Here Be Dragons
The glass slipped out of my suddenly numb fingers and shattered on the stone floor, but I didn't register it happening. I strained to see, to hear, in a room suddenly devoid of either light or sound. Nothing. Nothing but a shift of darkness within darkness, and my own heartbeat hammering in my ears.
The sensation threatened to choke me, and I sank slowly to the floor, drawing my knees up and hugging them to my chest. I shut my eyes, and amazingly the dark became more familiar. I concentrated on breathing in and out, trying to slow my racing pulse, and the pounding in my chest began slowly to subside.
I was trembling all over, and that realization more than anything else drove home the fact that I was scared. I, Gwylliam ap Clyyd, King of Lleanairr and Protector of the Hold, was sitting on the floor and shaking like a child.
A spurt of red hot rage cut through the fear, and I clutched at it like the hand of a friend. I slowly opened my eyes, and fought down another flash of panic at the utter blackness that surrounded me. I tried to concentrate on my anger, and wrap it around myself like a cloak - fury was something I understood, but this unreasoning terror was alien.
I had come up to the tower in the grey dawn to be alone. It had been two weeks since Kiera had disappeared, and I hadn't slept more than an hour at a time since. I couldn't bear our bed - it smelled like her. There was simply no trace; it was like she had never existed.
The hours ran together and days slipped by like sand through a glass, excruciating in its slowness, and there was no word, no hint of what had happened... just a tattered cloak on the edge of the wood. No blood, which fact I clung to like a dying man clings to life itself. Truth was, I wasn't sure if I would survive her death - she had been my very life for so long.
I opened my eyes, aware that I was rocking back and forth on the cold stone floor. Forcing myself to my feet, I reached for the wall, and almost tripped as I found one of the arrow slots, lurching forward as my arm plunged into the hole. I caught myself with my other hand against the wall and froze.
My fingers had met with an obstruction. Something was wrapped around the outside of the tower, blocking the light; something almost leathery. I flattened my hand against it, feeling hard ridges and an almost pulsing ribbon that traced its way across the breadth of it. I put my forehead against the wall and shut my eyes again. What witchery was this?
-Grace Alexander
