We stood in a round space, defined by an absence of grass, on what appeared to be some kind of sand or ground stone, covering thinly a base of rock beneath us. The space itself was not much bigger than a small cottage, and beyond it, there was the grass I remembered from Lucian’s memories, stretching out in all directions as far as the eye could see.

To the right of me and just outside the circle lay a largish pile of smouldering black; overlaid, I remembered that this is where the keeper’s home would have been, that it had been a round shaped hut made from grass and mud, decorated with earth colours and weaves carved into the surface.

As my eyes tracked on and past the keeper’s house, following a straight trail that led to an assembly of caved in and broken structures, I became aware of the outlines of a number of motionless human shapes, on the trail and halfway in the grass that was trampled flat by the side of the trail.

It was very obvious that we had come a day too late.

Lucian stood straight by my side, holding me, tracking across the land, scanning for life signs and for the enemy. I join him and we find many lives, all around us, thousands upon thousands of horses, frightened minds in hiding, and further afield, a celebration still in progress of those who had vanquished our faithful people.

Ahead, in the remnants of the village, life is stirring amongst the broken buildings and in the grasses beyond. I extend healing and comfort whilst Lucian continues to scan and track.

Movement refocuses me on the present visibilities and there are the strange horse people, coming out of hiding, their bodies mysteriously restored, coming from the village and the grass one by one and in small family groups and making their way to where we stand in the circle, their saviours and gods arrived a day too late to protect them as had been promised.

Lucian tightens his embrace on me briefly before releasing me and straightening himself.

“Not to worry,” he says quietly and under his breath, without taking his eyes off the approaching people. “There is much that can and will be done.”

I straighten out too and try to imagine what a goddess would wear in the way of expression and bearing but the thought just giggles me completely and I need Lucian to throw a wet dark blanket over me momentarily so I can stand with a straight face and back as I watch the horse people assemble to us.

They are all smaller than me, and Lucian positively dwarfs them by comparison. Their bodies are dry, sinewy and a peculiar colour of orange, their hair bound into many small sections and very long, their clothes consistent of long thin woven strands of materials attached to their shoulders or chests and waists, making it look like long hair of various grass and earthy colours. I can see the women’s breasts and the men’s genitals beneath the open strands of weave that flow with their movements just like the tall grasses amongst which they live.

There is not a single vibration of resentfulness or disappointment in us, only an overwhelming sense of awe and gratitude that we are there. I find this hard to cope with and mentally lean on Lucian for composure as he doesn’t care what anyone thinks or feels and keeps clearly focussed on his own outcomes of the time.

Amongst them is an old man, the thin, shrivelled orange arms sticking out from the covering of separate strands which are paler than those of the others and interlaced with many beads and small decorations, leaning on a stick that is highly carved and boasts what appears to be the skull of a small animal on the top. He is skeletal in his thinness. I/we recognise him immediately. He is the one we have communicated with in the past and I am most relieved to see that he is still alive. Slightly behind him, to the right, walks a small boy, no more than 8 or 9, wearing a covering of similar colours. He must be the old man’s apprentice and the one we would be communicating with a few years from now. The seamless procession across death of their duties strikes me strangely.

The others halt about two men’s length from the circle and step aside respectfully to let the old man pass through, then as one go on their knees and touch their heads to the ground.

The old man also very awkwardly and painfully, with the aid of the stick in one knotted hand and the shoulder of the young boy under the other, tries to lower himself to a kneeling position. I make to stop him but Lucian who has a tight link on me freezes me and sends me a negation.

Irritated, I side step his locking but instead of stopping the painful and slow descent of the old man as I had originally intended, I reach into his dust dry joints and re-flex them, easing and repairing with a wave that ripples swiftly throughout his entire skeleton. He sinks to his knees with an expression of disbelief and the boy swiftly throws himself to the ground, forehead down and both hands over his head protectively.

The old man focuses himself and sends us a message of humble welcome and deepest gratitude.

I find that very hard to cope with, indeed. We had to go play at re-locating swords, having arguments and Lucian had to blow up the tower in a fit of childish rage when we could have been here, protecting these people who trusted us so totally and unconditionally. Lucian catches my thought and admonishes me so sharply that it physically hurts my head. I nearly strike back at him but then reconsider. What do I know about these kind of things. I shall begin arguing with him over the treatment of serfs and dependents when I have more, or any, experience in such matters.

Lucian accepts the welcome message with the curtest move of the head and demands information at a level that is pitched about ten times more powerfully than would be necessary. The old man reels under the onslaught of his mental voice and sends feeble pictures in return of another group like their own, one who does not believe in serving the ancient gods they have never seen, come to take their prize horses, prize women and kill their warriors.

I feel a deep knot in my stomach for I already know what Lucian’s answer will be, and his action. Halfway through the story, Lucian has put out a call to his blacks, generically, all of them. By the time the old man is finished, the earth is already resonating under the beat of heavy hooves and from the left, straight against the undulating sweep of the grass waves in the distance, the first group of horses appears into view.

We stand absolutely motionless whilst the blacks make towards us. The lead one has a coarse rope end around its neck, and as I count them, the last straggler comes across the hills, carrying a terrified man still clinging to his back.

The eleven horses slow on their approach and stop, flanks glistening, great nostrils flaring, four square just beyond the circle, behind us and opposite to the kneeling villagers. Without turning around, Lucian brutally takes the mind of the man who had been carried to us and forces him to dismount, walking woodenly around us and then crashing to the ground like a felled tree next to the kneeling old man who tries to control a recoil reflex.

There is nothing much in the man’s mind, a high ranked warrior amongst his people who had thought to try and ride his spoil of war, a possession worthy of more status than a dozen wives could buy.

Lucian broadcasts into his mind a terrible picture of total annihilation of his people, brands it down with a flaring agony, then bubbles the man’s skin to red all over, causing insane screaming.

I watch him do this and do not intercede nor even think to intercede.

The man is writhing on the ground. Lucian tasks the old man to tie him to one of the blacks with ropes and swiftly, the old man relays the message in a rumbling tongue. There are no men of warrior age left alive, so two old men, a boy and a couple of full grown women set to the task of heaving the mangled enemy onto the back the same black who had borne him to us. The black stands perfectly still, perfectly obedient and when Lucian instructs it to return, it spins on its powerful back legs and streaks off towards the waiting, undulating grass land.

Lucian takes my arm and starts walking me from the circle. The waiting blacks move apart so we may pass and he heads us out and towards the grassland, away from the village.

Bring food, he instructs the old man sharply and cuts the link before a response could be made.

We walk in silence amongst the steady pressure of the wind and the whispering grasses. On a reasonable rise, he stops, takes a deep sigh and sits down, facing away from the circle, the standing horses, the burned village and their enemies invisible beyond the horizon, and looks out across the vast emptiness of the grassland beyond.

I sit next to him. Lower to the ground, the wind is a little less aggressive.

High above us is a tiny orange yellow sun, far away it seems, and the grassland stretches until it is blurring into itself and you can’t make out a dividing horizon at all between the blue green of the land and the grey blue of the sky. Perhaps there is none. Perhaps this place is the inside of a giant bowl. I don’t want to even think like that here, today.

“Do you have to kill them all?” I ask Lucian with some resignation.

He keeps his gaze steady out to the far away.

“What would you have me do instead?” he asks gently in reply.

I don’t know what else I would have him do. What alternatives were there? The horse people had served us truly and him and Sepheal too, King Malme and his knights way back when, for a long time indeed. They were a resource which was too valuable to risk to chance and further attack.

“Will you spare their women and children?”

He shrugs. “That depends on their values.”

For a moment I don’t understand, then I remember. Some peoples, some tribes had a strong tradition of blood that could never be broken, and even tiny children needed to be slain for they would grow up to be their father’s avengers for certain. Others did not have these values and just became what they grew up to become.

For the sake of  us all, I seriously hoped it would be the second choice.

Behind us, the old man approaches. There is the boy with him and two women carrying a woven mat with what provisions had survived the looting and the attack. I follow Lucian’s lead and we ignore them. They are relieved, put down the mat and scramble away as fast as they can, the fate of the enemy warrior still strong and bloody in their memories.

“Does it always have to be like this?” I ask him, with a sigh.

He gets up and moves graciously down the hill to where the food lies amidst the grass. He picks up the gourd, a few of the meagre bits and returns to me, placing the dried food into my lap and sits down again, swirling the gourd and turning the ferment into our approximation of wine. Then he takes a long, slow drink of it.

I am very hungry but have no appetite. Listlessly, I chew on the unflavoured, unleavened breadlike substance in the shape of a large coin, and through the food I re-state my question, “With everyone being so afraid of us, wherever we go?”

He takes another drink and smiles fractionally. “To be sure, it does have its advantages.”

I take the gourd from him because the dry stuff is sticking in my throat. Lucian’s wine is not bad this day, a little too thick for my liking and nowhere near sweet enough but good for all that.

“I find it uncomfortable,” I say eventually.

He really smiles now and looks at me, his head slightly to one side.

“That could be because you still think of yourself as one of them, and not one of us.”

“Us?”

“The rulers.” He stops smiling and returns to the distance, his shoulders dropping slightly as he aligns himself with the emptiness, the space, the endless rushing wind and the unknowable horizons.

I shake my head and drink some more wine, pick up a shrivelled fruit and bite into it. It is rubbery and resistant to my teeth, tastes old and fermented. I make it turn to straw in my mouth and chew and swallow automatically, aided by some more wine. It is gently warming my stomach and easing the pressure of the wind in my head.

“How did we get to be the rulers?” I wonder out aloud and Lucian does not respond. I take a piece of cured meat, two coin breads and the remaining fruit from my lap, get up and move up closer to him, laying my head on his shoulder and trying to see what he saw when he looked at the nothing landscape that stretched beneath us and before us.

It caused him to briefly become aware of my existence and wake up enough to take the gourd from me, but he refused the food with a grimace.

I threw it out in front of us as a kind of offering to the sea of grass.

“When are you going?” I asked him.

He shot me a sideways glance, then reached back, put his arm about my shoulder and drew me to a level with him. I leaned into his embrace.

“You will let me go and do the killing by myself then,” he asked evenly and I felt myself blush.

I shook my head.

“I didn’t mean it like that. When are we going?”

The wind was blowing my hair across my face and he picked up a strand between his fingers and wrapped it around.  The ring on his hand flashed its minute lightning strikes and I watched it in fascination.

“When the sun goes down.”

“Why so late?”

He sighed and released my hair.

“It is more dramatic. Lord of Darkness and all that.”

“But you are not,” I couldn’t help saying and caught his hand in mine. It was a very big hand. Big, strong bones. I had repaired this hand how many times now? And how many more would there be?

“Well,” he said with some dry amusement and I was glad he was not angered at my careless statement, “I am sure they don’t care in the end if they die looking up at the stars or at the sun. Dying is dying, in the end.”

When I did not respond, he added, “And you don’t need to keep being afraid that I will be angered by your words. My anger should be none of your concern.”

But it is. I am afraid of it, it kills me. It really hurts me.

That is a very strange thing. Why do you feel that way?

I don’t know. It’s like, not like you don’t love me anymore, more like, I have done something wrong.

You can do no wrong.

The very sincerity of his statement caused me a moment of the strangest sensation, a strange heat across my back and a fear, as well.

You do what you will. Say and speak your mind to me. If I anger, that is not your concern. Only mine.

You might hurt me in return.

I would hope that I shall not.

You might stop loving me.

Never.

I did not know how to respond to his certainty. It scared me and yet it pleased me, powered me in a way that I had never experienced before.

When did you decide this?

To love you? That was never my decision. I saw you. To speak freely of it and to admit it to me and you?

He paused and thought about it, and clearly a memory arose of a sea of pain, face pressed into shards and rubble, and a terrible sadness that if he was to die here this night, he would not be able to see the girl again.

I took his hand and kissed it gently. He watched me doing so and remained relaxed, passive. Beyond him, the orange sun was making its way towards the horizon, becoming more and more distorted and bigger as it did so.

“We might as well get on with it,” Lucian said aloud, retrieved his hand from mine and stood up, flexing his shoulders. As I didn’t rise right away, he turned and looked down at me.

“I will go by myself,” he said. “There is no need for you partake of what is essentially my business.”

The unspoken thought behind this statement included both the relationship with the horse people, as well as the divide – you always send the Lord Of Darkness to do your dirty work and you would stay at home, in your brightly lit palace, looking at pretty things, bright things, and never a  picture of suffering and slaughter need interfere in your cosy dreams at all.

I rose fluently and faced him squarely.

“I will ride with you, my lord Tremain,” I said, formally and there was no doubt that he had hoped I would.

I hope it will not disturb you too much, he send with a touch of concern, and I couldn’t help but copy his dry laugh with precision.

I don’t think there’s much left for you to do and me to re-live that would disturb me at all, never mind too much.

He found this reply somewhat troublesome but chose not to get into this conversation, and instead started down the hill with even strides. I followed him and, with the eyes of many riveted on us both, endeavoured to keep up some form of elegance and composure that would befit a goddess or a queen. I didn’t make a very good job of it at all but they didn’t appear to notice.

The blacks still stood like statues apart from the odd flicking ear or swishing tail.

Two detached from their circle, stepping backwards, turning and approaching us. I recognised them both very well and both recognised me in turn. They were pleased to see me again, to catch my scent and both were ready to feel my most familiar weight on their backs once more, in spite of what I had put them through. Lucian took over with a too heavy control; I had no doubt he had a negative reaction of sorts at my relationship with what were his own horses although he suppressed it well enough.

He kneeled the left black for me so I could mount easily, and he himself mounted with elegance and powerful ease even in the absence of stirrups and tack.

Controlling both of the horses and me tightly, he exploded all four of us straight from the stand out and into the slow hills which were fading into the dusk, unravelling to clarity before us as though we were carrying a faint light of our own that went where we went, with the setting sun behind our backs.

It was actually nice to be horse born again. My black’s movements were totally familiar to me, one of many memories specific to one particular individual horse that looked just like the next and yet had his very own qualities, his very own way of running, his own length of stride and how he held his head and neck at any given kind of landscape before him. This was his world, he was made for running here, everything was right and so we flowed across the brown green dusk-softened grasses as though we were flying.

It was not long before we came across an abandoned campsite, fires in large, dug out safety areas still smouldering, and many items having been hastily discarded, including a couple of old women who sat clinging to each other amidst the grasses. Lucian did not even falter the horses strides; he killed them with a thought as we sped by, following the very obvious trail of feet, dragging and hooves out into the darkening, ever darkening lands beyond.

I had no idea of how these people could ever have hoped to hide from us here.

There was nowhere to hide. There were no trees behind which to cower, no caves into which you could recede, no rocks to shelter you. The darkness and the dragging mist might have been some help, but Lucian did not need his eyes to see them, nor did he need to look down onto the ground where they patterns were marked on all levels and where they had attempted to lay a false trail and go at right angles into the night.

They lay alone and in small family groups in the grasses, well away from their belongings and the best of the stolen things from the old man’s village and were praying to some elder gods and guides in shapes of animals. Some of them were praying to us for forgiveness too, and hearing their minds churning beneath the everlasting wind and Lucian’s quiet deadliness of volition by my side was disconcerting.

Abruptly, he halted the horses and warned me for a show of rearing. Duly, both the blacks screamed as one and reared with care and came back down onto all fours just before I slid right off the slippery, sweaty back.

In front of us, a bright red light appeared in the shape of an eight pointed star, the top and bottom reaching right to the ground and as high up as right into the night sky that was beginning to reveal a tight glitter of narrow stars, far, far above. The minds in the grass trembled in undoing and then Lucian’s call stood like a terrible fanfare to come to him for judgement.

One by one, against their will and in utter terror, the enemies of the horse people rose from the grass, illuminated red, like they were corpses from an ancient battlefield as stiffly lurched towards us.

There were probably about 50 of them all told and children included. Amongst them were young women who belonged to the other tribe, as terrified of us as the rest of them.

They assembled in an untidy bunch before the red star, with Lucian and me forming the corners of a triangle that contained them all, and I looked down upon them and saw nothing but people that were about to die, most likely in a particularly gruesome fashion.

I called to Lucian to halt this endeavours.

He was not surprised.

I thought that you would say something, sooner or later.

Lucian, there must be an alternative to this. Do you/we have to keep going on with this ….

This what? This our obligation? This our duty?

Torturing them and killing them is not our duty!

Would you have me let them go?

I thought about it. With the way things stood here, it was really not an option.

Can you not just execute those who led them into the division, into this war?

It tends to absolve the others from their responsibility.

But they had no say in the matter!

They could have chosen differently. They did have a say, and a do as well.

But not the children, surely!

Ah. You will always plead for the useless vermin.

I’m not pleading, Lucian. And they are not vermin. They are people, like we are.

Quite unlike what we are, my dear.

His amusement and condescension angered me deeply and yet at the same time, he was right of course. They were nothing like what we were. They did not have our power, our resources. It was ridiculously unfair.

Isca. My dearest. I will leave the decision as what is to be done here to you this night. I will leave it entirely to you. The decision and all the consequences. Will that suffice?

For a moment I was thought- and speechless. What was this, and yet, I could fully understand what he was doing. It is an easy thing to wail and moan, yet another altogether to accept the consequences with full understanding that it was your decision that caused things to be. Whatever I decided, and whatever the outcome, this night would be on my hands and all the days that would follow.

Lucian, you are very cruel.

(Amusement, silence)

So be it. I will think and make a decision. Will I have to implement it too?

I am at your command, my lady.

Oh but he really had me now. If there was any killing to be done, I would have to do it myself, even if I was to ask him to do it in my place. It would amuse him, to be sure, and would re-cement his opinion of me that I was nothing but a child.

I made an effort to pull myself together. Sternly, I told him, Have these people sit. Guard them. I will take a ride, away from here and consider. You will have my decision on my return.

His amusement made me grip the horses mane so tightly that the long suffering black gave a snort and a step back in protest and I had to bite my lip. I commanded the horse to move out into the dark grassland, beyond the range of where the blood red star shed its light, and drew the tightest sets of shields around me I knew how to construct.

I set the black to sweep in a large arc around the central point where the star stood like a beacon in the night and thought about the possibilities. The easiest was to just kill all the men and put the women and children back with the original village, hoping that it would be a long time until another tried to challenge the never ending servitude to those far away gods who never did a single thing for them in return.

Or, I could look through their minds and just precisely kill the ones who were responsible for it all, men or women, for I was under no illusion that the men could have done this thing without their wives support.

Mercy wasn’t something that these people had a great understanding of. They would simply consider us to be weak if we did not live up to their standards of terror.

Really, none of this would have happened if we had  put in an appearance now and then. Lucian had not used them for anything much and had never visited here since he came with Sepheal, hundreds of years ago, dozens of generations. Legends fade and need to be re-drawn in fresh colours to make them stay strong and convincing. None of this, however, could help me with my current predicament.

There was no getting away from it. I would have to execute the ringleaders and all those who silently or not so silently had given their support.

The rest would be returned with all the goods to the main village and would help to reconstruct.

Together with a good strifing, that should do the trick.

I turned the horse back towards where Lucian sat relaxed and easy on the huge black and the trembling people clung to each other and their crying children.

He was watching me with great interest as I searched their minds. I marked each conspirator and when I had found them all, ordered them to their feet and had them move forward and face me, standing.

It was the overwhelming majority, including women with babies at their breasts and children clinging to their skirts.

I had sincerely hoped it would have been only one or two of the men.

Into their minds, I spoke clearly.

You may save your children.

The women turned back and handed their babies over to those who had remained in the kneeling position before the unwavering red star. The older children struggled and cried and clung and some of the oldest refused to be separated from their mothers and fathers at all. I considered and allowed them to stand with their doomed progenitors.

There was about half of them left now, and some fell to their knees to try and beg for mercy.

I sympathised with their predicament but the choice had been made a long time ago.

I pronounced the accusation, and the judgement. The words came to me easily and the phrases formed smoothly.

“You are guilty of high treason against the Lords of this land. For your punishment and for the education of those who come after you, you will die this night. May the fires of your suffering be a warning to others.”

I called lightning from the sky and had the first be struck, the leader of the tribe, a big man who had kept an impassive face throughout the proceedings so far. It was an extraordinary thing. The brilliant blue white crack appeared, sought and found its target and set the man on fire instantly, shaking him violently, his screams mingling with the screams of the onlookers. I kept the lightning in place until the man had been reduced to a charred doll that fell apart before it hit the ground when I finally withdrew it.

One of the group, a brother to the man, was about to step forward to declare himself to be next, an act of defiance and heroism that would have made good fodder for a song and tale if he had been given a chance. As it was, the lightning struck him before he so much as could raise a foot or open his mouth. One by one, with care, I worked through the condemned until the last, a young boy of perhaps ten or eleven, who had changed his mind a while back about the wisdom of standing with your elders but for whom the realisation had come unfortunately a few minutes too late. I felt sorry for him and blew him apart in an instant, saving him the suffering of the others and creating for the onlookers a memorable finale to the performance.

Into the whimpering, gasping silence that followed, I said,

“Remember this night. Return to your duties. It has been done.”

I turned my horse and rode out into the darkness. Behind me, the red star extinguished and I could feel Lucian stretching his horse a little to catch up with me. He was impressed.

For a while, we rode along next to each other in silence, then he slowed us both to a trot.

Behind us, the whimpering and chaos of the minds stood out like a carnival on an open field, and when Lucian picked up on my thought, he stilled them all with a deep sleep instantly.

Silence was around us then, bar the wind, of course, and the rushing of the eternal grass.

Lucian spoke out loud to me.

“That was done well.”

When I did not answer, he asked, “How do you feel?”

I considered the question carefully and went inside for an answer.

Partially, I felt sad that this thing had to be done. Partially, I felt unhappy that I could not have thought of a more kindly solution. Partially, I was satisfied with how it had been handled and that justice had been accomplished.

Lucian laughed.

“Don’t get into that, I tell you! There is no justice. Only power. That’s all.”

That made me sad.

“If there is no justice, what was that just then?”

“That was you using your power as you saw fit. Justice does not come into it. Unless, of course, it is your own justice.”

“Tell me something,” I said, stretching on the back of the horse, tired all of a sudden and wishing I could lie down and close my eyes.

“Tell me why this amuses you so.”

Lucian fell thoughtful. “I should think,” he said eventually, slowly, “ I should think it may be because I have never had the opportunity to watch another be faced with my kinds of choices and decisions.”

I reminded him of himself when he was first starting to do his kind of work. That was just wonderful. So I was still the Lord Of Darkness in training?

“Not quite,” he said and there was a smile attached again, “To the other tribe, you will be quite the hero.”

“Have you never been the hero to the other tribe?”

He did not answer, and from deep within me arose a memory in response to my own question. I did not wish to get involved with Lucian’s past life at this moment, and to be honest, I was tired of the whole subject. The repeated lightning strikes had caused considerable energy expenditure, even though I just facilitated it and directed it, not created it from scratch.

I stopped the horse and slid from its back.

“I am tired, Lucian,” I said and stretched again.

“We are better to rest here this night than in that rubble of a village,” he agreed and dismounted too, giving the horses leave to go and try to find a water hole amongst the dark hills. The blacks merged into utter invisibility very swiftly.

I sat where I had stood, then lay right down.

There were little crawlings in the grass which I extinguished and then it was comfortable, very comfortable indeed. Lucian knelt and took my boots off which was nice of him. I had thought of doing it but didn’t feel like making the effort.

He stroked my hot feet and between his touch and the cool night wind, it was a most pleasant sensation.

Then, with a sigh, he threw himself next to me, rolled over and looked up into the night sky as well.

It had little changed from what we both remembered it to be. The darkness upon which the tiny lights lay like decorations on a rich woman’s dress was subtle and of purple hue; it seemed impossibly far away. If you looked for long enough, it was as though the tiny far off stars began to move in a random order, random dance; and he had never been quite sure at all if they really moved or if his eyes were playing a trick.

The wind flowed over us evenly.

Lucian said, “I question the wisdom of turning their judgement to you, now.”

Mentally, I translated his words. He was so careful with words. He picked them as though he was making a mosaic and had to search for the right colour tile amongst a pile of them first; placing the correct one into the wet clay and tapping it down once it had been correctly arranged.

As I had not responded, he cleared his throat fractionally and continued.

“You should not be burdened with such things. As a woman.”

The statement nearly choked me dry and I had to sit up.

“As a woman?” I asked him, incredulously.

“It is true,” he said and although I could see no more than a shadow highlight I could make out that he put his arms beneath his head and flexed his body, “you are to be my wife. I go to war and you stay at home. You stay safe and far away from all that might disturb your equilibrium.”

It took me at least a whole breath’s length to work out that he was teasing me, laughing at me, well concealed indeed behind a calm and steadiness designed to make me be at ease and set me up just right for this.

I cast around for something to throw at him, something to hit him with in return, but there really wasn’t anything but grass and wind in this place so I imagined a large pail of water, made it as real as I could and threw it over him through the link.

He gasped, reflexively curled up and brought his hands up to protect his head; whilst I watched smiling and well satisfied, he tested his hair and clothes for real moisture and when he found none, relaxed onto his back once more and laughed.

He reached out his hand to me and touched my knee and I could not resist to turn and lie with him and snuggle to his chest and into a full embrace.

Sincerely. I should have not have you do what you did. It is nothing to me and for you, it questions too much of who you are.

Perhaps. Perhaps it was as well. Be still now, for what is done, is done.

(sigh) That is in truth a statement that will soothe a multitude of pains and aches.

Nonetheless, it is true. It is very true indeed. And it doesn’t mean we cannot learn our lessons.

And what lessons, tell me lady, have you learned this day?

I thought about it for a while.

I have learned that it isn’t safe to destroy the surfaces you stand on.

(Wince, embarrassment)

I have learned that I have much to learn if I am to be your wife.

(smile) You are – you were – not born to high. But you are very young and I have the notion that you will find the palaces and gowns of richest colour and material not too hard to get used to, in the end.

I followed his thoughts and could feel a grimace on my face and shook my head before I even thought.

I wish it would be like it is now, always. Just you and me. No people watching, no having to try and walk like a queen when you are stumbling down a hill and want to flail your arms. And you not hurting my head when I am thinking or doing or saying something that would be embarrassing to you.

He closed the link in response but before I had time to say or feel anything, he had tightened his embrace of me, rolled me over so that he was now on top of me, looking down at close range. I could only see the merest tiny reflection of light where his eyes would be and his outline, deep in black against the starry sky beyond him.

We both have things that we by need will learn to do in a new way.

He was heavy on me, hot and I moved my hips and spread my legs so I could lie in more comfort under his weight.

It is a strange thing indeed. To return from a mission and to lie with your comrade-in-arms.

I giggled. To lie on your comrade in arms!

(Smile) Well that I have before. But never have I had a comrade remove their gown and dance for me under the stars.

I lay quite still and tried hard to make him out with my eyes in the darkness but failed.

Is this a request, my lord?

It is just a musing, a passing thought. That’s what he sent, but in his mind, the picture stood strong, and in his body, it set up a strong reaction that touched mine in return. Yet I was tired and had no wish to move out from beneath his soothing weight, so I compromised for now and placed my hands to his neck, drew his head down onto my shoulder. He relaxed into it after a brief struggle, gave a deep sigh and somehow, became even heavier still.

His hair beneath my palms and fingertips. If you brushed one way, it was quite spiky; if another, it was smooth as the hide of a thoroughbred. I turned my head and placed my lips on his forehead, breathing through my nose, scenting him deeply. Beneath me, the ground soft, cool, moist, and above me, just Lucian. I felt a trembling begin, it came from nowhere and there stood this unbelievable sadness of loving him so much that I could just not understand, but there it was, and for once I didn’t fight it, did not try to avoid it, did not try to turn it into another thing, anything else but what it truly was.

I feel it too.

What is it? I know I love you but how can this be love?

I don’t understand it. None of it. Never have.

I thought to love would make you happy. (Garlands flying, swinging skirts, laughter and bright colours, summer hay golden and a vibrancy that spreads through your bare feet, touches all the earth and then the sky)

Perhaps it is an illusion. Perhaps we are forbidden to enter there.

We lay in deep silence and the sadness began to recede, a slow soft motion, falling away to nowhere now it had been named and made its presence understood at last, satisfied with the rearranging of the land the flood left in its wake, expressed and delivered, and free to go back into the oceans where the all merged into flowing blue and green.

As one, we took a deep, deep breath and simultaneously became aware of our physical situations and made adjustments to our postures. He slid his hips and legs off me but kept his head on my chest, and I in turn tightened my embrace briefly to let him know that he would be welcome to remain there forever.

What will we do when the morning comes?

That is still far away.

His hand is playing along my side, I am brilliantly aware of its presence as though it was an entity detached, a strange thing that had come from nowhere, out of the dark grasslands beyond that were unseeable, hot and hungry.

You have such strange notions.

He pulls his head away from my chest and leans on his elbow, then searches for my lips and finds them with his. Very cautiously, he begins to taste me.

Can I compare to wine?

No, richer, deeper and a thirst that cannot be fulfilled, not now, nor ever, not even if I drank your blood itself. I have been warned of this. I have been warned that there is a time, and a place, where you can stand at the edge of an abyss and you might fall into its depth, never to return. It is here, and it is now. Am I free to choose, one way or another? It has been self ordained that I am not, as I have never been. The time will come when I will bitterly curse myself for this foolishness, this lack of sense, the giving in to what is beckoning me here. But how can it be worse? I am so tired of fighting. I am so tired of war. I am so tired of the pain and the darkness.  A brief respite would be the most of welcome things. A brief stay in the abyss, devoid of anything, devoid of me. Can you devoid me of me? Or is that not the question I should ask but rather, can I devoid myself of me? Can I in truth master this fear, or admit at least that the suffering has simply become too great to bear? That I have failed again and accept my failure?

Accept your failure and I will accept mine in return. And from two failures we can right a wrong of sorts, and who can know? There may just be a difference.

A difference, indeed. A promise of a difference. Yet why do I still lack the courage to take that step, and what is the right direction?

Once, you stood alone. I stood alone there too – remember? – outside the raven gates of Sepheal’s tower. What direction would have been the right one? Who’s to say, who is ever to know? You stood and you did not choose either way. But here tonight, there are no servants that would carry you in one direction or the other.

I did the wrong thing then, and I have been suffering through the centuries for that one choice.

Then make another, and the suffering might be worse than any you have known so far.

With a deep sigh, he released my lips.

What a promise you are holding out to me!

It is the best I have.

I would ….

Shh. I know. Whatever you can, whatever you will, I am here. I made my decision. I made my decision a hundred times or more, for better or for worse. Whatever you can find to give me, give me. Truly, I hunger for more, but just to be here now with you is so much more than I would otherwise be offered. Times are hard, and we are difficult. This land – this entire universe – and all its times are deranged and nothing is as once it seemed to me. Is it not enough we do the best we can? Can we do any better, at any time? Can you ask more of me, or of you?

I can. I always have.

Then that, too, is as it is.

Silence.

Your father told you – told us – that you would have to be strong. That one day, you would be the ruler of the land. You have always been as strong as you could know to be, and I admire your strength above all. I don’t have a hundredth of it. I am not one amongst a hundred times a thousand.

My father? I don’t remember.

Ah Lucian, but truly now, the time for such games must be past between us! I rebuked him and moved away and out from under his embrace.

(Startled, injustice, non-understanding)

I hesitate and tune more tightly to him.

Your father? In the main hall? He wore a cloak of midnight blue and his hunting leathers?

(Total confusion, total non-understanding) I don’t remember anything about my father. You must be mistaken.

He was entirely truthful. I checked him again on all levels but he was not playing a game with me at all. He did not know that he had the memories of his father I had re-lived what seemed a thousand years ago during that winter at Headman’s Acre.

The realisation truly disturbed me and I drew away from him entirely, sat up and wrapped my arms around my knees. What else did he not remember?

Cautiously, I said out loud, “Do you remember your father’s castle?”

He sat up too and thought about it. I tracked him carefully and got brief flashes of the elder ruin, far in the distance, he had never thought to seek out for a closer look when travels took him in that direction, and then, a very clear memory indeed that had some strange vibrations attached of approaching the castle on horseback – he noted my presence and said sharply, shattering the image instantly, “That was just a dream.”

I drew a cloak around myself then and tried to make sense of what I had discovered. I wondered what else I knew about him that he didn’t know about himself – and what would happen to him if he ever did remember. I could not even begin to imagine.

“What is going on?” he said out aloud with clarity and an authority that shocked me out of my thoughts and caused me to drop the cloak briefly.

He instantly linked to me tightly and I struggled to keep focussed on anything other than what I remembered of him and he did not, the very act of not thinking about it causing brief flashes of this and that to occur without me being able to control it. In the end, I forced myself to strongly focus on an image of the standing stones, when we first approached them, wearily and exhausted after the nightmares of the grey land. I don’t know why I choose that memory of all but it worked and was there, strong and powerful and deleted the other things that he was searching for in my mind.

Frustrated, he dropped the link, then said, “You remember my father?”

I nodded but perhaps he couldn’t see it in the darkness, for he said it again, louder and with an urgency, “You remember my father?”

Keeping myself shielded without seeming to be rude to him, and very grateful for the option of the cloaking of speech, I answered him, “Yes, I do.”

He slid across the distance between us, and put his hands on my shoulders, hard, giving me a shake.

“Tell me! Show me!”

I was afraid and yet, he had a right to know. These were his belongings, after all. What was I but a mere custodian, the keeper of the warehouse? With a sigh, I opened myself to his insistent attempts to link and remembered …

Wild rushing of greens of many hues, thunder in my ears. I am very scared but also so happy  that I could cry out aloud. My very first hunt. I am big now. I am no longer one of the little children that run alongside the howling hounds and the stomping horses for a little way and wish the years away so they could go as well. I am one of the chosen ones, and my pony tries to keep up, my father’s huge grey pumping his thighs by my right shoulder. I take my eyes of the path for an instant and look up to see him looking down at me – our eyes meet and he smiles. He is proud of me! Then, he points to the path with a stern gesture of admonishment and quickly I tighten my grip on the pony, just in time to have it jump across a small log in our way that doesn’t even break my father’s horses giant strides …

Lucian gasps and releases my shoulders. I can’t see him properly in the darkness but I can feel his utter confusion and turmoil of emotions the memory is evoking in him. Carefully, I make a small glow at my feet, a ghost of a campfire, not enough to hurt my wide open eyes that are desperately soaking up the meagre light of the far away stars but enough so I can see what he is doing as well as feel it in my stomach.

He is sitting amidst the flattened grass, one leg folded beneath him, the other drawn to his chest. One hand is at his temple and the other half held in a warding off gesture. His eyes are wide open and dark black with shock.

I move closer to him and try to catch his gaze in mine, to steady him to the now. I take his hand and hold it firmly with both of mine. It feels colder than it did just moments ago.

“Lucian?” I call him gently and he startles and focuses on me.

I didn’t know … I thought I had forgotten ….

Shhh. It’s alright.

Do you – can you - …

I didn’t know you had forgotten these things. I am very sorry. Really, I didn’t know.

Oh … He removes his hand from mine and sits up straighter, looks at me intently and with an expression I have not seen in him before.

Don’t be sorry, no. I often thought I wish I could remember something beyond Sepheal’s tower. But there was nothing there. Sepheal used to try and have me remember but I … I remembered some things about the monastery, but there was nothing further back than that. Is this real? Is this really … was that really my father on the grey?

I can’t think who else it might have been. In the memories, your memories, it is always the same man. And he is so much like you. It seems real enough.

Lucian shook his head and closed his eyes, wearily. Slowly, he said, his resonant voice rough around the edges, “I heard he was a great man.”

I did not know what to say to that, and after a time, he continued, “There was a war and a siege. I heard about it. The castle was taken and destroyed, and my family’s lands became part of the crown’s estate. Malme offered it to me, years later but I had no use for it. I had no use for it.”

“Where were you, during the siege?” I asked him gently, knowing full well that the time would come, sooner or later, when this question would arise.

He shook his head. “I told you, I don’t remember anything before the monastery. There is nothing there.”

A picture. A fluttering bundle flying through the air, against a night sky flaring with orange flames. Sounds. Insane screaming and shouts, weapons clashing upon one another.

Any siege. Any war. Any time. Any where. Any when.

Not anywhere.

It is my brother, there, flying through the air. He is so small. He is always cold and wrapped in many layers of thin fabrics as not to chafe his fragile skin. They don’t think he is going to live. Above me, there is our nurse at the narrow window, flames behind her, framing her. She has thrown my brother from the window and I cannot run to catch him for I am crouched behind a section of the fallen wall, and my legs won’t move. I can’t hear above the screams and the noise but I feel in my body  the crunch as he strikes down hard amongst the stones, bounces high and falls, lies still. A brightness catches my eye and I see the nurse, her hair and dress on fire, her arms and legs wildly thrashing, fall from the window, straight down to lie and twitch and burn amongst the corpses of the guards.

Gently, I embrace Lucian in a steadying link.

It is a long time ago, my love. We are here, now, you and I.

How could I forget this?

I don’t know. Perhaps you had to forget what happened so you could go on living.

I should have saved him. Anneas. His name was Anneas. My brother. I should have caught him, ran off into the night …

Lucian, listen to me. You could not save any of them. You were a child yourself. There was nothing you could have done better, or differently.

I should have tried. I just sat there, behind those stones. I was too afraid to move.

Shhh. I send him steadying, softening, and deep inside, was beginning to become truly afraid in case he wanted to learn the rest of it, or that those other memories would return unbidden. He would not be able to forgive himself.

I remember. I sat behind the stones and I sat there all night. The noises were terrible and I tried to shut them out but I could not. Then the day came and soldiers came and they found me. They dragged me out and were going to kill me but one of them said about my clothes and that I might be worth something. They took my belt for the buckle and my shoes. They hurt me and laughed at me.

I knelt by his side and placed my arms around his shoulders, my cheek against his head.

It is a long time ago, Lucian. A very long time ago. What’s done is done. Perhaps these things are best left in the past.

He blinked and moved his head uncertainly, looked around at the small glow in the grass and then at me.

“What’s done, is done?” he said, uncertainly and it sounded more like a question. I wasn’t at all sure anymore but firmly I replied, “It is a long time ago, Lucian. It’s done. It was done hundreds of years ago. It is over. Let it be so.”

He gave a deep sigh and leaned into my embrace. For a while, nothing was said and he did not return to the memories, nor did they return to him. Eventually, he asked, “Have you lived these things? As I live your life, right now and here, when it comes upon me?”

I sighed too. “Yes. I lived these things.”

Incredulously, he looked at me and said, “And you still – you still sit here, by me?”

There seemed no answer to this. I said nothing, just snuggled him a little tighter. The night wind was cold now, the mists penetrating and chilling. I created a space of warmth and safety that spread out from the small light in the grass. Around us, the night.

“We can re-build your castle,” I spoke the thought that came out of nowhere.

He withdrew from me and shook his head.

“What would that accomplish?”

“It would set things to right. Those are your lands by right. Your true heritance.”

He shook his head again. “That was all over and done with a very long time ago. I want nothing of this.”

Slowly, I spoke the thoughts that formed in my head.

“I don’t remember if you remember that I promised I would take you home. And where is home, but your own lands, the lands your father said were yours before it was all taken from you with fire and sword?”

Slowly, he unravelled his position and stretched his long legs out before him, leaning back supported by his elbows.

Carefully he replied to me. “I don’t think of home as a place. There is no sense in that. Is your home your mother’s and father’s hut? Is that where you would go back to as your choice of home? Or would you rather make your own, of your own decision, in your own place, in your own way?”

As he spoke, I felt a grimace come to me at the thought of going home to my father’s house. He was quite right. Re-building his father’s castle was too easy by far and would lead into more past rather than into a future. There may have been a time for either of us where we could have chosen to make our homes the way our elders had done, but neither of us could do so any more, or ever again. To many things had befallen us, too much time had passed.

He sensed my understanding and acknowledgement well enough, so he continued, “I can understand how one would want to erase the past by re-building the ruins of that castle. Indeed, I have tried such a thing myself – if in a different connotation – and I have watched it being attempted many times. But that is not how it works. Raising or erasing buildings does nothing to change anything, although it might create illusion of control in such matters.”

I was most relieved to hear him talk so sensibly. It did not solve his problems or mine, but at least he was reasonable and rational.

“I shall build you a brand new castle, then,” I said. “I shall raise it from the ground for you especially, in a most favourable place, and you come home to this, and to me.”

He smiled. “And thus you would have fulfilled your promise and your obligation. You do know I would not hold you to such a thing, spoken as it was near raving and from a place where logic had long since abandoned hope?”

“It is what you said you wanted.”

He smiled again.

“Come here to me,” he said. “Lie like a pet across my lap and let me feel your hair beneath my hands. I shall stroke you and wonder how your head can hold all these things without making you just a little crazier still. You talk of strength? I cannot cope what I have inside me, and I have both the practise and the constitution.” He reached out with an open gesture and I smiled, shook my head and obediently laid my head into his lap, wrapping my arms about his strong thighs and snuggling in close. He began to stroke my head, heavy, slow strokes.

“Do you remember,” he said reflectively, “do you remember the coronation of Lemos?”

The pictures came first, and they were bright and full of contrast. I closed my eyes and became one with the stream of information that grew ever richer and denser until it merged unnoticeably into the now and here.

I am standing at an open window, my hands resting on the thick stone sill. From below, there is a great noise of crowd, sometimes individual voices standing out briefly before being swallowed up again in a roar or cheer.

The vast central space surrounded by the royal buildings in Pertineri is packed with people, commoners, soldiers, tradesmen, and a seemingly never ending stream of carriages. Cavalry riders and knights on horseback, resplendent in their feathers and multicoloured tunics, are bobbing along, fighting their way towards the overflowing quarters.

Pickpockets would have the day of their lives today.

Tomorrow, Lemos would be crowned king. This was an occasion so very different from the last time I had been here, when his father had succeeded King Malme The Great. Then, there was no celebration. The mourning had stood in the air like a stern bird of prey. The colours had been muted and the cheers lacked heart and soul. I would have been very surprised if any tears had been shed at the passing of Malme II – if they had, they may have been tears of sheer relief, I would wager.

Mad Kort, as he was referred to by all, had been a twisted and bitter thing, with no hope of winning any of the unbounding adulation his father had walked upon by right. Malme had a charm, a presence, a fire that his son could not have hoped to aspire to, and the countless songs and tales of his heroic pursuits must have crushed what little spirit Kort may ever have possessed. He had been quite insane for the last 15 years of his long life, but by then, the kingdom had been run by the clerics under the stewardship of the Lords of Thelein  for decades.

Lemos was the illusion that Malme had risen again. Tall, arrogant, headstrong and handsome, he was nothing like Malme had been, but then, who would know?  He matched the portraits well enough with his red locks and flashing eye and no-one was alive now who knew Malme as a young prince, who had sat with him in muddy tents, shared his wine and listened to his visions of a better world.

I was feeling more out of time that day than ever.

Truly, there was no longer a place for me here, and standing at the windows of what had been my quarters for centuries on state occasions in Pertineri, I was well aware of the problems my presence was causing.

I was no longer the High Commander of the army and had not been for five score years or more. The latest High Commander had perforce been allocated much lesser rooms in the East Wing, and would undoubtedly be furious. I knew him not yet I had known his grandfather.

Peace was an interesting thing.

There had not been anything but minor skirmishes for 60 years and for all that time, everyone was busy forgetting about the unpleasantness of war. I was a most unfortunate relic, a walking reminder, and a threat to their versions of events at every turn.

Of course, I never spoke.

The time had long since gone where I would have been angry or amused at the nonsense, the utter idiocy and ludicracy of what desire and hunger for illusion twisted the stories of real men into, real events that I had lived, that I had seen, that I had known.

They had no idea now of what had really happened.

They were basing learned books and plays to teach their descendants on a pile of rubbish.

I would be there and watch their lofty spires fall in due course, once again, of course.

Being here again brought home to me how I had not replaced the friends of old I had left behind. There was no-one sitting here on my bed, laughing about the pomp and ceremony; no comrades or fellow commanders to drink with, not even an attendant to sleep at the foot of my bed.

It was impossible now to bridge the gap between me and them. We had become too different and I had stopped trying to find comfort in speaking with others, trying to find a like mind, for simply, there wasn’t one to be found.

A huge roar caught my attention.

A carriage in white, inlaid with pearl and painted gold was being escorted by many guards towards the main palace entrance. I did not know nor care too much, but recognised the carriage and supposed it would contain a female who would have the dubious pleasure of being the new queen of the kingdoms.

Flowers were thrown at the carriage and fell ineffectually to the ground; it did not shy the four royal greys.

Ah, but I was so out of it. I didn’t even know the name of the girl that Lemos would be marrying upon his coronation. I would have guessed it would have to be one of the daughters of the old kingdoms, to cement a unity that existed nowhere at all but in the heads of the tax collectors.

Saranis still hated the Northlanders with a fury, and both of those distrusted the Marcantians and  Sollanders  who would slit each other’s throats or burn each other’s houses at any opportunity they may get.

Marrying royal folk across the divides did nothing whatsoever to stop the centuries if not millennia of racial hatred, prejudice and strife that was sucked up with their mother’s milk and every step they ever took.

I was so bored with it all.

I was so bored with my life.

And even more bored with theirs.

Everything repeating the same, all over again. You hang around long enough in this forsaken theatre and you know the plays by heart, the plots by heart and even the lines become nauseous, no matter how stirring they might have sounded at the first reading, no matter how they might have fluttered your vanities or quickened your breath or how profound they seemed, once  upon a time.

I turned my back on the window and stood in the room, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. I was nowhere. I should have shouldered my sword and walked into the mists of memory with Malme and the Black Wing, letting my outlines be softened and like boiling lead or silver be shaped into what the story tellers needed to be sure of getting a few coppers into their wooden bowls on that particular occasion.

Unfortunately, I did not and was still here. I shook my head and wondered why they had send me an invitation in the first place. Most likely it was that somewhere in the bowels of this palace, where the ratfaced monks scurried and squinted over rolls of  parchments, their fingers  permanently stained with ink and their faces sallow, there was some list of Lords and Dukes and Earls. I guess they crossed them off when they died, replaced them with their son’s names if they were different, and I remained on that list, always there, copied from one year to the next, ad infinitum.

Lord Lucian Tremain.

Lord without land, lord without deed, without sons and without  purpose bar the tasks I was given by the Serein council, now and then, few and far apart, meaningless actions I did not understand, inconsequential, disjointed.

I shook my head. There was nothing to be gained by such musings.

I lay on the bed and stilled my mind to vigilance and unknowingness. It would pass the time until my appearance tomorrow. I would do my duty, take my place on the bench at the left hand side of the throne, the man who had been placed next to me carefully keeping his distance from me and quaking lest I should move too fast or unexpectedly.

I would stand motionless throughout the ceremony, keeping my eyes fixed onto a relief on the other side of the throne room, a relief I had stared at throughout many other ceremonies. It depicted a scene from ancient lore, a hunter who had stabbed the deer which turned out to have been a princess, beautifully executed in marble and softened just by reverent cleaning throughout the ages. This relief was older than I was and that was a comforting thing.

Yet so, I would feel their eyes upon me, and upon the naming of my name the wave of fear and hatred, in these latter days now tinged with superstitious nastiness and disbelief, would assault me once again then ebb to a constant vibration that never quite would go away.

There was a time when I had enjoyed this, and played to it in a fashion. I barely remember it now. It is not even an inconvenience. Once the formalities had been concluded, I would take my leave and return to my chambers, waiting for the night to fall so I could leave and not be riding through a crowd. Not that it bothered me; it was simply more convenient and I was tired of their stares, of their attentions and their intrusive thoughts.

I would return to Tower Keep and into the routine of grey and study of the ancient manuscripts, and quietness and wine.

I must be older than I think I am.

I stretched on his lap and turned so I could fully see his face.

“You were pretty miserable, hm?” I said to him without thought and saw him raise an eyebrow briefly.

“No,” he said, eventually and slowly. “Never miserable. Just bored and tired.”

“I would love to see a King’s coronation,” I said, thinking about the wonderful carriages, the ladies in their sparkling riches and the Dukes and Lords in all their finery. “Actually, I would love to see it with my own eyes, and not through yours. It isn’t much fun the way you see things.”

He smiled and leaned down closer towards me, stroking my cheek with the back of his hand.

“Wait a few hundred years and see if you can still find fun in pomp and ceremony.”

I smiled back. “Why spoil my fun today with thoughts of how it’s going to be boring in a hundred years? Kiss me, why don’t you. In a hundred years we might well have grown most tired of this sport.”

He gave a small laugh and obediently touched his lips to mine. I laid all thoughts and memories aside and concentrated on his feel, and we lay with each other in the circle of warmth and light amongst the huge night around us and it was very different, new, nearly shy, careful of each others great fragility.

It was very nice and doubly so for it was absolutely new to me as well as new to him. Both of us had so little experience in loving with your body, or your mind, and it did not seem to matter much that there was such a difference in our ages.

Lucian picked up the thought.

“I have lived a long time, that is true. But it begins to seem to me that that is not what makes for knowing, or experience. Perhaps if you were to take out all the repetitions, where nothing was new, and nothing was learned, and took that time and threw it away, you might reduce me to a simple veteran, a man of 60 or of 65.”

“A mere babe in arms, indeed,” I laughed at him, and held him close with lightness. “Old man, be sure I shall not trade you for a younger lover, well, not for a hundred years or so …”

He replied easily, “And I shall find your lover, and I shall tear him limb from limb with my own hands, and then I put you on my knee and beat your bare behind with the flat of my sword until it is striped red and raw and you beg my forgiveness.”

I laughed out loud. “I shall look forward to this day, my lord.”

He held me close against his warmth. “I shall not,” he said, “for no amount of beating of you would cure my devastation if you were to chose another over me.”

“Never, my lord.” I said sincerely and marvelled at the deep formality of the words we were exchanging; as so often, there were a great many layers to what we were saying and what we were meaning beyond.

“Don’t say never, young one,” he whispered into my hair. “And let us not talk of a hundred years, or of eternity. Was it not you who told me that the only place to be is in the now?”

So we fell silent, and we lay in the now, quite holding on to one another amidst the oceans of darkness and we merged and mingled in our sleep, our dreams weaving in and out of short awarenesses of movement and of change of light.

When we both awoke, it was day once more and we had no idea as to where to go from where we were.

The now is an interesting place to be, but sometimes, without a next, there is really nothing to be done at all!

In the absence of food, we recharged ourselves through the grasses and the small creatures who lived there, dressed and quietly wished for Serein washrooms, wine and fluffy breads with butter and light slices of meat.

We were a very long way indeed from any such comforts.

“I guess there’s nothing else to be done but to go back to the mountains and make our way to somewhere from there,” I said with a deep sigh, the thought of having to make that awful journey once again to Tower Keep leaning heavy on my disposition.

Lucian was buttoning his jacket and didn’t look in my direction.

“Unless we want to stay here forever, I would agree.”

“What shall we do? Where are we to go?” I wondered out aloud and he straightened and looked across to me with a small smile.

“Whatever my lady commands, wherever my lady wishes to go.”

“Oh that’s a help,” I said, a little exasperated. “You are the general round here, you are the one who gives the orders.”

“Ah,” he said and stepped a little closer, putting his head fractionally to one side as he had a habit of doing when he was observing me closely. “That is where you are wrong. A general or even a high commander is a soldier still who follows orders, nothing more. The only difference is you get to work out the best way as to how to follow the orders you are given.”

“So how is it that a general may challenge the king?” I wondered.

“For this to happen, the general must think of himself as a one who would give better orders than the king.” Lucian was smiling, and I had no idea what he found so amusing.

“Have you ever thought what you would do if you were king?”

He gave me a glance I could not interpret and stopped smiling.

“No.”

He turned towards the grassland and called for the two blacks. They were not far from us and soon, their great heads appeared first over a grassy mound right in line with the low bright orange sun which made a fascinating picture.

Lucian stepped up behind me and put his arms around my waist. I laid my head back onto his chest and into my hair, he said softly, “You would have me challenge Trant for the kingdom, you little witch who would be queen.”

For a moment, I did not actually understand although I had heard the words, and as an added distraction, the two blacks were now upon us, reverently lowering their huge heads just a few handspans from my face.

Then it finally sank in and I caught my breath as I considered what he had said, and to my amazement, found that he was quite right.

Yes.

Indeed, I would have him challenge Trant for the entire kingdom. Why not? Did we have anything better to do? Trant was a rat, worse, a dangerous lunatic who had thought nothing of devastating the entire land for his own ambitions. He did not deserve to sit on Malme’s throne. Without the Serein council to keep him in check, there was no telling what he would visit upon the kingdoms and the people within.

Why should Lucian not be king, indeed?

He released me from his hold and started to laugh, a little bit at first and then he laughed out loud, harder and harder still until he was doubled over, holding his arms to his side and coughing and gasping.

I felt like stomping my foot.

“What’s so funny about that?” I demanded of him, but he could not answer and just shook his head.

It took quite a while for him to recover his composure.

Finally, he straightened out and said, with tears in his eyes, “In all truth, I cannot remember ever having laughed so much. Not in my life. Girl, get on your horse. Let us return to the freeze and snow of the North Mountains, perhaps the cold winds there will blow some sense into your head.”

“No!” I said and nearly stomped my foot for real. “Why do you find the idea of taking Pertineri so funny? What’s wrong with being king?”

He didn’t laugh again, just shook his head at me and refused to be further drawn into the conversation. He beckoned the black to him and mounted with his usual graceful power. Looking down at me with a half smile, he said, “See you at the portal,” then spun the horse on its hindquarters and streaked out into the wide grassland, flowing under the morning wind like velvet when a hand brushes across it.

Angrily, I made my horse kneel and raced off after him. Unfortunately, the horses were perfectly matched and far too strong for my weight advantage to make much difference; I could not close the gap between us without resorting to some trickery.

As we rushed across and up and over the low waves of land beneath us, I tried to keep my anger intact and work out why he thought it so preposterous to wear a crown; yet I could not do so for the ride under the orange morning sun was too extraordinary, too real and now and simply too much fun to keep my musings and the anger in my body.

By the time we had reached viewing range of the destroyed settlement of the horse people, Lucian had slowed his horse to a walk to allow me to catch up and I had more or less laid the argument aside.

Our horses fell into step and the villagers, busy with repairs and clearing operations, stopped at our arrival and fell to the ground as was customary. I noted in passing that behind us the old man emerged from a hut in a hurry but Lucian gave him no heed and headed straight for the circle at the far end of the village.

If truth was told, I was not looking forward to landing in the snow, not even with the support of the horses once again restored.

We entered the circle and Lucian began to cast immediately for the opening of the doorway. I followed him habitually in his endeavours. He linked into our return path and was about to open it up for us to move through when I saw something. I stayed him and widened my perception and what I saw beyond the immediate return channel was not just one but many, many possibilities.

In fact, each single place from which a doorway ever had been opened had been recorded in the strange patterns of the circle in which we stood.

It was extraordinary.

There was a dense mass of possibilities before us, some pathways thicker and deeper than others, and Tower Keep stood out like a flare for it was here that the most recent doorways had been opened with the greatest regularity.

But also, every single point of my own journey across the land was there, as was his before me, and with extreme interest I noted old connections that were deeper and stronger still than the one to Tower Keep.

For a while, I did not know what to make of these old connections until it struck me that these must have been the ones the kings of old would have used when magic was still commonplace and they had used the horses for themselves – there were doorways here to all the old centres of power in the kingdoms, and even ones so old that not even Lucian knew a kings castle or court had ever existed in these places at all.

This is astonishing.

How on earth did Sepheal not see this?

I cannot imagine. This is a strategic miracle!

We can go from anywhere to anywhere, instantly! All we have to do is come here first and go from here! Oh I wish I had known this! I could have saved myself months of hardship/unhappiness/suffering!

Months? What about me? Have you any idea of how many times I have traversed that road and how many others beside!

I can’t believe how Sepheal missed this. The man was such an unbelievably narrow minded fool!

Lucian dropped out of the link and we both centred back on the now, in the circle, with the wind pressing on us and the blacks standing  patiently and hot beneath our legs.

“Where would you have us go?” he asked me but did not look directly into my eyes. For me, at this moment, there was only one possible answer.

I wanted to go home.

Go home with him to Tower Keep.