Ellas Past

Kane

Hours passed as the three of us sat in silence.

Garath faced the trees before us watching for Gremok, his bladed hands now resting in his lap, the rut he had gouged almost encircling him as he sat.

I sat, arm outstretched, with an almost black flame standing six inches high burning in my open palm.

Only moments before, Anna had sat with a serene look upon her face, almost as if the fate of the world did not hang upon what came next, but after I had called the flame, and as it slowly grew darker, a look of horror had filled her face.

‘What is it that you do, Kane? It is not of our magic. It is… it is evil. You must stop it, Kane! It brings darkness. Stop!’ There was a wild look was in her eyes, and her hands began slight movements that I knew with a precursor to one of her magic's.

Abruptly, I closed my hand and extinguish the flame, and then meeting her eyes, I said, ‘I'm sorry, Anna. I should not have done that. What you say is true… it is a thing of darkness, a thing that he placed upon me. A part of him, he said. Sometimes I—’

‘A part of him? What do you mean, Kane? Tell me!’ There was a sense of urgency in her voice, and shock filled her face. ‘Tell me what he did to you!’

I was taken aback by her tone, and stared at her for a long moment before I answered. Garath had turned to face us, his now almost giant like face was filled with concern at Anna’s tone.

Hesitantly, not knowing how she would react, I said, ‘He said that he gave to me his most precious of gifts. He gave of himself, he said… his essence. He said that I would be as a son to him. It is inside me now… it is always there. Sometimes, as it did just, it calls to me. It is evil, I know, but calling the flame drives away the urge to do more.’

Anna's face drained of all colour. ‘You have not spoken of this before,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper and yet each word was filled with accusation. ‘Part of the foul one lives within you, and you thought not to mention it!’ Her voice was louder now, anger replacing the accusation.

‘Anna—’

‘Tell me what he did! Tell me now!’ Gone was the young woman, gone was my friend. Someone, something, else now sat before me and demanded answers.

Garath stood and towered behind Anna. His huge chest was rising and falling in quick short breaths, highlighting his obvious agitation.

‘You were his?’ he asked, as he stared down at me over Anna's head. ‘But you look… he did not change you!’

‘Be silent, and sit please, Father. Let him answer my questions. I must know if what he has said is true.’

‘Oh, it’s the truth, Anna. You saw what I did just, and you know it to be his darkness. Why do you then question—’

‘Because I did not see it in you… I have never felt it in you. I did not feel his presence as I did with Gadrid. I… I still do not feel it.’

Her anger had subsided, but still the Anna who spoke was not the woman I knew. It was almost as if someone else directed her words –the face and the voice was Anna, the girl Anna that I had known for the months since my return, but the eyes, her words, and the chill in her tone, belonged to someone else.

‘Who are you, Anna? Who is the person who now stands before me? You are not the Anna I know,’ I said, with certainty in my voice.

Anna lifted her eyes to mine, and then, slowly, ever so slowly, the ice that was in her eyes melted, and the blue that was Anna shone through.

‘It was I, Kane. It was but a side of me that I had no need to show you until this day. What you did just, what you showed of yourself, terrified me. It is a thing I did not think possible… and I must know what he did. I must know what it is. Please, Kane…’ Her voice trailed off, but it was the voice that of my Anna once again.

‘You both terrify me at this moment. Can we not be as we were when my brother was here?’ Garath asked, almost pleadingly, from where he now sat on the grass by Anna’s side.

I had not even noticed him sit, so intent had I been on Anna’s words. ‘That is a very good idea, Garath. Do you not agree, Anna?’

Anna did not hesitate, she immediately said, ‘Yes,’ and nodded her head vigorously. ‘Please. That is a very good idea.’

‘Thank you, Anna,’ I said, and after a slight pause, ‘I will tell you all that you wish to know… both of you. But I did not try to hide it from you, Anna. Truly I did not. I did not even think to tell you of it. So rarely does it manifest itself that I seldom think on it at all myself.’

‘I know that now, Kane, and I believe all you say. But panic and terror took me when I saw… no, when I felt what you did. My world went cold and dark before I even saw what you held in your hand. But I must know, Kane… I must.’

‘I will tell you, Anna. I will tell you all that he did that day… all that I remember.’ Then, as I began, memories flooded my mind, terrible memories of long ago.

####

‘He stood over me as I lay manacled on the hard stone altar, a Nargu for each limb and one holding my head. For what he did, chains alone would not have held my body as still as he wished.

‘‘‘Hold him!” he screamed. “Yes, hold him who will be as a son to me,” he said, as he broke into a terrifying laugh that cause me to soil myself.

‘‘‘They thought that he would save them. But they were wrong. Wrong! He could save no one!”

He laughed again as he spoke the last words. “It was I who would be their saviour… but they rejected me! She rejected me!”

‘He did not talk to me, I knew. This was how he was sometimes. He would rant and rage, but all his words were for himself. This was when he was at his worst, and all around him would be filled with terror at what he would do next.

‘‘‘But how they suffered for what she did… for what she said. She fled, but they paid the price. Yes, they did!”

‘His laughter was terrible to hear, and the Nargu's hands that held me shook even as they tried to hold me still.

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'I think that at such times, moments when he ranted so, I saw the true Dar’cen. Not the face that won over so many with his guile and compulsion, not the evil one that fed on fear and death, but the true creature that lived in his heart. As you have said, Anna, I believe that I, too, felt all that he was, and all that he has done. I do not remember what it was that I saw, only the memory of seeing… and the terror remains. But I believe that I saw what he truly was at such moments.

‘Then, just as suddenly as his madness had come, for that is what I believe I saw then, he was himself again.

‘‘‘You will be my child,” he said, again laughing that vile and terrifying laugh. “I give to you a gift beyond all others. I give to you of myself… my essence shall live within you… and you shall be my child.”

‘One of the Nargu dared to lift his hands to his ears. An instant later, he lay dead upon the floor, his blood covering me and those others that still held me. But still he laughed, even as his eyes gorged upon the fear that filled the room.

‘‘‘My son,” he said, and then darkness filled his eyes, a darkness akin to the flame you saw. It drank in the light around it, and ice seemed to fill the air. His eyes, those so very black eyes, filled me with a despair greater than any that had come before, and with every second, I sank lower and lower into a world of complete darkness. I know no other way to explain what it was that he did. All became blackness… no light, no hope, no life. I remember no more of what he did that day.

‘Later, perhaps days later, I awoke in my cell, and was taken to him almost as soon as my eyes opened. He seemed pleased with me at first, but after days of his terrible lessons in how to use the great gift he had bestowed upon me, his madness came again, and he did things to me then that even now I do not wish to talk of.

'I could not use his magic, you see. Yes, small things like the flame, but not what he wished of me. And so I was punished. What he did was worse than anything that had already been done to me… and all that came later.

'It was because he could not take back what he had given, I believe. I heard him rant such words when I was coherent enough to hear. His essence he could not take back, and he was less because of what he had bestowed upon me.’

Anna moved closer, held me, and comforted. ‘I am sorry, Kane,’ she said. ‘I had to know, I had to understand… and there is more still that I must know… more that I must do.’

I looked into her eyes and gave a slight nod of my head. I knew what she wanted, what it was that she had to do.

‘Be careful, Anna,’ I said. ‘It is a dark thing that lives within me. I myself do not touch it… With the flame, I believe that I merely vent it's frustration at its captivity within my being… be careful.’

Anna smiled. ‘Always, Kane,’ and with that she gently took my head in her hands.

Garath stared down at the two of us; he was now standing. ‘I will watch for my brother's return,’ he said, as he turned his back and took a few steps toward the trees.

Even as I stared at Garath’s back as he walked away, Anna's eyes drew mine to hers. Mere seconds, and I could not look away. Her eyes were deep blue pools that drew to them my very being. Slowly, a warmth spread through me as Anna entered my mind… as she became me.

Only seconds passed and suddenly Anna shuddered, her eyes becoming wide.

‘I cannot see this! I must not see this!’ Her words, her feelings even, screamed in my mind.

I knew that she was terrified, and I knew also that it was not the demon – she was on the brink of knowing me, all of me. She would know of my past, the one thing that she dare not know. I frantically tore her hands away from my head, and she flopped limply to the floor, her eyes wide, staring almost lifelessly at the sky above.

I dropped to my knees at her side, as Garath hurried back to us. Anna was still, not moving, barely breathing.

‘What have you done to her?’ Garath growled. ‘What have you done to my daughter?’ The steel blades of both his hands were longer now, almost as if his anger somehow caused them to gain in length.

I ignored him as I took Anna's head and placed it upon my lap. I stroked her hair, and spoke to her gently, ‘You are safe now, Anna. The future is safe. Wake; for it is safe… you can no longer see that which you should not—’

‘Safe? What did you do?’ Garath growled again, as he took a step closer.

‘Be at ease, Father,’ Anna said, her voice a whisper. ‘Kane has done nothing. I was foolish and rash… I did not consider what it was I did.’

Looking at me, she smiled. ‘Thank you, my friend. You saved me… you saved us all.’

Garath let out a huge sigh. ‘What is this that you both talk of? What is it that you did that was foolish, Daughter? What danger was there? It was but a moment that I left you,’ he said, obviously completely at a loss as to what had just happened.

‘Dreams, Father,’ Anna said, as I helped her to sit upright. ‘Those very same dreams that first brought me to you. The dreams that you urged me to heed and never dismiss… The prophecies brought to me this man, Kane, who hold me now. And my dreams told of how I must not know of him… that who he was must remain closed to me.

Garath glared at me silently as Anna spoke, and then, sitting with a grace that belied his huge stature, he said, ‘Forgive me, friend of my daughter. I spoke in haste and in great anger.’

‘I would have said no less, Garath,’ I said, with a smile. ‘But what now, Anna? Do you need to risk all again to see what it is that he gifted to me?’

A wry smile crossed Anna's face. ‘That will not be necessary, Kane. Time… time passes slowly where one's thoughts are concerned. When I called to you, I had already found and contemplated the dark thing that he placed within you. It was as I pulled away that I was drawn… No, that is wrong, not quite how it was…’

The wry smile was now gone from Anna's face as she pushed away from me and sat upright, silently looking far, far away. ‘It pushed me,’ she said, finally. ‘It knew that I must not see, and so it tried to force me to see your past, Kane.

'That which is within you is not just evil, it lives.’ Anna's voice trembled as she spoke. ‘It lives,’ she repeated, in a whisper.

A chill ran down my spine and my hands grew clammy as I took in her words. Could it be true? He had given of himself, he’d said. His essence, he’d said. Until now, I believed that he’d given some of his power, or a portion of his magic. But Anna said that it lived. Could it truly be a part of him, a part of his being, his soul?

I shuddered ‘Are you sure, Anna? Sure that the thing inside me, the essence that he said he gave to me, is alive?’

Anna hesitated, and then she slowly made eye contact. ‘What it did was subtle… devious, even. I did not feel what it did. Only now, thinking on what I did, do I recognise and understand. As I contemplated this thing, this essence, for it is not a physical thing that can be touched, I see that it, too, saw me, and it sought out my weaknesses.

'Now, I feel its touch… it was so very subtle. Yes, it lives, Kane. It is not simply some manifestation of Dar’cen’s power.’ Anna paused, a frown upon her brow.

‘He said that you were to be akin to his child. His gift, I believe, was truly a part of his being, and he intended that it consume you completely, so that you would eventually become as he.’

A dread filled me. I had lived with this thing, his essence, for years, and yet never contemplated what it might truly be, or what it might do to me.

‘So why did it fail, why did it not take me? Do you know? Can you guess, even?’

‘It lives, Kane. Yet somehow, it is contained… confined to little more than that which he originally gave to you. I believe—’

‘But how?’

‘That I do not know. Your body, your being, I should say, somehow resists it, and stops it from growing as it wishes. The evil strains against something that I could feel. But what it is that holds it, I do not know.’

‘But, the flame? How —’

‘You said yourself, that it is something that you do to drive away the urge to do more. Perhaps when you release the flame, you feel the pressure it exerts, and so choose to release it from your being. Truly I do not know, Kane. But it lives, and it is evil beyond imagining. And yet somehow, you contain it.’

‘So what do I do? What can I do?’ I asked, the dread I still felt, creeping into my voice.

Anna smiled and put her hand on mine. ‘There is nothing to do, Kane. I do not believe that it can harm you… and I know of no way to destroy it without…’ her voice trailed off, and her eyes slid away from mine.

‘Without what, Anna? What was it you intended to say?’

Slowly, Anna turned her eyes to mine again. ‘It lives in you, Kane. It is a part of you, and I fear that you would not survive its destruction.’

Throughout our conversation, Garath had remained quiet, though his blades did rake back and forth on the ground around him. ‘Are you sure, Daughter? Is there nothing you can do? This thing, his essence, can he tell where it is? Surely, he must hunt for it… its loss makes him less.’

But not this Dar'cen, I thought. He is whole; it is only in the future, in my time, that he is less.

‘Can this be used against him somehow, Anna,’ I asked, before she could respond to Garath.

Anna's eyebrows raised at my question, and for a long moment she seemed to think deeply on what I had asked.

‘I do not know, Kane,’ she finally said. ‘Though perhaps, just perhaps, this thing that he gifted to you may be his undoing.’