16:00 He looked behind him once, before passing through the gates and into the bailey, | |
| He looked behind him once, before passing through the gates and into the bailey, and the fog was nothing more or less than it had been before he'd approached the cemetery.
Chapter 37 Ashe was true to his word. Cheerfully, embarrassingly true to his word. He came round the next afternoon, an hour before Illya's duty shift was over, dressed as if he'd just come from riding in a deep gray tunic and a heavy black vest of some fine and durable weave. His boots were black and shiny, save for a few scuff marks at the toes and heels. His dark hair was a little tousled, a few sweaty strands sticking to his forehead. He had a healthy flush about his face and a look of great excitement in his eyes. He'd most certainly been out and about and associating with horses. He got that look when he'd been allowed the time to dally in the stables with his favorite steeds. "Hello there, archery master, how fare you today?" He strode up to Master Kelvon and clapped the man on the back as if they were fast and true friends. Master Kelvon actually managed a genuine smile for the prince. Master Kelvin hardly ever smiled at anyone. It figured, of course. Ashe had that effect on people. He had that effect on soldiers in particular, as if they found him infinitely more worthy than the other high-bloods and royals they had to cater to. "Its been a good day, my lord. Have you come to take a bit of practice on the range." "Practice, yes, but not on the range. I've come to fetch ranger Illya, if you'll let him free from duty a little early." Kelvon's eyes shifted to Illya, who was blindly mangling the feathers he was supposed to be attaching to the shaft of an arrow. He felt his face heat at the archery master's glance. Ashe had not even glanced his way. Ashe might have been asking for someone to come and polish his boots. "I can spare him." As if master Kelvon might have denied the prince heir's request. Ashe smiled and crooked a finger at Illya. "Very good. Come along then, we've not long before the sun sets." Illya's flush deepened. He determinedly refused to glance about the range and see if any of the few archers in attendance were watching this exchange. Stupid to think they hadn't noticed Ashe's presence. Ashe drew attention like flies to a corpse. Illya ground his teeth and felt vaguely pleased at that gruesome comparison. He was entertaining the mild notion of killing the prince himself. But really, he should have expected it. When had Ashe not lived up to his word? "I told you I really didn't want to do this?" He quietly hissed once they were out of master Kelvon's earshot. He fell into step behind the prince, where any good subordinate ought to place himself. Ashe allowed it without question. He could not see Ashe's face, but he knew he was grinning from the sound of his voice. "Did you? I rather thought we got distracted before that line of conversation was finished." That was true enough in the sense that Ashe had gotten tired of discussing what he'd already decided was going to happen and dissuaded Illya from further argument by very effective, very captivating physical means. He'd not even the sense or the energy to leave after that and ended up scurrying back to the barracks in the wee hours of morning, hoping no one would make too much of his absence during the night. If the gate curfew had not been in effect it might have been easier to explain away. As it was, there were very few places a man could be in the bailey, aside from on duty, during the middle of the night. "Where are we going?" "Don't worry, I won't trounce you in front of the entire bailey." Illya sniffed. "I don't see why --" he broke off, distracted by the wafting movement of a familiar ghostly form atop the outer bailey wall. He was normally careful to avoid this disturbing spot, among others in his daily travels about the bailey. Ashe had made him forget. "What?" Ashe prompted at Illya's abrupt silence. "Nothing." Illya shook his head, staring at the dirt beneath his boots as he walked; at the back of Ashe's boots; at anything but the wall. "It's just --- he's getting ready to fall again." "Who's getting ready to fall?" Ashe asked in alarm, pausing in his steps. Illya kept going, passing him by, determined to pay no heed to the small plummeting body. "The little boy. The one who fell from the wall." A moment's silence behind him. He thought Ashe was staring up at the wall, shielding his eyes from the sun which sat low in the sky over the top of the battlement. Then there was the sound of his footfalls as he strode to catch up with Illya. He did not bypass him. Slowed his long steps in fact so that he walked side by side, close enough that his sleeve brushed Illya's. "I remember when he fell. He was the Gate Master's boy, I think." Illya shrugged, wanting to put it behind him. It was getting harder and harder of late to put all the translucent, bewildered faces out of his mind. Last night with Ashe had been a blessing. It had made him forget. "So where are we going?" he asked again, to change the subject. "You didn't think I practiced out with the rank and file because there wasn't an arena set aside for my own esteemed self, did you?" Illya canted a look up at him. "Well, it's where I took my lessons as a child, before I became too unruly for all the royal nannies and custodians that father and mother thought necessary in the upbringing of a royal prince. Old Avahine himself used to give me lessons there." He smiled fondly for a moment before his lips twitched down in a frown. "Do you think his ghost wonders about somewhere? His was certainly not a restful death." "I don't know." "If it did, would it be in the place where he was killed?" Illya disliked the path this conversation was taking. "Maybe. More than likely. I don't think he would have lingered here though." "Why?" They passed through the inner gates onto palace grounds with nothing more than a smart salute from the set of gate guards at that portal. "Well -- I think that most --souls -- that stay here as ghosts -- are -- are uncertain -- were uncertain in life. Or unbalanced. They might not have been prepared, or they might not have believed they could really be dead. I get the feeling that so may of them are childlike in their perceptions. Confused and distraught. Maybe they were that way in life. I don't think General Avahine was confused or unbalanced, or unwilling to accept his fate. Do you?" "No." Ashe said simply after a long moment's introspection. "I don't think he expected to live long after he sent me on my way that day. And he didn't. He wasn't afraid of death." "He should have been." Illya said softly, hardly even realizing he said it, remembering that place on the other side. Ashe caught his arm of a sudden, in the relative privacy of a palace garden path. "Why? Are you, with all your religious beliefs to protect you? With all those pompous promises of a utopia on the other side?" "Yes." Illya whispered hoarsely. "Gods -- yes." Ashe let him go, shaken. "Because of what you've seen? Or the sins you've committed here on mortal earth that might prevent your ascension?" "Yes." Illya snapped, irritated with the dig at his reservations; at beliefs ingrained since childhood that Ashe made constant light of. "Which?" Ashe asked. "Take your pick, my lord." "Gods, you dispel all my hopes of eternal salvation." He laughed, but it was forced. "Can we please, please talk of something else." Illya asked. He blinked up at Ashe, trying to look beseeching, trying not to spark a debate that he truly did not wish to engage in. "What were you planning on doing with me this afternoon?" The prince's dark brows rose. A lecherous gleam appeared in his eyes. Illya ignored it. Pointedly. Ashe knew quite well what he'd meant. Ashe could be monumentally trying at times. "You'll find out soon enough." The prince said. And he did, to his regret. The royal training arena was inside the palace proper. Situated next to a glassed in solarium, the arena was a good sized building with a fine padded rink surrounded on two sides by a row of comfortable benches, on another by a wall sporting weapons of every imaginable type and on the other by a trio of floor to ceiling cut crystal windows that were so thick and intricate in their cut that they did not so much allow a view of the outside world as let in a hazy, gray light. Everything was a deep, dark walnut, from the polished beams along the wall and ceiling, to the waxed surface of the floor. The rails along the side were padded, and there were rolled mats on the floor under the weapons display. It was immaculately clean, but still it had the air of disuse. As if people had not inhabited this room for a very long time. "Does anyone use this now?" Illya walked out onto the floor, his soft footfalls hardly making a sound. Ashe's heavier one's echoed in the still air. The prince shrugged. "Probably not. I don't. Gods know my father doesn't. It's set aside for royal use, you know, not just any high-blood can prance in here and wag his sword. "Oh. It seems a waste." "The privileges of the highest of the high-bloods." Ashe grinned at him. "You're full of yourself today." Illya observed dryly. "Very likely." "This is going to hurt, isn't it?" "Very likely." The grin spread wider. "We really don't need to do this." "That is what we shall discover this evening, little ranger." "Don't call me that.' "Of course." Ashe conceded and proceeded to thoroughly thrash him. He didn't go out of his way to hurt Illya, quite the opposite really, considering their difference in size and strength and workable knowledge in combative things. It was merely hard not to get bruised and battered when one was roughhousing with the prince knight. Ashe was exceedingly quick for his size and quite agile. Illya had gone into this with the assumption -- probably a quite widely held one by healthy young men of his age -- that if he had a knife in his hand he was a force to be reckoned with. By the sixth time Ashe disarmed him he was ready to throw the blade to the floor in a fit of frustration. By the tenth time, his arm and wrist were almost numb from the impacts and he very well might have quit if not for Ashe's jesting comments. "You fight like a girl. I could probably get a better dance from the lady Lurene." "Then why don't you go and do just that." "Because I prefer dancing with you. At least someone taught you the proper way to hold the blade, I've seen enough green lads who hold it like they're about to carve a roast hen." "I'm not a green ---" "You are. And painfully so. Didn't you ever tussle with your older brothers or take lessons from the keep armsmaster?" Illya tightened his grip on the knife, glaring indignantly at the prince, who was not out of breath and hardly ruffled. Illya felt bruised in body and ego. "We were never much for -- socializing -- my brothers and I. And everyone thought I was destined for the church anyway, so why bother?" "Your choice, or theirs?" Another shrug. He wasn't quite certain of the answer. No one had ever forced the issue. They were all quite content to leave him to his wonderings and his books and his strange fancies. "It doesn't matter." "It does." Ashe disagreed and moved to stand behind him close enough to press Illya's damp shirt against his overheated skin. Close enough to feel the steady thud of the prince's heart against his back. The prince positioned his hand on Illya's wrist, turning the knife the way he wanted it. "Stand like this. Don't present your full body to an opponent. No use to give a man a bigger target than he already has. And when you block, hold the blade like this -- see?" And so it went. Ashe was not the gentlest teacher in the world. He was often impatient and often overzealous in his demonstrations. Illya would sport bruises on the morrow. He ached now. But he hadn't a cut on him. Ashe had. Ashe had a few shallow slices on forearm and the back of his hand that he'd acquired by purposefully letting Illya get past his guard. A needful thing and no harm done, he'd said, shrugging off Illya's apologies. It was well past dusk when Ashe relented and called the practice session over for the night. Illya sent a heartfelt prayer of thanks to the heavens for that mercy. He slipped the knife gratefully into its sheath and stood there trying to work the stiffness out of his fingers while Ashe set the arena to order. "Not so bad, little ranger." Ashe remarked as he waved Illya towards the door. "I'll teach you a few more offensive tricks tomorrow." "Oh, gods, Ashe, you'll kill me." Illya complained. "I can hardly walk now." "A good long soak will take the soreness away." The prince promised. "A good long soak -- where?" Illya cast him a wary look. It was late and he'd already missed one night's sleep in the barracks. "Where do you think? Do you have hot bathes in the bailey?" Bathes were lukewarm and few and far between in the bailey. Cold buckets of water from the trough were the norm. Most men that wanted hot bathes went into town on their off hours for a little pampered grooming. "It's very late." He said reluctantly. The thought of a little pampering at the prince's hands sounded rather nice after the beating he'd just taken from those same appendages. "It's not late at all. It's the season." True enough. The days were growing shorter and shorter, even as the weather grew more and more bitter in its journey towards winter. "Not all night." Illya said. "Of course." He ended up asleep in the prince's bed. Clean and sweetly scented by the prince's bath oils, and lulled into complete lethargy by the prince's oh so clever hands. Ashe chased the discomfort away. Ashe made him forget all manner of things. He might have happily curled next to the prince heir for all eternity, if not for the demands of the rest of the world. He came awake at the gentle nuzzling of lips against the lobe of his ear. Came into full awareness of the body half leaning over him, of the smell of Ashe's skin and his hair and the warmth of his body. "What?" he murmured, somewhat disorganized in his sudden awakening. Ashe went down on an elbow, the rough silk of the dark hair on his chest a pleasurable abrasion against Illya's shoulder and arm. "It would be remiss of me- - " The prince murmured, sliding his lips down the column of Illya's throat, shifting his body a bit to lean over and transfer his attention to the other side of Illya's neck. "- - to let you sleep the night away here when you asked so adamantly to be allowed to return to your cold, lonely barrack bunk." "How long have I been asleep?" It was hard to formulate the question with the prince's weight pressing him down into the soft mattress. With the smell of his skin strong in Illya's nostrils. His hands -- his hands sliding casually down the length of Illya's belly to do unpardonable things below his waist. "A few hours." "Hours? You promised." Illya couldn't manage the reproach he thought should have laced his tone. "Do you know, when you sleep so deeply, you look as if you're barely out of the nursery?" "Then you, my lord, are a molester of children. Let me up. I've dallied too long." Ashe sighed and rolled onto his back, displaying the length of breadth of his impressive torso for all to see. Illya lifted a brow at the state of his arousal. His own had dwindled at the thought of sneaking yet again into the bailey at such a late hour. He tossed a coverlet over the prince as he slipped out of the bed. "You have no modesty whatsoever, my lord." He chided, looking for the scattered components of his uniform. "Don't milord me, prudish creature." Ashe grunted, pushing the thick coverlet off his face. Illya grinned, he couldn't help it. He braided his own hair in an effort to hurry himself along. Ashe always took an extraneous amount of time for a job that Illya could accomplish in minutes. "I'll see you tomorrow, then?" he defied the inherent danger of Ashe's reach to lean down and ask. Despite the aches and bruises of the evening's workout, he was quite giddily eager to see the prince again. "If you wish." Ashe shrugged nonchalantly, as if it made no difference to him. Illya lowered his head and kissed him. "I wish." Then he was off before he might be entangled in something that would eat up yet more hours of the night. The grass was wet underfoot and the air cold. A light haze of fog clung to the ground. He thought it entirely likely that they might wake up on the morn to find the world covered in a light frost. The air felt like it. It was probably already snowing in the mountains of home. The weather was gentler here. This cold was nothing compared to the ones experienced in the northern Aldanian highlands. He didn't mind the winter so much. He had a fondness for freshly fallen snow. The forest newly coated in white was as ethereal a thing as anything on mortal earth. As he walked through the grounds along the back of the palace a wash of something that felt like one of the cold winds out of the north wafted across him. An odd chill that seemed to rise up out of the earth and curl around his ankles and work its way up his legs. He shivered, rubbing his hands up and down his arms, thinking it was time to break out the thicker winter uniform tunics. Something made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Some sense of something not quite right in the almost moonless night. He looked about the shadowed grounds warily, gaze fixing on the odd, bulky shapes of the old royal cemetery which lay across the manicured grounds up against the inner bailey wall. The fog was thick there, a hazy cloud of almost luminescent smoke against the blackness of the shadows. Illya felt a little twinge of something more than mere unease. It bordered on fear that had no discernible cause. Nothing but shadows and superstition. He had a distaste of graveyards in the middle of the night. It was not an unreasonable apprehension. He might have hurried past, but for the flicker of pale movement at the edge of the cemetery gates. A translucent, hazy form that seemed to sprout up out of the mists. At first he thought it might have been Rina and he took a few steps towards it out of reflex, her name a whispered question on his lips. Then he saw that it was not. He saw a brief flash of detail that made him draw his breath in shock. It was very well formed, this ghost. As concrete in its details as Elerina ever was. Its dress was as old in nature as hers was. Frilly sleeves and the long flaring coat tails that had been the fashion for men, centuries ago. It drifted along the boundary of the cemetery fence, like a dog pacing the breadth and length of its limited territory. It was the line of its neck and the shape of its face that gave Illya pause. It looked like Ashe. The resemblance was there in the long, lean jaw, the thin, straight nose, in the width of the shoulders and the way they were held. For a moment, an overwhelming panic bolted through him, an overwhelming fear for the prince. That he might being seeing his shade walking the earth -- but no, the prince was safely in his chambers, alive and well only minutes past. No ghost of his then. But of his blood. It occurred to Illya that this might very well be some ancestor of Ashe's. It occurred to him that Rina had claimed that her betrothed had been the very image of Ashe. Was this then, Kegery? He moved towards it, drawn by curiosity. Drawn by a sudden eagerness to ascertain if this were indeed the long dead prince. It would make Rina happy if it were. To bring them together in death as they had not been able to be in life struck a chord of righteousness within him. The apparition saw him and stopped, hovering at the gates staring at him intently. Waiting for his approach almost. The fog swirled around Illya's boots, biting at his knees with its cold fingers. For a moment he lost track of what he was doing, of where his feet were taking him. Ground was covered that he'd not realized he'd walked. The cemetery loomed so much closer than it had. The ghost was a pale miracle of transparent detail before him. Its eyes glittered with some spark of ghostly energy. There was eagerness within them -- and satisfaction. A malicious, cruel satisfaction. Illya blinked and stumbled. Something colder than the frigid air slammed into him from the side. A swirling miasma of frantic energy that invaded his body and pushed him backwards. He staggered and went down in the wet grass, up to his neck in the fog. Rina hovered above him, parts of her still passing through the solidity of his body. Run. Flee, now! Her words were a hysterical howl in his head. Don't let him touch you. As if his touch could have been any worse than hers and the shock into which it threw his body and mind. But there was true fear in her face and in the sound of her voice. The creature behind her at the cemetery gates opened its mouth and howled in frustration. The sound cut through Illya's nerves like a knife through flesh. It tore at his mind and he cried out in shock, covering his ears with his hands. The fog rose up, thick and malevolent, darker and thicker than it had been, seeking to twin itself around his body, seeking to steal his breath. He gagged, well and truly panicked now and tried to scramble to his feet. Rina in her efforts to shoo him away only hindered him more. He could neither think, nor function when her fingers passed through him. "Don't touch me." He cried. "Gods, get away, Rina." She backed off of a sudden, her eyes wide with shock, the smoky substance of her hands dispelling like smoke in he wind, then reforming as she regained something of her composure. Almost all of her form was becoming obscured by the fog. Illya could hardly see the ground before his feet. He looked behind him once and the haze had turned black as stormclouds and swirled in his wake. There was the dark outline a man in the fog. A solid man it seemed, but it didn't move or call out to him in his frantic flight. It might have been a statue. It might have been the ghost in some form before unencountered with shades. He ran then, blindly. Staggered once over a line of hedges and crashed through prickly bushes, scraping his hands badly and scratching his face and neck. He didn't know if Rina was still with him. All the world was covered in a mist that likened to freeze the damp parts of his clothing and numb the exposed portions of his skin. There was a light ahead of him. A solid darkness that was the bailey wall and the gate. He was out of breath and shaking when he reached that safe haven. That place where lanterns burned brightly and men stood on guard duty. "Miserable night out." The gate guard remarked, looking him up and down, but refraining from comment about the state of his dishevelment. Illya's hands were shaking so badly he had to stuff them inside his tunic to hide it. He looked behind him once, before passing through the gates and into the bailey, and the fog was nothing more or less than it had been before he'd approached the cemetery. The bailey was safer. The bailey was lit by a hundred torches and lanterns to drive away the darkness. The fog was faint and weak here. He walked into the midst of it blindly, devoid of destination. Devoid of anything but the need to gather his wits about him. Rina was still about. He could feel her in the air. Gods, he hoped it was her. But there was nothing malevolent about the feel of the presence, only nervousness and concern. He slipped into the darker shadows of a barracks building and pressed his back against the wall. "Rina! Come out, damn you. What was that? Was it Kegery?" Frantic uncertainty laced the air. Nooooo. Nooo. A disembodied voice. A wailing lament. Illya shut his eyes, digging fingers into the hair at his temples. Not Kegery. "Who then? What did it want?" You. He wanted you. He looked up, desperately searching the darkness for a glimmer of her form. "Why? Who was it?" Silence was his answer. He felt the tinge of her fear in the air, as bitingly cold as the fog had been. "It -- he -- was the same thing that frightened you in the crypts?" A soft, pitiful moaning. It might have been the wind. Silence. It lingered this time. The feeling of her presence just ceased to be. She was well and truly gone. He choked back a sob of frustration, pressing his back against the wall when his knees turned watery from a resurgence of the shock he'd suffered. He took a breath. Another, to gain strength. To collect himself. It had not been Kegery then. Rina had been terrified of whatever or whoever it had been. She said it had been after him. She exaggerated surely, in her panic. Why would some long dead ancestor of Ashe's have any malevolent interest in him? It was ridiculous. It was frightening. Even though she hadn't answered, he thought he was right in the assumption that it was the same thing that had chased them out of the crypts. Not Kegery. Who then? And why? He took a breath and pushed off from the wall, wary now of the darkness and the faint traces of fog clinging to the ground. Wary now of things taking an active interest in himself when none of the other spirits he'd encountered in Rhu paid him any heed at all. Sleep was not an easily achieved thing that night. He would have happily spent it in Ashe's bed, within the safety of Ashe's presence had he dared set foot on that span of palace ground that passed the old cemetery. ------------------------->------------------------- He woke up with a pounding head and a frantically beating heart, sweating from whatever fleeting nightmare had plagued him during sleep. It was well past the seventh bell and he was late for duty. He swore, swinging himself out of the narrow little bunk and throwing on his uniform haphazardly. He was lacing his tunic as he jogged towards the range. His lateness was a distraction from the worry of the incident last night. It kept him from dwelling on it. He was waylaid by ranger friend of Kenthy's on the way, an older man with Kenthy's sense of purpose and Kenthy's easy manner who had the time for easy socialization despite duty and Illya's obvious hurry. "He's out with a ranger squadron patrolling the woodlands around Rhu this last week." Illya explained Kenthy's absence. "Ah, keep an eye out for assassins hiding the forests." The ranger surmised. Illya shrugged to the obvious statement. This was not a place he liked to stop, very close the haunt of the long dead master sergeant. His eyes kept shifting to catch a glimpse of the ghost who was always there as sure as winter followed fall. Only today he wasn't. Today he did not go through his phantom drill only to fall dead in the midst of it. Odd. He excused himself from the ranger's rambling conversation and hurried towards the archery range. "I'm sorry. I didn't hear the bell." He explained to master Kelvin, who shrugged and went back to the meticulous carving of the fine ebonwood bow he was making. "Help on the range." The master directed. "Ingel's out sick today." Illya nodded, grateful to escape a scolding for his tardiness and walked out onto the range. It was fairly crowded this morning. A good number of soldiers and rangers were out horning their skills. The old hands he left to their own devices. The novices he helped, giving hints here and there about stance or how to hold the bow, or how to sight and gauge the breeze. He could not help but think about Ashe's attempts at tutoring him in the art of bladework. Ashe was not as patient a teacher as he was. Nor as gentle a one. He was walking a little stiff today from the lesson, as well as from his hectic flight across the grounds last night. His palms were tender and lacerated. If he could avoid pulling a bowstring himself today, he would. He shivered, thinking about that apparition. About Rina's proclamation that it had wanted him. What he might have done to warrant its wrath was beyond him. Unless it was anonymity it wanted. Unless it struck out at anything that perceived it in its eternal haunting of the crypts. Or perhaps it took offense at his proximity to its descendent. It was powerful, there was no doubting that. The pull of its eyes had been --- hypnotic. And the fog. He had doubts now whether that unearthly fog had been a product of his imagination or not. His nerves were strung as tight as a bowstring thinking about it all morning. He started at any manner of little things. Movements in the shadows made his pulse race. He was being ridiculous, he told himself. Most ghosts were confined to certain intrinsic territories. Even Rina who was by far the most independent shade he'd ever come across, was governed by the presence of the ring he wore about his neck. It was if there were some ghostly sense of propriety and it went against their basic nature to defy it. The spirit last night, if it was the same one from the crypts, had seemed constrained by the graveyard gates. Did its territory begin and end with the boneyard, both below and above ground? Had this ghost merely been in the midst of wondering in the cemetery when Illya passed or had it been waiting for him. He very much hoped it was the former. He very much hoped that it was confined to the places of the dead and that it could not haunt the halls of the palace itself. He'd never heard rumors of strange things in the palace. Ashe had never mentioned a thing, but then again such things were more likely to be seen or speculated upon by the servant staff rather than the high-bloods. He would ask Drougal or Drace when next he saw them. The resemblance to Ashe still lingered in his mind. It drew at his curiosity insistently. Despite the his foreboding over the thing he dearly wanted to know whose ghost it had been. "You there, boy, give us a hand here, will you?" he was startled out of his musings to find a group of high-bloods clustered around one of the archery lanes. Four of them, with fine expensive bows in hand. Regretfully he recognized at least two of them. Davad and young lord Eibli. To ignore them would have caused a commotion. He was more than certain Davad would not let him get away with claiming duty elsewhere. Reluctantly he walked towards them. "Yes, my lords?" He stopped an arm's length away from them. "I've come to improve my shot." Davad said cheerfully. "Won't you give me some pointers, ranger?" Illya really rather would not have, but there was little choice. The others spread out and took turns firing arrows at the straw targets. Most of them were wildly off the mark. Davad wasn't that bad. "Your wrist isn't straight." He remarked. "A wristlet might help." "Really? I'd rather not wear one. Show me what I'm doing wrong." He drew the bow and glanced at Illya, waiting for him to step closer and correct the bad posture. Gingerly, Illya placed fingertips to his wrist, correcting the angle. The arrow still missed the central mark. "Show me yourself." Davad handed Illya the bow. Grimly, Illya took it, wondering what Davad was about. It had a surprisingly heavy pull, but Davad had the height to utilize it. Illya knocked an arrow and sighted down the tip of it, presenting the perfect stance, explaining as he did. "Did you have a scare last night?" Davad whispered from behind him. "What?" Illya asked stupidly. The arrow loosed. It hit the target dead center and lodged there, vibrating slightly. Davad sniffed, disappointed that he'd not interfered with Illya's aim. "I saw you on the grounds -- what, had you just crawled from his majesty's bed?" "What -- did you see?" Illya felt stupid asking, felt stupid falling for the bait. "I saw you running as if a nightscare was hot on your heels. Guilty conscience, perhaps?" How? Where could Davad have possibly been in the middle of the night, in the midst of all that fog and chill. What had he seen? Illya turned and looked up into those cool blue eyes. Smug little smile on the lips, a daring cant to Davad's golden head. "What were you doing, in the middle of the night outside his majesty's chambers, my lord?" The smile faltered a little. The eyes flashed irritation, perhaps even a little confusion. "That's none of your business. More the point what were you doing?" "I thought, you'd already ascertained that." Illya said under his breath, lifting an eyebrow. Davad's innuendoes didn't embarrass him. They merely made him weary. He wanted this conversation over. He wanted out of Davad's company and the curious eyes of Davad's cronies. "Whore." Davad hissed. "He's never paid me." Illya said softly, calmly. "Find another term." Davad's face colored. He made an angry grab for either Illya's arm or the bow. Illya let go a taught pulled bow string and it snapped down on Davad's knuckles. The high-blood let out a yelp of startlement, snatching his hand back. "You did that apurpose." Davad cried, holding his hand close to his chest, drawing curious stares from the other archers. "You've broken my hand." "You exaggerate surely." Illya felt giddy with the calm realization that nothing this person said could make him less than what he was. None of his cruel comments or sly innuendo's mattered if Illya refused to let them. It might matter what Kenthy thought, or master Kelvin and most certainly Ashe, but Davad was less than nothing in the grand scheme of his life. "You've nothing but reddened knuckles. You have to be careful with taught bowstrings, you know." He handed the bow back. Davad reflexively took it, glaring. It occurred to him as he calmly walked away, feeling the glares on his back as surely as if they'd laid hands on him, that he might very well have seen Davad last night. That still, dark figure of man in the fog. Too near the cemetery for comfort. If it had been Davad, he wondered what else he might have seen. | |
|
| |
| Всего комментариев: 0 | |