Arpad first saw the Sorceress in a hallway to the royal chambers.

In the depths of night, while the hold grew frigid and he could find no rest, he traversed the quiet corridors like a sleepwalker. Like a man entranced by the sirens of the southern seas, his mind had no thoughts but unrealized tiredness. Not even the cold bothered him now. Past the doors of guests and guards, through the hall where dinners were held and where the smell of mead still lingered, he knew this was a memory forged to be forgotten. He would remember nothing of his insomnia except that it was his, that he had done something to quell it, but nothing more. It was a ritual, like the locking of a door, that could leave one’s mind the moment it had been observed. He wouldn’t be certain whether it had happened at all once he slumped back into bed.

So it always was in Castle Erod.

Nothing could be distinguished in the darkness. All seemed black and blurred together once the sconces extinguished themselves. Color itself slumbered until dawn. He might have been asleep already.

The sight of her jolted him awake. Around a corner, down a hundred feet, she stood at an open door, bathed in the light of a hearth that burned within a room.

Arpad drew toward her like an insect to a torch. Her voice, softly, spoke the language of the Verars, in an accent of Pyrthos. She wore a long and tight dress, silver in the dark. Her figure was a symphony of long lines in harmony with sensuous arches, from the flare of her bust to the span of her curved back and the width of her hips. Her dark hair hung low down her back and hid her ears, so that at first Arpad thought her an elf; but she was no elf, he knew from her accent, but a woman, and in her left hand was a simple wooden staff. Atop it sat a black orb that seemed to swallow whole the light of the obscured flame. It hung freely over a carved pedestal, twisting gently like the earth itself, and in its surface twinkled white stars. But with every gentle twist and sway of the haft in the Sorceress’ grip, it never left its perfect alignment with the grain of the wood.

“I will see to it,” said the Sorceress through the open door. “The wards are set. You needn’t fear for those within the stronghold’s walls.”

“Of course, Enchantress,” came the voice of another woman, muffled and out of sight. Arpad knew it at once to belong to the queen. She sounded weak. “Thank you. He will be well looked-after while you are in study.”

“I trust he will. I—” the Sorceress began, but she stopped and shifted on her feet. Her head tilted before it spun to regard Arpad.

Her irises were golden and the eyes around tilted and harsh. They met Arpad at level, for she stood at the same height as him. In beauty of face, in symmetry and strength, he knew no woman who might be her equal, yet a severity to her look suggested age beyond her years.

She did not look old. Her skin was pale as snow and pure as ice. She seemed quite young, but somehow Arpad knew he was being deceived.

She glared at him with the harshness of a housefire.

“Is something the matter?” said the queen.

“No,” said the Sorceress. Her gaze remained on Arpad. She consumed him, from his forehead to his beard and down to his toes, when a smirk broke at the right side of her lips. “I must retire. Goodnight, Ibolya.”

She snapped her fingers. The door slammed shut.

“You should know better than to slink about in the dark in times like these,” she said. “Paranoia runs rampant in these halls.”

And so she turned, and so she departed. Her footsteps were silent, but the staff tapped gently on the ground. She disappeared into the darkness with a sway that called out to follow.

But Arpad did not follow. He stood in awe until she had departed. And as he retired to his room, as he fell into his bed, he was sure to remember what he had seen.

Some dreams could enrapture the waking mind. The vividity of the Sorceress’ beauty and the viscosity of her enigma did not soon wane from Arpad’s memory. Were it not for how clearly he could see her yet, he might have convinced himself that she was a product of his imagination. She did not seem real. He wasn’t certain she was.

Yet the next morning he could think of nothing but her.

There were few magicians in Verarszag. The rift between its people and those of Esenia was an ancient one, and to cross the great mountains between the two lands was a trek few made. Verars did not practice the barbarous traditions of Manasearing, nor had they ever. Their people regarded aethereal magic with rightful suspicion.

But Verarszag was not spared the sundering of the rest of the world. Sometimes came need of a magician’s services even there.

Arpad was determined to find out what that need was. But he was more determined still to catch another glimpse of her beauty, to at least assure himself that it was real after all.

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