Al-Aaron stared into the flames as he reached for the pile of spent gossamer beside him, clutching it unceremoniously within his fingers. He held it above the flames as one end of the darkened cloth fell from his grasp, hanging wind-tossed above the fire that reached up to meet it. The cloth withered above the heat, giving off an acrid stench that filled the air. As the parched threads erupted into flame, he let the gossamer fall. He closed his eyes, his lids shrouded gray above them. “Tell me of the death of your father,” he said. Chaelus sank again against the tree root. The weight of shame and memory pressed him there. His breath grew thin. “There’s no greater guilt I bear. Yet still it’s worsened, because I can’t remember how it came to pass.” “Then tell me what you can.” “I had returned from exile in answer to his summons,” Chaelus said. “The host of Roan Lords had gathered to him. They’d just beaten back the Khaalish horde. On the field of war I found my brother Baelus, of less years than you are now, lying wounded in the snow. “It was for this that I challenged my father’s judgment. He couldn’t let it stand. He struck me and I saw darkness. I awoke and he was dead, his sword in my hand, his blood a fearful tapestry across the snow. No sooner had he died, than the gathered Roan Lords bowed in fealty before me. “That is my shame – that’s how I came to sit on my father’s throne.” “Your father died long before,” Al-Aaron confided. “And perhaps there is more you have yet to remember.” “But either way his blood is on my hands.” To Chaelus’ surprise, anger welled within him; anger at his fate, at his loss, at his father, and at the promise of the child knight before him when every promise his order had made had been broken. “You watched me fall,” Chaelus said. “You watched me as Magus – as the Dragon – poisoned me, just as it did my father. Why didn’t you save me then?” Al-Aaron raised a stick, pressing one end of it into the still-burning cloth, setting glowing embers of it rising upon the air. His wounded arm diminished against him. “You weren’t ready.”
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 16:39:08 +0000
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