Love is War 03:00:01:08

Love is War 03:00:01:08

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– 03:00:01:08 –

“She is insane, you know,” Farrell said, lazy and smiling. “She cannot be trusted.”

Farrell had returned to House Suwilo following his incarceration at the hands of the Coeecians, the same period of time that Lord Figo had been taken. Sahr Erison had listened to all of the fox’s tales as the creature spoke of all that they had suffered together, the young lord and the tricky healer. It was one of the reasons that Sahr had taken such care with Figo when he was brought in battered and wounded; that man had suffered enough, and continued to suffer if Farrell was to be believed.

Lord Figo had been enslaved by the Madwoman of the North, the Hermit of High House Wyrd. Sahr had heard all about that woman and all her madness, her use of narcotics to get what she wanted in any circumstance, the terrible science that she had used to win glory for herself in the highest circles of the Vanir. He had even read some of the woman’s works when she had caught his son, his precious son, reading them.

The ramblings had been that of one abandoned by sanity, barely coherent, nothing more than fictions. Sahr was certain of this because he did not understand it and he did not care for the woman besides. She was a woman and not to be trusted. The Vanir mindscape was taken with her but that would pass and hopefully she would be as forgotten as his former wife.

But now Lord Figo was repaying the care he had been given by offering Sahr’s son to that selfsame madwoman. His precious son, the only child he had sired who had proved loyal to him in the wake of his wife’s treachery.

He had married young, his paramour decades older than he. She had crippled him with her support, making his accomplishments less merely by being a part of them. Eventually she had proven more liability than use, the various resources he had taken her for becoming less, so he took everything she had selfishly thought to keep from him and then banished her from his lands, exiling her all the way across the breadth of Midgard where he would never have to look upon her again.

A child had stood between them during this separation, the first boy that he had sired. Little more than an infant, Sahr had taken him aside and explained to him why his mother was not to be trusted.

“I’m the only that loves you,” he had told the young boy. “I’m the only one that cares. You’ll see when you go visit your mother that she is nothing. And if you don’t do what I say, my son, well, the affection I feel for you and the only affection that is right or true in all this world may just wither and die.” The boy, Endrall, had looked at him with wide eyes before stepping into the carriage that would take him to visit his mother.

He had begged to return only days later. His mother was a drunken wreck, Endrall said, a ruin that could not rouse herself from the misery that had claimed her. When Endrall returned, Sahr swept the boy into his arms and gave him everything he wanted, rewarding him for his loyalty.

And so it went whenever the boy went to visit his mother and Sahr would smile to hear of what had become of his now shattered wife and the contempt with which Endrall spoke of her.

The boy had taken a lover eventually, but that was only to be expected. Sahr had instilled the boy with an inability to keep secrets from his father, so he knew all about Grais Rlied of House Raido long before the girl had been brought home to meet him. He had spoken with the girl at length and decided that she presented no threat to his authority. As such, he had consented to the union between his son and Grais.

However, this other woman, this Veskur Wyrd, she was something else again.

Intelligent, articulate, and old. Far too old for Endrall to even be thinking about and he knew – he knew – that Endrall was keeping something about the woman from him. Figo had taken Endrall to meet her at some social function and his darling son had come back with a sick light in his eyes that Sahr remembered, for he had once seen it in his own when he had been young and foolish.

He had tried speaking to the woman but found her utterly without merit. He invited Figo back under the pretense of checking his recovery but the Lord from House Jera had nothing but good to say of Lady Wyrd, though there was regret in his eyes whenever he spoke of her. Eri was not sure what to make of that but he knew – knew – that secrets were being kept from him. It was Farrell that he turned to for explanation.

“She has bewitched Figo,” Farrell said. “She will do the same to Endrall.”

The boy had the gall to argue with him when he forbade him from seeing the silly psychotic bauble. They screamed and fought, his gentle son howling like the possessed. This was not the son he had raised, not the loyal child that he had cultivated. Sahr told the boy that his love for him would wither and that had bought him respite, though resentment and rebellion both festered in the eyes of his beloved son. It was not a thing to be borne, but he did not yet see what could be done about it.

Staring north, he stood at the top of his keep. There had to be something he could do. There had to be. He would find it and he would destroy this threat as surely as he had destroyed his wife and no one would ever again think to take his son away from him.

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More is coming next week. If you like the artwork, why not go and thank Meghan Duffy at duffyartdesign.com? She’s cool people.

Living Myth Magazine
Originally Published:  OCTOBER 2, 2015


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