*back*

A strange, familiar color nagged at the back of Kell's mind. It was so distant, that she thought she was just imagining things. But it got closer, and stronger. Strong enough that she could concentrate on it and wonder: where had she felt this before?

When she remembered, she stood straight up in her cell. Could she ... somehow? Get him a message? She'd never been trained - he knew that, she'd told him.

Weyland.

It deeply surprised her when one of the Keep guards - not one of Carnos' sons - came to get her. They were rougher than the young men, it was entirely possible that they weren't even either alive nor human. They didn't listen to anything she'd ever said, and they always treated her exactly the same way.

They took her, naked and weak, into the main entrance hall of the Keep. It was the first time she'd ever even seen it. It was boxy, filled with weapons on the walls and sculptures of steeds and people she didn't dare look at too closely.

Weyland stood alone, in contrast to the number of people from the Keep who surrounded him.

"I suppose it is for the best," Carnos said, with a half-bemused look on his face. "She's almost outlived her usefulness. If you can get anything else out of her, I'm sure you'll find her quite tolerable."

"I have no intention of abusing this girl as you have," Weyland said, flatly and with his eyes fixed on the much bigger man. He extended his hand, and Kell bolted to his side. Her legs weren't used to running - she fell into his grasp, and he folded his big dark cloak around her. "And I think you might examine your ties with Lord Empal, as he has... degraded further."

"Is that some kind of threat?" Asked Carnos, but Weyland shook his head.

"Hardly. I merely mean to suggest," he said as he started to turn Kell and head outside, "that our Lord has become lost even deeper in his own mire, and pays less and less attention to his prior ... dealings. If you do visit our Castle again, though, Carnos," Weyland adopted a narrow-eyed glare, "do not bother coming to my portion of it. That section belongs to me, and always will. It was there before the rest of the castle was built, and my work is not to be disturbed. Even by the likes of you."

He guided Kell out, and though she could still feel his warmth and his aura comforted her, she could feel the overriding anger of Carnos and his sons. A year and a half with them had given them all the advantages.

She felt five pinpricks of curses, each placed by one of the men. One of them she identified as Carnos' pride and joy -something he'd been working up to for months. It crept over her spine and welled up in the back of her throat. It did nothing more, though - none of them did anything further than make their presence known under her skin, braced up beside the remains of her soul.

Weyland rushed them to his carriage, which was guided by two large bay-colored horses, and had a coachman which looked more mechanical than flesh. Once in the carriage, Weyland held on to Kell tightly. She cried as though she'd never done before, trembling and small.

It took several days more than the ride out, to get back to the Castle of Lord Empal. Before their first stop, Weyland took out a bundle of warm dark clothing and helped Kell get into it. "When we get to the castle," he had said, "don't leave my side. There are curses on you that even the guards will recognize. I'm going to have to work quickly to get you cured of them."

"You can do that?" Kell asked, between half-sobs. She hadn't quite stopped crying since leaving the Keep.

"I ... will try."

***

At the castle, Kell followed Weyland in, and did as he instructed. She couldn't move very far away from him anyway, her fear drove her back to his side constantly. She worried when she was away from him for more than an hour or so.

When she had finally become accustomed to the place again, and used to sleeping on a bed instead of stone floor, Kell allowed Weyland to question her about what all had been done to her.

How, in the course of only two years, Kell had run from her home in terror to this fairy-tale castle upon a tall hill. Thinking that the Lord present would be able and willing to help her if only she could speak her problems to him... All the stories she'd ever heard of him had led her to believe that he'd have done so. Yet to have come all that way, almost two hundred miles mostly on foot running from phantom fears, for nothing...

"He - he wouldn't eve-even look at me," Kell said between huge sobs. "I th-thought he was k-kind and jus-st..."

"And he had been," Weyland said, quietly. "Once. I ... still do not know what has happened to him. I've been trying to scrye it, divine it from any means I can locate, but even with all this," he indicated his library where they had come to sit and talk, "I have found nothing. I know something had troubled him, but I still don't even know what that might have been."

Kell nodded. "I th-think he's b-busy," she said, trying to sober up and stop crying. "And lo-look at me, I'm all blub-blubery."

A smile turned onto Weyland's lips, and he said, "Kell, after what you've been through, I'm honestly surprised you aren't just screaming still. Blubbering is okay."

She half-laughed, coughing out a giggle through the sobs again.

***

Eventually, after about two weeks, Weyland brought a mug of smoking thick liquid toward Kell. The look on his face told her that this was not stew or something nice.

"What is it?" She asked, as she took it from him.

"It... is a preservation potion. I cannot lift certain of those curses they placed on you."

"Oh." Kell said, watching the liquid as it roiled. She knew that her face showed tremendous disappointment, and she didn't try and hide it. After these questions and tests and hexing and... nothing was working?

"I will try, but I have to have time to study them. This will... well, it will at least stop them from progressing." He looked away, his dark blue eyes unable to meet her own.

Then, he asked an odd question: "when is your birthday, Kell?"

Kell had to think hard about this, since so much time had gone by without light of day nor sense of night.

"I ... what season is it?"

"Late fall, almost winter. It was spring of the year before this that we saw you first here."

Kell quickly thought, always quite good at maths. "I'll be eighteen in a bit, just before the winter moon."

"Two weeks," Weyland sighed, "that isn't much time. I'm glad I got this to you now."

"Why, is that important? My eighteenth birthday?"

"Because, Kell, most of those curses on you are going to erupt into something big, on that day." Weyland said, with no hint of emotion. "And the only way I can think of to stop them from killing you on their way out is to stop them with this." He touched the mug, and said, "drink it."

They stood in the hall where they'd first met, which was deep within Weyland's portion of the castle. There were scattered windows, and they overlooked the already-snowy castle grounds. There was a fine coating of snow piled up in the corner of the windows where they stood. Kell turned, and drank the potion.

It tasted awful, but she gulped it back. She trusted Weyland implicitly, though she still didn't even know why. He hadn't said or done anything to harm her, and -- he'd come to rescue her. She'd done all the talking, she knew next to nothing about him. Suddenly she wanted to start asking him: what's your birthday then? how old are you - you look so young but your aura is so old? when did you become a wizard? you said the castle was built after your part? But she could say nothing. Inside her she was becoming aware of a strange stillness.

She turned, tears welling up in her eyes. "I'm so cold," she said, and it was true, she was suddenly shivering, even though the potion looked to be almost boiling.

"That's the potion," Weyland said. "It will ... preserve you."

"I can't move," she said, voice wavering.

Weyland wrapped his arm around her, turning her with some difficulty to face the windows. "Shh," he said. "Just be calm."

He cradled her face with his long fingers, and then kissed her - she saw the tears in his own eyes, though they would dry before gracing his high cheekbones. "Hush," he said again.

"Thank you," she whispered.

She could no longer move, her arms were wrapped about her body, and she leaned slightly on the stone sill of the windows. Her sightless eyes glazed over, and the sorrow on her face had not been wiped away by Weyland's kiss. She looked so sad.

*next*