Subject: [FFML] [3 of 4][Ranma][Fanfic] Waters Under Earth - Chapter 29
From: "Alan Harnum" <harnums@hotmail.com>
Date: 11/17/1998, 12:40 AM
To: ffml@fanfic.com

Waters Under Earth

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum - harnums@hotmail.com

All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakukan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.

Homepage at:  http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/9758

Commentary is welcomed and appreciated, sent publicly or 
privately.

Chapter 29 : The Halls of Night (3 of 4)

     The sixth shrugged, the lush body underneath her dark dress
moving with the motion in ways that Mint and Lime found 
distinctly interesting.  "So take it off."

     "Wiyeed said not to," the youngest girl said.  "We're
supposed to do what she says now."

     "I heard from one of the older sisters that she had one of
the men put in her bedroom," the fifth said.

     "Her brother is here too," the first girl informed the
others.  "I've heard he's very handsome."

     "Wiyeed has a brother?" the second asked.
     
     The first nodded.  "Very handsome," she assured.
     
     "I'm taking the paralysis off the little one," the sixth
girl said.  She waved a hand at Mint, who was surprised to find
himself suddenly able to move.  "Hello there.  I'm Xiandan.  Who
are you?"

     Mint sat up and looked around, his eyes wide.  "I'm Mint,"
he squeaked.  "You're girls, right?"

     "Of course we are," the youngest girl said, glaring at him
suspiciously over a cutely upturned nose.  "Men are very stupid
creatures, aren't they?"

     "Wow!" Mint said.  "Girls!  Can me and Lime touch your
breasts?"

     "Knock him out again, Xiandan," the third girl said.  "He
obviously has no idea how to behave like a civilized person."

     Xiandan waved her hand again.  Mint's eyes closed, and he
fell quite contentedly asleep.  "Oh well," she said with a bit of
disappointment.  "The big one is cuter anyway."

     "Men are so boring," the youngest girl declared again.
     
**********     

     Herb looked back at Kima for a moment.  "Wiyeed said they're
being taken care of.  Why do you ask?"

     "I wanted to know," she replied.  It would be her luck to
get stuck alone with the Musk prince, she reflected sourly.  She
had met Herb and taken an instant dislike to him; what he'd said
to her when they'd been trapped by the Ravager had only increased
that feeling.  It had hurt her, and when you were hurt, you 
either cried or got angry.  

     However, she had not spent ten years as seneschal without
learning diplomacy.  Animosity aside, Herb and his people, along
with his sister, could make powerful allies.  They needed allies
now.  Ranma had made it easier, but even after all this time, she
was still unsure if his interests were always for the best of her
people.

     "So," she said conversationally, "how did you come to know
Ranma Saotome?"

**********

     Wiyeed glanced over to Ranma as they walked down the long
flight of steps.  "How did you meet her?"

     Ranma blinked.  "Huh?"
     
     "Kima."
     
     He smiled as he walked beside her.  "Haven't I told enough
long stories tonight?"

     Her eyes prompted him silently.  He sighed and began.
     
**********

     "He jumped in after you?"
     
     Herb nodded.  "I did not believe it myself at first.  That
is why I owe him my life debt.  There are few I can think of who
would do such a thing for a foe."

     Kima smiled slightly.  "He would."
     
     Herb nodded again.  "He is... different from when I first
met him.  Hearing what has happened, I can understand why."

     "He was not raised a warrior in the way you or I was," Kima
said.  "He was not ready to kill when he did."

     "You must always be ready to kill," Herb said slowly.  "A 
foe you leave alive may strike you down later."

**********

     "I killed Saffron," Ranma said.  
     
     "Killed?"
     
     He nodded.  "I... guess I probably realized it at the time.
He came back to life.  But I still killed him.  Maybe that's 
where all this began, when I first started being willing to go
that far.  Maybe a part of me likes it."
     
     Wiyeed shook her head.  "I don't think so.  You saved my
brother's life.  I sense in you a great respect for the sanctity
of it.  Such respect is a core of the Lady's teachings."

     "What power does she have?" Ranma asked.  "The dragon under
Ryugenzawa was the power of life, and the one under Jusendo was
change, transition..."  He paused.  "Then she is..."
     
     Wiyeed nodded.  "Everything comes in time, Ranma.  The Lady
is the great gatherer, the last river.  Her love is so great that
it enfolds all things in time.  Death must occur.  Once you
realize a thing is inevitable, it removes some of the terror of
it.  Do not mistake dominion over something for the enjoyment of
that dominion."

     Ranma looked at his hands and was silent for a long time.  
The stairs wound deeper into the depths of the mountain; he heard
singing, and the flowing of water.  "Every life I have taken is 
like a stain upon me.  Every death I cause diminishes me."
     
**********

     Kima raised one eyebrow.  "And how many have you killed to
learn this valuable lesson?"

     Herb was silent for a moment.  "None yet.  But I have never
been unwilling."  He looked up over his steepled hands at her
across the table.  "And you?"

     "One," Kima said.  "Perhaps one day, I will meet another man
who deserves death as much as Helubor did.  I pray that I do 
not."
     
     "You must always be ready to kill," Herb said.
     
     "Isn't it also as important to be ready not to?"
     
     Herb was silent again for a time.  Finally, he nodded.  "A
foe, in time, may become a friend."

     "Yes," Kima said reflectively, "they may."
     
**********

     "My brother and her.  You have a talent for making allies of
enemies."

     Ranma laughed.  "You don't know the half of it.  Ukyou, 
Ryoga, Shampoo, Mousse... maybe Tarou, even."  He paused.  
"Funny, isn't it?" he mused, more to himself than to her.

     They turned a corner of the winding stairs and stopped.  
There was a doorway.  Plain, undecorated iron, set flush into the
wall.  Ranma could not even begin to guess at how deep they were,
how far beneath the great rising weight of Chenmo Shan - called
Silence, but no silence still, for still the singing and the flow
of water over rock - they had come.

     "The Lady's place lies beyond here," Wiyeed said.  "From 
this point on, you shall go alone."

     "Why?"
     
     Wiyeed smiled, and reached up to gently brush her fingers
against his face, a lingering gesture.  "Everyone goes before the 
Lady alone."

**********

     Kima stared at Herb.  Herb stared back.  They had, it 
seemed, run out of things to say.  Their only uniting factor was
the mark that Ranma had left upon their lives.  Discussion of 
him, of how they had met him, was finished.

     Kima rose up from the table.  She inclined her head once.  
"I am going to try to send a message to my king."

     Herb raised his head questioningly.  "How?"
     
     "We of the Phoenix have our ways."  
     
     She walked out onto the balcony, brushing one limp wing for 
a brief moment against one heavy curtain.  Every time it seemed
she came closest to forgetting, she was not allowed.  Everywhere, 
she saw the traces of that which had vanished, the fragments of 
the lost.  Behind her, Herb was silent as she left the room.

     Out on the balcony, she folded her arms and shivered
slightly.  She wore the ceremonial robes of the seneschal of
Phoenix Mountain, but even those heavy garments did not offer
complete proof against the sudden chill wind that rolled up the
mountainside and across the balcony, carrying on it the faint,
whispered tinge of water.

     After a moment spent staring up at the sky, she pursed her
lips and sounded a long, high-pitched whistle that rose into the
darkness with the sound of water flowing, and the faint,
almost-audible singing.

     No answer came, and so again she whistled.  Waited.
     
     This time, there came the sound of wings, from high above.  
A shape sailed down within the darkness, and landed to balance 
perfectly on the railing of the balcony.  Not the dove she had 
expected, but he would do better.  An unexpected arrival.  
Serendipity, perhaps, or could it be that the message might 
summon the messenger?

     "Hello, Shiso," she said.  She stroked the great raven's
head affectionately.  "Is there anything that you don't get
involved in somehow?"

     The bird shrugged, and laughed croakingly.  "I am busy these
days indeed."

     "I have a message for Samofere," she said.
     
     Shiso laughed again.  "Of course you do.  I have messages
for you, and for Prince Herb." He raised one wing and stuck his
head under as if to preen his feathers, but his beak emerged a
moment later holding two rolled and tied scrolls of paper.  "Not
the time to tell you myself.  These will explain.  And what
tidings do you have?"

     She told him quickly of their meeting of Herb and Wiyeed, 
the Ravager's trap, and the probable presence of another servant
of the Dark within the area of Jusenkyou; the one who the Ravager 
had called gloried with his blood.  At that last, she saw the
bird start slightly, or perhaps it was only the blowing of the 
wind across his feathers.

     "Fly swift, friend," she said at the end.  Shiso nodded and
launched wordlessly into the air with a single beat of his wings.
He seemed to flow into the darkness almost instantly, become one
with it and vanish.

     She turned to go back inside, then paused and carefully
tucked the scroll with Herb's name on it into a pocket of her
robe.  She carefully untied the scroll addressed to her, and read
the short note in Samofere's neat, precise hand.

     She read it again, then slowly closed her eyes and bowed her
head.  All in vain, perhaps, all that she and Cologne had done to
conceal their purposes with Ranma at the start.  He was not going
to be happy when she told him.  She put her scroll away, took out
Herb's, and walked back into the room to hand it to him without a
word.

     "Who were you talking to out there?" he asked as he took it.
     
     "The messenger.  He brought this for you."
     
     He nodded, accepting the odd situation with a certain degree 
of royal poise.  His reaction, upon reading the scroll, was 
almost exactly what hers had been.  He bowed his head, closed his 
eyes, and let out a long, slow breath.

     "I must speak to my sister," he said, rising up from the
table.  "This news concerns both of us very much."

     Kima shook her head.  "You don't know your way around this
place.  You'll just get lost.  It's huge.  It... reminds me of
home.  Not surprising, really."

     "What do you mean?"
     
     She looked at him speculatively.  "Your sister told me the
history of this place after she woke me.  You don't know it?"

     He shook his head silently, half-turned away from her.  The
scroll was held tightly in one clenched fist at his side.

     "This mountain was home to people of my race in the time
before the Ravager's coming," she said.  "My people were the
original servants of the one she calls the Lady.  After the
Ravager destroyed Wurdsenlin, they were the first to endure his
fury."
     
     "What happened?"
     
     For a moment, she could not answer.  She had not wanted to
believe it when Wiyeed had first told her.  "He asked for their
allegiance.  The leader who ruled here in the name of the two
kings of the Phoenix Tribe had long been one of the Ravager's
followers, and he had brought many of those who lived here to the
worship of the Ravager's god.  Those who would not swear their
allegiance to the Ravager were slaughtered by their own people."

     She took a deep breath.  "When Shouzin the Traitor led his
followers out of Chenmo Shan to join with the armies of the
Ravager, they had been changed.  The Lady had cursed them, driven
them from the mountain and made it a place where death would find
any who dared attempt to enter it.  For over two thousand years,
it lay abandoned, until the founders of the Daughters of the
Night were drawn here by the Lady's power."

     Herb nodded slowly.  "I knew... very little of this.  The
histories of all our peoples are intertwined, it seems."

     "They are," Kima agreed.  "I think that it has begun again
to be so."

     Herb nodded again.  He turned back to face her.  The 
knuckles of his hand gripping the scroll were white.  "It has.
Have you ever heard of the belief that history moves in cycles?"

     "I have."
     
     "Perhaps we are coming to the end of one such cycle," the 
prince said slowly.  "The fall of Wurdsenlin marked the end of 
the golden age of our peoples.  And now the darkness rises 
again."

     He smiled.  There was no humour in it.  "Perhaps we have
come to the end now, Kima.  What are we, truly, you and I?
Fragments of fallen races whose time is past.  The world beyond
the confines of our homes is alien to us.  Do we even have a 
place in it worth fighting for anymore?"

     She stared at him in silence.  How many times had she had
those same thoughts, she wondered.  Dying peoples, slowly fading
away.  Would anyone remember the Phoenix Tribe in a hundred 
years?  

     "If our home is not worth fighting for, then what is?" she
asked finally.  "Will we lie down and die in silence?"

     Herb shook his head, his long hair flowing with the motion.
"I have never considered doing that.  My people... now that I 
have seen Wurdsenlin, seen what we were, I see how far we have
fallen.  How far we fell before, when the Childkiller ruled."

     The name made her stiffen slightly.  "I apologize for
calling you that when we first met.  It was not appropriate."

     Herb gazed at her, appraised her with a glance.  "No apology
is needed.  I beg forgiveness for what I said to you earlier,
about..."

     "It is alright," she said, cutting him off.  "It was only
the truth.  It hurt because I still do not want to believe it
entirely myself."

     "Please believe that I did not say it out of only cruelty,"
Herb said.  "I truly hoped that he would release you and my
sister and Saotome if I and my men stayed."

     "I believe you," she answered.  She turned away from him,
not wanting him to see whatever pain she might be showing on her
face.  "It does not make the hurt any less."

     "No," Herb said after a silence.  "I do not suppose it
would."

     She glanced back to him.  "You are forgiven for it.  I know
that the Musk have very little experience in how to properly
address women."

     Herb looked almost angry for a moment, and then caught the
glint of humour in her eyes.  He laughed then.  "I am learning
quite rapidly, it seems."

     The feeling in the room was comfortable now, companionable,
without any of the underlying hostility that had lain between the
two of them before.  Kima moved back to the table and sat down,
poured herself water from the pitcher.  Herb sat down across from
her.  Neither of them had asked the other about the contents of
the messages; they were both valuers of their own privacy, and
thus had a respect for that of others when it suited them.

     "You seem to know much of the history of my people," Herb
said after a moment.

     "The memory of Phoenix Mountain is long," she answered.
     
     "You know of Ganziao, at least," Herb said.  "What of 
Jinlung?"

     She shook her head.  "I know stories used to frighten
children, mostly.  The Childkiller; Ganziao Woman-Slayer."

     "Jinlung was the one who overthrew Ganziao and established
the roots of the Musk Dynasty as it is today," Herb explained.
"Ganziao reigned for three hundred years; the blood was purer in
those days, and more powerful.  He had only a dozen sons in that 
time, but he raised them to be as he was.  Each was sent out upon
his eighteenth birthday on a quest to... prove himself a man.  
The proof was in bringing back a human woman alive, and... 
defiling her before their father."

     Kima felt sick.  She stared at Herb in shock.  "That's
monstrous."

     Herb nodded.  "Yes.  Monstrous does not even begin to
describe Ganziao.  It was... a very dark time.  The Musk 
dominated the area of Jusenkyou.  He left the Joketsuzoku alone
for the most part; even he was not mad enough to oppose their 
magics, and he had seen what they were capable of in the battle 
against Fukwan.  But all other villages were in terror of him and 
his men.

     "Jinlung was his youngest son, and he was raised as all the
men of the Musk were in those days.  Taken from his animal mother
as soon as he was weaned.  Taught that women were only animals to
serve men.  And when he was eighteen, he was sent out upon his
quest."

     He smiled and stared at the scroll clenched in his fist,
lying on the table.  "It was written that the woman he first saw
was so fair that the stars might fall down from heaven at the
sight of her.  Somehow, in the seeing of her, he saw all the
monstrous wrongness of his father and of what the Musk had
become.  He began a rebellion.  His army was unstoppable.  One by
one, he slew his own brothers as they tried to oppose him.  He
came at last to his father.  Ganziao was ancient and powerful,
but Jinlung was something else altogether.  Their battle was said
to have shaken the very heavens, and at the end Ganziao lay dead.  
After three hundred years of terror, the Musk began to claw their 
way out of the darkness again.

     "The curse of the bloodline still remained, though, which 
was why the boys were always separated from their mothers.  It 
was to keep the males of the bloodline safe from the curse until
such time as they would be old enough to control it."

     Kima looked at him intently.  "And you are now?"
     
     Herb shook his head.  "Not... truly.  I think I am now.  I
was not before.  I had an... accident."

     "Accident?"
     
     He looked, of all things, embarrassed.  "There was talk of
arranging a marriage.  It wouldn't have happened, of course; my
father only thought I had grown old enough to be introduced to a 
woman.  There are certain conditions the first meeting is done
under, to make the onset of the curse slow and weak, but..."

     "What happened?"
     
     "I snuck out with Mint and Lime and went to Jusenkyou," Herb
muttered darkly.  "I already told you the rest.  Needless to say,
my first sighting of a woman was not... helpful to my control 
over the curse of the bloodline."
     
     "No doubt," Kima said flatly.  
     
     Herb stood up again and turned to face the doorway.  "My 
sister is taking her time." He seemed to desire no more 
conversation.  Kima gave a mental shrug and walked back out onto
the balcony to stare out at the vast sky.  There was an ache in
her heart still, and a phantom stirring of the maimed muscles of
her crippled wings.  The sky - the limitless, beautiful, 
unreachable night sky - seemed to mock her with the bright eyes 
of its stars.

**********

     Beyond the iron doorway, Ranma walked a slow and measured
tread down a sloping corridor.  The stone was worn smooth by the
long passage of many feet.  Light came from the same glass globes
that rested in every wall of Chenmo Shan.

     Down and down he went, until the sight of the door he had
entered from was gone behind the rise of that gentle slope, until
he walked only in a place where he could see neither beginning or
end.

     At last, he came - still with the sound of a voice singing
and of water over rock - to the end, to another doorway, a blank 
and featureless square of stone without hinges.

     He touched it, and it swung open silently.  A rush of cool
air came up past him and whispered down the corridor, and though
the globes of light held not flame, they flickered all the same
in its passage.

     Beyond was darkness, a blank expanse lit barely by the light
from the adjoining corridor.  Ranma saw rough stone floor before
him, perhaps at the edge a glitter as of water.

     Taking a deep breath, he stepped through.  Silently, the
door closed behind him, light fading to a thin slit, and then
vanishing altogether.  He felt no fear.  He stood in the 
darkness, with the sound of his own breathing, and the gentle
trickle of water over rock, and faint, very faint, the sound of a
voice lifted in song pure and sweet.

     This darkness, though absolute, was not like the darkness of
the place the Ravager had ruled between the waters.  It was
welcoming, soft even, an embrace.  An utter peace fell over him,
and he stood in the darkness.  Tension flowed from him; a 
stillness like a placid lake came down upon his soul.

     "Lady, I am come," he said at last.
     
     And then the light came.  A single thin silvery beam from 
somewhere high above, as if moonlight had distilled itself and
come rushing down through all the stones of the mountain to reach
the place.

     It struck the surface of the small lake that, and the light 
refracted as if from a prism, casting itself out in spears that 
struck the seams of white crystal that ran throughout the stone 
walls and ceiling of the low cavern.  It split again through 
them, never diminishing, growing greater second by second, until 
all of the cavern was filled with a soft glow.  

     Ranma saw the lake, small compared to the two that he had
seen before, beneath Ryugenzawa and Jusendo.  A few moments 
later, he would realize absolutely that size did not matter, 
form neither, not at this level of power.  Only that, in the end;
only the sheerness of the power.

     The surface of the glittering, dark, impossibly deep lake
did not move a ripple as the dragon rose in stately silence.  
The singing had stopped, and the sound of water flowing.  He
could not hear himself breathe; he was not breathing, he 
realized.  Too much awe to be allowed breath; too much beauty.

     Youngest and fairest and most terrible.
     
     The Lady, the Dragon of Death, was purest black, but the 
edges of her dark scales were rimmed with silver so pure it was 
almost white.  The form she had taken was tiny compared to that 
of her sisters; perhaps thirty feet from head to tail.  The 
majesty was no less; more, perhaps, as if the smaller size only 
emphasized the vast stored power behind those dark eyes, the 
might that was manifested now in physical form, but never truly
contained.

     *You understand,* the Lady said inside his head, as she 
rose from the lake.  Wingless, but there was an impression of
wings; the idea of the form, if not the realization.  Grace, pure
beauty of flight; wings might appear if wings were desired, and
yet for now, they were not.  *These forms are only our shadows.*

     Nothing, not even the voice of the dragon under Ryugenzawa,
eldest sister of this one, could prepare him for the sound of
this.  The speech of the Dragon of Life had been crescendo upon 
crescendo, overwhelming, overpowering with the sheer beauty of 
it.  The voice of the Lady plucked a single string at the centre 
of the heart and set the soul to sing in time.

     "Oh, Lady," he said.  He sunk to his knees, trembling, and
pressed his forehead to the rough stone of the floor as he bowed.
He was filled with light, with the shared grace of being in her
presence.  "Lady, Lady, Lady."

     *My child,* the Lady said.  He felt her power, the love of
it, the eternal peace, stroke across him in a caress.  He felt
his being laid achingly, painfully bare.  *My beloved son.*

     There was a ripple through the air, a soundless roar.  The
touch of power became the touch of fingers on his head, raising
him up to look into eyes that stretched back to the beginning and
end of time.  They were dark, so dark, and laden with the long
fall of years.  Sorrow there, and a single white scar upon one
cheek.  The hair was long and silky and dark; the Lady's scent 
was that of lilies and time.

     "Rise, beloved," the Lady said.  He rose; she was tall as he
was, so beautiful it made the world seem to stand still.  She
reached out and took one of his hands in one of hers.  Her grip 
was gentle, but irresistible as the pull of the tides.

     The Lady led him out upon the surface of the lake; they
walked upon it as if upon a gentle plain of grass.  Ranma stared 
into the dark depths that lay at the bottom.

     "What waters are these?"
     
     The Lady walked him further towards the centre; each of
their footsteps left a tiny, spreading circle.  "These are the
waters of forgetfulness, where all pain ends."

     A wind ran in a circle around them, stirring the water in
waves.  "Lord of Waters, have you come unto me to forget?"

     There was the answer in him; his mouth burned with it, and
the words leapt and coursed along his tongue.  Again, as there
had been before, there was a moment of decision; a moment of 
precarious balance upon which the fate of much hung.  He could 
choose; a choice was being offered.  Only in such ways as this 
are we free, and not but slaves.

     "No, Lady," he said.  "I have come unto you to remember."
     
     The Lady smiled.  She cradled his head in her hands.  With
gentle pressure, she made him look down, stare into the shadowy
waters.  He heard the rustle of cloth as she bent forward, and
gently pressed her cold lips to his forehead.      

**********

     Kima stared at the stars for a long time, and watched the
slow track of the moon through the sky.  In time, she heard the
door open in the room behind her, but she did not go back.  
Companionship, the presence of others, was too alien a thing to
desire right now.

     There was the speech of two voices, and then the sound of
footsteps.  Wiyeed came out onto the balcony, head bowed and
shoulders slumped.

     Kima glanced at her as the younger woman took a stance at
the railing of the balcony.  "How is Ranma?"

     Wiyeed shook her head.  "I don't know.  The Lady told me to
go back.  I suppose she must have known of the message..."

     For the first time, Kima saw that Wiyeed's face was wet with
tears.  "What was in the message?"

     "Our father is dead," Wiyeed answered in a whisper.  "Herb
is the king of the Musk now."

     A moment's hesitation, and Kima laid her hand upon Wiyeed's
shoulder.  "I'm sorry."

     "This changes everything," Wiyeed said, not even seeming to
notice the touch.  "Everything.  I should have known.  I could
have saved him, if only I'd tried harder."

     For a moment, Kima felt a kinship with Wiyeed so deep and so
painful that she could hardly bear it.  She could not speak, only
stand silent beside the other woman, listening to the faint
singing that came down from the highest point of the mountain,
and the waterfalls splashing down the sides.

     "You always feel that way at first," she said finally, the
old, familiar grief rising at the unwanted memories that were
coming back.  "But you only know what you could have done
differently because you weren't able to do it when it counted."

     Wiyeed turned her head slightly and their eyes met, pale
blue and a shimmering red.  Then, slowly, she nodded.  For a
brief moment, she rested her hand with Kima's where it lay upon
her shoulder.

     Taking it away, she wiped at her eyes.  "Herb and I must
talk alone.  Please make yourself comfortable here.  We will
return as soon as we are able."

     Kima nodded.  Wiyeed smiled weakly and slipped away, letting
the comforting hand fall from her shoulder.  In the room behind
the balcony, there was the sound of hushed conversation, 
footsteps, a door opening and closing.  Then silence but for
singing, and the water.

     Kima followed the descent of one waterfall, the long
splashing stream down the rugged slopes of Chenmo Shan, until it
passed out of sight beneath the shelf of a rocky cliff.

     Her father had looked much like her, or better to say that
she had looked like him.  He had smiled often, but she could not
recall ever hearing him laugh.  

     There had been the usual procedures when she was young; the
daughter of the most powerful family in Mount Phoenix had certain
roles to fulfil.  She had taken to the lessons well enough, the
old histories and learning of her people.  But nothing else; she
could not sew, or cook, or perform any of the other proper duties
of a lady of the Phoenix Tribe.  So in the end, perhaps there had
been nothing for her father to do but train her as a warrior,
against all expectations or traditions.  Perhaps he had hoped the 
hardship of it would force her back to more appropriate pursuits.  
It hadn't.  She had loved it.

     She had been strong; not some weak noblewoman, a pawn to be
married in the interplay between the noble families.  And now it
came to this; crippled, staring out at the sky that was denied to
her.  And remembering; memory no comfort, though, only grief in
the end.

     "Forgive me, father," she said, bowing her head and leaning
forward with her hands on the railing.  "I do not think this is
what you would have wanted me to become."

-Continued in section 4


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com