Kapitel 41: Ghost in the Fog
--Markos--
The memory burned. It had been real, if only for a moment. There had been flesh, desire, sweat. No rational explanation could erase the taste of her, the perfume. As he had rode onward into the cold night, the scent had stayed with him along with the taste of her lipstick, entirely different from Jo's. He had ridden east drawn away from the manor towards something. He hoped it was her.
Low fog rose up through the gloom as pale moonlight cast long shadows across the forest path and made walls out of mist. The distant call of the whippoorwill and the chorus of crickets couldn't drown out the racing of his heart. Before he realized it, his Warder had stopped at the edge of a glen concealed by branches and tall grass. The gentle splash of water caught his attention, calling up an old memory, and with only a little bit of wary hesitation he dismounted and walked into the roiling mist.
After he had passed through, and walked an indeterminate distance, Markos saw a pale figure sitting on a willow branch that stretched over the river. Golden hair hung in loose curls down her slender, pale back. The woman's body was clothed in a thin white dress, far too thin for the chill of the spring. The hem fluttered in the breeze.
He remembered. He had not found this place in years. This was the pool where he had seen her the first time.
His mouth was dry. He raised his hand and stopped, placing it over his mouth. If this was a spell, surely, if he spoke it would break it again.
The woman turned the shape of her ears was more prominent in the rivulets of illumination between breaks in the trees. Her eyes glowed brightly cerulean. There was moisture on those lovely cheeks. His heart caught in his throat as she met his gaze.
Sintija.
She splashed into the water but stopped short of touching him. Her mouth moved but he could not hear her. Her hand reached up to touch his face and lingered near his cheek but felt no warmth. He didn't understand.
Markos saw a sort of grief in her eyes. Sintija hugged herself as she mutely cried. Her lips moved and he tried to understand what she was saying.
He strained in the light to hear her, understand her.
Her lovely lips shaped the words and he repeated them to get the possible sounds."Ma-rk-os."
She was saying his name. Over and over.
Her form pressed against him though it was an illusion this time. She was weightless against him. He couldn't feel her, but he tried to grasp even her phantom. He couldn't explain why he felt so strongly about it, and he didn't try. A half an evening ago she had been real, and warm, and now he could only grasp air.
He stepped back, because he could not pull her away and trying earned him only smoke. Deliberately, he mouthed her name. It took all his effort not to say it aloud. "Sin-ti-ja."
Sintija looked up like she had heard him. Her eyes glittered in the moonlight as she met his gaze. For a moment, she seemed more real, her perfume more clear, he thought he could almost hear her heartbeat above the river. "I see you." She slowly mouthed.
His heart stuck in his throat. "Where are you?"
The words she mouthed made no sense to him, there were too many vowels. It was something elvish and long. After a moment she said something else. "Where the Gods sleep and the nightmares roam."
Helplessly, he glanced around the clearing. The moonlight evening gave him no clues, and the still pond could as well have been onyx, for all the black nothingness it showed. Stars twinkled in its mirror finish, almost as though they weren't there up to their waists in the water at all. How could he communicate with her, if they couldn't hear each other? His inner compass, so fixated on this point that he could feel its pull almost like a wire, led him here to the pond at the foot of the waterfall.
He stared at it for a few moments before realizing that the waterfall wasn't marring the surface of the pool. This was another pool, somewhere else?
It suddenly clicked for him. This must be how they moved, and why the Order could never find them. Not Sintija. Not the errant warlocks and witches that eventually became abominations to torment humankind. He could barely see mountains in the fog, if he stared at the unfamiliar peaks. He looked back at the phantasm of Sintija, and he took care to mouth the words slowly, so she might understand him.
"How do I get there?"
"Go north. The Gods hold the heavens above a graveyard of bones." Sintija formed the words slowly for what good it did.
Markos began to mouth his next question - what graveyard? What heavens? - when he heard the far-off whinny of a horse. Turning, he could just make out the galloping of hooves in the distance. Something about it had broken the spell; the mists began to roll back, and so did Sintija.
"No!" he roared at the magic, but the magic dissipated all the same. He reached out to try to grasp on to her, to physically hold whatever had bound this place with another place together, and he thought for a few panicked seconds that he might have achieved it. Sintija remained steady, where all the other mists began to roll away, but her words were still lost to him and nothing he could do could hold her form. It dissolved as the pond resumed its normal ripples and waves, leaving him standing alone in waist high water as the normal sounds of the forest began to rush in around him, filling the silence.
The fog began to clear, his ears popped, and he had the distinct impression that whomever had intruded on the boundaries of this place had been the cause.
Geschenke
-- Geschenk
erhalten Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein