Eragos Feareborne (proscribed) wrote in adusta, @ 2009-07-14 14:49:00 |
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Entry tags: | coronation, eithne savastian, eragos feareborne |
something of a hero (eithne)
When he opened his eyes, he was not sure where he was. Or why he was there. In the corner his flambard propped up so he could see it. The falchion was on his belt, which hung from a makeshift iron hook upon the door. Along with his knives, and his buckler. And his mask. Eragos wanted to ask where he was, who he was, but there was no one to ask. Only the silence. Only a square of white light that struck the foot of his bed. It was night, then, the silver glow of glass told him that from where he lay. Farmhouse. Or something else? Wooden construction. It was a solid home, he thought, worthy of whatever person lived here. It was not the city that he called home, or the base of his people, or... Eragos did not know what to properly call it. Castel. It was not the Castel. All this viciousness surrounded him, encompassed him, and he was known to it. A battle had been won. A battle he'd hoped with all of his heart to lose for what it meant to him. Badala was gone from this world now. Her, and her child, and the father of that child. Eragos had killed them all in one way or another.
That face, so perfect, a mirror image of her mother's. Eragos did not want to see at that moment - his eyes were squeezed shut, against the pain of it, against the exhiliration of it. He'd destroyed a family with his will to do right. Badala had asked him once what the point of right was if you were dead, and in return he'd asked her a question. Now with awareness a distant memory he knew. What was the point of being alive, if I've wronged to be there? Eragos would rather suffer those eternal pains than face a god knowing he'd turned away from the path a second time. This life, and whatever meaning it had, hinged on doing what was right. He'd given his oath twice, committed to the path twice, and he would not stray again. Was it right to throw down his sword against Palam? Cruelly effective in orchestrating her end. She had died, as her mother and father had died, because Eragos had tried to do something right. This farmhouse.
These healed wounds.
He did not want it. Eragos considered it for only a moment before he threw back the covers with a flailing sweep of his arm.
Whatever measure of self-control he'd managed to find for himself was fracturing in the weight of the moment. Swathed in bandages, that square cut of moonlight upon the floor, his sword propped up in a corner. Eragos thought he could see her sitting on the end of the bed. Legs folded beneath her, hair swept back over her ears, hanging around her neck and across one shoulder. Too much rouge, or perhaps not enough. And the narrow eyes, cat's eyes he called them, slanted and narrowed as they stared. Eragos could never tell if it was a good humor or a poor one. Watching that image fade, watching his hands shake without his knowing, was the same as watching the sun break apart. He could not bear to look, his eyes burned, but he stared in any case for that one last flash of beauty. Eragos lifted a hand then, one of the few parts of him not covered in those bandages, and ignored the jabbing pain in his shoulder. Weathered. It was not so young as it had been then. Not as smooth, lined with creases from the sword and from the pen. His sword callouses were growing darker with time.
If she could see him now, would she still call him beautiful? Would she run her fingers over the lines in his face as she had for the smooth skin of his youth? How long since he'd discovered the first gray in his hair? Vargis always joked about being old, and Eragos always laughed, but in that instant he felt it keenly. Spider-webbed through his veins, in his blood, the traitors of age and decay. Badala would have been older, as well. And with the imagination forged in the pages of Sir Culvan's leather-bound tomes he tried to picture her; tried to see the lines that tears would have left in her face. A furrowed brow, still beautiful but no longer smooth as glass. A mature face that would have been gorgeous beyond words. The image failed; her ghost was gone as he remembered her, and nothing new would stay. Lost in the darkness of the room once more, staring at an old hand, wondering how much violence it had done in its life. The life of a soldier? A knight? Or a killer? It wasn't his hand that shed Palam's blood. He tried to tell himself that, as a comfort, but it would not work.
"It doesn't matter," he whispered at no one, and nothing.
Tears were escaping his eyes before he could help them. If Badala could have asked him for any one thing, would she have asked him to stay? To protect her daughter? To give her daughter the life that Eragos had once enjoyed? And he, building wealth, amassing reputation and legend in equal shares, to the south. Living not far from her, all this time, never thinking day to day. Wondering what had happened. Badala wouldn't have thought on it, at least not in the public places where eyes could see. Eragos knew that. Yet Palam knew his name, well enough to manipulate him, and it had worked. A measure of responsibility. A measure of pleasure and pain. Joy to think he had been a father. Misery to think it had all ended this way. His child or not, he owed Palam a debt because that debt first had belonged to Badala. He'd let her die, by his absence he'd permitted it, and so when he told Bahn that he deserved to die nothing could have been more truthful. Eragos barely noticed the folded parchment on his bed
Unsteady hands urged folds out of paper, smoothed it on a knee.
Eragos,
I've gone back to Illos. By the time this letter reaches you, I'll no doubt be there, working with the new lord of the city. I have high hopes, for them and for the future of the Free Cities.
Entire legions threw down their weapons that day, held their hands out to their brothers, because of what you did. Palam may have died, but you inspired the people who continue on. Your name is known here far and wide, as it was before. I think you're something of a hero to them for what you said, and how you said it.
I don't know if it helps, but I'm sorry. Not every man has the chance in life to atone for his mistakes. You did, and the gods - whatever curse you pretend - judged your life worthy to continue. Does that not give you hope, as it does me?
Be well,
Bahn
Cursed. He was, and he knew it. Bahn's words did not reach his heart. Instead the sound that tore out of his throat was half-yell and half-scream. Embarrassing. The tears that stained his face would not leave him, and he hurled the paper without crushing it first, so that the page flailed wildly on false wind before it floated to the ground. Atonement. He did not want to atone for a sin that could never be forgiven. He did not trust the gods to name him worthy of survival. It was enough that he deserved to die. Should have died. A part of him wanted to be with her, just then, to listen to those ancient and apocryphal tales of Conlan Agrippa the White Rider. She would have smiled, and he would have forgotten his troubles, and felt a warmth in his chest that could come to him in no other way. For just a moment he wondered if the Lady Vera had helped him to forget, or perhaps helped him to remember when it mattered most. She had never embraced him, never touched him in anything more than the manner of a comrade, but at that moment he wished for it. Anything so that he would not have to sit in the darkness, alone. Utterly destroyed.
A knock.
"Go away," he growled.
If it was who he thought it was, he did not want her company at all just then.