Rhoethella approached cautiously. Leresai could see the dread on her face. Her contours long, her nose classical Suüd, now held down turned grievous. Her eyes set like a hawk. She was as much a part of her Suüdlands father, as she was her elven mother.

They reached the location where Leresai had sighted Lord Carro. Three high vaulted octagonal atriums lined up to create one continuous and glorious memorial Hall. In the center of which stood a statue of a Suüd king who died in battle more than twelve hundred years previously. Rhoethella walked up to it slowly. Her hands grazed the dusty boot.

"The matter of the coins behind you, Handmaiden?"

"Their purpose is now known to me. There is a small matter I am having inquiry done by men I trust. I sent them to Gareen to retrieve it."

"Do tell."

"In your many days, my lady, have you ever seen usurper's ducats made of obsidian?"

Rhoethella's eyes raised. "Oh…" she turned to Leresai, archly.

"Perhaps. But I would have to search my memory for its significance."

"I doubt it changes anything," Leresai dismissed it.

Rhoethella frowned. "The memory I speak is older than even the majeur who brought them to the Midvries. Understand, I know not its connection to you, as this coin gave prediction of the return of Izdun. Understand as well, my friend, games with coin and prophecy have been common practice by subversives and rogues since the Mandate.

Leresai smirked, "then I say, its authenticity is likely no higher than that of the coins I have been chasing."

"Leresai, with this matter closed, is there something else you may ask of me?"

"The promise, with the coins being fraudulent, I don't see how it could remain true as well."

"I didn't promise you that you would be the mother of an emperor one day, Leresai. I promised you a child, do you still care to hold me to that promise?"

Leresai stared towards the mezzanine supported by the West Wall of the atrium.

"Leresai ... are you happy, dear? As matters stand for you now, is your heart contented? Is that what you still want?"

Leresai held her hair back tightly wound in her hands.

"How do I even begin to answer. I feel my words are for the wind, born of the Aethyr. I ask of Hope itself as if it were one of your fellow goddess incarnations to explain myself to myself.

"The only enigma I am is to myself with everyone else seeing right clear through me. When I scratch beneath that skin of inscrutability, I don't like what I see. Forgive me, my lady, for I go in circles, but that is truly how I feel."

Rhoethella stood at the great King's feet and she sat down, patting it. "I understand. To make a decision now is to close off something very precious to you. To strive for one hoped for promise that appears ephemeral means letting go of another that is at least a tangible quantity, but you will no longer have time to indulge.

"Leresai, if you do so pursue my promise to you, you will need to find an elixir. I know how you need to obtain it, and only if you imbibe that elixir can my silver reverse the vexation that curses your womb. Lady Fertility guards her charge jealousy. It takes much to invade her domain and come through the ordeal whole."

"Where is this elixir?"

Rhoethella smiled as she stared back at the Sgoëthe princess.

With a nod, she answered.

"I am not the one who has been given that knowledge. However, I'll now give you something those who can uncover that secret for you will certainly desire in return. Let me have your lavalliere, my dear. And one of your blades."

Leresai took the pendant from her neck, cleaned out it's remaining content and along with the serrated blade she passed them over to the goddess. Rhoethella slit her middle finger and before it could heal she squeezed several drops of blood to fill the vessel. Rhoethella handed the two instruments back to her Handmaiden.

"Leresai, you already know this place well. I'm sending you home. Give the three crones, the Vûrselles, my blood and in return asks for where the fentifeledes can be found. Even Madame Luna won't reveal it to me. Remember that word, fentifeledes, it is both ancient and evil."

Leresai touched her ribcage, stroking it downward with her thumb where the geas had been etched.

"Is there anything else, my lady?"

Rhoethella shrugged. "I'm certain there will be, but the Vûrselles will have to tell you that as well."

She reached her graceful arm up to the Sgoëthe. "Help me up, dear. We have sordid business to attend."

They walked another hundred yards. Along the back wall, past the statuary, a globe glowed black light as it stood on a tripod.

"Draugrs," Leresai said, speaking of undead beings that inhabited the Northern Isles, "move around in dusk and dawn, but a backlight like that from the darkstar diamonds strengthen them and can make them appear as whole in their humanity as you and I."

"I have had my fill of the dead this eve," Rhoethella declared. "When you told me where we were headed, the sanctified ground for the Fallen of Veld's Rest, I feared whom we would meet and the condition that they would be in."

"Fear no more, My Queen," came a voice that sounded husk, but darkly elegant.

"Izsolt!" Rhoethella screamed with a singing pitch.

"Rhoethella," the revenant knight was just a half a foot shorter than herself. He bowed and kneeled on one knee. "I have long prayed, My Lady, for whom I give my life so lightly, would return. This day is most glorious!"

He stood back up. Tears ran down her cheeks. She rushed the revenant knight and clasped him in a hug, and spoke to him in a subset of Suüd - Suüd Intimate - the language of lovers. Leresai could recognize it from its modern form from her many nights enjoying the theater. What she now heard sounded much more refined than any she had ever encountered.

"Oh gods," Rhoethella gasped, after a long minute of conversation that took all of her breath with it. Suüd Intimate took stamina to speak properly. It was used to emphasize commitment, and to make rigorous love making even more strenuous. "I feel as if my heart is melting," she continued.

Izsolt bellowed a deep chuckle. Once their embrace was complete he extended his arm in invitation, his palm stretched out to a wooden door towards his right, facing East.

"My lady, that is not a tomb inside of that room. It is my mead hall filled with jesters, troubadours, danseuse, acrobats, and the finest fellows and most stout warriors to ever be felled by a grazeland horde. My lady, you will recognize all the faces you see inside as your very own subjects.

"Their good cheer will be more than double this eve for their Queen has returned. Your seat has always been set aside for this very day."

Roethella gasped and whimpered with a laced linen in her hands. She held it to her mouth.

Izsolt once more bellowed in laughter. "My have you grown. No less than seven feet tall you are! Your hair is now silver, not raven, and your skin is fair and not the deep bronze of the métisse girl I married more than a millennium ago. But I love you, dear lady, all the same. There is none like you in all of the world."

Izsolt looked away for a moment.

"Before we enter our Hall, I have one pressing matter. I hate to even mention this for I want nothing to spoil a grand eve. My Lady, this one who calls himself Lord Carro, he came to me in great disarray when he stumbled through here. He has requested my protection. I provided it when he told me the truth of your hunt for him, but under a set of conditions. He is to remain in a chamber I have set out for him with bare but respectable comforts and accommodations, and he is to wait for you to question him. He must answer you truthfully, or your wrath shall not be questioned by anyone. Shall that suffice, my Queen?"

Rhoethella nodded with a smile on her broad face.

"It so shall. Dear Izsolt, my husband, min saiwala gematas, one moment, I need to speak with my Handmaiden."

Rhoethella turned around and walked over to Leresai. She gasped the Sgoëthe by her shoulders.

"We have accomplished what we can for now. Return now to your Brietess. As I now return to my husband, long departed." Her fingers now firmly pressed on Leresai. "Leresai, do you know what the saddest aspect of immortality is? No matter how long you live, you will get only one, perhaps two soulmates, who will know you true. That time between, when that person is no longer around for you to hold, trust me, you will know then how forever feels. I do not wish that on anyone."

Rhoethella gave Leresai a kiss, and she returned to her husband. King Izsolt led her into the Mead Hall. Sounds both musical and jarring thronged out. Leresai heard the high wail of hurly burly, the brittle caprice of mandolin, the rugged vibration of rotte, the string chime of citharas, tambourines shaking, timpani pounding, all enrapt to an old lilt that had not been heard by mortal ears in several centuries.

As the door closed to, the hall grew quiet, Leresai became aware of another's presence. She drew her twin daggers and swiveled at the same time to face the person.

"Who's there." She challenged.

A man in an archaic suit of armor stepped out of the shadows. He was handsome, her height, sandy blonde hair, and he possessed an easy smile.

"Forgive me for startling you, Princess Fervarryn. I merely desired to see her one last time."

"Well, you have." Leresai felt she should know this one. She searched for a standard on his tabard.

"My lady, we have an arrangement to attend to. I am the one sent to relieve you of our mutual friend."

He stepped forward, a bastard sheathed at his hip. Leresai had to admit he appeared very formidable. Her eyes returned to the tabard, and she found his emblem. A diamond set in another diamond that eclipsed the sun.

She gasped in spite of herself, and she bowed her head.

"Forgive my insolence, Sieur Télsarràs. You were the least expected of all my eventful happenings this eve."

He smiled. Light danced in his smoke blue eyes.

"Come along, maiselle -" an archaic word common for damsels a millennia ago "-Princess Fervarryn, I shouldn't delay you much further."

Leresai followed him through the chamber to a greystone corridor on the far side of the Great Hall. It was shadowed behind a pair of arch supports which obscured it from view. The knight walked into the shadow and when he appeared under the light of lanterns instead of the black diamond globe, the change in his appearance was abrupt, and startled her. His face was mummified, his blond locks turned oiled down in fetid smelling strands. The blue eyes that dominated previously could not even be seen within his face.

"I feel your silence, Princess Fervarryn."

"Is it true you knew that if you took the vow of knighthood, you would one day be curséd revenant?"

His chortle was raspy and dry. "No. But it is a good legend. I assumed I would die in battle in service to my King fighting for our Independence. When that did not occur, I assumed I would die in service to the Golden Reign of Queen Rhoethella. When that blesséd spite from Izdun's crushing hand came to an end, I assumed I would die in rebellion, once again. The only thing I can say is certain, my assumptions have always proven to be for nought."

At the end of the several corridors the pair traveled through they came upon a set of stairs. From down below, came the chant she heard in the Aethyr. The foul hunger struck upon her once more. Her mouth tasted the blood, sediment, and yolk.

How is your every waking moment not consumed with wanton desire to destroy the sœurarchy?

She asked of Roquín.

For the longest time it was. When I was trapped inside the chateau on Mount Despumate, as I planned their deaths, I was staring at an emerald embedded in a clock and I meditated on the destruction of the sisters and their heathen empire. I would lose my senses as I refused to contemplate upon my humility. For a century, perhaps, this Insanity on my part would continue until the day came that the emerald spoke to me.

Spoke to you? Leresai asked. You truly did go insane.

In the weirdness of their minds melding, she could feel his laughter beneath her skin.

Indeed, when I heard it's voice I was finally quite sure of my insanity. Instead of fearing it I reveled in it. I saw into the granulate from wince the emerald was composed. At its heart is speckled lattice of captured light that dances softly within. And in it's patterns I came to be able to read its thoughts. It told me to hold fast and spoke to me as if I were an emerald myself.

The Sœurarchy would one day end in squalor, and I would still be as the emerald would still be, unchanged. Unlike my fellow realm kings, I cannot even be made undead such is the uniqueness of my time on Mount Despumate.

I would come through this unchanged.

I felt the freedom and a peace inside me I had not felt since my own unsworn youth. The next day, the Wild Sister appeared at the gate house of my chateau.

The revenant Knight turn towards her as she listened to the voice of Roquín in her mind. Télsaràs seemed to understand and waited patiently. He finally spoke when Roquín came to a silence.

"Princess Fervarryn, these men have prepared for this moment their entire lives, in accordance with a plan that unfolded over the course of generations. They feel confident. They feel they have the better of you."

"Do they believe I am incapable of touching silver? I have a few coins in my pocket to disabuse them of such a silly notion."

"No. I'm afraid they made science of your wiles. Capturing strands of hair from the beds of your lovers. Discarded clothing from your bins. Menses rags of which you disposed. They are disadvantaged for lack of one expectation."

He reached for his bastard.

"That you would have an escort. Follow at twelve paces, maiselle, and I will assure your safety."

She followed him down the steps. Her ankles became limp with a weakness she had never felt before. It crept up into her knees. It was the chant doing this to her. The words were in an ancient high dialect of the southern courts of Izdun's Minion Kings.

She realized it was the same as what they spoke as she surveilled robed ardents in the Aethyr, but now she understood little of the underlying words. The chant was designed to weaken her.

"Press on true, Princess Fervarryn," Télsarràs encouraged her.

The corridor they transversed enlarged into a hall with six columns to each side. There were insignias sketched upon the walls above the columns, along the floors. It was a recent addition as no dust accumulated upon the surface.

Leresai could smell the charcoal from the incense they burned fresh in the insignias' creation.

Torches approached from a distant corridor.

"Hold true still, my princess."

She tensed up. The chant knotted in her stomach. She felt eyes upon her that she could not see beneath the helm the revenant knight wore.

"I ask you, Princess Fervarryn. Do you know what I am in the distance of constellation?"

"That is a strange question, my Sieur."

"In my youth," Télsarràs said, voice sprung with mirth, "it was perhaps one of the most common questions of all."

She could now see the red cowls that shadowed the ardant's faces. Her shoulders hunched up, archly. The unnatural yearning for doe menses welling up inside. Roquin's memories becoming concrete in her mind. Riding his nightmare through the transit between worlds, he was on the hunt whisking through a woodland where he blared his mort horn and the hound beasts followed in pursuit lunging through leameadow, scurrying up small elk.

Leresai twitched. Utterly startled by the vividness of the vision. The revenant knight's dusk voice ground her back into the Hall.

"Do you know what I am in the near of planetary rise?" He asked her.

The ardant in front hesitated at the site of Télsarràs standing in the middle of the hall, waiting for them. The lead ardant motioned for his followers to continue. His hands made a gesture as he approached. He repeated the syllables of an ancient exorcism.

"Death Knight. Villain and most vile aberration, you will not interfere in these matters that do not concern you."

The other ardants found their places in front of the hall columns. One of the followers stayed behind their leader. In his hands, he held a velveteen inlaid box with a gem inside that bled of blue aura.

Télsaràs ignored their threat. He called out to Leresai once more.

"Princess Fervarryn, you certainly know what I am in the near of Earth, correct?"

"Those are matters that pertain to Fortune, Fate, and Destiny."

"You are correct, maiselle."

Her neck suddenly stiffened. Her body made rigid. Even speaking now strained the muscles in her jaws.

"When Roethella forsook Fortune, Fate, and Destiny, at the demand of the Sœurarchy, she forsaken you as well," Leresai said.

"Indeed, as Rhoethella just told you, immortal love or immortal life, there is no intersection in the tween."

She tried not to let impatience and her discomfort show through in her words as she spoke.

"Why do you ask these words, Sieur Télsarràs?"

"If those men knew the answers, that attempt at an exorcism would likely do me harm. If you knew the answers you would be less inclined to fear those men."

The lead ardant glared from beneath his red cowl.

"I warned you, revenant. You will now be dispelled."

A glowing ball of white-hot energy formed in the palm of the ardant's hand. He coaxed it forward. Télsarràs pointed his bastard towards the floor with the edge of the blade against the stone surface. He leaned against the pommel. The ball of energy moved towards him as he chuckled away, voice wispy. The ball touched his breastplate brushing up on his tabard. The energy dissipated.

The ardants gasped in unison. Their chant stuttered, and unraveled as they panicked.

"Now, where did that energy disappear to," Télsarràs asked them, playfully. "In the equation of existence it must be accounted for, am I correct?"

Of the sudden, the air became chill. The breath of all the living exposed by the mist strewn out of their mouths became gaseous tendrils that unfoiled and whipped in coils like living tentacles in the space between the ardants. Ice draped their hoods, frost covered their arms, and their eyes widened into the unsettling pearlescent gaze of the blind.

Their clothes exploded out from their bodies. Every stitch made filament that floated slowly down.

Sieur Télsarràs stepped forward to the nekkid and blind ardant leader and lopped off his head. The blade of his bastard he lay on top of the head of the acolyte who carried the gem.

"Do not move, or you will suffer the same fate."

Leresai peered at the men exposed before her. Their faces were malformed and abominable. She examined even closer and winced. They were hermaphrodites. Incestuous impurity went into their creation.

Télsarràs noticed her curiosity.

"Your adversaries, the genealogy of these wretched creatures was generations in the making. Only to be undone by the simplest of counter schemes in the span of a few minutes."

He retrieved the gem from the box and turned to face Leresai with his hand held out.

"This will at least give our friend a respite from that infernal longing. Place this gem in the cusp of your hand and his soul will migrate from your physical being into it."

She did as instructed. Roquín and the unnatural longing was released from her. Télsarràs kneeled at her feet, and kissed the soft leather of her right boot. He stood back up and took the gem.

"By your leave, my princess. I shall not delay you any further."

He turned and walked down the hall in the direction the ardants came. As he did so, the ardants coward behind the columns. Their sight restored as the frost no longer glazed their eyes. They hid their faces from her inspection.

Their mouths that moments before spoke a high noble language in perfect intonation now quivered and stammered in total incoherence. An uncomfortable feeling of which she knew little now coursed through her, pity.

Leresai made haste up the steps.

The Reverend Mother Irrianne sat on the bottom steps of the catacomb entrance way, waiting for Leresai to return. Her face was set with a gray, knotted expression. Her hands in a fret.

She stood up when she saw the Sgoëthe approach. Eighty-three years of age, but long and lithe. As did her twin sister Ursa, Irrianne studied the divine ritual of snake dancing for the Sœurarchy temples of the Midvries. In middle age, they went their separate ways.

"Most Belovéd", Irrianne called out to Leresai who cleaned off a twin set of daggers as she strode down the long length of the corridor.

Leresai nodded curtly, not wanting to be any further delayed.

"Reverend Mother," she addressed.

"I bear ill tidings for you," Irrianne said as Leresai passed.

"I've just come back through a host of Band'wa men much deserving the slaughter I inflicted on a few. I need a tall yard of ale or wine before we discuss anything, dear Irrianne."

Leresai climbed the steps with the Reverend Mother in tow. As she reached the top step leading to the long yard between the catacombs entrance and the winter garden, Leresai peered to see a cheerful commotion. When she heard the tap of Irrianne's boots behind her, she turned, and in a strident voice, she asked, "what are they doing, taking turns riding my nightmare?"

"Please don't be harsh with the girls. They rarely have time for amusement given their duties and studies."

"Get away from Sellanna, you vicious little cunts," Leresai yelled, catching sight of one acolyte doing an aerobatic tumble off of the nightmare's back before helping another girl somersault spin around in position then sinking into the saddle."

"What has broached the sanity of your minds? She is not a trick pony for your amusement. I hope your sleep is fretful and ridden with groping incubi."

Irrianne cleared her throat. "Dear, far be it for me to speak for the youth, but it is highly likely that is the point of their foray."

Leresai strode into the yard. "I'm going to give some bitches a thwack on their tender little behinds."

Irrianne followed, she caught her breath, and yelled,"Most Belovéd of Rhoethella! Brietess' body is missing!"

Leresai stepped in an abrupt lean against her boots, almost losing balance. Sellanna pranced in a side swivel and bowed before her new master. The acolytes had scattered when they saw Leresai making a path in their direction.

She turned her head to the Reverend Mother. Leresai's mouth contorted ugly.

In the retondu of a small mausoleum a shadow fell over a marble slab covered in dust and dried winter violets where Leresai last laid Brietess' head a mere month ago.

"Whatever did we know, my darling? My blesséd Bliss. My fleeting retreat into sweet ignorance. We were never meant to be but a moment's reproach to this world. And my, min saiwala gemata, how glorious was our hour. It is no wonder Pestilence chose you for her Grande Ball Eternal. You were always the most girlish girl I have ever known.

"I thought it myself, with you in my arms, grazing upward at me, staring with your beautiful brown eyes in to my own eyes, in Pestilence place, I would have gladly taken you by the hand and lifted you up into eternity to represent all the beautiful girls of the world.

"However, holding you these past five years, it has been difficult. Every time we meet here, I searched for my happiness and what remains of you.

"Your reanimated body would remind me of the beat of your heart, the heat beneath your flesh, the warmth of your wetness - all that is a part of your physical presence that could not be returned to me by Rhoethella's promise.

"Your voice but a faint whisper, a mere echo, of the sharpness of your mind, the resolute passion of your personality, the sincere conviction of your scalding tongue. All of those things that for whatever reason would not pass through the threshold of shadow into your presence in the here and now."

Leresai's eyes squinted. She bent over the marble slab where the dry petals of winter violet lay. She scooped them up in her palm. She laid her forehead against the cold slab in their place. She remembered the previous fortnight rituals.

That first time she arose from the slab, Leresai escorted her to the fountain in the center court of the winter garden. The Ninci admired the dress she wore, and thanked Leresai near a dozen times for providing it.

"I wish I could see the moon. I would like to dance under the moonlight." Brietess would repeat, longingly. Leresai would explain the moon's phases dictated when they could meet. She had to explain this over again just after addressing it.

It saddened Leresai to see her Brietess in such diminished capacity. Where was the anger, and the fiery wrath? Should not the girl bear a grudge? She always returned to Leresai as meek as a lamb.

There were however blesséd moments of lucidity that shone through on the one subject that remained whole for the girl,: dance. She studied it for a decade so it remained in her fiber.

"Leresai, did they ever teach you the etiquette of dance up in that Sgoëthe castle?"

"I learned the dance of spear, the dance of sword, the dance of dagger, and the dance of shield."

The Ninci's smile threw moonbeams.

"I will teach the dance of the old payson lilt. It is time you learned. Lift up your arm, and hold my fingers with your index finger and thumb. Necessary for you to hold them as you will need to turn your wrist on the third count of two.

"Like this, one - one - Two - one, one - one - Two - one, one - one - Now! - one . . ."

Every fortnight after they would dance for hours out by the fountain.

Leresai opened her eyes to the empty atrium once more.

"I do most suspect your brother of doing this. Perhaps the scheme he made of this night was only distraction from his true purpose to return your body to your home. For that I do not blame him. I promised him I would take care of you when he interceded with your father. I failed.

"He deserves his heart satiated every so much as I deserve to have mine. My dear, I will not seek some futile vengeance against a man I love to return you here just so we can begin our game all over again. It is not fair to anyone.

"It is for the best, min saiwala gemata. I must move on for in the truth of things, all of this time I have been lingering without the force of decision to guide me, I have been dying inside. I hope you understand, everything I ever held dear to me belongs to the wind, now. I have one last chance of making substance of this life of mine."

As Leresai strolled through the entrance arch she studied the dry petals and she wiped them from her hands.