Chapter 13
Ill Informed

n a vast room splendidly furnished, Éomus stood at the side of one of the elven leaders, Aldar, a dignified man with high cheek bones, pale eyes, and flowing silver-grey hair. He said to Éomus, “If my counsel is to be heeded, nothing shall be kept from him. However, the choice lies with you.” Éomus looked a moment as if he might protest, then looking resigned, inclined his head.

Out in the hallway Deacon waited, anxious to know why he had been summoned. Aldar would not have sent for him with reference to any small matter. Nevertheless he retained his composure, his eyes fastened on the door, which was soon opened to him. When he entered he found himself in the presence of the two elven men. Aldar had his back turned, facing the window, while Éomus looked grieved. Deacon stood a moment, waiting for one of them to speak. Great windows displayed a beautiful view of woodland and a magnificent flowing waterfall. However, such a prospect did nothing to dissolve the tension in his heart. He feared they were to inform him of something regarding his mother.

“Perhaps you should seat yourself,” said Aldar.

Deacon did as he was instructed. Both the elven men looked upon him, and there was an intense silence, as if they feared to tell him something crucial. “If there is anything that I hate, it is a mystery,” he said, trying to keep from the angry impatience that deep anxiety breeds.

“You must prepare yourself for distressing tidings,” Éomus told him with dismay.

“Whatever I must bear.”

“It has come to our recent attention,” began Aldar, “that a man whom was long looked upon as being dead …” he paused, seeing the young man’s face had become very pale.

“My father,” said Deacon, haltingly, and with the intensity of a hate that had been nourished over many years. “He still lives.”

“The council betrayed none of this to any outside their own. It was by mere chance we discovered Luseph’s circumstance.”

Deacon sat silently as the truth slowly came upon him. Black cloud after black cloud shrouded his mind, until his entire countenance was as dark as his thoughts. “Does she know?” he asked, thinking of his mother.

“Yes,” said Éomus.

“Why did she keep it from me?” Deacon asked, though he could guess why. A dangerous thought entered his mind and his whole manner immediately changed, becoming feverishly determined. “Where is he?” he demanded through compressed lips, the heavy beating in his chest making his words uneven. Éomus had a look of misgiving and did not speak. Deacon rose agitatedly to his feet, not liking to have to look up at them. He repeated more forcefully, “Where is he?”

“Luseph chose to retreat to the country for his confinement,” Aldar said calmly. “There, eyes shall seldom see him.”

The elven men were looking at Deacon with closed expressions, and he could not fail to understand that they were disinclined to reveal the location of his father. “You have no confidence in me,” he stated angrily.

“Pause a moment, regain your clarity,” said Éomus, concerned by the feverish flare of Deacon’s eye and the unnatural calm of his manner. He was trying for the appearance of composure, but his whole attitude betrayed deep resentment. Not a muscle of his face relaxed as he spoke.

“What was the punishment before his confinement?”

“His punishment was self-embraced,” said Aldar. “His body was shattered and destroyed to spare your life.” As he spoke, Aldar took himself over by the window, a gesture intended to quench conversation.

“Which he endangered to begin with,” Deacon said, not letting it be ended there. “It is because of him that she’s dying! He must be punished!” His voice rose a pitch higher when Aldar refused to face him.

Éomus spoke calmly. “He has been punished.”

Deacon’s gaze shifted furiously, and he said, low and hateful, “On his terms. Where is the justice in that?” He looked at Aldar again. “You say he has been punished, but the only person who has the right to say so is the one who suffered the injustice.”

“Self-reproach is the bitterest of all punishments,” said Éomus, maintaining his calm. “Think of the wound to his conscience, the inward suffering and torment he must bear.”

Deacon choked back some harsh words and started for the door.

“Deacon,” Éomus called to him. He paused but did not turn, his back rigid. “Rise above your father’s mistakes, or fall into shadow.”

Deacon’s chin fell to his chest in a kind of angry defeat. Then he left.

He did not return home directly but found an isolated part of the woods, where he stood overwhelmed with rage. A sense of injustice burned within his chest, and he could think of nothing but killing the man who shared his blood but not his spirit. Night fell, and it grew dark all around him. No beast could have torn at him more mercilessly than did his own outrage. He could feel the hate so intensely within him that it must find vent or it would consume him. Then came a voice as soft as the evening breeze, almost whispering his name. Lifting his gaze Deacon winced as though stepping out of dark shadow into strong light. Coming toward him through darkened trees, like a pure ray of light, was Ellendria, whose white radiance and beauty defied all description. She was many years older than her brother and was almost an ethereal being. When elves have accomplished all they can on this plain of existence, they transcend it and resonate with higher realms.

Resplendent in a white flowing gown, Ellendria was the embodiment of grace and stillness. She spoke nothing, but Deacon found her grey eyes directed toward him in a way that gave him the uneasy consciousness she was reading his innermost thoughts. Under her gaze he stood unnaturally, tense and hostile. Feeling his mind intruded upon, he sought to banish all dark reflections.

“Our deeds carry terrible consequences,” Ellendria said. “Be mindful of such thoughts.”

Deacon’s expression darkened. There was hate in it. Her intrusion provoked him beyond all endurance. He did not suspect his thoughts revealed their blackness through his features.

“Should you allow them to persist,” she said, “they will exercise mastery over you, until such that you cannot avoid attempting to fulfil their desire.”

A rage filled slowly within him like some consuming, scathing poison. Before her lofty superiority he felt subdued, bowed, and emasculated. He braved her eyes and said bitterly, “Why should I not? All those years I have wanted to kill him and now I can. Why do you look concerned for me? I will make him suffer and be glad for it. He has brought it upon himself.”

“Those, perhaps, will be the feelings in the first moments, but time will prove the reality of the evil, and then there will be no satisfaction, no rest. The pain will turn so far inward you will begin to lose all sense of self, till there is nothing left of you but a vague memory. Carry that always in your mind.”

A beam of moonlight shed cold silver over her features, and Deacon looked away from her pale eyes. There was a fire in them, but it was the cold, silver–white fire of the moon, which he felt she emitted against him. Her persistent gaze stung him with sharp, cold flames, and he wanted to be away from her; feeling her brilliance would destroy him as light destroys darkness.

“After everything he has done, I’m supposed to let him walk free?” he asked.

“We cannot change the past,” she said, her voice intensely calm.

“No. But we can see that justice is rendered, wound for wound.”

“You do not seek justice. You design to gratify your own will.”

“It matters little what I want,” Deacon said, defeated, his manner deceptively calm. “Éomus will not tell me where Luseph is. Damn him! That miserable coward hides away, while my mother must fight for her life!”

He looked up at Ellendria with eyes black with torture. Not for an instant did her countenance lose its look of grave patience, and a wild desire flared in his chest. He wanted to lay hold of her, hurt her, till he forced a cry of humiliation. His rage became so black and so powerful within him that for an instant he felt as if he might destroy her. He wanted to rend her apart, make her into nothing.

Inwardly Ellendria shrank from him, though he hadn’t so much as advanced a step. It was the felt darkness in him that affected her. She was afraid of him in that moment, and the knowledge of it was both pleasure and shame to him. He stood seething with his poisoned thoughts, and for a moment entertained the wild idea of seizing Ellendria in his hands. Impassioned to the point of intolerable anger, with no outlet, he was past the point where he could risk standing here another moment. With visible effort he suppressed the half-mad desire to force from her some sign of emotion, anything but this white-cold perfection, and made his way home.

Quietly he stole into the house like a guilty shadow. Inside he moved stealthily for fear of disturbing his mother, but she was already awake and waiting for him, cast in subdued light. He was passing the doorway when she called his attention to herself.

“You’ve been gone a long while,” she said, pensively.

“I know. I’m sorry.” He drifted into the room. He could tell from her expression that she was aware he knew about his father. Wearily, Deacon rubbed his lip. He could see that she wanted to talk. He glanced back at the door that would lead him to his solitude, which he desired more than company at this moment, then inhaled deeply, resigning himself. Dragging up a chair, Deacon sat opposite his mother, his knees on either side of hers.

“So you know,” he said plainly. He did not want to be impatient with her. Waiting for her to say something, he sat uneasy. Not once did she lift her gaze from his hand that she held in her own.

“I don’t know if it is within me to forgive him,” she said weakly, passing her fingers over the scar on his palm. “But you have to understand it was never his intention to hurt you as he did.”

Deacon saw, from her face and from the nervous clasp of her hands, that she was deeply distressed, and took her hands to still them. “It’s not myself that I care about—” His mother’s gaze lifted to meet his, and upon seeing her comprehending grief, he was unable to finish the sentence. His expression hardened, and with a startling suddenness he was angry again. “He should have been protecting you!” He rose sharply to his feet, tearing his hand away from hers. “Why is everyone protecting him!”

Daenara sank back in her chair and looked up at Deacon with helpless and aggrieved eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, inflicting a brutal rubbing on his face. “I’m tired. I will get to bed.”

Deacon took his leave with a brief kiss on his mother’s lips. Not attempting to keep him further, Daenara remained awhile, her heart aching. She could feel him losing himself to hate.

From the balcony that extended from his room, Deacon looked out over the woods illumined by the soft glow of night-lamps, which shone like silver stars in the trees. It was a beautiful and serene atmosphere. Down below he could see elves carrying hanging lamps, singing their hymns, while drifting with such royal sagacity throughout the peaceful trees. Elves, requiring only a few hours’ repose, sang long into the night.

Deacon inhaled deeply. Certain flowers here only bloomed at night under the moon and filled the air with a heavy, pungent perfume, which seemed so a part of the darkness it was as though he breathed the night itself.

The woods here were elegant and opulent, but Deacon was hardened against their beauty. He was living in what many believed perfection, yet he had a persistent sensation that behind all that beauty and flowers and appearance of harmony and happiness, lay treachery. Nature had become his antagonist. Living among the elves, Deacon was acutely aware of his mother’s and his own mortality and lived bitterly beneath the shadow of time. The elves were blind. They did not know what it was to age and die.

Far from these woods there was a tree, an immense and ancient tree, that Deacon had been told of over the years. It was said that this tree was the physical manifestation of life’s essence, haunted by the elemental spirits that govern all of nature. They could not be seen but felt intuitively by those who allowed it. Their bodies, made of an etheric substance, could not be killed. However, with disastrous consequences, their connection to one another could be severed. The source of their connection was this great and tremendous tree. If it was to be destroyed they would be separated from one another. Nature would despair. Sometimes, when his fury was roused against the elves, dangerous thoughts entered his mind. Deacon indulged his fancy but did not for an instant believe he would go through with such an unforgivable act.