Clad in the white enamel and gold armor of a Knight of the Holy Word, Sir Talvad Hasteen reined his white stallion onto the wide field of combat before the Warlock Lord's pavilion and rode toward the great Lord of Darkness himself. He ignored the Guardsmen flanking the Lord as they laid ready hands on their swords. He ignored everything but the dark lord in gleaming black and red, regally seated upon a black throne atop the dais.
At any other time the oath Talvad had sworn two years ago would have compelled him to kill this man and any of his followers on sight, but not this day, for this was the Eve of All Souls, All Hallows Eve, the night his God was most powerful, protecting him as he approached the Warlock Lord to make his challenge for combat with one of the Lord's darkling souls.
Halting his white stallion before the great red and black pavilion, Talvad crossed his hands on the pommel of his white saddle and respectfully half-bowed to the long, lean man who was the most powerful of all the Warlocks. The Court Herald, a twisted little man in black, stepped forward and down the steps to interpose himself between the young knight and his master.
"For what have you come here armored for battle, young knight?" The Herald asked.
Talvad ignored the Herald and kept his eyes on the Warlock Lord. "I have come to claim the Right of Challenger against an enemy I have long sought," Talvad announced.
"Do you stand before us as the Champion of the Knights of the Holy Word?" The Herald queried, falling easily into the ancient ritual of formal challenge that was older than the era of Warlock Lords and the Knighthood of the Holy Word.
Talvad shook his head. "The shield I bear upon my arm this day is not the emblem of my Order," he replied. "lt is my family crest."
And indeed, the crest was not of the Cross of the Seven Saints, but of a shiny silver eagle, the emblem of the Hasteen family, highest among the Seven Families following the teachings of the Sacred Creed.
"A personal conflict?" The Herald queried, and glanced at his master for direction. The Warlock Lord made no move or sound, but the Herald nodded as if words passed between them. The Herald faced Talvad again.
"Your request is honored," he said. "State your challenge."
Talvad solemnly removed the heavy, metal studded gauntlet from his right hand and held it high for all to see.
"Spoken before all assembled here and before God Almighty," he shouted. "I, Talvad Hasteen, duly consecrated a Knight of The Holy Word, do stand and demand justice upon a Field of Honorable Battle for an unjust deed done to the kith and kin of Hasteen."
Talvad expected the surprised rush of whispers from the Warlocks and their human allies as they learned why he, their sworn enemy, would intrude upon their dark celebration, but he did not expect the laughter that swept around him, jeering him. It insulted his pride and angered him, which amused the Warlock Lord. The Lord raised a slender, black gloved hand to silence the crowd and the Herald continued to play his part in this unexpected game.
"State your grievance," the Herald demanded. "And name your opponent."
"I have come to avenge the brutal and unjust murder of the most virtuous and much lamented Lady, Lynaya Hasteen," he announced and glared about himself, as if to challenge anyone to laugh at these words. No one laughed. He looked back at the Warlock Lord and cast his Gauntlet of Challenge down on the steps before his dais. "I have come for your illustrious and heroic Champion, the one you call Guardian, who is in truth Talvana Hasteen, my sister."
The gathered courtiers responded now not with scattered laughter, but open surprise. The Warlock Lord leaned forward, interested. He dismissed his Herald with an off handed wave of a black clad hand and spoke directly to Talvad himself.
"Why do you believe my Champion is responsible for this murder?" He asked quietly.
"We were twelve years old when Talvana took our mother's life," Talvad replied steadily, chilled by the low, inhuman softness of the Warlock Lord's voice and his direct attention. "I saw the deed done and I have not forgotten it."
"Bitter is your anger, boy," the Warlock Lord said. "But beware, as a Knight of the Holy Word, your errand must always be justice. Not vengeance."
"Vengeance is my right by blood and by law!" Talvad declared hotly.
"But 'vengeance is mine,' so said your own Lord, and you are sworn to His Word," the Warlock Lord warned heavily. "Remember that, boy. If you do nothing else in your life, remember to whom you have sworn your oath and pledge, and stand true to it."
Before Talvad could form a reply to this warning, the Warlock Lord turned and gestured to someone standing behind him. "What say you to the charges spoken here against you, my Champion? Has this young knight spoken true? Is he your brother, and are you a murderer?"
Like a shadow herself, Talvana Hasteen stepped forward from the shadows at the back of the pavilion and took her place behind the Warlock Lord's throne, the gleam of her black and red armor an affront to her brother as she stared at him without expression.
Born at one birthing, Talvad and Talvana were as true a reflection of one another as day is a reflection of night. With his long white cloak flapping out behind him like angry wings and his long blonde hair gleaming in the sunlight, Talvad looked a young god, but he was no god. He was only a son dedicated to one, as she was dedicated to this imfamous man of black magic and stood in his shadow like a shadow with hair and eyes as black as night.
Everything about them was in direct conflict, their appearance, their sex, their very natures, and this made it inevitable that they would one day face each other in this way.
"It has been a long time, brother," she said quietly.
"Fifteen years," Talvad said coldly.
"Yes," Talvana acknowledged simply and said no more.
Well, and what had he expected? For her to cry out a blustery denial? A guilty confession? A sobbing plea for mercy? Or to simply stand there, untouched by his charge, as she had been untouched by their mother's death?
"Your brother has charged you with matricide," the Warlock Lord prompted. "What say you, my Champion?"
What could she say, to her master, to Talvad? How could she tell Talvad that the knife she had used to kill their mother had been their mother's own and meant for Talvad's chest? How do you tell a son his mother meant him as a sacrifice to the Unseen? Talvana wondered bitterly how she could say now what she could not say for the past fifteen years. There was simply no way to tell him the truth. Not here. Not now. Yet, the Warlock Lord expected an answer from her, and she must make one. She looked at her master and said: "I neither acknowledge Sir Talvad's charge as true or as false, my lord."
"No hand but yours dealt her death, sister!" Talvad cried harshly. "I will have justice for her. On my oath, I will have justice!"
Justice? Talvana almost laughed in contempt at her brother's naivety. There was no justice, not for those touched by the Unseen. If there was justice in the world, their own mother would not have committed her soul to the Unseen in an unholy bargain for personal power; their own mother would not have tried to kill her own son to pay the price she owned for that power; their own mother would not have cursed her own daughter with her dying breath for interfering in her plans for power; condemning her to live out her life as a spirit held woman serving a spirit held Lord. No, facing her brother, who knew nothing at all of the truth of his own past or of what he truly faced in her or her master, Talvana knew there was no such thing as justice.
"You stand challenged, sister," Talvad glowered. "As an 'honorable' knight, you are obliged to answer it. Or have you forsaken your honor as you did your vows to God?"
Talvana stared hard at her brother, unable to answer. She could not refuse the challenge, given as it was before her own Lord, knight to knight. She could not refuse, yet to accept it would be her brother's death, or worse, if Talvad won the match and killed her out of revenge rather than justice. If his soul was committed to justice, the Unseen spirit in her soul would have no where to go, but if he soul was committed to vengeance, the Unseen spirit in her would not hesitate to spring from her with her dying breath to fill Talvad, making his life the living hell she had endured the past fifteen years.
"I do not accept your accusation as a valid challenge," Talvana said, and sprang forward as quick as a startled cat with her sword bared to protect the Warlock Lord as Talvad spurred his stallion up the dais steps in outrage, his own sword drawn in anger.
"Your cowardice knows no bounds!" He cried and brought his sword down to meet her blade. But steel did not strike steel as the Warlock Lord pushed himself to his feet and thrust out his hand, and his power.
"HOLD!" He shouted, and the young Knight cried out as the Warlock Lord's will gripped him and froze him in the saddle. With an angry toss of its head, his horse half reared and stepped back, back again, until it stood where it had a moment before.
Until that moment, Talvad had not truly believed any of the stories told about this man and his deadly alliance with the Unseen. Until this moment he had not believed a human could sell his soul for power. But now, as he swallowed his fast beating heart back into his chest and wetted his suddenly dry lips, Talvad felt the truth of the Warlock Lord's power, and believed.
"You overstep the bounds of your Challenge," the Warlock Lord reprimanded and pushed Talvana's sword aside with his arm. "Sheath your weapons, both of you."
Trembling, Talvad restored his sword to its sheath. Humbly, Talvana obeyed her master.
"Talvana, your brother's challenge is valid. Accept it, or be dishonored."
"My Lord...," Talvana began.
"Accept it, or be dishonored," the Warlock Lord repeated, and Talvana lowered her head, silenced, and resignedly stepped down to pick up her brother's gauntlet of challenge and heft it. Looking up at her brother with the cursed gauntlet in her hand, she knew she had no choice, no freedom, but to play this game out. She crossed to him and held the gauntlet up to his waiting hand.
"Your challenge is accepted, brother," she said. "May God have mercy on us both."
"May you die and burn in hell," he said, and she turned away without reply to meet the look of the Warlock Lord, his mind silent against her own, but his eyes alive with the light of speculation as he considered anew what she was and how he could use her to serve his own ends. Talvana bowed and withdrew to prepare herself for combat.
With the sun falling late into the day and casing shadows across the tournament field, Talvad took his white lance from his weapon bearer and stared off across the field to where his sister prepared to mount. His hand tightened on the shaft of his lance as the familiar tension of his hatred coursed through him at sight of her. Finally his quest across the years would reach its conclusion and justice would be done. His mother would be avenged. Her murderer would die.
Yet, even as he anticipated this long awaited moment and watched his sister arm herself and prepare to fight, Talvad's anger weavered and was disturbed by questions. Why had Talvana refused to confirm or deny his guilt or innocence? Why had she refused to accept the challenge? Did she fear to declare the truth of the matter before her lord and master? Why?
Angry that he could not answer these questions, Talvad banged the end of his lance into the dry ground and snapped shut his helmet's visor. He decided it didn't matter why Talvana had evaded the truth. It would not avail her this day, nor hide her from the death he held in his hand. Talvana would die, and justice, finally, would be done.
"Aim true and let's be gone from here," his squire said anxiously, and Talvad smiled without humor. He remembered the force of the Warlord's power on his body, confining him to obedience. He remembered it, but to face his sister and make her pay for what she had done, he would have demanded audience from the Lords of the Unseen themselves.
"I've not come to miss my mark, Squire," Talvad answered shortly, and kicked his stallion forward.
Beside the Warlock Lord's pavilion, Talvana noted her brother’s entrance upon the battle ground and mounted the warhorse her footman brought forward. It was a big black brute, one of the Warlock Lord's own, with fire in its eyes that was not entirely high spirits. It shook itself with a anxious snort as she settled into the saddle. It half reared as her own tension passed through her body into it and she firmly squeezed it under control with her armored thighs as she tugged her visor down. She caught the unmarked black shield tossed up to her and thrust her arm through its thongs. Then the lance came up and she fixed her free hand around it. Her horse stomped its foot anxiously, ducked its head in warning that it would not obey her tight rein much longer, and she nudged it forward onto the tournament field.
The onlookers, all loyal to the Warlock Lord, watched in morbid anticipation as the two huge horses, black and white, faced each other across the field of battle. The Herald, sitting his horse at midfield between them, saluted both knights with his sword, then raised it above his head. All eyes fastened on it as the sun's late light glinted off its sharp edge. lt flashed up against the blue sky, and hissed down in a shining silver arc. A cry went up from the crowd as the two great warhorses plunged forward with an explosive thrust of hard muscles and charged mightily across the field.
The thunder of their hooves shook the ground and air as they raced toward each other, their riders braced behind the streaking thrust of their lances. They met in the heart of the field, lance point to armor with a resounding clash that ripped a terrified gasp from the crowd as one horse cantered riderless from the field.
The Warlock Lord's Champion was down!
Breathlessly, Talvad wheeled his stallion around and cast away the broken haft of his lance, his heart thudding fast in his chest. He reined his mount toward Talvana's prone body, lying with his lance jutting out of her reddened breastplate.
Was she dead?
Talvad swung down from his stallion's back, surprised that it had been so easy. He hardly believed that she could be dead so soon. Not yet, he prayed, and drew his sword from the sheath at his hip. Don't let her be dead yet.
Sprawled on her back in the dirt, her face bleached and drawn with shock and pain, Talvana groaned and lifted her hand to her chest, feeling the lance shaft lodged there above her left breast, almost under her arm. Her left arm hung useless and dead in its sheath of armor. Talvad's squire and one of the Warlock Lord's footman ran to assist her from opposing ends of the field, but both held back as Talvad lifted his sword and advanced on his sister.
"Stand and fight," Talvad commanded.
Talvana grimaced and forced her body to rise against the weight of her armor and the pain in her chest. Gasping, she pushed herself to her knees, her hand gripping the broken haft of the lance. She gasped for breath and felt the Unseen spirit within her writhing as blood pumped warm over her hand.
Think not that you can flee, spirit. You are mine now and into death, she thought and tightened her grip on the lance, ready to twist it deeper into her body, to take her own life and the spirit with her. But she made a mistake. She looked up at her mounted brother with long-held love and her heart betrayed her.
"I take my life for the life I took," she said and steeled herself for death. But her words were not what Talvad wanted to hear and he heeled his mount around and thrust the flat of his blade in to flip her hand away from the broken haft of the lance.
"Stand and fight!" He demanded. "Or I swear I will cut you down unarmed. Your life and your death are mine! I swear it by all the gods that ever lived!"
"No!" Talvana cried, but too late. The words were spoken and the vow made, superceding all the others he had made in his life. Talvana groaned as the Unseen spirit within her body gathered itself in a whirlpool twist of power and wrenched itself from her body to launch itself out from her weakened soul into Talvad's rage filled soul. She grasped with all the might of her own dark will and history to hold it back, but it slipped through her hold and out of her being. Talvad stifled a surprised gasp of pain as the Unseen spirit slammed into him and took possession of his body and soul.
"NO!" Talvana screamed. She grasped his sword with her gauntleted hand and used it to pull herself up from her knees to her feet. "You shall not take this one as you took me!" She shouted and grabbed her brother to pull him from the saddle. Talvad roughly pushed her away, heeling his mount around, but she held on.
"Talvad, you must renounce it! You must fight it!" She cried, gripping him to take back what had abandoned her for him. Talvad freed her from his sword arm and smashed it’s hilt down on her wounded shoulder. She screamed and crumpled to at his horse’s nervously dancing feet. He reined the horse back from her as she struggled to stand again. He dismounted, slapped the rump of his mount so it cantered riderless across the field, and advanced toward her on foot.
"Draw your sword and die," he shouted at her as he faced her and swept the open space between them with his blade. Weakly, she pulled the lance point from her shoulder and tore the red sash from her waist to shove into the wound. She knew by the thick flow of blood she had little time left to her to fight her brother and take the Unseen spirit back into herself before she died. She didn’t know how, but she knew she must regain the Unseen spirit and take it with her through the gates of hell, or all she had sacrificed and suffered for her beloved brother these past fifteen years would be for nothing. Securing the wound as best she could, she regained her feet, drew her sword, and lifted it against him.
Sword to sword, night shade woman against sun lit man, one staggering, one striking, both fighting with relentless determination, to survive, to kill, to die, but with each strike made, with each blow received, it was clear Talvana was dying.
Shaking in the sweat and blood of her pain and weakness, Talvana knew she fought herself to the grave, and still knew not how to take the Unseen spirit with her. "Dear God of my fathers, help me!" Talvana cried in desperation, and packed the last of her life behind her sweeping sword, bringing it down to rip the blade from Talvad’s hands, but there was no help for her. Her sword came down and Talvad's was there to meet it with shattering force. Her sword was ripped from her grip and she collapsed to her knees, defeated. And Talvad stood over her, eclipsing the sun.
"I have waited fifteen long years for this, sister," he said and lifted his sword two handed, executioner-style. Talvana, kneeling with blood bright red on her chest and death pale white on her face, looked up at her brother.
"Talvad, do not forsake God and your vow to the Holy Word to satisfy your need for vengeance. Do you not feel what has come into you from my soul? It is the greatest evil, Talvad."
"How can you say this, sister, having lived as one Spirit held? This is not evil. This is power. True power, true freedom!" Talvana gasped in horror.
"You stand here as a Knight of The Holy Word? With a spirit of the Unseen within you, you can truly say this?" Talvana demanded and struggled to rise, but the strength was not in her. Powerless, she stared up at her brother. "I was Spirit held, Talvad, but never Spirit owned. I did not bargain away my soul to get it or call it to me of my own accord. I was cursed by it when mother died and it has been held as prisoner within me all these years--until you came with your high held hatred and need for vengeance, until you freed it by forsaking the Holy Word and swearing by the power of Unseen gods."
Talvad laughed at her, and she could not tell if the twisted laugh belonged to the young knight who had begun this fight or to the Unseen spirit now possessing his soul.
"What you say is true, sister," he said. "Truer still is the fact that I and the spirit are one in a way you never were. And this is the way it was always meant to be. All those years I thought I sought you to free myself of the pain I felt whenever I remembered our mother's death. But the pain was not in grief for her. It was for the loss of what she had offered me that night that you took away from me." He laughed and lifted his sword to cleave his sister's head from her neck. "I finally have what is mine," Talvad said joyously. "I am free at last, sister, free of my weakness and fear."
"Sweet God protect us!" Talvana cried out as she realized the sacrifices she had made and the suffering she had endured to protect her brother had been for nothing! She lunged at her brother as she pulled the dagger free from her sword’s belt and drove its point between the plates of armor at Talvad's groin. lt pierced through mail and flesh and the femeral artery in a bloody gush, ripping a scream from Talvad's throat. He swung his sword down on her armored back as she threw him off balance with her weight and grappled herself over his body as he fell. He struggled against her and weight of his own armor as she forced herself on top of him, her dagger going for his throat.
"Give it back to me, brother. Don't go to your death with it inside you."
“It’s mine!” He screamed and struggled against her, trying to break free. He slammed his arm into her wounded shoulder and leveraged her over and off of him. The universe turned with her and she lost her place in it as she put her last ounce of strength into her right arm and thrust the dagger forward. She felt it slide into flesh, and knew nothing else.
Waking in agony, Talvana thought she had passed beyond, but when she opened her eyes she knew she was still in the world. She stared up at morning sky, clear and empty, and knew the pavilion and the crowd were gone. The Warlock Lord, whose power had commanded her for so long , was gone, returned to his realm, bereft of the Champion he had called his own. His hold on her was gone. And she lay on the trampled field, alive and alone. Alone. For the first time in fifteen years, Talvana felt in her soul that she was truly alone. The Unseen spirit was gone.
Defying the pain in her body, she struggled upright to find her armor gone, her clothes changed to simple homespun shirt and trousers, her chest bandaged, her arm in a sling, and her body wrapped against the cold in the white cloak that had been her brother's own. And she was not alone. At a distance, beside the risen son, stood her brother's white stallion, and in it’s shadow, a undistinguished brown mare, and her brother's squire, kneeling beside a grave.
Pushing herself to her feet, she clutched the cloak to her and crossed to the man. She was startled when the white stallion interrupted its grazing to nuzzle her as she came near. She put her hand on his neck to steady herself and wonder at what she saw.
"Is he free, Lady?" The squire asked, without looking up at her. His hands were black with the earth of his master's grave. When she didn't answer, he looked up at her, beseechingly, across the grave.
"Tell me, Lady. Is he free?"
"I don't know," she said.
The Squire stared down at the fresh turned earth again, and came to some decision in his own mind. "If heaven is his, God will know," he said and stood stiffly to face her. "His horse is yours now, as am I."
"Is that what you want?"
"It has always been the way of my life to serve the Hasteen. I will serve you if you command it."
"I command no one," she said, "but I will take the horse. Do with your life as you will."
He said nothing more, but took her weight into his hands and helped her mount the stallion. It stood still beneath her as she swayed within a spinning world and willed herself to remain upright. When she was ready, she turned the stallion eastward with a touch of her heels. The squire called after her.
"You will not take word of your brother's death to your father?"
"If you feel the need to tell such news to the Hasteen, then do so. I ride east."
"You are free of the Unseen," the Squire said. "You are free to return home. Why do you ride toward the sun?"
"I have lived in darkness too long to ride anywhere else," she said and spurred off down the hill, into the sun, without looking back.
