Tenebrae Manor (26 page)

29: Libra’s Lament

In Libra's room, stillness dominated over all. The chaise lounge lay in the static. At the vanity, bottles of perfumes stood silent as soldiers, crystalline as the sky after the storm passes. Libra's enormous bed was, not surprisingly, unmade and its disheveled sheets flowed in billowy swathes to the floor. Yet they did not flow as per definition of the word - they were still. Like a river frozen over winter, they were silenced and only insinuated the thought of ever flowing like water.

             
Another dark sheet floated in the middle of the room. It hovered like a ghost and any betrayal of a footing on which it stood was lost to the shadows at its base. It was a pedestal of course, covered by a sheet, yet even the boldest heart would for a moment doubt their sight when first laying eyes on it. They would feel their heart lurch but for a second and all the childish terrors of their infancy would flood back to them, only to be abated by matured reality.

             
The silence breathed in sharply, as though of shock, stifling as one who steps into icy waters. What followed was a bloated exhale and as the walls seemed to breathe, a creaking scuttle echoed in the dim. A cockroach crawled aimlessly over the floor. In the candlelight, it looked as if the flagstones themselves were moving or that an ever-shifting stain marked the carpet. Its antennae twitched; the roach had detected something. Was it another sigh or another flint of movement striking the scene? The insect resumed its shuffle and never saw the great silk-slippered foot descend upon it and crush it to death most instantly.

             
Lady Libra, who had been sitting statuesque at the window the entire time, grimaced at the repulsive sight of the crushed creature and scraped her shoe clean with the butt end of the axe. Propping the axe back up against the wall, she returned to her vacant gazing of the forest below her window. The vines suffocating the manor had almost reached her window at the very top. While the others had rushed to defending the walls she had remained stationary, her apathy spoke greatly of her personal defeat, of the turmoil she continued to suffer.

             
Libra had glanced at the sheet-draped pedestal when her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at her door.

Her voice had lain long in disuse, so she twice had to croak, "Come in."

The door opened to the svelte shadow of Edweena. The vampiress stormed in like a draught of cold air in the warm room, completely disrupting the cautious stagnation of Libra's musing. She sheathed her rapier and threw the severed head of a wood golem at Libra's feet.

"They've surrounded us entirely. Impossibly sluggish at the best of times, though some are more adroit than others. A few would advance at us unawares and try to catch us off guard."

Lady Libra regarded the head with minimal interest. She nudged the root-mangled thing with her foot and watched as clots of soil fell from its face.

"Hmm. And the trees latching to my home; did you prune them?"

Edweena almost laughed, "Prune is one way of placing it. Swords slice through them with ease but they're painfully persistent. Some vines had already begun to grow again by the time Crow's regiment relieved us."

Libra's voice was dismissive and slow. "Well, good. You got what you want from this silly watch. Anything else?"

"Anything else?" said Edweena with rising anger. "Libra please see sense! This cannot be ongoing. We are buying time only. It is your responsibility to guide us from this mess. A mess that you must have insight of in some way."

"So you opt to accuse me?"

"Much as I hate to delate you, Libra; but you surely must have noticed that these rebelling forest monsters coincided perfectly with your ascension. Tenebrae Manor was locked in darkled calm for centuries, you know this!"

"Not my fault!" huffed Libra.

"I have never known such childishness! You impossible thing! Whether you had something to do with it, I do not know. Frankly, that is irrelevant. But 'sorcery serves', as you said. You have the spells, the aptitude and the rank to put an end to this. We can only hold out a little longer - lest Tenebrae become doomed."

Libra lagged for a moment. "Why do you care anyway? You were always in such a hurry to stray from the stagnant. Why would it matter to you what happened to this dusty old place?"

"Because it is our home!" Edweena's voice dropped to a more compassionate tone. "My friends live here. What can I say to make you help us?"

Libra paused. "I am considering a few ideas..."

Edweena threw her hands to her hips and huffed with vexation. She looked visibly fatigued by her efforts. "The scarecrow and Arpage are of little help," she said. "They are far more likely to fall sooner rather than later. Would you really lose more after what happened to Madlyn?"

"I said," replied Libra slowly, "I am considering a few ideas."

"You will only move when a fire is lit under you."

Edweena then left Libra, having added bruising words to her brooding.

Libra sat perfectly still for but a few seconds, waiting until the steps of Edweena dwindled into nothingness. When she was certain her rival was gone, Libra raced to the door and slammed the lock shut. Her eyes locked greedily onto the pedestal as her hands tugged at the cloth to unveil her frightening amulet, which glowed with an eerie beauty. The thing was illuminated with an indifferent kaleidoscope of colours, flashing calmly between hues. This relic, the wood heart, was the sole reason for the chaos that gripped the manor; the impetus to Libra’s dominance over the other residents of the house, the reason she had been able to rule uncontested as their supreme despot. To run her hands over it was to feel extraordinary energy channel into her veins and this power left her in a lulling calm. With such force at her disposal Libra felt invincible and she certainly was peerless in her quest to reign over Tenebrae.

But now she found herself in a prominent predicament; the wood golems wanted the heart back. She had known it from the very beginning, having stolen it unrightfully for herself several years previous when Malistorm still ruled the mansion. It appeared that the wood heart, in spite of its awesome power, would not resist being lured back to the hands of the golems, who would return it to the Black Rose Tree where it belonged.

Lady Libra was at a loss and in the purest of denial of her influence in the situation. To hand back the thing would rob her of all magical force and leave her monarchy ripe for the plucking by any of the other residents of the manor. Yet she knew that things could not continue as at present – the golems were slowly destroying the house. Their pace was ever increasing; it would not be long until the trees had asphyxiated it to its very foundations and the house become any more than a ruinous blemish in the endless trees.

Much as she had tried to wash the blood from her hands, to sweep the entire issue under the rug, Libra was under intense pressure from all sides to relinquish her denial and fix what she had broken. She knew that the fate of the house and all those who resided with was entirely up to her.

Libra found her thoughts turning to Bordeaux. The crimson demon had been an enviable presence to her; his humility and leadership something she coveted greatly. But it was just not in her to rule with such sovereign concord. She wanted to be worshiped as greatness! Where could Bordeaux have ended up? In her fury, she had merely channeled the power of the wood heart into what had been her most powerful magic spell yet. Bordeaux had been flung across dimensions, teleported for lack of a better word and of where he had ended up, Libra was completely ignorant.

She now regretted the actions of her anger; if Bordeaux were here, he would be able to bring order to the forest. Although it may have seemed that Libra had rid herself of her most threatening competitor, she had in actuality banished their best source of salvation. And now, when she would have normally cast off all responsibility onto others, she was now expected to bear the burden herself.

She turned back to the wood heart, the glow of which painted the walls with fantastic flames that inflicted Libra with an unshakeable nostalgia. Memories blazed in her dusky head as her amber eyes dove deep into the flames; she fell into a sort of trance at the sight of such unreckoned beauty.

The flames flickered, the flames flashed and from her tangled memory, she thought she heard a familiar voice echo through the void.

"Your tenacity is admirable, Libra; you would make a defiant leader."

A svelte, younger Libra simpered at such flattery.

"Better than Bordeaux?" she replied.

Malistorm stood at the window and stared out into the darkled trees. Though heavily sunken with fatigue, his eyes pierced with terrifying ascendancy.

"There are two kinds of sovereignty, Libra. Those who rule with intimidation and those who rule with humility. The difference between the two is that humility will please all, intimidation will please only one."

He had never said which one was better. Always a figure of mystique, even during his life at Tenebrae Manor, Malistorm never revealed more than his intention. It remained unknown to her how Tenebrae came to be built, perhaps Malistorm himself did not know. He alone stood as the oldest resident of the archaic walls, its peerless leader. From the highest spire of the house, he looked down on his moonlit province like a purple eidolon, in a state where he could disappear with the shake of his cloak in the event that anyone should disturb his brooding. His ruling was like that of a strict parent, never did he express any personal emotion lest he surrender his coerce authority.

The flames receded, the flames reformed and from her cobwebbed mind, another memory was born.

"The world is a place much darker than here..." he had said. "Let this forest be your recluse. This is our domain, this place closer to the other dimensions than anywhere else. Wondrous terror is attainable only here, while the rest of the world is abandoning the supernatural to the scientific..."

Whether he was once man or some eternal sentinel, how Malistorm came to be remained unknown, even to those who knew him best - Bordeaux, Edweena, Rune. Yet he reserved a special fondness for Libra. And to her, he was a sort of dark angel, her guardian.

"You are brash, young lady. A valuable trait in a world painfully suspicious of sin and witchcraft. We are banished, Libra. This dark corner of the world is our only solitude."

"But why here?" replied Libra. "Why this isolation? Who chose this site for our abode? Who built this house and when?"

"Unimportant."

"I must know!"

The magician heaved a sigh that divulged the true decaying of his aging face. Yet it was not with age that Malistorm’s wrinkles grew deeper, it seemed more related to the heaviness he carried in his heart at all times. Libra’s excessive yearning for self-illumination wore him down in one sense and reminded him of years earlier when he too had swam in the same waters of youthful persistence.

“I will show you something very important, Libra,” he said. “You must divulge it to nobody…”

The gorgon’s eyes blossomed with greed; it did not matter what Malistorm had to say, the fact that
she
was the only one to hear it was important.

Malistorm had led her to the library, where they had retrieved a book so old that it had begun to unravel at the spine. The pages were clotted with cavities, the leather brushing away like dust along its cover. The pair had then returned to Malistorm’s study at the top of the manor, the very room Libra now clamed as her own fantastic bedroom. And Libra, bristling with anticipation, felt the greed that burned in her core singe the back of her throat.

“In
this
book, Libra… You will find the very spell that keeps the shroud of darkness over our Tenebrae Manor.”

“That very spell?” gasped Libra; “I had thought you only knew it by heart!”

“It may have seemed like me to do as such, alas no.” He trailed off and again stared out into the forest. “I do not know what the years ahead hold for me. It was best that I write the spell down somewhere, lest my pretty little minions be exposed to the hideous daylight.”

“And you are going to teach me?”

“It is a difficult spell but not something you haven’t trained for. Should I be, shall we say, indisposed, I believe you will be capable of carrying on the spell in my stead.”

Libra leaned towards him. “And be queen over Tenebrae Manor?”

Malistorm held his skeletal palm aloft to hush her and standing a good foot taller than her, needed no words to reinforce his governance.

“I did not say you would be a
queen
,” he said. “I would merely have you in charge of our most vital spell. This is no small task!”

Libra pouted playfully but Malistorm had not finished and she took instant umbrage to the words that followed.

“I envisage Bordeaux succeeding me.”

Her eyes bulged, the white around those amber irises burning irate.

“Do not look at me so, Libra,” continued Malistorm. “Some are natural governors and I see this as the best use of Bordeaux’s abilities.”