Epilogue for a Lost Tale Read online

Epilogue for a Lost Tale

  By

  Lazette Gifford

  Copyright 2011 Lazette Gifford

  An ACOA Publication

  This story was previously published in Jackhammer Ezine.

  We rode with the wind in our faces. The horses dashed across the trickle of summer-dried streams and through woods thick with gnats and mosquitoes. Bright colors and shadowed hues blurred, faded and disappeared behind us, lost as surely as the past from which we fled tonight. We raced as if the day would be too short -- as if time mattered to us.

  It did not. The last person in our lives for whom time had meant anything had died, an old and shriveled man. I remembered him as a baby, and his mother as a young child. We had come back to witness his death, the last remote tie we held to the past.

  The Wizard and I had used our magic to scatter his ashes to the wind and sea before we rode away, running for places where the whisper of time and the death of others wouldn't reach us again.

  As the fall of night caught us, the Wizard and I came -- as we inevitably did in our tangled, long lives -- to a fork in the trail and a parting of ways. He would go back to his desert and I would return to my mountains. We would work our magic and sway the world in ways we hoped proved good, both for humanity's sake and our own. The Gods watched us very carefully. They didn't lightly give such gifts as we held.

  A small village sat at the crossroads. The place had been larger a lifetime ago, the last time we rode here. Now the buildings slipped back into gentle decay. The shadows of coming night hid us well as we rode down the trail from Corinport. We passed people who walked and barely noted us. They were used to strangers here along the caravan route and I enjoyed the moment of anonymity.

  When I looked to the north I could see the brush of fading sunlight against the mountain peaks. Not much farther --

  "Do not go yet," the Wizard whispered, soft words and a musical accent. He had stopped, my companion's face lost in shadows. "Don't leave yet. Let us go to the tavern and share a last cup of ale. When shall we meet again, love?"

  Love. For magicians such as us, who do not dare to whisper our True Names, the term still meant more than a passing endearment. I remembered a time when I longed for his arms around me and the touch of his desert-warmed hands on my bare skin. I wanted to feel the longing once more. I wanted anything to prove I still held some humanity and had not tossed it away on the wind with our old friend's ashes.

  "Sorceress?" he asked.

  "A cup of ale," I agreed. Whatever other emotions I felt I kept from my voice. I wanted the Wizard's company for a while longer. No one else remained with whom I could talk of old times or reminisce about lost friends. All the friends of our youth had died, and I had gotten used to seeing almost familiar faces in crowds of passing strangers. I had even begun to believe in reincarnation, though perhaps that came from a different longing I wouldn't admit aloud. I wanted to see lost friends one more time.

  The Wizard slipped from his horse and caught the bridle of mine, holding the stallion while I slid down, though no horse would fidget in my care. We bade our horses stay where they were. No one would see them either. Little magics made our lives easier -- small gain on a night like this.

  The tavern door stood only a few steps away. I could hear the boisterous call of patrons and the rough laughter of men who worked all day in the fields and saw no reason to hurry home to their drab wives and sniveling children. I had come to dislike such men who valued their plow horse over their family. They didn't understand what it meant to be deprived of such things.

  I had made my choice and I didn't regret. I put aside my bigotry and followed my dark-eyed, wild-haired counterpart from the desert. We had known each other longer than anyone else in the world had been alive. We'd been lovers before the birth of this generation's parents. I watched him as his hair caught in the wind and his gold chain and jewels flashed even in the smoky light from the tavern's doorway. Even his dark dark tunic glittered with a hint of gold thread. No one who saw him would forget his passage. The Wizard had always loved the show.

  I laughed when two men heading who had been heading for the same doorway made a hasty retreat and apparently thought they didn't want ale tonight after all. They quickly headed back down the village's narrow street and I wished them to go home and be kind to wives and children.

  "You should not do that," the Wizard said softly.

  "Maybe not," I conceded, stopping by the tavern steps. I didn't want to argue with him tonight. "But there are times when surely a little kindness can't be wrong."

  He watched where they had gone and nodded. "The last time we met I would have said you are playing petty games with their lives and forcing your morals on people who have no way to defend themselves against your power." He stopped and bowed his head. "I am no longer so arrogant to think your wish for kindness is wrong."

  He turned and headed into the wood and mud building while I stood, dumbfounded outside. He had seemed subdued since we met at the bedside of our dying friend. I hadn't thought it meant a basic change in him.

  The Wizard's entrance had brought silence to the room. I didn't want to create another stir so I hurried to join in his moment of glory. The silence extended long past my entrance though by the time the flustered serving girl had found us a suitable table, I could hear whispers begin to echo through the small room.

  They wouldn't recognize us, the dark foreign man and a winter pale woman -- strangers and strange, both of them. The patrons would be speaking of this night for months.

  The nervous girl arrived with ale in chipped, poorly made pitcher and matching cups. I didn't doubt she brought out the best they had. I wasn't certain I wanted to sip the contents, but I did appreciate sitting here with my longtime friend. Maybe we could remember the old days and speak without loss and bitterness of the mortals who had come and gone. Perhaps he could make me believe eternity was still worth the price.

  The other tavern patrons grew louder. The Wizard glanced back at them with a little scowl and waved his hand. The crowd turned away -- forgot we existed, in fact. The tingle of power struck me like a blow, catching me totally unprepared. He realized his mistake at once and reached across the table to cup my trembling hands within his own warm fingers. That proved to be a far more pleasant shock. I didn't pull away.

  "I'm sorry. Forgive me," he murmured with a regal bow of his head. Gold clinked like bells, a sound nearly as pretty as his voice. "That was unthinking of me."

  "Why did you do set the spell?" I asked, reluctant to draw my hands away from his embrace.

  "I did not want them to stare," he said. "And I wanted to speak to you in private. There is something I wish to do."

  I wondered how he thought to surprise me. He always delighted in astonishing me with some trick he didn't think I could duplicate.

  He leaned closer. "My love, I am going to tell you my True Name."

  "No!"

  I jerked free of his hold, startling him in both word and action. The look of pain on his face echoed in a whisper of surprise through the tavern as the Wizard came close to losing the hold on his spell. I reinforced the magic with a whisper -- so easy to meld my power with his own, even after so long.

  "There was --" he started and stopped, taking a deep breath and folding his hands on the table, out of my reach. "There was a time when every night you asked me for my True Name. They tell me you hunted through the palace records during the day. Then you stopped and went away. I thought you only followed your call to duty. I did not realize you left because you hated me."

  "I don't hate you," I whispered. He didn't believe me, of course. "We were lovers, we were young
-- and I wanted the gift of your True Name to show you trusted me. You were wise never to give me such power over you nor to ask me for my own True Name."

  "And now we are no longer young or lovers."

  I shook my head at many, many regrets. "I'm older and wiser, and I love you too much to accept this gift. Even if I never even whispered your name on the wind, you would know I hold the power over you. In the dark of the night, you would think about what I could do. You would worry each time we disagreed. If I had your True Name, would you trust me not to use it? Would you not worry, and wonder, and regret? Why should we risk such pain in our lives? I'm wise enough to see so now."

  I tried to keep my emotions from showing. I reached out, my fingers resting on his folded hands, leaving me bent over the table, as though I bowed to him.

  "I do not want to be forgotten," he whispered.

  "I think of you every morning and every night. I remember you during the empty hours when -- alas -- the time runs too long and I am alone in my high tower with only the wind to whisper to me."

  "And yet you do not want me?"

  "I don't want your name. I don't want to own you, Wizard."

  He looked up at last with a whisper of hope in his eyes like I had not seen in too long.

  "Come away with me," he said. He surprised me again, but this time I had the foresight not to pull away in shock or dismay. "Let us go away and hide from the world and let these mortals work out their own problems for a while. I weary of them, my love. I really do."

  "And what prayers would we give to the Gods when they came asking why we aren't doing our duty?" I asked. I half hoped he could give me an answer and persuade me to go with him. But he shook his head with a sigh of regret and I sat straighter in my chair, sipping, at last from the cup. Bitter stuff: it suited my mood.

  "We gave up to much for this," he said, waving his hand and leaving a trail of twinkling lights in the wake of the movement. "If we at least lived together --"

  "In your desert fortress? In my mountain tower? My soul would melt and your heart would freeze. We've gone our own ways, Wizard. We cannot go back."

  He took a deep breath and nodded, grabbing at the chipped cup and sipping.

  "But we have now, Wizard. Let's not waste tonight, my love."

  He had taken one drink and now sputtered and coughed on the ale. I laughed while he reddened and floundered for words. I didn't often get the better of him. In the end, I took his hand and led him away. We went to the roof and made a bed of magic and pulled down the warmth of the stars as we fell into each other's arms.

  "I thought there would never be love again," he whispered once, just before the dawn. Maybe he thought I slept. "You are wiser than me, my pretty sorceress. I would have regretted. I would have come to distrust you. Now I will have you in my heart and we will pass this way on another day. I will not lose you. Ah yes, there will still be love."

  His dark hair fell across my shoulders and his desert-warmed arms wrapped round my body. I slept very well.

  Late in the morning I watched my Wizard ride away, a glitter of gold and jewels in the foggy morning light. He turned and waved just before the trail dipped and I lost him in the mist and the shadows of the forest.

  I mounted my horse and watched for a long time where he'd gone. I wanted to follow. I wanted to ride with him to his desert and race the wind across the sands, and sleep each night in his arms.

  Ah, but we would argue. We always did. And I could not trust myself to be with him if I grew angry. I had a power over him, though he never knew it.

  I had hunted for his True Name for years in the palace. He never asked why I stopped and why I really left.

  "Fare thee well, Aldair," I said very softly, lest someone hear. "Farewell, my love."

  Elena and Aldair. They would have made a lovely couple if only they'd been mortal.

  I rode home in the rain.

  The End

  ###

  About the Author:

  Lazette Gifford has publications in both electronic and print format, including material from Double Dragon Publishing, Yard Dog Press, Eggplant Literary Productions, Ideomancer, Fables, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and more. She owns Forward Motion for Writers and is the editor/publisher for Vision: A Resource for Writers.

  Connect with Zette:

  Web Site: https://lazette.net

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/lazetteg

  Joyously Prolific Blog: https://zette.blogspot.com/