Summary:
Durwin is a unicorn knight and Brother of the Abbey of the Golden Hill. He and the unicorn Sibbe ride in honor and glory against the enemies of the God until a loss on the battlefield against the Sorcerer Queen Alvariss threatens him with the loss of everything.
Notes:
I've been working on this since October 2025 and have finally finished a HEAVY rework. I may make some minor edits going forward but this is the more or less final version of the story. Thanks for reading!
Poppies bobbed in the wind over the grass like little embers as the boy Durwin wound his way along and down another yellow hill. He was alone, had been alone for days since the dream had come and he cherished each little piece of it in turn even as his body ached with weariness and the sweat stung his eyes in the droning heat of summer. The dry grasses gave way to rough chaparral and he camped under a scrubby old juniper while the coyotes yipped not far away. He walked again, winding his way through the rough hills between the steeper mountain forests, all the way until he could at last hear the thrum of waves over the distant shore.
In the dream the land had stretched around him like a crescent while he stood atop a lonely rock jutting out of the sea. The sunless sky had been the royal blue of evening and there had been only a single star in it, while spread out beyond the curve of land the water had stretched to the horizon, white foam stretched across green-black water. It was the star that had become The Lady and when her light touched the rock it burbled with sweet, clear water. The rock quaked under his feet as a wave crashed against it and he was knocked down and blinded by the falling spray and he shut his eyes as it fell cold over his face. The boy did not open them again before waking, but felt the press of lips against his just before something sharp pierced his heart. Then he woke in pain and irrepressible longing and had left his home that very hour.
He climbed another hill as evening came, the carpet of dusty green succulents crunching with every uncertain step. He could see, beyond the pale dunes, the land curve like sweeping gulls wings, but knew he could not reach it before nightfall. He camped for a final night, brewed a tea of water, salt, and dried herbs he had gathered along the way. With a whispered prayer, he drank it, and knew no other food or drink would pass his lips until he reached the place The Lady of the Star and Fountains had called him, or he ate and drank with the dead. Durwin slept little, though there was no proscribed vigil, instead only dozing to wake with the light of the brightest star before his eyes.
The fog settled in the morning, silencing the world and rendering the landscape a series of abstract shadows. Durwin woke chilled with damp from the little stretch of sleep he had managed at last and ignored his protesting stomach as he laced up his boots and started over the stretches of iceplant and half climbed, half slid down the treacherous white cliffs on which the loose sand sat atop young sandstone, and shifted with every step. Eventually, he turned one final switchback and was struck with the iodine smell of desiccating kelp and the skeletal shapes of driftwood and knew he was close. He had worked up a decent sweat keeping his feet on the way down, but began to shiver when he stopped to rest one final time. He finished off the herbal concoction and, uncertain of himself for perhaps the first time since he had left his home behind, looked around to a good place to store his things where the tide would not take them when it turned. Just as he was turning toward the shrouded water, the fog shredded into twisting ribbons of vapor and over mere minutes the silent gray world of shadows was transfigured into the brilliant blue of the morning sky and the near identical blue of the horizon and there, in the distance looking back at him, Durwin saw the rock of his dream, the waves dark where they churned in its shadow.
The sunlight, warm on his skin, was small comfort as he considered that deep water. In his heart he had to believe that to turn back, so near, would be worse than what the waves might do, and he plunged in, the little prayer he whispered knocked out of him with his breath in with the first shock of the plunge and the current was stronger than he had imagined from shore. The boy paddled, trying to keep his head above swell and the rock which was his destination in sight, but he kept getting dragged away and under until he was no longer fighting to reach the rock but instead simply struggling to crest the surface for a single breath, then another. He choked on air. Another wave poured over him and he was plunged down into silvery bubbles that scattered into the turbulent dark. Durwin was near exhaustion already and the cold had begun to addle his mind so that he found it hard to figure out which way was the surface, much less able to reach it after being sent tumbling. Blearily, he eventually found which way the light came in jagged rays between the swaying tendrils of kelp, unreachable. The seaweed dragged along his body in the current and twisted about his legs so that he was held suspended in the water column, even at the pulsing waves pulled at him.
There was no breath left in him for prayer, and he dreaded to have come so near to the longing of his heart. The Lady of the Fountains had found him wanting at the gate to her courtyard and he would have wept, if he had been able, to die in bitter water not fit to drink.
The boy felt them before he saw them, a hundred thousand fish with bodies like silver foil swirling against him, all one motion with many bodies. The kelp could not bind him and the current parted aside in their ascent and soon Durwin broke the surface again with a joyous, sputtering breath. Before him, a few body lengths away, the rock stood strong. The water rose as another wave pushed Durwin up and he managed to ride the water to where he could grab a handhold. His arms felt weak but even so he managed to hand on and hoist himself up beyond the reach of the water, finding the sun-warmed top, where he collapsed, thoroughly bruised, soggy, and exhausted.
He did not know how long he laid there, but his skin was dry and sticky with salt when he opened his eyes again, turning to his side just in time to watch as a wave struck the great rock, sending a glittering spray upward and over the dry surface. He hauled himself up onto his knees and watched it fall again, collecting in something glinting wedged into one of the crevices. He crawled closer and saw that it was a shell, abalone, and that the sea spray had collected in the basin of it. It was beautiful and he longed to touch it so he stretched out his hand, unthinking. No sooner had his fingertips brushed the nacre surface, then a flash of the sunlight striking the surface of the water blinded him and there was tremendous pain. The splitting of his soul, his own nature changing, being born into the seashell's foam was torture and satisfaction both. He opened his eyes to see the divine blessing given form, she the unicorn, with flanks of opalescent dusky blue and lavender and mane as white as the sea-foam that engendered her.
He stared up at her, his body aching from the aftershock of birth, voice raw with the gasping scream of a boy drowned not long before and face streaked with tears. She, tall as a warhorse but delicate and foalish, lightly touched her horn to his lips and though it was dull and rough like the outside of the shell from which she had been made, it was sharp enough to pierce his flesh. He was still holding the shell, cradled in his lap, and this caught the dribble of blood that dropped from the corner of his mouth and the tip of her horn, mingling it with the seawater. He could only manage the barest whisper, but the words he spoke were pulled like blood from his very heart.
"I thank the Lady of the Fountains and the Star that you have come, creature of heaven and bride of my soul. I offer you all devotion and my chastity if you will deign to take the name I offer and suffer to bear me forth."
In his heart, Durwin hear the words that she did not speak aloud, her voice like his but softer, a girls voice, soon to be a woman.
"Courageous youth, favored of heaven, and mirror of our soul, I accept the name you offer."
Then with dream-words he had said in every dream of the Goddess, forgotten and now suddenly brought to mind, he said, "You are called Sibbe."
"Sibbe," said the unicorn, "I am pleased. Durwin of the Golden Hill, let us go, before the tide."
Though she was slender with youth, the strength of her heavenly source had not yet gone out of her coalescing form and she bent to take him on her back. He pulled himself over her, thrilling the first time his bare skin brushed the silken softness of her flank and their bodies tingled at the touching of one soul magnified, split, and reunited for the first time. Carefully, he clutched the shell, sacred to the Lady and an object for ritual that he would treasure all his day. As soon as he was seated, his fingers entwined in the curling strands of her mane, she bounded away, over the foaming sea and the white cliffs.
The pair of them went joyfully together over the land, relishing the sunlight on their bodies as they rode over the hills and the cool water of little streams as they rested. At night they slept pressed against each other in the tall grass and when Durwin glanced at her, Sibbe seemed for a moment to take the shape of a young maiden. In his dreams she kissed and caressed him and in his waking he found her leonine tail twined about him, possessive as a lover. But even a heavens blessed young man, for Durwin had not been a boy since he had been borne up out of the water, needs a life with other men and heavens born unicorns need to run with others of their kind. In those days there were others like them and an abbey set in the golden hills in which they offered prayer and lived and learned from older, wiser men to serve the Lady's bidding. There, no human women ventured, nor did they keep iron tools or weapons of any kind. In the first case, then men wished to avoid temptation to keep the loves born from their very souls, and would have no other, and in the second, the unicorns like all unearthly creatures, could not bear that material which was the stable and long-suffering slave of mortal man. Durwin and Sibbe came to the Abbey of the Golden Hill near the haymaking, when sheaves of cut wildflowers stood drying. They lived there for many years and Durwin was trained as cleric as well as warrior with other men as companions and as masters.
In the spring of his fifth year at the Abbey, the Sorceress-Queen Alvariss brought her forces, twisted mishapen amalgamations despised by gods and men, against the king of their land, south from the gloamy forests of her northern abode. After many bitter losses, the King went to the temple to the Goddess of the Fountains in the capitol, and in the sight of the high priest, his queen, his heir, and all the people, offered his chastity to the Lady of the Fountains in return for her help. He was castrated in the courtyard of the temple, the blood that dripped from the chalcedony knife that made the cut tinging the water pink with his offering. That night, the fighting men of the abbey, from the most seasoned captain to the untested youths, Durwin among them, dreamed in the time between their midnight prayer and dawn. The messenger that rode to them three days hence found two companies ready to ride against the Sorceress to the aid of their king. They rode forth in their marled white and blue cloaks and with the scales of engraved translucent stone linked with bronze clinking softly as they moved. and bronze spears flashing. They rode bareback and brideless, the unicorns their steeds neither needing nor tolerating more than the will they shared with their men to fight and to win on the field of battle.
The Captain of Durwin's company was a stern man, Caspar, who had fought many small battles in service of the Lady of the Fountains led them well and fairly in many battles against the Sorceress that would have been lost without the Abbey riders. The first such had been Durwin's first, and with the blessing of The Lady, the help of his friend, Arnaut, and the quickness of Sibbe, he had survived it, though not unscathed.
Arnaut and Durwin had been sent to ride ahead of the king’s army, following the crest of a line of hills. It was sparsely forested with cottonwood trees and oaks, and in the long stretches between tree cover glare was intense. Insects were thick in the air, springing out of the long grass with every step. Sibbe was irritated and Durwin was irritated along with her and they had been riding for hours already when, around a blind bend they stumbled upon a band of the Sorceress-Queen’s soldiery, about twenty in number. Most were men, infantry, but about a third of the group were the hulking, shaggy wolfdogs, their teeth capped in silver and their hides so thick with hair that it was nearly armor. Immediately one howled and they sprank ip from where they had been laying, panting in the shade. Sibbe and Bright, Arnaut’s unicorn, wheeled about, racing perpendicular to the path and down into the valley. The wolfdogs were close at their heels, their leader snapping and snarling as others surged forward on either side.
“They are trying to flank us,” shouted Arnaut. Bright and Sibbe were streaked with sweat already in the heat.
“There! up the rocks!” said Durwin, knowing that the unicorns could manage paths at full gallop that the wolves would barely be able to clamber up at all. Durwin felt Sibbe shift beneath him, racing toward the outcropping. A wolfdog snapped at her leg, blocking her way to the right, but before it could connect, Durwin's spear struck it in the neck. It gurgled as he pulled up again to dislodge it, then was trampled under the sharp and cloven hooves of the unicorn. The wolfdogs had man-like intelligence and quickly figured out what the riders intended. A snarl from their leader sent several peeling off up the hill ahead of them, still swift even as the unicorns had begun to flag with the chase and the long day of riding. Arnaut and Bright had nearly reached to rocks, but another wolf leaped for Sibbe, this time angling for her throat. She tried to gore it, but it managed to scramble up her to bite at her rider instead, sinking teeth deep into Durwin's lightly protected forearm. He shouted and tried to dislodge the creature, but had to fight to keep his seat as well. Arnaut, seeing him struggle, circled back to them, cutting the creature down with a blow from the bronze saber at his side. Together they rode again, reaching the steep slope at last from where the unicorns easily lost the hounds over the near vertical sides before returning to report what they had found to the main company.
In the aftermath of it, when the fight had gone out of his blood and left him shaking and tired, Durwin lay beside Sibbe on the hard ground. In all the fighting, the bite in his arm had seemed a distant thing but now he felt is no matter how he twisted and turned. Sibbe, every bit as tired as he from the fighting and feeling the echo of his pain in her own body, huffed in annoyance as he woke her.
“Sorry,” he whispered and made to stand, but she pulled him into her side again then lay her fine head across his chest, careful as always not to harm him with her horn. He breathed her breath and felt the slow rise and fall of her chest beneath him, slower and deeper than the throbbing of the wound and the beat of his heart. He slept at last and dreamed.
Sibbe was in his dream as she really was, a beautiful maiden, bare and unashamed. Long hair, the color of cloud, draped over her shoulders and down her lean and well muscled back, the swirling gray and blue and lavender of her unicorn coat blending and shifting to a dusky tan. Her breasts were bare and soft and he was pillowed against them as he reclined against her. The wound had gone foul, hot to the touch and stinking and Durwin panted at the pain of it. Sibbe too, was tense with the pain and he could feel it in the still gentle drape of her hands on his bare chest. Tears fell in tracks from the corners of her lovely eyes and he reached up to wipe them away, but she took his wrists in her hands instead and kissed them. There was a sudden hot pain, then just as sudden cold numbness where a tear dripped on his bare skin, tracing the ruined arm down until it pooled in the stinking wound. He struggled against her at the pain of it but her hold was strong and she was intent on following the burning with kisses until the pain subsided and he was limp and pliant and pleased and free of pain. When he woke, the punctures were pink with fresh, clean scar tissue and, though itchy, the pain had largely passed.
They fought many more battles, the Riders at the fore of every charge with blue and white banners streaming and the unicorns swift as gulls over even sodden fields and rocky slopes. By autumn, they had lost a few of their number, Caspar the most grievous loss to Durwin, who had admired him since he had come to the abbey those many years before. He had wept when he had seen the sightless eyes when they found him on the battlefield, tossed from the back of his unicorn Vine and neck broken by the thrashing of one of the Sorceress-Queen's feathered amalgamations, dead itself not far away. Durwin had fanned the flies away from his face, and had helped lay him on the pyre and watched as the flames climbed to the bodies thereon. When the tongues of fire licked the marled blue and white of his cloak and the carved jade plates of his armor, Durwin heard the shriek of Vine in her grief, her green-black body like a flickering shadow as she paced out of reach of the company, wild and inconsolable, until at last she leaped into the flame herself, swallowed up by them as they swallowed up all that remained of the body of her earthly bond and earthly soul. The flames died down and heavy clouds threatened on the horizon. When all was burned away at last, the rain came and swelled the nearby creek with their ashes. Durwin realized, when he washed the soot on his face away and tended to bright bronze of his spear that night, that he was untested no longer.
The forces of the king slowly but surely pushed the Sorceress-Queen's forces to the margins of the western mountains from which they had come, but the king would not be content to end the fighting with his lands retaken. So long as Alvariss survived, she would remain a threat to him and to all his people. The expanses of scrubland and rocky hills grew wetter and so thick with threes that the Riders of the Lady of the Fountains were lucky to ride two abreast along the claustrophobic trails that made up the highways of that land. He and Arnaut sat side by side in the shelter of an ancient tree, damp with the dripping of condensation from the needles of the evergreens. They both hunched over their bowls of offering as they did every morning, pouring a little water over the petals of dry flowers. They sang their prayers softly and Durwin missed the blending of voices at the Abbey. Here they were nearly silent under that shadow of the trees. That done, he drank the water that he had poured into the abalone shell and before he could turn to other matters, he felt a sudden wash of terrible dread. A tree limb cracked, and he pushed Arnaut to the side just in time for the heavy branch to fall harmlessly where they had been seated not seconds before, but in the process, the shell slipped from his fingers, fell, and broke in two where it struck against a root.
Arnaut peered up at him from the dirt a look of horror and gratitude mixed. Durwin tried to laugh, to settle the feeling in his chest, but neither he nor Arnaut believed him when he said, "The Lady likes you better than my singing."
They did not have time to dwell on the omen, not with the pre-dawn ride up the side of the gully and into the heart of the Sorceress's territory where they hoped to flank her forces from terrain no mortal horse and rider could hope to manage. Sibbe, though, shared Durwin's unease even before he explained what had happened and she was more affectionate that morning as he saw to her, leaning her fine, opalescent neck into his touch as he combed out her mane and lingering nearby, rather than spending her time near the other unicorns as usual, as he packed up for the ride.
The path would have been difficult even in the daylight, overgrown wherever there were breaks in the starlit canopy and slick and spongy with duff wherever there were not. It was clearly seldom traveled even by the Alvariss's people and for that it was well suited, though that did not make the climbing easier. It was just before dawn when they reached the crumbling bridge between two cliffs, a grumbling stream cutting through the stone in rapids far below. Osmund, the man who had taken over from Caspar as Captain, had them spread out and keep quiet and hidden until the entire company managed to trickle up the slope, not wanting to chance the crossing and be split by what awaited on the other side. Durwin was near the end of the line and did not have long to rest before the light that caught the clouds of Sibbe's breath glowed gold. They were moving again, dismounted and one at a time, the man first followed by his celestial pair, and the group nearly all the way across when a great black cloud skated along the surface of the river below and swirled up among them with a great flapping of wings and shrieking voices. Bats, thousands of them, on their way back to their mountain roosts and harmless except that the stones of the bridge themselves were slick with moisture and broken off in places. The unicorn on the bridge, fair Eilee, lost her footing in surprise and skittered, cloven hooves not able to find purchase on the smooth rock. Remembering the broken cup, Durwin rushed out of his protected place, hoping to avert the terrible cleaving of a bond between one of his Brothers and their souls. He reached her moments before her bondmate and moments before she would have slid down the long way down to be dashed against the cliffs. Together, they found the strength to help her back atop the walkway again with a scraped belly and a twisted leg, which she would favor but would heal.
They reached the place from which they were to begin their charge when the battle was joined and Durwin thanked the Goddess for her warnings and her aid. The unease in his gut did not settle, but then, he was always nervous before a fight. The armor was heavy about his shoulders, the shaft of the spear smooth in his hand, and Sibbe, beautiful Sibbe, all corded muscle and deadly force beneath his thighs. He loved her, would always love her and she felt his love and multiplied it as if through polished crystal through the soul they jointly bore.
When the horns echoed up the valley below, the riders raced down the mountainside, hard hooves glinting, and with horn and spear brought death a disarray with the assemblage below. Sibbe's forelock, usually white and diaphanous as a cloud, was stained with blood and entrails, her goat-headed victim dead behind their charge. Durwin himself had finished the wounded creature, bronze saber flashing, when it had clung to her, raking her with its yellowed claws before it knew it was dying. The monsters had broken and now the riders chased them through the valley and up the opposite slope. Durwin neared his prey, spear held to strike, a vicious cervitaur, before he darted off in another direction. Sibbe, in the lust of battle, darted after easily following, but Durwin, weary already with riding and off balance from the aborted strike, slid from her back as she changed direction and fell to the steep ground, landing hard enough to knock the wind from him, then rolling down, banging his head in the process and catching himself only with a sudden crunch of his arm. He wheezed out for Sibbe, but it was impossible to hear his breathless cry over the shriek of the cervitaur and the unicorn as they met in a final struggle.
He felt unfamiliar arms underneath him, struggled as his body was lifted up from the ground and was carried away.
Gasps became screams as his captors stripped and bound him in a clearing, bound so that he was on his back and stretched in four directions. His brain was addled from the fall and he struggled to make out the faces of his captors. Were they deserters? The remnant of that company they had chased up the hill? He couldn't hold his thoughts together long enough to figure it out. A tall, cruel creature, human as far as he could tell, but impossibly strong and with lips that couldn't close over her long, curved canine teeth, carved into his flesh with careful strokes of her flint knife.
She started at his feet, long lines oozing white and red rivulets which she licked with a purple-blue tongue. The crowd shrieked with mirth as he struggled and kicked against his bonds without success and howled when he managed to strike the woman's nose mid lick. She snarled and snapped at them, then bit just above the knee where she had been licking all the way to the muscle. The creature skirted along his ribs, tracing the blotchy bruises and every bone with the knife, and moved up again until she had traced both sides of his neck, then kissed him fiercely, forcing her tongue into his throat. It was the first kiss he had ever felt in the waking world, and he fought back vomit at the thought of it, though only just, nauseous as he was. She laughed again and worked her way back down her body, tracing the center of him, his collarbones, his breastbone, the dusting of hair along his navel and down to the root of his sex. Durwin struggled as hard as he could, but it was only the sound of footsteps in the brush and the sudden hush that followed that stopped his captor in her mutilation. They scattered, but there were too many to flee quickly. Durwin’s torturer blanched and Durwin could hear, but not see from where he was bound, someone dismounting from a horse.
“NAME, you quit the field early,” said a female voice, smooth and low and furious. “And I find you here, squirreling away a treasure. You know the spoils are mine to give, and not to take, especially, not deserters.”
“ I wasn’t…!”
There was a sudden reek of sulphur, and a loud snap. NAME collapsed, convulsing, and died. The woman kicked at the body, still twitching beside Durwin’s bloodied thigh. He squinted up at her, trying to focus on her face, but she was backlit against the evening sun, which made a halo of her umber hair but hid the details of her features beyond what his throbbing head and blood loss could manage.
She cut him down herself, leaving the rough cord where it had abraded his wrists and ankles to deal with later.
“The idiot had no idea what a treasure she might have had,” With inhuman strength, she wrapped him in her own silk lined cloak and draped him over the back of her own horse before getting up behind him. The ride felt like eternity, hurt as he was, but he was getting gentle treatment after the ordeal and he could not have meaningfully helped himself if he tried. So he drifted on the pain and limp was carried again into a great house and laid out on a clean
bed.
Whatever he was being wiped with stung badly and he flinched with every touch of the wet rag. He was propped up enough on a pillow to see the woman from before more clearly now, richly attired and dripping with chalcedony, malachite, and polished onyx as rings and beads and combs in her dark hair. Down her chin and throat, disappearing into the translucent layers of silk that made her high collar, words in a language he could not read were tattooed in red ink , the lines hair fine and crisp. The Sorceress-Queen Alvariss. She dipped the blood stained rag again in the basin and it came out reeking of some kind of bitter herbs, which she traced painstakingly down the cut along his navel, down to the root of his member and *lifted* it, bathed the length of him that no woman had ever touched, that he swore no woman ever *would* touch.
Durwin kicked at her, the panic returning and finding his arms bound overhead, but her gentle touch turned iron strong in an instant, pinning his ankles to the bed with her body and reaching to the side table for a little vial, which she uncorked one handed. She pinched his nose with the other hand and held him as he struggled against her until he opened his mouth to gasp, and dumped the whole contents of the vial down his throat.
"Lady of Fountains, forgive me. Sibbe, please I'm sorry..." he thought, even as the liquid settled warm and stupefying in his stomach, euphoria spreading to every limb even as his heart still pounded in his ears. He did not wake from the stupor again until after every inch of his body was clean, his wounds neatly dressed, and a silken braided band was fixed around his neck, leashing him to the post of the bed. He woke long enough to try it, and managed to roll himself painfull off the bed before he found it fast and the tether not long enough to reach the door. He could not fight the drug long enough even to hoist himself up into the bed again, so fell back into the stupor on the floor.
He dreamed of the rock on which Sibbe had been born, of a wave crashing over it as it split between them. She dissolved into the water and he was swept again to sea.
Slowly, he spent more time awake than sleeping and his wounds began to itch and pull, healing well and surprisingly quickly. The Sorceress herself fed him and helped him out of bed to, humiliatingly, relieve himself. He saw no one else and heard others only distantly beyond the locked door. The quiet was all encompassing and he was left with nothing to do but to stare out the window of the chamber, just out of reach, and feel the absence of his unicorn like a phantom limb. All of a sudden he heard a flurry of activity in the stableyard far below - the dragging of chains, shouts, and above it all, Sibbe calling out in rage and pain.
He sat bolt upright and strained against the collar to get a look at the ground. He was barely able to see a sudden spray of blood on the dark stone as Sibbe gored some unfortunate stablehand who came within reach. She tossed her powerful head and dislodged the body, nearly breaking free of her captors and trampling another before they managed to subdue her once more, binding her fast first with many heavy cords, then with iron hobbles. She screamed in pain, but there were too many to fight off and she could do nothing but lay, chest heaving, in the dust. Durwin could feel the iron searing his own wrists and ankles as an echo of her pain and he doubled over, nearly sick with it. He did not notice the door to his small chamber open until after Alvariss had already swirled in and spoke.
"Ah, good, I wanted you awake for this. Come."
She half helped, half led him to the stableyard. He ran and fell to his knees beside her, burying his face in her silken, bloodied neck. She leaned into his touch even as the iron bands and chains seared her flesh. Together again, they poured out apologies and hope to each other through touch, and even in the heart of the Sorceress-Queen’s castle they felt a kind of peace again.
He smelled it before he saw it, the iron brand heated to glowing and bearing Alvariss’s own cruel sign. The smith handed it over to her, the handle wrapped, for the Sorceress too had been transfigured by the magic she wielded and would not touch it herself.
“Wait, please no!” cried Durwin, seeing that she was about to brand his beloved. “She will feel it, always. I beg you, do not do this.”
“This creature,” said the Sorceress, “is valuable as a source of reagents for my work, as much as having a creature of the Lady in my own home is hateful to me. But already it has killed more than one of my own people, despite my generosity with its soul-bond. You. Though…” she thought a moment and smiled. It is your oath, that the Lady treasures and that ties this creature to the living world. You will break it for me. I will work great magic indeed with the body of the slave of the Lady of the Fountains.”
Sibbe tensed beneath him and his stomach churned, but he knew that as soon as she had given any other option that he would have taken it for the sake of his beloved. He kissed her one last time and rose to follow the Sorceress.
He followed her up a high tower to a room surrounded by windows of intricate colored glass, which cast patterns of of jewel-toned lace upon the floor. It hurt his head to look into the patterns for long and he froze at the entrance, his nerve failing him, when he saw the accouterments of her work hung from racks and heaped on shelves. Alvariss simply dragged him to the center of the room to a bare space surrounded by a circle of overlaid scorchmarks and made him kneel there as she bustled about the room gathering jars and herbs and candles and little charms, which she set about the room in precise, though obscure to him, positions. He shifted uncomfortably on his knees and tried to remember why he had offered himself at all, began again the prayer he had learned by heart the first day he had entered with Sibbe into the gates of the Abbey. He thought of the sea-foam and the salt spray and the iodine smell of kelp and of being lifted up out of the water only to be blessed again.
"Stop that," hissed Alvariss. "Or I will brand you both. You belong to me, now."
She brought forth a small, skinny bundle of linen and unwrapped it to reveal a ritual blade of polished speckled chalcedony. His breath caught when he looked up at her, blade in hand, and he knew it was a thing that was steeped in power. She tucked it into the fringed sash at her waist before stripping him from the simple shirt and trousers in which he had been dressed. Every muscle in his body was tense with the warring desires to flee, to fight, to give in, to preserve his oath, and to to break it for the sake of the one for whom he had sworn it.
It was no longer a choice for him to make, not in the center of the Sorceress's power and her captive. She ran her hands around his now bare body, all trace of the clinical pretense of her first examination of him gone. She traced patterns on his skin with her nails, circling a place on his right shoulderblade before biting, suddendly, hard enough to bruise. He gasped. The smoke of the candles was heady and she eased him backward, her bite throbbing against the cold floor. A little bottle of oil appeared in her hand, which she pour over his quivering body so that it pooled in the hollows of his chest and his navel and the vee of his groin, glistening on the crisp curl of his dark hair. Lingering, firm touches from her hands teased desire from his body, despite his unwilling heart and mind. As the oil soaked into his skin he flushed and shook with the want that he had learned long ago to set aside for better things, building as she pinned his hands above him and drew the pleasure out of herself, the intense gaze of a great cat never leaving his body even as she began to take her pleasure from him, forcing him down when his hips rose to meet hers, trying to explore the sensation that had become need, no longer mere desire.
It was over quickly, virgin that he had been, and in the moment of surprised bliss she took the knife and cut between their palms so that the blood swelled up and mingled. She lifted herself from him, but would not let him rise from where he lay spent, instead wiping him down with the little bit of linen, then placing it and the knife on a platter atop a low table. Overwhelmed, suddenly, with loneliness, Durwin reflexively tried to reach along his bond and found for the first time, a yawning void where Sibbe had always been. She was gone.
From then on, Durwin's life revolved around the Sorceress-Queen's pleasure, or the lack of it. Sometimes he was summoned to her study to act as a conduit for whatever perverse magic she was working, but mostly he remained in a small, well appointed chamber near hers. Now that his virtue was of little value, magically, Alvariss lost interest in tending to all his basic needs herself and sent servants to do so instead, as well as allowing him a little more autonomy, though always with a guard and never beyond the courtyard gates. Even so, he mostly stuck to his rooms and spend the long days and nights in which his body was not required in a kind of languid doze.
The Sorceress would not tolerate an unskilled concubine, nor a passive one when such was not demanded by the magic she worked. She used all manner of inducements, many enjoyable, others medicinal, but she found no small satisfaction in training him to confuse pain and pleasure. The ache of his body, after, was the only counterpoint to the dull and unending sadness that was his constant companion now that half his soul had gone forever. He hated himself as much as he hated Alvariss and she delighted in it until at last matters of war called her away from her palace again. Durwin was left alone with one of her trusted captains for a guard and only the staff necessary to maintain her property while she was gone.
Durwin tried, halfheartedly, to fill the empty time the way he had in his youth in the Abbey, but he could barely make himself leave the bed to eat and bathe, much less to train his body. Only once did he find the energy to do something meaningful with the reprieve and on that morning he spent the dawn by the courtyard fountain, which trickled clear water even though its edges were heavy with icicles. His guard, Mari, watched quizzically as he dipped a little shard of pottery in and carried it back with him to to his room, set it on the windowsill carefully, and shut the door behind him. He prayed to the Lady of the Fountains, that she might remember and forgive him, that she might help him in his trouble, that the wound in his heart might seal. And, though the thought was so fleeting and shameful he tried to pretended that he had not had it, he prayed for his own end.
His sleep was dreamless.
He woke to the frigid blue of another winter sky, still consort-captive, still without his better part. He cursed the morning, sliding up the window to curse the world below, and looked down as he did so. He leaned out, thinking how high he was, and wondered, suddenly very calm, if it would be a more fitting offering if he died in that fountain. He was halfway out before a hand at the woven collar at his neck jerked him backward, hard, coughing and sputtering on the floor.
Mari, a woman with little feathers poking out at intervals across her skin and hands like talons, spewed expletives at him and the bowl that held his breakfast still rolled on its side across the floor, the food upended in his haste to save Durwin's life (and her own). She shook the concubine furiously, her claws leaving little dots of blood where she had gripped him and her crest standing on end in alarm, then slammed the window shut. For the rest of the time that the Sorceress was away, Durwin was never again alone for a moment, though when she was no longer spooked, his bodyguard tried to be a little consoling. She sat with him as he stared into space and chattered about anything that crossed her mind. He no longer bathed himself or slept with the door closed and he was bound again by the collar at his neck whenever he wasn't moving from place to place, which was most of the time. He was too tired to fight it.
The Sorceress's return to the palace was cause for much anxiety within the household. Even Durwin could feel it, isolated as he was and the bustle of the servants in the halls as well as Mari's jumpiness suggested it might not be a happily anticipated return. It had not occurred to him before that the Sorceress's servants might not all be her willing accomplices, and that the cruelty she meted out to him was not unique. Indeed, he looked down at the fine silks that draped his body and smelled the sweet resinous oils that anointed his skin and thought he must look a particularly cherished, even spoiled, member of her household.
The housekeeper and the steward and the captain of the guard were all given audience with before she summoned him to her chambers late in the evening. He walked the short passage, almost relieved to feel something besides all-encompassing numbness, even if it were hatred and fear instead. His guard followed silently behind. Even now he was watched. Alvariss was greater and more terrible than he had remembered and even seated she seemed to loom over him like the shadow of a mountain. She embraced him with tenderness and he did all he could to ape the affections of a lover reunited.
"I have a present for you, after," she whispered in his ear between gentle nibbles and the piercings she had put there, glittering hoops of gold and carnelian drops.
The Sorceress lounged like a sated cat when she had finished with him. "Your gift is in there," she said, gesturing lazily at a small wooden chest banded in engraved bronze. He opened it and immediately the pungent smell of embalming plumed into the room. Inside was a tangled mass of yellow hair and he heart sank as soon as he guessed at what it was. Gently, as gently as his trembling hands could manage, he lifted it, cradled it in his hands, and looked into the face of Arnaut. His eyes were gone, plucked out for some cruel magic, but the lips were the same, the nose still had the bump from when he had broken it training the younger Durwin to fight while riding on the hills beside the Abbey. Suddenly, Durwin felt sick, put the head back as gently as he could, before running from the room. He heard the Sorceress's laugh echo after him as he vomited in the hall.
The next morning, his breakfast was brought with the chest and a note in precise, spidery script.
*I trust you will not attempt to break what belongs to me again.*
He did not open the chest again, but kept it beside the bed beside the little scrap of pottery with which he had made his offering. He ate without being prodded and dressed himself and stretched the ache of the night and of long inactivity from his limbs. He would get strong again, he decided, and kill the Sorceress Alvariss.
The Sorceress delighted in torturing him and now that her toy had found some semblance of life again, her tastes turned darker. Durwin bore it as best as he could, trying to learn everything he could about her magic, but her study was kept locked and he knew that whatever spell she worked over the place to protect it during her short absences, even if his guard did not tell her of his transgression, would be terrible indeed. Spring came late so high in the mountains, but Durwin was now determined to find some weakness and to restore the condition of his body enough to take advantage of it when he found it, so he bundled himself up to wander the grounds and the halls, even when he had to limp to do so. He avoided the stable grounds out of the kind of grief that sapped the delicate strength he had found again if he every faced it fully, that was until he had exhausted every unlocked place in the palace out of Alvariss's eye. He resolved to face it that day, stopping by the fountain one last time with a passing, nearly habitual prayer for strength. He cupped the meltwater in his hand and watched the drops fall through his fingers into the basin below
The stableyard was dusty and nearly empty. Few horses tolerated the monstrous creatures in the Sorceress's retinue and she had neither patience nor affection for much beyond her magic. He walked the perimeter of it, even now hesitant to look at the place where Sibbe laid those months before but there were no more secrets there than there had been anywhere else in the palace. He made to go but could not make himself do so until he once again went to the place where he had said goodbye those months ago. He gave a shuddering sigh, not willing to do more in front of his silent escort, then from the corner of his eye, saw something in the dirt. He crouched, made to adjust his shoe, and saw a little iron nail, lost from a horseshoe and half rusted through, on the ground.
He picked it up and tucked it into his shoe as subtly as he could, kept it there the whole day, until at last he could examine his most precious treasure under the heavy blanket that night.
The Sorceress made ready to leave once more. She had Durwin dress in the most opulent, revealing finery that she had given him, complete with many rings for his fingers and ears and a heavy golden band set with many cabochon gems that fitted neatly over the woven collar at his throat and which he now knew from experience held magical significance and potential. It was to be a ritual night, then. He was bathed in a steaming herbal bath and his hair, grown long, combed and oiled, and braided back at the temples and affixed in place with combs. In the days since he found the little nail, he had painstakingly shaved it whenever Mari could be convinced to give him a moment of privacy. He had a number of small filings, easy to hide on his body even in the gauzy silks while the larger piece of metal he kept in the chest beside Arnaut's head, which he spoke to sometimes when the loneliness became unbearable.
One filing beneath his tongue, another between the inner collar and his throat, another by his heart - if these three failed, surely the Sorceress would know, the consequences worse than when he had tried to kill himself. Even so, he was determined to try.
He knew and dreaded the knife on the golden tray, for it meant his blood would be needed as well as sexual release, together. Even so, he offered only token resistance to her insistence that he lie on the bed in the center of the room just for the purpose and let her feed him elixirs of love and fondle him with all that strange, cruel sweetness that she was capable of. The cordial, a usual one, filled him with a buzzing earnestness and he struggled not to forget himself in the sensation of it. The sash about his chest and the filing secreted within it, had been stripped and cast aside nearly as soon as she had him on the bed, and his hands were held in hers so that he could not reach beneath his collar. All he could do was arch his back and let the tears well up when she showed him the knife as he knew she liked.
She kissed him and he felt the knife bite into the place right where moments before she had kept a bruising grip on his thigh. She made to pull away, to catch his blood in a little cup, but his kiss became insistent even as she pressed into the wound. He hissed and met her lips again, his dark eyes holding hers, daring her for more. She ground against him where their bodies met, blade forgotten by her but not by him. She bit his lip so that they both could taste the coppery blood well up His tongue swept into her mouth tentative, then bold and just before he knew she would come up for air, he swept the little shard into her mouth. She pulled back, swallowed the blood in her mouth and grinned. Then, her expression changed to a grimace, the candles about them flickered, and he felt the intoxicating power of the spell that had been building in their union change.
He snatched the knife before she could figure out what was happening and with all the force he could muster pinned beneath her, drove it into her breast.
"What did you DO?" she shouted. The Sorceress Alvariss was weakened, but far from powerless, and she snarling gouged her nails into Durwin's face, missing one eye, but not the other. He bucked underneath her, the handle of the blade slick where he held it fast. She could not keep her hold on him and he rolled out from under her scrambling to his feet even as the tower around them shook and the many colored glass squealed as the magic woven into that place ebbed away with the lifeblood of the one who sustained it. Naked, bleeding badly, and heaving great breaths, Durwin stumbled into the hall, hoping to escape before the Sorceress's guards came. Mari waited there already, presumably to help him back to his own chambers after whatever the Sorceress had planned for him, and he knew he was not strong enough to fight her. He had hoped to run, but saw with her others who all stared at him wide eyed. He still held the ritual knife, wet with the blood of the Sorceress and though he could not see it himself, the place vibrated with power. Mari snapped her gaze to his and then in a burst of recognition that saved the both of them, bowed.
"Hail, Durwin, Sorcerer-King"