A/N: This story tells part of the life of a character from my Pretentious Pentad series of novels. You don’t need to have read that to understand this, however.

I really like this character, and I may add more stories to this as time goes on.

"I have long thought that I would understand the great powers of our world better if I did not have to worry about my study of them being blasphemy in the eyes of my goddess. But then, one always pays a price for faith, and this is mine."

-Periloa, Priestess of Elle.

"It will all go easily with you when you learn to love, Kyesta."

Even in the midst of delirium brought on by too little water and several hard floggings over several days, she knew there was something wrong with that.

"My name is Nightstone," she murmured stubbornly. "Nightstone."

"She’s dreaming," said someone, and a kind hand smoothed her hair back from her forehead. Nightstone would have flinched back from the hand if she could, though, since she knew what the kindness demanded. "Everything will be better when she wakes up."

Somehow, those words always loosed a torrent of memories in her. And if those memories were dreams, then she didn’t want to wake up.

*******

"Come on, Kyesta! The servants will be serving dinner soon. Iced fruit. You love iced fruit, don’t you, Kyesta?"

But she wouldn’t come inside. She was standing on the battlements, high above the places they thought she could climb, and gazing in awe at the stars that sparked above her head. Glittering constellations, dancing dragons and horses and butterflies and a few that she hadn’t been taught to name yet. They were sharp sparks of cold light, even in the warm summertime wind off the Lilitha Ocean, and they made her shiver with the same wonder that the sharper winds of winter did. Yearningly, she reached her hands up to them-

And found them firmly caught by her older brother, Prince Kyern, who smiled at her and led her towards the windows lighted by rich yellow lamps. "Iced fruit," he said, "and fires burning just to take off the tang of the night when it comes down. You’ll like sitting in front of the fire and playing with it, won’t you?" Princess Kyesta was a Scarlet mage, and they all knew how much she loved her element. They thought it was so cute, the way she would sit in front of the hearths and hold out her hands, bathing them in the flames without fear. Her father still liked to tell the story about the way she had caught up a coal when she was only a year old and laughed at it, joggling it from hand to hand. It had badly burned the maid who finally took it from her, of course, but that was a small price to be paid for the cuteness of the story.

But she turned her head back. She could play with the fire at any time. She couldn’t watch the stars all the time. They only came out at night.

The wind blew, and the stars seemed to dance in their places, their light glittering more brightly than ever. She gasped, and felt part of her soul rip free and go flying towards them.

"Come on, sister," said the Prince jovially. "The Light is waiting, to protect you from the menace of the Dark."

But she only went in long enough to eat the evening meal with her brother and sister and placate them the way any clever seven-year-old could. Then she went back out and watched the stars until the sun came over the sea.

*******

"We only want you to come back to us and be the way that you used to be, Kyesta," her brother was saying, in the sorrow-laden voice she knew so well. "Only open your eyes and look at us, say you know us and yourself and that you have left this madness behind."

She kept her eyes closed, even when the delirium that came from her untended wounds eased enough to let her open them. They wouldn’t call her by the name that she had chosen. That was enough to make her stay still.

Her brother sighed, and went away again, saying as he left the room, "These wounds come from the madness of the Dark. She will have to wake and face what they mean sooner rather than later. I just hope that she can accept it without falling back into madness."

I am not mad, she thought. And my name is Nightstone. Nightstone.

But she went back in her mind to the first time they had thought her mad, when she rode out on the Plains with her elder sister.

*******

"This is the way that you hawk, Kyesta."

She watched, enthralled, as Princess Tyera tossed her bird into the air. This was an art she could appreciate, given the swift and deadly beauty of the merlin as it swept along on wide-spread wings. When it dived with that same breathtaking beauty and hit a smaller bird, she clapped her hands and laughed, bouncing up and down in the saddle of the horse that even then she could ride expertly. All the royalty of Orlath were taught to ride from a young age. It was thought to make them more decorative.

"You can go fetch it, if you like," said Tyera, smiling tolerantly at her younger sister’s enthusiasm.

She smiled brightly at the favor, and raced away, looking for the bird. The merlin had come to ground somewhere around her, she knew, since there were no trees, and she only had to find-

A shadow swept the ground ahead of her, and she looked up, thinking that perhaps the merlin had taken flight with its prize, though the shadow was too big. A moment later, she forgot to breathe.

In flight above her was a blaze of pegasi, dark knives cutting their way across the sun. They wheeled and danced around each other, graceful and perfect. She felt her heart rise, aching, as she watched them. She would never be as beautiful as they were, and usually she found herself envying those creatures who were more beautiful than she was, but this time it didn’t matter. Their beauty was of a different order than hers, higher and purer, and no competition.

Then, ahead of the pegasi, a herd of gazelle broke cover and went bounding across the Plains.

The flight of the blaze changed instantly. They hurtled ahead, their wings beating so hard that Nightstone could barely see the motions they made. In seconds, two of the flying horses were near the front of the formation, battling for pride of place and nipping at each other.

The one with the prouder arch of neck won at last, as the watching princess had thought she should. She dived first and slammed her axe-sharp hooves into the back of the leading gazelle’s neck. The animal staggered and kept its feet for another few steps, but only until the pegasus dropped with all her weight. The gazelle stumbled, and this time it did not rise again, while the pegasus on its back tore rapturously at its flesh with teeth nearly as sharp as the killing hooves.

The rest of the blaze split off, hunting sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, and the young princess rode after them, her mouth open, her heart beating in her ears as it did when she watched the fire rise brighter and hotter, and thought about what it would be like to let it burn out of control and consume everyone in the castle-

"Kyesta!"

She turned sharply around when she heard Tyera call, but part of her heart was still out on the Plains with the pegasus blaze, and when her sister irritably repeated her shout, the thought came clear into her mind.

I need a new name.

******

"She’s awake. Yes, now!"

Nightstone opened her eyes and found herself looking into her brother’s face. He smiled anxiously at her and touched her shoulder, then winced when she yelped. A piece of flesh had been neatly sliced from that shoulder.

"I’m sorry, I’m sorry," he muttered, patting the blankets back into place. "I forgot."

Nightstone looked steadily at him. How could he forget? But she said nothing.

Kyern sighed and sat down on the bed. He was steady, reliable, his eyes brown as earth, his hair bright gold. Everyone said he looked like a spirit of the Crop, and admired him extravagantly. He was a devoted servant of the Light, which was the great power the Orlathian line served, and Elle, the goddess who was the patron of their Kingdom. And his Destiny shone around him like an aura of portable sunlight. He was perfect.

Nightstone couldn’t stand the sight of him.

She turned her head away, looking out the window, and smiled a little when she saw that night was falling. It was the first time she had been above ground to see that happening in days. Most of those last few nights, before she grew so delirious that they thought she would go into wound-fever, had been spent underground in the chambers where the careful torturers stripped the flesh from her in small cuts and splashed her with water, which hated Scarlet mages.

"Kyesta," whispered her brother. "You should follow your heart. What does your heart tell you?"

Nightstone turned and looked at him. "The same thing it has told me all my life," she answered. "That the darkness is holy, that the night is nothing to fear, and that I love the Dark."

Kyern sighed anxiously and indicated her wounds. "But it was the Dark who did this to you," he said. "You should know that."

Nightstone closed her eyes, and returned to the first moment when she knew she loved the Dark. It was far better than sitting in the Light with her kingly brother.

******

She stood on the battlements above the Lilitha Ocean, and stared down into it. She had always been afraid of it, great expanse of water that could crush all the fire within her.

But now she was going to plunge down into it. Nothing could have persuaded her to try this by the light of the sun.

But now it was night, the stars sparking above her, the darkness unbroken otherwise. Not even the moon of the goddess that her family worshipped with such devotion was there, and that was as it should be. She was going to dive, and the Dark might save her or it might not. If it didn’t, then she would die. She could feel the Azure lapping beneath her and staring up with blind hatred, hungry, ready to eat her.

She need only trust in the Dark- a power so stubborn that it had a war with the Light every generation even though it never won, a power so untrustworthy that it would betray those who had served it faithfully for a few moments’ amusement.

She looked up at the stars, and felt a love so powerful it hurt her cleave through her throat and heart, as a moment later she dropped and cleft the water.

The hands of the ocean reached out and grasped her, and the hatred, even more than the cold and the water itself, was drowning her. Her breath, smashed out of her by the impact with the water, was too weak to help. She cried out, weakly, and felt more water fill her lungs.

And then the water turned inky around her, as black as the inside of a black stone, and the Dark was there, surging power and perfection and wildness, guarding her from the Azure’s touch.

She rose, laughing, out of the water, and danced on the ocean’s surface on a mingled spout of flame and darkness. She had found her name, Nightstone, and her love. She was eighteen years old.

A few days later, she prepared to depart and go seeking the Dark, that she might serve it. There was no place in Orlath itself for a Princess of the royal line who loved the Dark.

And that was when they took her, and hurt her and hurt her, sometimes murmuring over her as they did so, sometimes laughing. And she hurt and hurt until she woke up.

******

"Kyesta? We are all very worried about you. Won’t you speak to us?"

Her brother spoke those words, and Nightstone turned her head and gazed at him. His voice was wistful, concerned.

But it was the same voice, still, that had hissed at her in the torture chambers of the Temple of Elle, while the priestesses worked on her with their cold arts made perfect by the Light and the advice of the goddess, trying to drive the Dark out of her, as they said. He had told her to die, that she was useless and a disgrace to the royal line of Orlath, and many other things that she could not remember right now, but had no doubt would return to her before too long. She would have all her life to think of this. She intended to be immortal, one way or another.

She answered at last. "My heart lies where it has always been. I will not forsake the Dark. You cannot make me."

Kyern’s face twisted. "Then you will be bound to the table again," he spat, and stood, his Destiny flaring around him, his eyes full of what he would no doubt think was righteous hatred. "Chained at each limb. And the priestesses will work on you until the Dark drains out of you, either by your free confession or by your last drop of blood leaving your body."

Nightstone turned her head and looked out the window.

"And where is your Dark now?" her brother gloated behind her. "Not rescuing you, is it? The Light would take any of its servants from the Dark, and has before now, but your great and mighty power will not come for you."

Nightstone thought of all those history-tales of Lightworkers dying heroic deaths among the Darkworkers, but said nothing.

She looked out the window again as Kyern seized her shoulder to drag her back beneath the Temple, and saw a slender shape move there. A moment later, something smashed the window in and landed protectively beside her bed.

Kyern gibbered.

Nightstone stared in fascination. She had heard of the filifernai, but never seen one of them. Yet there could be no doubt that this was one- smooth dark blue body without hair or breasts or genitals, a twisted clump of silver wire that moved around its head in no breeze she could feel, and eyes with a triangle of revolving light in the middle of them. It saw her. The triangle of light flashed white and then gold and then silver, but Nightstone could feel it looking at her.

It knew what she was, and it welcomed her.

It looked at Kyern, and saw through him. Carefully, it unwound the chain that it carried on its arm, smiling widely with pointed teeth. Nightstone had heard that the dark fey had no voices, but this one spoke in a high-pitched tone just on the edge of a screech. "Shall I sing and dance, my lady? Shall I call him to me, helpless to resist, and then lash out his throat and eat him?"

"No," said Nightstone, and smiled at her brother as the filiferna curled an arm around her shoulder and helped her up. "I want him to live, and fear me."

Kyern’s face, which had gone pale, flushed with blood. "You will die," he promised. "We will send hunters after you, and make sure that you have no chance to get far away."

"You will have other things to do," said the filiferna. "Think what this means, kingling. The war has begun. The Dark is invading Orlath, and scores of my kind are running down your villagers on the northern border. For every wound that my Lady Nightstone has suffered, a dozen villagers shall die. The Dark repays its debts."

While Kyern gaped, the filiferna hopped back through the window with Nightstone and down in a long fall to the courtyard. They landed lightly, of course, and then the filiferna sprang again to the gate wall.

"Pegasi are waiting to carry you, my lady," it said, inclining its head courteously to her. "Are you well enough to travel without my companionship? The Dark wants to see you, but I want to stay and feast." It looked at the castle, and its eyes and hair both spun faster.

"Thank you," said Nightstone, "but I can make it."

"As you will, my lady." The filiferna left her and sprang into the courtyard below. Nightstone watched it pass into the stables to begin the killing, and smiled.

A soft neigh behind her made her turn. A pegasus hovered there, either the one she had seen down a gazelle on that day long ago or its twin. It inclined its head to her, and Nightstone inclined her head back and climbed onto its spine.

It turned and hurtled towards the north, moving so fast that Nightstone felt the wind sting tears from her eyes and the breeze flay her along the arms. She was wearing only the light prisoner’s shift, hardly appropriate traveling garb. In the north, the Dark’s stronghold, it would be colder still.

She didn’t care.

She looked around at the star-dotted darkness they were racing through, and thought of the killing that was going on below, and was perfectly happy. She only hoped the pegasus would pass low enough over the villages that she could see the slaughter going on.