[Mkguild] Dream's Aria: Dark Interlude (1 of 3)

[Ryx]

Reposting the entire thing due to the first section being bounced.

Ryx.
---<<>>---

Dream’s Aria:  Dark Interlude
Oct 28, 706 CR
 
Sir Yacoub Egland of Yesulam, Holy Knight of the Ecclasia, stared morosely at 
the plain bowl of porcelain before him.  In the bowl was gleaming clear water 
that reflected the wan torchlight of his recovery room.  That water would be 
cold, he knew, and while he once may have paid little heed he was no longer what 
he once was.
            Cold water, for one, clunk to his new pelt of short, fine fur quite 
tenaciously without ever seeming to warm appreciably.  Since autumn was well 
under way it was getting cooler and his rooms were feeling that chill.  He did 
not look forward to another chilling bath out of that porcelain washbasin.  Nor 
did he look forward to the ignominy of having another aide in his bathing 
because of his weakened state.  He sighed heavily and looked down at his hands, 
now like the rest of him given over fully to the change.
            Contemplating the two hoof-tipped thickened fingers and one thumb 
that had replaced his once fine hands and nimble fingers he did not hear the 
polite knock at his door.  The sound of a polite cough did finally interrupt his 
fractured thoughts and bring his attention to his visitor.  A short woman, age 
regressed by the villainy of the curse where Egland had been made a beast, stood 
at the threshold bearing an arm load of towels and a fresh ewer of water.
            More cold water.
            “I’ve brought you some towels, Sire, and more water for your 
rinsing.” She explained once he looked up and bade her enter with a nod of his 
antlered head.  Egland, a knight of many years, accepted the weight atop his 
head as normal, as he might a steel helm, but the balance was vastly different.  
How elk in nature dealt with their cumbersome antlers he could not fathom.  
Before becoming injured and trapped at Metamor, victim to its curse, he never 
would have cared.  “I can call Angton to assist you with bathing if you wish.”
            That idea pleased Egland even less than the thought of bathing with 
icy water.  “No.”  Angton, a huge burly man that he was could be gentle enough 
but a bull gracing in a field had more personality.  “What is the hour, lass?”
            “Halfmark past the eleventh hour, milord.”
            Almost midnight, Egland realized.  The listless empty passage of 
time in the healer’s rooms was playing havoc with his body time.  The curse 
could not be helping that, either, he realized.  “Would the baths be usable at 
this hour?”
            “Oh, aye.” The nurse nodded, “They’re available all the day and 
night for those that keep such hours, milord.”
            Carefully drawing his crutches over Egland levered himself out of 
bed carefully.  He had donned his tabard some hours before and suffered no 
qualms of modesty.  Not that he would have had ne not been dressed for this 
nurse had been one of the many who had been tending him since his untimely 
crippling.  After he had tried and failed the death of his Patriarch where so 
many others had perished under the attack of but one madman of incredible 
ability and power.  Of a retinue of fifty only three survived.  Himself with 
legs crushed beyond all but the touch of magic, and Metamor’s curse, to heal.  
Bishop Vinsah who remained comatose even two weeks after the disaster and Kashin 
who had lost an arm but retained his mobility.  That last had left to hunt their 
attackers and exact vengeance and escape the touch of the Curse.
            “Point the way, if you would.” Egland hobbled inelegantly on the 
rough wooden crutches toward the door forcing the nurse to move.
            “Well, sire, that’s not really a simple task, as such.” She wrung 
her hands in consternation, “Where the baths are and we are, well, is all up to 
how fickle the Keep wants to be.”
            Egland leaned on one crutch to take one of the towels and drape it 
across his shoulders.  Tightening the belt around his tabard he hobbled through 
the door with the small nurse at his tail.  “Ah, for blessed Yesulam, where the 
forsaken walls don’t move.” He muttered.
            “Just a moment, sire, I’ll fetch someone to assist you.”
            “Nay, lass, nay.  I am whole and hale, if weakened.” Egland belayed 
her hasty fetching of some other sad invalid to wander the cold corridor with 
him at the turning hour of the night.  “This pilgrimage is betwixt Eli and mine 
own heart, I shant bring others from their comforts just to shuffle alongside 
me.”  So said he awkwardly drew open the outer door and stepped into the 
corridor beyond.
            Or would have, had the broad spread of his antlers not caught 
against the lintel and hauled him up short.  “Gods all bedamned horns!” he 
swore, shaking his head violently free and staggering into the corridor.  “When 
the master healer arrives have him fetch a bone saw.  I wish to be rid of these 
fey things!”
            “As you wish, milord.  Have care and come back safely.” The nurse 
called after him.
            Frustrated at his infirmary and the cumbersome weight upon his head 
Egland made his way slowly down one corridor and then another.  Not attentive to 
his own twistings and turnings and angrily aware that had he put more thought 
into remembering his path the attempt would be moot a minute later.  The Keep 
gave him creeping horrors the likes of which he had not known since childhood.  
He had visions of the floor opening up at his hooves or the walls slamming 
together where he stood.  Neither mental image, fatal as they might be, was as 
terrifying as the thought of being sealed away in some stone room bereft of 
window or door to perish alone.
            He heard the calling of the hour through a casement and looked out 
at the starry darkness the view presented.  No torches were lit upon the curtain 
wall, relying on the keen night eyes of those on watch, and the moon was waning 
somewhere beyond the casement’s view.  Along the shadowed crenellations an 
armored form moved on patrol.  “Eli, all Father, how have I failed you that I am 
cast into this place of waking horrors?  Why did your good, kind servant 
Akabaieth and so, so many others perish and we few of us survive only to live on 
in such a cursed half-existence?” Egland asked, again, as he had since awakening 
and finding the raccoon healer Coe hovering over him.
            “Why were we deemed not worthy to be brought unto you as the 
others?”  He spoke toward the cold, distant stars with a familiar crushing ache 
in his breast.
            “It is not the destination; it is the journey that defines who one 
is when they arrive.”  A new voice, mellow and tenor, interposed gently on 
Egland’s questions of faith bringing the elk knight about abruptly.  Irritation 
and embarrassment burned in his ears and eyes at being caught in his weakness of 
faith.
            Standing several paces away was the pine marten minstrel, Dream 
Serpent, who had entered into Egland’s infirmary room the first time some six 
days earlier.  He had since returned twice more to help Egland re-learn how to 
use his hands and make music with his precious viola.  He was always nobly and 
gaily garbed in the latest court fashions, insofar as fashions could be adjusted 
to fit his long, sinuous form.  Now was no exception save perhaps being more 
ostentatious than Egland had seen before.
            The dark brown marten was bedecked in a turquoise silk surcoat and 
leggings etched with silver embroidery and gold piping.  Over this was an indigo 
coachman’s long coat while deep azure boots adorned his feet.  Atop his head was 
a broad-brimmed hat festooned with peacock feathers.  In contrast the dark brown 
leather dulcimer case slung across his back looked like horse dung flung across 
the dawning sky.
            “Your poetic reach is not well taken, minstrel.” Egland muttered 
flatly.
            “Ah, ts’amut, be at peace.” Dream held up a placating hand.  “I was 
merely observing an old verse.  When adversity strikes ever the faithful 
question their faith.” The marten said as he approached languidly.  “A friend 
once told me that without adversity we lose our faith, without conflict we 
soften.” The minstrel’s head came barely as high as Egland’s chin.  Smiling, 
Dream reached up a hand to clasp the taller elk’s shoulder encouragingly.  “The 
gods do not look upon us in the throes of our adversity, giggling at our tails 
like bullies, but rather wait to see what emerges upon the other side of them.”
            Egland looked quizzically down at the good spirited fop.  “You’re 
waxing fine philosophy for one who cleaves to no faith at all.”
            Dream smiled hugely and then laughed.  “My friend, I am drunk!” he 
chirruped happily.  “I always wax philosophical when I’m swimming in my cups.”  
The hand fell from Egland’s shoulder to his elbow.  “Come; come, where ever it 
was you were going.”
            “To bathe.” Egland did move, however, drawn from the black edge of 
the abyss he had wallowed in quite enough already.
            “At this hour?  Ah, and a good idea it is, too!  The baths’ll be 
vacant.”
            “Yes, and you’re about at such an hour as well?” Egland followed 
Dream’s lead along the vacant hallways, the slender fop’s hand upon his elbow 
like a courtier escorting some courtesan, following the marten’s lead along the 
vacant hallways.
            “Beh!  Duke Tomas brought in a clot of his vassal nobles and spent 
all of the day yammering about Metamor’s response to the inevitable lying of 
blame for your Patriarch’s untimely demise.”
            Egland frowned.  “His murder.”
            “Oh, aye, no quibbling on that matter.  A dark, dark day that was.”
            “And their conclusions?”
            Dream released his arm momentarily to pirouette lazily as they 
crossed an open courtyard bounded by an arcade to hang from a pillar, “No idea, 
I came to play the banquet that followed.  The last drunken sod rolled his fat 
rump out not long before the midnight bell.”  Spinning from the pillar Dream 
danced into the inky shadows of a narrow passage.  The air in the courtyard was 
still and cold with the bite of coming winter, brown leaves scattering across 
the flagstones with a whisper like court gossips, stirred by a fitful breeze.  
“Ah, hah, here we are.  Come along my smelly friend.”
            Egland followed more cautiously for the passage seemed tight but it 
was the darkness within giving that seeming.  In truth it was both wide enough 
and high enough to accommodate Egland’s frame and antlers.  He could hear the 
minstrel scrounging about in the darkness.  Somewhere ahead was the sound of 
water slowly moving and a warm draft of damp air whispered past to stir a brief 
mist of fog along the arcade.
            “Ten paces and turn right, or you’ll flatten your nose on the wall.”
            “Can you find a light, minstrel?  I cannot see but blackness.”  
After ten paces on his crutches Egland fumbled about to his right and found 
another archway.



      

!DSPAM:4c3957cf168521122247586!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.integral.org/archives/mkguild/attachments/20100710/2302b825/attachment-0001.html>