Darkenhold

[Quincy]

It began on an early morning near the end of May.

The western hills of Myrken Wood found their quiet compromised by the sounds of busy men; considering its distance from the township, word would travel very slowly, if at all. Some of the same Oakhollow villagers who'd worked on the Ringwall were hired again for this project, mainly for clearing some of the trees; however, the majority of them were of Syl Duquesne's personal choice and more than familiar with the royal architect's plans.

Judging by the perimeter of its markers, it was clearly to be a structure of some considerable size. The workers had no information to provide for the curious; there was no sign to hint at the future of the thing.

~*~


It's a good day for a beginning.

Quincy turned down her sleeves before she washed her face in the cold brook. She'd overseen some of the morning work in her excitement and determination, and was now headed back toward town in the middle of the day. Flicking the water from her hands, the girl picked her way back to the path and continued along.

She knew that she could never have accomplished this alone, and even now it would be imperative to seek out allies with similar interests. With very little inclination toward politics, despite her time as Guillaume's bodyguard, she still feared that she would eventually have to speak to someone. The nature of the project may draw unwanted attention. Thanks to the sudden and involved presence of The Constabulary and her friendship with Cinnabar, she knew who she could turn to when the time was right.

When she tried to think of people that she might persuade to her cause, she often thought of the adventurers on a winter night earlier in the year. Acteon Skinner would have been more than a valuable addition with his unquestionable skills, but she was too ashamed to seek him out. Everything had gone awry. He would probably run the other way if she came near him again!

"I'll find them."

Resolution made, Quincy went to find her sister and the architect.

[Betzalel]

Few of them had reason to go home again. When all was said and done, they were starting over. What home they knew, what livelihood they possessed, what peace and even family they had cherished, these were now painful memories--an invasion had driven them from a way of life.

A few kept families still, able to bring them with on this essential relocation and settle in a new place. Some would not linger, however, once the strange fates of the location would come to be known. Some, however, would tempt that fate and stay. Eurian Betzalel, one of these. A man without wife or child, but a grumpy great uncle who flatly refused to die but who required some care--the responsibility fell to the builder. his only living relative. To leave the old man to the mercy, or lack thereof, of the Nnurians was to write him a slow declining death. This, Eurian could not do. The old uncle made the journey with him.

"Mark four," he murmurs to the fellow next to him, who uses sharpened charcoal to make notes, even as the builder sights along this tripod scope, a surveyor's clever tool. A dial is twisted to adjust the angle of the scope. "Adjust one and one half right."

A breeze moves here, a welcome rush of air stirring up the back of his tunic, cooling sweat-traced skin. Below him, workers who are both his own and local, toil on the landscape, digging to loose brush and roots and trees, hauling away the logs by teams of horses, and bucking the timber. What could be used in the building of this worthy structure would be cured and used; what not be used would be distributed, sold, or burned duly, so that there was no wasted resource. As per Lord Duquesne's directive, a command which oversaw every royal architectural project on which Betzalel found himself working.

He straightens up from peering into the scope and looks over the landscape, squinting under his hat and reaching up, lifting it from off short-cropped brown hair, that his sleeve might serve as a mop for a sweaty brow. This dusted white tunic flutters its excess against his spine, according to the breeze, and he sinks his brimmed hat down again. Something was different about this place, something genuine in the air--it was troubled, but it had promise. It had seen difficulties, but it had a presence of resilience despite. He liked that--the concept could be applied to human lives, too, including his own. Everyone deserved a chance to start over again after long suffering and that's what he means to do. The gods can thank Syl Duquesne for that. If not for him, Eurian Betzalel and his crew would be scattered or dead.

[Carnath-Emory]

"'Werthfawroca', we would say of it. Something precious."

In the wake of Aithne's ruin...
Of Bromn's long silences...
Of Agnieszka's sure death...

A woman had taken herself to the site at which her sister's dreams become gradually tangible: to visit, at first, to observe, there being something striking in the way that land is cleared, is made flat and obedient. The sight had pained, in its first hours: the transformation had been so murderously absolute as to chill her with its enormity. But there'd been here and there a body willing to answer questions, so long as they were kept short and few in number, and there'd been time, most importantly. Time to witness what would become of that land, time to grasp the necessity of transforming a thing so that it might become greater than when they'd started --

It had gradually occured to her that the process was one not of murder, but refinement.

This was one of the thoughts that she turned over in her mind during the time that she spent at the building site -- and such a great deal of time it was, for these visits occured with increasing frequency until she was a daily visitor. Hours stretched into evenings, and evenings into entire days, until one day she'd simply brought a bedroll with her and dispensed with the nightly return. They tolerated her well enough here, for while she was no use for construction, still she could split a log, and stones as well, and willingly. Oh, gladly, it being precisely the sort of mindless, exhausting work that her body craved. It was not the purpose for which she'd longed, but it was Purpose nonetheless, it was Use, and she'd taken to it so avidly that by the second week's end they'd become quite accustomed to the girl-shaped weapon that moved amongst them.

Russet walls, she would suggest to her sister at some point, this woman who's unstrung the necklaces from her throat, who's added a second ring to her ear. Russet walls, and vines to climb them. Green growing things, for food, you see, and for beauty as well. But no mosaics for the floors, for it's terrible to tread upon a beautiful thing, terrible to leave dust on a person's art.

Each hour, they approach the time in which Darkenhold walls will cast a shadow upon this earth.

[Quincy]

Quincy helped her sister paint a garden with words as they worked side by side at the site of a structure that was in its earliest stages. It was far too rare a thing that they should build together. How much they had fought together; how much they had broken together - how much they had done apart from each other, while their hearts were together. It was a special time, she knew, and was humbled that life gave it to them at all. She did not spoil it by trying to imagine how long it would last. Instead, with an old tatter of white shirt tied around her head, she carried wood and blocks and water for the drinking; she laughed a great deal despite the hot exhaustion of long, summer days.

It was going to be slow work. It was going to be large, and it had to be exact; she'd never done anything but fix chairs and make windchimes, but fortunately, at a site of construction, there was plenty of work for novices as well as the ignorant. She found herself in complete agreement with her sister; it would be an awful crime to step all over artful floors, and she added, matter-of-factly, that the floor should never be stained with blood - so it should be an easily-cleaned floor. She spent far too many years working in a tavern where she could never, ever clean out the stains, no matter how she tried.

She was deeply concerned, for a time, over why they were building the walls before they dug the tunnels; she was very elated about the tunnels, which were Syl Duquesne's own personal touch. It was explained to them that the tunnels would come after a good portion of the walls were implemented, to preserve their secrecy; it took some time for Quincy to grasp this, for she'd never been much acquainted with secrecy. She prefered direct methods in all things. This was why Darkenhold required so many other brains and hands. She'd approached many with her idea, but one still stood out in mind - someone not so easily found.

"'ow do you find Acteon Skinner?" Quincy asked Ariane one day. "Do you know where 'e stays?"

She hoped that her sister would remember the name, because she did not want to talk about the winter night at the caves at any length. She'd grieved long enough over the general foolishness of the unplanned trip and the copious numbers. This was what happened when she did not have Pharris Tergor to consult anymore.

[Malaroth]

The small wagon wound its way along the bumpy path that passed for a trail. Whatever fool had told him that this forsaken stream of dirt and rock had ever been a road had never even seen the North Passage Down - which was quite the ignorant feat by Thomas' reckoning. By now, however, the construction site was well within view and only by some foul fairy magic could he hope to get lost. That thought drew a vigorous gesturing to invoke the blessing of the One True Faith.

The horse-drawn cart drew several inquiring looks as it rolled along to the music of squeaking wheels and casks of water gently striking one another. A gentle smile touched his lips as he began to consider the immensity of this project - a far greater structure, to be sure, than the Shepherd Knights' headquarters.

As the wagon rolled to a stop, he set the reins down and waved to the first person he saw. Though a Myrken native himself there were plenty of people he had never laid eyes on before and this was one of them.

"Greetings from the Shepherd Knights of the Silver Staff," Thomas offered in a mildly gravelly voice. The mud of his boots and simple, faded vest spoke of a farmer attempting to dress nicely for a polite, if humble, diplomatic mission.

"A gift from Grand Master Malaroth Deucalios and his knights," he explains having abandoned the formal scroll of the knight's declaration and intention for the gift. Thomas thought the gesture entirely unnecessary and, having spent significant time about the uptight swordsman, thought it might invite only ridicule.

"We've plenty of left over timber from our own constructions and we've brought that. Good, stout wood," he added while thumbing his belt. "Along with hammers, nails, rope and chains for pulleys, casks of fresh water and a few kegs of ale should you decide to celebrate some evening."

A sudden awkward silence seized him before he cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. "Me and the boys can put them wherever you like."

[Carnath-Emory]

[INDENT]"You believe yourself to be very much a thing of steel, don't you, and all those elements which accompany -- blood and death and conflict and all such things -- and yet here you are."[/INDENT]
And yet here Ariane is, and here they are, two sisters whose lives have been riddled with precisely such violence, but very seldom with such such opportunities as these. Two girls who have spent themselves liberally on the destruction of things, but very rarely on their creation. Here is the truth of it: that the swordswoman had meant to find purpose of a sort here, had meant to find hard work for her restless limbs and distraction for a grieving mind, and instead had come upon a thing far more precious.

Each night before sleep, she touches aching, loving palms to the rich earth that is theirs. Each morning, she rises to the sight of half-made hopes.

Such things they speak of! Lacking her sister's grasp of such things, Ariane has not shared that concern for tunnels and walls: Syl Duquesne has given them this Betzalel and named him Competent, and her faith in the Architect's judgement is absolute. Lacking also her sister's mind for the scope of this undertaking, except that clearly it is to be vast: she is arriving at the notion slowly, and with a mind that can scarcely Believe what they have begun. But walls and floors are far simpler matters, and she devotes herself to the simpler aspects of their design; had briefly longed for a fountain, but this was too much a fancy owned by Duquesne herself, so that she could not bear to voice it. Similarly, the notion of raw silk for their windows, which is a very fine thing, but one very unsuited to what Darkenhold is to become. It is better kept for more personal rooms, far gentler places, like so very much else that she'd seen of Aithne, and --

Imagine this, she has one day said: a broad room with glass for its dome, so that sunlight pierces its gloom like a lance. Has almost shyly ventured, not because the idea is so strange, but because the memory is: that she had stood beneath this thing, helplessly transfixed by the strange beauty of it. Imagine this, she has more easily suggested: shelf upon shelf of books for that library, and with ladders to reach their heights, ladders upon wheels.

It will one day be a strange thing, this Darkenhold. Three cultures are at work upon it.

But: "Acteon Skinner," she'll later echo her sister, filthy at the hands and sweated at the brow, and glad for a moment's respite. They have neared the very depths of summer, and its warmth sears. "The tracker." Because there's no forgetting that one, who'd once sat with them both by a tavern hearth, in Darkenhold's earliest days. It was half-formed dreams, then; he'd added his own, and accordingly it had begun to grow...

"Not at the 'Dagger, surely; I've not seen him since -- " Ah. There's no need to speak of that near-disaster. "Except for once, and in passing. The 'Dragon in town, perhaps? But he should be here. He would do well here."

Increasingly aware, meantime, of the approach of wagon-wheels and well-shod hooves, which is not in itself unusual here. But that heads have begun to lift, that eyes have turned towards the sight of it ... that interests. Some very small backstep gives it over into Quincy's more capable hands.

[Betzalel]

The sun would rise high this day, a great eye looking out and down, making short the shadows it made long in the morning. The cool of night has lurked a while, settled in among the shadows of foundations, among the jutting of new walls whose stone is cut, hewn into rough symmetry and cemented together with artistry and precision. With the builders came their technologies, their management of heavy stone and timber, and each day some new rise is given to walls upon buried roots of pale-stone foundations. Imported stone, because it is strong, because it is a process of tradition--no structure they raise can grow upon any other stone.

In contrast to rock locally quarried, this foundation is light and smooth, inset with veins of tiny and natural crystal, so that each day when the sun fields outward from the horizon, east-facing surfaces glisten gently with pale color and there is some mystical sense in the effect, as if the work to be done here had been blessed.

Under the warmth of this high sun, Betzalel takes a moment to stop, to draw his hat down and pull a sleeve across his brow, even as sweat lurks down his neck, catching in the short kerchief tied there for just such a purpose. Around him, workers labor, coming to and fro with supplies, tools, materials, moving in efficient rhythms. He turns, looking along the length of the nearest wall being raised, hearing from beyond it the sound of song, a methodical tune for the purpose of working, and for a time he only listens... glad for the tones of his native tongue filtering down from among the rising walls of this place. Some edge of smile occurs here and he looks down, settling his hat into place and bending to collect his bundled survey equipment, hefting its precise and heavy weight up onto his shoulder and lending himself once more to motion. Joining in again into the steady pace of things and setting himself eventually to some uphill climb.