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Every Shadow Burns My Face

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Away from Mirasintsa's cell, some two hours walk, out the monastery walls and down through the last gentle foothills, up to the town wall and through the guarded gates, past the sandstone men to King Hastinbar's castle, up the spiral staircase in the Eastern tower in the King's study room, a copy of that same book Mirasintsa recalled, with the names and descent and brief stories of the nobles living and dead, was open on the desk.

"So, these have been all the minor decrees of the Council, your Highness. Those you've refused to sign I'll send back to them with your requirements."
The scribe rolled up the ornate scrolls of the decrees, separating those that had received the King's seal and signature from those that hadn't.

"There is one more thing to do now which I think can no longer be postponed, your Highness. I have kept the Book current myself with all incoming announcements and sent out the letters informing of the betrothal of the Prince. It is only the hand of your Majesty however which may purge a name from the book."

The scribe pulled over the heavy volume of the Book of Names and opened it upon the family tree of Lord Rurestfeth of Lokshada, who was already marked DECEASED, as were his second and third daughters. The scribe's finger now pointed to the name of the third.

"This is not a public act and happens at my discretion. I will not do it at this time”, replied the King.

"Your Majesty, the purging is indeed not an open ceremony, but whether it's done or not can't be kept secret. Any noble of any house has the right to view the Book in any other noble's house, and it will certainly be so at the next great feast. Shall it be that we have no feasts anymore, your Highness?"

"I fear we will have to, though my heart's not in it. I guess it would be excusable for the upcoming one, to pretend the Book was mislaid. We would have to look for it in the Citadel. The war, you know. Hastily brought to safety. The next feast we cannot escape would then be the turning of winter, and till then my mind will be set, and we can pass around the Book."

It was true that at feasts it was an almost mandatory entertainment, especially among the ladies, to pass around the Book, and suggest to the great hilarity of all the most improbable dynastic pairings for maidens coming of age. Sometimes those games were even used to discreetly suggest marriage pacts, as the game was a way to make such advances without anyone losing face, by retreating to calling them mere jest if they met with disapproval. Also it was a subtle way of controlling whether the copy of the Book in each house agreed with that of the others, or contained any falsehoods or slanders.

The King is turning grim when feasts are something he seeks to escape, thought the Scribe. Perhaps Liuthanna had it right, and some curse of the Mad Queen was eating at his soul. Striking her name was only the most symbolic of exorcisms, but as if spellbound, he seemed unable to do it …

“May I speak honestly, your Majesty?”

“As always, you may. I shall bear it.”

“I do not see whence come your doubts in this matter. The Mad Queen must be purged from the Book, not for what she did in the world, it is for chronicles of history to condemn that, but for how she left it.”

“As it's written here, we speak of Tsilsne daughter of Rurestfeth”, said the King icily.
“Consider the fourth stipulation of the Principal Edicts on the casting out of abominations.” he added.

“Your Majesty, I do not see how it touches on the matter. Does it not forbid the worship of gods who demand human sacrifice, or the sealing of living servants into the tombs of their masters as grave-gifts?”

“The Edicts were written as they were for a purpose, including what precisely they permit by omission. Recall the words precisely and you will find they forbid the offering of another's life to the Gods. What they leave open, is offering your own self to the Gods, while injuring no other.”

“Your Majesty, you are of course correct regarding the words of the Edict. I have however, not heard of such a thing done, and how could one possibly say the Mad …, erm, Tsilsne, offered herself as a sacrifice to the Gods when there was no proof by priest or prophet that the Gods required a sacrifice, or recognized her as such?

“One might say so if there were signs and portents that went with it. And the Gods it seems are always thirsty for sacrifice. It is said the mountain still burns, although there is not a stem or branch of wood left on it. I am of a mind to go there and see for myself.”

"A pilgrimage, your Majesty? - Mention this, and you may as well declare her posthumously an instrument of the Divine. Quite a few would cheer that, but others will bring out the knives. Blood in the streets. The populace is most divided. Unrest every day. Surely it would also not be the best start to mending the Alliance among the kings of the Middlelands…

“A journey of discovery. I do not intend to proclaim such a thing. Rather I say that I'd prefer to wait until the judgment of the Gods is known. I was there, I saw it with my own two eyes how the flames sprung up and they seared away the very clouds. It was not of this world. If I see the mountain still burning for myself, if it still burns when winter comes, then I'd dare say, those who have struck out Tsilsne's name from their Books must recant and write it anew. For now, I intend to do… nothing. That has served me well in recent time. I declined to put my name on that ridiculous challenge against her legitimacy. I preferred to save my forces and show them when her own were weakened, and even then it was best that it didn't come to blows. As for the Alliance, for that very reason it would seem I am now the first among the kings of the Middlelands, as they all followed my final call to arms, even Boltarg Bristlebeard did.”

“So the Book will remain as it is, except for the amendments you may make as before. You are dismissed.”

The scribe withdrew and the King put the Book of Names back onto its ceremonial stand.

Names to remember.
Cruel fate. Cruel fate always wins. He thought of Adohinsne resting in the garden beneath her heavy stones. Soon he should visit her again; for some reason his thoughts ran most peacefully there. What he did now, he opened a drawer and retrieved an amulet that snapped open to reveal a likeness of tender beauty.

Cruel fate always wins. They had chosen alabaster for her face, carnelian lips and sparkling emeralds for the eyes. From blackest jet was carved the crown of her hairs, some disorder in the garnet-dot ribbons, a living moment behind closed doors caught and frozen in stone.
He turned to the window, but that looked out on the fields of anguish where four months before battle had raged. Turning back, he placed the amulet in its drawer again. It felt like setting an urn into its niche.


As the Gods wished, King Hastinbar and the novice Mirasintsa would at the same moment each return their own secret token, their talisman of memory, to its hiding place.
As the Gods wished, they would also, a few days hence, come upon each other for the first time since the pyre.
Mirasintsa would look down upon the face of the King from the height of her suffering.
 
malins said:
King Hastinbar and the novice Mirasintsa would at the same moment each return their own secret token, their talisman of memory, to its hiding place.
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Each hides that secret token, that talisman, away in its niche but it seems neither can hide the memory represented there deeply enough.
 
malins said:
Well they mention the 'next great feast' at the castle. Might be an opportunity for some strands to meet... and well, I haven't forgot about the title character, the creature under the hood.
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I think creature comes across as a bit harsh. I mean call me a creature and I will consider a reference to my proud bushy tail, my ability to handle space in three dimensions at high speed while screaming imprecations at all and sundry and an acknowledgement that were I insulted I have but to chew your wires to cut off your internet.

I prefer to regard her as an interestingly enigmatic person about whom we shall hopefully learn more:p
 
RacingRodent said:
I think creature comes across as a bit harsh.
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Oh, that might be my langauge. In German 'Geschöpf' just something that's 'created' , (by God). In some ways she's a wondrous creature, in others obviously a tortured creature, was she just a victim of random cruelty or did she deserve a punishment?
And well, there are a few new names introduced. Relatively soon I guess I'll be making a PDF of the story so far. Because I see that in trying to keep the threads together (and I've got some omissions in there that I'll be struggling to fix on the fly :D ) it's important to have the whole thing.

So for instance who the fuck is Adohinsne. It's clear from something that comes up in the General's reminiscences on page 1 of the thread. I'm trying to write this in a way that some while before the big disaster happens it shoud be possible by following the threads to know what's coming.
I think Jollyrei may have already picked up the scent...
 
Yes, 'creature' in English tends to suggest a non-human animal,
or a rather contemptible and unpleasant human one:
'the being under the hood' might be more neutral?
 
However...
Merriam-Webster defines creature as:
something created either animate or inanimate: as
a: a lower animal; especially: a farm animal
b: a human being
c: a being of anomalous or uncertain aspect or nature<creatures of fantasy

When we refer to creature comforts or a creature of habit, we are not referring to something inhuman or to an animal.

In older usage; creature was used to refer to someone appointed to a position, particularly if they were elevated from a lower social rank. A royal appointee might be referred to as "the King's creature". Even when the term was meant to be critical, the implication was not that the person was a monster, but rather that they were unworthy of their office.

I think "creature under the hood" is just fine. It has an old fashioned sound to it that is entirely appropriate and sounds less clinical than "being under the hood".
 
Naraku said:
When we refer to creature comforts or a creature of habit, we are not referring to something inhuman or to an animal.
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Both those are formulaic phrases, which tend to preserve earlier usage.
There may be a slight transatlantic difference,
COD says 'a human being of a specified kind' (as in 'creature of habit' etc.),
I wouldn't advise learners of British English to use 'creature' as a synonym for 'human being',
especially one under a hood :p
but it's a matter of subjective judgement, the connotations the word has in one's own usage.
 
This creature-talk might seem a bit much but I find it very helpful!
Obviously as someone who doesn't have English as her first language I'll have some strange usages. Anyway that's one reason for writing everything in a 'once upon a time, far away' style, trying to get credible 'street-wise' everyday dialogue would be much more difficult for me.
In that way old-fashioned usages might be fitting but I do find I may overuse 'creature'.
I've got 'creatures of the forest', and the frog as 'a beautiful emerald of a creature', that's the non-human animals,
Naraku said:
a being of anomalous or uncertain aspect or nature
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That might apply to Mirasintsa as 'a creature of pure white' when she pours ash all over herself. Could have been 'figure' or so too.
Then I've got misery in the context of the shrouded stranger (emaciated creature, broken creatures), and the Mad Queen also gets called a creature. That might be anomalous aspect again ;)
So I might watch that word in the future.

Anyway I absolutely do enjoy comments and discussion like this.
 
malins said:
Anyway that's one reason for writing everything in a 'once upon a time, far away' style, trying to get credible 'street-wise' everyday dialogue would be much more difficult for me.
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And a very engaging style it is, Malins, it creates just the sense of mystery that suits your story,
you've obviously got a rich vocabulary of 'literary' English, and using words in slightly novel
ways is far from being a fault, it 'makes the familiar strange', which is what poetic language should do :)
 
Anyway I'll drop Mirasintsa for a while. She'll return later. She doesn't exist just for the purpose of reminiscences, there's a fate for her to meet. But I'm stumped with her next chapter. I may rearrange things when I put in the pdf.
For now, here' someone digging closer to the roots...

The Ancient Gardener

Gardener was a good thing to be. Even if you're a little bit more. Though she had grown bent with her late years, it was good work, and meaningful, especially in the herbal garden.

People had called her the “Ancient Gardener” already when King Hastinbar had newly inherited his crown. She didn't quite believe though what had once been said about the lines in her hand, that she'd live a hundred years.

Gardening anyway, the weeding and seeding and tending, is quite a vital matter.

Sometimes you need to look for the wrong growths, the ones that look just like the healing leaves but carry poison. You needed a good eye for that. Even at her age, she still had that, sharp sight.

Both ways. She was a bit of a clearseer.

Think of what could happen! – what she grew here went straight to the royal kitchens for taste when anything was bland – and straight to the royal chambers for healing and fortification when anything was amiss.

So, although she was just the Gardener, she was looking out for the well-being of King and Country. She was trusted and had helped ward off or cure many evils over the time of her service.

As a clearseer, she'd sometimes find the poison growths anyone else would overlook.

Poison growths among people, too.

These also needed to be cut out.

Whereever things grew, and needed to grow right, there had to be a Gardener.

Otherwise you had wilderness, where weeds smothered the roses, beasts ruled and shadows prowled.

Besides the herbal garden, she also tended to the walled one.
To the gates of its innermost sanctum, only the King and she had keys.

King Hastinbar's directives as to the care for the heart of the Garden of Remembrance, where rested the deceased of the royal family, concerned mostly the tombs of his first three wives.

Looking back, it seemed as if the Gods had chosen to torment the King in his young years by sending him one princess more dazzling after the other, each to perish sooner. Irvenit had lived a good year and a half as his wife and died in childbirth, taking the newborn prince with her to the grave. Taisande went in a rush of blood five months into her pregnancy. It was hard to remember what she even looked like. Poor thing.

And Adohinsne.
The King hardly talked about her at all anymore. It was almost as if her memory was forbidden. Too painful. She was gone twenty years now.

He'd kissed the very ground she walked upon.
But she carried the fever in her already when she arrived for the wedding. In the beginning it had looked as if it was just a little cold caught on the travel, but it was death. There had been an emergency ceremony so she could go properly as his wife. The King had insisted on it.

After Taisande's death, the King had questioned whether a curse had been put into his seed.

That worry was dispelled as he went out to father some healthy bastards. The Gardener herself had chosen one of the girls, she'd once been taken to the dungeons when a noble prisoner requested medicine from the garden. At that opportunity she'd looked at the other prisoners, looked at them clear, the condemned whimpering in their cells, and sure enough there was an innocent. As the girl grew round after the visits by the mysterious guard, the King, not so surprisingly, stayed her execution till after delivery, and by that time inspection of the documents found the usual falsehoods and gave ground enough to release the girl along with her newborn, bleary-eyed and blinking into the light of freedom.

The boy was a strong young man now and suspected nothing of his descent.

It had been in that time that the Wars of Dissolution had started. All around bandits and rebels and roving heretics needed cutting down, and guarantees that had held hundreds of years where withdrawn. Nothing was as it had been before, Kings and Lords were looking for new arrangements. The North got involved too, and as it was, Rurestfeth Lord of Lokshada was blessed with bright and beautiful daughters he sought to bring into new alliances.

The King's infatuation with Adohinsne had been head over heels, the pact made sense in terms of power, and so it was sealed.
The Gods though had wished otherwise.They had among all of them conspired to give Adohinsne the greatest riches of all gifts, except in the number of her days.

The King, he hardly spoke of Adohinsne but often visited.

To the gardener it seemed sometimes he should spend more time with his living wife, the one that had filled up the castle with the laughter and irrepressible mischief of the royal children. Well the older ones were starting to get serious.

But maybe he just preferred to spend his times of brooding, which Kings probably needed to do, in this place. It came with kinging, which Hastinbar did a good job of, all that brooding and soul-searching, what with the decisions they had to make. And why not here, it was certainly a secluded place, where Adohinsne's tomb lay in its own little grove.

They'd done it all in the Northern style.
The planting was beautiful, seemingly wild but well-planned, rich with moss and ferns.
Giving her a home here.
The Gardener, she loved the cool moist lushness of it but despised the stonework of the tomb itself.

Those northerners and their cruel superstitions.

In front of the inscribed stele, there were three heavy stones. It had taken four men to carry each, wedge-shaped pointing down, sinking into the earth, pressing down, where Adohinsne lay. Banishing symbols etched into them. Because they were terrified, especially with those who died so young with lives and loves unlived, they were terrified that the dead would come clawing their way back from the grave, and as revenants they would always consume those they'd loved most in life, feasting on their souls.

Stupid barbarian superstitions.

Yes there were things of otherness in the world, among men and women there were such as witches and wizards, foretellers and cursemongers and dreamcasters and clearseers, like she was one.
It wasn't all that different from some people being eagle-eyed or having perfect pitch or unfailing aim with bow and arrow. Or others being short-sighted or clumsy. Gifts the Gods gave you, or withheld. Who could say why and which for whom.

There were also things that once had existed in the world but did no longer, such as dragons, elves, or lions.
You'd find dragon-bones turned to stone, just as the stories said, when the Gods acting through the Beastslayers had made an end to their terror. You'd see carvings or ladies' combs made from elven-bone. And the King had a lions-head not only on his coat of arms but also one mounted in his hall, a stuffed thing his great-great-grandfather had bought for an arm and a leg – or actually no, just a lot of gold, it had cost people a literal arm and leg sometimes fighting with lions, they said, when those beasts had still lived.

But then there were things that only primitives believed in, like revenants, vampyres, the walking dead.
It was as if all the effort of the Truthfinders and Outstampers had been in vain if people still believed that. Well they had never quite made it all the way North. Yes there were sometimes false deaths, and rebirths, but what was dead would never in flesh walk this world again.

It was a cruel superstition to inflict on the memory of such a sweet young lady. What a devastating blow that had been. Rurestfeth's visiting party had lingered long in their mourning, the King and the Northern lord growing close over their shared loss. They went together into a season of war-fighting, coming upon the rebels like raging storm and fire, crushing and burning and beheading and crucifying their way through the upstart strongholds to forget their own sorrow.

There had been a younger sister, quite a gap between them though, she was yet too young for marriage but she'd been grown enough to come along with Rurestfeth's party. When wounds had healed, time had passed and the girl had flowered, she'd be the one to be offered for marriage in turn.

Of course, as it came out, that didn't happen, couldn't be allowed to happen, and in the end the great alliance of Lord Rurestfeth of Lokshada in the North and King Hastinbar of Verdesgord in the Middlelands - since this year often called the Wise - that alliance came to nothing.

But at that time, if you were looking for young king Hastinbar's next marriage that was where you'd look.

And though they said she was the odd one out among Rurestfeth's daughters you could figure she'd be quite a beauty in her own way. You'd see her sometimes in the garden, otherwise only in the castle; crushed by the loss of her big sister, the girl hardly ever went out afterwards, though she'd seemed the seclusive kind from the beginning.

The gardener however had put an eye on her already soon after the arrival of Rurestfeth's party.
What she'd seen first was one of those barbarian customs again.

She'd noticed something was going on when they were all out in the garden for meal and entertainment.

The Chief Advisor had pointed out a sight to see, an eagle in the sky chasing and dueling with a raven.

As the birds tumbled through the great blue sky everyone tracked them with their eyes, looking for some portent from it or just enjoying the sport as shown. The girl was squinting hard trying to make the birds out, but suddenly she sat up bolt-straight and frozen-faced as if suppressing sudden pain. The gardener kept an eye on her and sure enough some time later she was craning her neck and squinting again, and this time it was easy to see, she got viciously jabbed with something pointy, then she gave up looking for the birds and just sat there with round vacant eyes.

It was a cruel thing. The poor girl, the Gardener realized, was rather short-sighted, and so of course she was always squinting trying to see things better.
But they didn't want that, they didn't want squinty pig's eyes on their porcelain princess, and so it seemed everyone around her was instructed to jab her with something pointy whenever she had that look on her face they didn't want. Everyone except her sister, except Adohinsne. She hadn't done that.

Down in the Republics they make those specially carved stones that you can look through and it'll make you see better through them, if your eyes are bad. Why didn't they send for some of those, she could have held up one and found the raven and the eagle. They had the gold. It made a lot more sense to spend it on that kind of stone than some sparkly gem.

But they insisted on their barbarian customs.

Instead of getting the girl those clear stones, they'd even come to the Gardener and asked for things, she figured out it was something they wanted to drop in, so the girl's eyelids would stay wide and she couldn't squint anymore even if she wanted to. For once the Gardener didn't give them what they asked for.

That jabbing, once you knew what to look for, you could see it was going on all the time, even at meals, the jabbing needle was there for her, under the table. They wouldn't give in until they had a docile puppet that sat there with big round eyes and gave up making sense of the world she looked at out of her eyes. Just so they could have the face on her they wanted to see.

And so, much of the girl's world would be books, which she could hunch over or bring them up close to her face. Anything in there the girl could make sense of.

And so, the first thing the Gardener felt for the girl was pity.

But being a clearseer, once she'd started keeping an eye on the girl, she saw another thing.


Somewhere, someway, somehow, the girl had picked up a second shadow.

It would weave between the columns or dangle from the chandeliers or pool at the bottom of the stairs.
Waiting to ambush the girl.
Because it was her enemy, and she'd made that enemy somehow, and brought that enemy along with her, here to King Hastinbar's castle.

The Gardener had never seen it with someone so young, but with seeing it, she put all feelings for the girl away.

The Gardener understood here was found a poison growth. And something would need to be done about it.
 
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The Ancient Gardener, 2

It wasn't a matter of hating the poor girl. It was her who suffered first from the shadow's torments.

Sometimes that knotted living darkness would jump at her during conversation, suddenly distracting her. Sometimes it would surprise her at some routine chore, causing her to drop or break things. Since no one else could see the shadow, its assaults just made her appear somewhat absent-minded and clumsy, and at times led her to avoid company.

Other times though the girl would get the better of the vaporous demon and banish it for a while with some unseen fire from her eyes.

What was certain with that, was her awareness of it. She saw it, she knew it was there, but kept it a secret. While the shadow grew in strength and malice, clearly biding its time to bring disaster, as it flowed in shifting shapes, dimming the light through a windowpane here, snuffing a candle there. A sudden chill at the back of the neck or a brief but searing touch on the face or the back of her hand.

It took the Gardener a while to find where to dig.
Of course she couldn't just walk up to the King and inform him that his marriage prospect was afflicted with the curse of living shadow.
Go to the Temple of the True Path and talk to a priest there? - The result would certainly be a full proceeding of Truthfinding, which would undoubtedly see the girl tortured and bring scandal upon both houses.

A Malevolent would have mixed up a poison potion but it was not the forces of darkness she had sworn her soul to.

She kept an eye on the girl as best she could; luckily, the girl often visited the gardens, and enjoyed listening to the Gardener's talk, whether it was introductions into the care, use and secrets of herbs, or the many tales true and tall she could recount, things she'd lived through or heard of.
The girl loved stories and secrets of all sorts.

At night, the Gardener's thoughts began evermore to revolve around the shadow-girl and what to do with her, until near dawn the old woman fell into short fitful sleep.
Then the girl would walk in and out of her brief, uneasy dreams.
Sometimes the next day it seemed to the Gardener she could guess what the girl would say even before she opened her mouth.

And there she had it. Knowingly or not the girl was a dreamcaster, and indeed went in and out of people's heads as they slept.

It seemed though she did it unwitting, as she left the doors to their dreams open wide.
To her own as well.
Dreamcasting or mindwalking was not something the Gardener could have done on her own, but sidling in after the shadow-girl was as easy as a cat slipping silently through a door left ajar.

In the shallows of the young girl's own dreams her secret visitor saw almost shockingly innocent imaginations concerning the prospect of royal marriage, as she had neither designs on power nor any lustful desires grown beyond the first budding.

Mostly she imagined she would be queen and therefore no one would be much able to tell her what to do, she'd be left alone whenever she wanted to. Also she'd dress nicely. And have her own maids and servants. Who exactly to marry concerned her little, she did admire King Hastinbar for the mere fact of his kingliness – her father for sure had more of soldiers and silver, but no crown, no knights and no coat of arms, as these were not traditions of the North – but whatever imaginations she had of manliness or the occurrences to expect in a wedding night were altogether her own fanciful fabrications without any appearance of the prospective royal groom.

Diving deeper, the dream-guest found that the girl had, from somewhere out of fairytales, formed the painfully simple but hopeless notion that if she found her prince of true love, the shadow would be driven out the moment he bedded her. Oh if it could be that simple. Here were dreams now that were unaware to her in waking hours, and here her imagination of the bedding was surprisingly thorough and detailed for one of her age, but also richly mixed with fear and apprehension.

Still deeper, the dream-quest found disaster where the shadow prowled with sharp claws and ruled his wilderness, his kingdom of beasts. The entire day the Gardener had lain unawake, unseeing, drooling and fevering, and only with the next night's dreaming she barely found her escape back into life. These were depths she'd never visit again. There were only few definite images she recalled but those were of haunting wrongness.

For some nights the Gardener slept not at all as she kept herself safe and worked her way through the sights that had seeped into her mind, to make sure the shadow had not set roots in her, and to make sense as best possible of what she could recall.
To sort those sharp obsidian shards, night-black and cutting, near untouchable....
 
The Ancient Gardener, 3 ... (Uprooting)

One thing she understood now was that she had not been the first to see the girl’s talents.
If that had been so, perhaps it would have been possible to save her.

As it was, she could only hope to banish the threat she carried within her.

Someone of evil intent must have discovered the girl's hitherto unseen gifts, and for selfish purpose lured her onto the downwards path with false promises. Schooling her in isolation, schooling her wrongly in the ways of the seventh sense and second sight, giving her true words with false meanings, raising inchoate powers, and that fiend had led her into darkness and confusion instead of giving her a light to follow, making her dependent for every step on his crooked guidance, instead of enabling her to find the True Path.

That malicious Master had perished but his baleful spirit remained undeparted and had clotted into the stalking shadow. It had lasted through death.

A Master that had led her to gaze upon the pallid face that wore no mask, that looked out from a world of wrongness where there were two shadows for every living thing.

A path went there within the girl’s mind; it led, so it seemed, down her memories on steep wooden staircase to where the shadow had pooled, and if you fled from there in terror, bolted out the door, you would lose yourself in twisting narrow stone pathways looping back on each other, finding no exit for a night and a day, even though at every turn the outside world of the busy harbor town with all its voices and footfalls seemed to be just beyond a thin wall.

When the Gardener had stepped into the girl’s dreams, that was where she had very nearly lost herself. The crawling shadow, creeping slowly, but so familiar, so intimate with every twisting turn, every awkward angle, had almost overtaken her.

A desperate fugitive in this maze of despair, the girl herself too had once tried to escape, but the shadow had seized and overcome her. She was irrevocably tainted.

One should wonder how such a thing could happen under the very eyes of a noble family.
Perhaps unwittingly, they had entrusted part of her education to someone who had wicked aims but managed to disguise them well.

Then of course the Northerners where in general superstitious people, far too afraid of all things of otherness. The girl would have been raised in the belief any such stirrings inside her must be evil, and would instinctively conceal them when they began to unfold in her. She would have been easy prey for someone who promised to understand her otherness and guide her ... to whereever.

All in all, a sad tale, but as blackened on the inside as she was by now, there was nothing in human power to save her.

Any inspection would find her under Malevolent influence, even though it seemed she had no ill intent of her own, and lead to the torture chamber, painful execution or lifelong immurement. And the proceeding of Truthfinding with all the searing heat of its cruelty and shame would cast a pall over the fortune of the kingdom.

The shadow-girl needed to be put away, but it wouldn’t be easy for the Gardener to uproot that poison growth all by herself. Not with the girl being the King’s marriage prospect. But it was that dreamcasting of hers, and the opportunity to slip inside others´ dreams behind her, that made it possible. With much perseverance.

On her nightly wanderings through people’s dreams, the shadow-girl never reached in to remold them.
She was quite literally sleep-walking.
But each following day people felt more familiar with her than her brief history of presence at court, and otherwise quite reclusive nature, would lead anyone to expect.

It began that people would turn their heads just before she entered the room, seemed instinctively aware of her likes or dislikes among foods or entertainments, imagined they remembered things about her she’d never told, all in all felt like they knew her well and long. People agreed she was a bit strange – well, those Northerners, but the alliance was proving useful – yet somehow she seemed to fit in. The girl herself also took up the local customs eagerly, you didn’t have to tell her twice how things were done in the Middlelands, sometimes it seemed not at all. Things she learned, things she disclosed, unknowing in dreams when she drifted through the landscapes of other people’s minds, borders blurring, seeping through.

Everyone was eager to welcome her, not just for the sad loss of her sister. All agreed, there would be a time of mourning; the girl would learn more of the ways of the Verdesgord court, and grow just a little bit older, and then there would be another wedding to look forward to.

In the meantime both sides were gaining from the alliance. Though they were not many, the soldiers that Lokshada sent to fight alongside Hastinbar’s men, in what they were now calling the 'Wars of Dissolution', as it was all the old alliances of centuries coming apart, – these men were much feared – mostly because they were well accustomed to raiding in winter; they came with sword and fire and merciless fury over the rebel strongholds and heretic hideouts when they least expected it.

Lord Rurestfeth in turn was glad to gain a safe overland trading route.
The Northern lordships seemed to have it in their blood to always war amongst themselves, and so it had been in the recent years that Tjeremesd and Auvestiva had repeatedly blockaded his harbor and seized his ships at any opportunity.
Thanks to the alliance, Rurestfeth had things brought all the way overland to relieve his town, through the mountain passes, which only his lands had access to.
Most important where the great guns of course. Probably everybody has heard that story a hundred times. Two years later. Cast of bronze way south in Belquemer, from the hands of an artisan dynasty who were known for the fairest-sounding bells and now, the furthest-throwing guns, it was an undertaking for hundreds to haul them all the way up overland, and impossible to keep secret. But they had come up with a ruse, later revealed to the delight of all at a victory feast. The young King read out the letter that began, “Today the towers of Lokshada shrouded themselves in smoke, and cleared the bay of foes”, and of that ruse he announced, it had been the girl’s idea, and was that not another proof of her eminent suitability as soon-to-be Queen for his castle.

It was known that she was present at many deliberations of court. Blessed with, at the time, six living daughters but not a single son, Lord Rurestfeth had come to expect none of his issue would ever rule a castle or lead an army in their own right, but he intended to have his daughters be not only perfect princesses of beauty but also excellent counselors for their future husbands.

Some people did criticize that certain disciplines he enforced to that end might be more than the tender soul of a girl could bear, but anyone who had ever known Adohinsne in her brief life understood that she had been all that, tender, beautiful, but also strong-willed and dazzlingly smart. Perhaps the Gods had become impatient to have her amongst themselves.

His firstborn daughter was already well placed in a match that shored up his hold on the mountain passes, his second daughter had been claimed by fate, but his third, as she came of age, was quickly earning a reputation. They said she’d sit quietly listening, and when everyone’s considerations were irretrievably stuck in a rut, she’d throw in a suggestion that had people scratching their heads asking why they hadn’t thought of it themselves.

That was how fate would fall if left untended to: Due to the evident viability of the alliance, the girl’s own intelligence, eloquence and ever more obvious beauty, and much reinforced by the slow infusion of her dreams into all around her, she would become Queen, and most likely a very influential one. She had quickly become well rooted here.

If she wasn’t cast out her spirit would perfuse the entire court, and inevitably, it would be the living shadow who would wear the crown, who would be the true King.

But the Gardener knew by now where to dig, all the way to the root and pull it out.
The girl carried fears of herself inside, the knowledge of her shadow-taint, and it was just a matter of bringing that out when she went on her night-time wanderings through people’s dreams. The Gardener slipped in behind, and it was almost like holding up a veil, letting those she visited see deeper – see through her skin onto the scales of the monster rippling beneath.

And so it began that her darkness and her fears seeped in, too.

While it had been imperceptible to them before, people now started pulling in their heads when the shadow sailed over them. Also, no one ever mentioned that cruel custom, that ritual of forcing the face of the porcelain princess on her. That was because she herself swallowed the pain of it and kept it deep in. It had been the malicious Master, He who revealed the pallid face, who’d told her that she was tainted, she had taken it to heart, made that stain her very heart, and it seemed she took that torture too, as one more punishment for being so.

A change crept in, unknowingly they began to see her in another light; in her green eyes deadly pools, drawing them down, lurking predatory shapes in the depths, tails twitching as they circled, waiting for prey. You couldn’t count the ways of drowning. In a turn of her head, they’d see dark curls dissipate into swarming clouds of black bats. Haunting visions of doom would stalk the hallways and slip under the doors into sleeping chambers… forebodings of incomprehensibly cruel fates for royal children yet unconceived.

All of this was inside her, and when her spirit went sneaking into people’s dreams, all the Ancient Gardener had to do was follow patiently behind her and hold up that veil, so these things were seen, and became instinctively known of her.

Over the next years, as she grew to marriageable age, the girl would mostly spend summers at court in Verdesgord. It was only then that the Gardener could do her work. And so, as strange as it would seem, it happened that whenever the girl was at court, a wall of ice seemed to rise between her and the King; while as it was told, they both spoke of each other with the greatest enchantment when distant.

It became a love that cannot be; they would be drawn together from afar, but when they were close, fear would drive them away. It became as if the one could not breathe when the other was near. The King seemed entirely befuddled around the girl; she herself, otherwise known for eloquence, brought out hardly a word of sense around him. It tore the young king’s heart, as he could not understand what was fighting either in himself or the girl, but to save him, his heirs, and the kingdom from the curse of the living shadow, that ache was a small price to pay.

As time passed, the girl had most surely grown and flowered, but the arrangements dragged on. Ever more discord crept into the alliance. The King brought forward arguments to delay. Such as that two of his brides had died trying to bring an heir into the world and he wished to be careful. It was noted that he often went on raids and military campaigns just when the Northern party resided at the castle again. Talk began behind the king’s back. The more benevolent hinted that he had taken the Iron Bride and would not have any other until the last rebel holdout was razed. Others murmured that perhaps he had given up on womankind altogether and sought his pleasure elsewhere.

In those days the Gardener saw ever less of the shadow darting around, and evermore of it inside the girl, flitting behind her eyes.
She was swallowing it.
Perhaps hoping to hold it inside and destroy it.
Or just to hide it, sensing it was no longer entirely invisible to others.
She was always concealing.
With such spirits, it always works the other way around though: They eat their bearer from the inside.
And now, with it inside her, she would suckle her children with shadow.
The royal heirs would be poisoned as newborn babes, the dark spirit within them from the first breath – no, even from the first beat of their tiny hearts inside their mother’s womb, and the spirit would shift at will between any of them, working its evil where ever it wanted to.

Around that time another thing came to pass that served to finally separate the two.

It was the second-to-last time the young King went out to raid against the rebels. He came back seeming distressed, and there were none of the usual stories of glory and victory. Something had occurred that none of the warriors seemed all too proud of.

The next day the King was seeking solace in the garden, and under the eyes of the Gardener, he came upon the girl resting there too, a book closed in her lap. She looked up at him and opened it, as if to reveal something.

What he saw there made the King step back and flee with guilt and anguish in his face. After a moment the girl went after him, but her steps were hesitant. She did not reach him.

What the book had opened on, as the King fled in terror from the girl. The wind had turned the page over as the Gardener walked up. She recognized the book as that prurient fabrication known as 'On the Methods of Justice in Manifold Times Past & Present and Realms Near & Far' and the Gods only knew why a young girl would choose to read such a book or why they let her have it. But well, it seemed she read anything and everything. It was the kind of book that pretended to inform, and most of the writing in it was somewhat true if exaggerated, but much more it sought to titillate with its illustrations.

As she turned back to the page the two of them had both look upon, she realized though that the Gods knew very well why.

A young maiden nailed to a cross. In the moment of rising to suffer.

The young king had returned from warring, and would not the shadow-girl have wandered through his dreams last night.

Was that what she had seen there?

Crucifying, it was the kind of thing they would do when they went to wipe out rebels, wasn’t it?
Though usually not to a young maid. Perhaps that was what they were ashamed of?

And the girl, she knew, and the King,... he knew she knew.

So, he understood she could see his secrets.

See his shames that were fresh, secrets dark and deep-cut and still bleeding.

That had to terrify him!

She had to terrify him! ... and that was good ...
 
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