In Her Argent Embrace

A tear.

You turn over, your heart breaking, and it's a long time until you fall asleep.

-

You're having a nightmare. There's something else in the cave with you and Leuna. It smells like brimstone, its breath like hot, sour milk in your face. When it moves, it's the scraping of sandpaper against stone.

It lets out a long, sibilant hiss.

You try to open your eyes, but they're already open. You didn't fall asleep at all. It isn't a nightmare.

Leaning over the two of you is a long wedge-shaped head. Narrow dark eyes glisten deep in gouges on either side of it. You watch, petrified, as it moves its head back and forth, opening its mouth to reveal row upon row of needle-sharp teeth as a forked tongue slips out to taste the air.

A sand-drake. There's no mistaking it. About the size of a human, it's related to the dragon: a smaller, dumber, more aggressive relative. You say small, but relative to a dragon everything is small. This drake is about human size.

It turns its head again and licks at Leuna's face with its tongue. Then it nuzzles the bedding over her wound and starts to hiss.

You don't hesitate. You take hold of the edge of the blanket that's on top of all the bedding and you toss it over the creature at the same time as you throw yourself against it. it's taken by surprise as you knock it clear over, and in its confusion you manage to lock your arms around its scaly neck and pull it over on top of you and away from Leuna. You're left on your back on the ice-cold stone with the drake on top of you, crushing you, its claws digging at the air as it tries to find traction. You hold onto it for dear life, knowing that if you let go it will most likely bite your face off, or worse attack Leuna as she sleeps.

"Leuna!" you cry.

The drake starts to thrash around, the sharp spines along its back lacerating your clothes and skin and you cry out in pain. Its neck is too thick to choke it, and so you gouge it in the eyes with your fingers.

It lashes its head back, smashing you in the face and you taste blood. You struggle to hold onto it, blinded with pain, but your arms slip from around its neck and you land on your back on the cave's stone floor. Then the dull pain in your head is replaced by needles of fire as the drake swings around and clamps its jaws down on your forearm.

You scream in agony.

The needles withdraw and you're enveloped in the stink of sour milk and brimstone. The drake is leaning over you, its mouth wide. You wait for the inevitable.

There's a sickening crunch and you expect further searing agony. It doesn't come. The drake rolls off you, and in your pain-filled confusion you wonder why it would suddenly do that.

But then you see Leuna. She's flung the bedding aside and one of her long legs is sticking out. She's kicked the drake clean off you.

The drake scrambles to regain its footing but Leuna is on top of it in a heartbeat, locking her good arm around its neck and wrapping her legs around its serpentine body like a wrestler. With a twist of her hips she pulls the creature onto its side. The drake thrashes back and forth but Leuna is glued to it, hooking her feet together around its back and squeezing tighter and tighter with her thighs. She grunts and the drake opens its mouth, emitting a strident hiss. There's a sharp crack and the hiss terminates in a single, strangled shriek.

Leuna has broken its back.

While it lies there twitching, Leuna grabs the knife lying near you and once, twice, three times she drives the blade straight up into the creature's thrashing head.

Shuddering, the drake's limbs go limp, its tongue lolling from its mouth as a death rattle escapes its gurgling throat.

The entire fight has lasted maybe ten seconds, and you've watched it through a misty haze, almost as if you're drunk. You press your hand against the wound the drake's teeth made. It feels strange, now. The pain has been replaced by a weird sensation of spreading coldness.

Of course. Venom. Sand-drakes are venomous. It's the reason they're teeth are so long and thin. They wait until their prey's heart stop from it and then dine on them at their leisure.

Leuna has extricated herself from under the dead creature and is at your side now. You see her desperate face in the moonlight flooding into the cave, hear her calling your name from a thousand years and a thousand miles away.

She goes away. Sharp pain in your arm, then warm wetness. Not blood, Leuna's mouth, sucking the venom from your wound, spitting it to the ground.

You're rising up. Leuna's beautiful face, grimacing in pain as she lifts you.

You smell her horse, and her. You're in her arms, seated in front of her, enveloped by her like when the two of you were escaping the ambush. The world is bounding up and down now like an earthquake. You're on horseback. You feel hideously cold inside, but around you there is warmth.

The world about looks all white. Has it snowed while you were in the cave, fighting the drake? No, it's the moonlight. The landscape is drenched in it.

Moonlight. You turn your head. The moon is staring down at you, flooding the world with her pure light. She's so beautiful, with her hair like pale yellow star-shine whipping about her face in an interstellar wind.

"Hold on!" whispers the moon. She's dressed all in glowing silver, like an angel. "Hold on! Don't die on me! Hold on!"

There's rain falling now. Warm rain on your face and neck.

You ride out across the surface of the moon, over its snowy hills and through its icy ravines and across its fields of frost.

Then all of that goes and you feel yourself slipping away.

You wish you could have seen the moon's face one more time. Your heart is filled with love for her. But if she can't be yours, what's the point in living anyway?

"Don't go," says the moon. "Please. Stay with me. Don't go!"

She doesn't want you to go. You pull back. It feels so warm here, where you are. It smells so good, too. And that other place is so cold, cold and dark.

You decide to stay here.

But then everything grows darker and darker. Shadows spill over you, a deeper nightfall. You can't see her face anymore, but the moon's voice is ringing in your ears.

"Please. Please. Don't leave me. I love you!"

She loves you. The moon loves you. Your frozen body is filled to overflowing with sadness and happiness all at once.

But you fall anyway, fall deep down into nightmare dreams of stone and scale and pain and sour milk.

----

Something is crushing your hand. You jerk awake in a panic, remembering your desperate fight with the sand-drake.

But you're no longer in that cold cave of stone. You're lying on a smooth, cool bed, a sheet draped over you, and someone is calling your name.

It's Leuna. She's holding your hand.

That explains the crushing, then.

It's your body's turn to be crushed as Leuna throws her arms around you and hugs you to her. She's saying something, something fast and incomprehensible between the sobs as she nuzzles her teary face into your neck.

After a while you can make out what she's saying.

"I thought I'd lost you, I'd thought I lost you," over and over again.

You hear a cough and over Leuna's spun-platinum hair you catch sight of a young man dressed in a monk's habit standing there with a small tray of medicines. He's trying to hide a smile and failing, but then he shakes his head and his expression becomes professionally stern.

"Now then," he says, trying to make his voice lower than it is. "Please don't mistreat the patient, milady. He's still as weak as a kitten after all the trials his body has undergone."

You feel Leuna nod and then she sits back down on the chair beside your bed. Her blue eyes are swollen red and still streaming with tears which she wipes at with the back of one hand.

You notice then that she's wearing a dress, azure with a deeply cut bodice embroidered with gold. You can't help but stare at her. It's the first time you've seen her wearing something other than her armour or her tunic and your heart races at just how beautiful she looks.

The monk makes a tutting sound as he places the tray of medicine on a little table on the other side of the bed.

"Welcome to Hiria," says the monk. He hands you a vial. "Drink this."

You do as he says. It tastes vile and you start coughing.

The monk shakes his head. "Of course it tastes terrible. It's tincture of lycoris root, the only known antidote for the bite of the sand-drake. The freezing element of the venom that brought you to the edge of death needs to be counteracted with heat and bitterness." He takes the vial from you and gives you another to drink. "You're extremely lucky. A few more hours without treatment and you would have died. Luckily, your friend rode through the day and night to get you here. You owe her your life."

You look across at Leuna. At the monk's words she's turned away, blushing, and it's then that you notice the fresh scar on the side of her face. You lift your hand to it, asking whether the drake did it, but she shakes her head.

"We ran into a few problems on the way," she says and explains that some of Lazgarri's men were waiting for you further down the coastal road.

You gape at her. She risked the coastal road even when she knew it was going to be full of Lazgarri's men?

"Of course I did," she replies, frowning at what she obviously thinks is a ridiculous question. "There was no time. No time to fight them properly, either. I cut down a few and broke through, but one of them got a lucky swing on me." She lifts her hand to yours. "Don't make that face. It's only a scratch."

Your hand feels suddenly heavy and you take it from her face with great reluctance. You start to feel your eyes closing and you turn in panic to the monk.

He grins at you, breaking his professional sternness. "Don't worry, it's just a soporific. You need your sleep. It's the only way your body will heal itself."

You turn back then to Leuna. She still has your hand in hers, but she's holding it more gently now. Her eyes glisten as she looks at you and a single tear falls from one of them. She places your hand by your side, then, and takes hold of your shoulders as you start to sink back onto the bed, the air itself weighing you down with the weight of a mountain range. Struggle as you might, your eyes close. You feel the soft warmth of Leuna's lips against your own, the gentleness of her fingers as she strokes your hair, and hear her whisper "I love you." Or are you already dreaming?

Who knows? All you know is that you love her too.

-

You wake again. The room is dark, but then a light springs into life nearby, glowing with the buttery yellow of alchemical power. The monk walks past it towards your bed, that accursed tray in his hands again. With the flickering light casting a chiaroscuro on his face, he looks somehow devilish.

As he puts down the tray, you look about you, but there's no sign of Leuna.

He pulls up the chair that she had used and hands you the vial. You drink it. Somehow, the second time it tastes even worse.

You're about to ask him where Leuna is when he says, "She's gone." There's a surprising pity in his eyes and you feel your heart sink.

Gone?

"She asked me to give you this."

He hands you a leather envelope and something that glitters with silver in the alchemical light. You take it and turn it over in your hands.

Her clasp, the one in the shape of the crescent moon.

"She stayed with you all day and night, you know. A whole week she kept vigil at your bedside before you woke."

A week?

"The struggle against the venom of the sand drake is no small business," says the monk. "For a long time we feared we'd lose you to it. When you regained consciousness yesterday, we knew the fight had been won, thank the Lord." He clasps his hand and raises his eyes to the ceiling then turns back to you. "She wept such tears after you returned to sleep as I've never seen before." He sighs. "I've been a monk all my life, so I know nothing of love, and sometimes I'm glad of it."

The monk stands up. "I'll leave you to your thoughts," he says. "But be sure to get some rest. You're still very weak." He walks away, but then stops and over his shoulder he adds, "Just remember that old adage. 'Tis better to have loved...'" He falls silent and leaving the glow of the alchemical torch walks out into the darkness, leaving you alone.

You put the clasp down on the bed and with trembling fingers you open the envelope. There's a letter inside, written on delicate paper in an exquisite, tiny hand.

My dearest,

I love you. Oh, why is it that I am only able to write those sweet words, only able to utter them when you cannot hear them? Would that I had been strong enough to say them to your face, but I am the basest coward. I feared that my voice would break mid-sentence and the words die half-spoken from my lips.

Why am I no longer at your side? I have fled from you, wretch that I am, fled from love into the arms of duty. I fear you must forget me, my darling, forget what transpired between us. I was wrong to dally with your heart, full knowing that this time would come, that we would be separated by those cruel walls of the castle, you to go to your life as a merchant and I as a knight of the Regency. And yet, I cannot regret those embraces we shared, those embraces that I will never forget.

And so take for yourself my clasp, that which before you was the one most precious thing to me in all the world. Now that thing is your name, the sweet name that will pass my lips with sighs and groans as I endure the torments of loneliness, remembering the soft gentleness of your hands, the warmth of your arms and the sweetness of your kisses.

My heart is yours forever.

Leuna.

The letter slips from your trembling hand.

Before you met Leuna you would have laughed at such flowery words and overwrought emotion, thinking them ironic, but you know her too well. It's the only language of romance Leuna knows. Every word of it is true, and it breaks your heart.

You crush the letter to your chest, clutching her clasp in your other hand. Tears come hot to your eyes and you lie there, cursing fate and wishing that you'd been given the chance to see her one last time, if only to say goodbye.

--

When you request to be discharged, the young monk tries to convince you to stay, but with little enthusiasm. The look on his face is knowing, the pity in his eyes unconcealed. You take out the money that Kalbasa left you, seeking to give a donation for your care, but the monk shakes his head.

"The lady has already given one on your behalf," he says. Your face must have fallen, for the monk places his hand on your shoulder, wanting to say something, but in the end he just smiles at you.

"May God walk with you and protect you," he says as you leave.

It's afternoon and you walk out into the busy streets of Hiria. You're in the inner city, the cobblestone streets between the high marble buildings filled with people. For once you're happy for the crowds and you disappear among them, anonymous and alone in your sadness.

You walk the streets aimlessly for hours. The famed street lights have just started bursting into glowing life when you finally decide to make for the merchant quarter to locate the contact your master gave you. And yet you quickly find your feet carrying you away from the port and towards the inner city again.

Over the aisles of spitting lanterns the dark shape of the Regent's castle looms before you. You soon reach the nearest gate, wrought in iron and emblazoned with the sunburst of the Regency. A guard is leaning up against the wall, his halberd at his side and his helmet down over his eyes, but if you thought he was sleeping, you're soon disabused of the fact as one hand slips to the hilt of his weapon and the other pushes his helmet back. He glances at you then sighs and leans back up against the wall.

"It's past curfew, friend," he says. "If you've business in the castle it'll have to wait for tomorrow. No need to spend the night in pursuit of gold when there are so much ale and so many eager wenches waiting out there in the sulphur-lit city."

You tell him that the business you seek is of a personal nature, but beyond that you've no idea how you're supposed to explain yourself. You stand there feeling lost, but you know you have to try.

Your words spark the guard's interest and he opens his eyes again. "A personal nature? Do you have papers, perhaps?"

You shake your head.

The guard sighs again. "I take it, then, that you're not expected."

You shake your head a second time. The lady, you say, beginning to explain...

At the word 'lady' the guard pushes himself up off the wall, looking at you as if seeing you for the first time. A smile spreads onto his face, but there's more sympathy than mockery in it.

"Who is it?" he asks you. "A maid? One of the ladies-in-waiting?"

A knight, you say.

The guard's eyes go wide and he whistles. "You have a taste for silver, then, I take it. I guess it shouldn't be surprising, since you're a merchant." He chuckles at his joke. Then he sighs again and leans back up against the wall. "I feel for you, brother. I really do. But take this advice from a fellow who's been in love before. Try and forget her. See these?" He waves his hands up at the great beetling walls before you. "The walls aren't just there in case of enemy siege, you know. They're there to keep the city and the castle apart. You need to have a good reason to pass under them, and even then, they'll only let you stay there for as long as they need you. Then you'll be thrown back here with the rest of us great unwashed. Why, all my years as a guard at this gate I've only ever been inside the castle proper once."

You stand there, knowing the truth of what he says. You stare up at the great dark walls of the castle.

Loving hearts divided. Wasn't that what Leuna had said that night at the inn? But unlike a romance, there's no secret door or magic spell or friendly giant to help you.

The guard watches you. "Don't even think it, brother. I saw a guy try and climb the walls once. He fell halfway up. It wasn't pretty." He places the helmet back over his face. "But there is a cure for love, my friend, beyond the embraces of the one you love, I mean..."

And what's that, you ask.

"Ale."

--

The night is almost done. You've lost count of how many drinks you've downed in this little inn on the edge of the inner city and you curse the guard's advice. If anything, the ale has just made your heart more querulous and you sit there in your shaded booth, nursing your tankard and wondering how many more you have to drink to send you into the oblivion of sleep.

The inn is quiet, with few people talking. Everyone seems there to drink and be alone with their thoughts. But all that changes when the front door crashes open and a tall, black-bearded knight bursts through, a young woman dressed in a leather jerkin crushed to his side.

"Ale!" cries the knight. "Ale for a knight of the Regency!"

You look up, hating him immediately, hating him for his noisy interruption, for the silver cuirass that reminds you of Leuna, and for the pretty girl at his side.

Your bad luck continues as the knight seats himself at the booth next to yours. He pulls the girl onto his lap and she squeals, struggling to escape his eager kisses.

"Ale!" cries out the knight again, thumping a first on the table. "Our throats are parched from defending you worthless whoresons out in the northern dales. Ale, I say, for a loyal knight of the Regency and his faithful squire!"

You almost spill your drink. You stare across at the two, wondering if you heard right. The girl has removed herself from the knight's lap and has draped herself against him, stroking his beard and whispering into his ear.