From the Start
We moved together like two mirrors facing each other on the dance floor, gliding like thin little swans on two straight legs. It was beautiful, I suppose, to be watching us – nobles, young, obviously in love. Seeing it now it’s like something out of a fairy tale. Her blonde hair cascaded behind her and I wanted her so badly, more than I had wanted anything in my life… but I wanted it to be special. I waited until we were married and I took her and she took me — it was probably more of her taking me. In those first few months there was nothing but love and passion, light and laughter. Out of anything in my life, I think those might have been the happiest moments – straight up there, hanging at the pinnacle of my existence, with such fond reminisces as father giving me my sword and teaching me to ride, and mother actually smiling for once in her wretched life. I wished it could stay like that forever, that I could watch it for an eternity, but the image shifts like it always did, always at the same part.
Once upon a stormy night in Avonna; that was the next chapter, and the first chapter really. Hugo II took his first breaths in the world and again my heart was filled to the brim; but there was a layer of wry wistfulness there. I had hurt Emily so many times, and she hurt me right back… it was still love, always love, but I missed her dreadfully in those days. We would take care of Hugo on our own time, each cloistering him off on our private wing of the estate for days while we spoiled him rotten and did all in our power to get him to say ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’ first, like it was some game for the fate of all Avonna. These were still good memories; I had my father, I had my baby boy. We were a family, albeit broken in many places. The glue held thick.
Pieces shatter, father died from injury and sickness. I wasn’t sad, only empty. It was his time and I look over my shoulder now to see how happy he was to go. Beyond my sobbing, my begging, I saw that he needed the sweet release of death; how selfish of me to hold him there. Emily watched from the shadows and she reached out to me, but I turned away. I remember now I wanted to strike her so badly, so very badly — but I never did. Never would. I took over Avonna with a stern, morbid hand, using my counselors to facilitate economics while I focused on foreign relations and turned an eye towards the heretics within the Tarn. There would always be heretics within the Tarn. It was my sworn duty to protect pilgrims to the Spring Paths, and further – explorers into the Orkin, where the tallest trees were felled for the grandest ship masts, dragged thousands of leagues north to the sea, where Vandagan-Tubori shipwrights would turn them into floating castles on the sea. The scope of my little slice of the Kingdom was breathtaking and beautiful and I vowed to see it prosper, and it did, for a time.
Tragedy of course was never far behind. These were always the most painful images; riding upon Midnight through the keep walls, a small welcoming party of close friends and advisers. They smile for their Lord has returned; I know each one by name and get along reasonably well with all of them. Foreign dignitaries aside, Avonna people are my people. I wonder if I could have ever made Noah understand that; how I would die for him at the drop of a hat, no matter what I said any day, because he shared my blood and my heritage. They run their hands through Midnight — I don’t mind it, they’re all familiar faces that I’ve grown up with and around for years. Advisers of my father, new recruits into the Dragon Guard. There’s one named Joseph, freshly released from basic training; I’m eager to meet him but that will have to wait. Above all there are two faces I wish to see most — and there they are above me, coming out from the balcony loft, Emily waving, Hugo in her other arm.
Crack. The balcony breaks. They fall…
I heard my father’s voice a lot in that time. I might have been going mad, maybe hearing a ghost… or just incredibly, incredibly lonely. He would tell me to have faith, be strong, and he would say those cheesy lines that I knew him so well for: “The night is always darkest before the dawn.” I spent three years languishing, waiting for a dawn that never came. I drowned myself in violence, I persecuted the Hillpeople like Dav persecuted the Charali. Each night I would come home and say the same prayer. “Strength, Lord,” I would beg Him. I would beg him so hard, wringing Emily’s prayer beads through my fingers, concentrating on those words alone to calm my spirit and stop me from throwing myself off the balcony, only now being repaired — I had the builders executed, outright. Their piked heads gave me comfort, sometimes. Sometimes they gave me nightmares. “Strength, for Hugo, for Emily, and for my People.” I watched the prayer being said, and I cried two-fold.
I kept her dresses; each and every one. I would rotate them out, laying a new one in bed beside me in some sick strange ritual. Her scent kept on them for a month after she died… I can’t smell it now. I wish I could, but all I have is the perfect memory. Lavender and chamomile, like a calming tea. She was so perfectly pale and blonde…
I languished for three long years, hoping death would find me honorably and take me viciously. It never happened though. I had few comforts in those times, but Joseph was one of them. I trained him into the Dragon Guard and he trained me out of sorrow… at least, partially. The man was particularly unique, cold and gruff, which I liked. I had never enjoyed lukewarm people — people who don’t reveal their feelings or aren’t earnest in their desires. He was entirely a good friend, altogether blunt and honest, and he rarely judged. I did the worst types of things during those years and he would try to stop me, sometimes violently, but he would always understand. I wonder if that’s what I had wanted from Ariel most days; just understanding. I didn’t need philosophical discussions about how I could turn it all around… I just wanted him to know why I was the way I was. That’s all. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
It was mother who eventually talked me out of my repose. Curiously enough, my mother, who I had never felt close to since I was six years old, brought me out of the deep depression… in of course a very motherly way. She yelled and screamed and threatened until eventually I had to leave; I went to Lithmore, because that’s where she wanted me. She needed me there to find her a perfect Vavardian bride, somebody who would bring us copious amounts of money. If they were gentry, so what? As long as our finances were secured and my mother’s Vavardi lineage was represented more completely among the Azadar household. I wonder if she ever truly cared for father. Maybe in the beginning, but it was short lived.
I left Joseph on tour with the Dragon Guard and rode to Lithmore under the guise of finding a new bride. In earnest, I just wanted to drink and drug myself into oblivion. It was a quiet enough entrance into court when I first made the acquaintance of the Queen – whom I had seen several times in my late teenage years when father took me to court but never actually met – and Ariel le Orban, the commoner turned noble. Immediately I had the goal of fucking the Queen — because why not? Immediately, Ariel saw me for it. The little common-blood prick… he infuriated me at the time; a man can have his measure drawn by the way he treats his inferiors, my father always said. Ariel was the type of man who lived by those words — or at least pretended to. A ‘proper’ noble in every sense of the word because he had much more to lose, having gained it all from the bottom. It makes a poor, stiff noble indeed. I’m looking over the scene now and I wonder if I had said things differently, if I had actually tried, would I have succeeded? Fucked the Queen, killed Ariel, made off as a pretend King? How long would I have lived?
There were others I met in the city too – a ruthless savage Charali by the name of Dagerian who I immediately disliked. What type of man walks into a bar with a pet wolf? I’m almost positive it was well-trained — I grew up in Hillfolk villages more often than not, I had seen it done before — but it was a matter of principle! And the Justiciar at the time? I can hardly recall, but they gave me the impression of simplistic and weak, simply for the fact that they let people like Dagerian make a mockery of the law. Rumor was that he was an ex-Reeve himself which I could hardly believe. It was all so stupid, and in eloquent, and not very efficiently ran at all. It made me long for home, where if a man wanted to protect his people from the whims of a muscular Charali with a pet wolf, he could simply -do- it.
I met a woman named Gwenith, too… and Linnea. The images are blending together though; I can’t keep looking like this. It’s too hard. I need to rest.