Swan on the Moor

Chapter Three

There were dungeons, even here, but they were well-concealed. In the deepest depths of the world, there lay a prisoner, chained with binding iron to a dripping wall, ignored, forgotten. The King's Guard did not even know of this one, for it had been over a century since the last great fae war, and the cells of those awaiting punishment for crimes were the level above this, the deepest, most hopeless fathomlessness of the Otherworld. Only one living being had the misfortune to rot there now.

The figure of the dungeon guard slid forward from the shadows of the entrance arch; black-robed and black-eyed. Drawing closer, one might see her robe was not fabric but tattered crow feathers, woven together with tendon and sinew. Badb Catha smiled at Avalbane's approach, and bowed low as he stood before her, a shining thing amidst the gloom and mould. Badb Catha welcomed the ruin; she had once been a being of war and death, the crow goddess. In the general peace of Adalardo's time, she had grown restless and vicious, and to pacify her Adalardo had made her the ruler of the dungeons and prisoners. The task suited her in lieu of her natural role, and she was one of the few who knew the true nature of Avalbane, and who approved. Avalbane knew himself that this was not through ambition or even personal choice; it was simply what she was, a thing of times past, a thing of war and blood and destruction, but as impersonal as a sword. It was her function, and she longed for it again. Her love for Avalbane was not inspired by desire for anything other than the wish to return to her true purpose, which she knew he could bring. There would be blood aplenty for her to revel in, warriors again to whom she could attach herself and her power, with whom she could fight and destroy.

"My lord," she hissed, dropping to her scarred knees. "Pass and be welcome,"

Avalbane laughed softly. "Rise, Lady Badb Catha. Welcome by you perhaps, but not by him."

She scoffed, lifting to her feet in a swirl of feathers and dank leafmould. "His pain gives me strength, lord. He suffers, even now, even after so long."

Avalbane's smile widened into genuine pleasure. "Good," he nodded, and Badb Catha melted back against the stone and shadows to let the bright figure through the arch, down the short, black corridor and to the cell at the end.

It was nothing more than a hollow carved in the black marble-shot earth of the Sithen depths, barred with iron across the front and lit only by the vague phosphoresce of two will'o the wisps, glimmering sickly against the all-pervading gloom. Trails of dribbling water and eroding earth lent the walls an illusion of tears, the sluggish streams dripping into puddles on the filthy floor, interminably dripping. Avalbane tilted his head, true malice leaking into his eyes as he stared at the figure pinioned to the back wall, cold iron shackles draining him of magic and strength. Nonetheless, he managed to raise his head a fraction to stare at the glowing figure before him with such complete, half-mad hatred that a lesser being would have quailed. Avalbane merely laughed his glorious laugh, a sound of such pure joy it quite shamed the dungeon and the tormented being within.

"You still hold on, even now?" Avalbane asked, his voice courteous, as if they were merely discussing the weather at a banquet or some such frivolity. The figure stirred, and the faint glow of the fae lights fell on his face.

His hair, long enough to fall to his knees now, had once been a bright blond, the last shimmer of the sun, but now it was matted, greying with rot and dirt. He still wore his armour; black as pitch, half-submerging into the earth behind him, but its was now polish long lost. His pale skin was streaked with years of grime and sweat, the two long scars under his eyes now ugly bumped ridges, but nothing could disguise the fact that he was still Sidhe, still strong enough to survive such neglect and loneliness. Avalbane was strangely impressed at his tenacity – and pleased, yes, pleased that he could visit the tormented figure and mock him, watch his eyes flicker as he heard of Avalbane's work in the court, know that even now, he could still feel fresh pain as the whole world he had loved crumbled further and further beneath Avalbane's burning power, the power of the heart of the summer, the heart that burns and kills even as it draws in. It amused Avalbane that even now, this being was the closest thing he had to a confidante; was the being to which he told everything, censored nothing, spoke freely and with pleasure to, even as he watched him weep and gnash his helpless teeth. Even now, however, Avalbane could admit nothing could detract from his prisoner's Sidhe nature, from his beauty, the brightness of his eyes, even broken and filthy as he was. Those eyes still burned, after so long, a fierce, furious, shattered red, half-destroyed and half-deathwishing, but unwilling, unable, to quite let go. Those were the eyes of twilight, for this poor being was the Dusk Lord, the bringer of the night, and now, he dwelt forever in the dank darkness. There was a pleasing irony about this which was not lost on Avalbane.

The prisoner just stared out at his tormenter, with the wild rage of a trapped and wounded animal, helpless and hating.

"There's no point looking like that," Avalbane murmured. "Don't think I don't know that if you were free, you'd rip me apart with your bare hands...but you can't, and you never shall, for now I am King, and I shall return glory to my Sithen, and the dross shall rot with you, Dusk Lord." He leaned in closer to the bars, and hissed, "Humanity will worship us again, as they were made to do, the sheep before the wolf, nature's rightful place. They shall learn, as shall you, just what power is, what I shall be capable of."

The prisoner's cracked lips were invisible beneath the stylized helmet which covered his skull and forehead, carved into a representation of bared teeth to cover his own, but a voice, raspy with disuse, weary with pain, issued forth from under the metal. "Damn you to eternity, Avalbane."

"Some have," Avalbane responded evenly, "But it is I who stand here, and you who lie helpless. I gave you every chance. You could have helped me, but you chose humans above your brethren? Do you not remember what we were?"

"We were...tyrants," the dark figure shook his head, fractionally. "Hated and feared. Who would want that?"

"They loved it, the humans" said Avalbane, leaning back, a shimmer of magic starting to crackle around him. "Your point is invalid, as ever, fool. Why else would they write stories and songs of us, tell tales of us and our beauty, invent stories of our world?"

"Why did they lock and bar their doors at night and cling to their babies, fear the darkness, stay away from what lay beyond the fields they knew and run home from the woods? Because of the ones like you, who stole them away, who ruined their crops and lives...the darkness never hurt a soul through intent."

"Oh, intent," mocked Avalbane, beginning to fight to control his rising rage. The days like this, when he argued, when he still showed the edges of spirit, Avalbane wished he had just killed him long ago. Yet where was the victory in that? "You killed without even the dignity of emotion towards them. The darkness fell and the wild beasts took them. At least I showed them a higher world first."

"I take no pride in what I was once," he whispered, and Avalbane's pounding blood was soothed by the disgust in his voice. Avalbane occasionally brought whips or swords to the being in the cell but in truth he did not need them as much as the silence and darkness in which his self-hatred and guilt could grow and fester. How truly Avalbane hated him.

"You turn your back on all that made the Sidhe great," Avalbane shook his own golden hair back, flowing like rays down his slender back. "I only seek to return to what we were, what was taken from us by you, when your wise words whispered after dark, alone, in his poor ears," he sneered sarcastically over the pronunciation, "Led our weak king to draw back from the Upperworld, to let the humans prosper, to keep to ourselves and let their fantasies fill the gap...take away our might and replace us with twee dreams and distant gods..." He raised a hand, suddenly alight with power. "All...your...fault!" He thrust his hand towards the bars sharply, and a burst of light tore from between his fingers and tore like a dagger into the chained being's face, cutting straight through the black helmet and tearing a welling welt into his cheek. He didn't even flinch, and Avalbane snarled, watching the blood drip down onto the midnight armor.

"You could have just stayed as silent as usual, as of old..." he whispered, turning away. "You never spoke to me, did you?"

"I speak my mind when I feel it is important," the figure spoke with difficulty beneath the throbbing cut and the cold metal of the helmet. "I kept my own counsel."

"You have to, now, Dusk Lord," Avalbane turned to walk away, then, as if on a whim, spun back. "You know I shall never let you out? That you have to will yourself dead or you shall never escape from here?"

The figure did not respond or even move. Avalbane's face for a moment grew almost ugly with hatred, and he spat at the floor before the cell, turning to leave the figure alone in the darkness once again, Badh Catha whispering in the shadows in his wake.