The Darkness Deepens, Chapter 4

         The Dark Lady looked up to see her wayward child approaching her throne.  A small smile crossed her face as if she knew what had brought him back to her.

         “Good evening Tassadar, your presences had been missed.  I am glad that you have chosen to return.”

         The giant man looked up and into the eyes of the woman that had made him what he was.  In an instance his memory of the night flashed in his mind.

         He was 25 year of age and a warrior.  There was simply nothing else anyone would give him a chance to do.  Everyone told him that someone his size had to be a warrior.  His reach was longer then everyone else and he was stronger then most people.  He had taken a job guarding a wagon train as it made its way across to the Dark Ladies strong hold.  Now granted he had no love of the Dark Queen, but then again a job was a job.  And this was simply a merchant train, or so he thought.  Five days out of Gedro on their way to Fort Tirr the train had been attacked just as it had started to make camp for the evening.  He had fought with all his might, aware that if he gave up the “treasures” of the wagon train he would still be killed.  He didn’t want to die.

         Finally a large man, one that almost matched his size had stood before him.  Tassadar almost defeated him, but then he tripped on a fallen body and the man ran him though with his sword and left him for dead.  But a man the size of Tassadar takes a long time to die.  He had laid there for hours in the most grueling pain he had even felt.  He had tried to pull himself over to a wagon looking to find something to bandage himself to stop the flow of blood, but his great strength had finally deserted him.  The last thing he remembered before waking to the face of his mentor was hearing her ask him if he wanted to live or die. He had wanted to live.

         When he woke the next time he had no idea of how much time had past, but the beautiful dark woman was there again.  She again asked him if he wish to live or die, and he again proclaimed that he wanted to live.  He felt no pain as she climbed in the bed with he was surprised to realize that he was growing erect as she pressed her nude body against him.  He had been no virgin, but never had he ever know such pleasure with a woman.  This woman was like no other and she loved him for what seemed like all night.  He was surprised when he felt her bit into his neck.  At first it hurt, but then it was like the sex all over again, only better. It was not long before he grew weak after that.  A part of his mind knew it was because she was drawing his very life blood from him.  He simply could not fight her, even if he had the strength to, he simply didn’t want to.  As he felt his heart slow and his vision started to fade she pulled back from him.  With a clawed finger she cut into her breast.  He could see her blood start to flow freely down her chest.  He thought to himself that this was the way for a true warrior to die, watching a beautiful woman bleed against him.  She pushed the bloodily breast into his mouth and told him to suck, he did. 

         The Dark Lady was no ones fool and she knew what was going across Tassadar’s mind as he stood in front of her lost in his thoughts.  She didn’t mind him remembering how she had given him the gift of immortal life.  It gave her a chance to look him over and to see how he was keeping himself.  She looked at him with vampires eyes and saw the beauty of him.

         Yes, he was as handsome as the night she had found him dying on the battle field.  His reddish black hair, long and flowing down to his waist, his face was that of a Greek Gods.  High check bones, square jaw line, full lips, she stopped herself before she got too carried away.  He was here for a reason and she already knew what he reason was.

         She knew that the Duke of Acoroc was trying to punish a Chosen for the deal that his wife had made with her long ago.  She didn’t really care that the woman had lost her mind over it.  She had made a deal, the children for her beauty.  The Dark Lady had taken the deal and used her for a spy for a time, when she was done with her, well, it had been a simple matter to start visiting the woman’s dreams will all manner of horrible truths.  It didn’t take long for the woman to lose her mind.  The Duke never knew.  He had been a foolish man then and it seemed was still a foolish man now.  But this time he was standing in her way.  She could not allow that to happen.  The Chosen that the Duke threaten this time as the one she herself had chosen long ago.

         “Tassadar, I know why you are here child.  Do not fear, I know how you can save your Vinculum.  There is a law, it s not well known for if it were too many people would take advantage of it.  But the law states that if a person offers to marry one that is on the gallows and the condemn person accepts then the person will be freed to marry.  They will not be killed and they will live the rest of their lives with the one that made the marriage offer.  Now I am sure you would not have a problem sending a ghoul over to make that offer.”

         It took a moment for Tassadar to realize that the Dark Lady was actually speaking to him.  The past few days had been hell for him.  He had known from the minute they had taken the elf from him that he could have gone in and freed her.  But he had also understood her sense of honor.  She would kill herself if she thought that she had been found guilty of the charges and even worst she would have simply found someone to which to turn herself in if he had freed her.  He knew what the scum had done to her, and it ate him inside as nothing else had ever done.  His joy at the words his Lady spoke was too great to express.  He knew if he could force himself to come here she would fix the problem. She always had an answer for everything.  He smiled at her and gently took her hand and kissed it, using his magic he disappeared and reappeared on the edges of a crowd.

         Blood running down her back from the blade point.  In a strange way the path of the blood consumed her thoughts and sent her back to the night she was captured.  Her Vinculum.  She had found him, but he was a vampire.  No, she remembered now.  They had told her.  He was not Vinculum, it was a strange power that the vampires had to hold over people and draw them.

         She didn’t much care as she was pushed into the court yard yet again to stand in front of the Duke and his court.  It took her a few minutes to realize that this time it was different.  She finally realized that several Chosen, a Head Mother, and a representative from the High Court were standing in the yard as well.  They were all talking about her.  She struggled to make sense of the words.

         “It was my child she killed and I demand justice be done.  It is your law as well as mine that she broke.  If she was not blackguard she would have come peacefully as your yourselves have said.  And if nothing else a berserker blackguard must die.  There is no other way, if she were not blackguard I would turn her over to you to dispense the law to her.  But as well all know, she has committed a crime against not only myself but the royal line that she is sworn to protect.  She killed my heir.  Murder is punishable by death.  Chosen or not, she has committed murder.  You are welcome to stay in the city and watch her death.  She is sentenced to die at midnight.”  The Duke said to what appeared to Rhiannon to be the one Chosen.  As far she could count there were three pair of them.

         Rhiannon had heard enough.  She was drugged, but she was not stupid.  She had just been sentenced to death and damn it to hell she had done nothing wrong.  She spoke out.

         “I don’t know why I am here, I don’t know what I have done, but I murdered no child.  I have done no wrong.”  She though she said, what actually came out was less understandable then a small child first attempt at speech.

         The Duke smiled to himself.  He feared she would try to speak up for herself.  But things had worked out very nicely.  She had killed the only two that might have been able to clear her.  The guards at the fortress gate that day died in the battle to capture her.  And of course, he had to keep her drugged.  How else were they suppose to keep this murderous blackguard under control?  The Duke was very happy with himself as he listened to her attempts to proclaim her innocence.  He knew what she was trying to say and still could not understand her.  And if he could not understand her, neither could the other Chosen and the representative from the High Court.  He could not have planned it better.  Everything had worked out better then he could have ever hoped for.

         Rhiannon was kicked into silence and drug back to her cell.  The Chosen in the courtyard were not happy with the treatment of their fellow.  But even they had to admit, the “evidence” against her was overwhelming.  No one had seen the child alive seen she left the Isle and right after dumping the child off she had ran, not even giving the Duke a chance to thank her for bringing his daughter home safely to him.  It was then or course that he noticed something strange about his child.

         Several hours later an elf entered her cell.  She carried with her several things.  The first thing she did was feed the condemned woman a large vial of a foul tasting liquid.  In moments Rhiannon’s head started to clear.  The woman indicated without words the bucket and soap.  Rhiannon washed herself and her hair.  She was thankful that she would not have to die looking like a bagger.  At least the Chosen would leave her with a little pride if nothing else.

         After Rhiannon cleaned herself up under the watchful eye of the Chosen woman she sat quietly on the little stood in her cell.  The woman simply started at her.

         “Do you have any final statements you wish to give Rhiannon?”  The woman asked.  It was the first thing she had said to Rhiannon since she had entered the cell.  Rhiannon knew the only reason she had spoken at all was to fulfill tradition.  Now that she had been condemned as a murder the Chosen would not talk to her unless they had to.  And to make matters worst she had supposedly killed a royal heir.  There could be no worst crime for a Chosen.  The worst however that the Chose could do to her was declare her a blackguard.  It was not uncommon for Chosen to hunt down blackguard that had gone insane for one reason or another and kill them.  It was both a way of preventing the blackguard from harming others and away to give the blackguard the release of death that most of them sought.  Of course, most blackguard were Chosen that had lost their Vinculum in one horrible fashion or another.

         “Yes, I do have a final statement.  Make sure you get all this down right.  I want to make sure you don’t miss a word of it, so I will speak slowly.  First I would like to thank all of you for allowing me to die with some of my pride left in tact.  I am grateful for my dress uniform and the fact that you are allowing me to face death with a clear mind.  In the past few weeks I have been treated as an animal.  I have been beaten so many times that I have lost count.  Even you can attend to my condition having seen my body as I bathed.  What I came to this place I was a virgin.  That to was taken repeatedly from me, in the most hard ways you can imagine.  And finally, I am not blackguard.  I have a Vinculum, strange as it may seem.  I do not know even at the hour of my death grows close why the Duke wishes to see me dead, but I did not kill the child.  I loved her and found it extremely hard to turn her over to her parents.  But I did my duty.  And may the Goddess have mercy upon those that kill me for their own strange desire.  I don’t know my Vinculum very well.  I was taken from him even as we linked.  But I know as surely as I sit here awaiting my death that he will destroy this place.  You see, he is one of the Risen.  Which of course means he is most likely one the Dark Ladies children.  So mark my words, this place will fall, of that I have no doubt.  I can see the horror in your eyes even now.  You can not believe my words.  Oh, they are true.  What can you and the others do to me now.  I will die soon and then it will be over.  You can not declare me blackguard I am not.  I have made that clear with my statement of death.  I am not a murder.  When I was attacked in the middle of the night I simply defended myself from the attack.  I did no wrong.  I fulfilled the last duty set to me by the Order and I will die with my own honor in tact, if not the honor of the Chosen.”

         The woman looked down at the blackguard Chosen seated before her and noticed the woman’s studs.  They were not black anymore.  She herself had met Rhiannon several times on the Isle and had always wondered how someone so young could have lost a Vinculum, the Head Mothers had always said is was the way she had been born.  But now they were all the most perfect white diamonds and the reddest rubies she had ever seen.  She recorded everything that was said.  And everything she had seen as well.  But her heart ached for the lost one.  How could this thing have happened?  It was sad.  But is was the way of things.  The peace had to be kept and all laws observed or they were all lost to the Dark Lady and her ways.  The woman left the cell and quickly sent the message on its way.  She knew of course that the message must reach the Isle before the time of the lost ones death.  It was tradition.

         A few hours later a dozen men waited outside of Rhiannon cell.  Her cell door was opened and she walked out with her head held high.  She didn’t look any of the black clad knights in the face.  She was afraid she would see something in their eyes and her resolve to die with honor would break.  The men waited until she stood in the middle of them and then escorted her out into the court yard.  She had heard the workers building the gallows earlier and how she could see their handiwork.  She could not believe the size of the crowd at this time of night.  It seemed that the whole area had turn out to see her die.  She was still not sure what her death was going to be.  She didn’t have long to wait.  Her “guard” stopped at the bottom of the scaffold and she walked up the stairs with her back straight and he head held high.  She took her place at the top and then knew what the death would be.  At her side was a table filled with different types of knifes.  Hers was to be the death of a thousand cuts.  This method of execution was reserved for those that were felt to have committed the most horrible of crimes.  She could hear the crowd shouting at her.  She heard the wail of a dead mans wife.  And she knew in her heart that these people would never know the truth.

         She refused a blindfold.  She wanted to take the sight of these people with her into death.  The Duke himself had chosen to be her executioner.  He didn’t waste any time in starting her torture.  He walked up and without a word slowly cut her uniform away until she stood nude before the gathering.  In doing so he had made sure that every cut to her uniform came though onto her body.  For her part she refused to either acknowledge his cuts or the fact that he was trying to embarrass her by making her die in the nude.  Rhiannon simply repeated over and over in her head “this is the way I came into this word, it is only fitting that I leave it in this manner.”  She didn’t close her eyes and as her eyes wandered the crowd they fell upon the Chosen that she had seen in the courtyard earlier that day.  She could see the horror in their eyes and she quickly looked away from them, she had seen something there that was going to erode her resolve.  They knew the truth, somehow and in someway they could see the truth in her eyes and they wept quietly for her.  She knew they could do nothing else.  Knowing the truth did not change the fact that she could not prove her innocence to anyone.

         Rhiannon felt the Duke’s new assault.  He was trying to cut her studs off her ear.  His blade was dull and not cutting the skin very well.  Rhiannon bite down on her lower kip, refusing to scream or show any emotion. 

         The Duke tossed the blade away and decided on a different tact, he took up a thin blade and start to crave on her belly.  He would get her to scream soon he vowed to himself.  She would scream, long and hard.  He started above her navel and lightly, he was making sure not to cur to deeply, traced the blade down to her public area.

         Rhiannon was not sure how long she was going to be able to hold out.  But when her wandering eyes came across the large man in the back of the crowd wearing a hooded cloak to hide his features she knew it would not be long.  One look from her nameless Vinculum was going to crumble her.  It was then that he looked up and into her eyes.  She could see his pain and the first tear rolled down her cheek.

         “M’Lord, hold, I have something to say before you continue.”  Nuisance sang as he received a mental blast of pain from his master.

         The Duke looked darkly upon the toadish man approaching the scaffold stairs.  “What every you have to say must wait until I finish this horrible job.”:  The Duke nodded at one of the knights and the little fat man was grabbed and prevented from climbing the stairs.

         “But M’Lord I wish to invoke the right of marriage.  I want to marry her.  I will do so now, you must hear me, it is the law.”  Nuisnace again sang out, he had to yet to be heard, there were to may people in the crowd shouting for the murderess death for him to be heard otherwise.

         The Duke looked down at the little man and went pale.  “How could you know of that, do you know what she had done?  Do you not fear she will kill you in the very bed that you take her to love in?”

         “I know what she had done, I don’t care.  I want her as my wife for the rest of my life.  With a woman like that at home a man could do great things.”  Nuisance was not sure what else to say.  As he watched the Duke he was sure that the Duke was going to refuse him the right but then a strange thing happened and the Duke turned whiter then he was before.

         The Duke was looking around at the crowd, trying to judge their mood. If things came down to it he knew he could blame the crowd for her death.  It if came down to that.  After all he was sure this little man did not know for sure that it was law.  At best he was guessing.  The Duke smiled inwardly.  He could bluff with the best of them. It was as he turned to address the little man that he saw her face.  He had never before seen the Dark Lady but he knew her anyway.  He had heard of her legendary beauty and the commanding power of her eyes.  Her face floated before him.  He looked around quickly to see if anyone else was seeing it.  Judging by the crowd and everyone else face, he was the only one to see her.  And then she spoke to him.  “You will let her go.  The law is the law.  Give her over to the fat little man.  The thought of her having to endure his touch should be punishment enough for you.”  The Duke heard her words, and he faulted for a moment.  Then he regained himself and stabbed inwardly at the condemned woman.  “Here little man, come marry your bride.  Hurry now, I do not have all night.  We must obey the very letter of the law you know.”  The Duke looked up to see how the Dark Lady had taken his reaction at her words.  “You shall pay with your life scum.  No one defies me for to long.  Enjoy your life while you can.”  The heat of her eyes burned into the Dukes soul as her face faded from view.  The Duke had never known such fear.  It burned in him so deeply that he turned and united Rhiannon, withdrawing the small blade from her stomach as he lowered her to the floor.  She would live.  It was a painful wound, but not a death wound.

         Rhiannon heard the voice of her unnamed Vinculum in her head as the Duke lowered her to the floor.  “Rhiannon, marry him, he is my minion.  Do as I say, please do not fight me on this my love.  I will take away all your pain as soon as you are done with this foolish game.”  Rhiannon would have fought him any other time, but now she was growing cold and her body ached from old wounds and the new ones the Duke had made this very evening.  She didn’t fight, didn’t even raise the slightest objection to any of the foolish conditions of the marriage.  She signed her name where the marriage contact was placed before her and looked in to the eyes of her new husband.  The growing chill of the midnight air was nothing to the chill that his eyes held for her.

         The Duke stood before the crowd and read the marriage contact aloud for all to hear.

         “I, Rhiannon, give myself to my savior.  I swear to honor, love and obey him tell death due us part.  And if he should die under questionable circumstance I agree that my lie is forfeit.”

         And so it was done.  The little man helped his new bride down from the scaffold, covering her with a cloak that he had brought with him.  None of the crowd noticed that the cloak was not made for this short man, it drug the ground behind her as she walked, but it covered her from head to toe.  From no where a coach appeared to take the newlyweds away.

         “Remember Nuisnace, I will expect to hear from you in the morning.  I will know that you consummated your marriage this night or I will have her head in the morning light.”  The Duke said from the scaffold as he watched the two getting in to the carriage.  The little man grinned up at him.  :You need not worry about that M’Lord, a fine figure of a woman like her will not go to waste around me…”  He said as he closed the door to the coach and it pulled away.

         There were many in the crowd that did not like what had just happened, but there were at least a few, namely the Chosen that felt the Goddess herself had taken a hand to prove to them that Rhiannon was not guilty of the crimes she had been accused of.