The dimly lit room shook slightly as the mercenaries battered the citadel’s door once again.  Dust fell from the stone ceiling, coating everything below in a fine powder.  Sir Rivence leaned forward on his stool to gently brush the specks from Simone’s face. 

As he sat back, he gazed in anguish at his beautiful wife turned cold and lifeless on their bed.  By now, the red blankets covering all but her head had been turned white with the falling dust.  He repeated the process as powerful hit sent another shower from the ceiling.  

They had been married for five wonderful years before she died, and they had been considered Keln’s finest rulers in years.  The townsfolk had been content, and he had brought a previously unheard of level of prosperity to their town.  Those had been the best years of Rivence’s life, when he had been surrounded by adoring subjects and had the woman he loved beside him. 

Only in hindsight did he see that their blessing had become a curse.  The unprecedented wealth that Keln had amassed had also attracted unprecedented attention for the town, and it soon found itself under attack by those wishing to pillage their wealth.  

He still could not believe how quickly the mercenaries had encircled the town, trapping those inside.  Had he but listened to Simone’s advice, they could be safely away by now, smuggled out by swift horses as the enemy approached.  He had refused to flee.  His honor would not allow it, but now she lay dead.  

In his heart, he knew that the town would have held had the mortal disease not reared its ugly head.  The first cases had been reported two weeks after the siege began, and everything had been done to stop its spread.  The bodies had been burned and citizens had been quarantined, yet the disease had spread throughout the town like wildfire.  

Even now he had no idea how Simone had become infected.  He had ordered her to remain their chambers, and only he had been allowed to enter.  He had brought her meals, and the plan had worked for a time.  Somewhere something had gone wrong and she too had grown ill.  

When he had found out, he had been desperate to find a cure.  He had searched the entire town, but nobody could help him, so he had been forced to sit helplessly by his wife’s side as she had faded away.  

When her last breath had finally left her body, Rivence had grown uncontrollably distraught.  He had refused to leave her bedside, and had continued to gaze at what had once been his loving wife. 

At first, his men had tried to come to him for guidance in the town’s defense, but he had refused to talk with them.  He felt a twinge of guilt as he thought back on how he had abandoned his people in their time of need, but that was over now.  And soon, very soon, it would all be over.  

He took a moment to glance out of the window.  Everywhere there were flames and smoke.  The town in which he had spent his entire life was quickly being reduced to nothing.  He could not bring himself to dwell on the fate his beloved people would be subjected to after this battle was over.  

A mighty crash shook the keep more violently than any before.  From the cries below, Rivence could tell that the battering ram had broken through the oak doors and the mercenaries were now streaming into the great hall.  Soon the loud clangs of metal greeted his ears, and with them came a new sound: the shrieks of the wounded as they were struck down.  

Rivence could only shudder as he thought of his poor townspeople fighting against all odds to save those who were huddled behind them.  Those men-at-arms who had been so proud on the training field were now discovering how inadequate their preparations had really been.  They had never been intended to hold their own, but to simply support the knights as they rode to battle.  

The problem was that the few knights who had been in the town when it was besieged were all long-dead.  They had been heroes, true legends of Bretonnia.  Some died as the walls were overwhelmed, but most had been cut down as they tried to delay the surging masses of attackers.  They had stood bravely in the streets to give the civilians a chance to flee from their homes, and they were killed where they were.  

They were not knights of Keln, but they had given their lives to protect its people.... given their lives while Keln’s lord sat in a tower.  They had never questioned him, never muttered against his inaction.  They were all too noble to dishonor a man mourning his wife’s death.  Yet now all of those fine defenders lay dead, and there was nobody to stop the mercenaries from butchering Rivence’s soldiers.  

As he sat listening, the screams of dying men were replaced by those of terrified women and children being herded off toward an unspeakable future.  Their shrieks pierced his ears, and he began silently to weep.  How had he stood by and allowed his town to be destroyed? How had he been such a coward? 

Swallowing, he stood for the first time in days.  His hands trembled as he moved to the wall where his mail, shield, and sword hung unused.  With the speed of one practiced in war, he donned his armor and shield.  Finally he turned to the sword, which he held in his hands for a long moment, allowing himself to feel its weight.  At last he buckled on the scabbard and faced the room.  

Tears were now streaming down his face as he made his way toward the lamp sitting by Simone’s bed.  It had been a small source of comfort for him in times past, but it would now be the cause of indescribable pain.  Lifting it, he gazed once more at his beloved wife and whispered, “My dear, I pray that we will meet again.  But until then, I will not let them take you.”  With that, he threw the lamp onto the bed, which burst into flames.  He stood silently for a few moments, watching the fire consume his wife, the one person he had loved beyond measure.  

When he could no longer see her face, he turned and walked toward the great hall.  The corridor ended far too quickly, and he was now forced to see the full extent of the massacre.  Everywhere blood stained the stones, and bodies lay limp upon the floor.  The few women and children who had escaped to the keep were being lined up by the doors.  Some pled for mercy, but most simply looked defeatedly at their feet.  They had accepted their fate, and they were broken.

Sir Rivence strode quietly into the room, ashamed at having allowed this to befall his people.  It was a small boy that saw him first, shouting out excitedly and pointing to him.  The mercenaries whirled around to face him, their faces shocked.  They had not thought there were any defenders remaining in the keep.  Now face with the town’s lord, they were unsure of what to do.  

Raising his voice, Sir Rivence addressed the hall, “My people, I cannot express my pain at seeing you in this state.  I knew in my heart that I am responsible for this, and I do not ask your forgiveness. It is far too much to ask of you, who have suffered from my selfishness.  I ask only that you remember your defenders fondly, for they fought valiantly to secure your freedom.  It is me that you should blame.   As for our enemies, who among you dares to fight me? Is there a champion among you that wishes to test his skills? Surely one of you desires to hang my bloodied shield from your tent this night and proclaim to all the world that ‘It was I who did kill Sir Rivence, Lord of Keln?’”  

Stepping forward, one of the mercenary captains answered, “You are a very strange man, Sir Rivence.  You stood by and did nothing as your people were slaughtered and captured, yet now that the battle is all but over, you seek a challenger. Hmmm, very odd indeed. Yes, I shall take your challenge, and I shall have whatever small honor can be gained from slaying you.”   

The man drew his blade and advanced on Sir Rivence, grinning.  Once they were within a few feet, he lunged, forcing the knight off balance.  As his opponent chuckled, Rivence regained his footing and attacked.  Forward and forward he pushed, the mercenary captain giving ground as he parried Sir Rivence’s fearsome blows.  Then the man ducked and slashed backwards quickly with his sword, driving it into the knight’s leg.  With an agonized gasp, Rivence sank to his knees, pain overwhelming his will to fight.  “No, I must continue,” he thought.  Leaning heavily on his sword, he began to stand.  A loud click drew his attention upward.  The captain stood above him, a pistol pointed at Sir Rivence’s head.  The knight sighed. “I am coming, my love.” 

The Beast

It appearedfrom the shadows. Those flaming eyes! It screamed, the shrill shriek shatteringher eardrums. It’s eyes! Their flames gripped around her throat. Fire! Theflash of lightning and her neck, her chest was on fire! The shrieking stopped.She gurgled. After all those years the daemon had returned. Now there wasnothing but silence.

The Ruins

Grandeurwasn’t the first word to spring to Eugène’s mind as he approached the shadow ofthe castle he had left as a boy. Grotesque, perhaps, but that is exactly whyhis initial excitement, stirred by the scant few memories of his childhoodfaded and blended into a newborn melancholy. Seven years of spring and summer hespent at the bastion of Proust, a small village which lay in a V formed by twoslowly meandering rivers merging into one. The river Saramago, on whose bankshe had fished and in whose water he had swum and from where he would return inthe evening, exhausted and wet, but with a childish sense of fulfillment. Howdifferent these hills were in the drizzle of an autumn afternoon, he thought ashe tried in vain to wipe his moustache dry with his leather glove. He spurredhis horse and proceeded along the muddy path to the keep’s gate. He passed asingle peasant on his way, but couldn’t recognize the face of the hunchbackedman hurrying through the puddles, shielding himself from the rain.

Hestopped his horse at the gate and called out for the guard. A miserable thug onthe wall, clumsily dressed in the castle’s colours asked him his name. EugèneMarcel of Proust, he answered the gateman, who reluctantly let down the bridge,knowing that he would have to lift it again after the lost son had entered theshadows of a former glory. Melancholy, and it occurred to him that houses,roads, avenues, alas, are as fugitive as the years. He left as a boy, returneda man, but he never returned to what he had left. The dark, wet masonry of theinner keep wasn’t the same stone he had thrown rocks at as a boy. The donkeyshe had in the summer sunlight weren’t those clustered together under the onetree inside the walls, seeking shelter from the worsening rain. Althoughmemories came back to him, they were no more than memories, trying in vain tomaterialize before his eyes and suddenly he began to wonder, are they stillalive? How long had he been away? He had counted seventeen winters, but he wasopening the doors of the ruin of his memories. Mighty walls had been reduced toworn barricades and the proud banners of the inner keep were torn or gonecompletely. What he saw was to his past a mere ghost.

***

Shelightly tapped her boney fingers on the wooden armrest as she stared into thehearth’s fire with hollow eyes. Save from the fire’s light and the scantsunlight that fell through the only window, the room in which they were sittingwas dark. He sat on a stool close to the fire, desperate to expel the chillfrom his bones, while she sat some distance away and had long given up on thatfight.

When hehad entered the room, there had been only one thing to pass his lips beyondsilence; how? How? He asked her but she hadn’t answered him, she just staredinto the fire and he would have thought her dead if she hadn’t beenmonotonously tapping the armrest. Grotesque, her face, deeply carved linesrunning across her forehead and down her cheeks, yet she could be no older thantwenty-two. The memory of the little girl stretched out her young, fragile armto the old woman in the chair, but those hollow eyes just stared at theever-changing fire, who knows what she saw?

Yearslater, he would describe the silence from his memory as cold and endless, herecalled her greasy hair carelessly draped down over her chest and down to herlap, the endless flicker of the flame reflected in her eyes. A vision mostlyimagined in shades of pale blue, her fiery eyes the only contrast, amplifiedthrough the years.

I couldcontinue “in truth, the embers were barely reflected in her matte eyes and herdress wasn’t a pale shade of blue, but rather an old white that had long becomea dark red around her groin,” but I reject the notion of truth and falsehoodsin memory. It is unnecessary to condemn Eugène for telling a factual falsehood,to consider his image of blues and coldness a lie. I consider it neither afalsehood nor a lie, but the most truthful representation of his experience ashe saw the ghostly appearance of his younger sister, like a mirror thatinverted the years.

He hadasked her what had happened to the keep, to the family, to the village on theriverbanks many times before the sunset – he could tell by the lengthening shadowson the bare stone floor – and he had already given up hope, staying only forthe warmth of the fire, when at a moment not long before sunset – the room litby a deep red rectangle on the wall and a smaller flame in the hearth – shebegan to scream.

Youwould expect the piercing scream to have shocked Eugène, but instead he merelylooked up. After hours of idly sitting before the small flame, submitting tothe cold as it crept into his bones, the memories of sunlight, fishing and hislittle sister in the fields, he stood up. The eyeballs of the woman almostburst out of their sockets as she screamed and he remembered the fits she hadwhen she was young. He always knew she had been possessed by some sort ofdaemon. The Beasts lurked in these forests. With a decisive cool, he folded hisfingers around the hilt of his sword and unsheathed it. At the sight of themetal blade, the woman vomited and fell out of her chair. She mimed somethingwith her mouth; words came out, but he didn’t pay attention. The red light ofthe setting sun almost blinded him as he moved forward and she stumbled away innew found horror. He quickly caught up with her and struck. She saw a settingsun. A setting sun that shaded the castle’s last grotesque into life and diedout in the twilight.

The Fable of the Grotesque and the Finch

A youngfinch once landed on the shoulder of the sitting stone grotesque. “Mustn’t itbore you to look at the same road every day?” she asked, to which the grotesquereplied, “but that road was different yesterday, those trees were differenttoday, people walk and ride along the road and they all leave their mark. Everyday I see a different road; it never bores me.”

So wemust remember that we never see everything before our eyes and can recall lessstill.