The Sword of Nuada

11/18/2007   So for all you doubting Thomas', here is the Prologue for Sword. Comment away, no edits have been done. Raw material in action.


And there shall come a time when the veil that divides this world from the next shall be torn. And all the demons of death shall spew forth and have their way upon the people and creatures of life. And there shall be no cease. And those that have caused this shall despair for they thought to bring good, they thought to bring cease and yet it turned against them in their vanity and they were brought low. But there is One who can See. This One shall turn the tables if true. The ways shall be brought to right and the seasons shall cease their rebellion and the balance shall be restored. But betrayal follows the One and much travail. A heart hardened cannot love and without love cannot triumph. Who shall bring the softening? Who shall bring quickening to a heart long silent? Will love be enough? Despair, oh servants of the wind. Despair.

*

The old man turned from the window. He had whispered those words to himself for a long time. Every night since it happened to remind himself of his part in what happened so many years past. It did not diminish the ache in his heart. Tears still spilled from his rheumy eyes as he looked past the darkened sky to that other place. A place of light.

He glanced down at the floor, strewn with children, content in the warmth and light of the banked fire. His eyes grazed his sister’s form bent in the corner, nodding in half sleep. He shuffled to the cot in one corner of the room and lowered himself onto it, wincing at the squeak of the ropes as they tightened beneath him.

“She was there, wasn’t she?”

The old man didn’t look up. He simply nodded.

“I saw her too, at the window when you told your story. She comes each time you tell it. Is that why you do?”

His sister saw too much. That was always her problem and she had paid dearly for that gift. He sighed and glanced up reluctantly, trying hard not to wince at the sight of her ruined face. It was impossible to tell if she smiled, her mouth had been slashed into a wide gash that ran from ear to ear and the scar that had formed over the wound would not allow for movement any more. It barely mattered. Half of her face was paralyzed anyway from the beatings and the cuts. His heart constricted and he closed his eyes. More that was his fault. It came about because of him.

“I do it, my love, because it reminds me of what I am.”

His sister’s voice dropped low. “You are not what you think you are. It takes more than one moment in time to define a soul.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. It took several moments. Several choices to bring us all to this place. I would that I could choose over again.”

“But you cannot, my dear, and perhaps that is for the best. We are all here, we are all safe.”

The old man stood and shuffled over to the corner where his sister sat, drawing her into her arms. “No, not all of us are safe,” he whispered into her hair. “And not all of us are here.”

A single tear ran down his face and splashed to the floor. He watched it break into a thousand prisms of silver and vanish before he could blink his eyes. Just as She had vanished so very long ago.

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