Ten days of struggle was all Lenore Shaeton could take. Her screams had vacated her halls. The same, however could not be said for her lord husband’s head. As Isen Shaeton rode down to the shore unaided and unguarded with a bundle of bloody blankets in one arm; her cries, moans and screams haunted him like the crisp chill of death.
He was deaf to his horse’s rhythmic canter, soft and squelchy. He was blind to the unseasonable mist that hung over the road like ghostly curtains. He heard only shrill wails that filled his castle and drowned out the rolling thunder that brewed over the bay. He saw only thin hands with translucent skin gripping white sheets. Red. Her blood made them red. Darker than the richest wine in his cellar. The image flashed before his eyes like the lightning that chopped up the sea on those long unending nights.
And he felt a stone lodged in the back of his throat; a dam holding back an endless river of tears as his world fell down around him.
…
It was his beach. He resided over it from his cliff-side castle and drank with the taxes he imposed upon sailors and merchants who made port in the bay. I’ve been making too little and drinking too much as of late, he reflected. It was true. Isen Shaeton had fine tastes when it came to wine and the like – he preferred the finest from Golden Grove. But Golden Grove wine was expensive, even with the dodged import fees. Then I have a cellar full of liquid gold.
The sea lapped upon the small stretch of sand that was kept private for his own personal use. Salt lingered in the air and the waves whispered with a cold voice that drew Shaeton in like a succubus. One moon sat upon the horizon while the other floated in a sea of stars. They made the ocean shimmer in a cold blue way – the way crystals shimmer in dark caves or the way the diamonds around Lenore’s neck shimmered on those short summer nights. She was a diamond, he thought. Beautiful but hard. Unbreakable. But in the end, she was no goddess. In the end she broke, the gods, the real gods, had decided to make it so. Broken... No. Murdered… By a child.
The Dark and the Light had agreed that Lord Isen Shaeton had to be taught some humility. During the solstice storm, they allowed a demon to claw its way from her womb. Biting and chewing like some parasite. And a parasite it is. His jaw clenched, as if preparing for an amputation. Upon the night of the summer solstice, it was not unheard of, frankly it was normal, for the Light, to take a mother and leave in her stead a child when he warred with the Dark in the clouds above.
He tied up his horse and sat upon a rock. The wind was gentle. It slithered through his hair; the mournful caress of his lost love Lenore. How could she leave him? Leave him with this… He looked down into the blankets. He found those eyes. Those twin yellow flames that he first saw between her legs; burning bright with malice. Nails that were deathly black raven beaks at the end of stubby fingers the colour of untempered iron. The demon spawn clawed and gnawed, setting free fountains of blood; bathing their marriage bed.
After setting the child down, he unbuckled his sword belt, shed his shirt and kicked off his boots. It had not screamed, he reflected. Perhaps Lenore screamed for the both of them. What had he done to displease the True Two? There were plenty lords, he knew, that did not waste their time with pray in the Bithel and they had not been cursed with a demon for an heir.
His feet sank into the damp sand and he remembered the wet summers when she complained with a smile about his northern rains. And when they used to lay in the sand with the sea for a blanket. And when they stole moments under the peer when his lordly responsibilities were not so lofty. His memories rolled down his cheek in a shiny moonlit diamond.
He rolled his trouser legs up to his knees and untied his hair, before once more taking the blankets in his arms. How could the light do this? To me? To her? Step by step, he made his way to the lapping waves. Shaeton had never been much of a sailor but he could admire the beauty of the endless ocean as much as any man could. Perhaps he has damned me. Saw it fit to let the Dark have his way with me. His blood froze as the water gripped his legs. It still whispered to him like- Lenore. She had been taken yet she was as godly as anyone. He remembered the way her voice chorused with the bells at ceremonies. Perhaps there is no Light God after all. Perhaps there is only the Dark, and I hold his son in my arms.
The priests of the True Two had always said that; when one lights a candle, one also casts a shadow. But Shaeton seemed to find shadows everywhere he looked, even when no candle was in sight.
Comments