Knightslayer

Chapter one: The Long Winter

    This confession is long overdue. The need for it came upon me some time back, while gazing at a stranger in the mirror. I had thought to see a bright eyed boy capped with an unruly mop of blonde hair. Instead, a withered old man stared back, judging, his skin pale and parched, his eyes sunken and black, and his few long wisps of hair seeming to fade from gold to white, as if they had been slightly browned in an oven. Lord Garret Moore, hunched and wrinkled, is all that I am now.
   
    The lands of my castle, called Summerhearth, mimic my own degradation. Though we are nearly in the midst of Spring, a light snow yet falls, adding fresh whiteness to a land buried deep in ice and cold. There is a crystalline beauty to new snow, a purity that belies it’s innate evil. It is a thing to be loved and dreaded all at once.
   
    Summerhearth once rang nightly with songs and revelry and romance. Great ambassadors from far East dazzled it’s halls with silks and mysticism, princes and dukes plotted with whispered intrigues, and great lady’s adorned the halls with their beauty.  Vast and important decisions about the course of our country were writ upon archaic ledgers, then announced to the village below by the castle criers. Mostly I think of it as the home of my beloved Lady Caelynn. She was a princess once, as I was a boy. Now she is just my wife, bound to her quarters with fading health, her title reduced and meaningless. When she passes, all that I have ever been or cared for will go with her, and I will be as a ghost wandering these halls, anxious and lost and yearning for a final exorcism.  
   
    The throne room, which I mostly avoid these days, is like the gaping maw of a hollowed skull. Frigid winds howl through it’s pillared halls while little sconces cradle little flames that struggle futilely to bring some warmth and light to its shadowy length. The only work done there anymore is the counting of coin for the Dragon’s levy. Baron Mikal, ever faithful to his duties, each day prowls the quiet, snowy streets of Misty Vale, collecting silver crowns from farmer’s, smiths and merchants who have none left to spare. At night, his rounds completed, the castle halls echo with the scratching of his feather pen as he records the tally. He is near the end of his current, massive ledger. In the last forty years Mikal has filled entire shelves with it’s like. 
   
    The coins have but one purpose. Beyond Summerhearth, among the jagged and fiery peaks of the Cuhl mountains, dwells the Dragon. Named Knightslayer, his appetite for silver is unquenchable. Knightslayer is the source of our lingering winters, surrounded as he is by an aura of terrible eldritch sorcery. His mere presence alone conjures frozen wind and ice that blanket all the lands surrounding his lair in near perpetual winter. He can suppress it when he chooses, and for a few months in high summer he does just that. So long as we gift him the coin he demands, that is. But each year the totals of our homage wan, and so each year he lets his spell linger a few days more. Sometime soon our coffers will run dry, and Knightslayer will leave his hex up all year long, and Summerhearth will die. What will he covet when the last of us have fled, and no more silver is brought to his feet? Most folk will not stay to find out. Each week another family loads a wagon with all their worldly goods then sets out for some imagined better future. Soon only the shadow of man will hang over a land that once was a jewel shining across all the kingdom. I will stay though, and die with this place. Not from guilt, but because I love my home, and cannot believe that I could ever love another place as I have Summerhearth and Misty Vale.

    When I was young I had a chance to kill Knightslayer. He’s become more cautious with age, as I suppose we all do, and is unlikely to present such a weakness again. But once upon a time there was an opening, a chance, a moment of choice the kingdom will likely never see again. When the land was green and fertile… and the armor of our heroes shone in the morning light and great knights governed the land from the back of perfect white steeds while maidens swooned to just see them… when simple farmers and millers sought to live with the honor and grace of their betters…  when I was a boy there was hope.  


Chapter two: The Heart of the Flame

    The farm I grew up on lay on the outskirts of Misty Vale and right along the edge of the Hurnwood, an old forest of towering oaks and mossy rocks. We had a number of orchards where we grew cherries, apples, and fields for pumpkins or gourds depending on the time of year. We kept a stable of goats and pigs as well for the leaner months, but the Moores were best known for our apple wines, which were a feature attraction at every harvest fest. 

    My Grandfather, Aldon Moore, had been awarded the lands for acts of heroism while serving as a pike-man in the Greenfellow Company. The Greenfellows were a roving band of mostly landless knights and noble mercenaries who specialized in hunting the unnatural things in the world. You see, if you go too far into the Hurnwood, or too deep among the crags of the Cuhl mountains, you will find the twisted forms of the old world, the shadows that reigned before man tamed the kingdom. Beyond those dangers reside the dragons, ancient and unfathomable. Sages and bards whisper about how the very firmament of the world was made upon their backs and how sometimes they rouse from their eternal slumber and demand recompense for all that the lesser beings have taken from them. Lesser beings like man. In his youth, my grandfather saw no greater purpose in life beyond standing against these eldritch beings.

    Thanks to Aldon Moore’s bravado, the warm days of my own childhood were an endless string of glowing days devoted to excursions into the fringe of the Hurnwood, where rabbits and sparrows were the worst kind of beast I might encounter. The gold that had come with the land allowed my grandfather to hire local boys to tend the farm, leaving my brothers and I free to play to our hearts content. Such was the bounty of the Misty Vale in those days,  that the children of farmers could be idle and reckless. With sticks for swords, my brothers and I acted out noble and heroic rescues, saving our sisters dolls from high trees and fending off the large, warty toads who became our dragons. 

    What I cherished most, though, were the nights we gathered about a crackling fire to listen to my grandfather’s tales. Huddled together under a bearskin, Aldon’s many grandchildren sat dazzled by stories of the Greenfellows and their many great exploits, of gleaming silver armor, enchanting queens and maidens, righteous kings and terrible monsters. Who I am, or tried to be, was born on those special evenings around the fire. And while the whole family loved his tales, I believe my grandfather knew that, among his get, I adored them most. More than anyone else, it was I he favored most often with the coveted seat upon his knee. Maybe he saw the wonder in my eyes. Or maybe some prophetic vision had warned him that I needed to truly hear his words, as my future would, ultimately and inextricably, be entwined with his past.

    Of course our favorite tale was the last one, the one that had made our family rich and earned us lands and that would eventually allow me to become a knight in Summerhearth’s court. The Greenfellows had been hired by the King himself to hunt down and destroy an awakened dragon who had of late been terrorizing the Heartlands, snatching up cattle and demanding, as all dragons do, a hefty tithing from the small villages dotting those great, shimmering plains to the south.

    “She was named Blacksun, for her wings, when fully stretched out, blotted out the light of day all across the plains, and because her countenance was terrible and beautiful all at once to behold.” Grandfather Moore would pronounce with his scratchy baritone, and we would hold our hands up to the fire in the shape of a winged creature so we could better imagine the terror of her silhouette. The story would unfold from there; The long ride south, a skirmish with bandits, the hunting of Blacksun herself, and how, on the their first attempt to confront her, over half the Greenfellows died, consumed by a single blast of her fiery breath. He cried every time at that part. The company had faced dragons before, but never one so large and cunning. He would take his time, clear his eyes and throat, than at last continue. No one ever interrupted him or pushed him too fast, so obvious and deep was his pain. The desperate survivors finally sought the aid of a witchwoman, an ancient shaman of the Heartlands tribal folk who had walked the plains for countless ages before the Kingdom invaded her homeland.
  
    “We had come to the Heartland with blessed weapons and armor.” Grandfather Aldon would explain. “Sanctified by the prayers and holy waters of our priests, they had never failed us before. But Saffrin… that was the hags name, told us that a weapon must be washed and blessed in the elements of the dragons homeland to have any effect upon it, elsewise it was like poking a stone with a blade of grass. How could we have known? In the north, where we had always fought, our swords and shields easily smote down the foes of man. But the rites of the north God had no powers over the elder fiends of different realms. She polished our blades and armor with the sacred red earth of the Heartlands, and we set out once more to face this Blacksun. Yet with so many men down, we wondered if it could possibly be enough against such a terrible foe. Lord Karden Porter, who had assumed command, asked only for volunteers. To a man we said aye, knowing that the word could be our death. On the spot he promised knighthood and wealth for each of us should we survive, though he could not equip all of us very well, cut off as we were from the iron and steel of the north. But that did not matter to us.., there was a duty to be done, a task of necessary risk and unquestionable nobility. It was the nature of the men of my time to never flinch from such callings.” In my memories, I see him looking at me when he says this part. I wonder sometimes if I have just made that up in my mind, or if he truly knew.

    He always told the final act with a flourish, the days long chase, how they pinned her down in the red gulch with a deadeye shot from a sanctified arrow. How Sir Karden rushed in too quickly anyway and was gutted wordlessly with one swipe of her claws. “His sword spun through the air and clattered at my feet, as if God had always wanted it there. I didn’t hesitate to fetch it for myself, my blood was up after seeing our leader killed that way. I did pause though, when I saw her closely. There is no sight in this world like a dragon.” Grandfather’s eyes always got far away when he spoke of this moment. “Her scales shimmered in waves of green and blue, and her eyes were like dazzling golden gems. All around her the air burned of some unnatural heat, and flakes of burning ash swirled about like mad dancing fairies. And the sounds… unlike anything you could imagine in life unless you’ve stood among a thousand forges churning with molten fury… and when she opened her maw… its like… it’s like you can see how all the world was born. Within is a spiral of fire and shadow, and at the heart of that a brilliant whiteness, the doorway to heaven and hell all at once. A great and horrible fear washed over me, and for a heartbeat I waited to die. Something deeper moved my arm and body instead, and the next thing I recall was standing over her head, Sir Karden’s sword thrust through her upper jaw and piercing right into her brain. I’m glad I don’t remember deciding to strike the final blow. I don’t think it is the sort of choice a rational man should be faced with. Heroism is training and instinct, not thinking… never thinking.” A long silence would hang in the air every time he finished this story, and that night always promised hours of sleepless anxiety.

    When I became squire to Sir Karden’s grandson, Ben Porter, Grandfather Aldon gifted me the very sword that slew Blacksun. Three years ago I buried it in the abandoned fields of the Moore farm. I like to imagine that a hero will arrive someday, and think to look there for that legendary blade, though it will do him no good to have it.

Chapter three: A Gift for a Princess

    She came to the Moore farms when I was fifteen. My dreams had taken on new shapes by then. I was no longer swept up in the tales of heroism and glory of my grandfather. Now I yearned for that glory myself.

    Grandfather had aged poorly over the previous winter, finally handing the farm over to my Uncle Matheus to run. Matheus quickly released the various hired hands and set his sons and nephews to work, putting an end to my wandering and listless ways. I complained, resisted orders, cut corners anywhere I could, and was generally as worthless a farmer as I could manage, but he held firm to his belief that the Moore boys should earn their keep. The place I had loved all my life became a prison, and I a slave to my Uncle’s droll principles. Coin flowed as though from a burst dam back in those sunny days… why should I labor like a commoner?

    I found my ambition and purpose when Princess Caelynn announced her intent to visit our farm late in the summer of the year 989. Daughter of the King, Caelynn had been betrothed to Willem Rosan, noble son of Misty Vale‘s Duke Lucian Rosan. Caelynn and Willem were second cousins, and with her older brother being so sickly, Willem’s prospects for one day gaining the throne seemed all but a certainty with this pairing. The Vale delighted in this news, for it was understood what a fine and outstanding lord and knight Willem was shaping out to be. With Willem upon the northern throne, all agreed the kingdom could suffer no ills. Folk talked about a new age of peace and prosperity like it was divine prophecy, and they lived in the glow of it’s burgeoning light.  Strange, those hopeful days are still prattled about today… as if they could actually happen. Madness.

    A week before the summer harvest we received word that the princess and her retinue intended to call upon the Moore farm. She was preparing for the wedding, which was to coincide with the harvest festival, and wished to taste our stocked vintages of spiced wine. They were renowned across the kingdom, as I have mentioned. I still have a barrel from that year - in storage below Summerhearth. When the last coin is collected, I intend to share with all who remain in Misty Vale. A sort of farewell gift.   
   
    We worked tirelessly to prepare the estate for her coming, scrubbing every nook and polishing every button. For once I followed my Uncle’s commands to the letter. A princess! Such a vision stirred my soul in a way that I had not felt since my grandfather had held me on his knee. He made it clear I was not to speak to her, unless asked a question, and then to keep it short. My role was to stay by the barn and manage the animals if she decided to examine them. That was unlikely. Her interest was the wine, and Matheus intended for his own sons to soak in her presence, not his lazy nephew.

    Truly, and you must understand this about me, I have never lacked courage. You may find this hard to believe in the end, but the purpose of this confession is not to expose a cowards heart.  My sins are of a different sort, and I have already seen to most of my redemption. I suppose this story is my desire to scratch a final itch, that broken part of me that needs others to understand what they so clearly do not.   

    So when I saw her across the field, intoxicating even from afar, I abandoned my goat-herding duties and dashed right into the heart of the crowded mass of guards, handmaidens, advisers, and family, squeezing through the ranks until I squirted out of the masses and found myself face to face with Princess Caelynn. 

    The stories were true. Oh how they were true! Her hair, raven black, flowed down her shoulders in curly waves, framing her pearly white skin, glinting green eyes, soft cheeks, and a small, regal nose… Nobles are always said to be beautiful, but it’s so rarely true. I looked upon Caelynn once and fell in love with her instantly, and resolved to become her servant.

    Everyone was frozen - and looking at me I realized with sudden alarm. Wheezing and leaning on my knees, I tore my eyes from the princess and assessed the damage of my rash action. My uncles face burned redder than the apples behind him while a few of the girls in Caelynn’s party giggled in each others ears. A guard grabbed me by the shoulder and was about to yank me away, so took my chance and spoke. 

    “These here are the freshest now, your highness.” I managed to sputter in between breaths. “But in a week, it’ll be those.” I pointed a few rows off to section of the orchard where the apples were not yet so red as the ones around us. My uncle seemed about to scream, but Caelynn cut him off. Though only thirteen, a short lifetime of royal instruction had equipped her with a total command of such situations. 

    “What’s your name, boy?” Her voice a little more high pitched than I preferred.

    “Garrett… Garrett Moore your highness.” I said straightening and forcing my lungs to settle. Her eyes looked me up and down soaking me in, and I found I wanted to hide nothing from her. Perhaps I succeeded. Many times I have asked her why she did what she did next, and I am eternally maddened by her response. She shrugs and says it felt right. I push for more, but she offers nothing else. I think I will die not knowing.  

    Finally, she said, “Garrett, I would like to see those apples. With you, only. The rest of you can wait here.” She is not dismissive in her pronouncements. She says them like she is asking a favor, and you feel obliged to obey out of politeness, not because it was an order. Though confused, the retinue parted before us, unsure how else to respond to such an obvious breach of protocol.  

    I walked awkwardly next to her, debating whether to take her arm or not. I decided that I should. Now that I’d achieved her company, I sought to restore some semblance of properness to the moment. I remember her arm feeling warm, and her grip being oddly tight, like she might fall without my help. I remember my loins rushing with blood, and hoping for some reason that she would notice.
   
    “What kind is it? What flavor?” She asked when we reached the trees I had pointed out. I can see her now, reaching her neck towards a low hanging apple, acting as if she knows anything about them

    “They’re called Red Fool’s, your highness. Very sharp flavor, but they will be in their prime when you marry.” I could not stop staring at her. At thirteen, I was not a virgin having sampled the twin girls from the Maryworth farm and a girl I met while hunting in the backcountry. I was handsome back then, blessed with my grandfather’s confidence and my mothers blue eyes, and I knew how to use these assets. “Would you like to taste one?” I asked, holding her gaze.

    Princess Caelynn broke, and became awkward finally. She glanced back briefly and for the first time I saw her eyes go the ground. She nodded, so I plucked a Red Fool for her. I remember this moment as one of my best. I reached across her shoulder, grazing her cheek with the side of my palm… I can feel a spark sting my old, withered hand even now as I picture it… and then brought it down to her slowly. She took the gift, just as slowly, looking me in the eyes again, and bit. Then she smiled through a kind of sadness.

    “It’s good, isn’t it?” I asked as she finished her small, gentle bite. She nods, but her eyes were wet, and I knew something was wrong. She had asked me over for a purpose that had nothing to do with Red Fools.

    “Do you know Lord Willem?” She asked, her voice just above a whisper.
   
    “I’ve never met him.” I replied truthfully. I’d been to court a few times with my Grandfather, though never to meet Willem. “They say he will be a great man. A great Duke. His father takes good care of the Vale.”   

    “I’ve only met him once.” She said. “I want to be what will make him happy.” 

    “How could you be otherwise?” I replied simply, and with utter sincerity.

    What Caelynn was to me then, she still is today. There is a great depth in her, a profound sorrow and understanding well beyond anything I have ever known or will know. I worship that mystery even as I beg her daily to confess to me her secrets. Even now, with her health fading and locked in her tower, she will not enlighten me. She always responds, “I have no secrets Garrett. I don’t know what to tell you. What do you want me to say?”

    “The truth.” I reply. But she stays silent on that matter.  


Chapter four: Innocence

    “Garret, why don’t you try a shot? Caelynn speaks so highly of your skills!” Sir Ben Porter chuckled, holding the longbow out towards me. He wasn’t being sarcastic or cruel. Sir Porter, in every way, was exactly as noble and friendly as a knight should be.

    “My lord?” I muttered, caught off guard by the sudden attention. Princess Caelynn, now twenty and wrapped in the arms of her husband, Willem Rosan, laughed in that light way she was known for. Behind her, his face partially buried in her black curls, I could see Willem’s eyes alight with confusion.

    Sir Ben Porter, knight, adviser, and friend to Marquis Willem Rosan, strode over to me. He had long golden hair and piercing blue eyes, and at this moment a roguish smile. “Call me Ben, Garrett. Just Ben. We certainly spend enough time together to drop all of this formality.”

    My eyes darted to the princess, who nodded in approval. I fumbled with my shield, resting it against a tree and took the proffered bow. Ben gestured to a glove that has been propped up on an old stump about three hundred paces off.

    I did not hesitate long. Pulling back the string with practiced ease, I aimed and let loose the arrow. It sailed just wide, splashing into the Vale river some distance behind the makeshift target. Caelynn frowned in mock disappointment while Ben just kept grinning with that half faced smirk of his. "Perhaps I should reform the training regiment." Willem called out.


    “I had hoped for more from a Silver Shield.” Ben added.

    “I’ll work on it.” I was fully aware that it was not my martial skills that had allowed me to move up in the ranks of Summerhearths soldiers, and felt angry at having been put on the spot like that.   

    “Don’t worry about it. You did as well as any of us. And it’s Ben. I insist.”

    “Very well. Ben.”

    He clapped me on the back and guided me over to where Caelynn and Willem were sitting in the soft spring grass. “I’m weary of Willem’s tales.” Ben said as we walked. “Tell us about yourself Garrett, I’d like to learn something new today.” Right then was when the possibility of Lord Garret Moore, knight protector of Misty Vale, was born.
  
    I feel I should  tell you something about the home I came to rule. I have no idea what state the valley will be in when this archive is retrieved, if that is ever even going to happen. Perhaps in your time the image of Misty Vale as it once was means nothing to you. Suffice it say, only in a place as pristine and isolated as Misty Vale could such a tale as mine unfold…

    Misty Vale rests in the shadows and foothills of the Cuhl mountain range, possessing some of the richest soil in all the kingdom. It is a land of green farms, homey cottages, and simple pleasures. The mountains themselves, though treacherous, are an abundant source of silver and iron and invite prospectors from across the realms seeking quick fortune. Then to the East is the ancient Hurnwood, with its vast appeal to loggers and trappers. There is bounty in every corner.

    Our valley should long ago have been plundered, settled, and reduced to just another buzzing hive of human activity. Only it’s distance from the kingdom’s center preserved it from such an invasion, though there was always talk that the tide of humanity was about to roll in, that we had been discovered and were soon to be exposed.

    The town itself is nestled between a pair of long verdant hills called Yerinwell and Golden Top respectively. For miles they run parallel to each other, finally converging at the very north end of the valley. Where they meet is another of the Vale’s riches, a glistening, silver cascade of pure mountain water known as Misty Falls. The falls originate from Cuhl Lake, an azure perfection deeper in the mountains proper. These falls are the source of the Vale river, and give the town it’s name. It is a heaven of green pastures, blue streams, and whites clouds a place even those who call it home can dream of.

    Following my behavior during Caelynn’s visit, Uncle Matheus had insisted on expelling me from the family. His intention had been to ship me west where I would serve one his cousins who ran a trading post outside the capital. Yet when I heard his plans, it was not Misty Vale I found myself fearing to lose. My heart was utterly smitten with princess Caelynn alone. Wherever she was I would call home, and the thought of being so far from her made me physically ill. I had heard of lovesickness in stories, and not really believed it, but now I knew how true and painful it could be.

    I must stress that I did not desire her physically, at least to the extent that a young man can deny such thoughts. I had learned to understand my role with her over the years, though I do confess that I did what I could to draw her eyes to me. However, to behold such a woman is to grasp, fully, the separation between common and noble. As I grew to know her better, thoughts of soiling her body, as I had some of the local girls, began to appall me on profound levels.

    If there is a sin I still must atone for, it would have to be for the blubbering, weeping pathetic mercy I begged of my uncle. I  apologized over and over for my rash interruption… though honestly my apologies were lies, since I did not feel in my heart I had committed wrong. Maybe he sensed that, for he was unyielding in his anger. I remember him red faced and snarling, and I recall thinking that I have brought the true man to the surface. My own father also exposed himself as a coward, doing nothing for my defense.
  
    I have my grandfather to thank for my salvation. Feeling me brought low enough, he rejected Matheus’ plans. Still, grandfather acknowledged I could not stay on the Moore farm, so volatile was the mood.  He called in an old favor for me, and instead of being sent to the capital, I was to join the ranks of the Summerhearth guard. I had mixed feelings about this at first. I imagined guard duty a lowly and brutish kind of life, until grandfather, between fits of coughing, reminded me that exceptional soldiers could chose the company they served… and that one possible option, if I proved my mettle, was an appointment to the Silver Shield.

    The vows of the Silver Shield guard were among strictest of the various sentry companies in Misty Vale, for their task was, day and night, to ensure the safety of the high ladies of Summerhearth, noble and graceful women who nonetheless would be helpless to defend themselves in dire times. With diligence, I could be at princess Caelynn’s side for the rest of my life… a protector, a councilor, or maybe in some small way a friend. My course was obvious. I left the Moore farms immediately and with a smile, dedicating myself completely to mastering the martial and mental demands required of a candidate for the Silver Shield.

    Of course I succeeded. I have never failed at any task I have set myself to. Perhaps you thought Knightslayer’s ascension to be the result of inability on my part. You would be wrong. My choices will be clear soon enough.

    Before the dragons rise, though, and before eternal winter threatened an end to the bucolic serenity of Misty Vale, there was a perfect day. On the banks of the Vale river, in the warming spring sunshine and cradling safety of the valley, and just a few short months past my official appointment to Caelynn’s permanent guard as an officer in Silver Shield, I was graced with a touch of the sublime.

    “Let him try again!” Caelynn suggested, “but this time let me give him some encouragement.” Like I said earlier, her suggestions simply could not be refused. She freed herself from Willem’s grasp and floated over to my side, plucking the longbow from Ben’s hand as if it where a rare flower. Willem, ever trusting, leaned back and took in the sight of his eager bride, amused to see where her help might get me. She placed the bow back in my palm and I swear it felt as though it had been scorched over a fire where she had grasped it. I turned to Ben for guidance.
  
    He threw up his hands and backed off a step. “Don’t look at me.” He joked. “You’re in it now. I wouldn’t want to be the one to let her down.”

    “Caelynn, what exactly do you think you know about archery that can help out a trained guardsmen?” Willem teased.

    “Ignore them.” Caelynn insisted. “Come over here and aim your shot.”

    I drew the flaxen string back once more, and lined up my shot as she requested. My hands shook with terror. I could not bear the thought of disappointing her.

    Then she said, just so I could hear, “Now imagine that you are protecting me. It’s not a glove… it’s the hand of a villain bent on harming me. Can you imagine that?” I swear her eyes drifted to Willem as she spoke.

    “I can.” I whispered. My hands settled. The ache in my arm from holding the draw eased. I felt my whole body exhale.

    “Kill it, Garret.” She breathed, and I felt her words stir against my cheek. “Don’t let it hurt me.”

    I loosed the second arrow, and watched it fly true to it's mark, smiting the demon that now stood where the glove had been. When it hit, a white light bloomed. Small at first, it quickly flooded over the embankment with a kind of inexorable silence before drowning the entire valley in it’s brilliance. Within that blankness of sight and sound and self, the merest sigh echoed in my consciousness, a slight moan of relief and ecstasy from a princess who sought only the steadiness of a true and loyal servant. I sensed with that perfect shot I had become her man in a way her husband could never be. I had become the thing she desired.

 Chapter five: The Reason for Some Lies

    Naturally I exaggerate. It took me several tries to take down the makeshift target. Nor did Caelynn whisper in my ear. The impression she gave me, sitting uncomfortably within Lord Willem’s grasp, is where I drew inspiration for my variation on the tale. The truth is that Willem and Caelynn’s blessed marriage, the hope for Misty Vale’s future, was eroding by the day, but none of us who knew them wished to deal with this reality.

     Though they had been married nearly ten years on that day by the river, Caelynn had not yet borne Willem a child, boy or girl. Whisperings of Willem’s discontent and rumors of a possible annulment flitted about the shadowy nooks and alcoves of Summerhearth as gossipy intrigue became the norm in a place once dominated by lofty matters of state. I was disgusted by how quickly the people withdrew their support for their rightful Lord and Lady.

     Many of these ‘reports’ spoke of how Caelynn refused to share her bed with Willem. This was absurd, of course. As a Silver Shield, I frequently had to deal with the ‘stains’ of their activities. If they could not consummate their marriage with a child, I assure you it was not for a lack of trying. The worst rumors theorized she had a lover on the side, and drank poisons to kill the unborn children she conceived to keep her whoring secret. One such tale indicted your truly!

    The fact is that we all wanted them to be happy together… a perfect example to follow in our own muddled lives. And to do so, most of us were perfectly content to overlook how things really were between two young people who had been forced into union before they really understood what that meant and then burdened with the dreams and anxieties of an entire nation. They hated each other.

    I myself awakened to the truth in the summer of 1001. Much had been made of the ominous nature of a millennium coming to an end, and perhaps things had changed the previous year, though subtly.  Certainly the passing of Willem’s father had been a sad event. Yet old men die all the time, so few paid the matter too much mind. Now the duke, the pressure on Willem to provide a heir bore it‘s full weight upon him.

    It was a humid afternoon and the general mood of the keep seemed irritable. I had assumed my usual sentry duties outside of Caelynn’s rooms, and was doing my best to achieve some comfort in my white chain armor when the princess popped her head out.

    “Have you seen Jane?” She asked, referring to her handmaiden. Of late, the dimwitted Jane had been neglectful of her duties, complaining too much about the heat.

    I wiped my brow, hoping that my sweating had not overly ruined my appearance for her. “No, my Lady.”

    Caelynn frowned, than looked me over with her wide eyes. “I’m hungry. But for something light. There are still some strawberries in the kitchen. Bring some please, and wine.”

   I hesitated. My duties were to guard her person, not attend to her various personal needs.
“My post is here.” I said.

    She rubbed her hand lightly along the door frame, and I could suddenly imagine myself under her hand. “I’m sure I’ll be fine for the few moments you are away. I’ll lock my door if it will ease your mind.”  

    I cannot explain it. I felt something would be wrong if I left, but I did anyway. Perhaps the heat muddled my thinking. Certainly I desired a drink myself, sweating as I was. Against my usual better judgment, I abandoned my post and went to fetch Caelynn some food. And what of it, really? I could not have stopped what happened next, merely changed it’s circumstance somewhat.

    I found Ben Porter in the kitchen before I found the strawberries. He was nursing a mug with his feet up on the prep tables.

    “Garret!” He called to me. “I’m shocked to see you alone, free from Caelynn’s leash.” I learned later about the real man behind the constant mirth, the ugliness he hid behind his commoner’s style of crude humor.

    Still, I never backed down when challenged. “I could say the same of you and Lord Willem.”

    “True enough.” Ben laughed. “Perhaps the heat has made our masters hands lazy. Or perhaps they have wearied of our constant presence.” A shadow of his actual, bitter self slipped over his features before he drowned it with a deep gulp of his warm ale.

    Ignoring him as well I could, I splashed some water on my face and began collecting an assortment of strawberries on a silver platter, adding some cheese and bread for good measure. Perhaps I hoped Caelynn would sit with me and share her meal. Ben watched me for moment, before babbling some more.

    “We are kept men, you and I. Better than dogs by birth, but little more by training. Of course Willem has promised me Summerhearth when he is finally called to the capital. So it’s worth it to me to grovel. What do you gain from heeling at Caelynn’s skirts?”

   “The honor of service to a princess is all I care for, Sir Porter.”

    Ben considered, then said. “Fair enough. We should all be like you, Garret. The world would be a better.”

    While I agreed, I could not tell if it was a compliment or not, so I simply bowed and departed. Winding up the steps of Caeylnn’s tower, I discarded the bad taste of my meeting with Ben and focused on the thought of sharing a strawberry with my princess, and a bounce returned to my stride.

    However, when I returned to the hall outside her chambers, I could hear a dry slapping sound coming from her room, and I could see that her door was open, and my heart froze with a sudden terror that some terrible harm was befalling her, and that I had failed my most fundamental order.

    I rushed to her room and was briefly relieved to see that it was Lord Willem himself who had entered her chamber. Yet my relief turned again into something else as I absorbed the events of the moment. His pants were crumbled about his ankles and his bearded face was twisted in an angry snarl. His bare thighs were smacking against Caelynn’s bare waist as he pushed himself in and out of her. He had pressed the princess’s face down into the bed and was clutching the hair about the back of her neck. They were both grunting like feeding pigs, and neither of them seeming to derive much pleasure from the act.

    I stood there dumbly. The white flesh of her exposed thigh enraptured me utterly, and I suddenly did not care about protocol and duty. I’m not sure how long I watched my Lord and Lady copulate, but at some point Caelynn noticed me standing there, foolishly holding a silver tray of strawberries, breads, and cheese, and in complete violation of a private moment between a woman and her husband.

    “Dammit Garret!” Lord Willem barked. The Duke grabbed a boot that had been thrown on the princess’ bed and threw it at me. It smashed into the food tray and scattered the various treats all over Caelynn’s floor. “I‘m not some commoner to be gawked at!” Scolded, and like the dog I was, I scurried away from the scene and resumed my position further down the corridor. After a few moments of silence, the slapping sounds resumed.

    A short time later Lord Willem emerged, covered in sweat and in the process of buckling his belt. I held my breath as he strode past, fearing some retribution, and when he turned on me, my breath seized.

    Since assuming control of Summerhearth, Willem’s pleasant countenance had vanished behind a new, scruffy and unkempt demeanor. His breath was often bad, his eyes swollen with weariness, his beard sweaty and stained. Like Ben, the change in station had brought out the worst of him. The full repulsiveness of this changed man turned upon me now, and he said to me with a strange kind of indifference, “Don’t just watch next time, Garret. Help me out… I need an heir.” Than he sneered in such a manner that one knew nothing at all funny had been said.

     I didn’t know what to say to that, so I simply held his gaze. His smile faded and  he backed off a step before turning and leaving. In the quiet that followed his receding footsteps, I could hear Caelynn cleaning up the mess of food that I had dropped. I considered going to her and comforting her, but another part of me was disgusted with my Lady as well. I’m not so foolish as to truly believe a woman has control over when she conceives a child, but it was her duty to provide an heir. She was failing, and I and the whole vale could not help but to resent her for that failure. At that moment, anger seeped into my soul and told me that failure had come because she bore no love for her man, that the seed of his loins could only be awakened in the heat of real passion. 

    So you see, sometimes it is better to tell things differently from how they really happened. The vale was a place of majesty and romance, or at least it could have been had better people lived there. Even I, who loved Lady Caelynn purely and above all other thoughts, could not help but to hate her in those moments when her failings were so painfully clear.


Chapter six: Three Visitors

    In early spring of 1005, the Vale rejoiced at the news that Caelynn, after 15 years wedded to Willem, had finally quickened with child. With it’s birth, be it boy or girl, the union between our Duke and the princess would at last be sealed. Everywhere you went you could feel the air lightened, as if the burdens each man bore became somehow less because of the promise of a noble birth. That is why noble blood is superior to a commoner. No farmer or merchant could ever hope to inspire such elation in so many by doing so little.

    By midsummer, that hope lay bloody and dead in my hands.

    Three ‘visitors’ came to the Vale the following summer. The first, and most welcome at the time, were the Kyrdur. Roaming storytellers, mystics, and magicians, the Kyrdur traveled the lands in colorful wagons and claimed only the road as their home. I remembered them fondly from my childhood - whirling silk, spouting fire, and chilling campfire tales. The Kyrdur were beloved for the relief they brought to our routine lives and despised for the rumors of lawlessness and thievery that dogged them.

    By this time I had risen to captain of the Silver Shield. I think Duke Willem saw my promotion as a means of keeping me quiet about the tattered state of his marriage. It did not matter to him that I would not have betrayed their sacred trust - such was not my nature. Enough gossip blew about without my breath added to its winds.

    Be that as it may, when Caelynn decided to visit the Kyrdur circus, I attended as her personal guard and companion. Such was my right as captain. Side by side, we wound through carnival stalls and makeshift shops while fire eaters shot gouts of flame from their mouths and spinning dancers twirled their frenzied circles -all the time as if I were Caelynn’s loving husband and the father to be of the preciousness growing within her. 

    I do recall one nagging concern that troubled me breifly. Caelynn seemed too happy… too relaxed and unthinking. The smile she wore was like that of a child, and she laughed heartily and frequently at simple pleasures like magic tricks and comedic players. I wondered if she truly enjoyed the spectacle and expected nothing more. I knew Caelynn to be a woman of profound depth and complexity, yet she seemed so genuine at that time. Could this be the real woman? A carefree soul dazzled by the illusions of the Kyrdur? I decided no, and relegated this facade to just another of her many masks, another brilliant and subtle performance from a goddess of courtly demeanor.

    At one point, in a quieter area of the Kyrdur camp, she held some silks against her swelling belly and asked, “Which do you think for the baby? Orange or red? Or maybe this yellow one?” Her green eyes were alight in the glow of the fires, and a few strands of her black hair had fallen across her face in a kind of perfect happenstance. My mouth grew dry, and a sliver of my old boldness surfaced.

    I moved over to her, holding her gaze as I did, and fumbled through the piled fabrics until I retrieved a bright green strand, which I raised next to her cheek. “Earthly tones suit you best, M’lady.”

    Her other arm raised slowly, then she took my hand and pressed it and the silk against her face, her eyes closing through the action. “It would have been easier had I not been a princess, I think.” She whispered. “My heart is elsewhere.”

   “Then I would not have loved you.” I confessed, suddenly unraveling feelings even I had not known. I had said the words without thinking, realizing later that, just as when my Grandfather had smote Blacksun, I could not have acted had my rational mind been in charge at that moment.

    Her eyes popped open… and she looked into mine… and then a strange chill blew through the scorching summer heat, snapping us both from our fugue.

    We quickly resumed our normal roles and did not speak of this stolen moment for a long time. My body was shaking with a sense of violation. The words were out there, and could not be taken back, but I wanted nothing so much in that instant as to be able to pull them in, to undo time, and never have uttered them.

    The second visitor came a few days later. Four days into the week long Kyrdur festival, Dennith Sorel, a traveling merchant, returned from his latest sojourn to the kingdom’s capital. In itself, that fact mattered little. However, he bore with him some terrible fever. A day later, another villager took ill. Then another. When the first few of these cases died from the illness, fear swept over the Vale. And when Caelynn became ill with this new plague, panic consumed it.

    I remember feeling guilty at first, believing that somehow my confession of love for Caelynn had brought this pestilence upon us. I tried to reassure myself that all I had really said is that I loved her as my princess. Most of the Vale citizens blamed the Kyrdur, even though the first instance had started in a merchant coming back from the capital. The Kyrdur saw what was coming and pulled up their tents as they prepared to leave. An edict from the king, however, closed all the kingdoms roads to everything save for royal business. This plague, it seems, had cropped up all over.

    Anyway, my concern was not the kingdom at large. The entirety of my focus rest upon Caelynn. I watched from the doorway of her room as she writhed in agony, clutching her belly and moaning while physicians and midwives applied leeches to her arms and back and cool rags on her forehead. Day and night I stood vigilant from my distant post, refusing any relief from my duty, hoping I might somehow be of help. On numerous occasions they blooded the princess with a razor, thinking that perhaps the leeches were hesitant to drink too much of the diseased blood. Each time it fell upon me to dispose of the bowl of wretched crimson fluid. But at least for those few minutes I had a purpose, and the clarity that came with action.

    Only once did Willem bother to see his wife.  He stood at the door next to me, whispering a few questions to the lead physician about her state. “What of the child?” he asked. “Can it be extracted?”

    “It is too early in the pregnancy, my Lord.” The physician replied. “We would surely lose both mother and child if we tried.”

    Willem stared at the groaning and sweating Caelynn for a heartbeat. “I don’t care about the mother.” He snarled. “Do what you must to save the baby… all other matters are incidental!” With that he turned and swept down the tower stairs, his royal purple cloak fluttering behind him. One part of me did not mind hearing this. I knew that Caelynn, with her deep and hidden awareness of royal necessity, would herself agree with this conclusion.

    However, another new and growing part of me felt quite otherwise. This part cared only for her,  and would have taken her pain into my own body if it could. Small at first, the voice grew louder as her cries of pain intensified over the days of her illness.

    One night, weary from sleeplessness, I dreamy of myself sucking on her open wounds, as if I were leech too. In the dream, the physician made a small cut into the blue veins under her hand, and black blood oozed out from the slice like viscous jelly. I plunged my mouth onto her delicate wrist, suckling from her body every last drop of plagued blood, even though I knew each slurp brought me closer own horrible death at the hands of this villainous pestilence. In the dream she started screaming, but I kept drinking. I was hurting her, but the pain was also making her better.

     I awoke to realize the screaming was real. I had dozed off against the wall when a bone chilling shriek split the dense summer air. A bowl clattered to the floor, the sound of it reminding me of when Willem had thrown his boot at me. Then I came too fully when I recognized that it was Caelynn who was screaming.

    Two men were holding her arms down, and I saw that her legs had been bound by rope to the posts of her bed. A midwife worked diligently between Caelynn’s legs, barking orders to the men to do a better job. In the corner, the pathetic handmaiden Jayne wept like a small girl.

    Suddenly Caelynn let out another horrid cry, and fancied I knew then I knew what I banshee might sound like. The midwife withdrew, holding a messy pile of blood and flesh in a towel between her hands. She came over to me and I saw that it was a child - unformed to be sure - but a child in the making nonetheless… a still and lifeless child.

    “Hide this!” The midwife hissed at me. “Bury it deep where it cannot be found. Do not show it to the Duke… his anger will be awful enough as it is.” I looked dumbly at the terrible mass of legs and body and gore, paralyzed for one of the few times in all my life. “Do it, you stupid man!” She bellowed. In my memory, she is less a woman and more a looming shadow, one of the few people I have ever been scared of.

    I darted one quick glance at Caelynn. She was writhing around again, but her eyes met mine. “Put it back in… please Garret… put it back in.” She gasped, her breathing weak and shallow. I stepped away, letting the shadows of the hall shroud me and the dead baby from her sight.

    I don’t know why, but I rode the dead child out into the fringes of the Vale, all the way to my old family farm. It was run now by a cousin I barely kept in touch with. The night was deep and silent but for the hooves of my horse pounding into the packed dirt road.  Once there, I snuck into the old barn, retrieved a shovel, and buried the child under the very tree where Caelynn and I had first talked privately. Somehow I felt it was my right to claim such symbolic ownership of this event. I have always felt that way about things. The world has always belonged to me.

    Finished, I stood in the gaze of the hazy moonlight and wondered at the consequences of this night. What might become of this tree now that it was nourished with the blood and flesh of royalty? What pain would the Duke bring upon Caelynn for this miscarriage? What of the Vale, that had staked it’s hopes on the back of a Duchess who simply could not provide? What about me, who had abducted the corpse?

    Then a worse thought came bidden to my mind… What if someone overheard my strange confession of love to Caelynn? Few were around and we had whispered, but what if someone knew? What if my touching her cheek was enough to piece the puzzle together? It would be so easy to blame the miscarriage on our illicit affair, as such would be the obvious conclusion of my hearsay romantic babbling. That lie would be my death if any gave it form, without even a trial, so terrible would Willem’s wrath become.

    The blood on my hands glistened in the moonlight, mixed in with bits of dirt and soil and and I collapsed to my knees, weeping. I am not proud of myself, but the night had been horrible. It is one thing to die for a princess one loves loyally, another to face the possibility of death at the hands of misguided untruths.

   Then the calm, rational voice within me came back, and asked so simply and so precisely the perfect question. “Since when have you ever felt beholden to the truth, Garret?”

    My fear quieted and my tears dried. A story took shape that would save me from Willem and the bleating of treacherous gossips. And in the ashes that followed the actualization of this vision, the third and most terrible visitor would come upon Misty Vale and reveal to all what had always been in their deepest hearts.


Chapter seven: The First Snows of Summer

    A  hot, hazy morning was brewing as I rode back to Summerhearth. I immediately returned to Caelynn’s bedside, where I found her sleeping. Her breathing was ragged and shallow, and her color terribly pale even for her porcelain complexion, but her fever appeared to have broken.

    The old midwife had been snoring away on a nearby chair, and still somehow sensed my presence. Her eyes suddenly shot open and she swept over to me like some great owl seizing upon a helpless mouse. 

    “Is it done? Is it hidden?” She hissed at me.

    “He will not find it.” I replied, holding a firm posture. I was the captain of the guard after all.

    She narrowed her gaze. “And did you look at it’s eyes?”

    I had not seen the boys eyes, and did not understand why she would ask me that.

    “We must go to the Duke now. For your own sake, do not tell him where the grave is!” She looked pensive for a moment. “We will say the baby was riddled with fever, and we feared contagion… and that is why we destroyed the body. That is what you will tell him.”

    When I did just that, Willem’s response was to backhand me across the face with a gauntleted fist. I spun to the floor of the council chambers and gagged out a mouthful of blood.

    “Liar!” he shouted, and raised his hand to me again. None of the Duke’s advisors came to my aid, not even Ben Porter.

    “The Kyrdur woman!” I managed to gurgle as more blood flowed from inside my  split and already swelling cheek. I hope you can see, my friends, just what kind of danger I was in.

    Willem grabbed me by the back of my tunic and tried to haul me to my feet. He ended up just yanking me off the floor a few times before dropping me back to my knees. Willem was never known for his physical strength. “Get off the ground Moore! Explain yourself!”

    I did not hesitate to speak. True, I had earlier experienced a sort of panic at the thought of my own death… but I would not describe it as fear. It was more like an anxiety about being unable to serve Caelynn. You see, my obsession with duty demanded I survive this event. As I said before, this is not a cowards tale. So when the Duke commanded an explanation, I actually experienced a surge of excitement. I felt in control. 

    “Four days ago,” I said through the blood and swelling, “when I escorted Lady Caelynn to the Kyrdur festival, she begged me to take her to one of their soothsayer women. I obeyed her of course, but have regretted it since.”

    “Why would the Kyrdur wish to harm Caelynn or the Duke?” Ben asked, anticipating my agenda. “We have always treated them well and welcomed to the Vale.”

    I had decided early in the formation of my tale that it would serve me better to deal in mystery and vagueness. I had to paint an image too murky in its lack of details to pinpoint as false. “I couldn’t know their reasoning.” I said, adjusting my aching jaw. “All I know is what the old woman said, and how she said it.”

    “Spit it out Garret! Tell me what she foretold!” Willem yelled.

    “I forget the exact words, but she said that… the Rosan line in Misty Vale would never produce an heir. She said the fates had spoken against it, and that Caelynn had violated those fates by conceiving a child at all. She said Caelynn must be strong to have overcome the old curse on your lineage, but it did not matter. She said things would soon work out and the wheel of fate would be set right again.”

    The air hung with silence as the story took form in the minds of Willem and their advisors. If they decided I was lying, my freedom and probably my life would be forfeit. One does not manipulate Dukes idly. And yet I was calm. I felt I had told the story well, and with the necessary conviction.

    “Why wasn’t I told about this after it happened?” Willem asked, sinking back into his chair. I noticed how tired he looked as he leaned back. The heavy circles under his eyes, the sweaty beard, the thin and sunken flesh. I realized I hated him… For being fatigued, for being a poor husband, for being nothing like my vision of a nobleman.

    But I also saw that my allegations were like spilled lamp oil, and the Duke’s demeanor a smoldering matchstick. All I had to do was flick the tinder into the pooling blackness around our feet, and the room would erupt in raging flames. I slide to his side and spoke more intimately now.

    “We thought the old woman a babbling fool. There is no curse on your line. Why would there be? And yet…”

    He looked at me with those sunken white orbs. “And yet what?” He sneered.

    I tread carefully over my next words. “…And yet… it has been difficult, has it not my Lord? Unusually so for two young… nobles.”

    Anger flashed across Willem’s face, and I thought he might strike me again. Then he sagged back once more, and I knew I had won. The seed was planted, my life secure for now.

    Ben approached, and fell in beside me. “Willem, maybe it would be best to sleep now, think on this matter when you have a clear head. I can investigate in the meantime.”

    Willem became lost in his thoughts for a painful stretch of time, and I began to  wonder if I should excuse myself from the room. Then just like that he waved a hand at both Ben and I and said, “For a long while I have believed myself cursed… My father died too young. Our struggle to birth an heir. The constant prattling of advisors and merchants. Endless documents to sign…I feel stuck in this chair sometimes.”

    “What is your take on this matter, Vizier?” Ben asked of Willem’s spiritual mentor. Vizier Raphel was a fat, disinterested bureaucrat. Were it not for the extreme circumstance of the moment, I doubt he would have even bothered to be in council.

    Raphel stirred from gazing at his palm. “The Kyrdur are a Godless lot. Who knows what they are capable of, but I’ve heard it spoken they often meddle in curses and unholy rituals. Their schemes for vengeance are said to go back centuries. Perhaps one of your great ancestors offended them in some way, My Lord. I would not put it past them.” He pronounced his verdict as though talking about yesterday’s meal.

    Ben turned to me. “Are you sure of what you heard?” He asked.

    “I’m sure of nothing, to be honest.” I replied, sticking to my plan. “Nothing except… My Lord… except…” I had Willem’s full attention now. “…Except that it was a son. It was a son, but his skin was black and twisted. He looked like he must have suffered greatly in the womb. Nothing natural could do that, could it?” I paused for effect, just like the traveling players when they delivered a dramatic line. “It was your son.”

    The rest was formality. Willem ordered his militia assembled at once, against Ben’s protests for further investigation. I was also brought along for this ‘purge’ as they were calling it, tasked with finding the particular old woman, though I insisted I would have trouble recognizing her from among the many Kyrdur in the camp. It wouldn’t matter. The entire Vale was on edge over the pestilence that had claimed the kingdom’s verve. Old suspicions and superstitions would be enough to justify the action, not that the Duke needed any. The Kyrdur were landless people. No one would avenge them… or so we wrongly assumed.

    The haze had intensified over the day. Everything shone with a glaring brightness that it made it difficult to really see. We stormed into their camp nonetheless, hooves thundering as they cried out in alarm and vainly tried to rally a defense. It was a slaughter. The moment Duke Willem saw their quaint wagons and colorful tents, all his frustration and angst welled up in a fury of resentment, and his men rallied to that anger.

    We cut them down like stalks of wheat at harvest, our swords becoming murderous scythes. Their blood hung in the wet air, shrouding the battlefield in a crimson mist. Their dying screams echoed through the Vale while the flames of their burning wagons hissed and cackled with eerie life.

    A kind of madness seized the soldiers, and they began screaming themselves, howling weird and incoherent battle-cries with each new victim. Even Ben, jovial and snide Ben, became enraptured with the insanity of slaughter, spinning and slashing through their ranks even as guts and sinew dangled from his pretty face. In our frenzy, none of us noticed how cold it had become, how the wind was whipping, and how the dogs and wolves all across the Vale had begun to bay, sensing as they did something strange and terrible happening.

    I cut down two men myself before spying an old women cowering behind some barrels. I doubt I had ever seen her before, but she looked enough the part with her spindly fingers and black shawl. I pointed her out to Willem, who dismounted immediately. Without a word he strode over to her and in one smooth motion slashed through her neck and sent her head spiraling from her body. It landed with dull thud next to my feet.

    That was when he and I perceived the snow. It was midsummer and snowing. Already a thin layer of white coated the ground, mixing with the blood too create a exotic speckled effect, like staring at Hell’s idea of a flowering field. It is strange to say this I suppose, but this did not bother me. For some reason I had expected the unusual to happen during the attack. It fit my idea of how things should be.

    Willem was not so reflective in his estimation of the sudden blizzard. His confidence and surety vanished utterly, his sword slipping from his weakening grip as it thumped to the earth. “What have I done.” I heard him mutter before he dropped to his knees.

    Then an ear splitting screech rent the air and every living thing in the Vale froze with instinctual terror. We looked up all at once, and collectively absorbed our destiny. Far above, in the radiant glare of summer snow, our vision blurry from the need to squint against the penetrating brilliance, we beheld the unmistakable and near divine shape of a dragon, a creature awakened only by the most extreme transgressions.

    Willem clasped his hands over his ears, trying desperately to escape the bone numbing noise. I saw everyone else doing likewise, cowering and twitching. Only Ben and myself did not flinch. He wore a mask of grim determination as he estimated the new foe, whilst I let the dragons roar flow through and over me, as though it were the most beautiful music I had ever hoped to hear.    

   Chapter eight: The Knight

     I have let my emotions get the better of me. What I know now often clouds what I knew then. To fully understand this tale, I must explain to you the kind of man Ben Porter was. Or at least the kind of man I once believed him to be.

     I first joined the Summerhearth guard at the age of fifteen, as you may recall. Of course I did not immediately get to serve with the Silver Shield. Such appointments must be earned through diligence, connections, and proof of combat prowess. In my case the former two would have to suffice, as I have never been gifted in the art of battle. I’m a serviceable warrior, to be sure, but nothing compared to Ben Porter.

     Ben finished his squires duties the same year that I completed my training and joined the regular militia. I knew his reputation even then, as we all did. On the off chance you have not heard the legend of Greys’ Tower, I will repeat it here to lend full clarity to my own tale.

     Late in the Fall of 991, a border dispute erupted between Lord Gelden Barhurst and Count Padrick Morgan. They were squabbling over rights to a little mountain on the North Tier that had been found to contain rich veins of silver. At that time, Ben served as the squire to Sir Oslen Morgan, the knighted second son of the Count. Old Padrick dispatched his son to parlay with the Barhursts. The meeting was to be a strictly diplomatic affair, but Olsen bungled the job so completely that Gelden took him prisoner instead. The Count’s son had become a devastating bargaining chip in a quarrel the Morgan’s should easily have won, as they clearly had the greater claim.

     Without any official approval, save for the squires code of honor, young Porter rode out from Olsen’s camp and right into the heart of Grey‘s Tower. If you have never seen it, I assure you Grey’s Tower is far more than just some lonely spire. When he took his Lordship, Gelden Barhurst inherited one of the more menacing castles in the Kingdom. The tower for which the keep is named, while impressive in it’s height, is simply the center point of an elaborate and fully manned fortress-city of thick parapets, numerous murder holes, and stern faced guards draped in black armor.

     This did not faze Ben in the slightest. He marched right into Lord Barhurst’s receiving chambers and demanded that Gelden  immediately release sir Olsen to resume the parlay as originally intended. Naturally Gelden and his advisors laughed at the foolhardy brashness of this overly dedicated squire. Undeterred by their mirth, young Porter promptly challenged the best knight Gelden had to offer to one on one combat, with victory settling both the issue of the captured Olsen and the disputed hill.

    This stifled their humor somewhat. There was some question as to whether Porter had any authority to make such a challenge. It was finally decided that Ben’s distant relation to the king allowed for it. At the very least, Gelden assumed, he had nothing to lose. Clever Ben… always so clever… he made sure that Barhurst signed the terms in the presence of several neutral witnesses. Gelden went on to select sir Tomas Gossle as his champion, a renowned and experienced tourney knight who should have had little trouble dispatching the upstart Porter.

     I’ve heard a number of different versions of the contest between the celebrated Sir Gossle and the unknown squire Ben Porter. Some say it was to be a fight to the death (this is untrue, Sir Tomas would not have agreed to such a combat with an unproven noble youth). Others say the fight lasted hours and is among the most amazing showdowns ever fought, a truly epic melee between genuinely equal warriors. Most accounts, though, suggest the battle was a quick victory for Ben. Whatever else I may reveal to you about Ben Porter, I can assure you that no man was his equal in swordplay. Martial skill came naturally to him and he worked night and day to hone his gifted instincts.

     So it was that a furious Lord Gelden, master of the indomitable Grey’s Tower, was forced to submit to a mere squire, and the legend of Ben Porter was born.

     Sir Olsen, however, was not pleased to have been saved. He was, in fact, humiliated and horrified by the idea of being shown up by a squire. Olsen chose to publicly denounce Ben’s actions and even went so far as to initiate legal proceedings against the validity of the single combat. Sir Tomas, of all people, rose to Porter’s defense and insisted that his loss to the young man was both legitimate and convincing. Sir Olsen’s reputation as a weakling and a coward was sealed, and he finally retired to a post along the southern border, where tales of his shame were less prevalent.

     For his efforts, Ben Porter was knighted by the King himself, then given his choice of assignments. Ben had known Willem from their days as children, and elected to serve his knighthood right here in Misty Vale. As an aspiring soldier, I nearly swooned at the thought of following him into conflict.

    I remember my first tour under his command. Thieves had been hijacking caravans traveling on East road through the Hurnwood. He assembled a small group of veterans and wetbacks and spoke to us about the importance of our mission. I forget the exact words, but I remember the passion he could inspire with his wit and presence.

    “Men!” He said as he jumped up onto a mossy rock just outside the Hurnwood. “Perhaps you are wondering why I am out here with you, dogging lowly bandits, when I could be using this perfect face God gave me to be wetting my member inside any of the many, pretty-faced maidens back at Summerhearth… to tell you the truth I am wondering the same thing! What a hideous bunch of bastards you are!” This drew laughter from the men, relaxing them. To be honest, I felt his humor loathsome. It’s what he said next that stirred my soul. If only these latter words had been the whole of the man.

     “The answer is simple.” He went on, though in a suddenly more somber and intimate voice. “I love my Duke and his Duchess, the Lady Caelynn. I love them as though there is nothing else in this world to love. Maybe these thieves are no great threat to the kingdom, but these ’men’ have threatened the safety and sanctity of Willem and Caelynn’s domain. They terrorize the Vale and therefore terrorize those who rule it…. And by doing that they have terrorize me.  Men who threaten me, whether they realize it or not, have in fact decided to forfeit their own lives. Perhaps they mean to challenge me. I doubt it though. More likely they think themselves too small to draw my notice, and believe they can skirt my knife by slinking around like mice in a dark kitchen.” He stood silently for a moment, looking like the statue of some ancient, thoughtful hero. “If you wish to serve in my company, then know this… There is no crime too minor to punish! There is no stain too small to subject to the lye of our blades! My charge will be pure! If your word to your Lord and Lady is likewise pure, you will see it as I do, and give yourself over to every task as though the very ascension of the sun depended upon it! For the Duke! For the Vale!”

     As he hopped down, the men echoed the final words of his speech. Ben soaked in their adulation like it were a warm bath. And I was among them. His crudeness aside, Sir Ben Porter was, at that moment, everything I had ever hoped a knight would be.

    Though stressed by the years of familiarity, my perception of Ben had not yet fractured come the bloody day that Knightslayer awakened upon the Vale. With the Kyrdur butchered and steaming, the Duke weeping like a babe, and all the other men cowering and quivering behind whatever cover they could find, only one man beside me had the strength to face our sin, made manifest and terrible right before us. When I saw him, grim and undaunted,  I knew in my heart I would be glad to follow him into death, so long as it meant confronting the creature and all that had summoned it upon our lands. As a man truly should when his transgressions are revealed.  

    Such is the power of certain illusions that we sometimes consider dying for them, though they may be nothing but a dazzling gold cloth draped over the shabby and decayed furniture a long abandoned home.


Chapter nine: The Dragon

    He came upon the Vale in a vengeance of ash and ice. First to fall were the Shawe, Colby, and Hobson farms. All of these homes were situated along the north ridge of the valley, just under the looming and jagged majesty of the Cuhl mountains. Knightslayer had decided to set a perimeter around his lair, and the markings he left to define his boundaries were such that no man could mistake their intent.

    We rode to the Shawe’s place first, after a neighboring farmer reported to us that he’d seen the creature circling the skies overhead and black smoke rising from their lands. Duke Willem joined the company of knights, guardsmen and foot soldiers set to confront the matter, though it was apparent that Sir Porter had been charged with actually running the investigation. It was an eerie and unsettling ride, the air sweltering with midsummer heat while the frozen ground beneath our horses hooves crunched and shattered with each tentative step.

    The sight of the Shawe farm itself only amplified the horror. Their barn was little more than a smoldering pile of wood coated in a thin sheen of ice. Of their ranch house, only the walls remained, likewise glistening with fresh snow, but blackened and charred underneath. The bodies of the entire family - including the women, and children - lay scattered about, some complete, some torn into small, barely recognizable parts. It took a moment to understand what we were seeing. Their bodies had been razed to ash, then frozen somehow in the very act of falling, so that their limbs and heads reached up from the ground as if some mad sculptor had shattered, than half buried, his collection of tormented statues. It was a garden of death, a captured image from the worst our nightmares could hope to offer.

    Duke Willem would not approach the destruction, electing to study it and us from afar as we crept among the dead. A few of the men lost their breakfast before staggering away like a wounded deer unable to grasp the reason for it’s pain.  I admit I found the scene deeply unsettling, but I held my resolve and kept pace with the solemn Ben Porter and the man he’d summoned to assist his effort, Baron Mikal Lund. Mikal fancied himself an expert on matters of archaic legend and sorcery, and nothing ever seemed to  trouble him. Not like me, who always cared too deeply. His emotional disinterest in the drama’s of Misty Vale made him an ideal confidant when my time to rule came at last.

    Mikal wound through the bodies and part of bodies, the black robes he always wore fluttering gently about his booted feet. He crouched next to a hole where the Shawe’s ranch house had once stood. “How interesting.” He said, more to himself than to us. He had only given a cursory glance to the mutilated forms splayed across ground, and somehow found a whole more intriguing than the carnage. I had to admit, I was impressed with his focus. “You should see this, Sir Porter.” I could see even from here a sparkle in grey eyes, an excitement all the death could not awaken.

    Ben tore his attention from the frozen corpses and joined Mikal in the heart of the wreckage. My own curiosity peaked to see Mikal so intrigued. Having little to offer the dead, I followed Ben to where the Baron knelt, his fingers tapping eagerly in an open steeple.
  
    The ground had been torn apart here, and mounds of frozen were piled haphazardly all around us as though a huge dog had decided to bury its bone here before quitting mid dig and wandering off. Gold and copper coins littered the area, glinting in the frozen mud, and pieces of a burnt and shattered chest lay strewn about as if it had been dropped from some great height.
  
    “So looters got here before us. They shall be dealt with in their order.” Ben concluded from the scene.

    “Ben.” Mikal said as if speaking to a wide eyed child. “Why would looters leave so much gold behind?”

    “Perhaps they were in a hurry.” Ben offered, suddenly not so sure.

    “It was the dragon.” I mumbled.
  
    Mikal nodded, but Ben only blinked in confusion. “Why would a dragon want gold?” He asked.

    I looked at him, and felt a sudden surge of consequence. All at once those grand and magical stories my Grandfather had shared with me came flooding to life with newfound purpose and authority. “It doesn’t want the gold.” I said simply. “It  took only the silver.”

    “Exactly!” exclaimed Mikal. “It’s Garret Moore, correct?”

    I nodded, proud to have been noticed by a man who, at this time, was my better. 
  
    “It still makes no sense.” Ben stated flatly. “Why would a dragon want silver.”

    Mikal clasped his hands and approached Ben. I joined him, suspecting I might lend some weight to what the Baron had to say. “It is a matter of ancient lore…things I have come across in my old grimoires. Dragons are ’of the land’ as they say. They are made up of the very elements of whatever area they sleep. The Cuhl Mountains have no greater resource than their silver.”

    “You’re saying this thing is made of silver?” Ben asked bluntly and not quite believing.

    “Not exactly...” Mikal began.

    “It eats it.” I interjected. “Sir, my grandfather fought a dragon once. A creature named Blacksun. He told me stories of how it fed upon special kind of green rock -  jade I think - that can only be found in the south. He told me that when the creature was cut, it’s blood was same green color.” 

    “These creatures sleep deep in the heart of the world. They were born there when the world was made and themselves are formed from the same substances… and can only be destroyed by weapons likewise forged and sanctified.” Mikal explained.

    Ben considered this. “So… a blade made of silver could smite this creature?” He asked, his interest rising to match ours.

    “One can never be certain in these matters.” Mikal answered carefully. “But as little as we know, it is our best option. The armor and shield of whoever confronts the dragon should also be imbued with silver… to protect them against…” He said no more, gesturing instead towards the broken and burned bodies all around us.

    Ben  absorbed this information for a few silent heartbeats, turning to where Duke Willem huddled, keeping his safe distance from the terror and brutality of the Shawe farm. “We will ride to the other farms and confirm this pattern.” He declared, his bearing strong and regal. “If it holds form, I will commission arms for myself and those volunteers who are ready to face their death. Then we will purge this villain from our lands.”

    “Should we tell the Duke?” Mikal asked, puzzled by Ben’s presumption of authority.

    Ben pulled himself onto his horse and narrowed his eyes towards the far-off shape of Willem. He spurred the animal forward, careful to guide its footing, and called back to us as he maneuvered through the ruins. “Tell him what you like. His opinion on matters is not long for the world, and his presence in our lives is surely soon to follow.”

    Snow started to fall again as Mikal and I wondered at Ben’s meaning. Instinctively we all turned our eyes upwards, waiting with bated breath for the dragon to take flight once more, and dreading the prospect in the deepest recesses of our fears. Yet the skies remained clear and the land silent, as if the creature had only wished to remind us it was still there, patient and unyielding, and of a mind to drive all hope from our souls.
      

Chapter ten: The Good Duke

    Had I been propped up on my Grandfather’s knee, the fire roaring behind me while the eager eyes of brothers and sisters drank in the mood, the story would have gone more like this…

     ...The good Duke Willem ran his court with a fair and even hand, and oversaw the needs of the people of Misty Vale like an attentive father addressing the hopes of his faithful children. His beautiful wife, the Duchess Caelynn, had graced her lord with many fine children. Their eldest son, Willem the second, displayed even in his youth all the virtues of his father, and people spoke proudly of the possibility that, one day, a Rosan would sit upon the golden throne at the heart of the kingdom.

     Willem’s greatest test as a leader and a warrior came in height of a strange winter, when foul and jealous villains sought to usurp the noble lord of Misty Vale by summoning a ancient dragon from the depths of the earth. These warlocks called the creature Knightslayer, hoping to spawn fear and panic in the nobles and good folk of the Vale. They believed  that Willem would flinch at the thought of facing the beast, but they did not know our lord as we knew him. Without hesitation, he called forth his greatest knights and captains, each answering the appeal with valorous declarations of sacrifice. To the surprise of none, Duke Willem elected to lead the new company of dragon hunters, and took for himself the ensorcelled blade that had been crafted to smite Knightslayer. “By my own hand I will purge this monster from our lands. If I fall, tell my children of my deeds and that I was not afraid of death, and let them lead the Vale in the warmth of my light!” Willem pronounced before he and his men rode forth. 

     The battle was long and brutal. Many selfless knights died in their efforts to corner the dragon. Finally, though burnt and weary, Duke Willem set upon the creature with the last vestiges of his lordly strength, calling on God to see his blade strike true. The blessed sword pierced Knightslayer’s thick scales, then Willem pushed the point deeper, thrusting it through the creatures heart. Each of us knew the moment of the dragon‘s death, for a brilliant light rose up from mountain top lair, and a great warmth suddenly fell upon our farms and vineyards.

     Willem returned to us a day later, wounded but alive. Caelynn rushed to her husband, and he embraced her with his good arm. They kissed in such a way that brought tears to all who witnessed their reunion. “My love for you, my children, and my people kept me strong.” He whispered, yet somehow loud enough for all of us to hear. Smiling, they held each other and nuzzled as cheers and hurrahs rang across the Vale, and we glimpsed for a time the world as it would be in the glow of eternal peace and goodness...

    However, my grandfather is not telling this tale. A few days after returning from the north ridge, and even as new reports of more destruction trickled in, Willem summoned his court for a final proclamation. I arrived as duty demanded, though I was surprised to see that Lady Caelynn was not in attendance herself. I was about to set out in search of her, when I heard it whispered that a missive had arrived from the King himself. I decided to stay, lingering along the wall with the other guards. No one every really noticed us standing there, doing our duty, hearing everything.

    The air had an unusual taste to it that night, a kind of smoky thickness as if we‘d all stood too long near a bonfire. Yet it was the first time in several weeks that clouds had not obscured the stars. Glimpsing the full array of heavens stars made many us believe that good news we all so desperately craved was at hand. Rumor had it that the King was going to send an score of his finest knights to aid us in these dark times, and spirits were high at this thought. My insides remained uneasy despite this talk, for I remembered too well what Ben had said to me amidst the wreckage of the Shawe farm.   

    When I saw the Duke, any trace of optimism was further quashed. Willem looked awful, slouching in his throne like a boneless drunk, his eyes swollen and downcast, and his doublet hanging open and stained from days of wear.  Once the court had filled, Willem waved a lazy hand towards vizier Raphel, who raised a parchment above his fat belly before clearing his throat loudly enough to inspire silence in the gathered nobles.

    “The Duke has prepared a statement, which I read to you now.” He said, speaking as though he were announcing tax revenues.  “Honorable Lords and Ladies of Misty Vale,  a terrible evil has beset our region. When the recent troubles began, I recognized immediately the probable cause of these new terrors. Though I have sincerely and verifiably tasked myself with consummating my union to the Princess Caelynn, these efforts have failed. I seem destined to go on without an heir so long as this marriage endures. Yet this would be but a minor concern were it not for the many other horrors that besiege us. Plague, a cursed family line, and now the appearance of a dragon. These events cannot be unrelated, for to suggest otherwise is to suggest that heaven has abandoned us to chaos and meaninglessness.  No, we must accept that these trials are signs, warnings… and punishment.”

    A ripple of alarm spread through the crowd as they digested the ideas Willem had written for them. Raphel cleared his throat once again, and continued.  “As you know, the law of our land dictates that no noble marriage is fully consummated until a child has been produced from the union. If we are to believe that God shapes our lives so that we can understand his intentions through the outcomes of our choices, then we must acknowledge that my marriage to Lady Caelynn is a violation of holy will. Though difficult at first, I have embraced this truth. To this end,  I wrote the King two weeks ago and sought his permission to annul our union. With the blessing of the church, he has agreed.”

    The crowd gasped, unprepared for such a revelation. Others stood stonefaced - they were the ones who already knew what was coming. Nausea rippled through my stomach and I felt my knees weaken. I had always believed, from the very  beginning of their marriage, that Willem and Caelynn were a perfect match… a symbol we could all look up to in the petty trials of our own lives.

    Vizier Raphel went on, barely raising his voice above the din. “The King, recognizing the damage I have suffered via this failed marriage, has agreed to compensation. To make amends for betrothing me to his flawed daughter, I have been granted Nordin Hold to the far west. As for the Vale, the King has decreed that it shall fall under the rule of a knight protector, to be appointed by me, until such time as the threats to the valley have been suppressed. Lady Caelynn is to be a ward of Summerhearth, her fate and needs to be addressed by whomever comes to rule this land. Some of you will be asked to join me at Nordin Hall, some will not. Those who have been honored with continuing in my court are encouraged to depart this land at their soonest convenience. May God watch over those who remain.”

    Raphel rolled up the parchment and deposited it into the deep folds of his robes, and assumed a bland expression, as though nothing untoward had just happened. The confused murmur grew to a low roar. I looked down and saw that my hands were shaking, though I could not begin to adequately describe what I was feeling. Some of the nobles began shouting, and instinctively my men and I reached for thier swords and gripped their shields that much tighter. I remember motioning for them to hold steady and keep their steel sheathed, lest tenuous atmosphere give way to sudden violence. 

    The duke, lost in his own thoughts, did not appear to care about the swelling outrage drowning the throneroom. His advisors scrambled to calm the nobles, but they outmatched and outnumbered. It was Sir Ben Porter, of course, who rose to the occasion… how I once admired him!
   
    “My Lords and Ladies, calm yourselves!” He yelled.  “Such behavior is unbecoming of your statures!” His green eyes shone in the light of the torches, and he seemed suddenly taller than any other man in the room. They obeyed him! Though most of those assembled outranked him, they followed his commands like willing cattle.

    “Duke Willem informed me sometime ago that I am to be knight protector of Misty Vale. As I speak, notices are being sent to your homes, informing you as to whether you are to remain here or if you are to follow Willem to Nordin Hold. Before you go to learn your fates, know that I have ordered the creation of special armaments to be used against the dragon. On the morrow, these weapons and shields will be ready. Myself, and a select group of our best warriors, will ascend the mountains and seek out the beast. We will kill this dragon and restore peace to our valley. Do not fear if you are to remain here!” 

    Frantic to learn of their destiny‘s, the minor lords of Summerhearth quickly poured from the chamber. None bothered to say farewell to Willem, who anyway had snuck off while Ben was speaking. We have our tales and our wishes about how the great and noble behave and rule, and we have the truth. We all wanted Willem to rise to the moment, to seize his birthright and declare for all the world his intent upon it. Instead he crawled away with barely a peep, hiding behind old laws and the whims of the King. The last I ever saw of the man was his back, his cloak wrapped around his legs as he quietly slipped away from the doubt and fear his cowardly decision had created. 

    “Let no one disturb the peace tonight!” I muttered to my men through gritted teeth. I felt a hot anger swelling in my soul, which I forced down for the sake of the Silver Shield. “We are sworn to the Vale, remember that.” I was nowhere near the speech maker that Ben Porter was, but my words served. Though every bit as bewildered and wounded at the Duke’s sudden retreat as anyone else, the Silver Shield held true to their purpose, and no violence befell the keep.

    Yet my own mind spun in a thousand directions. I could not fathom the betrayal. I could not understand how the vision of a man could be so incongruous with the reality. Then I also thought about Caelynn, and my anger surged again as it wondered about her role in this failing.  My rage carried me away from the throne room and up the winding stairs to her chambers, my fist wrapped tightly around the grip of my sword. As I marched up the steps, my mind a swirl of conflicting parts, I resolved to do whatever was needed to ensure that my image of Caelynn as a kind of perfection did not fall into same trap that my faith in Willem had stumbled into. Better, I thought, that she was dead and untainted, than alive and flawed and pathetically human.


Chapter eleven: The Daylight Pond

    Summerhearth Keep sits high upon Mill’s Knoll, a swollen breast of a hill west of the town proper. The castle itself is a spindly and jagged mess of sharp towers and looming gargoyles. Who first built this place, and why they felt the need to design such a menace, has been lost to the ages. Some say it was not a man at all who erected Summerhearth. They say that one of the strange and forgotten beings that shaped the land before man claimed his plot dreamed up this foreboding place. They say that only man has the humor or the blindness needed to call such a demesne ‘Summerhearth’.

    Man did create the vineyards and gardens surrounding Mill’s Knoll however. Generations of kings once viewed this land as their vacation paradise, and each one of them commissioned their master groundskeepers to carve up their own little parcel of land that they could stamp as their eternal contribution to the beauty of this place. The results are nothing short exhilarating. Each garden is distinct from the other, and to walk them all is to walk through a hundred different worlds, and to know a hundred different selves.

    Yet for all their splendor and diversity, one garden ranks above them all. The Celestial Grotto, as it’s called, is renowned throughout the kingdom as a place of singular perfection. It was conceived by the mad King Jurian some five hundred years ago, a man who believed the fate of all things could be known by reading patterns in the heavens. Jurian saw meaning in the way light and shadow vied for dominance in the night sky. He is the reason the Kingdom still comes to a halt during an eclipse, as his utter worship of those rare days has become an established ritual in all the realms. The Grotto was his true masterpiece however.

    The Celestial Grotto is not truly a cavern, but rather a tightly arranged maze of towering and twisting oaks that form an almost canyon like appearance. Perfectly placed and maintained vines, branches, and statues contribute further to the effect of enclosure, yet even so tight beams of speckled sunlight slice through these ‘walls’ in dazzling formations. The true genius of the grotto is not the flowers and plants themselves, but the sculptures of light and shadow that are fashioned via the placement of these things, and the haunting changes that can occur right before your eyes as the sun shifts in the sky.  Exotic striated mosses cling to the trunks and branches of the trees and their reflecting glow adds fluctuating color to the light carvings. When the sun is low in the horizon, the dance of light and color so overwhelms that one may believe they have seen the very face of God. At the end of the grotto rests the Daylight pond, the culmination of ones voyage through light and shadow. Huge roots bend into the fringes of the inky black waters, while lily pads swirl and spin in slow, hypnotic dances under the slivers and beams of golden sunlight.
   
    I first visited this place when I was seven.  My Grandfather had been honored with an invitation to one of the old Duke’s festivals. Even at that young age I knew enough to be awed, humbled, and moved by the spiritual intensity of the Grotto. I remember dangling my feet just above the lapping water of the pond, afraid to touch it… terrified of what such splendor might do to me…. And yet through the terror I still yearned to reach in.

    There are three goldfish that live in the Daylight Pond, said to be ancient beyond all reckoning. They have lived since the time of King Jurian, and were considered ancient and timeless even back then. Gifted to King Jurian by Eastern sorcerers, these fish were said embody the spirits of ancient and lost Gods. That is why I feared the water, even as I hungered to plunge into those midnight waters. 

    I returned to the Daylight Pond again when I was nine, guest of another party thrown together for reasons long forgotten. I wanted to see the Grotto again, though I had been told it was closed for upkeep that month. I didn’t care. Something had awoken in my young body after that first visit, and I wanted to feel it again. It was an energy born in my loins,  that swam in my stomach in vigorous circles, and sent a flowering warmth to the tips of all my limbs. It was an experience I needed again, so I snuck away from Summerhearth and crept down the lonely southern slope of Mill’s Knoll to where the quiet acres nestling the Celestial Grotto waited.

    The journey was just like before… better even. This time I was alone, my feelings and discoveries unfettered by the presence of others, and in that way more honest. I sometimes wonder if other children are so aware of beauty and passion as I was.  I think not. Wrapped up in their games and toys, none of my childhood friends ever saw the world as I did. Even grown, most give into their petty ambitions and selfish angles and miss the larger meanings. No, I have always been special, and destined for the grand gesture to which I presently confess.  I know now that portions of my future were revealed to me that day. I know now that mad King Jurian was not mad at all, but aware in ways that few of us ever can be. The light spoke prophecy to me that day, and laid out for me the decision I would someday be thrust into making, a choice that would allow me to shape the world into it’s proper form.

    For when I came upon the Daylight Pond that second time, a terrible unease rushed over me and quelled the hoped for warmth. An abrupt chill rushed through the narrow branches and the dancing lights vanished as a cloud swept over the sun.  Suddenly, the Daylight Pond seemed bleak and sterile, and the tress all around me became dreadful sentinels bent on judging all my failures. The beautiful orange glow of the three goldfish, so apparent in the light, became a sickly mottled brown under the swarm of gray clouds. Panic nearly overwhelmed me, and I thought I should flee when a slight motion caught my eye. Resting on a rock near the center of the pond was single small frog. A harmless enough creature in most situations, but a villain and a violation of perfection in this place. It did not belong. I knew this as surely as I knew to breathe, for the winds whispered to me the purpose of this moment and purpose of my life.

    Calm returned, though warmth did not. Fear fled my bones as though a herd being startled by the scent of an approaching wolf. I wadded into the dark water of the Daylight Pond, the water oozing around my thighs like tainted blood. I don’t know why the frog failed to sense my approach, nor why I felt so certain that it could not hope to see me no matter I approached. In a smooth motion I plucked the violation from it’s stolen spot and held it’s limp, waiting form in my grip. It must have known it’s place in the annals of prophecy, for it accepted the inevitable with a kind of bland disinterest. I wrapped both my hands around its body, then I began to squeeze. Even as I felt it’s skin push between my fingers and its bones shatter and splinter, I did not relent. I crushed even tighter, summoning strength and will from places I had not known existed until my hands were clenched in perfect fists, and all that remained of the small frog became a pulped smear on my own hands.

    Quivering, I looked up from the deed and felt the light return, and with it the surge of warmth and power and untold ecstasy I had sought in this second coming. I knew then I was to be a champion for purity and perfection, and that no blemish could flourish so long as my heart and vigilance remained true.    

    Thoughts of this fateful day raced through my mind and soul as I pushed the door to Caelynn’s chamber open. She sat slumped on the ground beneath a wide window, draped in heavy shadow and an orange dress. Only one small torch struggled to keep the room alight, yet I could still tell from here she had been crying. My heart lurched even as I resolved to keep a steady course. I knew what signal to await, and how to act on it.

    Caelynn saw me immediately and stood quickly, but made no other motion. She assessed my presence, and drew an accurate conclusion to my purpose.

    “You blame me for the Duke’s leaving.” She stated bluntly, not bothering to ask what was so obvious. 

    I said and did nothing, waiting under the door frame like a hung effigy.

    “I don’t fault you Garret. I blame myself as well. Do you know what has been in my heart all this time? Did you see what I tried to hide?” She waited, and still I made no motion. Finally, she filled the void herself. “ How could you not see it. Ever faithful Garret… around even when unwanted.”  

    She strode over to me, unafraid, noble to the last. My emotions churned in chaos. She had been forsaken by her father and her husband. She was no longer a princess or a duchess or even true royalty anymore. Just a ward of Misty Vale, the symbol of our failed hopes. Yet the room had not changed. The flickering light from the little torch told me nothing of my destiny, and no cold wind pointed me towards the violation as it had in the Celestial Grotto. She was looking me right in the eyes, but instead of the certainty I had expected from this confrontation, I was instead overwhelmed by her eternal mystery… the sensation she always exuded of knowing something unfathomable and true. 

    She slid to her knees, and pulled her down her dress to reveal her chest to me. “I can live with the guilt.” She said. “But I won’t die begging and screaming. Do what you must.” Her voice wavered only slightly. Such majesty! Even discarded by husband and father she exuded the grace and perfection I had always worshipped so much in life. I drew my sword and set the point to her heart. My loins hardened in the act, and I began to sweat. Where was the telling chill? Instead I burned for her.

    “Did you ever try to love Willem?” I asked, voice shaking as badly as my hand. I wanted to do so many things to her.

    She held my gaze, steady as ever, her eyes so dark and piercing. I felt myself falling into them. “I have loved only one person all my life. And only ever tried to love that one person. Tell the world if you wish, nothing else matters to me anymore.”

    Had the slightest breeze brushed past me at that moment I would have stabbed down. But even with the dragon’s unnatural spell of cold, the air hung hot, heavy, and still.

    I wanted so much and took nothing. There was no clarity with which to make a decision, no cleansing authority dictating my choice. I could not bear responsibility for anything in such an absence, and so I fled. Like the cowardly Duke I ran. I wondered as I scurried away if I were the blemish on Misty Vale. When and where had things gone so wrong? Before I reached the bottom of the spiraling stairs,  I tripped and fell, tumbling several steps before finally rolling into a balled heap. Then I cried. Not from pain, for I felt nothing physical. I cried in despair and confusion and fear. Where had truth and conviction gone?

    As if sensing my broken, questing heart, the dragon suddenly bellowed a terrifying and bone splitting shriek that cascaded and rolled across the whole Vale. My body shuddered as I suddenly came alive again to the sensation of real and true pain.

    As I drew myself up from the ground, assurance crept back into my heart. Whatever else came to be, I would confront the dragon, and learn what secrets it held in the process. Perhaps none, my mind whispered… perhaps none Garret. And what will you do then?

    If there is no truth then I will remove myself from the world. I replied, for death is the last, unquestionable frontier that is totally and completely certain, the one agent which cannot be violated or overcome by any rebellion or doubt. 

    At least in death, the promise of my childhood could be at last made real.


Chapter twelve: The Birth of a Legend

    My silver tipped arrow sliced through the air, striking the dragon’s wing with a bone splitting crack. I had but glimpsed the things shadow racing across the ground near me when instinct took hold and I loosed the wounding shot. The dragon screeched in agony, then began to spiral to the ground in slow, inevitable circles. Ben's plan had worked masterfully!

    The dragon saw must have seen me as it fell. I could not make out much of it’s details against the setting sun, but I somehow sensed it’s intentions and let myself slip  behind a boulder at the last moment. The act saved me, for as I fell behind the rock,  a blizzard of twisting ice erupted from the dragon’s mouth and washed over the other four men I had been banded with. They died instantly, frozen in mid scream, parts of them shattering and breaking in the gusts of the focused winds of the dragons roar. 

    Then it disappeared into the volcano’s mouth, unable to keep aloft on a shattered wing. I looked up the rise to where fire, ash, and snow swam together in a mad jesters dance of elements. Black ice pelted my face and arms, while gouts of brilliant orange lava spurted into the air in rhythmic shoots from within the caldera. Even though it cloaked itself in an aura of frost and winter, the dragon had chosen for it’s lair a seething volcano, an unsettling realization for those of us hunting it. Did we really know this beast? Would silver truly kill it?

    For seven days we had scoured the peaks the and gorges of the Cuhl mountains, seeking signs of where the dragon nested. Twenty brave men comprised the hunting party, a mix of common foot soldiers and knighted nobles under the determined leadership of Ben Porter. Weary, hungry, and cold, it did not matter. We had all volunteered to see this matter resolved, or die trying.

    As the last of our food vanished, a needed sign appeared in the blackness of night. The distant orange glow of an awakened volcano shone like a silent beacon. We could not say why, but to a man we agreed the dragon must be there. In our hearts we knew it to be a creature of the elements, drawn to those places in the world most suffuse with wild and ancient primal energies.

    As we slept that night, nervously huddled around a small campfire like piglets fighting for a spot at a sows teat, I dreamt of Caelynn. In the dream, which I have had many times since, she and I are in a white marble room, though a dense fog hides the walls from sight. Caelynn lies on an alter, most of her white dress torn away, hanging around her waist in tattered loops. Her left leg is bent behind her at an odd angle. Blood oozes from her chest from where my silver sword has impaled her, driven to the hilt. Her face is an odd mix of ecstasy and terror as she moans and grunts to my cadenced thrusting. I feel a rush in my loins  and I sense the approach of total unity. I am in her, one with her, and we are dying together in the act of love.  Always at the very moment of climax I am yanked from this nightmarish pleasure back into the waking world, screaming and sweating.  
  
    “You should not trouble yourself with imagined fears, Garret. They will be real enough on the morrow.” Ben said to me, though his eyes and attention were lost somewhere in the dwindling embers of our campfire. The dim flame cast ugly shadows on his otherwise perfect face, and his fists ground together in anxious knots. Yet there was still great strength in him, a focus Willem had never possessed. He was not a man troubled by his destiny. Perhaps he would have been had he seen it more distinctly.

    I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and sat up. Only Ben and I were awake. The other men, so tired from days of climbing and hunting, slept deeply even as the bitter wind pounded against the flimsy ridge we were using for shelter. Just beyond the low ridge was a drop over a thousand spans, and my legs shook at the mere thought of that edge. Truly we were in a land not meant for men.  

    “I dreamt of the princess. She was in pain.” I said numbly.

    Ben nodded as if he understood what I had see, as if the same images had plagued his mind. I saw little need to add more specifics to my description… I doubted he would understand that. “She’s not a princess anymore.” Ben muttered.

    She is I wanted to say. More than you can know she is. Nobility is more than titles. Instead I bit my tongue and minded my place.

    “You should sleep, my Lord.” I said. “I’ll mind the fire for a while.”

    Ben didn’t move. After a long time in silence, he said to me, “A man shouldn’t face his death with a burdened heart. There are things I would tell someone. Anyone.”

    I was taken aback by this. “I know what you mean?” I asked stupidly.

    “I believe I am the reason the dragon has come to Misty Vale. There are things I have done. Places a man will go when he is in love, especially when that love is returned in kind. I have violated much that is sacred. But for love… is anything more sacred than love?”

    A sudden and profound fear swept over me. I did not imagine I could absorb more admissions and revelations and keep my sanity, yet I longed to know what he would say. I struggled for a long time in that silence, unsure whether to press him or retreat. I sensed he was about to reveal the whole of himself to me when I blurted out. “The dragon is no man’s fault, my Lord. Some things are best kept secret. Once a confession is made, it cannot be unmade.”

    Ben regarded me for a long time, eagerness to speak written on his glittering green eyes. He sighed, bit his lip to quell its’ desire to yield his secrets, and turned his mind to the next days strategy. “We have to assume that once threatened, the dragon will simply take flight. So I will divide us into two groups.” He explained. “I will lead the first group, fifteen men, armed with silvered spears and shields. We will drive the dragon out, make it take flight. I want you to lead the second group, Garret. We will select the four best archers and team them with you. We have thirty silvered arrows. An arrow likely won’t kill it, but perhaps a well placed shot can wound it enough. You will wait, and when you see it take flight, shoot it down. Hopefully the fall will damage it or stun it enough for us to move in for the kill.”

    “Why me?” I asked. “I’ve never been a great archer.”

    Ben grinned. “Remember that day on the river, so many years ago? I do. Your aim is true enough when it counts. I’ve seen how the other men are in the heat of the moment… who they are when the battle rages. Fear clouds their judgment, rattles their attack. But not you. You’re like me… never unsure.”

    “But I am…” I tried to admit.

    “No!” He asserted. “I know a warrior’s heart when I see one. You will lead the second team.”   

    I nodded slightly, accepting the unexpected commission without further protest. I was bothered by idea that I possessed a warriors heart. Such a statement simply felt wrong. I couldn’t articulate it, but my place in a legend seemed elsewhere.

    He got up and clasped me on the shoulder. “I trust you Garret. I don’t know why, but I do. I’ll sleep now. Rouse us at first light.”

    So I did.

    Later that day, after climbing the steep face of the gray and craggy volcano, and as the fading light of dusk settled over the range, Garret’s team beset the dragon. From below, I could not see the initial skirmish, but the screams of the dying told me some of the story. One man, whose face I could not discern, was flung from the mountain, crying in terror as he flailed helplessly and fell to the valley floor far below. Again and again the dragon roared as it unleashed it‘s murderous ice spray, and each time the mountain shook and rolled.

    I was regaining my footing when another terrible howl rent the air, and the dragon’s shadow crossed my eyes. My arrow came free without a moments thought as instinct took over. It was exactly how Ben had imagined, how my grandfather had described in his stories all those years ago. My warriors heart shone through, and I clipped the dragon exactly where it mattered most, sending it crashing back to the waiting spears and swords of Ben’s group, though it cost the lives of the other archers I had been asked to lead. 

    Unsure how many of Ben’s squad still lived, I resolved to see the matter through myself. As I scrambled up the slope, I imagined so many futures, so many heroic returns. The legends of my shot would ring through the ages, and the land would be restored…

    Restored to what? I wondered as a sudden and telling coldness seized my soul. What exactly are you saving, Garret? A voice within me asked. It was mine, to be sure, but calculating and cool and somehow also utterly broken by the lies, failures, and shortcomings of those I had once worshipped, those whom I had once believed to be shining emblems of that was good and purposeful in the world.

    That thought plagued my mind as I crested the ridge. The cold doubt I had felt in the Celestial Grotto was screaming at me to reconsider my intent while the brilliant, shining warmth of clear action remained absent from all senses.
  
    Then I saw the dragon, close and alive, and certainty returned.

    It clung to the rocky, blackened ground of the volcanic cauldron in a kind of regal lions posture. It’s scales glistened in undulating patterns of green and blue that reminded me so much of the dancing colors of the Grotto. It’s silver eyes shone like reflecting pools of pure light, while wings of leathery white gossamer beat rhythmic gusts of churning wind. It’s snout was sleek and narrow, rowed with spotless ivory teeth while it’s chest heaved with vitality and strength.

    Snow and ash still twisted through the air as geysers of lava shot into the sky behind the dragon, bathing it‘s graceful form in scintillating fluctuations. All around lay the bodies of dead and dying soldiers, some torn limb from limb, others shattered ice sculptures like my archer companions below. Of the fifteen sent to melee with the creature, only Ben Porter remained, dancing around the dragon’s bites and ducking behind his silvered shield when it tried to blast him with it’s chilling breath. He was an artist.

    But the dragon was art. I had hoped all my life to behold something so pure and perfect, so untainted by the petty imperfections of our miserable human lives. I could see it’s mind in it’s gleaming eyes, and knew the dragon’s function with the kind of clarity and had occasionally once known in my own actions, before doubt clouded my world. It killed without remorse or hesitation, and took as it pleased without regard for anything but it’s own pleasures and whims. The dragon, I realized, was not a product of nature… it was the living embodiment of divine innocence, a being that would not house guilt or reservation.

    It was the very essence of every child’s tale. Knights and kings and princesses had all my life shown themselves to be less than their myths. Corrupt, miserable, soiled… heroes only in their minds. The dragon was true nobility, the thing that the best of us could only hope to perceive, and never truly dream of achieving.

    And at that moment Ben Porter was killing it. Each feint and jab brought him closer to the dragon’s underbelly. His sword, a masterwork weave of silver and steel, would in a few short movements be positioned to strike the killing blow. He truly was a marvel among men, a warrior unequaled.

    Yet he was also just a man, ready a few hours earlier to spoil his clean image with unneeded confessions over his failings, his sins, his insipid guilt. How I wondered in that heartbeat of a decision what he had wished to tell me. I think I knew. Why else would the midwife ask me about the eyes of Caelynn’s miscarried baby? Who else had eyes as striking and distinct as Ben Porter? It didn’t matter. Doubt was a thing of the past. I had found my perfection, and I would not let it die.

    Exactly with the calm that Ben had hoped for, I drew an arrow and let it loose. To be certain, I strung and fired another. It didn’t matter. Both hit with flawless accuracy.

    Ben looked up, stunned and horrified at the sudden appearance of two arrows plugged into his chest. He saw me, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open, and his spirit utterly broken by the shock. It troubled me to see him that way, so I fired a third arrow, clipping him in the shoulder. He spun, tripped on a rock, and careened into the volcano’s throat, uttering no sound as he disappeared over the side and into the fiery core of the dragon’s lair, carrying whatever secrets he owned with him.

    As if waiting for this moment all along, the dragon blinked once and heaved in a slow exhalation of tension. It swung it’s head to me in a graceful, knowing arc and beckoned me closer with its eyes.

    Unafraid, I climbed down and stood before the dragon. Its stature grew as I approached, each step making it more a god. I fell to my knees and wept with joy as it extended it’s wings for me, for I beheld all the glory that the world could ever hope to offer.

    Knightslayer was born in that moment. The label belongs to me, and always has.


Epilogue: The Eternal King and Queen

    I spent some time on the mountain with the dragon after that, tending to it’s wounds as I tried to atone my sin of attacking it. We nurtured each other up there, the dragon healing my tormented heart while I cared for his wing. In the many years that have followed Porter’s death, I have never missed a chance to visit my regal lord. When the silver toll is collected each month, it is I who brings the levy to my master. Who else could be trusted with such a task? Who else would the dragon accept, for I am his most loyal servant. Even on these old bones I make the trek, for life holds little joy besides these visits.

    When I returned to Summerhearth I told the remaining nobles that it was the dragon who had claimed Porter’s life. I had to lie, for I also told them I could appease the creature with offerings of their silver. In this way I protected Knightslayer, for few men were willing to attempt what the mighty Sir Ben Porter died trying. Who would hesitate to kill me if they knew the truth? No one. Then the dragon might die too, and I could not accept that.

    They awarded me knighthood and protectorship of the Vale for my efforts and my deception. By doing so, they awarded me Caelynn as well. Though sullied, I still yearned for her in my own particular way. I can cherish at least what she once was to me. Her extreme sorrow at the news of Ben’s death added weight to my belief that she had loved him, but that didn’t really anymore. I had what I have wanted, even if her agreeing to marry me came against her will. Over time, she has warmed to me and forgotten her soiled past. The dragon is a thing to worship from a far, distant and pure. Caelynn is my earthly possession, the thing to soak up my worthless humanity. We take from each other all the pleasure we can, and I feel now we have come to need each other. What else could a man’s love be?   

    Yet her spirits and health are not holding up against the pervasive cold. Each year the spell grows stronger, and creeps further into the world. Would be heroes have arrived intent on ending the curse. I am careful to welcome them each, taking my time to assess their worth. They are all little frogs in their hearts. A dash of poison in their stores has always proven sufficient to see that their efforts to kill Knightslayer fail. If I must decide between Caelynn and the dragon, then the choice is easy.

    Soon she will be at death’s door, and I will be too old to make any more journeys, save one. When that day arrives - and it is close - I will take her up into the Cuhl mountains with me. I will show her the dragon and read this confession to her, and perhaps at that time she will unfurl her dark and shrouded mind for me. Perhaps we will at last be pure together, as husband and wife should be.

    Then I will take her to a place on mount Dargard, a steep and treacherous spike overlooking the entirety of Misty Vale. There is a nook shaped into the  point of that mountains peak, a kind of throne almost. My families old farm, the village, Summerhearth keep, and the Celestial Grove are all visible from that looming seat. I will set us both upon it, side by side like king and queen, and let the killing winter spell of Knightslayer consume us. In time it will freeze the Vale as well, and maybe the world when all is done. So be it. What better for the land than to be blanketed in immaculate white for all eternity?

    There is nothing so haunting in its beauty and innocence than a new snow. As the land cools and the rivers come to a halt, and the winds give way to a burgeoning stillness, a peace will fill the Vale, pouring forth from where I sit with my timeless bride. If our sight-lines are traced to the valley floor, you will find our gaze settling upon a small frozen pond set at the end of beautiful forest corridor. Within that pond will be the three goldfish whose sanctity I preserved once as a child and again as a man, entrenched in ice for all time, unmoving and unsullied by the vulgarities of man and nature. And from that point will flow a warmth and a glow, a blazing white brilliance expanding in all directions as it flows inward and outward through the apex of creation, opening a path to the faultless opposite of an unending, pristine winter.