Prologue: A Grandmother's Grief

Aldis loses her grandson, just as she lost so much of her other family.

Errien was gone, struck down by the same foul death that had taken much of Aldis’s family.

What cruel god put this upon her? Did she hold the foul shroud of death within her? Had her youngest son, Harl, escaped death by running so far away?

Why? Why did Errien… and the White Death.

So irrevocable and consuming. Why was there even denial in her mind? She knew far too well that there was no return for those struck down by that wretched plague.

There would be no return, and the house would be empty, and she would gather all the work she was able just to get out of the house of barren rooms.

She could not bear the thought of taking in another to fill the silence. When her first two sons had died, each time she had taken in their children. Yet those children also fell, one after another, like petals off a flower, not by the White Death, but by one malice after another, sent by the gods of tormen. When would it stop?

“Ma’am, your flower is ready,” Jamre said, his face dower. With hands she kept from shaking, she took the flower. “Again, I am sorry for your loss.”

She nodded, her eyes dry from far too much mourning in her life. “Errien was a good boy.”

His eyes widened slightly, “What death took him? I saw him not a day ago.”

She met his eyes with her own dead ones, “The White Death.”

He was still for a moment before a smile sank into his face, one she had seen many times in her life,  one a person wore when they braced themselves for the coming onslaught of trials. “What I would give for this business to close.”

She gave a weary smile in turn, “If such were so, the gods would would deem to give us some other torture.”

“Not all are evil and wanting us harm,” Jamre tried to coaxed. “Such gods you invoke are simply demons.”

“It seems to be all those that hover over me.”

“It is that sort of talk that drives those caring away,” Jamre rebuked. He took a deep breath, “From all that I had seen of Errien, he was a good hearted lad, much better behaved than most his age, I’ll guarantee. Most are still high on their freedom to be good functioning citizens of any civilization.”

She gave a wan smile, “Yes, my son and I raised him right.”

His expression sank to concern, “Has he fallen pale yet?”

Aldis shook her head, “Not when I last left him. Soon…”

“You are a strong woman,” Jamre murmured.

“Only because I have ever required to be,” she replied, drawing herself up, reminding herself.

He reached out and patted her shoulder, “May the stars guide you.”

“And may my own heart be a fortress unable to break in strife.” She met his gaze, grief keening in her eyes, “I must let my son know that I have led his to such a fate. All those who I have cared for who have come to age, I… what am I to say to him?”

“Do not hide behind your shield of iron,” Jamre said softly. “Poise and grieving should not be in one.”

She nodded, her grip on her flower tightening gently. So many flowers she had held.

“I must return now,” she said to herself. Steeling her sanity, she turned and walked out the door and into the street filled with dust and clamor. The sun was high and just preparing to lower. The streets paid no mind to the death and mourning that clung to her like a cloud. They paid no mind to her grief, and they paid no mind to the torment that had been inflicted on her by her mind.

She wanted so much to lash out at the footman for being so fast, as if wanting her to hurry to see Errien dying, ensnared by that evil snake of a plague. And yet, the heavy weight that dragged down her chest would not allow it. She shambled into the carriage and sat down on the seats, looking around vacantly.

Had it been this very carriage that she had taken Errien away from his birth home? Had it been this very carriage that she had made so many trips to those horse fields to inform her country living son the state of his shrinking family?

Errien, Desmon, Elrie, Carven, Geral… she must stop, she must stop the tide of names and faces and relation and meaning, she must stop, else she would disintegrate and dissolve into a grief too consuming.

Had it not been this very carriage in which she sat along those pitted and rutted roads with a heavy dread and slight anxiety to see the one she first saw as a boy, now a man grating, a strange stranger, one so slightly familiar, yet so different and hostile?

Such memories for the only carriage she ever had.

Such grieving and anticipation and thinking thoughts and memories. This carriage, her journey to her future and reminder of the past.

Had it only been yesterday or the last hour that Errien had reached the age of judgement, the age of thirteen? Had it only been last week that he was seven, and terrified, sitting in her carriage with his eyes opened wide as he looked out the window to the city he had never seen? But no, seasons had passed since then. Two years had passed since the age of reason, and eight since she had first took him in.

Errien! How could he die? So young, too young! He had his father’s blood: good, strong, resilient blood as no other blood was strong. So independent and would not… but Errien had always followed her orders so compliantly… and never disappointed her. Did that make him weak of spirit? She had always tried to take into account what he wished. She had just wanted to open the way. She had just wanted to be something to someone, make it so that she was not alone, so she could be… so she could care for another one, so she could say she had a son again. To have some connection to her son again.

The carriage came to a stop, so slowly.

“Oh, Errien,” she whispered. The doorman opened the door, keeping his hat down, covering his face.

The flat was a stairway up. Such a hard burden on her weary legs. The footman rushed to her aid, giving her his arm. Never before, but the feeling, the touch of another human being was so comforting, to know someone was there. “Thankyou,” she sighed, the flower clasped gently in her grip.

They reached the top of the stairs of the old adobe building, and she patted his shoulder, for the first time looking into his eyes truly. When had he aged from the slight young man she had hired? Was it truly so long ago for lines to spread across his face? “Stand tall, Mistress, we will catch you even if you fall,” he murmured before making his way down the stairs.

With a breath to gather her withered self, she put a hand on the door and paused. She did not know what she would find within the walls, she did not know whether she would find the once, no, still fine young boy, alive. He may have already been taken away, or he might still be fighting… tortured in the heat of fever. He might… she did not know whether to wish for him to be alive or dead. It was outside her hands, but… in the end, the fever would take him. Was it not better for her to wish for an end to his suffering? Yet she could not.

She steeled herself once more. The door was a  barrier between her and her grandson who lied on a mattress soaked in sweat and sick. She would see him, and she would…

She lowered her hand: some part of her mind railing and screaming against her cowardice, the cowardice of seeing her grandson-- her son, for he might as well be her son, for she had risen him for more years than she had risen his father-- die.

Yet to die alone was a worse fate.

She grabbed the handle once more and gave it a fatal turn.

Author's Note

Editing help would be really nice.