…The chains pulled at scabbed over wrists as he tried again to shift into a position that didn't hurt. Not that he expected to find one…

2314 Galian Calendar

The elderly man sighed and leaned back in his chair. Dinner had been good, and as he watched his small horde of grandchildren flutter around the kitchen cleaning and tidying, he wondered with a smile what he would have to do to earn his keep this evening…

He rubbed his face against the scraps of cloth still hanging from his shoulder. Not really awake yet from the last round of torture,trying to scrape some of the blood from his eyelid. He hadn't broken yet, but he would, soon. Very soon now…

"A story, a story!" The impious voice clambored at his knee for attention.

The scrape of metal studded boots on cold, rune etched stone, roused him from the dazed fugue he'd been drifting in. Roused him in a state close to panic, it hadn't been long enough yet, they shouldn't be back so soon, he hadn't had the time to build his defences back up… He hissed softly and wedged his battered form closer into the wall…

"Now, angel," he began to one of his grand-daughters as he levered himself out of the kitchen chair and, with a wink at his indulgent daughter, into the living room followed closely by the brood. "What makes you so sure I have any more stories to tell you?"

Flaring torchlight made him wince in a move totally alien to his nature. Light had become something to dread. There was only light when there was pain, he'd learned the dungeon lessons well…

He pulled a large, crumbling, leather bound book off the mantle and sank into the overstuffed chair he habitually occupied for the evening story. The book, an expected prop, he opened on his knee…

He kept his head down, trying to breath evenly. He wouldn't be able to see their faces against the light, and he didn't want to see what they had in their hands. He shuddered in memory and couldn't help the small sound of denial that escaped his lips as the door to the cell swung open…

"Because you always have more stories to tell Granpa." Came the emphatic reply. It was true he awknowledged with an inward smile, Years and years of travel into places that the small villages here scoffed at the existence of had given him a near inexhaustible supply of stories, though given enough time his grandchildren might just test that…

His eyes tightly shut and attention turned inward, in wasn't until a firm hand brushed his cheek, cradled his chin, and tugged his face into the light, that he realized something was different about this visit...

"Hmmm…" He made a great show of flipping through dusty pages. "How about a story a little closer to home than the last one."
"Stories about Briyndilar? I thought you said you didn't know any good ones."

He jerked his head out of the grip and opened his eyes. Not a group after all. Just one. One soldier leaning over him. Alone. He frowned and looked again to make sure there weren't more in the hallways beyond. The torch was placed in a scone far out of reach and the man moved towards him…

He paused in the act of turning a page and looked up to meet the accusing eyes of his darkest grandchild. Darkest in mood and coloring both. He smiled and nodded at an empty place in the floor. "Join us Kasi."

Alassan clenched his fists, the "guard" waited wordlessly until he had relaxed them again before continuing to move closer. He hesitated a second on the last rune. Once he had passed it there was nothing to protect him from the slight figure huddling broken against the stone. After that moments pause, he moved his entire body as if unconcerned into the circle of smooth rock and reached for the manacles…

Kasalia sank to the floor at his urging with all the grace of a prisoner going to a last supper. After all, as the eldest sister present, it wouldn't be seemly to be thought willing to endure such babyish past-times as stories…

He sat up slowly, warily rubbing his few unbroken fingers over the thick scabbing on his wrists. Watching confused as the man next reached for the heavy chains binding his ankles. After the last of the heavy links had been removed from his body, quietly asked "why?"

"Now," began the old man settling deeper into his chair. "I didn't say it was a good story. It's not happy or nice and doesn't have a particularly cheerful ending. But!" He forestalled the mumbled complaints from the children at his feet. "It does have magic and great lords and evil sorcerers."

His would-be rescuer tugged his sleeve up for a moment, allowing the briefest of glimpses of the sigils tattoed there. It was enough. Alassan drew in a sharp breath at the sight. And listened dazed as the man replied, "they didn't get us all."

He almost shook his head at the suddenly renewed smiles in the group at his feet. Children. Well, as an old drinking friend of his had once said, the best storytellers are those who know what their audience wants…

Alassan pulled gratefully on the arm that leveraged him to his feet. He had not left this small circle of stone in the long days since he had been brought here. An event he still couldn't remember coherently. Had not left the circle for the simple reason, in addition to the heavy chains, that once the rune wards had been completed…

"Father." Called a clear voice from the kitchen that still occasionally rang with the soft clatter of untensils and dishes. "Nothing that will give them nightmares."

"I can't cross this." He said simply as he looked on the spiraling figures painstakingly lain into the stone.The wards of binding and protection forbid his existance with every inch of themselves, denied the very possibility of his simply being. The chains had simply been emphasis, and had forbid him escape by suicide by limiting the movement of his arms.

"Of course not, love." He agreed, noting with amusment the dissapointment on young faces. "Just some history." Apparently mollified there were no more requests from the dining area.

Without a word the stranger lifted him into his arms and crossed the floor. Alassan shook from the simple upwards reaching aura of the wardings from the first step until he was carefully placed back on his feet in the relative safety of the stairwell.

"Well now. Why don't I take requests. What would you all like to hear most about?" He knew what the answer would be before he asked the question. It would be "tell us about Lord Aythrian and the dragon," or, "tell us about how Lord Aythrian won the battle of Rockdell," or something along those lines, piped in the eager voices of the very young…

"Thank you." He had no other words to offer the man. A nod was his only response as the two of them began the slow journey back to the world. Pausing every other step to listen for movement. As careful as they were they had no warning of the archer until a gasp behind him made Alassan turn sharply to his companion. To sharply because the sudden movement put him on his knees at his rescuers side.

"Tell us how Lord Aythrian defeated the Witch-Child at Kandilmar." He raised his eyes to once again meet the suddenly impassive eyes of his oldest grand-daughter. Not once in all the years he had dwelt with his daughter and her family had Kasalia participated in story-time as anything more than a reluctant witness.

A fall that spared him the next arrow that whistled just over his head. The stranger tugged briefly at the shaft embedded in his rib cage. Then took a deep breath and gazed full into Alassans face. Dimly in the background shouts were ringing closer.

He wondered, and not for the first time, what she was learning from the dusty old monks she prefered to the playmates most children her age enjoyed. He would have wagered a weeks earnings from his soldiering days that not a person in this town knew the proper name of the site of that battle. Most would have just called it "the Tower," and everyone else would have nodded in understanding.

The man smiled and reached out with one hand to grab Alassans hand, leaving within it a tiny cloth bundle that semed to have a beat all of its own. "Go, my prince. You are the last…"He wrenched the arrow out sharply and ended his life as his words sent Alassan rocking back to his feet. The last…

"Okay, Kasi. I don't think that's a story I've told you all before." It wasn't, of course. It made him uncomfortable. He'd seen enough in his younger days to wonder at it's veracity. But if Kasi wanted to hear it enough to display some interest…

…it was no longer a matter of self preservation. Now he had to survive. Or at the very least not be taken alive. Alassan took off down the hallway that rang with the least shouts. Not the best choice apparently because within seconds he was grabbed by a man wearing the livery of his tormentors…

"Let's just find where it starts…" He made a great act of finding just the right page. "A long time ago, before the Covenant Keepers and Lord Aythrian saved us, Briyndilar was ruler by great and powerful Sorcerous Kings and Queens…

…he slammed his knuckles into the guards nose, smashing cartilage into bone and losening the steel grip on his arm. As the guard staggered into a wall, he wrenched free and skidded down the stairway, shaking out his numb, throbbing, hand and cursing under his breath…

…and so the Covenant Keepers decided something had to be done about the evil that was eating out from the heart of the country…

…taking advantage of the momentarily clear hall, he tossed the small scrap of cloth into an over embossed urn, the pain of his injuries was growing less now that sudden movement had all of his body screaming in agony after too long immobile. As the first guard's cries brought a flood of soldiers, he dodged grasping hands and thoroughly blocked corridors, to fall to a halt in front of a huge casement, left ajar, and no doubt opening onto a breathtaking view of the ocean…

…and Lord Aythrian, as leader of those who founded the Covenant, took it upon himself to cut down the source of the Evil…

…the ocean. At least it sounded and smelled like a huge body of salty water crashing on the other side of the heavy wood… There might still be a chance…

…but his job didn't end with the wicked Queen, because after the Covenant Keepers had secured the country, and people began to believe they were safe from the demons, Lord Aythrian discovered that the very most evil and powerful of the wicked Queens sons had survived…

…he climbed grimly to his feet. The steely rasp of well tempered metal clearing leather rang louder in his ears than even the rolling waves and the sudden mental image of his own skinny frame spitted on dead iron was enough to overcome the instinctive nausea that the thought of water evoked...

…the Witch-Child rode to the tower the Covenant Keepers had claimed for their own in a great display of sorcerous might and arrogance…

…putting a bruised shoulder to the casement, he shoved, and was rewarded with the piercing squeal of rusty hinges and a shout of surprise from what sounded like his immediate back. He slid through the opening as soon as it was large enough to permit it, and found himself on an ornate ledge, overlooking, as he had thought, the endless blue of the Esicersi Sea...

…and challenged the great Lord Aythrian to a duel for the souls of the Kingdom. The winner to rule unchecked, the loser to be damned for eternity…

…he threw himself back hard against the still closed wooden panel. Swallowing down both panic and a sudden desire to turn himself back over to the tower guards, he focused his wavering attention on finding a way down that would put him on land and did not involved freefall. The tower was one of the most over-decorated structure in the known world…surely he could pick a path down. The thought was obliterated, along with the heavy wooden 'door' he had opened, in a wash of harsh, black laced, light, as the time for rational thinking passed, and he leaped without hesitation to the foaming waters below…

…after days of magical battle, having defeated the many demonic minions of the evil Witch-Child and endured volley after volley of the fires of the hells, Lord Aythrian was victorious. And as the Witch-Child drowned in the clensing waters of the Eceri Sea, Lord Aythrian wiped away a tear at the narrow margin by which he had defeated the monster. How close the good people of Briyndilar had come to being the subjects of a wicked tyrant…

…as he fell towards the ocean, he had the great satisfaction of seeing a face twisted in fury, still radiating lethal energy, peering over the ledge above him. He smiled briefly right before he was swallowed into the icy brine and the world slid from reach.

He closed the book with a startling thud that made all his grandchildren jump. "That was a good story, Grandpa. It's just like they tell it in school. But better when you tell it." He smiled at the tiny figure leaning against his leg and saw the brood off to bed at their mothers insistence. Kasalia, as usual, was nowhere to be found. He wasn't concerned, she would show up for breakfast. He was also not surprised that that particular story was standard fare in what passed for schools in Briyndilar. Anything to make the Covenant Keepers look good to the populace. He did wonder what the girl had been looking for in his telling though…

When she was very young the dreams had been loose frameworks. They were many and almost always different, but they left her with enough assurance that what the adults were telling her was wrong. As she had gotten older, when they returned, they slowly became more than vague feelings and pictures, until from the time she closed her eyes until the time she opened them she becamse another person, unable to change the fate she knew was coming, helpless to escape reliving it. Trapped behind anothers eyes, again, and again, and again. She didn't always remember the details. But she remembered enough. That particular story. The one she had asked her grandfather for, the first story most children learned, bothered her in particular. It was the one she dreamed the most. That wouldn't let her go.

As the moon wavered out of focus and she sunk farther into the soft grass, as her eyes slowly closed and sleep claimed her agaisnt her will, she knew she would dream it again… Fire…