Alariel. Lady. Where did you wander? What did you see beyond the veil that made such a taint of your end?
Many times in the past century, he had toyed with the spell, learned from Sargoth’s studies. But the face of the Lady of Elliath had always had this effect: It stopped him from moving further. Her resignation chilled him more than her fire might once have.
Until now.
Too much had happened. What hope of control had he, if he had no knowledge?
He called forth an image of Sara’s face. For her sake, he was willing to pierce the veil that separated the present from the future; for her life he was willing to pay the cost that had doomed the Lady of Elliath.
Let me see, now, what the future holds.
His lips opened on soundless words, over and over again in an endless litany. By morning, the future was no clearer, but the path to sight had been opened to him, a journey for another night.
Darin waited quietly in the sitting room outside of Lord Darclan’s study. He wore the fine clothing that the lord had ordered for him somewhat uncomfortably. He also carried the staff.
After a few minutes, Gervin emerged. He looked much better for the night’s sleep; the dark circles under his eyes had been completely erased. Darin thought he could detect a restless energy in the older man that had not been there before. His step was brisk and formal as he walked over to Darin and bowed.
“Lord Darclan will see you now.”
Darin nodded and rose. He paused once outside the closed door, gripped his staff more firmly, and entered in. The study still evoked a tremor of fear.
Lord Darclan looked up when he entered, and set aside a small sheaf of papers. “I hope I have not kept you waiting long.”
Darin looked at his feet, fully aware that he had overslept the dawn by a good three hours.
“No, lord,” he replied. “I just arrived.”
“Good. If it would please you to do so, you may sit.” He gestured at the chair in front of the desk.
Darin took the seat quietly. He didn’t know why Lord Darclan had summoned him, and habit kept him wary.
But Lord Darclan was not entirely certain as to the reason for the summons either. He fixed both boy and staff with the darkness of his eyes before shifting restlessly in his seat.
“Might I remind you, Darin, that I have asked you to refrain from called me lord?” He smiled then, a wintry, edged expression. “It is a force of habit you would be better without.”
“What should I call you instead?”
The question confused Lord Darclan, and his smile became fixed and hard. “Enemy, perhaps. Or peer. It matters little.” He knew the boy could use neither.
“I hope—I hope not to have to use the first.”
“Or the second?” He shrugged. “And I had hoped as well.”
Lady, Lady.
“Such is the whim of fate; hope is fragile and easily crushed.” He looked at the boy seated so carefully in front of him. Yes, there was strength in that small form, strength in the eyes that returned his regard so openly. The child who had lived in the shadow of his fear was gone; the lord found himself regretting the absence with a bittersweet pleasure.
“But it isn’t easily killed.” Darin thought of Gervin.
“In men, perhaps, and in the young.” Darclan’s fingers rose to form their familiar steeple. Changing the subject, he said, “I have not had a proper chance to congratulate you on your victory, Darin. Let me correct that oversight; you have survived much in the past few nights, and you have my gratitude for all that you have accomplished.” He meant each word, and each for a moment was unalloyed by darkness.
“Thank you, lord.” Darin looked down at the staff of Culverne; to his dismay he could see the bright green halo that had grown to surround it.
Lord Darclan saw it as well; his body tensed slightly, although he betrayed none of this tension. He remained still, his eyes bitter upon Darin.
Is this what I seek by my summons, Darin? Are victory and peace so alien to me?
He could never have anticipated what happened next, for Darin, with a pained but determined expression, set the staff to one side of the chair, withdrawing his fingers slowly.
“My lord.” He bowed his head softly.
“Why did you set it aside?”
Darin did not reply. Instead, he pulled his hands up and clutched them firmly together in front of his chest. He glanced once at the staff, but made no move toward it.
“Darin, why did you set it aside?”
“I don’t want to be your enemy,” he said quietly. “I don’t think we have to be. We both love the same things, or some of the same, anyway.”
The lord’s eyes closed tightly.
“Darin, child.” Darclan’s voice was slow, careful. “Do you not know who I am?” His fingers were white as they pressed together beneath the line of his jaw.
“A priest.” Darin whispered, looked down at his hands. “A priest of the—the Enemy.”
They watched each other for a few minutes, wholly focused but unable to speak. Young eyes clashed with old. Darin broke away first.
With stark, beautiful simplicity, he spoke. His voice was a whisper, but it was steady. “I trust you, lord.”
His words fell into silence, each one striking Darclan forcefully. He began to laugh, and the laughter, like Darin’s words, was wholly strange. “You trust me.” He laughed again, in dark, rich despair. “You trust
me
!”
The staff of Culverne flared white and hot. Darclan could see Darin’s brow crease momentarily. The white-fire was coming. Darclan felt sure of it. The last of his laughter faded into a grim smile. He watched with mirthless satisfaction as Darin bent to retrieve the fallen symbol of his office.
And once again, the child did the unthinkable, the unforeseeable. He rose, staff in hand, and walked over to the door. It opened, and he left, only to return a few seconds later. Without the staff. He found his way to the chair he had occupied and sat, unarmed. He looked oddly the stronger for it.
Darclan stared at him.
“Child, you do not know what you are doing.”
“Maybe not. But I know that
I’m
doing it.” His voice was steady.
“Do you realize that you have deprived yourself of the only weapon in your possession that might possibly stop me?” His voice was harsh. He rose, suddenly, his movement overturning his chair. He began to walk slowly around the desk. “I could kill you. Now. You would stand no chance.” He moved with feline grace, his eyes unblinking.
Darin’s lips tightened.
“You should have listened to the voice of Bethany. Yes, I recognize the staff; it is older and wiser than you. It knows me for what I am; it knows that we are enemies.” He was close enough to touch Darin now; his hands moved smoothly and came to rest under the boy’s upturned chin. “It knows, better than you, all that I am capable of.” His fingers tightened suddenly.
Darin closed his eyes but made no attempt to wrest his neck from Darclan’s painful grip.
“No, lord.” His voice was faint but sure. “It can’t know what I know.”
Darclan’s fingers bit into the pale skin of the boy; small beads of blood began to well up beneath his nails. He smiled, a cold, dark smile.
“And what do you know?”
Wearily, Darin answered as if he had had this discussion many times. “That you love Sara.”
The smile died.
“If you can love her, you can love. If you can love, you can be touched by the Light of God, even if you are blooded by the Enemy.”
“It may be that you have deceived yourself. Self-deception is the art that men learn first.” But his fingers were suddenly numb. Unable to maintain his grip on the boy, he drew away and walked over to the window. Only the breadth of his back faced Darin.
Darin watched him. The marks that the lord had left stung, but he said nothing.
“Yes. Yes, I love her.” The voice was suddenly ancient. Lord Darclan turned slowly, but did not look at Darin. “You trust me,” he said to the wall, to the past, to things that Darin could never see. “I thought that might change. In truth, you are cruel, Priest of Lernan.” Shaky hands found their way to the desk top. Lord Darclan braced himself against it. “Nor are you the first to be so foolish. You and one other, in all of time.”
His head came up, and this time Darin did move, thrusting back into his chair.
The lord’s eyes were red—a deep, dark, red, threaded through with blackness.
I should have known better than to choose you, child. I should never have tried to find one so like her. And yet, you were different. Smaller, more frightened. More mortal.
But as always, he pushed regret away—the deed was done; the consequences, complex and somehow painful, would be endured as they had been endured before.
“Darin.” His voice was changing, deepening. The boy’s trust hurt him somehow. It was the Bright Heart’s legacy, the Bright Heart’s taint. It was the same pain that Sara always caused.
And the same twisted pleasure.
He knew now why he had summoned the boy, the initiate, the priest. It was as close as he had come in hundreds of years
to this feeling—for Sara, newly wakened, had not yet come to trust him so.
And he missed it.
But the boy’s trust was given to a priest of Malthan. He bowed his head, then, and took the final step.
He summoned the darkness. It came, swirling around his human form and robbing it of its semblance of life. The room went chill. He shivered as he raised his head again, knowing that Darin’s eyes could not pierce all of his shadow.
“Can you trust me, Darin?” he whispered.
Darin sat frozen.
Death,
he thought, as he had thought one night so long ago.
Death walks here.
For the Lord’s power was no longer veiled, and Darin’s blood responded to its revealed strength. He knew the Lord now. He knew the Servant who had presided over the death of all Culveme. With a cry of fear, he bolted for the door.
The shadow made no move as he flung it open and scrambled for the staff that was his office.
So. Stefanos stood, withdrawing his hands from the desk. He felt relieved as the white-fire of Bethany flared like a clarion call. But he felt pain, too.
Darin turned, the staff forming a cross with his body.
“This,” Stefanos said, “is all that I am. Do you remember me now, little Priest?”
The staff came up as the First of Malthan began to walk.
Yes. Let us have an end.
Tears began to fall from Darin’s mortal eyes. Tears that the heritage of the Sundered could never allow to fall.
“You,” Darin said. The staff was shaking.
“Yes.”
Yes. I am Stefanos, First of the Sundered. I carry the Darkness that is your line’s death.
He raised his arm, his eyes flashing.
The staff faltered. Darin’s eyes closed, and the tears grew stronger. And then he said one word, as if to himself.
“Sara.”
Stefanos stopped. He knew that Darin spoke not to him, but to one long dead. He also knew that he would not kill the boy. His arm fell to his side, and the shadows slipped away. Cloaked beneath the facade of Lord Darclan, master of the house, he stepped back.
Darin watched in the numbness of shock. The staff, though not raised to strike, still surrounded him with a nimbus of green
light so pale it was almost white. He was shaking, but stood unshakeable as he watched the transformation.
“So,” Lord Darclan said softly. “You know.” He wanted to order the boy to leave, but refrained, his eyes caught and held by the patterns of a light inimical to his nature. Arrested, he let the red flare of his eyes gutter, and wondered if the boy—if any Lemari—could see in the shadow what he saw in the light.
He smiled, bitter. For he understood, through this meeting, the error he had made. Sara’s light, Sara’s love—it was not separate from the blood that ran through her.
“You aren’t human,” Darin began.
“No.”
“Not even half blood.”
“No.”
“You killed my line.”
“All but you.”
There was silence again. Silence in which Darin’s pain filtered out and danced in confusion around Stefanos’ senses.
“And now?”
Now?
Ah, the question. “I do not know.” He stepped forward, reached out to touch Darin’s shoulder. “I might ask the same of you.”
Darin didn’t move away. Instead, he shook his head. “The lady?”
“She is safe.” Stefanos reached out with his other arm. Darin was caught in the circle he had formed, although neither knew why.
It was hard for Stefanos, hard to stand in the presence of something so fragile without breaking it. Centuries had done nothing to alleviate the dichotomies that Sara had formed. But turning away was hard as well. He understood the nature of fragility intimately; it was not the life that was before him, but something more complicated.
“Why?” Darin said, his voice closer and muffled. “Why don’t you blood the stones?”
Lord Darclan smiled, although the boy could not see it. “Why?” he said softly. He shook his head. “Because she always hated the blooding.”
“Why doesn’t she remember?” Darin murmured, his voice already fading.
But this question Lord Darclan would not answer.
“Who is she?” The question was so quiet that none but a Servant would have caught it.
“Elliath,” the lord whispered. “Elliath, as you are Culverne.”
He felt Darin stiffen, heard the intake of the boy’s breath.
And perhaps it is time,
Stefanos thought,
that she remember this.
There was no resignation in the words.
Darin did not ask why Lord Darclan held him; Darclan did not ask why Darin allowed it. The silence gave them the tenuous peace that they needed for the moment.
“It’s very frustrating.”
“I realize that, lady. But you should not tax yourself so; the memories will return in time.” He watched the stiffness of her shoulders give way for a moment as she stared out of the window. Daylight robbed him of the reflection of her face in the glass. He stood near her; the tremor in her voice drew him.