The moon had risen, grey and grim. And a chill was settling across the Morglade as distant howling came over the hills. Scattered bonfires were lit throughout the camp. And Joanne Ballassteer was walking, wrapped tight in her tattered black shroud, accompanied by the two sisters, Gai and Mel. Due to reverence, or perhaps out of fear, the legion soldiers stepped aside, always leaving a clear path as the Lysaneea captain made her way.
At the lord master’s pavilion, Derrek Hallowway was pacing outside the entrance holding aloft a candle lantern to help those in the darkness. When the boy spotted Joanne approaching, he swayed the lantern in the air to signal to her. And as she came in, Derrek straightened himself and nodded respectably, only saying, “Captain Ballassteer.” But the dark lady only glanced silently from behind the shroud’s frayed edges with eyes flickering madly in the moonlight. Bewildered by her stare, Derrek froze and cautiously watched her pass and enter the pavilion. The wild-haired sisters halted outside with him.
“Hail, baby knight,” said the red-haired Gai, fiery strands swirling over a smirking face. “I see you’re still with us. Enjoying impending doom, are you?”
“Don’t listen to her,” advised the blue-haired Mel with a wisp of blue hair waving tranquilly across her eyes in a breeze. “Mind us standing with you, squire? I swear we shan't be much of a distraction.”
Derrek groaned. “If you must, ladies.”
Inside the pavilion, candle lanterns were softly glowing and spreading a haunting feeling as the lord master stared gravely ahead, sitting in his armchair of dark wood with his head resting on a hand and elbow on the chair’s arm. Hanging behind him was an exquisite brocade of diamond patterns colored in silver, gold, and blue—the colors of the queen—stretching across the width of the pavilion. At Elliot’s left was the giant Vinndash, Otis, standing in a guarded pose, holding his coiled whip and glowering over the room. On Elliot’s right was the mute-man, Sollozar, one of the faery men, standing head down and motionless in his earthly colored hooded cloak.
As Joanne entered, the pavilion went silent. The other legion captains were already in audience to the lord master. Captain Dace and the mage Thorn stood on the left. Captain Wylen was to the right with his shy sister looming quietly in his shadow. The captains moved away from Elliot as Joanne approached his chair. In front of Elliot, she bowed courtly and addressed him, “Lord master.”
Elliot stirred in his chair. He straightened his back and looked particularly grim at the Lysaneea captain. “Captain Joanne, finally gracing us with her presence. I hope my summons were not too much a bother.”
“Apologies, lord master,” she answered, graciously, “I was fast at prayer.”
“And what were you praying for?” He asked.
“You, Elliot.”
An insidious snigger erupted from Michael Thorn, contaminating the air with unease. Otis snapped a look at the mage, squeezing on the whip with his giant hands. The mage stopped and lowered his eyes.
Elliot spoke again to Joanne. “No more prayers, Joanne. I need my captains to arrive when properly due.”
“Worry not,” she expressed, “I promise I will arrive… when properly due.”
Leon Dace spoke with a touch of elegance, “We missed you earlier, my lady. As always, supper felt hollow without your presence.”
“Oh,” Joanne replied, “I assumed you were used to it. And certainly, little missing me.”
“Nor has anyone truly, witch,” spoke Thorn. “The faery man is overly gracious as usual.”
Joanne turned to the mage and eyed him, spitefully. “Then my absences are not without merit.”
Sherral raised her voice, barely over a hush, “The mage speaks for himself.”
“Never mind that,” Elliot demanded. “Joanne, since you are here, report the provisions that came.”
Joanne slipped a rolled parchment from under her shroud and unrolled it in her gloved hands. “Not much this time,” stated Joanne, reading. “Corned meat, enough for ten days if rationed correctly. Eighteen barrels of turnips, seven of carrots, and four barrels of crab apples. Black goat cheese, but only six days’ worth at best. Seventeen quarts of salt. And by the grace of the queen, directly from our capitol, a hundred and eleven casks of gully wine. Also, the Baron of Borlocke wanted you to note, it was he who provided the five wagons of chopped wood and the baskets of wild berries.”
Elliot grunted, “My gratitude to the baron. Is that all?”
“We can expect another train within a fortnight.”
“Ah hah,” said Thorn, coming forward. “I see my supplies are missing, once again. Am I to work with nothing?”
“What you asked for is not easy to come by,” replied Joanne.
Thorn fumed, “Nor is my work, easy. Need I remind you all, of the nefarious things in this world, the mysteries you cannot possibly comprehend, the dangers you cannot meet with mere swords or axes… or a witch’s venomous stare. All of you will wish me to have what I need when those challenges come, I promise you.”
Elliot sighed, “We will make do.”
Outside, the two sisters were staring and passing whispers between each other. Gai picked her teeth and mockingly stared at the boy. Growing strained with his company, Derrek broke the silence and asked, “Is it true, Captain Ballessteer is the mad wizard’s daughter?”
Suddenly, Gai growled and brandished her teeth like a beast. But her sister interceded, “Sister… he doesn't know. He’s not one of us.”
Gai spit and calmed herself.
“I meant no offense,” Derrek said. “I was only curious.”
Mel explained, “We don’t call him mad wizard, squire. Only you norrins do. The Lysaneea know him only as the donkey mage.”
Gai puffed up and proclaimed, enthusiastically, “We love the donkey mage!”
“The donkey mage?” Derrek wasn’t certain if the sisters were jesting.
“Our mother told us about him,” continued the blue-haired Mel. “He arrived on the first warm day in spring. Master Ballessteer rode on a grey-haired donkey, dressed as a plain traveler, not as a mage at all. Mother said he carried himself like a nobleman and was as handsome as one with long black hair and dark amber eyes—the same as Joanne. He was the only one of your kind to aid us during the great sickness. Your lords had no love for us, and travel was forbidden to the marshes where the sickness spread and we lived. They were happy to let us die. But he came.”
Gai announced, “If not for the donkey mage, the Lysaneea would all be lost.”
Mel nodded, before continuing, “At first, Master Ballessteer prepared an ointment for our skin, believing the sickness may be due to green-headed flies swarming through the swamp. The ointment helped with the flies, but our kinsmen continued to perish. Soon, he discovered a dark secret. Fish in the swamps were dead and still swimming in the waterways. The swamp water was tainted. Ballessteer claimed a dead tree must be in the marshes causing it. He set out alone for two days and when he returned he announced himself grandly as all wizards do and declared it was over and there would be no more dead fish and no more sickness. And he was right. Within a day, the water turned clearer and the air turned fairer. It was gone. We had no coin to pay him, all we had were our horses to offer, but he refused to even take one. He rode off on his grey donkey, making us promise a favor in the future. The Lysaneea never saw him again, but we shall always love the donkey mage.”
Gai added, “Me and my sister were born in the flowering after he left.”
“I’ve never heard of this,” said Derrek, skeptically. “Grieves Ballessteer—a selfless, charitable man? I always was told…”—Derrek carefully thought out his words—“…very differently about him.”
Mel nodded. “It’s the real story of Greives Ballessteer—our donkey mage.”
“Aye,” Gai said, “the donkey mage is a good man, noblest of all mages, and I dare anyone to say otherwise.” She clung to her dirk’s grip.
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As Derrek stood there, wondering about the tale the sisters had told him, his mind went to the stories of the mad wizard raising horrors and terrorizing the entire kingdom. No one—women, child, or old—was shown mercy. All were devoured in his path. Senseless, brutal, without cause. It took every knight, and every able man, led by the iron prince, himself, to slay Ballessteer. And the prince paid with his life for doing so. It was hard for the boy to imagine the sisters were talking about the same person. Derrek always believed mad wizard was only a title given to him for his cruelty, but perhaps, it was a true malady after all, one that seized Ballessteer in his old age and turned him to a dark path. A terrible curse—to lose one’s wits—believed Derrek. And one that could be passed on to a son—or even a daughter. Derrek then asked, “And how is it Joanne became your leader?”
“It’s my turn,” Gai insisted, loudly. “Mine!”
Mel looked wary, but said, “Tell him correctly, sister.”
“I will,” said Gai. “See, years later, after the donkey mage saved us, an old grey priestess and a young girl came to the Lysaneea marshes. The priestess demanded sanctuary for her and the girl. She said we owed a debt, and a wizard would rain fire on our heads if we refused. Out of fear, we took them in.”
“Sister, that’s not true,” interrupted Mel.
“Yes, it is,” snapped Gai. “And it’s my turn to tell… so let me tell it the way I want. The girl was Joanne, barely six years at the time. Her and the old priestess stayed with us, teaching us the ways of the waking eye and the grey fields after death. And oh… was our old chief not happy. But he feared Ballessteer too much and let them stay. Then after you norrins murdered the donkey mage, our old chief finally got bold, and he killed the grey priestess. Then he, the old wretch, demanded a sacrifice to the old gods to get right with them again. He wanted me and my sister for his ritual blade. But Joanne loved us, and she snuck into his dwelling and strangled the old man in his sleep. We were all happy to be rid of him.”
“That’s not how it was,” said Mel. “After he killed the old priestess, Joanne met our old chief and challenged him for the horse-bone dagger. She was only a girl, but when he moved to kill her, she merely touched him, and he fell… dead as a fallen tree and splintered to pieces. Joanne took the dagger and we kneeled to the daughter of the donkey mage.”
Gai huffed. “What? Fine. As you say, sister. But not all of us kneeled. We had to kill them.”
“No,” corrected Mel. “Joanne let them go in peace. You know that.”
Gai said, “I like my story better.”
“Your stories are all black and grim, murder and death,” said the blue-haired sister. “No one wants to hear them.”
Gai groaned.
Suddenly, a strange wind blew. Gai’s unruly, red-painted hair wavered and danced in the rush. Both sisters immediately stepped back as a shadowy wave moved over Derrek, enveloping him and squelching the light of the candle lantern. As the shadow passed over, the flaps of the pavilion's entranceway fluttered. After it was gone, the lantern burned brightly again.
Derrek was shaken. “That’s strange.”
Gai’s eyes narrowed sinisterly, and she spoke with a low, slow voice. “Aye, boy. That’s the shadow demon.”
“A shadow demon?” Derrek asked, uneasy.
“It’s not a demon,” corrected Mel. “Only the arch-mage’s messenger.”
Back in the pavilion, the air stirred. Candle lanterns flickered as colors faded and the flames became dim. Everyone halted their chatter. Captain Joanne recoiled, pulling her shroud tightly around her. She stepped away from Elliot, glaring wide-eyed at a darkness forming at the entranceway. A shadowy figure slowly manifested, twitching and convulsing, with limbs and a head oozing out in semblance to a man. Its eyes pulsed alive in an unseemly yellow. Then the figure finally solidified, its body went crooked and lifted in the air, seemingly from invisible strings. The shadowy figure shifted eerily, moving between the captains, drifting towards the lord master. “Such an unnatural thing,” muttered Joanne, as she held herself while leering behind the frayed edges of her shroud.
After it halted before Elliot’s chair, the shadowy creature grandly announced, “I HAVE RETURNED.” Its voice rang out, reverberating and hallowing, before eventually fading into dying whispers. After dropping its head and arms in a slump, as if a puppeteer dropped its strings, the hovering creature of inherit darkness humbly bowed before the lord master.
Elliot responded, simply, “So you have, Sha-rhom-de.”
Sha-rhom-de twisted around, acknowledging all the legion captains with their due respects. But when it faced Joanne, it lowered itself and drifted in more intimately, clasping its decrepit dark hands and stretching an unsettling smile over its dark face of indistinct features. “Captain Joanne,” it spoke as its yellow eyes dulled and its voice mellowed. “you always stare with apprehension…”
Aghast, Joanne shrank away, shielding herself under the wrappings of her black shroud, and hissed. But the shadow only crept closer, unabated, until its slender dusky fingers almost touched the worn threads of her hood and its oblique head lingered uncomfortably close to her face. Sha-rhom-de asked, “Am I so grotesque… so monstrously repulsive… my presence troubles you so?”
“No, creature,” Joanne answered, harshly. “It’s not your appearance, but what you are.”
“And what am I? I’m only one thing… a servant to the queen.”
“He made you believe that.” She shot back.
“Sha-rhom-de,” spoke Elliot, “did you come here for Joanne or me?”
The shadow rotated around. “To your service, lord master.” It hovered closer to Elliot.
“Then what of the children?” Elliot asked.
The shadow’s voice turned deeply sober in tone. “It is a shame… the queen’s court has become truly exhausted with the lawlessness in the realm. Amnesty has been denied. The children must perish as well.”
Murmurs rose in the tent. Elliot sat unmoved in his armchair. Only a subtle shuddering in one eye betrayed the lord master’s usual grim demeanor. Captain Leon Dace stammered forward, caught unbalanced by the shadow’s revelation, and pleaded, “Sir, even for those so young?”
Sha-rhom-de answered the faery man. “It is the queen’s will, captain.”
Leon insisted, “But they are only children. This cannot be.”
Sha-rhom-de lifted higher in the air and circled around. Then it declared to the room, “It is with a heavy heart, I pronounce the sentence. And no will of my own. But understand, the queen’s court has become troubled with the progress of the legion, lately. Though valiant in its efforts, the legion has made little progress in taming the lands. And as such, there will be no more mercy, of any kind, for outlaws or rebels… or any other enemies to the kingdom.”
Leon howled, “This is madness.”
“It is not madness,” said Wylen. “I told you so before, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Where is the fairness in it?” Leon demanded to the Vinndash. “They are not outlaws or rebels, captain. Mere children. Are we to punish sons for the crimes of their fathers now?” The faery captain turned to the lord master, “Sir Elliot, you cannot mean to go through with this wicked command. There is no justice in it. Tell the queen… we shall not obey.”
Elliot gave no answer back. His head sunk down and he held his head.
“Elliot, tell them,” pleaded Leon. But Elliot remained silent in his chair.
“You have a soft heart, faery man,” said Wylen. “Children die all the time. As all men do. Whether it be fair or not.” But from behind, an arm wove around Wylen and his older sister pulled herself gently against him and spoke quietly, “Not always, brother.”
Wylen huffed, “No. Not always. But this is the queen’s will.”
Leon sneered, “You mean the arch-mage.”
Wylen grunted, “I mean the queen.”
“You know as well as I, or anyone else,” Leon returned, “who really rules.”
“Captains,” Joanne announced, “it is the queen’s authority we follow.” She looked directly at Leon and eyed him meaningfully. “And not our own hearts.”
“Well said, Captain Joanne,” said Sha-rhom-de. “All of us are in service to the queen. And we must obey her commands.”
She hissed at the shadow again.
“May I say a word,” Captain Thorn said, his head hunched, scratching his chin. “The children need not suffer. There are means to ease them into death. I may-”
“There will be no deaths, mage,” roared Leon. “This farce will not go on. I will not let it.”
“Captain, collect yourself.” Wylen had a wily smirk on his face, smoothing over his beard. “You have heard the queen’s commands.”
Leon rested his hand on the pommel of his sword and narrowed his eyes. “Do you mean to stand against me, captain?”
Wylen laughed, “Aye, faery man, I do. And the Vinndash, the Lysaneea riders, and the entire kingdom—all of us—stand against you.”
Leon said, darkly, “and many will regret it.”
Wylen sniffed at him. “You are a fool.”
“Enough.” Elliot raised his voice. A tense silence fell in the pavilion as all eyes went to the lord master. For a moment, he stayed bent forward in his chair, rubbing his forehead, in silence. But in his mind, a ghostly voice was pestering him. Forget them… abandon the oath… save the children… you must… save them… save them… Elliot focused until the voice vanished. He then straightened his back, wiped over his face, and looked directly at the shadow and declared, “It will be done.”
Sha-rhom-de bowed. “Very good, lord master.”
“Never!” Captain Leon Dace stormed out the pavilion, muttering curses.
“Without delay,” advised Wylen, urgently, “it should be done. I will have Croy see to it-”
“No,” Elliot said. “Not Croy. This is not a task for him. Captain Thorn.”
The mage stepped forward, rubbing his hands. “Yes, lord master, as I was saying, I have the very thing. A painless toxin, expensive mind you, but perfect for this task. It mixes without notice in even water. The children will pass to sleep, peacefully, without a prick of pain, on their way to await God.”
“You give your word on this?”
“I swear,” Thorn said, smiling thoughtfully. “It is my art and duty to know these things.”
“I will hold you to it then. At sunrise, give them a last meal. Then the potion. Joanne will deal with them afterward.” Elliot stood and scowled sternly across the room. “And that will be the end of it.”
“I must bid you, farewell, lord master. And captains.” Sha-rhom-de’s form began to dematerialize as its voice dulled and lowered. “Until we speak again…” The creature vanished, and out the way it came, a shadowy wave blew through the entrance. The colors instantly brightened after it was gone.
Joanne approached the lord master. “Elliot, may I suggest something?”
Elliot grunted, “What?”
“Open the wine casks,” answered Joanne.
He howled, “On this night? You want me to encourage wantonness, recklessness, as one of my captains threatens mutiny?”
“Yes,” she said without pause. “Let them drink and sing songs. Celebrate victory. Give the men a distraction from the darkness cast over the camp. Allow them to forget. You should encourage it, Elliot.”
Turning away from her, he answered, flatly, “NO.”
Joanne said nothing else. She knew not to press him.
Outside the pavilion, Sollozar was leaving, walking in silence in his hooded cloak. The mute’s senses had grown more perceptive from his years of never talking and only listening. When he felt a presence stalking him in the night, he spun around. Joanne was there in her dark shroud, creeping after him. The lady reached out, presenting a bare white hand to him, and gracefully asked, “Sollozar, may we speak?” Sollozar took her hand tenderly and gazed into her moonlit eyes. Hand in hand, they both walked into the shadows of the night.
