Mickey Reichert - The legend of Nightfall

The guard sheathed his weapon, looking nonplussed. Apparently, it bothered him that so much damage could occur before he responded to screaming. "Oh. Well. We’ll search around outside. See if we can find him. What’d he look like?"

Kelryn gave a passable description; and, having seen the man twice now, Edward filled in the details. The guard exited, leaving Kelryn, Edward, and Nightfall alone.

Nightfall shook out his cloak, and a shower of glass fragments tumbled to the floor to join the others. He brushed more from his hair with flicks of his hand.

"There’s a broom in the closet,"’ Kelryn said. "Let me get it."

“No." Edward went to Kelryn’s side. "You’re wounded. Sudian can take care of sweeping.” He glanced at Nightfall to indicate that, although he had spoken casually, he meant the words as a direct order. Leaving his squire to tend to the glass, Edward hefted Kelryn, laying her gently on the bed. "Where does it hurt?"

Kelryn gathered the fabric of her dress to reveal her right thigh. The sight of the silk sliding along the fair skin gave Edward a pleasure that instantly channeled to guilt. He felt immoral enjoying the beauty of one in pain, especially when that injury came about because of an attack by his enemy. Soon, the dress lifted enough to reveal a blood-smeared, jagged gash in Kelryn’s flesh, surely caused by the destruction of the decanter by magic. Edward used a handkerchief to clean and tend the wound.

Nightfall busied himself sweeping up every crumb and flake, pausing only to retrieve his thrown dagger.

"I guess I won’t be dancing for a bit." Kelryn mused as Edward worked. "Did you know that man?"

"I’m afraid I did," Edward replied honestly as he probed the injury for remaining pieces of glass. He did not miss his squire’s sudden, warning glance. As promised, he would not reveal Nightfall’s natal talent. "You’re right about him being a sorcerer, and he wants to kill us for some reason. I’m sorry I got you involved."

"I’m involved?" All of Kelryn’s rabid terror returned in an instant. She curled into herself, eyes suddenly moist again.

Edward blamed his ministrations for her discomfort and suffered as much for inflicting it. “I’m afraid we can’t chance that you are." He met Kelryn’s hazel eyes, deep and dark in the half-light. "I want you to stay with us. We can protect you until we’ve got him safely in the hands of guardsmen."

Kelryn glanced at Nightfall, and a strange expression crossed her features briefly. She caught Edward’s hand, eyes skittish as a cornered deer’s. "I’d like that very much."

Though her grip felt cold and clammy with sweat, Prince Edward enjoyed the contact.

That night, Prince Edward arranged for them to sleep in shifts, but Nightfall did not bother to awaken the prince when his had ended. He could not sleep. In fact, the restlessness grew into an endless, driving need he could not identify to satisfy. He felt possessed by a thousand contrasting desires. Unidentifiable things in his core goaded him to slaughter Kelryn while the prince slept; others nearly as strong directed him to curl against her for comfort and warmth. Another part of him wanted to surrender to it all, to kill or abandon woman and prince and allow the oath-bond to have him. The same survival instinct that had kept him alive this long kicked in to fight the latter, but the others swirled through his mind in a dizzying chant. His mind told him to follow the course of necessity and patience, to work through the oath-bond and wait for the opportunity to serve his hatred without compromising Alyndar’s prince. Yet, Nightfall’s heart supported the opposite choice, the same that, as a child, had driven him to butcher the man who had killed his mother. The image of Kelryn blood-covered and screaming would not leave his thoughts, and the demon-force told him to dominate and torture, to let the death she deserved become the ultimate mercy.

Nightfall recoiled from his thoughts, finding them as ugly as those that had made him despise Kelryn in the first place. Dyfrin had taught him to control that villainous rage that went beyond justice. "Kill enemies when you have to," the Keevainian had once said. "But do so with calm dispatch. Uncontrolled violence is doomed to failure, in its consequences as well as its actions. Emotion is the enemy of rationality and logic. When it becomes strong enough to guide your conduct, your life is no longer your own."

Edward slept soundly through Nightfall’s considerations. Kelryn, however, grew fretful as night slipped toward its darkest hours. She rolled and whimpered in her sleep, apparently pursued by nightmares as disquieting as Nightfall’s thoughts. Occasionally, she cried out, wordless noises of fear that miraculously did not awaken Prince Edward. Distracted by her movement and vocalizations, Nightfall felt drowned beneath a sea of conflicting emotions; and the path of control and personal right seemed blurry as a distant mountain peak in fog. He had no idea what course of action would serve him best, and that loss of direction whipped him nearly to panic. He found himself contemplating how his actions would affect others as well, and the foreignness of this consideration only added to the turmoil.

At length, Kelryn’s thrashing ceased. She cringed into a corner, like an infant in a womb; and her strangled sobs became comprehensible words. "No, no, no. No. Sorcerer. Blood. Pain." Her fists tightened, fingers blanching; and her tone changed from fearful to desperately angry. The intensity of emotion made him certain she was reliving trauma, not just dreaming. "He’s a vicious murderer. Kill him. Kill him. Oh, just kill him." She flopped to her other side, entreaties lapsing into silence.

Nightfall’s heart quickened, all concentration driven from him. He could only guess at the reference and meaning, could only surmise that she wrestled with a past reality that filled her head when sleep emptied it of the mundane. His own name fit perfectly into the scene. He could imagine her battling scruples, first denying the sorcerer his identity from conscience, then recalling that the man she protected was an assassin who deserved to die. He wondered at what price she had finally sold him.

That concept reawakened the uncertainties that had, so far, kept sleep at bay. One thing seemed certain. He needed to sort through the boil of idea and emotion assaulting him without Kelryn’s internal strife to disturb him. He needed to be alone.

Pulling a cloak over his sleeping gown, Nightfall slipped across the room and out the inn room door. He had no specific idea where to go, though he maintained enough presence of mind to realize it could not be far. He suspected Ritworth would need time to ponder his failure as well as the gash Nightfall’s dagger had torn through his side and hip as he sailed through the window. Still, Nightfall would remain within watching distance of all entrances to the inn or Edward’s room.

Nightfall padded down the empty corridor and the exit stairs. Many things about the previous night seemed as maddeningly illogical as his thoughts, and he tried to draw it all into one coherent explanation. Kelryn had honestly seemed happily surprised to see and recognize him, yet he had once believed in her love for him also. She could fool him as no one else had managed. He would have to draw his conclusions based on other things than the woman’s reactions. Her sleep-talk, at least, seemed more revealing.

Nightfall pushed open the outer door. The late spring air, filled with the scents of flowers and new greenery, helped to clear his head. As the fog lifted, his senses became more attuned and he recognized the soft patter of irregular, trailing footsteps. He slunk into the shadows.

Shortly, the door edged open. Apparently awakened by her own night-demons, Kelryn peered through, eyes scanning the stretches of pasture, trees, and roads between surrounding buildings. Nightfall waited only until she limped outside and closed the door quietly behind her. Then he seized one of her forearms, wrenching it against the small of her back, and wrapped his arm around her throat. He pressed a dagger to her cheek. "Don’t make a sound."