3A/N: Thanks to LunaFireJuggler for reviewing
Chapter 3
The fourth spring since my capture glowed with green warmth and birds' songs.
Each day was another repeat of the same routines. I watched the daylight move the shadows outside my cell and reminisced and regret.
Home. Where was it any more? The Caverns I knew echoed with songs of prayer, of love, of healing and of life's celebrations. Now it was but a broken shell, gouged out by the Drakians and filled with pall silence, its shining people recruited into the barbarian's war with the southern lands as mere slaves. The war was over but we are scattered and encaged, tainted with the blood we spilled for our 'masters'.
How many of us left? How many killed? Where were the ones I used to know and loved?
There was a constant ache in my heart whenever my thoughts turned this way. Even air felt heavy, flowing sluggishly in and out of my body. Every sensation was numb after the first few months, and except the constant cold burning from the collar on my throat, the testament to my cowardice, it had stayed that way. If I was as brave as I was supposed to be, I would have killed myself long ago to deprive the barbarians of the pawn for their 'mutual agreement'.
But I was not brave. So I lived with my scars.
I got up and did my usual round of the room. My thoughts have gotten much too weighty for me to sit any longer. I went first to the window, the dimensions only big enough to fit my face and half of my shoulders, careful not to touch its iron bars. I placed my hand on the worn ledge and studied it in the warm sunlight. I moved my fingers and marveled at how the bones strained against my transparent skin. It was a small gesture, a confirmation that I was alive, because sometimes I felt as if I was just a ghost haunting this tower. I looked enough like such a one. The whispers of my keepers said so.
I gazed down the lengths of the fortress' roofs. The back courtyard, where the stables, smithies, and kitchens were, was right under my tower's small opening. The tiny figures of Drakian slaves and servants were always rushing about on some errands, and if I pretended hard, I could imagine it was the Caverns on Feast day…
My eye caught on a figure emerging into the yard and I snatched back from my only link to the world outside. He was headed here. There was no other reason for him to cross the commoner's courtyard accompanied by his personal guards and retinue.
Emotions boiled up inside me, and I trembled at their force. I thought I had lost them long, long ago but it seems there was still some in me yet.
A knock snatched me back from the waves and I found myself gasping for air. How strange. Just a little while ago I was barely breathing, now there was not enough of it in the cell to fill me.
"My L-lady?"
A wobbly treble sounded behind me. I did not even notice the cell door opening. But it was only her, not him. I obediently stepped away from the window. For some reason the notion of me going anywhere near it seemed to terrified her.
The servant girl entered the cell, the door clanged shut, and she started on her chores. There was nothing to clean beside my floors, private area, and bed, but she went about it with all the determination in her small body, scrubbing furiously on her knees. She was a plain creature, this tiny Drakian girl, and nervous around me, but she was all I had besides the jail guards for human contact.
I kept away from her, more for her comfort than mine, and stood in the corner wedged between my small bed and the wall. I studied her face closely for the first time, though she has been coming to my cell for a few months now, after the old woman who used to do her tasks became too old to climb the flights of stairs to my lofty palace, weighed down with buckets of water and cleaning apparatus. I missed her nonsense chatter to herself. It was how I learned so many things in the first place.
I went back to studying the girl. She was no more than a child really, just coming into adolescence. Was it something more than nervousness I saw in her tight lips? I could not even begin to think of a cause for such a reaction. I had tried to appear harmless and not provoke her, and I had a reason to believe her apparent unease was not because of my different colorings or race. Maybe she was just afraid of a lot of things.
A memory occurred to me. It seemed some of the wardens were bragging they were guarding a dangerous monster up in the tower, capable of killing on sight if someone met its eyes. So. I was this "monster" in their tall tales. It would explain why the girl was always looking down all the time and trying to make herself look smaller: to escape my gaze.
I could not help it. I laughed. Even if my throat burned and pain made my voice hoarse, I laughed. Here on my prison's floor scrubbing tiles was a citizen of the mighty Drakonian Empire, who had thoroughly conquered the supposedly deadly race who could kill with just a look, and she was flinching away from the sight of me draped in nothing but tatters, curling into herself. Ridiculous.
Tears dropped onto the floor. Why was I crying?
But it was too much. Why? What ever did we do to deserve such a fate, such fear in the eyes of an innocent child?
Our songs of prayers were turned into songs of carnage. We were "useful weapons". Was that the purpose of our lives then? To end more lives to enriched others? To know how they preached about our "wicked powers", how they called us "beasts", "monsters", killing without mercy, needing to be controlled…Gods…
I turned and pressed even further into my corner. If only I could pass through walls like a real ghost, I would fly from this place. In this tiny iron-barred box, chained as I am, I could not even die with my fellow brethrens. To be there for them like I was supposed to…I was stupid to want more. Now there was not even a single person I could apologize to, not that it would do more than satisfy my own crushing guilt.
The door swung open violently and the sound of several pairs of feet tramped into my cell. I heard the guards barked the order for the girl to get out, a scuffling of feet and slosh of bucket, and the sound of her fumbling feet faded away down the stairs.
I rubbed my eyes dry, turned, and tried to stop the hole in my chest from quivering. Why did he have to have Sigdrom's bearings and eyes? My four years worth of homesickness crashed down on me all at once, and my knees would have crumpled if I had not been against the wall.
I stared into his eyes and willed my knees to straightened, he was not my cousin. Was not, was not, was not…
It was awhile before I noticed his moving lips and heard his voice. My ears convinced me when my eyes could not, and my resolve steadied.
He was speaking. Only 'speaking' was not the word any of our people would ever use to describe our speech. 'Humming', 'whistling', 'crooning', 'chanting', 'trilling', any other word but speaking. There was nothing in his voice to tell me what he was feeling. It was like listening to a drone of bees, except even bees had different notes to say when they were looking for honey and when they had found some.
Sigdrom would never degrade his Bishop rank to such graceless form of our language.
"- glad to see you are well. I have come personally to bequeath unto you a task of grave importance. This following midsummer will be held on this ground of New Kalaise the finest Tourney in the history of the Holy Drakonian Empire. This celebrated event will be attended by such distinguished personages as the Imperial Crown Princess Dailorrossa Drakonia, along with such lords and ladies who made up her retinue. In her honor, for on that day will also be her Imperial Highness' day of birth, you shall sing a song of celebration."
He snapped his fingers, and one of his attendants handed him a scroll. "Use this poem as the base for your song. I leave the melody to you, songbird. And do not forget," he continued tonelessly as I refused to take the scroll from his hand, "I am lord of this place, and you are mine, and the Empire's, to command."
At the end of his words my binds contracted and I bit my lip to avoid screaming as an audible hissed of burning filled the room.
"Take it, before your wrists are beyond repair." he ordered in that maddening voice. How could he have been so ruthless, when he of all people should know how excruciating the pain of these banes was on us? I hated him so intensely at that moment. I wished I really could kill by sight.
But what was the use? I was powerless with my collar on me, burning, burning my skin off my hollow bones. More tears involuntarily slid down my cheek as I reluctantly lifted up my thousand-year heavy hand, manacled and dangling the chains linked to my shackles. He placed the scroll on my shuddering palm, and I noted even through the haze of red how he took care not to brush even a fraction of my skin. Was he Paired already? Impossible.
The burning intensified suddenly. It tore my mind away from everything else, and nothing exist other than the crimson lances of pain stabbing through my eyes, my throat, all my limbs. I collapsed on my small bed, to found out I was unabashedly screaming, even though I did not even remember when I had started to, and had only noticed it when I had to stop. I willed my hands to still and clutched instead on the blanket, almost tearing the flimsy material to pieces. There was no use in writhing, and clawing at the binds would aggravate the wounds. I learned that lesson the hard way. The only thing I could reasonably do was to pass out, and I followed my own advice well.
I was alone again by the time I woke. The pain had subsided. It was a mixed curse, this body of mine. Even if at times I wanted to never wake up again, whenever I woke and took my first conscious breath, I would be relieved. My own body betrayed me by wanting to stay alive.
Outside, night was fingering the last vestiges of blue from the sky and the air was pleasantly cool. I concentrated on the soothing effect it had on my burns, and on gathering back my tattered sanity.
Singing for the princess? The mere notion of it revolted me, but at least…at least I would be able to sing. It was too long, much too long ever since I have spoken words of any kind aloud, much less to sing them. No doubt, I will be under lock and key and chained till I could not move even a fingernail, but I could sing. This may even diminish the feeling of emptiness in my soul. God and Goddess, Lord and Lady of the Sky, I will dedicate this song to you, not to this foreign woman who may not even appreciate the grace of songs You gave to us.
An echo of feet heaving up the stairs floated to me on the evening breeze. I did not pay it much attention. Just a change of the watch coming up with the night torch, I thought.
Sure enough a wavering glow of orange light sifted through the cracks of my door. But what came next caught me off guard. The torch's warm fire suddenly suffused my cell. The door was open.
I sat up and stared. The girl stood nervously, her face down and shadowed in the doorway. Why was she here again with a bucket? Did she not clean my room to his satisfaction earlier?
She was holding a candle, in addition to a small bundle tucked under her arm. This she lit from the torch and carried inside. The door closed behind her with a firm bang and was locked. The guards resumed their positions silently as if nothing was amiss, as if this evening visitation was something regular.
Was it? What was she doing here?
The girl was still for a moment, visibly taking deep breaths from her climb, then she set down the candle resolutely on my small table, turned sharply toward me, and with head still down, stuttered out, "My L-lady, ah – I – I was t-told to give you a b-bath."
A bath? I snorted. So I was too pungent for his lordship? Well, being imprisoned could have that effect on a person's cleanliness.
"I w-was also given a key for your c-collar, M-my Lady. Y-you are to p-practice for the Tourney at n-night only."
Her teeth were chattering and I could barely make out her words, but a key to my collar? Surely I was dreaming this one-sided conversation, or the lord must have been severely inebriated, to have turned this generous in mere hours since I last saw him. Was it a trap? But why would he do that, when it was he who told me to sing in the first place?
"I w-was also t-told to tell you: I am d-deaf and the g-guards will b-be plugging t-their ears whenever you are w-without your c-collar."
She was deaf? I wondered if it was true. But I saw how she ignored the snickering of the guards whenever she had her back to them. Maybe it was not that she was impervious to them, maybe she really could not hear.
My heart went out to her. To not be able to hear the graces of the Gods? No one, even if they were Drakians, deserved such a mete of fate.
But such precaution was to be expected from him, after all these years it would hardly do to give me a chance to escape now. It was precisely why the given time to practice aloud was wholly unexpected. It was a small blessing this Tourney, even if I loathed being grateful to such a man, even worst, the Drakian princess.
I allowed her to approach and held myself straight as she wielded her tiny key like a sword. She was afraid of me, but I had to admire the girl for her dedication. Her fingers shook and her lips trembled as if she were intensely cold as she struggled with the padlock, before I remembered to avert my eyes. After a few moments I felt a click and the weight of the world lifted.
I was free of my sorrows, if only for the few hours of the night.
The girl backed away fast. Did she perhaps expect me to strike her down? It did not matter anymore. I could taste the sweet night fully now, even if the crisp nectar of it was in no way similar to my mountain home's. I took deep breaths, and wondered if my lungs were the same as before. Have I ever felt this full? I had forgotten the marvelous freedom of singing uninhibited. Ah…
All was naught, and naught was in my mind as I began. It was always a joy to let Them guide your voice. But before long I recognized what I was Singing, and another fresh tear rolled down my cheek. My Pair who will never be, where were you now?
I imagined the wind carrying my voice away across unknown expanses of distance, and dared my self to hope again.
A/N: Angst galore in this chapter...sorry about that folks. I think I'll alternate between the different characters till they all finally meet up, then switch to third person POV.