Author’s Note: This was written for my Creative Writing Workshop class, though the assignment was, “write a story or a poem,” so it’s not as if I owe it all that much. It’s also the first piece I’ve had edited by more than one person (big thanks go to my CWW teacher and to Chiomi), and it’s interesting to see how their comments differ. What one likes, another hates…and both of them didn’t like my that’s, but I’m keeping them anyway (nyah!). I’ve incorporated about half of their comments—for the others, either I didn’t agree (I’m stubborn) or I couldn’t find a way to fix it. If you have any comments, I'd greatly appreciate them, as I will be turning an edited version of this in eventually.

Also, this is the prequel to my submission for The Writing Circle’s The Twelfth Challenge, which will be posted late in the evening on March 1st. That post will also include a more complete guide to the pronounciation of the names, but for now, just assume the Hs are silent. Until C12 goes up, go to www(dot)fictionpress(dot)come(slash)(squiggle)thewritingcircle to see all the cool stuff we’ve already posted! And of course, we’d love for you to join…

Eternity Waits

She did not cry as they brought her into the room. Galen had thought that she would, as women were wont to, that she would sob and beg and plead for mercy, but she did not. Nor did she fight, though he had half expected that as well—Asahana was known for her defiance. It was, after all, the reason she was to be imprisoned.

But she did not cry and she did not fight. She walked calmly, serenely, to the platform in the center of the room, head up, shoulders back, steps slow and measured. Asahana was a princess, and though she would be punished for her refusal to be Queen, she would carry herself as fit her station.

Galen met her as she reached the platform, a makeshift affair of rough wood. His duties in this painful affair were small, but he would perform them. Grasping her gently by the elbow, he said, “You may still ask mercy of the King.”

Asahana looked at him for a moment, something like pity in her blue eyes. Then she turned out to the small crowd of priests and courtiers of the seven royal houses that had come to witness the creation of the castle’s guardian, fixing her gaze to a spot just above the King’s head.

“I will not ask mercy of Shehalek, for I know it will not be granted,” she said. Her voice was mellow and cool, a courtier’s voice, yet it rang harshly in the small room, hinting at the immortal she was to become. “I am not sure that I would know what mercy would be, would he grant it. To live, now he has slain Dahernys? To die, and never see my sister grow? There is no mercy left for me. I could not ask for that which I know cannot be granted.”

Her eyes remained fixed above the King’s seven-pointed crown—one point for each of the royal families, though the Vehern were gone and she was the last of the Rohax—but Galen could see her shoulders trembling against her white gown—white for innocence, white for marriage, white for death. White that marked her Shehalek’s, and white that proclaimed she never would be his.

The King, however, refused to see the second meaning in her dress. “I offer you again the chance to be my Queen,” he said. It was not an offer. It was a demand, an ultimatum—it will be my way, or it will not be at all. “You would be wise to accept.”

Galen watched her fingers curl into a tight knot against the white silk of her skirts. “I asked for no mercy, my lord, and to be your bride would be none. I asked you once—We asked—” She inhaled sharply and closed her eyes, pressing her lips together to stop the hysteria in her voice. When she opened her eyes again, she looked directly at the King.

“We asked for understanding, Shehalek. For our friend to bless our love. For the freedom to wed as we chose.” She had lost some of her royal bearing now, thrown off her protective mask in a final attempt to reach the King. “We asked to live our lives.”

“You asked to discard all that we stand for! You asked to disgrace me and your family—and yourself, though you refuse to see it.” The King’s face was ugly, lips twisted in rage.

Asahana swallowed hard, the veins in her neck jumping beneath her skin. “You never could let him win,” she said softly, and Galen thought perhaps only he was close enough to hear her words. “You could never let Dahernys be your equal.”

“He never was my equal,” the King replied, his voice dangerously low. “Begin the ceremony.”

Asahana straightened again, raising her chin and stiffening her shoulders. Her gaze passed over her sister, and her eyes softened for just a moment. “Sahola…I am sorry that I could not stay with you.”

Sahola nodded through her tears. The half-sisters were nearly identical, though seven years apart by birth. It was so easy to forget that Sahola was only fifteen. But on that day, in that room, with Asahana standing tall and proud and Sahola weeping silent tears, Galen saw the truth they all so often forgot. Sahola was but a child, and with Asahana gone, she would have no family, no protectors. She would be at the King’s mercy—but as Asahana had said, what mercy was left to them?

Asahana turned and stepped onto the platform, facing the trunk of pale maple, new-hewn, that rested in the center. “I am ready.”

Galen joined her on the stand, reaching out to untie the rough cord that bound her slender wrists. The rope had left bands of red across her skin. “Face the door.” It was the King’s mandate—speak only in commands, and do not use her title. She is no longer a princess.

But she was, and would be ever, he thought as she turned her back to the maple trunk. Despite the King’s commandment.

An acolyte came over, the castle’s sword clasped in his trembling hands. Galen took it from the boy, sliding the blade carefully from its sheath.

Palenta. It was the castle’s sword, forged at the full moon a month before, the day the castle was completed. It was custom, in castles such as these, for a guardian to be imprisoned in the castle’s heart with the its sword, to protect it through eternity from the dehemons drawn to congregations of human beings.

But never before had the guardian been one unwilling. And never before had the guardian been one so old as Asahana, though at 22 she was a woman grown. Always the guardians were acolytes, willing children from twelve to eighteen, who had chosen the honor of becoming immortal.

He’d freed Palenta from its sheath, holding the hilt carefully in both hands. It was a large, double-bladed broadsword—a claymore. The blade was a full 36 inches long, the hilt—dark pewter wrapped in rough black leather—another eight. A faceted crystal, nearly two inches in diameter, made the pommel. A red tassel and another crystal, much smaller than the pommel, hung from a braided cord looped around the hilt.

Galen took the blade to Asahana, closing her hands around the hilt. Her eyes closed as her fingers gripped the rough leather. The point of the claymore’s blade rested on the platform, the pommel stone level with her navel.

He returned the scabbard to the acolyte and stepped aside as seven cowled priests—one for each of the seven royal houses—ghosted to encircle the platform.

The priests raised their arms to their neighbors, fingers of their left hands splayed to the ceiling, fingers of their right cupped beneath their neighbor’s palm. The circle began to shift, turning clockwise, slowly, then faster as the priests chanted. Their voices mingled in an unsettling collection of low moans, high shrieks, and breathy, otherworldly whispers. The eerie sounds wove together into a veil of power, swirling clockwise with the circle. The supernatural fabric tightened as the circling sped, the priest’s voices rising as the power grow.

It closed around Asahana and the maple trunk, contracting and pushing the two together. There was an awful sound, only audible at the very fringes of reality, and the princess disappeared into the wood.

Abruptly, the chanting stopped and the priests broke the circle. The veil splintered, releasing in a blinding flash of light.

In the silence that followed, the maple trunk stood stark and alone. Galen’s stomach clenched as he remembered Asahana was still alive within the wood. It would take weeks, but slowly her body would dissolve, the maple absorbing her flesh until only her bones remained imprisoned within the wood. Then the pillar would splinter, excess wood falling away to reveal a perfect likeness of the now-immortal princess.

The King stepped forward to stand before the trunk. The acolyte presented him with frankincense, to bind Asahana’s spirit to the mortal world once her body had decayed. Shehalek accepted the vial gravely, and began to mark the pillar in accordance with the ceremony.

A line across where the statue’s eyes would form. “I bind your eyes to the service of this castle.”

Higher, above the line, a V of oil. “I bind your mind to the service of this castle.”

On either side of what would be her head, a small spot. “I bind your ears to the service of this castle.

Lower, at her throat, a triangle of frankincense. “I bind your voice to the service of this castle.”

Two large circles by her waist. “I bind your hands to the service of this castle.”

At the base, two ovals. “I bind your feet to the service of this castle.”

Finally, below the triangle at her throat, a seven-pointed star. “I bind your heart to the service of this castle,” the King said, and his voice almost—almost—broke. But he gathered himself again and called the last line of the incantation in a ringing voice.

“I bind your spirit to the service of this castle!”

The pillar shuddered and then stilled. Taking this as a cue, the priests and courtiers slid quietly from the room. The King lingered behind for a moment, gazing at a maple trunk, but soon he, too, was gone.

Galen was alone now with Asahana. Once the pillar broke and the statue was revealed, he would move it from its makeshift base to a pedestal of polished mahogany. The King would gift the naked statue with clothes, to bind her services to his generation. When he died, and his son wore the seven-pointed crown of steel, the new King would again present the statue with livery, and so on through each generation, to eternity.

But that would wait. He was to take Palenta’s scabbard to the small chamber above the one in which the statue resided. In the days before the imprisonment ritual, guardians had been sealed in a closed room instead of maple wood, and the practice of providing the guardian with a room had persisted. He had already furnished the room with a mattress and a small table, though he would never know whether the semi-solid immortal would use then, as the room would be sealed once Palenta’s sheath was inside.

He stole one last glance at the pillar before he went to his task. In his mind, he saw not the stark wooden trunk but the statue it would be, a perfect likeness of Asahana, Palenta’s hilt grasped between her hands. Superimposed upon that was the image of the princess as she had been, full of life, forever in red, despite Shehalek’s fondness for white.

The picture of Asahana in white opened a floodgate for a rush of other images. Sahola, that was her sister, dressed in trousers and talking to the statue. Dahernys, that was her lover, in all manner of strange clothes, in the garden, walking the castle corridors, rowing the boat to shore, cutting colored glass into thin strips. Shehalek, that was to have been her husband, in the strangest garments also, sparring with Dahernys, studying the night sky, frowning into an odd box that glowed strangely. Others of the royal houses, in different garb, in different times, and throughout it all, Asahana, Palenta in her hands, defending the castle and its inhabitants. She saved Shehalek from a dehemon to see Dahernys die, and the image was replaced by another Dahernys in another time, frowning at the statue. That Dahernys was joined by the Sahola who wore man’s clothes, and both faded to an image of Asahana, naked and shivering, alone in her sealed chamber, deserted but for Palenta.

Galen forced the rush of images from his eyes, staggering slightly as his sight returned to normal. What was the meaning of these visions? Were they true prophecies, foretelling the eternal life of not only Asahana, but Dahernys and Shehalek as well? If that were so…

The King had made a mistake, Galen knew. If the visions were correct, by imprisoning Asahana, Shehalek had condemned himself and Dahernys and many others as well to eternal life. Though all but Asahana would die, to be reborn in a new body and a new time, none would ever leave the mortal world. The cycle would play over again and again, the souls drawn to the source of their bond to the mortal plane. They would return to the castle, to seek answers they did not know they sought, to discover their eternal past. The dehemons would come, drawn to the immense energy of the congregation of eternal souls. Asahana would protect the others, as she had been charged, until she failed and they died. And the cycle would begin again.

Shehalek had wished to punish her, to have her spend eternity without Dahernys. Now he would spend that eternity watching her refuse him for Dahernys.

If there was a way to break the cycle and release the souls, it was beyond his knowledge, beyond that of anyone in the castle.

But he could say none of this to the King, for Shehalek was proud, and more than a little mad, to have done such a thing. He could only hope that some other, later Shehalek would realize his mistake and try to remedy it.

He raised Palenta’s scabbard in a salute to the woman imprisoned in the wood.

“I do not know why I have seen what I have seen, or if it will come to pass, or if you will believe me if I tell you. But the future holds much for you, and for Dahernys, and for Shehalek as well. Your souls have been bound, to one another, and to this place.

“I tell you this because you are the only one who will remember. It is your curse, but it is also your gift. For if you remember, you may be able to free the others.”

He turned to leave the room, then stopped and looked back. He did not know what prompted him to speak.

“Eternity waits for you, young immortal. Use it well.”