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From: li@Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus)
Subject: [LH] [OFFER] Kadrys/Kardia: Afterglow
Message-ID: <1993Oct14.172212.20782@data-io.com>
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Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1993 17:22:12 GMT
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[ADMIN:  This is posted for Andrea Evans and was written by her and me.]

-----------------

At one side of the largest room given over to the party, Rhythm Song vied
with the happy din of speech and the occasional ting of glasses.  They'd
been told by 'Raf to "keep things light, dudes, this is a party for a lot
of different kinds of people, and some of them just lost kids to that big
purple lizard, and some others are from off-world and you do NOT want to
mess with them, so keep it fun but not an orgy."  They'd followed those
instructions for several hours already, but some of the party people kept
asking for the more erotic drumsongs, and besides they were, well, bored.

As ar'Elya and Kadrys appeared, Dack nudged Dirk and grinned teasingly,
"Hey, lookit those two.  Too bad we can't..." and he pounded on the drum
in a slow, insistent beat.  Dack shook his head, grabbed his brother's
forearm.  "You crazy?  How'd'ya think she _or_ 'Raelf'd like us tryna
play that kinda stuff, after 'Raf said _not_ to?"
Karl broke off piping, and muttered over his shoulder,  "'Sides, you
horndog, remember ar'Elya can `push' back just as hard as any of us?
Anyway, even 'Raf tried the push with that Kadrys guy, and he couldn't
get a rise out of him.  ...Yeah, don't bother,"  Karl added, grimacing in
response to the twins' disappointed looks,  "...he looks like prime
fillet, but that's one _cold_ fish."
Anna was singing, so she couldn't comment aloud; but as her glance flicked
back and forth between the two new arrivals, her eyes widened in shock.

                                   *

ar'Elya and Kadrys walked together down the ramp from the tower, her hand
resting on his arm in the old, courtly manner.  But it was hardly a formal
entrance.  ar'Elya's appearance raised a general chorus of greeting and in
answer she turned her dazzling smile on her guests.  Kadrys stood and
watched as ar'Elya's friends concentrated on her.  At another time, he
might have felt left out.  Not now.  Now, the idea simply did not cross
his mind.  For no particular reason, a memory surfaced: a room with a wall
of glass looking over the sea.  Though he made no conscious decision, he
found himself backing away from the people around ar'Elya, and weaving
through the crowd toward the door.

                                   *

Kardia had watched the grand entrance with a smile and sipped an iced
latte with a shot of amaretto.  She had been a little surprised at how
many people sought her out once they'd found out about her silence.
It seemed that quite a few people needed someone to just listen, nod,
encourage, or laugh with.  The young woman who had agonized over
keeping a male friend, the fair elf who had been nonplussed at first
and then found her communication without words a grand game, the young
man who had been shocked to find his pity for her 'condition' rudely
laughed at, and the older woman who had been fun to banter with at the
beginning and who ended talking about her recently dead husband.  The
older woman's bones had been as light as a bird's when Kardia had
hugged her amid the crowd.

Sceadu had kept his quiet place amid the corners and shadows,
invisible to all but mage sight.  She took a break from the party to
ruffle his black fur, and got an odd look from one guest as her hand
disappeared and reappeared from the pocket reality.

Kardia quietly watched as Kadrys broke free of the crowd around
ar'Elya and grinned at the look on his face, the almost dazed look of
contentment.  She narrowed her eyes when she saw his whole body in
movement.  There was something uncharacteristically loose-limbed about
how he walked, it lacked the precision she remembered from the
Founder's Day party.  He drifted across the room and opened the door
as absently as brushing aside a gnat.  Kardia set down her glass and
started after him.  One by one, the shadows in the room changed shape
for an instant in her wake.

                                   *

The only light in the room came from the fireplace in the wall opposite
the window, which probably explained why it was deserted, in stark
contrast to the room Kadrys had just left.  He walked toward the window,
leaving the flickering wash of firelight behind.  He stretched out at full
length on a couch directly facing the wall of glass, settling himself with
a long, slow sigh.  To any ordinary eyes, he would have been lost in
shadows.  To his own sight, he had left the vivid warm radiance of the
fire, to enter into an equally strong light, but a light totally in
opposition to the fire's orange and gold.  This was a glow of the limpid,
profound blue of evening, the same shade that mortals see after the sun
has set, but before true night has fallen.  And yet, the deep azure light
did nothing to obscure the stars.  They stretched out to the horizon,
filling the void, blazing brighter and more numerous than any human eye
could see.  Gazing out at them, he felt their timeless humbling call, the
poignancy of their distance.  Far, far below, waves rippled silver in the
starlight, the calm sea a vast silken skin stirred by the pulse of the
world.  He could only just hear the waves through the thick glass, their
sigh so much like a sleeper, breathing.  The sea, the stars: a sight older
than worlds, eternity in motion.  And then, as if from a great distance he
heard a door behind him open.  He listened, drew a breath.  Kardia.

                                   *

She hesitated on the doorstep for the moment it took her to swap to her
low-light vision.  Her surroundings focused sharply, clear whites edged
with grey and truly black shadows.  She stood a moment longer in awe of
the view.  She walked in, grinned at Kadrys and waved when he looked up at
her.

He stared at her for a beat, and when she said no greeting he smiled and
murmured drily, "Another curse bites the dust."  There was no change in
his level tones, or his calm face as he added "...This would be Dasham's,
I suppose."  Kardia nodded.  Then she cocked her head and swept a hand
towards a nearby armchair.  Kadrys grinned for a moment.  "Feel free."

As Kardia sat down, the shadow in front of her chair shrugged and became a
calf-sized black hound.  Its massive head swivelled to face Kadrys, and
then the creature rose slowly to its feet and stared at him.  But the
ominous effect of its immense size and its glaring eyes, was offset by the
comical tilt of its head, a pantomime of puzzlement.  Kadrys grinned
whitely at the hound then glanced over to Kardia, "Who set the shadog onto
you?"  As Kardia erased old lines on her wax tablet, Kadrys held out a
hand to the hound, which was still poised between reactions.
"C'mon, then..."  The beast extended a head large enough to take Kadrys'
hand off in one bite, and after a long pause, snuffled at his outstretched
fingers.
"Rwyt ti'n gi doa."  Kadrys muttered, a strange lilt underlying his words,
and the dog lolled out its tongue in a toothy grin before padding back to
Kardia's chair and sidling into the darkness at her feet.

Kardia showed him the three lines on the wax tablet.  "Dasham.  Sceadu's
a Watcher.  What did you say?"

Kadrys shrugged a little.  "Oh I just called him a good dog, in a language
the wizard Dewinn used for speaking with shadogs.  Dewinn...  Nice fellow,
but a little too curious about the powers of darkness.  He met a succubus
in the end.  Fell for her, all the way.  Who knows, maybe he's even happy
there, with her.  Stranger things have happened..."

Kardia shook her head just a touch at the story and grinned.  She sat
back, erasing the tablet again.

He shifted a little, lying there, turned to fix his gaze once more on the
subtle silver of the stars and the surf.  His eyelids lowered as he
receded into contemplation.  "Ahyes, stranger things have happened
indeed..." he repeated musingly.  "...lately, they've been happening to
me.  You know what I am, Kardia.  But you do not know all of it, yet.  I
think I owe you at least that much of the truth."  He sighed, closed his
eyes, drew a long slow breath as if gathering strength for his next
words.

Kardia folded her legs under her and put her elbows on her knees and
then her chin in her hands to listen.

"...I am old, Kardia, very very old, even as my kind know age.  The
millenia I have endured number many times more than the years enjoyed by
living men.  And most of that time, I have spent in hiding, stealing from
sleeper to sleeper, taking their memories of me as well as their blood,
then passing into the night, forgotten.  Only in such total secrecy could
I be certain of safety; and in the long term, anything less than certain
safety means death...  I could not afford to be remembered, however
fleetingly.  How much less could I afford to make myself known?"

He opened his eyes, frowned slightly.  "...Yet, I chose to walk into the
light, into the Inn.  Why?  Why take that terrible risk?  Simply because I
had no other choice.  I have fought the long struggle to remain human, and
so far I have somehow managed not to fail.  But nothing remotely human
could survive the loneliness of total solitude for more than a few
centuries.  My desire for companionship grows until it becomes an
obsession, and then I must re-enter the living world; or else I would risk
adapting completely to my isolation, growing callous enough not to feel
the pain of it any longer.  And if that ever truly happens to me, I will
have lost my humanity."

He sighed.  His voice dropped into a meditative murmur, almost as if he
was thinking aloud.  His gaze drank in the calm beauty of the view.  "So,
I came to the Inn, simply to stand face to face with other people in the
light of day, tell them my name, know that when I saw them a second time
they would remember me, perhaps even be pleased to see me again.  I
expected to be able to do this only if I passed myself off as a living
man.  But when I stepped up to the bar, something made me ask Littlefair
if he served blood."  Kadrys gave a crooked grin.  "Perhaps I simply
wanted to know where I stood, find out for certain whether I had anything
to fear, or whether for once I would be able to _truly_ step out of the
shadows, and survive."  His face grew grimmer.  "There was probably some
trace of unconscious deathwish in the impulse, too.  I am always near the
end of my endurance before I can bear to make myself known to the world.

"The reaction surpassed my wildest hopes.  No spells, no blessings, no
stakes.  Not even a threat or an order to leave.  Just Serene, standing in
the kitchen doorway and asking me in that unflappable way of hers, whether
I could make do with fresh-killed game."  He chuckled softly, shook his
head.

"How could I know that that was the least of the wonders in store...
Wonders such as you, Kardia.  You knew almost nothing about me, before you
discovered my terrible secret.  And yet you neither fled nor tried to kill
me.  Instead you freely offered me your blood."  Eyes full of starlight
turned to meet hers.  "You trusted me with your life.  Such trust is a
truly precious thing."  He held her eyes for a long moment, before smiling
softly at her and lowering his head again, basking like a cat in the cold
hearth of the stars' fire.

Kardia felt herself blush a little.

"And the wonders have not ceased.  Your friend, Jameson..." he waved a
slow hand at the vista beyond the sheet of glass "...she is as full of
life as these heavens...  And then, there is 'Raelf..."  His voice was
filled with warmth.  "'Raelf.  One of the earliest to consider me his
friend.  He taught me that I could abandon my deepest self, surrender all
my secrets, and not only survive the experience, but be so _enriched_ by
it, by him...  To know the embrace of molten stone, to touch the heart of
the sun, to understand the song of the wind, feel the meaning in the
falling of the rain..."  He shuddered, closed his eyes.  When at last he
spoke again, his voice seemed to express of the quiet of the night, rather
than break it.

"...And finally, there was ar'Elya.  Ahhh, where in all the worlds, are
the words to describe the wonder of her?  The passion and the purity of
her, her gentleness and strength.  Love in all its facets.  A generosity I
have done nothing to deserve, that I can never equal.  She has given me
herself.  In her embrace I have been devoured and reborn.  The phoenix has
finally found his pyre, and a new life has arisen at last from the old."
He laid his bent arm over his eyes, and a spasm passed across his face.
In a living man, it would have been weeping.  It was a long time before he
resumed.  When he did, his quiet voice was full of strange resonances:
lost and wondering.

"...After all these miserable millenia, to have all this happen to me
now.  ...There is a story of an old tramp: Looking only for a doorstep
to spend a winter night, instead he was welcomed inside by the lord
and lady of the house, and given hot meat and mulled wine and a seat
by the fire.  ...I feel as he must have felt.  It's - it's all too
much."  Without warning, Kadrys sat up, stared at Kardia.  The sudden
black gaze had an almost physical impact.

She cocked her head.

"_You_ know what I mean.  You must have some idea.  That foot of
yours: you'd had time to start to get used to the loss, realize that
you would live with the pain and the maiming for the rest of your
life.  You _knew_ that it could never be restored.  How did you feel
when 'Raelf gave you back something you thought you'd lost forever?
How did you feel when he made you whole again?"  Kadrys' stare was
stark.  Kardia met it full on, and smiled at him, a slow smile full of
open joy.  She flung her folded legs out from beneath her and went up
on her toes and swept an elaborate bow in Kadrys' direction; and then
laughing, she bounced back into her seat and raised one eyebrow at him
in question.

He was staring out into the distance but this time Kardia did not
think he was drawing calmness from the view.  He looked too forlorn,
too lost for that.  As she watched his chest heaved, once, for breath.
She popped up again, concerned.  Then he whispered unsteadily, "I
don't know what to do.  I don't know how to react.  One moment I want
to _laugh_ for joy, just as you have done, but then the old caution
seizes me: 'It's all just too good to be true!  It _can't_ be real!
It can't be happening, not to _me_!'"

There was a long, long moment that sang with silent tension that
Kardia could feel in her own body.  She reached out to touch his
shoulder; but then, even as she watched, the anxiety that tightened
his face and turned his hands into claws, changed like the sea beyond
him, ebbed and drew away as gently as the tides.  He turned his head
to face her.  Slowly, so very softly, a smile dawned.  Not since that
first night when he had held her in his arms, had Kardia ever seen
such tenderness, such wondering delight in his face.

She laughed quietly and sat back down and her smoke dark eyes shone as
she listened to his next words.

"...And then - and then I remember, it _must_ be true.  For not even
in my most ardent dreams have I dared to wish for _so_ much love."
  

===============================
Copyright 1993 by Andrea Evans.  All rights other than those required for
electronic distribution and archiving reserved.  Kardia Xvaramene is the
copyrighted creation of Phyllis L. Rostykus, and is used with her
permission (and feedback).