Dear All
Its only a short peice ...so think Roman Empires last days, gothic darkness,brutal and hopeless, erotic. Magic and heroism , its there with hope but not easy to see.
***
I had to dress without notice, half asleep, naked to fully clothed in minuets while the two guards ( who I had not seen before) etched in the firelight watched every movement, each button fastened, and every fabric my nervous fingers touched.
Halfway through though perhaps one ( the taller) prodded the other holding the lamp, that low flickering light was a little to meek to illuminate my entire pale body above my waist. So he put the large (then dim) oil lamp on the table amongst my precious papers and turned it up clumsily and deliberately so its flame looked angry and started smoking. We three then looked like haggard ghosts in that light, it reminded me of the bodies of our fallen in the secret underworld of the dead sea. When I was done (and they were sure I concealed nothing) the taller one who I saw as he leant forward wore a Dragoon tunic in dark blue beneath his cloak, dropped the chain and shackles to the bare floor before the rug on which I stood, the scabbard of his unhitched troopers sword lazily scraping the floor. He was handed a hefty bunch of keys from his comrades belt, which he also dropped on the floor. Then he put the shackles over my boots ( just as others had many times), tested which key worked and then snapped the lock shut. While this was done I was already far away in my thoughts trying to remember not the Dragoon Regiments by number that wore blue facings but the verse I had heard in my vision while I had slept moments before.
They send for you like that from the Imperial Court, unprepared with mental defences a little lower, tired, your fire smouldering, cooling or just low and dying. At their will it is again that I am to be taken to that place I had already been many times these last weeks, the Highest Court of Empire. There these months now, the Military inquisition has been held into the campaign in the North, that was just over a year ago now , its debacle, my part in it, certainly my demise.
They say in the City far below the best were already dead.
So escorted from my comfortable warm chambers, we move down the short winding steps of twenty or so, then out into the wide hall of many doors to meet the very chill air always waiting there. In there we are joined by a boy ( appointed I guess to guide us ) I had not seen before, thin, gaunt lad , perhaps eight or nine. He seemed to have been waiting a while, jumped up as we descended the last stair into the open space. He wore a dirty jerkin of buff leather, covered in jet black soot, he held a simple candle lamp of glass-wood and went slightly ahead, pointing the way politley. I could only take short steps as the chains (blissfully over my thick riding boots lined with lambs wool and clean thick sock Ms Julslain had bought me the eve before) are so encumbering, made extra short and heavy on my sore legs.
The hour must be approaching midnight; the grand tower bell would soon sound. No wonder the passages were bereft of any sole. As the levels of the bells were not too distant, here ( with some high arched windows, without glass open to the cloud laden sky ) it would be as grinding thunder in the caverns of the tower. Out here in the passages and open spaces for certain your ears would be ringing for days.
The boy leads the way now, the soldiers drop behind me , he takes fast steps turning back from time to time to see why I am so slow, I could see he had been crying. The guards seemed a little unsure of the route; no other folk were around, not here at least. This was not the guards normal area of duty, I saw that…
No one speaks as we go, just the clinking of the chains, large keys on a guards wide belt and a scabbard of the other scraping on the stone floor behind me. The heavily cloaked guards lead me in hand carefully down another wider passage (with more care than I could have hoped for) then into more airless and dimly lit steps of a narrow passage in the frigid cold where our breath mingles in icy vapours. Down and down we go through endless mazes, steps and dimly lit corridors of many more closed doors. Finally we come to a wide chamber dimly lit with too few Stain crystal lamps. There are worn threadbare rugs on the floor and on the far wall there is a tapestry of a hunting scene, hounds bounding ahead of horses, arrows in the air. Before us now were the apertures in stone holding the iron platforms. There could have been ten at least though two or three looked disused. I had not been taken from this level before but it was similar. From here ropes and chain winches take you down the hundreds of feet remaining past the private and secret levels, lower and finally if you hold the correct passes to earth. The three of us step over the dark gap onto the insecure iron floor; it is unsteady much more so than any other I had been on. The boy remains. The Guard with the bright lamp hooked it over an iron fixing in a bar above us catching his hand on its now very hot hood. The boy stands holding his small candle lamp overpowered by our smoking beast, looks at us departing and raises his left hand in a gentle gesture of goodbye.
I thought just then, I could be asleep, a dream, lost sad Chimney boy, but no…its too cold, its very real.
The boy looks only at me with glistening eyes set wide in his sooty face as if I were a little unwelcome or he was unsure of me. He was just about to speak (his last chance perhaps) when one of the guards bellows through cupped hands behind me breaking the his sensitive composure…
“ lowers yours way! Lower away! And turn down that lamps Purlivus or I be made blind as a tower bat.”
Three or four folk appeared behind the boy carrying in single file what looked like baskets, one certainly had a full basket of chopped fire wood upon his back, they took no interest in us.
The dirty boy stared at the long pink scar on my left cheek that ran from my lip to my ear. He rubbed his eye on the back of his hand, he was upset at something. As the platform started to lower on its great chains, he checked around to see no one was getting too close to listen and then he spoke in an accent of the North, of Gorting, that touched something inside me as if a needle had pierced my lips and I tasted blood.
The fiery angry lamp lit his black sooty face , some way off the moon filled the whole of one window high above him, the ceiling of the chamber was much larger, ornate and expansive that I could have guessed , in the bright light a muriel was shown in the upper parts – I could not say what it was . Our world and its matters looked small in the new light. The boy drew short breaths as he hastily said…
“ This is an important place …you must be special, very something special.
Hey Eh Sir, were yu in the Army then , a soldier but you were hurt right, what did that, no gold braided uniform? How come they are going to hurt yu Sir?
Have yu seen Alexia Hellig she too has gone there, down to Earth where yur going. Its so far I wish I could go, I wish to go outside and play in the sun with other boys as she said I could.
Hours…hours ago she went, before dawn, just like you and her room a few levels above yours. I come from the very high levels near the bell so I don’t hear well now so I can read lips a bit now sir… it helps. I miss her, she says she was born of a Queens line of long ago and I should become her Prinvice and come down to earth if I were good and did not cry, she asked if I helped bring things she asked for that were not allowed, she would see I played in the fields under sun. She is so kind to me…but so sad to go, if you see her ehh Sir, if you see her tell her I am still sad too, I did cry.
Oh, I am named Profinus, Profi she called me, Profi, remember me to her Sir, Profi, Profi!
The bell will strike soon. Twelve midnight, the longen so take care.
I miss …?
The first tear that had to come sooner or later was wiped from his cheek by his own finger; his skin was as white as the moon beneath, the platform was slowly lowering. The Dragoon guard looked displeasingly at him and shook his head gesturing him… be gone.
I could not hear anymore, the platform had now lowered further and he was slipping away, his feet finally vanishing in the closing aperture above us, I heard his feint voice echo from above my head, I thought he may have then been shouting, leaving his plea incomplete, too late.
When at last I realised how this puzzle may have fitted my previous life my heart pounded upon my breastbone, my eyes set with fire looked wildly for anyway to see him from the gaps in the descending metal tube, find the words I could say in a second or so …to learn if he and she had known my beloved Sarah… her sister …it must be… I never knew her name.
Purlivus mumbled something about “a woman washing or being washed, held down… while he watched ” and reached up to turn the lamp down… while the other looked down to hitch up his scabbard upon its belt hook , all hid beneath his cloak.
So I took my chance for action but really, if I was honest, I hesitated a second or so fearing what they may do and it was too late…
Escape, no… those wild fortunes written of so many times are for tale and song or childrens stories- All I took from fates chance handed me were words shouted, words thrown upward in desperation!
We had now already accelerated in our descent, in a few seconds we had passed through solid stone yards thick and the boy’s level was already vanquished from sight. As I said, the name Hellig had lit fire in my eyes and I shouted back at the boy in my surprise to say more but I too was drowned out I suppose, not by the bell but a wrenching metallic wail as the heavy chains swung and run against the side of the metal braced vertical tunnel - Randomly I guessed they crashed and grated over the structure as we lowered – down through a sound of …heavy metal thunder. Like undisciplined players re tuning a hundred hollow iron gongs, the crashing chains musical chaos slew my and the possibly boys remaining words thrown back to me, if there were any. The Guards covered their ears rather then silence me, perhaps their reaction was that it was the first toll. So none of us were in a good position to face what happened next.
The platform jolted to a halt, jarred, moved two feet more, again another foot, dropped at an angle. We all slumped forward upon each other; I fell against the side of the tube and its exposed mechanisms, desperately trying to avoid my outstretched hands touching the fast moving chains, I felt the weight of one of the guards fall on my legs , pining me… probably that saved my hand. Being so close to losing my right hand, I thought bizarrely about my starry sword, how warm she had felt in my grasp and where she was now. I knew it was pointless to deny my rash decision to hand her over…somewhere here , deep , deep below here in the smithies’ she is to be broken like me, be unmade. I turned my head, above me the lamp swung violently on its hook above flicking out flaming oil as Perlivus now up struggled to gain hold before it spilt its full volume burning oil upon us all.
A few seconds later the intense noise stopped, the platform suddenly was running free and steadied itself immediately to my surprise. The apparatus then began a long slow grinding decent as if nothing had happened.
I managed to get myself up as they too composed themselves.
The lamp was turned down, scabbard hitched. Standing behind me after some moments they laughed as I had when greater danger had passed – soldiers do. Moments later after a few whispered words they began talking lustfully between themselves. In low voices they sniggered and jibbed about the legs and unshaven womanhood of a female prisoner they had seen de robed earlier and what they would like to do with her…
I should be asleep this macabre evening cannot be real. My mind wanders back to the strength of dreams, of Sarah just then, embalmed in a Necrophilis of her ancient Household in some distant Western Kingdom but joined in words now with little Profi and her Sister Alexia then faintly back to me… the platform rumbles and grinds down inching us apart. I could not say how long that descent lasted this time…or even if I heard the bell distantly above.
Level upon level we pass, I look at each new opening vision in the dark stone as if it were pages of an unread book. There once were open stairs leading upward or downward, warm or cold wide or narrow rooms but they were the simple things. There were places I had never seen…A chamber or was it a cage lit from the sides by artificial light with a wretched stench within a host of auburn chickens. Impenetrable dark halls with pale faces in the gloom to which I could not see bodies, watching us pass in union. Then below that an armoury, a wide deep chamber well lit at the viewers end through its huge portcullis, chained shut. It was stacked with metallic missiles of many calibres, stowed for the great weapons of the tower that for this magazine at least must have been on the lower levels. Silent winches to lower these weapons were folded neatly over wooden hatches braced with iron in many parts of the floor. I saw hundreds of Spiked Air Mines from Orion Dwarves in wooden crates, hundreds of ballista bolts with serrated heads to take down the greatest beast. Beyond them and in the shadows were derelict cannon some on broken mountings of many sizes, draped in oiled hessian. Then below that place a serene lamp lit, warm picture lined corridor with thick rugs, below again occasional roaring hall fires tended by servants…
I focus on words I have heard in my sleep, of you of coarse, of voices in my head I live with, back to the dreams of the verse before they came for me, start to recall the fading lament I had been given. Its like that with dreams for us all, they are washed from us, driven out by new images of your woken eyes even as your heart could reach out to hold them. I recounted again and again the parts I could remember but alas some of it I had earlier recovered from sleep was already gone or merged with thoughts of Sarah.
Where would you begin, like or unlike this?
What words come easily for you to place in green cutler ink if you as I had to now recount all that’s been seen – that is, through my life’s eyes till now?
It will not then be easy for me either, you know that’s true so be not surprised if I shall flip and oscillate from the here and now back to what has been or may have yet been again and again. I hope you realise reflecting on what has past, sometimes distantly and across vast distances and time is not my intent but as you know well, I truly live in no space or time. Perhaps, I in recounting the most remote and unfathomable events may really be looking to place the chance spark back into me, re kindle an old fire and take me back with another chance to step a new way toward the path of light and a new open horizon…
So you once asked me about my earliest memories> Was I like my beloved angels Titfus and Tatfus? Were they of me , those that guided me and lead me in play in those early single years and whose purpose I never really came to learn ?
No, how can that be? They were not of earth and sky but of the twilight of birth ever fading right from that moment of my first screaming breath. They are utterly gone now I know that. Slain at my innocence end and by my own hand in my misplaced lust for Sarah, I believe though we are one now but not in this world.
But ask me again not for my wishes or view of parts of me of which I suppose you know all but ask if I still remember the whole boy who in single years thought time had not noticed him? He was a gossamer thread, weightless without care new made in the bright fresh light of his first years and angels were at his heels, and the fire of horses hearts were his wings as he played…
Yes … just, I do … and he grew…
A freckled faced yellow haired vagabond who rode horses bareback proudly one handed crooked long stick for a lance in the other and he dreamt of the old Kings but who finally found him self earthbound and shouldering so much hope of others from the strength his ancestral blood that he did not know which way to turn to serve any purpose with real effect. Does it resonate and agree with you then that I would say this boy was in truth just a small thread in a mighty weaver’s purpose, locked and drawn ever tighter within a wondrous minds pattern of thought and intent of which we have no real understanding?
In the dreams I share with you, I remember I told you, there is no time I know of but it must be that something is passing away from me that you could feel. I do not know how fast we are moving further apart, hours later, years later, lifetimes later it is to me, I still dream in a void of time, pressing my lips back on yours across the void to test we are still there and close, knowing I suppose one day my kiss will be upon darkness. To you I think there is no tide of sea, no sign of sky to show this passing but I am glad to be always locked in your grace in your memory… I realise that my ancestors are close in this place too though they cannot come before us again and I would wish … Mother , oh and Father there would be no more time to divide us if I could regain a place of innocence in my heart… we would be together again, whole and one.
Part of me then is locked in you, yes but alas, the conscious me now can only watch you from my sleeping visions, seeing that with hope (and hope races still in my heart ) you still hold somehow the thinnest golden thread of my soul there in your eyes still hanging in the light breeze and the brightest fresh light that still calls for me but it is devoid of me, locked beyond me. I may have passed now unwittingly closed doors or just grown away to the woken world but always left fragments of my passage behind…with you.
So the time of the boy is gone except in the memories contained in his heart. A new thought spirals back at me from the weightless space of the dreamscape…
Did I really become the man who finding his legacy in his own blood, stride fourth into the diming light of the world and take up arms of steel and serve a twilight starry blade of the old Kings and march east and north once more? Could I have been that man that many later followed onward into battle in the hope of absolution from the weight of many too many sins and fears locked in the fading light of their own lives?
I am not sure I ever was happy to be that strength to others, it was never my intent I will never be whole enough to bear that weight.
So I who was un content to be so revered, thought myself little more than a pawn and so I bore my own hidden fragile hope inside theirs that pledged their lives, that is true. I who in no way deliberately discredited the Empire with my deeds nor truly loved it enough to save its fractured heart, achieved really so very little. For all the lives lost in all oaths we made we still toil against the undefeatable enemy and still the wars are waged without end.
Knowing that I was the man always to take the grey line between deed and thought, in doing so neither saved nor was saved is not to be proud of. In truth ( its clear to me , even now) the division of evil from good could not always be found though I tried so hard to drive the wedge of light between them. Now if that is by those deeds of which I write here is how you feel I should be judged in the light of your day- yes it’s me how would I deny it to you?
I could never be what I needed to have been even for myself, never mind what the past held its hand out to show me I could have been and indeed what I was.
So you may feel a little ashamed of me, as we are close here in this thought just you and I and it should not be hidden, you say nothing but I know I failed your hopes, I know I did… and may yet.
Men and women, young and old, in armour and without kneel upon the aged steps of the Citadel before the starry blade outstretched in my bare hands. Some are weeping others whispering to comrades or loved ones, each awaiting their turn for they cannot go back before death on this oath. Some are wide eyed like children again, to be so close to her finest edge, they pledge allegiance to the final struggle. With fumbling word or strong words it make no difference, for they know now the end of days could be at hand for the Empire and all they believe in. Even if that be true, we will all conceal it well just for now any fracture of faith in our conviction will allow evil to divide us. So as I am weaker than they think, I will not take any eye of theirs on mine for fear they should see what I really feel. Instead, I look blankly ahead into the marching dusty columns beyond, horses and men in columns of snaking regiments one after another, so numerous, fade into the north and the wars beyond the still distant low mountains. The long standards and colours of the Empire and of the old Kings, too numerous to count are at last entwined in the growing breeze of harvest times end. Here from the heart of Empire they march away in a new alliance, march away ... again north, away.
Below me, my old chestnut charger stands in red and silver comparison bearing the crest of the sun and moon, a little too hot, pacing and striking at the earth with his fore hooves, maybe he knows his last ride to war has come. He is too old perhaps for this campaign but I have no other like him, he fears not the east and I need every ally who would stand with me now.
The sun breaks from the cloud sweeping its radiance over the army setting its armour afire like a silver river.
There he stands awaiting me … empty well worn saddle, chestnut brown with furnishings in red, shinning in the autumn sun. His ears are pricked and his eye is kind but knowing his death awaits as he looks back at me, reins over his proud head gently held in the hands of my young squire. The other seventy or so of the households Old Guard all ready to mount, stand to horse and await my command.
I look distantly to the North East, there is red anger in the heavy cloud that fills the sky there … they know … they wait for me to return, within the long spinning seasons of darkness they have rekindled, re spawned. They can wait with unclosing eyes through lifetimes of men if needs must, their strength ever waxes and strengthens… sooner or later they know we must fail in our strength.
They know I am, was always and will forever be, a frail pale thread hanging in a dwindling light.
I hear many low voices about me, I hear my chains louder as I ascend the low steps to the place of the accused, and I have walked in a dream into the high court chambers. Here and now in the deep winter’s night, I stand in an iron cage embellished with forged metal ivy, its leaves as sharp as the teeth of the Rog. Awaiting my accusers’ final assault, I look out into the many candles and lamps faintly illuminating the dark figures beyond.
It’s just as cold here, last night it had been bearable. The guard with the lamp, Purlivus held it low to the ground as he checked my leg irons and said the steam venting through copper had failed or maybe just diverted to needier parts of the Citadel Tower. He casually ignored what he stood in, the end of a life.
There on the floor of the cage in his lamps light was cold dark congealed blood, I had walked in and was still standing in it before I realised what it was. Over my shoulder (at the base of the short steps) a part covered contorted body below awaits collection. Only the one arm is visible in the lamp light. There I see a deeply slashed thin pale wrist of a woman’s arm and beyond that it’s hand upon that beautiful long pale fingers with polished coloured nails, open and outstretched. Not those fingers of a worker, soldier or servant but those which should have once held roses.
I saw him twice more, the boy of the north who touched my life through Sara’s sister, Alexiasasis was her full name. Once, days later, from a distance, timidly entering a crystal lit room with many voices within. He looked resigned to his position and as dirty as ever, he smiled a little at the face of the hand on the open door that I could not see. In his fingers was the same now unlit lamp, a bundle of stiff brushes tied in cords over his shoulder… A big built older man prodded him through the large door to attend his task. The guards lead me back toward my confinement, he did not see me.
The next time would be, when he too bought me a forbidden thing. That act would sweep the shadows into the brighter light of day… even though he would never live to see it.
I thought now though of what he was to me then as I stood in the iron dock before the court. A broken hearted little boy who I never knew and whose skin had never seen the holy sun, he who would always wonder after the promises made to him and who would never come to earth to play under the open sky…
I buried his ashes with honour, laid him in the wide Atrium garden of the lesser tower of Allowena, close to the golden Magnolia just before it bloomed in the first warm days of spring.
Thanks for reading - if you got this far
Its only a short peice ...so think Roman Empires last days, gothic darkness,brutal and hopeless, erotic. Magic and heroism , its there with hope but not easy to see.
***
I had to dress without notice, half asleep, naked to fully clothed in minuets while the two guards ( who I had not seen before) etched in the firelight watched every movement, each button fastened, and every fabric my nervous fingers touched.
Halfway through though perhaps one ( the taller) prodded the other holding the lamp, that low flickering light was a little to meek to illuminate my entire pale body above my waist. So he put the large (then dim) oil lamp on the table amongst my precious papers and turned it up clumsily and deliberately so its flame looked angry and started smoking. We three then looked like haggard ghosts in that light, it reminded me of the bodies of our fallen in the secret underworld of the dead sea. When I was done (and they were sure I concealed nothing) the taller one who I saw as he leant forward wore a Dragoon tunic in dark blue beneath his cloak, dropped the chain and shackles to the bare floor before the rug on which I stood, the scabbard of his unhitched troopers sword lazily scraping the floor. He was handed a hefty bunch of keys from his comrades belt, which he also dropped on the floor. Then he put the shackles over my boots ( just as others had many times), tested which key worked and then snapped the lock shut. While this was done I was already far away in my thoughts trying to remember not the Dragoon Regiments by number that wore blue facings but the verse I had heard in my vision while I had slept moments before.
They send for you like that from the Imperial Court, unprepared with mental defences a little lower, tired, your fire smouldering, cooling or just low and dying. At their will it is again that I am to be taken to that place I had already been many times these last weeks, the Highest Court of Empire. There these months now, the Military inquisition has been held into the campaign in the North, that was just over a year ago now , its debacle, my part in it, certainly my demise.
They say in the City far below the best were already dead.
So escorted from my comfortable warm chambers, we move down the short winding steps of twenty or so, then out into the wide hall of many doors to meet the very chill air always waiting there. In there we are joined by a boy ( appointed I guess to guide us ) I had not seen before, thin, gaunt lad , perhaps eight or nine. He seemed to have been waiting a while, jumped up as we descended the last stair into the open space. He wore a dirty jerkin of buff leather, covered in jet black soot, he held a simple candle lamp of glass-wood and went slightly ahead, pointing the way politley. I could only take short steps as the chains (blissfully over my thick riding boots lined with lambs wool and clean thick sock Ms Julslain had bought me the eve before) are so encumbering, made extra short and heavy on my sore legs.
The hour must be approaching midnight; the grand tower bell would soon sound. No wonder the passages were bereft of any sole. As the levels of the bells were not too distant, here ( with some high arched windows, without glass open to the cloud laden sky ) it would be as grinding thunder in the caverns of the tower. Out here in the passages and open spaces for certain your ears would be ringing for days.
The boy leads the way now, the soldiers drop behind me , he takes fast steps turning back from time to time to see why I am so slow, I could see he had been crying. The guards seemed a little unsure of the route; no other folk were around, not here at least. This was not the guards normal area of duty, I saw that…
No one speaks as we go, just the clinking of the chains, large keys on a guards wide belt and a scabbard of the other scraping on the stone floor behind me. The heavily cloaked guards lead me in hand carefully down another wider passage (with more care than I could have hoped for) then into more airless and dimly lit steps of a narrow passage in the frigid cold where our breath mingles in icy vapours. Down and down we go through endless mazes, steps and dimly lit corridors of many more closed doors. Finally we come to a wide chamber dimly lit with too few Stain crystal lamps. There are worn threadbare rugs on the floor and on the far wall there is a tapestry of a hunting scene, hounds bounding ahead of horses, arrows in the air. Before us now were the apertures in stone holding the iron platforms. There could have been ten at least though two or three looked disused. I had not been taken from this level before but it was similar. From here ropes and chain winches take you down the hundreds of feet remaining past the private and secret levels, lower and finally if you hold the correct passes to earth. The three of us step over the dark gap onto the insecure iron floor; it is unsteady much more so than any other I had been on. The boy remains. The Guard with the bright lamp hooked it over an iron fixing in a bar above us catching his hand on its now very hot hood. The boy stands holding his small candle lamp overpowered by our smoking beast, looks at us departing and raises his left hand in a gentle gesture of goodbye.
I thought just then, I could be asleep, a dream, lost sad Chimney boy, but no…its too cold, its very real.
The boy looks only at me with glistening eyes set wide in his sooty face as if I were a little unwelcome or he was unsure of me. He was just about to speak (his last chance perhaps) when one of the guards bellows through cupped hands behind me breaking the his sensitive composure…
“ lowers yours way! Lower away! And turn down that lamps Purlivus or I be made blind as a tower bat.”
Three or four folk appeared behind the boy carrying in single file what looked like baskets, one certainly had a full basket of chopped fire wood upon his back, they took no interest in us.
The dirty boy stared at the long pink scar on my left cheek that ran from my lip to my ear. He rubbed his eye on the back of his hand, he was upset at something. As the platform started to lower on its great chains, he checked around to see no one was getting too close to listen and then he spoke in an accent of the North, of Gorting, that touched something inside me as if a needle had pierced my lips and I tasted blood.
The fiery angry lamp lit his black sooty face , some way off the moon filled the whole of one window high above him, the ceiling of the chamber was much larger, ornate and expansive that I could have guessed , in the bright light a muriel was shown in the upper parts – I could not say what it was . Our world and its matters looked small in the new light. The boy drew short breaths as he hastily said…
“ This is an important place …you must be special, very something special.
Hey Eh Sir, were yu in the Army then , a soldier but you were hurt right, what did that, no gold braided uniform? How come they are going to hurt yu Sir?
Have yu seen Alexia Hellig she too has gone there, down to Earth where yur going. Its so far I wish I could go, I wish to go outside and play in the sun with other boys as she said I could.
Hours…hours ago she went, before dawn, just like you and her room a few levels above yours. I come from the very high levels near the bell so I don’t hear well now so I can read lips a bit now sir… it helps. I miss her, she says she was born of a Queens line of long ago and I should become her Prinvice and come down to earth if I were good and did not cry, she asked if I helped bring things she asked for that were not allowed, she would see I played in the fields under sun. She is so kind to me…but so sad to go, if you see her ehh Sir, if you see her tell her I am still sad too, I did cry.
Oh, I am named Profinus, Profi she called me, Profi, remember me to her Sir, Profi, Profi!
The bell will strike soon. Twelve midnight, the longen so take care.
I miss …?
The first tear that had to come sooner or later was wiped from his cheek by his own finger; his skin was as white as the moon beneath, the platform was slowly lowering. The Dragoon guard looked displeasingly at him and shook his head gesturing him… be gone.
I could not hear anymore, the platform had now lowered further and he was slipping away, his feet finally vanishing in the closing aperture above us, I heard his feint voice echo from above my head, I thought he may have then been shouting, leaving his plea incomplete, too late.
When at last I realised how this puzzle may have fitted my previous life my heart pounded upon my breastbone, my eyes set with fire looked wildly for anyway to see him from the gaps in the descending metal tube, find the words I could say in a second or so …to learn if he and she had known my beloved Sarah… her sister …it must be… I never knew her name.
Purlivus mumbled something about “a woman washing or being washed, held down… while he watched ” and reached up to turn the lamp down… while the other looked down to hitch up his scabbard upon its belt hook , all hid beneath his cloak.
So I took my chance for action but really, if I was honest, I hesitated a second or so fearing what they may do and it was too late…
Escape, no… those wild fortunes written of so many times are for tale and song or childrens stories- All I took from fates chance handed me were words shouted, words thrown upward in desperation!
We had now already accelerated in our descent, in a few seconds we had passed through solid stone yards thick and the boy’s level was already vanquished from sight. As I said, the name Hellig had lit fire in my eyes and I shouted back at the boy in my surprise to say more but I too was drowned out I suppose, not by the bell but a wrenching metallic wail as the heavy chains swung and run against the side of the metal braced vertical tunnel - Randomly I guessed they crashed and grated over the structure as we lowered – down through a sound of …heavy metal thunder. Like undisciplined players re tuning a hundred hollow iron gongs, the crashing chains musical chaos slew my and the possibly boys remaining words thrown back to me, if there were any. The Guards covered their ears rather then silence me, perhaps their reaction was that it was the first toll. So none of us were in a good position to face what happened next.
The platform jolted to a halt, jarred, moved two feet more, again another foot, dropped at an angle. We all slumped forward upon each other; I fell against the side of the tube and its exposed mechanisms, desperately trying to avoid my outstretched hands touching the fast moving chains, I felt the weight of one of the guards fall on my legs , pining me… probably that saved my hand. Being so close to losing my right hand, I thought bizarrely about my starry sword, how warm she had felt in my grasp and where she was now. I knew it was pointless to deny my rash decision to hand her over…somewhere here , deep , deep below here in the smithies’ she is to be broken like me, be unmade. I turned my head, above me the lamp swung violently on its hook above flicking out flaming oil as Perlivus now up struggled to gain hold before it spilt its full volume burning oil upon us all.
A few seconds later the intense noise stopped, the platform suddenly was running free and steadied itself immediately to my surprise. The apparatus then began a long slow grinding decent as if nothing had happened.
I managed to get myself up as they too composed themselves.
The lamp was turned down, scabbard hitched. Standing behind me after some moments they laughed as I had when greater danger had passed – soldiers do. Moments later after a few whispered words they began talking lustfully between themselves. In low voices they sniggered and jibbed about the legs and unshaven womanhood of a female prisoner they had seen de robed earlier and what they would like to do with her…
I should be asleep this macabre evening cannot be real. My mind wanders back to the strength of dreams, of Sarah just then, embalmed in a Necrophilis of her ancient Household in some distant Western Kingdom but joined in words now with little Profi and her Sister Alexia then faintly back to me… the platform rumbles and grinds down inching us apart. I could not say how long that descent lasted this time…or even if I heard the bell distantly above.
Level upon level we pass, I look at each new opening vision in the dark stone as if it were pages of an unread book. There once were open stairs leading upward or downward, warm or cold wide or narrow rooms but they were the simple things. There were places I had never seen…A chamber or was it a cage lit from the sides by artificial light with a wretched stench within a host of auburn chickens. Impenetrable dark halls with pale faces in the gloom to which I could not see bodies, watching us pass in union. Then below that an armoury, a wide deep chamber well lit at the viewers end through its huge portcullis, chained shut. It was stacked with metallic missiles of many calibres, stowed for the great weapons of the tower that for this magazine at least must have been on the lower levels. Silent winches to lower these weapons were folded neatly over wooden hatches braced with iron in many parts of the floor. I saw hundreds of Spiked Air Mines from Orion Dwarves in wooden crates, hundreds of ballista bolts with serrated heads to take down the greatest beast. Beyond them and in the shadows were derelict cannon some on broken mountings of many sizes, draped in oiled hessian. Then below that place a serene lamp lit, warm picture lined corridor with thick rugs, below again occasional roaring hall fires tended by servants…
I focus on words I have heard in my sleep, of you of coarse, of voices in my head I live with, back to the dreams of the verse before they came for me, start to recall the fading lament I had been given. Its like that with dreams for us all, they are washed from us, driven out by new images of your woken eyes even as your heart could reach out to hold them. I recounted again and again the parts I could remember but alas some of it I had earlier recovered from sleep was already gone or merged with thoughts of Sarah.
***
Where would you begin, like or unlike this?
What words come easily for you to place in green cutler ink if you as I had to now recount all that’s been seen – that is, through my life’s eyes till now?
It will not then be easy for me either, you know that’s true so be not surprised if I shall flip and oscillate from the here and now back to what has been or may have yet been again and again. I hope you realise reflecting on what has past, sometimes distantly and across vast distances and time is not my intent but as you know well, I truly live in no space or time. Perhaps, I in recounting the most remote and unfathomable events may really be looking to place the chance spark back into me, re kindle an old fire and take me back with another chance to step a new way toward the path of light and a new open horizon…
So you once asked me about my earliest memories> Was I like my beloved angels Titfus and Tatfus? Were they of me , those that guided me and lead me in play in those early single years and whose purpose I never really came to learn ?
No, how can that be? They were not of earth and sky but of the twilight of birth ever fading right from that moment of my first screaming breath. They are utterly gone now I know that. Slain at my innocence end and by my own hand in my misplaced lust for Sarah, I believe though we are one now but not in this world.
But ask me again not for my wishes or view of parts of me of which I suppose you know all but ask if I still remember the whole boy who in single years thought time had not noticed him? He was a gossamer thread, weightless without care new made in the bright fresh light of his first years and angels were at his heels, and the fire of horses hearts were his wings as he played…
Yes … just, I do … and he grew…
A freckled faced yellow haired vagabond who rode horses bareback proudly one handed crooked long stick for a lance in the other and he dreamt of the old Kings but who finally found him self earthbound and shouldering so much hope of others from the strength his ancestral blood that he did not know which way to turn to serve any purpose with real effect. Does it resonate and agree with you then that I would say this boy was in truth just a small thread in a mighty weaver’s purpose, locked and drawn ever tighter within a wondrous minds pattern of thought and intent of which we have no real understanding?
In the dreams I share with you, I remember I told you, there is no time I know of but it must be that something is passing away from me that you could feel. I do not know how fast we are moving further apart, hours later, years later, lifetimes later it is to me, I still dream in a void of time, pressing my lips back on yours across the void to test we are still there and close, knowing I suppose one day my kiss will be upon darkness. To you I think there is no tide of sea, no sign of sky to show this passing but I am glad to be always locked in your grace in your memory… I realise that my ancestors are close in this place too though they cannot come before us again and I would wish … Mother , oh and Father there would be no more time to divide us if I could regain a place of innocence in my heart… we would be together again, whole and one.
Part of me then is locked in you, yes but alas, the conscious me now can only watch you from my sleeping visions, seeing that with hope (and hope races still in my heart ) you still hold somehow the thinnest golden thread of my soul there in your eyes still hanging in the light breeze and the brightest fresh light that still calls for me but it is devoid of me, locked beyond me. I may have passed now unwittingly closed doors or just grown away to the woken world but always left fragments of my passage behind…with you.
So the time of the boy is gone except in the memories contained in his heart. A new thought spirals back at me from the weightless space of the dreamscape…
Did I really become the man who finding his legacy in his own blood, stride fourth into the diming light of the world and take up arms of steel and serve a twilight starry blade of the old Kings and march east and north once more? Could I have been that man that many later followed onward into battle in the hope of absolution from the weight of many too many sins and fears locked in the fading light of their own lives?
I am not sure I ever was happy to be that strength to others, it was never my intent I will never be whole enough to bear that weight.
So I who was un content to be so revered, thought myself little more than a pawn and so I bore my own hidden fragile hope inside theirs that pledged their lives, that is true. I who in no way deliberately discredited the Empire with my deeds nor truly loved it enough to save its fractured heart, achieved really so very little. For all the lives lost in all oaths we made we still toil against the undefeatable enemy and still the wars are waged without end.
Knowing that I was the man always to take the grey line between deed and thought, in doing so neither saved nor was saved is not to be proud of. In truth ( its clear to me , even now) the division of evil from good could not always be found though I tried so hard to drive the wedge of light between them. Now if that is by those deeds of which I write here is how you feel I should be judged in the light of your day- yes it’s me how would I deny it to you?
I could never be what I needed to have been even for myself, never mind what the past held its hand out to show me I could have been and indeed what I was.
So you may feel a little ashamed of me, as we are close here in this thought just you and I and it should not be hidden, you say nothing but I know I failed your hopes, I know I did… and may yet.
***
Men and women, young and old, in armour and without kneel upon the aged steps of the Citadel before the starry blade outstretched in my bare hands. Some are weeping others whispering to comrades or loved ones, each awaiting their turn for they cannot go back before death on this oath. Some are wide eyed like children again, to be so close to her finest edge, they pledge allegiance to the final struggle. With fumbling word or strong words it make no difference, for they know now the end of days could be at hand for the Empire and all they believe in. Even if that be true, we will all conceal it well just for now any fracture of faith in our conviction will allow evil to divide us. So as I am weaker than they think, I will not take any eye of theirs on mine for fear they should see what I really feel. Instead, I look blankly ahead into the marching dusty columns beyond, horses and men in columns of snaking regiments one after another, so numerous, fade into the north and the wars beyond the still distant low mountains. The long standards and colours of the Empire and of the old Kings, too numerous to count are at last entwined in the growing breeze of harvest times end. Here from the heart of Empire they march away in a new alliance, march away ... again north, away.
Below me, my old chestnut charger stands in red and silver comparison bearing the crest of the sun and moon, a little too hot, pacing and striking at the earth with his fore hooves, maybe he knows his last ride to war has come. He is too old perhaps for this campaign but I have no other like him, he fears not the east and I need every ally who would stand with me now.
The sun breaks from the cloud sweeping its radiance over the army setting its armour afire like a silver river.
There he stands awaiting me … empty well worn saddle, chestnut brown with furnishings in red, shinning in the autumn sun. His ears are pricked and his eye is kind but knowing his death awaits as he looks back at me, reins over his proud head gently held in the hands of my young squire. The other seventy or so of the households Old Guard all ready to mount, stand to horse and await my command.
I look distantly to the North East, there is red anger in the heavy cloud that fills the sky there … they know … they wait for me to return, within the long spinning seasons of darkness they have rekindled, re spawned. They can wait with unclosing eyes through lifetimes of men if needs must, their strength ever waxes and strengthens… sooner or later they know we must fail in our strength.
They know I am, was always and will forever be, a frail pale thread hanging in a dwindling light.
***
I hear many low voices about me, I hear my chains louder as I ascend the low steps to the place of the accused, and I have walked in a dream into the high court chambers. Here and now in the deep winter’s night, I stand in an iron cage embellished with forged metal ivy, its leaves as sharp as the teeth of the Rog. Awaiting my accusers’ final assault, I look out into the many candles and lamps faintly illuminating the dark figures beyond.
It’s just as cold here, last night it had been bearable. The guard with the lamp, Purlivus held it low to the ground as he checked my leg irons and said the steam venting through copper had failed or maybe just diverted to needier parts of the Citadel Tower. He casually ignored what he stood in, the end of a life.
There on the floor of the cage in his lamps light was cold dark congealed blood, I had walked in and was still standing in it before I realised what it was. Over my shoulder (at the base of the short steps) a part covered contorted body below awaits collection. Only the one arm is visible in the lamp light. There I see a deeply slashed thin pale wrist of a woman’s arm and beyond that it’s hand upon that beautiful long pale fingers with polished coloured nails, open and outstretched. Not those fingers of a worker, soldier or servant but those which should have once held roses.
I saw him twice more, the boy of the north who touched my life through Sara’s sister, Alexiasasis was her full name. Once, days later, from a distance, timidly entering a crystal lit room with many voices within. He looked resigned to his position and as dirty as ever, he smiled a little at the face of the hand on the open door that I could not see. In his fingers was the same now unlit lamp, a bundle of stiff brushes tied in cords over his shoulder… A big built older man prodded him through the large door to attend his task. The guards lead me back toward my confinement, he did not see me.
The next time would be, when he too bought me a forbidden thing. That act would sweep the shadows into the brighter light of day… even though he would never live to see it.
I thought now though of what he was to me then as I stood in the iron dock before the court. A broken hearted little boy who I never knew and whose skin had never seen the holy sun, he who would always wonder after the promises made to him and who would never come to earth to play under the open sky…
I buried his ashes with honour, laid him in the wide Atrium garden of the lesser tower of Allowena, close to the golden Magnolia just before it bloomed in the first warm days of spring.
Thanks for reading - if you got this far
