Facing Valwyn

As the castle rose up on the horizon before them and the Valys escort closed around their party, Garnett quelled, the exhiliration of the race long past. The temptation to turn her horse about and flee at a dead run gripped her so tightly her hands trembled on the reins. Every step, her mind whispered: Run! Leave!

It's just a building,you foolish child, she scolded herself, attempting to keep terror from her face, but the blood had drained from her skin and the strain about her eyes and lips betrayed her. For her entire stay in Valys, she'd been confined to these grounds, every inch of them containing memories that had never left her.

The escort led them through the gates, footmen swarming to help the ladies dismount, many of whom, including Garnett, had remained astride for the rest of the ride. The flurry of servants and guards fell into a distant hum as her head tilted back, jade eyes lifting to find the ramparts in the deepening night. Torches burned, and she craned her neck to see them at the top. It took all her determination not to whimper, the black stones seeming as though they longed to crush her, dreams swarming her memories.

Remembered terror accompanied her own, that horrible shuddering tearing fear that he had never conquered, the one that sent him tumbling to his knees, the secret one that only she ever knew. If he could face that day after day, you can do this. But all she wanted to do was collapse on the back of her horse and let it carry her away, let it run until it collapsed and crushed her in its fall.

Somehow, numbly, she made it down from her horse and walked blindly into the castle. As she had in the first years that followed, she fled herself, the part she regarded as Garnett simply fading to oblivion, sweet senseless oblivion, while the outward part, formly Lady Wenfrith, now Queen Mother went through the proper motions. Engrained enough to be flawless, she managed to have Maeryn reassigned to the quarters prepared for herself, knowing her daughter could not bear the crowding of the women's wing, and the Queen Mother refused to inhabit the royal floor.

It seemed to cause quite a stir that the Queen Mother would take an apartment on a lower floor, and the servants bustled to make it suitable only to have her snap at them. She simply wanted a place to rest alone. Sending Sapphine to terrorize the woman's wing, she glided to the quarters she had demanded, her eyes as chilled as her skinn.

"Leave my things outside for the morrow," she demanded, her sudden slam of her door nearly taking off the servant's nose. With the latch driven home, she finally collapsed on the bed, unable to stay the violent grief that rose in her.

"Uhtred.." She pleaded, as if by calling his name, he would suddenly appear. Pouring green eyes lifted uncertainly from her pillow as she whispered it again, begging for him, but the room was empty, the only sound the crackle of the fire on the hearth and her own breathing. He's not here. No matter how many corners she looked around or how long she'd fought to bring his son back to the castle, he was gone, and she was alone.

It was nice, there in the cool, dry darkness. Hay had been brought years before and he rested in it. His once gorged belly had slimmed over the years of sleep. Yet his sleep was not peaceful.

He returned to that plane he wanted to avoid. That terrible place of memory. For that's all he had now, as he waited. Her dark hair haunted him, her child-blue eyes so soft and welcoming. He had been hers and he had not wanted anything more. Her love kept him at her side.

The strange world waivered, and her eyes were not so child-like. Her goodness had been devoured by the man who'd bloodied her. He recalled the smell. Recalled the darkness that replaced her blood. A gleam of silver on her finger, that looked like him, was alive like him, yet was not. It was alive in a way he could not be. Of more use to her than he. He felt the loss of his 'child' more than any parent, felt her ripped from him by human hands.

He hated those hands. Hated what she let herself become. Hated her. But even with all his hate, he had stayed at her side. Right up until the day she left. She hadn't come to get him, hadn't called for him. She turned her back. And now, he waited.. but not for her.

He remembered hair of fire. He could hear the gentle, quivering voice. He could still feel her hands as she reached out and clutched him, when he freed her from that terrible place. Surely she would need him, surely she would come.

So he waited where the mice dared not tread. He slept in absolute blackness. His sleek black body began to silver. The edges of every scale shined with his strange ageing. He began to worry. He was finally growing old, and surely death was coming... would she return to only find a husk?

Then one day it happened. He tasted her in the air. His eyes came into focus, still as sharp and as penetrating as they had been in his youth. His tongue flicked. Yes. She was home. In the dead of night he slid from the deep crack in the wall. Synaria's room wasn't how he left it. The bed was no longer a nest of pillows on the floor. It was a nusiance, but he found the post and curled up it. But his effort had been in vain. He stared at the shock of blonde that slept there. His tongue split the air near her parted lips.

Not her. But close.

He turned and slid through the shadows, found the hidden halls and roamed them. He followed the taste of her. Confusion hit him as her smell took him down from the level he had anticipated she would sleep and into an unfamiliar room. But such trivial things could not stop him.

She was close.
So close.

He wound 'round the railing of the bed. The shock of red greeted him as did the gentle sound of her sleeping breath. He tasted the age on her. A sadness filled him, that such a flower could begin to wither so quickly, when he had gotten to live lifetimes longer than he had right to.
But she was there. She had finally came home to him, which meant she needed him and he would protect her always. Slowly he coaxed all eight feet of him onto the bed and gently laid his head against her chest, and waited.

Isotep had awakened.