The lord of the castle

chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

He stood once again on the pinnacle of the mountain, shaken to the very foundation of his soul.

Her spirit, as pure and clean as the light of dawn, had brushed his, and as their souls collided, the fetters of blindness had melted away and she had seen the world through his eyes.

He had felt her joy as she looked upon the faces of her father and mother for the first time since an illness in childhood had stolen her sight.

In those few moments, he had felt all of her pain, her sense of being shut off from the rest of the world, her yearning for a home and a family of her own.

How was this possible? In three hundred years, he had performed countless miracles, healed the sick, coaxed rain from the heavens, but never had he plumbed the depths of another soul, nor had another see the world through his eyes.

He gazed down at the villagers.

They stood subdued after the incident with the wolf.

Had he willed it, he could have heard their voices, read their thoughts, but he closed his mind against them, his whole being focused on the young woman who gazed sightlessly into the distance, her heart silently beseeching the great black wolf to return to her side.

He paced through the empty rooms of the great stone castle all that night, his mind in turmoil.

He knew so much, and yet he knew so little.

He had performed wondrous feats of magic, yet could not explain why a blind peasant girl had been able to see when she touched him.

He paused in front of the looking glass that adorned one wall of his chamber, stared at the reflection before him as though it could give him the answers he sought, but he saw only what he had always seen: a tall man, broad of chest and long of limb.

His hair fell past his shoulders, long and straight and black save for a narrow streak of gray at his left temple.

His eyes changed color with the seasons—cold gray in winter, pale green in spring, deep brown in the fall.

This night, they were the warm blue of a summer sky.

She had touched him and seen the world through his eyes.

How was that possible? Were he to touch her while in his human form, would the same miracle occur?

He walked slowly through the great stone castle that was his domain.

He had lived here alone all his adult life, watching the world change, watching the people in the village below as they went through the endless cycle of life and death.

He had watched Channa Leigh grow from being a plump, pink-cheeked babe, to a long-legged girl, to a beautiful young woman.

It seemed he had always watched Channa Leigh, that he had ever been drawn to the beautiful green-eyed girl who now stared at the world through sightless eyes.

He paused in the great hall to stare up at the painting of his parents.

His mother was as fair as his father was dark.

She had been a pale, slender creature with light brown hair and eyes as blue as a deep mountain lake.

His father had been darkness itself—dark of skin and hair and eyes.

Dark of soul, some had said.

The people of the village had called him the Dragon Lord of Darkfest Keep.