Author's note: Not sure if I like this one that much. I wrote it a year or two ago, and it's still not one of my preferred works.

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Loud tolled the brass gongs. The gate of the castle stood ajar, and beneath its skeletal arch passed the carriages of the noble families of the realm. Flames burned in depressions cut into the courtyard. Their tongues quested toward the ramparts, whose massive shape glowered down at the guests. The breastworks drew a toothy line against the night sky.

Though the invitations told of joyous tidings, most of the guests wore troubled faces. In their dresses of satin and crinoline came the ladies, fair beyond compare, and their uniformed cavaliers were equally magnificent. Yet fear radiated off them all, and the scabbards of the men hung empty at the belt.

The throng assembled in the courtyard, where a narrow gravel-paved path led into the fragrant garden that lay on the right side of the main entrance. For the occasion, pedestals were spaced intermittently among the blossoms. Atop each rested a severed head, covered in part by drying blood. They were not long dead, but there was the air of corruption here, the sweetness of flowers mingled with the reek of decay. It admirably complimented the castle’s current atmosphere.

As the stars began to emerge, the double doors that barred the way to the castle proper swung open. Framed by the hallway, illuminated by its row of torches, stood a wizened creature of a man. He bade the guests enter with a sardonic note to his frail voice.

Pairwise they walked down the halls, under the watchful stares of guards without number. The rows of torches seemed to stretch into infinity. All of the guests had been here before, though for most, that occasion had not been recently. One by one they noticed the changes. The greatest change was hope. It seemed as if it had left with the passing of the King. His successor had strangled it and left triumph and death in its place.

She waited for them upon her seat of wrought iron, within the throne room, the pulsating heart of the castle. Its expanse was imposing, huge as it had been in the olden days, though now, the warmth was gone. Its alcoves, where earlier sculptures had rested, now smouldered with cold blue flames. Crimson carpeting covered the floor, where the royal mosaics had once lain bare. Many tables had been carried inside for the occasion. Shadowy runes that seemed to writhe their way across the stone disfigured the surface of the walls. The ceiling was lost to darkness.

The Lady greeted her nobles with mocking courtesy. Would that all her subjects were as loyal to her as they were! Savouring the fear in their eyes, she waited while the nobles wondered who of them would be the first to die. But death did not come. Instead, the Lady stood, announcing this to be a banquet in celebration of her recent, radiant victory.

Fair she was, none of the nobles would gainsay this, not even they who had cast their lot with the rebels. She was tall, slender, shapely, as coldly flawless as a crystal shard. Her skin was like milky ice, her hair the red of a leaf in autumn. Her lips were blood, her eyes black fire. None that hated her would deny her beauty, or the evil that lay behind it.

And listless servants carried in food on trays, and the hollowed-eyed minstrel struck a tone on his harp, and the alcoves lent the hall an otherworldly brilliance. The Lady watched her subjects loudly toast her health and eat, pursuing this travesty of revelry, and her gaze burned heavy-lidded.

The banquet now concluded, the dread in the hearts of all that were present grew to almost to the point of panic. But the suspense would not come to an end quite yet. With merry malice in her words, the Lady called for her subjects to dance.

There was nothing to do but to obey. Hope had died hours ago, but still they clung to life as tightly as they did to their partners in the dance, to the hope that they might be useful enough to retain their lives. They whirled and skipped across the floor before the inscrutable eyes of the Lady’s Guard. From her throne, the Lady watched, her amusement clear.

Then did the witch-lights waver. From out a shadowed corridor strode a form that was neither guard nor captive guest. It was swathed in cloak and a skull-like mask, with the eye-slits black and empty. A scabbard hung low at its side. The shadows danced.

Like a cat awakening rose the lady. The trill of the pipers fell quiet. And the dance was arrested as its doomed participants halted to regard the one interloper.

And in silence that one walked, through the frozen dance, past guard and guest, by each step drawing closer to the throne.

The Lady spoke, then. Bold was the man that did not fear his mistress, said she; but foolish the one who did not know her. Had this intruder come to pay her homage? If so, she said, he would kneel before her throne in proper fashion, and divest himself of his sword.

The echoes of her voice had not died before a voice rang out behind the mask. It was as human as the howl of a wolf, cold and remote and utterly uncaring. It was but purpose and death.

No homage was to be paid, it told, no kneeling done. For in the name of those dead, today would see the end of the Lady Rana. The hiss of drawn steel punctuated that statement.

And now the Lady gave a true smile. Were this stranger, then, one of the surviving rebels? Did he not know of the defeat their army had met? She had taken their leader, Sandar, captive, and seen his consort ravished and broken unto death on the field of battle. Who could stand against her now? Who of blood royal still breathed but her? There were none.

Her only answer was the soft footfall as the stranger drew closer still. The Lady’s smile stiffened into a chiseled grin, and her hand dipped to the hilt of her own weapon. It leapt free without apparent effort on her part, and she held it with a lightness that seemed thoroughly unnatural. Her other hand gestured to the guards, and they stepped back and were still.

At the foot of the dais the stranger halted. The sentinels murmured their unease, but did not attack. Obedient unto death and beyond, their lives belonged entirely to the Lady.

The fires danced, silhouetting the Lady Rana. It seemed a trick of light when she moved. Her pale form rose from the throne without preliminary motion, hurtling through the air in a prodigious bound, sword blurring in a powerful stroke downward. It met nothing but air, for the stranger had moved past its arc.

They moved together, cut and counter, swipe and parry, and their speed was unnatural, inhuman. Those watching felt wonder creep through their terror, for this was the known aspect of the royal blood. The stranger’s blade struck like a living tongue of lightning, and the Lady’s edge was a streak of death in her hand. Neither, it seemed, touched the floor with their feet.

In the light of witchfire gleamed their blades. The Lady bore no mark on her body, and she fought with icy confidence, smiling all the while. Her own blade had cut only cloth, opening rents in the intruder’s costume, undoing the cloak. She was of the blood royal, stronger than steel, as quick as a living flame. None was left that could match her.

Slowly, but with finality, the Lady Rana forced the stranger from the throne. Their blades clashed, the outcome growing plainer. And in a sudden flash of sparks, the Lady sent the blade of her foe spinning through the air. The next blow spitted the heart and cleft it in two.

The stranger, impossibly, managed to stand. The gauntleted hand rose toward the head, and, in a spasmodic motion, tore the mask off, snapping the ribbons that held it in place.

Through the silence a scream rose from the Lady, and one of terror and revulsion. Then the stranger raised the other hand, and the bright knife therein plunged down and silenced her call forever.

The sword slid out with the final fall of the Lady Rana, and the stranger knelt to grasp it by the hilt. Some of the guards, mad with grief, charged toward their deaths, but most fled in terror. For all their love of their mistress, they were not about to share her fate.

The stranger departed the chamber for the warrens. The witch-fires went out in her passing, their demise an echo of what had transpired, and blackness claimed the hall.

Little did Lord Sandar know of this. Naked and shivering, he stood leaning on the damp stone wall of his oubliette. His own bodily waste, in which he stood up to his ankles, had long since robbed him of his sense of smell. The will to live, however, flickered still in his heart. Already three fingers had been cut from his hand.

The sound of footsteps intruded, and what little was left of his mind wished for death. But the expected laughter of the torturer was not forthcoming. Instead, he felt himself hoisted from his cramped cell and lain almost gently down on the stone floor.

A measured amount of water was put to his lips, and he drank while held by arms that did not appear to notice his weight. Food came moments later. A voice floated to him, pitched very low, dry and whispering. Could he stand?

Sanity returned to him, slowly and at length. He did not trust himself to speak, and instead, jerkily, nodded, stopping only when drawn to his feet.

They walked through the dim deserted halls, the prince and his saviour. The fire of torches had all but gone out; they flickered like candles in the draft. His questions were met with terse answers, and the fate of the Lady Rana was made known to him by the sibilant voice of the stranger.

He noticed, after a time, the stench. It was the cold of death, of rotting flesh, different to the sickening sweetness that had pervaded these halls when first he had come here.

But what of the others, he asked, what of them? His eyes locked on his guide’s back, no more than a shapeless shadow in the gloom. What of his generals? What of his men? What of his love, the Princess Lysara? Silence returned and gave its answer, and, softly, exhaustion taking its toll, he found himself weeping.

They came upon the gates, which were open and unguarded. The carriages were not to be seen; the noblemen would be on their way home, doubtless mustering their armies to assail the castle, now that the Lady was dead.

Wracked by emotions too powerful for him to understand in his deprived state, Sandar looked at the open gate. He took a hesitant step toward it, but hesitated, for he no longer saw his rescuer.

As he turned, he at last saw the shape of that one, standing before the gates. The figure was absolutely still, like a pillar of carven basalt. In its hand blazed a torch of great size.

The figure slowly turned toward the prince, face averted from the firelight. It spoke, again in that muted, unearthly tone. Go, it said. There is nothing here for you now.

Will you remain? the prince asked. Will you not come with me?

I have done what was mine to do, came the reply. My coin for that is death.

His voice trembling with weakness, the Prince still could muster laughter, and now he did. He said, I also have done my part, and all that I love is gone.

No, spoke the other, but soon will be. The head turned, and the flames leapt, casting light upon the features within the cowl. The sight struck him far harder than the stench of rotting flesh. As the prince cried out in deepest despair, the figure spoke one last time.

You will live for me, it said, because I know what death is, now. I know its graceless ways, how it is bested, and even how to leave its realm for but a time. And by this knowledge I say that you must live. For you, and for the land, that is my wish… man that I love.

Thus did the Prince remain as the figure turned, and reentered, and was soon thereafter lost through the darkness and his tears. The flames were not long in rising, and he stared at the walls until the conflagration was complete. The foundations of the castle groaned and tumbled. They fell, and with them they brought the twilight of dreams, a night of sorrow, and the dawn of hope.