The Eternal - Part One

Always Rising

         The night was still, and cast its heartless shadows on a silent world. A waning moon silvered the darkness, high and distant in an endless sky, mirrored twice in ebon eyes which looked upon a same-hued city. Eldor watched the empty byways of Zoll Zora from atop the highest tenement, his gaze intent upon the streets as he waited for something, for anything more than a dream.
         The intemperate winds of young winter pervaded his cloak, and they deepened the pallor of his eager hands. He was numb to the cold; he was numb to everything. He had been long insensate to the world. 
         Eldor bore no weapons, and brought no one to aid him. He was alone, as alone as the risen moon, surrounded by unbroken shadow and unending night.
         He tensed at the faint sound of footfalls far below.
         He discerned the amber glow of torches, and watched them gild the narrow alleys of the city as their bearers went about their noxious task. The men strode aimlessly, mindlessly, and stopped only once they’d come upon an open doorway. Eldor leapt from his tenement and landed on another, descending from rooftop to rooftop till he was directly above the King’s men. Two of them had entered through the doorway, and the other three awaited their return.
         Eldor could see from this height the glint of their swords, and yet he paid it no heed; many times he had overcome armed men with his bare hands.
         He dove noiselessly down to the earth and landed just behind the torchbearer, who swiveled about to meet a deathly blow to his head. He fell on his back, his face imbrued with blood. The torch flew from his hand – Eldor caught it swiftly in his own, and seared the man who lunged for him.
         The second man sank, wailing, to his knees, his hands burnt and lifeless, and his sword dropped to the ground. Eldor turned to face the final soldier, and dodged his blade as it came for his head, managing only to graze his shoulder. He could hear the cries of a maiden from within the tenement, and the hurried steps of her captors as they rushed out to see what was afoot.
         The man came at him again, and this time Eldor not only evaded his sword, but took it for himself by way of an agile maneuver. He held it menacingly before him, and his steely glare was enough to send the soldier clambering home.
         A pair of armed sentries emerged to see their comrades rendered defenseless, and a dark cloaked man standing in their midst, armed with a blade and with fire. They had heard a great deal of this unsung hero, this defender of the people. They knew of his inhuman courage and overwhelming stealth.
Eldor could see them trembling, and he watched the fear in their eyes consume them as they turned to flee. It had been too easy.
         He looked upon the shuddering girl, whose auburn eyes were wide in terror, and smiled.
         “You’re safe,” he spoke. “They won’t dare come for you again.”
         She gave a slight nod, and sidled wordlessly to the waiting doorway, her gaze fixed upon him still in utter awe.
         He saw such chastity in her, such virgin innocence, and he shuddered to think how fast she would have been defiled if he hadn’t saved her. The King was ruthless in his breeding. Every night another girl was taken from the streets and brought to the palace, given to the King’s strongest men in hopes that she would bear them healthy sons, sons who would grow into warriors, slaves of his father’s empire. Not always were the victims so fortunate as to be saved. Eldor only wished he might protect them all; but for now he was glad to have rescued the amber haired maiden before him.
         He moved slowly toward her, and placed the silver haft of the sword he held in her hand. “Keep this,” he bid her. “Lest you are ever in danger again.”
         She raised her lowered gaze to look upon him and saw only his gleaming eyes, for all his face was masked. And yet she would have known those eyes anywhere, such was their depth… they were as dark as new moons, and yet they shone with all the light of full ones.
         The maiden vanished inside, sword in hand, unbelieving that this had been anything more than a dream.
         Eldor watched her fade into the shadows past the doorway, and as he began to leave he heard the faintest noise behind him.
         He turned and was met with yet another blade aimed straight for his head, which he swiftly eluded. He thrust his torch into the man’s already bloodstained face, for this was the soldier he had first stricken. The man shrieked in pain and grabbed at Eldor’s own face, tearing his mask in the action – his features were bare, and the sentry with the burnt hands who knelt a ways away gaped at the man he saw, and rose to make a mad dash for the palace.
         Eldor struggled for a moment with his current opponent, and killed him off quickly. He began frantically after the other soldier. He could hear his heart drumming hard and fast within him in fear. If the truth were known…
         Just ahead of him, a shadow emerged from the darkness, swift and silent, and drove his sword deep into the man with the burnt hands. He gave a death cry and fell to his knees.
         Eldor came to a sudden halt, panting, reeling with relief, as his comrade approached him.
         “That was much too close,” Aereon stated flatly, and wiped his crimson blade with his cloak. “Everything, everything would have been over, had he gotten to the King.”
         Eldor nodded, for this he well knew. He could feel what was left of his mask waving softly in the winds of a winter’s night.
         “You need a mask of steel,” his companion averred.
         Eldor was silent. The enormity, the weight of all that might have been, lay still upon his shoulders. It was only now that he came to know the terror of his imminent discovery, and how fast his world might fall to pieces… it would be his end. He would be free no more to roam the streets, and no longer could he guard the world against his father.
         “I could never thank you enough,” he professed. “Our friendship is binding. I saved your life once; now you have saved mine.”
         Aereon beamed dimly, then looked down on his bare feet, and on the bloodstained earth beneath them. “It would be safer, you know,” he spoke, his voice hushed in the knowledge that his words would not be taken well. “Were I to take your place.”
         “No,” Eldor’s grateful smile hardened to a grimace. “It is much too dangerous. I would not have you die in my place.”
         “So you would have the world die?” he retorted fiercely. “Do you know who you are, Eldor? Do you know that all the world will soon be yours? That you can make everything good again once you rise to the throne of the earth?”
         Eldor knew his fate, he knew his future… but he knew not who he was.
         He faced his comrade and met his pleading eyes, eyes gray as stone, so like an endlessly clouded sky.
         “The world died long ago.”
         With that he turned toward home, the raven palace of Zoll Zora, in which lay all he knew and all he hated. He did not look back on his friend, but kept his gaze upon the looming gates. Aereon watched him go before he left to find a place to stay the night. He knew no home.
         Eldor cast off his torn mask and thin cloak, and was once again the son of the King. The moon silvered his now bare arms and set him all aglow, heightening his majesty, turning him into a god. At one glance the palace guards allowed him entrance, and his stride brought him now through the throne room doors and to his mighty father.
         He was upon his throne, and before him stood the three quivering sentries whom Eldor had frightened away.
         “You say he had come from nowhere?” the King demanded.
         “So it would seem, my lord,” the thinnest among them replied, his voice still dry in fear. “We went inside to take our captive and in but a moment he was at the door, the others fallen at his feet.”
         “I see,” Xor leaned forward in his seat, just enough to make his servants tremble even more. “And you were afraid to fight back?”
         “Well…” the soldier was visibly restless. “He had taken up a sword, Your Highness, and a torch as well. We were in no place to challenge him.”
         “We thought we’d best tell you everything before he could kill us. You had to know that he was running rampant still, or else he might have kept at it,” another stammered in defense. “One girl was hardly worth risking your ignorance, O King.”
         The King laughed lightly through his nose.
         “One girl, you sheepish coward, means many, many boys,” he uttered, and gestured to his heedful attendants. “Have these swine properly dealt with. The royal lions have been long awaiting supper.”
         He looked then upon his son, though he already knew of his presence. As the horrified soldiers were borne away, one of them met Eldor’s eyes and went deathly pale before he was led to his fate.
         The King smiled.
         “This infamous defender of the people has saved another whore,” he claimed. “The palace breeders have been lonely these past few nights. I sent you to kill this man, did I not?”
         “When have I ever done your bidding?”
         Xor’s smile deepened, though it was meaningless. Never, he thought, and he never would. He dismissed the matter.
         “Where have you been all evening?” he inquired, and raised his tapered brows. “You missed my birthday dinner.”
         “Good.”
         The King exaggerated his displeasure, reclining deeply into his throne. “I don’t much like these nightly excursions of yours,” he stated, his features drawn into a puerile pout. “Why don’t you like me, Eldor? Hm? Wouldn’t it be nice if you and I could get along?”
         His son bore no reply save for the hatred in his eyes.
         “Well then,” Xor assumed a hollow grin. “I suppose we’ll go on despising each other. In any case, I am your father. And I am your King.”
         The silence may have gone unbroken for eons hadn’t it been shattered by the sudden entrance of a seething warrior.
         “He lives still?” the young man bellowed, his broad shoulders heaving in fury.
         The King turned to face the intruder, and welcomed him coldly.
         “Garendor.”
         “I thought they had slain him! I will not have some worthless bastard roaming these streets, saving the people! He dares to challenge an empire,” he roared, his fists tensed and his teeth bared in rage. “He must be killed.”
         “He will be,” Xor spoke in a passionless voice, void of life and of feeling, for all he could feel now was how he loathed the man before him. He dared not let his hatred surface.
         “He is alive! You sent your son to slay him and he failed!” Garendor retorted, and turned toward Eldor. “You failed, O Prince. You’ve always failed!”
         “Hush!” the King threw him a scathing glare. “Eldor will seek after him again. And he will find him.”
         “What? You send him on this errand once again, when he has failed so many times? I am your greatest warrior! I have felled entire armies, O King. I could fell this man within the hour.”
         “But you will not,” Xor ordered him. “You would not dare defy your King.”
         Garendor was livid at this shameful truth, but nonetheless it silenced him. He stopped to face the prince before he left.
         “You may be the heir to the world’s throne,” he uttered. “But you will never be a King.”
         He stormed past the open throne room doors and wound his way through the palace, down empty halls and forgotten stairways, till at last he came upon a cold, dark chamber in the depths of the cellars.
Its granite walls were a lurid gold by the dim light of embers, which smoldered idly from beneath a great black kettle on the room’s far left, and it was furnished merely with a low oaken table and a pair of stools. It was a lifeless place, made all the more sepulchral by its tenant, whose back was toward the doorway as he bent ardently over his work, still and silent as a corpse. Garendor entered the chamber and moved to the opposite side of the table, across from this ancient man whose earthen eyes were agleam with voracity.
         He was reading a book, intent upon its every word, and he did not pause to look upon his visitor till he had completed his current page.
         “It is well that you have come here on this night,” he hissed, his tone eerily unsettling as his words rasped through his toothy grin.
         Garendor was gazing at the slanting symbols all across the yellowed page, trying in vain to make sense of their foreign meaning. They were inscribed in an exotic, almost beautiful tongue he had never once learned.
         The ancient man rose to his full height, though it was hardly a dramatic change. His neck was stooped with age, as was his back, and his dying vigor, though the spirit of his ravenous youth lingered still in his eyes. His sweeping beard dusted the table as he moved across the chamber to his steaming cauldron.
         Garendor, straining still to comprehend the whorls and canes of blue black ink, noticed that a certain set of symbols was sporadically repeated and penned in crimson.
         “That book before you,” the old man uttered, slowly stirring the contents of his kettle with a long handled spoon. “Is the prize of my life’s endeavors. I have sought long and hard to find it, and alas it has come to me… do you know what it is, Garendor?”
         The warrior tore his probing gaze from the heavy tome, and looked behind his shoulder at the cloaked figure tending his cauldron. “I do not.”
         “It is written by Danalor Morowyn,” he spoke, and continued to stir. “It tells of all he did after escaping the dungeons of Zoll Zora. Where he went, who went with him, what happened there. It has been most intriguing. And most enlightening.”
         Garendor’s eyes had widened at the name. “The leader of the Glorious Rebellion?”
         “Indeed. Morowyn himself. He was quite a great man, for all he was worth,” the aged man left the fireside and returned to his open book. “Which was nothing.”
         “Ghergol…” Garendor looked upon his secret master, who lived all alone in the deepest parts of the palace, and never saw anyone save for the soldier before him. “How… how did you find this?”
         Ghergol smiled most wickedly, distorting his mordant features and casting shadows over his ashen face. “I have my ways.”
         “What does it say? I cannot read it,” Garendor asked eagerly, and pointed to a knot of crimson symbols. “What is this word so oft repeated, this word in red?”
         “There is a certain page in this book that has been most momentous,” Ghergol replied, paying his comrade’s query little heed as he leaved through the ancient tome. “I will transcribe it for you, so you may know the import of its meaning.”
         He presently arrived at a heavily marked page, opposite which lay an intricate map of the world. Garendor leaned forward in an effort to study it in the dim firelight, and saw that at the map’s center a minute isle was labeled in red. He recognized the letters of its name.
         Ghergol took up a blank sheet of parchment from his table. He dabbed the tip of his silver quill in a well of dark ink and began to translate, his bony hand moving swiftly, mindlessly, black words forming beneath it in a legible language. He set down his quill upon completion and blew gently on the damp ink before placing the transcript in Garendor’s hands:

         I alas have found light in this unlit world. At the center of the Western Sea there lies an isle, no larger than the City of Evil, uninhabited and prospering with Eden’s beauty. Verdant palms tower to a vault of clear azure; blossoms burgeon with gemlike luster beneath a sun of gold; seas of sapphire wash against a silver shore; the very earth is brimming with goodness. The isle knows no evil.  It is here I have alighted with my followers, to begin anew, so the world may be born again. No others shall know of the isle. I hold faith in my people, that they shall not betray our cause, for here alone we have sanctuary from an evil world. The isle is called Glorion, and we are the Glorious, who shall one day end this endless reign.

         He read it once, then twice, a thousand times, and still he did not comprehend it. The entrancing words traversed his mind, only to vanish like mirages, like illusory phantoms haunting his every dream. He knew they would haunt him forever.
         Ghergol was quite generous with his patience on this night, which was seldom his way. And yet now, all eternity was his, now that he knew of the Isla Eterna. Now that he might bring it to its knees, and put an undying heaven to death.
         “Glorion,” the utterance fell softly past his lips, slightly parted in awe, as Garendor lifted his eyes from the transcript. “Morowyn lives still through his descendants. It has been years since he rebelled against his King. He was taken for dead, and yet… he is more alive than ever.”
         “He is only mortal,” Ghergol rasped. “He, too, shall fall. Nothing is eternal.”
         The warrior met the fire-rimmed gaze of his lord and shuddered beneath it, for it burned him, though it set his soul ablaze with zeal. He knew already what this meant.
         “You shall be the one to fell him,” the withered man seemed now as nascent as the rising sun, which went unseen from his underground chamber. “You will have your long-awaited glory, and you will be the savior of the earth. You are in your prime, and you have the might and courage of a million Kings. And you have the will. You’ve dreamt of this for all your days, since ere you were born. It doesn’t have to be a dream, Garendor… when you can make it real.”
         Garendor thrilled at the thought, the idea of destroying all that dared rebel against the empire. He would make it real. And he would have his glory.
         “The King will name you his heir,” Ghergol spoke the words as if he knew their truth. “It is all he can do, once you’ve put an end to all that’s left of Morowyn. His son will be nothing to him. You will be his son. You will rise to the world’s throne and rule with the utmost strength.”
         The sun peered past the rim of earth and sky, almost hesitant, as if in fear. It was loath to rise upon a world so veiled with shadow, endless shadows it could never illumine.
         The darkest of these shadows moved to churn his seething kettle as his disciple left for the barracks, in hopes of slumber, in hopes of dreams he would soon bring to life.


         The raven wing of night had lifted, leaving in its wake the silver of lingering stars, and dawn gilded the shores of Glorion. She rose with the sun, as she always did, her eyes as vibrant as the break of day. Leara sat soft upon the shore. The pale gold sand gave way beneath her, dampened by the heaving tide as it rose and fell in cadence with the shifting clouds, which were roseate with the sun’s first light.
         It was a beautiful seascape lain wide and bright before her, limned with fading starlight. She smiled to look upon it. She had always loved the sunrise; it enthralled her, and nowhere on this earth, she knew, was the sunrise more enchanting than on Glorion.
         A while passed ere her reverie was broken by footfalls just behind her, faint and muted in the fine sand. Leara turned toward the lady approaching her, whose dusky eyes were mirrors to the blue-gold sky, and whose golden hair, bound up in a loose knot from which a number of tresses had fallen, resembled the mounting sun in both color and brilliance.
         Caliphria had always been beautiful, but gilt now by the dawn she appeared as an angel.
         “Have you ever wondered,” she uttered, her tenor almost wistful. “What lies just over that horizon? If there even is a world beyond these shores?”
         Leara smiled dimly. She had wondered often.
         Caliphria gave a deep sigh and alighted on the sand, her cerulean gown settling like seawater about her knees. “They’ve always told us it’s a dreadful place. That Glorion is the only good left in an evil world…” her words drifted, borne along the same zephyr that stirred the swelling sea. “I never once believed them.”
         She ran her finger lightly across the sand, and the end of her furrow trailed off with her fading voice. Caliphria was fraught with yearning, a yearning for the world she’d never known; all her life she’d longed for something more than paradise. She was a captive of heaven.
         Leara looked in pensive silence on the sun, which had risen past the sea and shone bright amidst the waning hues of daybreak.
         “We will see it for ourselves, you and I, one wondrous day,” she assured her dearest friend, her eyes aglow with promise. “We will come to know the world beyond these shores. We will know its beauty… and we will know the beauty of Glorion.”
         Caliphria smiled at the notion, though she doubted its truth. She knew she would spend all her days on this Isla Eterna, and never know anything more… it would be enough, she told herself. Everything here was beautiful.
         The first rays of the fully risen sun awoke the isle of Glorion. They kissed the moon white palace at its heart, the wide emerald fronds of the towering trees, and the mauve and scarlet blossoms flowering brightly all around. The isle knew only golden summer and verdant spring, and at times the vibrant shades of autumn and the rarest winter’s snow, which even then was soft and pale and swathed the isle in lustrous silver.
         The denizens of this flawless place rose to greet the newborn day, moving happily about, bathing in the palace’s crystal pools and breaking fast upon its bounteous fare. The two young maidens on its shore were still, watching the distant horizon as if it might beckon them forth toward the waiting world… and yet it, too, remained unmoving.
         Olbe Morowyn watched the breaking day from the palace atrium, through the wide glass window which commanded a view of the entire east. Oft he would watch the sun rise through this window, and oft he would watch the girl upon the sandy shores. A day had yet to pass when Leara would miss the sunrise. Olbe smiled. She was as a granddaughter to him, so like the daughter he’d lost, and yet so unspeakably different…
         “Your daughter rose early this morning,” he uttered, not bothering to turn toward the man behind him.
         Gorovan descended the shallow stair and moved to stand beside the Lord of Glorion, who had always been able to tell when he wasn’t alone.
         “Caliphria?” he looked upon his daughter, and even from this height he knew her by her gleaming hair, and by the way she gazed upon the sea. “It isn’t her custom. She’s only keeping her comrade company. Leara wakes with the sun every day.”
         Olbe nodded faintly. “As did Gloriel.”
         Gorovan shuddered, neither by ailment nor cold, but at the utterance of her name.
         “She stopped when Xor arrived,” Olbe continued, and sank into warm reminiscence of his long lost daughter, the daughter he’d always loved. “I remember well… I watched her from this window, that fateful morning when a ship appeared on the horizon. That was when her world changed. It was as if she’d been waiting all her life for him, watching, waiting, as if she’d always known that he would come… she loved him ere she knew him. And she loves him still.”
         The ancient man, wizened by the cruelty of the years and by all he had lost, withered further in remembrance of his daughter. “She never watched the sunrise again.”
         Gorovan could see him wilting, and it pained him, for he admired this man above all else for his undying goodness and strength. To watch him fade away was to watch an eternity come to its end. Glorion would be nothing without him.
         “I am only mortal,” Olbe spoke, as if he’d read Gorovan’s very thoughts. “My days draw to a close… I have no heir to come after me. I have no child, nor even a wife with whom to leave the fate of Glorion. I know you could well take my place – ” Gorovan stilled, for he was ready and willing, and yet it would not be right for him… “– but you are no Lord of Glorion. It is a burden for even the mightiest man, though a most blessed burden… I have not shouldered it well in my time.”
         Gorovan tensed. “No,” he demurred with all due respect. “It was you who brought the light and the darkness together, who almost led the evil King toward good. You are a god among men, Olbe. You began us on the path that will lead to a world reborn.” 
         Olbe smiled, glad at least that his comrade esteemed him so highly. “Nay… I am only a man, Gorovan. No more. The earth’s savior is soon to come, and I am nothing when put to him.”
         Gorovan heaved a sigh, and watched as his daughter rose to greet the young man who approached her. Darison Belham, he recognized with amusement, the man with the pleasant face and not much else. He had long been seeking Caliphria’s hand. She was not interested in the least. Leara stood as well, not about to be a part of her comrade’s courtship, and began inland toward the palace.
         “Belham’s a fair enough man,” Olbe claimed, the tone of his words far lighter. “But he is nowhere near worthy of Caliphria.”
         Gorovan laughed softly to himself. “She hasn’t the heart to tell him.”
         The two men watched as Darison took her arm and ambled slowly down the shore with her, completely enamored.
         “Your daughter is after much more than a husband,” Olbe averred, his voice heavy with wisdom. “I have seen the way she looks on the sea. She wants to know the world, Gorovan. She does not fear it for all its evil.”
         Gorovan inhaled deeply. “She does not know its evil. She knows no fear.”
         Caliphria vanished from sight as she moved down the coast, and Olbe straightened, clearing his dry throat.
         “A man knows he is growing old,” he uttered with a wrinkled smile. “When he can pass entire mornings by a window. You, my friend, are not yet ancient. Go to your wife; I would presume she has breakfast waiting.”
         Gorovan returned the grin and bowed his head as he left for his quarters.
         Olbe bided the time in silence, well aware of his age, and content nonetheless. A time had passed ere he felt Leara’s presence behind him, and saw her mirrored faintly in the glassy pane.
         “The sunrise was most beautiful today,” he spoke.
         He could see the reflection of her smile in the window.
         “It’s always beautiful,” she replied softly.
         The both of them were wordless for a moment.
         “Did you know,” Olbe uttered at length. “That the sunrise is eternal? That even as the sun falls past our horizon, it is crowning another?”
         She knew now, though she’d never thought of it before. She loved how Olbe could open her eyes to something she’d been watching forever, and yet never truly seen. He enlightened her in wondrous ways. His every word was magic.
         “The sun never sets,” he avowed, his voice surreal and enchanting . “It is always rising.”
         Leara looked upon him, upon this withered man whose beard swept past his waist, whose kindly face was creased with age, whose bone-white hands were frail and yet could still uphold a world of good. What would this world be if he should leave it for another…
         “It shall not set on this isle,” Olbe spoke. “Though it may set on me, it shall not set on Glorion. For we have a future. The sunrise you love …”
         His eyes, the same tranquil azure as the firmament, glowed bright upon her with a light she would never forget.
         “… you have become it.”


         She went unseen amidst the long, dark shadows of the setting sun as she rose slowly from the great stone well and stepped onto the streets of Zoll Zora. She glanced warily to her left and right to make certain that she was alone, and drew her cloak tight about her against the frigid gusts of twilight.
         She tread carefully, wending her way through the unpaved alleys, passing the cadaverous forms of old men and young orphans who clung to threadbare quilts and heels of bread, and to ever-nearing dreams of the promised hereafter. She wished she might have helped them, and yet she could hardly manage to sustain herself and her ailing father. At the sight of every dying child she passed she cursed the world for being so cruel, and she cursed the King and all his men for being so evil. Nothing was left of this earth save for shadows, and long lost hopes, and distant visions of a sun which would never rise again.
         Lincia slowed in her stride, approaching the slumberous silhouette of a portly vendor. He slouched against the wall of a tenement, his hat drawn sleepily over his eyes, his fleshy fingers clasped over his potbelly, which rose and fell deeply in cadence with his noisome snore. At his left was a pair of empty bottles, one laying on its side.
         She neared him silently. A woven basket laden with bread, the faint fragrance of which toyed with her aching hunger, was guarded beneath his corpulent arm. She drew ever closer and extended a hand trembling with caution toward the basket, daring to gently lift the kerchief drawn over its contents.
         The great man stirred, his rhythmic breathing disrupted, and gave an incoherent grunt as he removed his oversized hat. His deep-set eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, and he blinked them twice before he could fully perceive the maiden before him. Lincia was motionless, wordless, her hand holding still to the cloth.
         “If it isn’t my bright little posy,” he drawled in a voice thick with rum and with animal lust, and leered voraciously at the horrified girl. “So you’ve come again to visit me, eh? I s’pose you must be… starving for my company.”
         “Please, sir,” she stammered, and shifted her hand slowly, subtly, to rest on a crust of bread. “Please let me go home… just one loaf, sir, please…”
         He bared his carious teeth, salivating shamelessly, and seized her frail arm.
         “I’ll give you your loaf, my little posy…” he rasped, his pale eyes afire as he lifted a tress of her russet hair to his face. “…if you would only provide the proper… payment…”
         She cried out, writhing in his callous grasp, and shut her eyes against the heartless world.
         He had defiled her so many times before, and it was painful, it was horrible; every week she’d come in hopes of bread for her father. Sometimes she would manage to steal away, unnoticed, and bring it home, but other times… at least, she thought, she would return home with a loaf of bread.
         His brutish hands were groping at her tattered skirt, harsh and probing, when she suddenly felt his grip fall away and heard him sink to the earth. She dared to open her eyes and saw him lying motionless in his own dark blood, a dagger buried deep in his throat, the inhuman gleam in his eyes having faded, leaving only a less human shadow.
         She shuddered in shock, in relief, in numb detachment from the reeling world around her, and might have remained thus forever hadn’t she remembered her father. Slowly, everything returned to her – the knife at the vendor’s neck, its wielder unknown, had slain him and saved her from his cruelty. She knelt to take up the untouched basket at her feet. As she turned to leave she stopped to look skyward, at the roofs of the tenements surrounding, hoping to know her nameless savior… but all she saw was shadows.
         Aereon watched her go, his granite eyes never once leaving her till she merged with the ambient darkness. And then he vanished.
         Lincia hastened toward home, leaving loaves in the empty hands of those she passed. As she approached the well, her load notably lightened, she discerned the faint chimes of maiden voices nearby, and she watched as a triad of young girls turned into the street from a neighboring byway. Each of them held to a tarnished tin pail.
         Lincia paused, resting her basket on the stone ledge of the well, and pretended to be drawing water. 
         “He never told me his name,” the tallest of the three claimed, her hushed words only just audible in the silence of nightfall. “He was cloaked all in black. I saw only his eyes. They were… amazing.”
         Her voice took on a dreamlike tenor at the thought of him, and drifted absently away.
         “I hardly believe you,” her green-eyed friend proclaimed somewhat indignantly, shattering her reverie. “It seems far too fortunate to be rescued like that from the King’s men.”
         “I speak the truth!” the first retorted, her auburn eyes glinting in defense. “I even have proof; he left this with me.”
         At that she came to a halt and, not without a degree of dramatic effect, produced a great sword from her cloak.
         Her comrades’ eyes widened in awe as they reached timorous hands towards the weapon. They’d never before come so close to a blade.
         “Irana!” gasped the third girl, the youngest, whose pail was smaller than those of her companions, and whose garb appeared much thinner and much less resistant to the pervading winter. “Why would he leave you with such a thing?”
         Irana shrugged lightly at the query, as if she hadn’t asked it of herself a thousand times.
         “He said it was for if I was ever in danger again,” she rejoined, and beamed as brightly as the moon that silvered her amber hair. “I will keep it with me always. He has saved me from this horrid world.”
         She returned the broad sword to its place at her side, having formed a makeshift sheath for it the night before, just after she had used her day’s rations of water to clean it. It was by far the most cherished thing she had ever owned.
         “You don’t suppose he is the savior?” the girl with the small pail inquired innocently of her comrades, as if they were great astrologers who might divine the future.
         The emerald-eyed girl gave a derisive laugh at the notion. “The savior! You don’t mean to say that you still believe in those childhood stories. You must have learned by now, Noria, that this earth shall never know a savior. If ever he was fated to come, it would have been long ago.”
         Noria’s every fading dream seemed to die at these disenchanting words. Her comrades proceeded toward the well, and she lingered sorrowfully behind, her once bright eyes downcast and then raised to the rising moon. Lincia could never have heard her from this distance, and yet somehow she well knew the child’s words, words of undying hope in a hopeless world.
         “I believe.”
         She watched as the child turned to leave, her empty pail rattling against her knees as she made toward home. Her family would have no water tomorrow.
         Irana and her green-eyed friend spoke still in muted tones, no doubt about her wondrous rescue, and only once they’d drawn very near to the well did they become aware of Lincia’s presence.
         They stopped suddenly, and both of their gazes were fixed at once upon the basket beside her. The pale cloth was draped over it, and the bread was far too stale to produce any distinct aroma, but the two starving girls could easily guess its contents. Their eyes wandered almost concurrently up to Lincia’s face in tacit entreaty, and wordlessly she placed a well risen loaf in each of their hands.
         They drew their water silently in turn and then left for home.
         Only once they’d turned down a dark street did Lincia balance her heavy basket on the considerably smaller water bucket, and carefully lower the pail till she felt it hit the surface of the underground stream far below. She then looked all about her to make certain she would go unseen, and began to descend into the well.
         She knew the rough stone wall, she knew its every protrusion and pothole, and it was by habit of having scaled this wall so many times that she was able to do so without any difficulty. She dropped softly into the murky waters and waded through them, taking up her basket, until she came upon the great cavern in the side of the subterranean channel.
         It was a most unusual home, but it was her home, and it sustained her small family well. The stream flowing constantly alongside their quaint little cave provided water, for drinking and for bathing, and an occasional fish when times were kind to them, though they survived chiefly on the bread Lincia brought.
         Lincia was happy in her home. She’d been living here as long as she could remember. She loved it for its safety and seclusion from the shadowed world above, and for the kindly man who lay in its furthest corner beside a dim fire, the man she’d always called her father.
         She climbed out of the waters and onto the floor of the grotto, laying the basket before him, a daughter’s smile upon her face. “We have been blessed today.”
         Her father rose, his visage aglow with joy, only to lie down once more as pain seared through the wounds beneath his quilt. The wounds that still burned him after so many years…
         “It is a long story,” Lincia replied to the question in his eyes, dabbing a rag in the flowing stream and placing it lovingly on his forehead. “The night deepens; I will tell you everything tomorrow. You’d best take to rest now.”
         The Eagle fell into welcome slumber with a smile upon his face, mirrored on that of his daughter even as she drifted into sleep herself. She watched the guttering shadows cast on the cavern’s walls by the dying fire, and they lured her toward her waiting dreams.
         She believed.