'Come now, lady.'
She regards me warily as I carefully take up the slim fingers of one pale hand, tucking them into the velvet-clad crook of my arm. I walk her to the door of the windowless, cheerless room where she has spent all her days since I brought her to the northern fastness. Do I burn her, I wonder, through the cloth of my robe, with the life running through me and the purpose of the east in my veins? There is a burning in her, a cold fire that chills me through the rich fabric. My flesh repulsed by the touch of her, mayhap.
Gracefully she gathers up the fulness of the black dress, quietly compliant as she walks beside me. Yet her head on her slender neck is as high as a proud queen as we walk along the silent passages of the towers. So quiet. One would not realise all the cries and anguish that are muffled by the thick walls below us. But, this is not for her - not today.
Let her make of this what she will. A reward for being compliant? A lessening of my guard against her charms? An apology for the theft and intrusion of her dream?
I take the key to the small door into my free hand and open it. The cool northern air blows into the still, sullen atmosphere of the passageways. The season turns quickly through autumn this far north, and winter is already hinted in the breeze.
Summer is a muted parody of itself here, the land twisted by the presence of the orc-filth and their unceasing activities. But I lead her into the one small place in all this blighted land, where summer could linger, if it willed. Here, nestled between the tower-tops, high above the withered land and untouched by the filth and dirt of orc-kind, I have one place of promise.
I am what I am, and blood will tell. I hold beauty high. Here, in soil taken from sweeter lands, tended only by Men, I keep my garden. The shrubs and small trees in their tubs of earth hold the fading autumn colours, echoing their brethern further south. One blaze of living colour in all this land of death and stone. Poor in comparision, but here... it is as startling as the fabled elf-valley near the mountains. She steps into it in wonder, it seems for a moment she forgets wariness and emnity, life flooding into her cheeks as she gazes about, turning to me with an animated face and a swift, stiffled smile.
The songbirds in their small cages of metal tracery and woven willow burst in to sweetness as she walks around the small enclosure. The one pool of clear water set in raised stone reflects her, still as a mirror. I hold out my gloved hand to her, and she takes it without complaint as I assist her onto the encircling wall, mindful that this is the first she has seen of the world for many weeks.
She does not push me from the wall, I note to myself, amused. Nor does she try to leap the many storeys to the ground, where Men and filth hurry about my business in the courtyard or stand watchful on the lower walls. But she does look. Well and good. Gaze out, little bird. Plan your flight. From here the pattern of the fortress is laid out like a map, and though the light is low under the grey clouds, the blasted hills and withered woodland reminants can still be seen in the distance.
When I judge she has had enough time to silently drink in all that she sees, I return her to her locked room. I sense her secret pleasure of discovery; I hold my own secret pleasure that even in this, she unknowingly dances to my tmeasure.
