Upon Lake Balaton
By: Aelis Posted on: February 28, 2004
Closed wooden shutters kept out the sun, with thick velvet curtains further hiding the room from the prying eyes of its rays. Shadows slunk and coalesced on the walls of the room, save for a single dripping candle at one corner, puttering its last strength into a dying flame. Furtive scratching on card and the clinking of hard quill tips hitting the bottoms of glass inkbottles were the only noises in this dilapidated abode.
She took in a deep breath and paused to observe her handiwork.
On the face of the card, two figures were entwined in a passionate embrace; grinning demons emerged out of surrounding foliage, all pointing to a pair of shackles that kept the figures trapped together. Willful pulling would not break those bonds; submission would only strengthen them.
Biting her lip, she braced herself for the final touches. She reached for a stiff calligraphy quill, and dipped it once into a black inkwell. Four cursive letters carefully formed under a steady hand at the bottom of the card.
It was done. She would do it tonight.
It had all begun not one month ago, when spring gave way into early summer. It was the season for the romantics, where many fell in love and many more became unintentional poets. She was of no exception.
Her figure and wealth were coveted by many, giving her no difficulty in scooping one man from a deep pool of admirers. But she chose none, deciding to let fate play its hand and usher in a more interesting prospect.
The winds always did blow in her favour.
Just two days before warm Scarlatan gave way to the feistier Ero, a young druid had sailed into her shop like a swan gliding across a placid lake. She had watched him carefully - not out of paranoia for her wares, but out of an acute fascination for this exquisite creature. Slender hands had held up various enchantments, carefully observing them with soft brown eyes like that of a young doe. Not effeminate, but beautiful, she thought. An artist would give up their left hand just to spend an hour painting this face onto canvas. Butterflies began to stir in her abdomen when he had come forward to query on a particular item.
Their conversation was brief, but it was etched in her mind as a cherished memory. She remembered his sweet charm and boyish curiousity regarding the rarer magical items in her shop, idly mentioning at one point that he was looking for a person to guide him around Ashtan, foreign as he was. Any common sense had dissipated when she had leapt at the chance to spend more time with this stranger, offering to give him a tour of the northern Bastion at the expense of the day's business.
The butterflies began to fly upwards when the young man had bowed his head towards her and thanked her with a common druid courtesy followed by a relieved grin. It caused the winged fancies and hopes to begin a complicated dance, and one flew upwards into her throat, inabling her to speak anything more than seven words at a time.
So began the pair's friendship, a bond that she was convinced that would bloom into the amorous, the most beautiful of abstract concepts that philosophers and poets both argued and doted over.
How could it not, she had thought. More than once he had taken her hand in his to dash off towards an interesting sight and thrice did they walk together on the shores of Lake Balaton in the early evening, discussing all things pertaining to a soul or a body. A kiss on the cheek in the mornings, an encouraging word in the afternoons, or a compassionate hug in the evenings before parting. Her butterflies had learned true flight and no longer fluttered but soared high and became doves under a romantic night setting with a crescent moon hanging overhead.
And that one night . . .
She shut her eyes and placed her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the memory that had wormed its way into her bouquet of sweet thoughts. She dug her fingernails into her hair, an anger tinged with grief burning as her breath became sharper and agitated.
That night was perfect. Above, a white lunar disc was nestled in a sky blanketed with stars. The water of Balaton was an inky black mirror reflecting the sky, its waves edged with silver as it lapped against the shore. She had gone wandering that night to seek some relaxation, as long hours with only quill, parchment, and a theory of Chaos for company will leave one hungry for something less mentally tumultuous.
The night breeze was playing a natural chorale with tree foliage that no Cyrenian Bard could ever hope to imitate. This caused her to laugh, a melodious chord on its own that carried in the light breeze. They try so hard, those Bards, but for all their skill, what is the use if you cannot recreate the mood of this night?
Smiling to herself, she had nearly walked into the open sand where two figures stood alone. Quick feet and the ever-useful Occultist's shroud managed to get her back into the darker shadows near a beached fisherman's boat, disturbing only grains of sand under her stealthy feet.
Her smile widened behind a small mast, comparing the plainly doting pair to herself and her druid. A sweet place to recite personal vows, she thought as she watched the silhouetted figures against the preternatural glow of a full moon. Perhaps we should do that some future night, just like this one . . .
The couple shifted; moonlight finally shed the dark curtain that obscured their identities to those in shadow. As the light passed over their visages, something cold began digging its claws into her chest.
On the illuminated face of one, a sharp profile with long raven hair and a pale scar running down one cheek. Grey eyes more often seen cold and gemlike were as liquid as the waters of the lake, reflecting something that she yearned to see in the eyes of another. A blood red coat-of-arms detailed with a monstrous dragon was emblazoned on a black shield half-buried in the sand by his feet.
The icy claws buried deeper, and she felt something slowly bleed inside her chest.
The moonlight revealed on the other a soft nose, deeply lashed eyes and a gentle expression she knew too well. A quarterstaff lay at the feet, forgotten like the shield beside it.
Words were softly murmured and were followed by a gentle embrace - she felt her heart fall to her feet, pierced through and pulled down by the cold hands of an epiphany.
Her chest empty of a warm weight she had fostered from the beginning of summer, she began to gulp in air to try and fill the deep cavity. The long-haired one turned towards her direction suddenly as she tottered backwards. A quiet word and he turned away, oblivious to the shrouded woman who stood gasping for air behind an old fisherman's boat. Her mind numb and body stiffer, she dug her feet into the ground and abandoned herself that night at the shore of Lake Balaton.
She buried her face into her arms as she leaned against a desk with its insides riddled with wood louse. Her hair once golden and luscious now fell dull and limp down her back in a trailing braid, single strands unraveling like an abandoned silkworm cocoon. Lifting her head slightly, her eyes followed the curved surface of a quill placed in an inkbottle as she swam through a pool of memories from the weeks past.
The day after that night at Lake Balaton, she did not leave her bedroom at all in the family mansion. Lost inside her pain and angst under richly quilted duvets, she sent a household's foundation into a panic. The walls of the old mansion were too saturated with a Chaotic energy to stay silent like other buildings - they sensed the turmoil of a treasured family head that had fallen from her flaming chariot. Creaks punctuated her stifled outbursts; groans followed her volatile moments as she threw pillows at the draperies in the middle of the night.
A week passed and she had emerged from behind gold-framed mahogany doors - disheveled, betrayed, and fuelled by a resolve that filled the cold empty space inside her chest. Like a scorned goddess, her aura was dark as she set forth to execute one plan, sending the irrelevant tumbling in her wake like dried leaves in a thunderstorm gale.
First, she had thought, the Ashtan constabulary. The desk officers pandered as they looked for the information she requested, both flustered at the sudden appearance of a famous woman and her stony blank expression that unnerved them at the back of their minds. Papers, rattling quills - she waited patiently as the officers tried to make sense out of a heap of dusty parchments and faded ink scrawls.
"A red coat of arms with a dragon you say . . . ayep, Mhaldorian, my bets on Dracotalus clan."
"Wasn't theirs a big arse snake and the Valhallas had the dragon?"
"Dragon, snake, both got scales and sharp teeth, don't they?"
"Whatever drinks your keg - let's see, long black hair, scar down left cheek - I think I have it . . ."
"Blimey, him, eh?"
Fifteen minutes of absent-minded bickering and ambiguous muttering between two middle-aged Rajamalan men, and she soon had a small slip of paper with a name tucked into the folds of her robe. Old forestal enemy, they had said. The record's too old to be sure, so go pay a visit to Eleusis's overgrown trees, they should set you right.
A swipe of card from a deck, a faint clack of stiff paper hitting stone floor, and a gigantic map opened up before her, with a low whistle coming from one of the officers. As she touched a wooded area to the northeast, she stepped through a whirl of colour and landed in a moss-covered forest. Songbird trills and the serene blue sky overhead were lost on her as she summoned a demonic chariot with another loud clack.
Magic like these cards are imbued with Chaos, but I did not need it to appear where I wanted it the least . . .
Thoughts of her druid's face in the moonlight haunted her as she hitched her goat-pulled chariot and rode towards Eleusis. Each time a feature of his appeared came into memory, she felt a pulling underneath her breast. With a shake of her head, she grimly rode forward, as what the feeling was pulling and groping for was no longer there.
Dazzling high trees and a small gatehouse revealed the entrance of the Green City, and she took her business towards the grand oak tree where many citizens - and no doubt scribes as well - gathered. A few querying words passed her lips, and she sent a group of elder Sylvan sages into a jumbled retelling of stories that has been noted and shelved away for a future life of yellowing and copious amounts of dust.
"The Maldaathi Tresverian . . . I say he burnt down a number of groves years ago."
"We made him pay his dues, though. A good shakin' of earth, a proper smiting with lightning. Abandoned that Mhaldor a year later and barely makes a ripple in the pond these days."
"Pffft, he's still a necromancer and a forest killer. One wave of his hand and we'll regret ever giving him a thank you."
"Right, can never trust a bloke who's devoured more hearts than you've had a woman - "
"He can't be too bad, then. I'd say Dahsin's score so far . . ."
The old sages began to settle into a stream of insults and anecdotes that were as age-worn as they were, when she posed another question, to which she was met with surprised silence. A shuffling of feet, a genteel cough, and she knew that she would not get more information from these sages. The air was notably more belligerent towards her, as the simple suggestion of a Druid and Maldaathi even speaking to each other with cordial air was preposterous to them.
However, she sensed that the silence had some shame tinged to it. And she knew what she had hoped against in the back of her mind was genuinely real. The pit grew, demanding a larger resolve to fill it. Another piece of her fell, disappearing within the void inside her. She broke into a cold sweat and her breathing became shallow, leading her to clench and unclench her fists to keep from screaming in frustration.
That black knight had taken what was hers. A deception, facades, no doubt lies to sate a selfish desire. My druid is faithful and not at fault, she thought. She always slew the thieves that dared to rob her possessions, had she not? But she had cherished the druid the most - this crime deserved a stronger punishment than death. It deserved the gnawing feelings of loss and horror she had felt that night, boring deep holes and leaving blood dripping from the wounds.
The worms will not sleep. They will never sleep. They will devour and decimate until naught is left but a brittle skeleton of a person once full of life. He will be the one to rot in the grave that was dug for me . . .
She gave a low hiss as vengeance prowled into her breast and settled like a crouching panther. All that were gathered at the Central Oak of Eleusis went into a nervous silence as this Occultist stormed away, cloak and robe billowing with a menace that they had no ability to understand.
Creeping, creeping - shadows were her only allies for the days that followed.
Watching, watching - she studied the times of the day, the locations traveled.
She observed until her eyes grew red, tracked until her joints grew weary. She had abandoned nourishment and sleep a week earlier - she had no time, no time. The hours would wax and wane, but her moment would materialize from shadow as life did from the beginning. Patience had tempered her rage and zealousness fed her tiring endurance.
And there it was. Like a torch suddenly lit in the bowels of a subterranean cave, she knew when she could strike and how to save the one fooled into loving another.
They had always come to Balaton during the evenings every second night. She had watched them with a growing displacement, as if she were observing specimens behind a glass. Any words exchanged leaked from memory the moment she heard them - they did not matter. Her perverse fascination with their movements brinking on a masochism she had by now given up on resisting.
Chaos is always Chaos. There is no theory in it, only a truth to it all.
Near the road to Balaton she found an old house, long abandoned by residents plagued with scandal and death. She broke into a room and lodged there, preparing for the night of lifting the curtains that lies would spin. Moths fluttered at her candlelight, cockroaches scuttled beneath her feet. All she ignored, lying contemplative in a murderer's old bed.
That was yesterday. She spent this morning pouring out her thoughts to the flame she stoked in the fireplace. Was this moral, after all? Even through all the agony he put her through?
The fire would crackle in reply, fuelling a bright flame and a newer resolve.
I did not want Chaos here. But I am a child of Chaos, am I not? Perhaps it is time to embrace what I was born from. Chaos in magic, magic in cards . . .
She spent the whole afternoon in the effort to make one card. She knew she could not make one before, and after this, could not make another. It was too powerful, too dangerous . . . but that was the nature of such things. Need decided their use, not desire, wasn't it?
But that could change, yes? These things could always change. Need is never desire, but desire can turn to need. The way things are, the way things I shall make them be.
She had inscribed it an hour ago. She should be happy. But why did she feel no elation of a task about to be finished, but a doubt that crawled around the edges of a pit that was still growing?
Never mind that. The sun has set, and it was time to leave for Balaton.
She crept out the front door into a cloudy overcast sky, ignoring the slick feeling of the decaying wood and the rusted iron hinges that screamed like the dead rewoken. She did not bother to shroud her form tonight - she knew the face of the thief, and the thief in turn should know hers. A sweet irony, she thought bitterly as she briskly strode down the dirt path towards Balaton.
The last of the fishermen were docking their tiny boats as they headed home for the night, dragging their catches with them. The gulls were slowly dispersing as well, watching the fish they so coveted be towed into crates and carts that clunked off towards a destination too far to be worth flying for.
And there was the beached craft she had hidden behind that night . . . a delinquent young archer undoubtedly shirking duties was sleeping on the deck, a bow and quiver of five arrows close at hand should her sleep be disturbed.
She quietly treaded across the sand towards the boat with the archer, and watched the younger girl sleep with the benevolence of a mother. She gently covered the sleeping one with the cloak off her own back, smiling briefly as the archer stirred slightly and gave a sleepy murmur before going still with slumber again.
A cry by the last departing seagull was her cue. She covered her head with the hood of her black robe, slipping her hands into her billowing sleeves. She stood some distance away, the beached fisherman's boat placed between her and the patch of sand the pair had always stood. She listened to the lake waters lap up against the shore as she waited.
Soon, she heard the crunching of heavy boots boldly striding over small pebbles, followed by a softer tread of sandals on finer sand. She bit her lip as she saw the two stand together with a contemplative air, both watching the clouds slowly become greyer overhead.
She made her move.
She walked out past the useless watercraft into the water, appearing so suddenly that she took both of the men by surprise. The lake swirled around her ankles, a weak force compared to what was stirring inside her. Coming to his wits faster, Tresverian moved to draw a sword from a shoulder-bound scabbard, when the druid who saw her face, no longer hidden by a long cowl, stayed his hand.
With a shaking hand, she drew the card from one sleeve with two fingers. The air grew colder as the other two recognized the vibrant image of a mortal's primitive vice. She tried to look at the face of the card, but turned away, knowing well enough whose likenesses were inked onto the small canvas.
"You," she nearly whispered, looking towards the druid.
"His poison that clouds you," she said, gesturing to the black knight, "I can disperse it!"
She held the card up higher, the stiff paper fluttering slightly in a growing wind like her own resolves.
The druid mouthed her name as he stepped forward, his face etched with - with what? Repentance? A realization?
No, not sorrow. No, please, don't let it be pity . . .
"There never was a poison," he said softly as he took her hand in his.
She broke away with a splash into deeper water, recoiling as if she were burnt with a torch, refusing to look at his face. An apology was not what she wanted. Her eyes darted unseeing in the real world, trying to regain the balance inside her head with the new doubts that threatened to break the wall she had erected weeks ago.
The clouds curled upon themselves, and it began to rain.
The straw broke, and she screamed as she fought off the truth with her conviction. The druid stepped back with horror as the card in her hand began to glow brightly. With rainwater streaming down her face, she threw it.
The card fell towards the sand, its glow fading slowly.
A pure white shaft sang through the air found its mark.
As she fell into the deeper shallows of the lake, she saw the young archer from earlier stand on the prow of the fisherman's boat, the bow empty and the faint humming ringing in the ears, signs of an arrow that had just been shot.
The girl archer turned pale, her chest heaving. She fell backwards onto the deck, shuddering as she pulled a black cloak around her shoulders. Large brown eyes stared at the scene on the beach before her, tears beginning to mingle with heaven-sent rain.
"She . . . I had to . . . " the girl stammered.
The first kills are always the hardest, aren't they?
Her own eyes were blurring - was it tears as well? No, she had cried herself dry of them in her own bedroom. Lake water? Yes, lake water.
She was facing heavenward, rain pouring on her face as lake flowed around and beneath her. The arrow in her chest stood straight like a holy beacon, siphoning something warm out of her chest. She put a weak hand there to see if she were not being deceived as her druid.
It really was warm. Did she always have this warmth curled asleep within the ice inside her breast? It was leaking away now; she had never gotten to enjoy it. Can't she stop it? No, it's another one of those things. No mortal will could stop it. Not even hers.
Cries of her name and the thunder overhead were her rites of death. The winds always blew in her favour, but wind cannot carry deep underwater. It was quiet there, and her pain was left floating on the surface. She abandoned her heart here, might she find it now, within the lake itself?
Probably, yes . . .
Like a fallen blossom in a breeze, she was carried away to her peace by the waters of Lake Balaton.