Tenebrae Manor (27 page)

Under the tempering flames of her anger, the beauty of her face took on a new life of exquisiteness and she wanted nothing more than to slay Malistorm in that instant and take reign for herself. But no, she could not do that. Surely she would not be capable of such a black deed, even in her rage. She thought of bursting from the room in a huff, though that too would not be beneficial. A piece of the most priceless knowledge of Tenebrae Manor was being presented to her; she would be a fool to ignore it.

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

Time flew past in rushes and lulls, though neither could be properly discerned in the constant night. Libra had gloated to Bordeaux and Edweena, taunting them with Malistorm’s trust. The magician had carried about his stern yet gentle governance, the brush of his violet cloak shielding them from the harmfulness of the outside world.

Libra continued to practice her magic and sword skills, remaining a diligent pupil in hopes of one day proving her master wrong. She could rule Tenebrae. And she would.

Soon, Malistorm began speaking to Libra of another mystery.

“A black rose tree…” he pointed at a sketch in a mighty tome.

“It is beautiful.”

“There is no tree quite like it. Its blossoms are said to be the most extravagant one could hope to lay eyes on.”

“Where can we find one?”

“I do not know,” replied Malistorm. “I do know that they grow sparsely in this forest. Perhaps there is only one. Perhaps it is merely an abnormality formed from centuries spent in darkness. But look closer…”

Libra leaned towards the page and observed the glowing hollow in the trunk of the tree.

“A wooden heart,” said Malistorm. “It glows with a flame that will never be extinguished. It is as though this kindling can never be exhausted and it is said to be unbelievably powerful.”

“How powerful?”

Malistorm strode to the window. “None could oppose you.”

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

The two of them had conspired to retrieve it, after which, several scouting missions proved fruitless. Libra was sucked into the same seclusion of temperament portrayed in Malistorm, so that even Edweena, her best friend, could not decipher her.

"Where have you been hiding yourself, Libra?" said Edweena. "The forest is ripe with mischief, yet I cannot find you recently."

"I'm... Busy," came the distracted reply.

"I loathe such inactivity! When such energy flows through me, I simply must give into it... Though I am missing your company."

Libra was barely listening.

****

"I am going out for a while, Libra," came Malistorm's ghostly murmur.

"Where?"

He did not answer. Simply pulling up the collar of his cloak, he vanished from the house like a king of vampire bats. Though his words had been vague as usual, Libra had taken notice of a certain oddity in his tone which she didn't understand, even in the present time.               Malistorm did not return to Tenebrae Manor.

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

Stricken by his vanishing, leaderless in the shadows, those apparitions left behind waited in uncertainty. What had become of their baron, they would never know.

All was not lost, so long as Libra knew the spell of eternal night. But it was Libra who wore a sneaking suspicion as to Malistorm's fate.

She foraged through the notes in his study, searching for any lead to his whereabouts. Upon uncovering his final scribbled notes, including a crudely drafted map of a certain area of forest, Libra set off on her own hunt. She remembered the ease in which her fit body had torn through the woods. Lithe as a black panther, she raced to an unexplored part of the trees without so little as a sweat.

The tree carried grotesque grandeur, so much that Libra wondered how it had not been discovered earlier. Although she soon realised that to find one particular tree in a forest was indeed similar to finding a needle in a haystack.

It was undeniably the very treasure she had been searching for. Gnarled branches twisted from its thick bole so that the furthest twigs spanned in an impressive circumference. Along its branches there sprouted an unusual blossom; roses glistened with midnight dew, shining sharp as swords. The ground beneath the tree was littered with the footholds and potholes created by those great roots that burst from the dusty ground in all directions, dotted with fallen blooms of the aforementioned roses.

Libra readily stooped down and picked one up, admiring its beauty, before gazing at the tree it fell from. One feature stood dominant over all - that of blackness as dark as all night, all coal, onyx and ebony. The black rose tree; it was distinguishably dark even under the night sky, where vision was difficult.

Libra trembled at the ominous sight, for she could discern her prize from where she stood, some fifty feet from the tree. Separating itself from the monochromatic scheme of its surroundings, the wood heart glowed from within a hollow of the trunk, beckoning her with its beauty. This was it and her eyes did not deceive her; the very relic she and Malistorm had yearned for sat before her. With it, she would be unmatched. Even Bordeaux would not be able to match her in power. She would rule the manor by force if she had to. The wood heart! She had to take it.

As Libra stepped towards the tree, she felt as though it acknowledged her presence, for the branches shuddered on a sudden, unaided by the windless atmosphere. Libra crept warily but still had to stop several times to unhitch her black pants that kept snagging on tendrils of thorns that littered the forest floor. Momentarily she halted all together and pinned her hair up behind her, rolling her sleeves up as she did so. This endeavour would undoubtedly take a lot of concentration.

Closer she crept; the heart was only a few feet away. The light emanating from it lit up her pale face, a jarring force of white beauty in the otherwise dark region where she stood. And as the wood heart switched palettes between a spectrum of colours, so too did Libra's beauty reflect the same luminance. Would its touch scald her? Was it heavy? Was it sealed in the tree and irremovable? The properties of this treasure thrilled her and with bated anticipation did she hope to claim it for herself.

Libra stood at the base of the tree and started suddenly, fearing she had heard a noise or detected some disturbance. But no, it must have been her over stimulated imagination. She reached both hands out to the heart and grabbed it. As though it were meant to be hers, it was removed easily from its hollow. She spent a moment absorbing the exquisite detail of her prize, feeling an unbridled energy enter her person. Her senses sparked with sharper life and she no longer felt the fatigue of her journey.

Yet as she turned to escape back to the manor, a stinging lash that wrapped around her ankle restrained Libra. She stumbled, almost dropping the wood heart. A barbed tendril had latched around her leg and now bound her to the tree trunk. Her eyes followed the vine and saw it had spewed forth from the empty cavity where the heart had sat moments earlier.

A panic bubbled in her chest and to her horror, more tentacles shot from the hollow and from the roots below her and began to constrict her in a deathly grip. The tree knew she had stolen the wood heart.

Libra tore at the vines with one arm, trying to shield the heart under the other, yet they grasped with wicked strength. There was a rustle and a groan from around her and Libra saw grotesque, squatted humanoids approach her sluggishly. They seemed to be made of wood and mud, horrific with their bulged and vacant eyes.

By the time Libra could shake away the fear, she was entwined by innumerable tendrils, one of which had wrapped about her throat and squeezed like an anaconda. She felt the life drain from her eyes as she slowly suffocated. Her vision began to fail her and when it seemed she would surely perish, an adrenalin of determination surged through her.

With a pulsing and furious malice, a refusal of defeat, the wood heart glowed in her hands and from its core, a ring of fire shot forth.

In an instant, the vines that bound her were incinerated and those wood golems that had surrounded her crumpled to ash. Charred remnants of vinery lay twitching at her feet and the tree itself seemed to groan involuntarily.

Libra inhaled deeply and quenched her lungs with air, her nerves steadily calming. Hesitating no further, she ran from the sight of the tree and back to the manor.

What awesome power dwells within this relic!

Tenebrae Manor greeted her with merciful silence. She returned to Malistorm's room and placed the wood heart on his abandoned desk, before an indomitable smirk crossed her face.

The flames receded, the flames reformed and one last memory surfaced from the ashes.

She had ruminated on a hiding place for the wood heart for some time. It seemed to her such a shame that an object of such beauty should be hidden away but Libra could not risk it being thieved. Without it, she would be brought back to even footing with those competing for leadership.

But how would she avoid suspicion? An instant claim would be too hasty, so she chose to seal herself in Malistorm's study. Claiming it as her own quarters, Libra ignored the door knocks of all visitors, attributing an increase of magical study to her isolation. True in a sense, for with the wood heart she was capable of unspeakable sorcery and, within several months, she had actively announced to the other residents that she would be their queen and that all would answer to her. Protests towards her claim were met with malicious punishment that readily put the others in place below her.

As for the wood heart, she had stumbled across the secret room completely by accident. Disposing of much of Malistorm's belongings, she had uncovered the small passageway in her room when a loose brick had fallen away unexpectedly. A crude hiding place to be sure but discreet enough to keep the heart hidden and keep the source of her power away from prying eyes.

Years had passed since then, though in the grand scheme of Tenebrae, it could have been yesterday. To Libra, it certainly seemed as such. Having made her decision to pursue power over friendship, she gradually isolated herself from the residents until they were no more than associates. As her demands grew fiercer, so too did she expand in weight, her slothfulness increasing in tow. And once Madlyn entered the scene, a frightened and stupid girl that was so easily manipulated, Libra had a lackey who would complete all the errands befitting of her status. The fruit of her hedonism had ripened and was ready for harvest. Though where she had expected to shine like a quasar, she was instead thrown in the deepest umbra of the begrudged. Her rejected friends watched from the shadows of the rooms below, hurt and nonplussed as to whether or not this was the same Libra they had known. Their resenting of her crippled the household and soon, she was barely recognisable as the strong willed woman who had been their friend. In place, was the self-absorbed tyrant she had become.

30: Juniper

Bordeaux had turned back towards the town and readily felt his mind unravel;

After the hours had gone by in thought, he sought a useful way to travel.

To return somehow to his immemorial home and save his friends in time,

He would need to cover ample ground swiftly and what better way than equine?

Atop a horse’s hasty flight of hooves, he would be able to spread his wings

And hope against helplessness that his soaring would fling

Him in the correct direction, the accurate degree of the compass where his home

Waited in mid-peril for him, their saviour, to return from his unexpected roam.

So within the harbour town, he made his way through the bustling parade

Of markets and stalls and found a merchant with whom he attempted to strike a trade.

Though they spoke no common tongue, Bordeaux’s remaining coins and a silver ring,

One of many he wore, were an absolute bounty to the peasant, who stood grinning.

He was more than ecstatic to acquire such treasure for a common horse

And Bordeaux was pleased that his exchange had not required force.

Thus the crimson demon rode away from the coast and left

The harbour town betwixt the sea and mountains in that salty cleft

Where land and sea locked in embrace. The road he had chosen became

Little more than dust and grass until he found the path had dissipated into no more than a plain.

The sunlight shone down onto his back, igniting the steppe of reeds and flowers

With a vibrant fluorescence of colours - green, blue, yellow and they showered

Onto him, with the foreign intrusive red of his hair and his horse with a pelt of auburn

Disrupting the harmony of those glowing colours poured from the sunny urn.

The breeze whispered sea-bound and flew over his shoulders,

Fleeing the steppe that lay littered with blossomed bud and boulder.

And this wind was accompanied by the glassy currents of the rivers

That ran like veins towards the heart, the sea, in glossy cool slivers.

Breaking the field of verdant green, those trees that stood few and far between

Were of a variety of juniper and Bordeaux had forgotten how open space could spark the serene.

Yet even with such velvet verdancy stretching towards his every horizon,

Each day that passed punctured his confidence and mounted his wizened

Appearance into something increasing haggard and poor;

A weather beating proven by the stubble that sprouted on his gaunt jaw.

Gradually the scene shifted, before eventually growing stale in his heart.

The open space of the fields that once thrilled him did start

To evoke loneliness akin to the forest that he yearned for in vain.

Gone was the freedom of riding across this lush and uninhibited terrain.

All that remained in its place was a crippling and desperate despair

That was magnified verbatim by the roaring rush of the lilies and above, the daylight               glare.

Night had revived Bordeaux time and again, so that he pressed

On further until the steppe grew in shoots of tree and became woods. He addressed

The reality of his stark situation. Another change of scene and no hint for him to grope.

He found he was blindly reaching at the fraying strands of his hope.

“I am at a loss. My efforts are futile. I cannot continue on this way,” he said.

“I’ve no idea where my home is and surely my friends may have already assumed me to be dead.

Is there any point to travelling further degrees of longitude on this planet?

Though where else can I go and live in tranquility unmet?”

Just as Bordeaux had begun giving up and thought he might cast

His anchor overboard, so to speak (for he felt like a rudderless boat) and avast

His travelling for favour of aimlessly drifting alone over the lands,

A certain movement of a creature, namely a tamely colt, captured his glance.

The beast, clearly domesticated, peered from his timid eyes

Beneath the drape of a brush, whose blue-black cones and grey-green fronds disguised

It in a considerable camouflage to the unobservant eye. Although hardly an unusual
              sight,

The horse made Bordeaux realise a possible end to his plight.

For the wayward appearance of this particular saddled thing could only mean

That a settlement, be it farm or town nearby, would
break the monotonous bush land green.

Bordeaux forced his horse into a trot and rounded a corner of hill,

And there, just out of sight down the foot of the slope was a windmill.

It stood as a beacon, towering over the small farmhouse next to it.

The fields of trimmed grass surrounding were inviting, he had to admit.

Straddled by a verandah, the house appeared ancient and in need of repair

And Bordeaux wondered whether its inhabitants still lived there.

As he drew nearer, he dismounted his horse and crept

Towards the flimsy fence near the house. On a sudden his heart leapt,

For the movement of a human being startled Bordeaux,

As she glided from the door of the cottage into the afternoon glow.

The lass he observed was in the prime of youth, simply adorned in a sky coloured dress.

Her entangled hair glowed a palette of auburn, shifting shades with the sunlight's caress.

As she hung out linen to dry in the sun, Bordeaux attempted to call out and speak.

The travelling had him worn with fatigue and a nagging hunger made him weak,

But could there be harm in confiding with her? There was no town for miles,

This Bordeaux knew, so perhaps she could offer safe lodgings for a while.

So a demon posed as a man called out at the girl, who showed little shock

At the sudden arrival of a stranger. A turn of her head and a sway of her frock

Preceded a confident smile that startled him; for the ease of her beauty was akin to a
              nymph

Or any of those other mysterious dryads that hover through nature as sprightly glyphs.

As though he were little more than another tree in the forest, another post in the fence,               she turned

And left him alone in the grass. The screen door closed a
nd the wind was all that could be heard. She returned,

With a tan-furred dog at her feet that raced at Bordeau
x, whose fearing eyes suddenly bulged wide.

But the dog’s advance was friendly and when he lo
oked up again at the girl, she beckoned him inside.

Bordeaux was never quite certain whether the girl spok
e a foreign language or simply didn’t talk at all

But never once did the girl say a word and her spritely mystery kept the demon in thrall.

Despite the lack of verbalism in their commune, Bordeaux spoke to her often and felt               she still understood

The desperation of his situation. He named her Juniper, fo
r the abundance of such plants in the surrounding woods.

Together, they tended to the health of the horse that h
ad transported Bordeaux safely until now

And as the days drifted by in sweetly, Juniper car
ried about her errands feeding chickens and milking cows.

He had thought that Juniper must live alone; though found soon enough that she had her
              own demons.

In a certain sunny room of her humble house sat an invali
d old man, who painfully cried for deathly haven.

The man must have been Juniper’s father; he could not stand on his own accord.

He was completely dependant and the man’s tears were his only way of expressing thanks to his ward.

The sight of the sickly man struck a chord in Bordeaux’s heart

And he tried to ask Juniper how she became tied to this part.

It seemed to upset the girl to reminisce, she showed Bordeaux a grave

That stood lonely at the bottom of the garden, at the back of the enclave.

With the headstone unmarked, Bordeaux could not discern whom the grave was for

But gathered it must have been her husband or mother, someone else who may have poured

Their heart into the tending of this farm and the caring of the sick old man.

Bordeaux realised that Juniper too, was trapped in a world of limited span.

As the sunlight filtered through the quiet days, he felt his heart become enveloped

With fires of love and tenderness, albeit somewhat impetuous and less developed.

Perhaps it was merely the farmland’s secluded reality presenting idea of freedom

Or that Juniper represented the folklore of more relatable kingdom.

Their similarities were unassailable; she too was s
tuck in a world reliant on her servitude,

So maybe between them, they could share their inequitable load and belay the attitude

Owing to a life where their whims, fancies and dreams would always be second

To the needs of others that lay languid in their introspective pond.

Yet these very thoughts ended up pivotal and soon Bordeaux's calling took its toll.

He realised that he was chasing an ideal life that he could never hope to control.

Although in his heart, he felt that staying with Juniper was no act of whim,

Nothing would change the fact that his own home and friends needed him.

The emotion welled in his chest and when he one day caught Juniper’s gaze,

He exclaimed, “Juniper, this cannot work! I cannot stay. Though your beauty amaze,

You don’t understand the words that I say and nor could I hope to properly know you.

Even though the agony we feel is certainly burdened we
ll together, you know it to be true!

Between us there is mutual devotion, derived of my love of your heart, so altruistic!

No chimera could destroy my knightly ambition to nurture you, my fantastic!

But while my home calls for me, the idea of us united is indeed a chimera,

Aspired dream must give way to my responsibility, such cruel terror!

Oh chimera – a dream from whence I stumble on my words, darling Juniper.

Let me say - no other muse compares to you, you star of brighter luminance than Jupiter.”

Juniper’s eyes swelled with a torrent of tears as she clutched at her heart.

The deluge of Bordeaux’s avowal, even with their foreign linguistics, did impart

The expression intended. And her acceptance of his pl
eas shone through their mutual affection, 

The realisation that both must go alone and attend to their own afflictions.

He longingly stared at her with sorrowful eyes and repeated, “I have to go.”

Juniper kissed him softly on the cheek and whispered a word for him, “Bordeaux.”

His horse was prepared in the symphonic nocturne of the evening, where the crickets

Rung their ornamental anthem
sempre forte
in the gnarled brambly thickets.

Bordeaux painfully uttered farewell and hoped to guide h
imself through the treacherous shoals

With the spritely image of Juniper forever etched into his soul.