A Shadow in the Mist

“A Warden and Weaver bonded are bound together for life, but there are times when his need to cleanse himself is great and his wife is not near and there is no one who can draw out his corruption without the need for intercourse. This is the sad necessity that he must sometimes lie with another in order to purify his Core and avoid his soul being tainted beyond redemption.”

- From the writings of Thomas Norrell, 381 AB

Leora- Sunday, March 7th, 547 AB

I sat before the bishop of Emmeria, my daughter rocking in my arms her eyes closed in sleep her angelic face totally peaceful.

“You’ve been with us sometime Lady Adara,” he said looking over the parchment on his desk before him. “You’ve requested to take charge of a convent in the newly settled portions of Emmeria, why? You are still young and could remarry.”

I shook my head. “I can’t…go through that again, when Aranea’s father died it broke me. If I didn’t have her I don’t know if I’d been able to continue; put me in charge of a remote convent. I’m ready to take the vows.”

He looked at the infant girl in my arms.

“You can’t be her mother and her Mother,” he said. “Mother Superior’s can’t have children of their own, you would have to give her up.”

My arms tightened around Aranea for a moment, but I relaxed my grip.

“She will be raised as an orphaned Aspirant; she’ll never know I’m her mother.”

“You can do that? Let her grow up thinking she was abandoned by her parents to the Church,” Bishop Strisz asked skeptically.

“She can’t know who her father was,” Leora said. “This is for her own safety.

Bishop Strisz studied her force for a long time drumming his fingers on the desk in thought. He nodded then dipped his quill in ink before scratching out a few short lines on the parchment in front of him and pouring some fine sand on it to blot the ink.

“I’m assigning you to the Abbey of Corsnburh,” Bishop Strisz said. “I have assigned several other orphaned girls to be sent with you to help explain why your showing up with an infant.”

I rose and curtsied. “Thank you, father.”

“Remember, she can’t know she is your daughter, and you cannot show overt favoritism to her,” Strisz said sternly. “I will keep an eye on you to make sure of this.”

“May the Voice curse me if I ever tell her,” Leora promised.

A carriage came to a stop and the door opened. I stepped out wearing the brown and white with the red sash of my mother superior. She held the infant girl in her left arm and helped five other girls, none of them older than seven out of the carriage.

The brick walls and buildings that made up the convent were still bright cherry red from being newly constructed. The whitewash of the inner walls made everything seem bare and emptier. I went to the dormitory and was greeted by a priestess.

“Greetings Mother Superior,” she said curtseying. “I am Sister Tabitha; I am at your service.”

The woman and I were about the same age that I accepted her deference. “Thank you, Sister, these girls need a bath after being on the road for so long.”

We started washing the girls then putting them into the white dresses of Aspirants.

I wandered the abbey, the little Aspirants followed me as I surveyed our new home. It was still midday so Sister Tabitha and I fixed a picnic and settled in the newly planted orchards at the back of the abbey.

“Why did you take the vows?” I asked Sister Tabitha.

“My husband died in battle,” Tabitha answered. “We’d been trying for a baby for about three years but I was never able to conceive, after he died… I just couldn’t move on. Why did you take them, I heard rumors you were a well respected Lady back in Emerald, why take this position out in the provinces?”

“Same reason as you,” I lied looking at Aranea as the girls took turns holding her. “I couldn’t have children and my Warden died, I wanted to get away from the politics of court so I came out here. I’m a Mother to all these girls now.”

We wrapped up the picnic and washed up all the dishes we had used in the abbey’s kitchen. It was late and the girls were brought to dormitory and knelt beside their beds.

“Our father who dwells in heaven,” they prayed. “Give us your Voice to guide our steps, bless the Wardens who slay your enemies and the Weavers who Ward our homes. Let your Kingdom come, your will be done, and deliver us from the djinn.”

I tucked them in brushing their hair back and settling them in. I went over to the crib and rocked my daughter back and forth. Bending down I kissed her forehead.

“Sleep well, my little spider,” I whispered.

Cain- Sunday, August 23th, 558 AB

The stone monastery at the edge of town served as it orphanage, operated by the Church it was the central focal point for how life in the town was revolved around. A large man on a massive warhorse rode through the town a brilliant two-handed axe slung over his back over a thick bearskin cloak. I watched this stranger enter the town, his horse snorting as smaller horse walked past it, the other horse backed up like a wolf had snarled at it, its ears going back. The warrior moved past the other rider not even sparing the farmer a glance as he entered the monastery’s walls. He dismounted his horse, his boots hitting the cobblestone of the courtyard ringing out as his sabatons clanked against the stone. The warrior was approached by the abbot descending the steps from the chapel.

“Greetings Warden,” the abbot said. “What brings you to our monastery?”

“I’m looking for a boy, he should be around seven years old; his name is Cain Le’meer,” the Warden said. “I received word he was here.”

“And you are?” The abbot asked.

“Sir Jason Lanceren, his father,” the man answered.

“The man who ended the war?” The abbot asked and surveyed the man’s face.

The Warden sighed but nodded, and the Abbot clapped him on his arm.

“The Church does not involve itself in political wars, but I am glad you brought an end to the war, it was getting far to bloody and many good Wardens we need to fight the djinn were being wasted in it.”

“Is my son here?” Sir Lanceren asked.

The abbot gestured to where I was sitting on the steps watching a group of the other boys playing outside. The knight came over and knelt before me.

“Hello son,” he said after an awkward pause.

“Hello,” I said as I searched this stranger’s face.

“I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” he said laying a hand on my shoulder. “She was a good woman.”

“What will happen to me now?” I asked.

My father extended his hand to me. “You will come to live in my house, I will train you in the martial arts and when you turn seventeen you will be a Warden.”

I took my father’s hand, mine disappearing in his colossal grip. He lifted me up into his arms. “Is there anything you have to bring?”

I nodded and he carried me to the dormitory. I only had one thing left of my mother, a wooden case containing an ivory flute carved to look like a dragon. My father packed it in my saddlebags and lifted me into the saddle in front of him. We left the town behind us heading south towards the mountains. We left the road heading cross country.

The familiar landscape made me shrink in on myself as we approached my old home. Dismounting my father knelt amid the blackened remnants of timber at the pile of stones that marked where my mother and brother had died, a blue flowering vine grew over the stones. When my father rose from prayer, I saw a trinket left behind on the stone a small wooden figurine like the ones my mother used to carve for me and Able.

We rode for several more days stopping at inns or camping on the road. I watched my father swing his mighty axe felling over a dozen djinn over the course of our journey from Imps to even a Jtunn. We stopped at an in the town guarding the pass between the mountains marking the border between Carsway and Emmeria.

“Its going to be a few days on the road without inns or taverns,” my father warned me. “You’ll have to learn to sleep in the saddle, we don’t want to be that close to the Mistwall for any longer than we have to.”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“You can just call me father,” he said with a sigh. “I should have come to visit you and your brother more, if I’d just…. never mind.” He put aside his regrets for what could have been.

We kept on the move through the road carved through the narrow section of the mountain pass that wasn’t covered in any of the Mist. We couldn’t see into the white wall of fog or see any of the horrors that might be looking out from it at us right then. It took two days, with only a few times of stopping to let the horse graze and rest before we kept moving. I breathed a sigh of relief when we passed out of the shadow of the mountains riding up to the fortress town on this side of the border.

Staying the night, we left the town the next day heading further south away from the mountains. It was another seven days along the road and moving cross country. Fields of grain, orchards and pastures filled with sheep and cattle. We approached a small manor with a stone wall around it and several outbuildings inside its walled confines.

My father passed through the gate into the courtyard of the manor. He dismounted and lifted me off his hose, we approached the house and a tall, beautiful woman stepped out glaring at him and me.

“He is not welcome here,” she snapped.

“He is my son,” my father said. “I have heard you but I am your husband and the Lord of this house. Whatever your feelings and however miserable you try to make my life I will not turn him away.”

“He will not stay in my house,” she insisted. “Let him sleep in the guardhouse with the militia, he has any place here.”

My father sighed. “If that will bring peace then so be it but you will not speak with such hate to him again.”

“He is a bastard! Just because you went off to war and sired him on that bitch…” she began irately but stopped as my father raised his hand to strike.

“I will not tell you again,” he said his voice as cold as the mountains. “You can hate me all you want but my son is off limits to you.”

Her head bowed in submission. “Have him stay out of my sight,” she turned her back disappearing into the manor.

My father knelt beside me. “I’m sorry you had to see al that, she wasn’t very happy about what I had to do. Come, I want you to meet your brothers.”

He lead me to the training yard where a group of boys were sparing with wooden weapon. They all dropped them and ran towards us crowding around my father’s legs.

“Dad! Did you bring us anything from Carsway for us?” the youngest asked.

“I’ll give out gifts later,” father said. “I want you to welcome your brother, Cain.”