[>=============================<[]>==============================<] Setting: North of Montfort, Ifrean Author: Deborah Greene , [>=============================<[]>==============================<] (Outside Montfort) An Odd Pair Approach Two men came up a little rise just north of Montfort. One was middle-aged and ruddily leonine, a regal figure in blues and greens sitting tall in the saddle of a barded black charger. The other? Well, the other was smaller, younger, decidedly shabbier, and perhaps pale-skinned under what looked like almost a year's worth of travel dust. He tramped along on the end of the long chain bound to the rider's saddle. The horseman coaxed his mount to a halt, and leaned forward some to gaze at the city below. "It could be worse," he observed. "It could be better," his prisoner quipped. This made the first man chuckle. "Then, it's undoubtedly perfect." "I don't want it to be perfect." The horseman turned his dark eyes from the view to regard the man on the ground. He smiled some. "Be a little reasonable for once, eh? Open yourself to the possibilities. Revel in the new, while there is still hope for your sorry carcass." His companion met his gaze with a bleak grey look, despite the scowl on his face. "Why don't you just kill me?" he asked. "Two more months of this..." "And you will slit your own throat?" The rider's smile grew more defined, almost avuncular. "Ah, Derin, were that possible, I would be a happy man." Derin's square jaw tightened, but he said nothing. His captor chuckled again, and put heels to his charger. Derin resumed trotting along beside the horse. "One of these days, Banior," he muttered, "I'm going to carve that mocking smile right off your face." "If only that were true, Derin," Banior said, as if speaking to a beloved son. "If only that were true." * * * (Montfort & The Stables of the Dragon's Inn) Shift Change * * * Montfort was not quite as close as it had appeared from the crown of the rise. Nearly half of the vespers sun had vanished by the time Banior and his bleak-eyed charge reached the nearest gate, a half hour during which the older man's remaining youth tr ickled from him little by little, wrinkle by wrinkle, as if each inch of darkness was a year less in his life. Entry was less a matter of persuasion than of movement, once the requisite information and reassurances were exchanged. No one at the gate had heard of Naros or Gureh or even Elach a'Derata, but none denied believing that Derin was a prisoner, not a sla ve. None refused to consider that Banior was not a man of the law -- even if he hailed from a Naros or a Gureh in a place called Elach a'Derata. They may have changed their minds about the "man" part, however, had they been privy to Banior's stabling his horse at the Dragon's Inn. By then, Montfort was nearly full into dark where lamps did not push back the encroaching night. Derin sat on the swept stable floor outside the stall Banior had rented, his chain wrapped and clamped around the base of a thick oak post. Banior was within, with the black charger, setting down her heavy saddle. The weight pulled his aging frame down with it. He brushed a withering hand over one of the horse's dark legs, and leaned on her blue-draped shoulder as he struggled back to his feet. "Good night, Sister," he rasped. "Be safe." "Thank you, Brother," a woman murmured, after a moment of thick silence. "Rest well." She turned from the auburn warhorse now standing where Banior had bid his charger good night, and stepped out of the place where, by all rights, that charger should have been. Her boots crunched on a few stray bits of straw as she stepped out of the sta ll, and shut the half door behind her. The warhorse buried his broad nose in a trough of coarse oats and alfalfa, and set about his dinner. Derin glanced at her, and back down, quickly. "I had wondered if we would make it into the city before you came on shift," he muttered. "Is that a bit of true wonder I hear in your voice, lad?" the woman asked, her sunken cheeks beginning to fill out and dimple around a ghost of a smile. The thickening darkness softened her cadaverous features -- literally -- straightening her crone's form and beginning to add layers of youth. "Don't get your hopes up, Niorba," Derin grumbled, scowling down at his bent knees. Niorba raked her long fingers through her wind-matted mane. A few silver strands came out when she tugged too hard, and she shook them off her hand in disgust. They too, turned black after another tick of the clock. "Well, then," she said. "If I am not permitted to hope, I shall see about some dinner and a proper shelter for the night. What would you like to eat?" "Nothing," he said. "Nothing," Niorba echoed. No wrinkles appeared on her pale forehead when her brows came together. "You are trying to kill yourself?" Derin said nothing again, without uttering a word. Niorba half-closed her dark eyes. "I shall see about some dinner and a proper shelter for the night, then," she murmured, before walking out of the stables. * * * (The Stables of the Dragon's Inn) Darkness Drops In * * * Derin saw things in black and white, night-gloom at one extreme and day-pallor the other. Rheumy greys filled up the middle. Every now and then, though, some color leaked in, startling, nauseating, typically with a sound, or a smell, or a whisper of ge nuine emotion. Those three additions were as unwelcomed as their partner in sin. He squeezed his eyes shut tight as Niorba walked away from him. Something had stirred inside him at the sound of her velvety voice, less recognition than an ephemeral sensation of ... balance, he told himself, not willing to acknowledge that he had back slid so far into wickedness. And, oh, yes, Derin of Gureh had once been a wicked man. A very, very wicked man. Wicked enough to incense a god of Naros, the patrons of the King he had served, the grandson of a King who had subjugated his homeland longer ago than anyone could rememb er. Though a foreigner, Derin had attained the position of the Chief Ranger. Though a commoner, he had gained the respect of King's three prideful sons. Though not a handsome man, he had won the hand Princess Adelime, the loveliest of the King's four beaut iful daughters. Derin had also not been a religious man, though he cried praise to the host of deities of Naros and Gureh upon the birth of his son, thanking them for their favor, and asking them to bless the child. Ke'g'Lauri, the Mistress of Plagues, heard his cry. More than this, she heard the absence of her name in his litany of gratitude. To show her appreciation, she stabbed his wife in her childbed, and cooked their child within his soft skin. More than th is, she stole the mind of Derin's father-in-law, who forgave him all. 'Derin, you are not to blame,' the grieving King had said. 'You have done nothing to cause this.' But Derin knew differently. He had served, and served well. He had coveted, and worked to achieve what he desired. He had loved. Ah, indeed, he had loved. Now each step was a step away from life, a step away from living, a silent prayer for Ke'g'Lauri to collect him in Her embrace. But Ke'g'Lauri had taken her time about collecting him. Derin did not blame her ^Ö he could not blame her. And to cut his waiting short by himself would only offend her. The Walkers had told the King they would tend him for a year, no more, and hopefully (their words) less. 'If he has not come to terms with Fate in that time,' Banior had told the King when he came to collect Derin. 'He will never re-embrace life. It would be showing him no mercy to attempt to force him into it beyond that point. It will be our honor to p ut him out of his misery in that instance.' So, Derin waited. And one of the darknesses wedged in two corners of the stables opened its bright eyes. * * * The early evening patrons of the Dragon's Inn saw a young maid walk in, one dark of hair, pale of skin, and easily, easily six feet and some inches tall in her boots. The boots? Knee-high, black, carved with rows of tiny glyphs, glyphs that in turn had been filled with green and blue enamel, and bordered in gold. Well cared for boots. Expensive boots. Boots that fit like they were part of her -- not that the blue and green wools and linens and silks she wore fit any differently. She appeared unarmed. She looked around with large, uptilted eyes entirely the color of wet coals, fixing after a moment on Hugh. Her not-insubstantial horselike ears twitched within their nest of wind-snarled raven hair. She started walking toward him. "Good evening," she began ... and ended. Her dark eyes turned up, and her limbs flowed slack. The next sound she made was a thud when she toppled over onto the floor. Within a heartbeat, she began to ooze through the floorboards, leaving a pool of fresh blood in her wake. [Stranger] The strangers door had opened, and he had stepped silently onto the balconey, watching the confusion below him, and the lady disapearing. "Impressive, albeit with slightly less finess that you would achieve is it not," the stranger patted the small dragons head, as it clambered across his shoulder, it's head bobbed at his touched, and its eyes blinked twice, it made no reply. Stretching its damaged wing slowly, it crawed lightly, its voice slick with pain, and its bandages stretching between the splint and its touch wing. The stranger closed the door with a wave of his hand, and walked purposefully down the stairs, acknowledging only the barman's presence, with a curt nod. The stranger's scar glistened as he kneeled by the rapidly drying blood, he touched it gently, as a pheonix would hold a petal. To the distaste of the surrounding figures, he tasted the blood. It was like iron on his tongue, but ... powdery, with an odd oily aftertaste. Bitter, yes, but not human's blood. Nor elf's blood. With the taste came the smells of travel; dust, exertion, fatigue, the musk of horses, the need for sleep. This all with the smells of womanly flesh. And sudden pain. Slower fear. And sorrow, perhaps. Standing gracefully, he looked through the morbiddly interested, and rapidly increasing group, and out the small window, into the howling wind. "Shall we find where this beautiful creature has gone?" the stranger asked. "What?" questioned one of the patrons. "I was conversing with my dragon." the stranger replied, rubbing it's chin for effect. The young man hadn't noticed, and didn't for a few moments, before staring at it, leaning closer, until it pecked at him, and backpedalled into his two friends. The stranger withdrew quietly from the crowd, whilst the dragon stretched its crippled wing, desperate to release it's arm. "It will never heal if you continue to pull at the bandages, and it will only inflict further pain." the dragon stopped, and examined the strangers lips moving to form the words, it snuggled into his neck, and fell quickly asleep, its claws dug tightly into his jacket. "As is your wish, you may sleep, I will decide," The stranger whispered, watching the dispersing crowd. "If I were her, where would I hide?" For a moment he paused, boot poised over a crawling insect, who was fortunate enough to escape before he rested his foot, and the creatures life. Something in this creature sparked an interest in him, like the dragon apon his arm, he could have healed it with his touch, but allowed it to heal naturally, to teach it pain, and to teach it care for itself, it needed to learn, it was reckless. He corrected himself, she was reckless, as it bit him sharply on the neck, hearing his thoughts, and settled to sleep. Like this beautiful creature, passing out, and disapearing through the floor, not difficult for some, but still impressive. The bitter taste of blood was apon his tongue, he decided to trail the woman, waiting for her would be less of a reminder of talents learnt, and she would not be hospitable to a stranger who approached her through the door, initiative was the key. Something about her, impression or familarity, he was sure it was neither, but something....... * * * [Derin] Derin was cold. Very cold. But not cold enough to be kept ignorant of the chill. Spots and splatters and stripes of steaming warmth served to distract him into consciousness. He opened his eyes. He was no longer in the stables. Banior, in human form once more, lay at his feet, now-pale eyes staring blindly up at the moon. His throat had been cut. An odd iron stake -- one that looked like it had been twisted together out of horseshoes -- had been shoved through his heart, pinni ng him to the ground. As a final indignity, someone had hacked his arms off at the elbows, and his legs off at the knees. The limbs were scattered about the open field. "Coward," an unseen woman breathed, stirring the hairs on the back of his neck. Derin ran. Demonic laughter filled the air behind him. [End posts]