Dennis McKiernan - Once upon a Spring morn

Celeste raised her torch and approached the girl to find she cast no shadow, though there was a thin line of darkness at her feet that shifted slightly as the torch moved about. “Is it Avelaine?” asked Celeste.

Roel knelt before the maiden and whispered,

“Avelaine?”

The demoiselle looked up, yet there was no recognition in her eyes, and she cast her face in her hands and wept on.

Celeste looked at Roel, a question in her eyes, and he nodded and glanced down at Coeur d’Acier and stepped well back and murmured, “Oh, Mithras, do not let her speak.”

In that moment, Celeste gasped and pointed, where on the wall a huge celestial astrolabe slowly turned, the large disks of the golden sun and silver moon and the smaller disks of the five wandering stars-red, blue, yellow, green, and white-all creeping in great circular paths.

“Roel, look, the disk of the moon is nigh all black. ’Tis but a faint silver line remaining, and even it is disappearing.”

“We must hurry, for mid of night is upon us,” said Roel.

Frantically Celeste looked about, her eye lighting on the golden rack. “Can this be her shadow?” asked Celeste, reaching for the dark garment. But her hand passed through; she could not grasp it.

“It must be,” said Roel. “It looks just like the one the Changeling Lord had draped over his arm.” Celeste frowned in puzzlement. “If we cannot even touch it, then how do we restore it to her form?” Roel frowned and looked at the golden rack and then his face lit up in revelation. “Celeste, the Fate-given gifts!”

“Oui!” cried Celeste, and she set her bow aside and took the three gifts in hand: the golden tweezers and spool of dark thread from her pocket, and the silver needle from her silken undershirt.

With the golden tweezers and their very rounded, blunt ends, she found she could take hold of the shadow on the rack.

But when she tried with her fingers to pluck the loose end of the wispy dark thread from the obsidian spool, she could not grasp it either. Once again she used the golden tweezers, and with some difficulty, she managed to thread the silver needle. Then she lifted the shadow from the rack and moved it to the thin line of darkness at Avelaine’s feet, and after comparing one with the other, she turned the shadow over to mate with the line.

And on the wall the astrolabe showed a black moon with but a trace of silver remaining, and it began to disappear.

Taking a deep breath and praying that she had gotten things right, Celeste began to stitch, the seam sealing perfectly as she went.

Roel stepped to the door to stand ward, only to hear a distant rising and falling of an incantation echoing down the hallway.

“Celeste,” he called quietly, and when she looked up, he glanced at the astrolabe where but a faint glimmer remained. “Someone is chanting. . mayhap the Changeling Lord. If so, it might be to entrap Avelaine’s soul forever, for mere moments are left of time. I must stop him ere it falls, but you must continue sewing.” Celeste paused in her stitching and glanced aside to make certain her bow was in reach, and then she nodded and whispered, “Go,” and began sewing again.

With Coeur d’Acier in hand, Roel stepped quietly along the corridor toward the chanting. Past doorways he trod, and he turned at a cross-hall, the sound growing louder. Down the passage before him, an archway glowed with wavering light, and as he approached, a brief flare of brightness glared through the portal, followed by the boom of thunder. At last Roel came to the entry, and it led into a grand room bare of furniture, with a great, round skylight centered overhead. Again a stroke flashed through the sky and starkly lit the entire room, thunder crashing after. But the storm above was not what caught Roel’s eye, for there in the flickering candlelight, with his back to the door, in the center of the chamber at the edge of a circle engraved in the floor with five black candles ringed ’round, each joined by five straight lines forming a pentagonal shape, the Changeling Lord stood with his arms upraised, and he chanted, invoking some great spell.

Running on silent footsteps, across the broad floor sped Roel, his sword raised for a strike. But ere he reached the Changeling Lord, in the circle appeared a tall, thin, black-haired woman, dressed in a dark flowing gown. And her imperious face twisted in rage, and she shrieked, “You!”

But it was not the Changeling Lord who evoked her venom, for, even as the lord turned to see Roel hurtling forward, the woman raised a black-nailed hand, and with a gesture she spat a word.

And Roel was frozen in his tracks, and try as he might, he could not move.

Sneering in triumph, the woman started forward, but the lines on the floor seemed to stop her. She looked down at them and with a negligent wave, as if flicking away a fly, she stepped out from the pentagon, out from the circle, and, with but barely a glance at the Changeling Lord, she strode past him and toward her impaled victim: Roel.

Reckonings

A s the woman stopped before Roel and looked him up and down and smiled wickedly, “I did not expect you, Nefasi,” said the Changeling Lord.

“Then why did you summon me, Morgrif?”

“I did not summon you by name, Nefasi, but rather I summoned this one’s deadly enemy, for he is a most leathal foe.”

Nefasi laughed. “Indeed, I am his deadly enemy, for he set back my revenge against Lord Valeray.” At the name Valeray, the Changeling Lord’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “He, who is most responsible for the defeat of Lord Orbane?”

“Oui, Morgrif, the very same. And this fool twice kept me from seizing one of Valeray’s get: Celeste.” Nefasi turned to Roel and put a hand behind her ear in a pretense of listening. “What’s that you ask? How did you interfere? Pah! You fool, ’twas I who sent the brigands to capture Princess Celeste, Valeray’s youngest spawn. And ’twas I who sent my minions to attack at the twilight bound. And it was you who interfered both times, for I watched as you slew brigands and again as you slew Redcaps and Bogles and Trolls and fled with the princess.”

“You watched?” asked Morgrif.

The woman ground her teeth. “I looked through the eyes of my familiar and called out for revenge, ere some fool put a crossbow quarrel through my bird, and oh, how that pained me, and for that this man shall also pay. . and dearly.”

Nefasi turned to the Changeling Lord and said, “You will be well rewarded for this, Morgrif. And when Orbane is set free, you will sit near the throne.”

“I think I have another gift for you, Nefasi,” said the Changeling Lord. “This knight has a woman with him.”

“A woman?”

“Oui. Elegant and slender and of pale yellow hair and green eyes.”

Nefasi crowed. “Ah, even sweeter than I thought.

Surely it is Celeste. She has not escaped my revenge after all.”

Sweat ran in rivulets down Roel’s face as he strained to move, yet he could not. And Nefasi laughed to see him struggle, and, preening in her power, she strutted back and forth before him, her long black gown flowing behind. “Why, you ask, do I wish to harm your love, the princess? Idiot, I am one of four sisters, two of whom are now slain: Rhensibe, killed by Borel; and Iniqui, murdered by Liaze. Those two assassins are siblings of your Princess Celeste, all of them foul get of thief Valeray and his slut Saissa. And I and my sister Hradian plan to kill them all; we will have our revenge, we two who remain Lord Orbane’s acolytes.”

Hatred filled her eyes, and spittle flecked at the corner of her mouth, so rabid was her desire for vengeance.

“There will come a day when we set him free, but you will not be around to witness it, nor will your whore Celeste.” Nefasi raised her hand, her black talons gleaming ebon in the candlelight, and she reached for Roel’s exposed throat.