Skandra Tyullis (roll_the_bones) wrote in adusta, @ 2010-08-29 23:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | aeotha easaahae, singularity, skandra tyullis |
barren (aeotha)
He was seated at a table. Fine oak passed beneath his naked fingertips. It was stained, glossed with lacquer, until it was the image of perfection. A thousand carpenters could toil for a thousand days and not make something so fine as this. They were eating dinner here. With their fine ceramic plates, also glazed fine, and gold forks. Gold spoons. There was nothing more decadent that he could imagine, with its sloping high walls and its domed ceiling. Servants must have climbed ladders to light the oil lanterns hanging in a circle above them. They not only lit the room with bright orange light, but illuminated that mural strung across the dome. Skandra stared at the plate in front of him. A slab of meat, cooked proper, still sitting in its own juices, smelling divine.
It was the face that greeted him that he couldn't credit.
Anaiya smiled. "Aren't you going to eat?"
"How are you here?" he gasped.
"I rode a horse, silly. The farrier was still working on the carriage when I departed. Don't worry, the men came with me, though it cost a small fortune to arrange for horses so quickly-"
She was prattling on. Indulging him and laughing at his sudden concern. Skandra snatched at the wine bottle. This was the servant's kitchen, where they ate so often, to have a measure of privacy and relief from social obligation. A twenty-year-old Voloos. He couldn't imagine servants drinking such an expensive wine. But he could imagine it in one other place. This was the night... the night she'd... they drank this wine, then another bottle, and then he'd punished himself with whiskey before retiring behind her. That sun-light hair spilling over her shoulders. You could spin it into a fleece and men would believe the thing was gold to its core. She was peering at him now with playful blue eyes. Playful, but a touch concerned all the same. She couldn't stop staring. Neither could he.
"-my... father... are you all right, Skandra?"
"Your father let you drink it for the first time on your eighth birthday," he whispered back to her. "For temple, a prayer service. Bel Tine. You were supposed to have it watered down, but he didn't. He winked at you and said no one would know. You felt like he was treating you as an equal. You were so proud."
He'd ended in a voice almost too quiet to hear; couldn't see her face for all the tears that were crowding his eyes. Memories served just as well. How was she here? Why was she here? What was it the departed did to keep so tight a hold on you? That even now, in the heat of something else, he could remember her this clearly. That he could see her before his eyes. The wine bottle was thrown, against a wall, and there it shattered. How did servants obtain so lovely a dining hall? With murals! The wine tracked down the wall. Blood running on a lie. Skandra was staring across the table at her again. This time his eyes were clear. Hers held fear.
"Skandra," she began.
"You're in danger," he told her quietly. "We're leaving. Now. Going to the country. I'll keep you safe, don't worry."
"There is no safety," a voice spoke into his ear.
Black shapes around him. Her, on the bed, so pale. White as snow. Dead. Him, head in his hands, weeping as they wrestled his fingers from his eyes long enough to shackle him. Marduk - Marduk, savagely slamming his heel into Skandra's torso again. And again. The beating was righteous. So was the pain. Yet through it all he saw black shapes and dying stars. He saw her hair of spun gold, taunting him with the knowledge that he would never touch it again. The voice. He knew the voice, and knew it well enough to pick it out of a crowd. Had done more than once. It was not a kind voice, nor a warm one. Cold and distant as the northern reaches.
"Gershul," he spat.
Shantar's face staring down at him. The old Immortal's eyes were red. With tears? Skandra knew he looked the same without checking. Still, the heel of a palm scrubbed across his nose. Across his eyes. Shantar was gripping Skandra's coat tightly; when the younger Immortal began to clear his face that hold was released. Not that Skandra was sanguine about their prospects. They were in a field of black, standing on something. Something firm. Something solid. Yet he could see nothing save eternity all around them. Endless waves of it, as fraught with danger and uncertainty as the cliff of a moment ago. And yet here he felt more peaceful than he ever had.
"I tried to save her," he blurted without knowing why.
"You only had one chance for that," Shantar turned his gaze away suddenly; he pretended to survey their surroundings, but there was nothing to survey. "You only ever get one chance, Skandra. Remember that."
"I could have-"
"Done is done, boy!" Shantar seized his coat again. "Remember it!"
They were both interrupted by a sound, like a shriek. Uaine had appeared before them in a rumpled heap. Her robe in disarray, that happy face stripped of joy, eyes as puffy as theirs of a moment gone. Skandra was first to catch her arm before she flung herself onto her face. Shantar was on the opposite side; together they managed to pull her off the ground and to her feet. Uaine still wept as openly as one could, in short and broken sobs. She must have been choking. How did she breath?
"I-I-I wasn't... t-there," she wailed.
Shantar's support of one arm became a full embrace. Skandra stepped away from the pair of them then, pulling his coat back, exposing the Vel's handle to the world as he peered into the darkness. There must have been something... how did he know this was real? Anaiya wasn't real. She couldn't have been real. The past was done with, now and forever. You couldn't go back. Shantar was right. Which would be more heartening? To know that it wasn't real? Or to know that it was?
"Where," Skandra finally said, as he turned on his heel to face Shantar. "Is Aeotha? And Lobanny?"
"L-L-Líobhan," Uaine corrected him.
"Whatever."