabin and probably wasn’t suffering any kind of physical discomfort at the moment, which made Fang very angry.

“Zedwig, take away that barrier,” said Fang. “Now.”

“You seem confused about who is in charge now,” replied Zedwig in a languid way. He was so smug with his bucket.

Fang took a breath, calculating things in his muffled, dried mind and realizing he’d have to explain something or he’d end up passed out again or worse.

“I … couldn’t,” he said.

Zedwig smiled, and it was a slow, satisfied, knowing smile; the sort of smile one lords over someone else when they’ve caught them in something that gives them the upper hand. Fang began the unfortunate habit of grating his teeth. Somehow, Zedwig had made him feel even more powerless.

Zedwig’s smile faded, though, and he removed the barrier. Fang fell to the water and forgot everything, entirely lost in the pleasure of a long draught after nothing for days, and in fact, he drank too quickly, too much, with no food to sustain him, and suffered the humiliation of losing it all once, and through it Zedwig stood nearby, silent, with his bucket.

At last Fang finished. He drank less the second time and more slowly, and once he had sat back on his heels Zedwig moved and dropped the bucket beside Fang’s thigh.

“Fill that and bring it to the cabin,” he said, and then he turned and headed through the field.

Fang only stared for a long time.

I - The Oblivious Clearing

2009-08-26T06:27:00.000-07:00

High in the mountains that surrounded the country (and brief empire) of Schloeffelonia, there was a minute clearing that had often escaped notice from the most terrain-familiar eyes. Surrounding it was very little except thousands of acres of trees, most of those being a juxtaposition of sky-stabbing pines and delicate aspens, and the closest thinning of the forest wasn’t caused by civilization, but by the timberline, when the peaks rose too high until the trees could no longer sustain themselves, and very little else, for only late in the hot summer did the snow melt away save for a few lingering pockets.

This little clearing, though, was not quite that high and though the air was thin, it wasn’t unpleasant and one could grow accustomed to it. The elevation gave the sunlight an edge; there was a whiteness to every color that touched the subliminal before the conscious mind could realize what was happening. The winters would be long and silent; the growing season was short and glorious in a rapture of wildflowers and riotous living for life that survived the long, deep frost and as a rebellious prelude before the next winter would come.

On this day it was late spring elsewhere, but spring proper within the clearing. The early flowers had come. In this terrain there were small fields and alpine lakes which dotted the aspen-pine forests, the fields being created long ago by massive glaciers that once covered most of the area, and the lakes being the smaller, younger, adaptive cousins of those ancient glaciers, who, like prehistoric sea monsters, left only their bones and a sense of wonder.

This clearing was an especially good spot, though hard to find or access; there was a stream running alongside the property beneath the trees, and the stones at the bottom were a palette of pastels, of purples and pinks, browns and oranges, and the crystal snow-water ran across them in the constant act of polishing and shining their richly hued surfaces. There was a bank, and then a few aspens, a little bluff, some more aspens and a few jutting, black pines rising above. Then there was a small field that showed the furrows of being used once for growing things, but had long since fallen to wildflowers. There was a tiny shed, only somewhat aged, and up, past the field and within the canopy of some towering pines, a cabin, faded with disuse but not derelict. Trails led away from this place in two directions that were only wide enough for a man to walk comfortably, or a horse or possibly, with luck, a tiny cart.

On this morning in the field, there was a hawk who, since it was a warm morning, rode with wings outstretched and drifting above the bluff, on rising air. Two bees swerved and attached to wildflowers in a dance of move-and-pause. A leaf fell from an aspen, fluttering with delicate silver-green over and over itself until landing like a feather on the wildflowers below, and then the wind blew light and all the aspens quaked, shimmering as if covered in sequins, and the wildlife around reveled with restrained repose; a small movement here, another there. None of these had any idea that, miles away and far below on the valley floor, the Empire of Schloeffelonia had just fallen and a number of men had just died in its defense and overthrow.

Sometimes, on occasion, the most remote of places can be affected by such grand events, and soon this clearing was to be invaded by a force of dissent that would oppose the natural order of things, a force that would impose its own will on everything around it while lacking the wisdom to do so, and a force that would leave a trail of broken life in its wake. In other words, this clearing was about to host Man; oblivious, overdramatic Man. A squirrel, its fluff of a tail straightened gracefully behind it, ran up the trunk of a pine in a spiral, spinning upward into the branches.

It had a slow beginning. There was a blue and white tendril of force that grew from nothing perceptible and it began to curl, then twist, and then it split. It split again, twisting, curving, splitting again and again, until there was a mass of tendrils like the albino tentacles of some deep-dwelling cave insect floating in the air above the wild flowering grasses. It glowed, seemed to suck into itself, and then ripped apart, revealing two figures within, one white, blue, and glowing, the other dark and resigned, with tendrils flowing out from both in an explosion of magic in all directions like a sunburst. The wind came from the mage now, and as he retracted his magic it spun in a vortex until settling down, slowly, into the earth, fading into the grasses and the dirt, the bees and the worms.

The man in white released the darker one, turned him, and punched him in the face.