Forever Young

What would you do if you were destined to live forever?

~~ This is chapter 1 of a prequel to a fantasy trilogy I'm working on,and I need some feedback. Would you like to see this story continued/completed in a novel? Please -- I could use any advice you have.
Thanks,
-Stevie ~~


* * *

Forever Young

I

The Guardians visited the king and queen of Nyclone the day after Selestrus was born. King Luther’s soldiers came bursting into the palace moments after the morning’s first light that summer day to report that they had seen two dark shadows in the sky, flying like hawks through the sunlit haze. Starlise met her husband’s eyes. They were coming.

Luther told the men to keep him in touch. Around noon his commander, Miloch, informed the king that the shadows hadn’t changed their course. By early evening it was reported that they had cleared the last forest between themselves and the kingdom. When the Royal Militia of Nyclone lost sight of their quarries around dusk, there was no doubt that they would reach the kingdom by evening.

If anyone slept in Nyclone that night, their dreams were shallow and disturbed. The wind bristled with rumors of unease, the trees outside the palace walls creaked a strident song of dark anticipation, and the odd chill in the summer air sliced through even the warmest quilt like the steel blade of a dagger. More than a few restless souls sat awake in their bedchambers, staring through windows at a starless sky of inky mist. It was a curious thing, therefore, that no one noticed the Guardians enter the palace. Also curious -- no one ever saw them leave.

* * *

“Luther of Nyclone,” the soft, toneless voice whispered into a chamber lit only by the flickering glow of torches mounted on the walls. “What do you intend to do?” The voice was female but expressionless, the voice of a woman who had lived for long years and seen great joys and terrible sorrows, and could bear the tragedies of those she kept only by building a wall of isolation around herself, brick by pitiless brick.

Suddenly a lantern sputtered to life, casting a golden glow over the royal hall with its sparkling gilded thrones, over the little prince sleeping in his cradle with his parents sitting by his side, over the ridged back of the dragon embroidered on a thin yellow banner that shivered from the cold wind blowing outside.

Over the king’s iron sword, drawn and glittering on a tasseled cushion next to the child’s bed.

If King Luther and Queen Starlise hoped to identify the intruders by finding the source of light, they were disappointed. At first the lantern seemed to levitate of its own accord; but as it drew nearer and entered the pool of moonlight streaming through the high palace window, Luther and Starlise could make out two black shadows silhouetted against pitch darkness.

“Who are you?” said Starlise. Her voice sounded hushed to her husband’s ears, like the echo of a whisper in a temple with domed ceilings arcing high over rainbow-flecked windows.

Luther opened his mouth to shout for the guards, but found he could not yell. The shade bearing the candle raised her hooded face, and a pair of bright, violet eyes stared into his. All at once the room grew icy, a glacial chill running down the king’s spine. She was reading his thoughts, her eyes boring into his murky brown irises as though she could see his intentions inscribed there. She nodded and laughed, a soft, unearthly sound that made Luther flinch and somehow broke the spell.

“How did you get in here?” he shouted, moving to stand protectively before his wife and child. “Guards! Guards!”

“Silence,” ordered a man’s voice, and a second lamp flared into light. “Save your voice. Your guards cannot hear you.”

“Who are you?” said Starlise again. She walked closer to the shadows as though mesmerized. “What do you want?”

The man and the woman exchanged silent glances. “We are friends,” said the woman briefly. The cold amusement in her voice made Luther shiver, recalling a time he hadn’t even realized he still remembered. An hour, two hours, three -- was that all? -- it stood out in his memory as such a long day, but he supposed time had a way of slowing down whenever the impulse struck. Luther had never told anyone the words he’d heard that day, the cursing of a woman’s voice, a king’s verdict of death . . . and later, too late, the realization that the wrong woman had been killed.

Maybe it was the old memories, the flashes of pictures long-lost and forgotten, that made him speak foolishly here.

“What black magic is this?” he demanded.

The second after the words had left his mouth, he wished he could take them back. One of the figures lunged at him in the darkness. The lantern crashed to the cold stone floor, extinguishing with a hiss of grey smoke. The splintering chime of glass exploding into oblivion tolled through the chamber. Next second Luther felt a cold hand wrap around his neck, squeezing tighter, tighter, constricting until he thought his bones would shatter. He gasped, his breath coming in ragged gulps.

Through a haze of pain, Luther heard the man speak. “You dare accuse us of your dark deeds, foolish mortal?” A chilling hatred lay in his voice, a passionless, calculating hatred that the king had never heard before. It wasn’t the defiant vehemence of murderers convicted to the gallows or the feverish ravings of madmen; this was a patient sort of loathing of one who could -- and would -- hold a grudge forever.

“Enough,” said the woman’s voice. The flame of the second lantern floated closer to Luther, and the king dimly saw her lay her pale hand on her companion’s arm. “This is not why we came, Raiko. Enough of this.”

For a moment longer Raiko hesitated, and necessity battled with the hate in his colorless eyes. Then, without a word, he gave Luther’s neck a final wrench and let go, turning his back on the king. Luther collapsed to his knees. His breath came harsh and ragged, his eyes watering uncontrollably.

From the corner of his eyes the king saw Raiko approach the prince’s cradle. Starlise met him with respect, but Luther could tell by the tenseness of her stance that she was willing to shield her son with her life. What had moments ago seemed an irritating whim of his wife’s now made him sigh in relief.

“Please, sir,” the queen said, but she looked him in the eyes as an equal, “who are you? I will let no strang-- no one -- hurt my son. I would give my life to protect him. If you wouldn’t have it come to that, tell me what business you have in Nyclone. Tell me who you are.”

Raiko cast a glance back toward his companion, the woman who stood over King Luther, coldly watching him get to his feet. She met Raiko’s eyes and nodded.

“Very well, Atalanta,” Raiko said pleasantly. He lowered his hood, and though Luther couldn’t see his face in the shadowy room, he could see Starlise’s reaction. She paled, her face going so light she seemed an extension of the shafts of moonlight gracing the stone where she stood. She opened her mouth and moved her lips, forming words no one could hear.

“You stare at me as though you are seeing a ghost,” Raiko observed. If there was any implication, any threat, anything but simple truth in his statement, it was buried well beneath the surface. He took a step closer. Queen Starlise did not back away.

Luther staggered forward a step, knowing he needed to hear Raiko’s next words, knowing that they weren’t meant for his ears. A pounding ache resounded through his head. The world still seemed, to his air-deprived brain, to twirl around him. The floor twisted grotesquely beneath his leather-hide boots. The sparkling rays of moonlight were mirrored a dozen times over on the floor until he couldn’t tell the ceiling from the west wall. Luther became aware that he was shivering. He felt like he was just getting over a bad spell of the flu: weak and unsteady, cold inside, listless, feverish. He closed his eyes to stop the world from spinning. Raiko’s voice came from far away.

“What do you remember?” he said.

Starlise shook her head. Her gaze, avoiding Raiko’s eyes, swept the throne room and passed over her husband without a shred of recognition.

Yes, Starlise, what do you remember?

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. Only . . .” Starlise seemed about to say something then, but her voice stopped suddenly, her breath trailing off as an autumn gale before the storm breaks. The queen shuddered, and Luther had to close his eyes again to stop the agitated motion of her shadow writhing and twisting, like the serpent-hair of the Gorgon, like a waxwork melting and bubbling into a flesh-colored pool. “Black magic indeed,” he heard his wife say from the darkness.

“You doubt our methods,” said the woman called Atalanta. Luther had forgotten she was there. He opened his eyes, trying to fight off the wave of sickness engulfing him. His stomach felt that it had dropped into the dungeon. The bitter taste of bile rose in his throat, along with another, bitterer sense he thought had nothing to do with dizziness. What were these beings that hinted at the dead and shrouded themselves in shadows and could bring a mighty king falling before them?

Atalanta was laughing. It was a shrill, piercing sound: the sickly sweetness of sugar-water spilling over the rims of two gold-plated goblets clanging together.

“Ironic, that you would doubt our methods. It is our intentions I would distrust, were I you. However,” she added with a sigh, almost as an afterthought, “how can I presume to know how mortals think?”

The question hung unanswered in the air. The clock in the center of the kingdom chimed, each toll pealing through the night with all the strident force of a scream. The sky would begin to lighten in a matter of hours. The dead of night had passed in the dreamy moments of breath-holding, still midnight. Soon the cycle would begin anew, the fiery orb of the sun rising into the sky, the same as it had been for ages; and no one would know it wasn’t real, and no one would know how short their time was. No one ever knew, not while they were living. Not while they still had time left.

All these thoughts flowing through Luther’s pain-numbed mind would come back to haunt him later with impossible clarity, and he would wonder where they had come from, whose thoughts they really were, why a king should ever know the wonderings of a dreamer. Yes, later he would think them madness or wisdom, and wonder at the difference between. Later he would breathe his last breath and these would be the words on his mind, and neither his wife’s name nor his son’s would come to his dying lips, but a laugh as he finally understood. But now, as the two strangers stood silhouetted against the waxing moonlight in his throne room, these musings passed in a space of seconds that seemed like hours. It was Atalanta who finally broke her own silence, he would later remember. It was Atalanta who started it all.

“You asked who we are, Queen Starlise,” she said. “I will tell you. We are the Guardians.” Atalanta shifted her gaze from the sleeping prince to his mother. “Do you still doubt us, Your Highness?” she added softly.

“Guardians?” said Luther with a sneer, steadying himself against the wall. “If you are Guardians indeed, then you are long in coming. What has kept you away from Nyclone?”

“We have duties more important than to come running back to this land every time a babe is born,” said Raiko.

Atalanta drew nearer to the cradle where Selestrus slept. “He is beautiful, Starlise,” she said. Her voice softened but was still cold and distant. “He looks like you. He looks like your brother and father.” A moment that seemed to last an eternity passed before she raised her face to meet the king’s. “But I wonder,” she said, so quietly that Luther leaned forward to hear her words, “if he has Luther’s eyes?”

As though baby Selestrus had been following the conversation, the child fluttered for a moment on the outer edges of wakefulness, opening his eyes to reveal irises the grey of iron thunderclouds before falling back into a deep slumber.

“No,” Raiko said, “it would appear not, Your Majesty.” Luther heard the scorn in the Guardian’s voice, but he wasn’t sure anyone else did.

Atalanta looked up slowly and gazed at him with an intensity that could not be mortal. “What did you do?” she asked Raiko.

“Nothing. I have done nothing.”

Atalanta considered, shifting her gaze to the sleeping child and back to Raiko again. “If you lie to me,” the Guardian said, “This morning’s dawn shall be the last you ever see.” Her voice was as flat as if she had merely asked him the time rather than threatening him. The effect was startling to Luther, the way she spoke of murder with no anger and no fear reminding him again of that marble inhumanity so many years before.

But she didn’t frighten Raiko. The Guardian met her gaze and said simply, “I swear.” Atalanta nodded. Of course she believed him. A Guardian kept his word. Always.

“Then he is the one . . . The one we have been waiting for . . .”

“Yes,” said Raiko. With a single movement both Guardians turned to gaze out the window, where a midnight sky was slowly lightening to sapphire.

“Our time grows short,” Raiko murmured. It was a whisper meant for her ears only. Atalanta felt his hand latch onto her arm, and the coldness disrupted her thoughts, bringing her back to this castle so much farther from the sky. She wrenched her gaze from the glass, but Raiko stalked away without even looking at her. The Guardian felt a faint twinge of regret as she watched him storm past the cradle, Luther giving him a large berth as he slipped into the shadows near the wall. Atalanta recalled the row they had had on the way to Nyclone. Raiko was right, of course. She did know how he felt about this. She just didn’t care.

“Raiko speaks the truth,” she said aloud, turning to the cradle where prince Selestrus slept. Not that he’d remain ‘Selestrus’ for long. No child would answer to such a name, just as Luther never answered to his real name. Les, Atalanta decided vaguely, they’ll call him Les. For a while anyway. And after that . . . Well, then it wouldn’t matter.

“We must be far from here come dawn,” Atalanta continued. “There is a reason we came to Nyclone, and you need to hear it. And you, Your Highness,” she said, turning to stare hard at Luther, “will need to put that sword away.”

“I--” he began, but was cut off by
Raiko’s voice out of the darkness.

“Don’t deny your intentions, king,” the Guardian said. Luther flinched noticeably as Raiko stepped out of the shadows, appearing suddenly next to him in the flickering light of Atalanta’s lamp. He lifted Luther’s sword in his hand, studying it.

“Iron,” he said, unable to keep the admiration out of his voice. He raised the blade to his face, turning it this way and that. Luther watched him inspect the cutting edge with reluctance. No one touched his sword. It was an icon, a revered battle trophy to his people. And it was his.

Luther later cursed himself for what came next. It happened so fast that he barely had time to choke back a scream. One moment the Guardian held the blade in front of his own face. Next Luther was on his knees, feeling his battering heart leap into his throat as the blunt side of his own sword pressed against his neck.

For a moment he looked at Raiko’s eyes glaring at him in the darkness. The king saw something he didn’t expect there. Pity. That this Guardian whose voice rang with sarcasm no one else acknowledged, who had twice now brought the mightiest king in the world to his knees, could feel something like sorrow made a greater impression on Luther than any sight he would ever see. For a single moment, longer than most who walk the sun- and moon-painted landscapes of the earth, the king of Nyclone knew just how ignorant he was.

And then it passed. Once more Luther was ruler of Nyclone and High King of Soylhi, and Raiko was an unwelcome guest in his palace. The Guardian retracted the sword and laid it on the oak table by Selestrus’s cradle.

“Iron,” he said thoughtfully. “Perhaps I was mistaken. A less cynical man would say you know more than you know.” Luther gave a strained but regal smile, which disappeared as Raiko spoke again.

“Unfortunately, I am not a less cynical man. I maintain that you are lucky, and luck doesn’t last long. But I regress. Atalanta had something to say before we leave.”

“The reason we came,” Atalanta said, and Luther thought he heard irony in her voice. “Do you remember the old legends, King? The Guardians, unearthly beings who traveled the lands, giving gifts of magic to infants.”

“Surely we remember. It has been a long time since those legends were true.”

“So it has,” agreed Atalanta. The Guardian looked at Selestrus sleeping in his cradle again. “Too long.”

“And now?” said Starlise. There was a hope in her voice that Luther felt sure was about to be dashed.

Atalanta didn’t shift her gaze from the child, and even Raiko moved to stand next to her, his eyes on the prince.

“He will live forever,” she said. Starlise let out a choked, triumphant cry.

“Then my son will be a Guardian?”

Raiko shook his head. “No. You would not want that destiny for him.”

“The child will never die…never grow old…” Atalanta closed her eyes, and a single teardrop slid down her marble skin. “He will rule strong for ages upon ages.”

“Of course he will! He shall be king of Nyclone, after all. Sovereign of all Soylhi --”

“He will lead far more than Soylhi,” interrupted Raiko. “All he sees will be his to rule. The earth and the water, the sky and the stone. It will all be his.”

“The heavens watch over him as we cannot. No, Starlise, he will not be Guardian. He will be so much more than that. There are greater forces than us. Or there will be.”

“Where?” said Starlise.

Raiko crossed to the window. “Look into the sky,” he instructed. “What do you see?”

“Nothing.”

“Look deeper.”

She looked. The clouds began to melt away, leaving clear blue air in their place. A thousand diamonds glimmered in her sight.

“What do you see?” said Raiko again.

“Stars. Scores and scores of them…”

“Each of those stars,” Atalanta said, her voice betraying a hesitant hope, “is the candle of one light Guardian, just waiting for your son’s destiny to unfold. Waiting for their king.”

“Thank you,” Starlise whispered.

“Don’t thank us,” Raiko said. “Please don’t thank us.”

“But you have just given my son a blessing--”

“--And a curse. I don’t expect you to understand, Your Highness. But the day may come when you wish you had never seen us.”

“Raiko,” said Atalanta, “it will be dawn soon. We must leave.”

“Yes.” The Guardian bent down and kissed Starlise’s hand, the farewell of olden times so long forgotten that Raiko could only be what he said he was: an immortal Guardian. With the swish of a cape, he was gone.

Atalanta lingered a moment longer. She spoke to Luther. She told him not to fear his son. She told him not to pick that sword up again. The time to use it would come soon enough, but it was not now. The Guardian told him all these things and more. Years later, it would be said that the words she spoke -- words even Starlise, standing as she was beside her husband, could not hear -- cast a spell on the King of Nyclone. Some would claim that a fit of madness descended on Luther, an insanity that brought him to his knees that night. Others believed that she breathed to him a whisper of what was to come, a shadowy fear which stalked the dark corners of his mind until the day he died. Whatever the case, Atalanta vanished into the darkness soon after. Both Luther and Starlise heard the high-pitched clink of glass on stone as the light of the Guardian’s lantern faded away.

It was the strangest thing, however. When the sun dawned the next morning, both the king and the queen searched the chamber from end to end. Not a shard of glass was found in Luther’s throne room.