The trip through the Fortress was made at a brisk pace. This Captain Yolanda Meriz, pretty in a way though she looked as though she might've chewed rocks in her free time, seemed a hard-edged woman with bits of gray streaking through her otherwise black hair. He had no words for her, so he didn't bother trying to strike up conversation. Men and women of varying ages passed them in the corridors, were passed themselves, and they turned to offer short bows or curtsies before continuing about their labor. Wearing red and black slashed discreetly with silver, they had the look of uniformed servants. A good many of them were cleaning, dusting this or that, or carrying covered trays that smelt of good food. Some were laying down carpets and runners and rugs over the floor, no doubt in anticipation of colder weather to come, and others were hanging up tapestries, removing others.
Two flights of stairs and many turns later, the captain offered him a preemptory gesture which halted his steps before an open door. She slipped inside, leaving him out in the hallway with what appeared to be a large... creature. For some reason, something nagged at his memory. He wanted to call the thing a troll.
~
Entering into Alysia's study, Legion-Captain Meriz crossed the floor without a glance anywhere except to Alysia herself, seated behind her desk. There were a great many formalities that Lord Ayreg had drilled into the Legion, and there were different ways to approach the Emperess (or any high-ranking officer) dependent upon where she was at, at the time. The most formal, of course, was when she was seated in the Great Hall of the Fortress upon her throne. For her to be seated in her study required something remarkably less... rigid.
She pressed her gauntleted fist to her chest in a salute, though done quietly, and bent at the waist until her head was very nearly level with her waist, "Pardon the intrusion, Emperess, but I have brought Lord Ayreg, if you would receive him now."
Alysia regarded the Captain before her, studying her features. She did so in silence for a few seconds, revealing nothing in her own face.
"I would see him now," Alysia finally replied, acknowledging Meriz's words with a polite nod. "Unless he's in dire need of repair."
The captain straightened, lowering her arm to her side. "On the contrary, Emperess, he looks polished. If not a bit... disoriented. He tried to hide it, I think, but he walked like he were learning the place again. I'll speak with Lieutenant al'Caer later, but I'm not sure that Lord Ayreg even..."
She shook her head, "Forgive me, Emperess. I'll send him in, now."
Captain Meriz turned sharply on her heel and marched back across the room and out the door.
~
The woman in the armor, that Yolanda Meriz, motioned him in and took up a position of guarding outside the door. Entering into the room, his hands held behind his back, his one good eye peering about curiously, the man they called Gareth examined everything studiously. The troll followed in after him and stood by the door. When he took notice of the woman seated at the desk, though, he stopped in mid-stride. She was like a vision from his dreams. More, he knew that's exactly what she was. He had seen her before, at night when he slept, events that he was only starting to believe were actually real and had taken place. In a way, that turned those dreams into nightmares depending upon what the visions had for him. After a moment of hesitation, he continued forward. Toward... the Emperess.
He did not bow, though he looked for an instant as if he might have. As if he were trying to decide whether to or not, before just finally deciding to speak, "I understand that you wanted to see me," he said, "and I have questions of my own for you."
"Yes, I wanted to see you, Lord Ayreg," she said. There was a caustic edge to her smooth contralto, and she voiced his title with what seemed to him to be gentle mockery. She rose from her seat, motioning for the strumming minstrel to be silent, and approached him with an unreadable stare. She stared at him for what seemed to be a long few moments, her expression never altering a whit. Her eyes glittered crimson, and she stepped back, gesturing toward him. "No less than three separate people in Rhy'Din have been seeking you, and those are just the ones I know about," she continued. "For all I know, there could be more. You've not been seen nor heard from in months, and I finally found you in some wretched little farming town. Was that your idea of a vacation? -- The scars you wear tell otherwise."
The troll snorted, then immediately tried to pretend as though he hadn't. Alysia shot a heated glare at Khaz, then returned her attention back to him. When she spoke again, her voice was lower, less shrill. In some ways - in many ways, truthfully - that calmer, quieter voice seemed more fearsome than the excited one, "I'd like to know where you've been."
Oh, yes. He wanted the words back almost as soon as he spoke them. While a cat could gaze upon a king without fear or worry - usually - a simple country man had no such capabilities. He had been a bit shorter with his tongue than he should've been, and that was tossed back into his teeth now with the biting tone that the white woman had taken. But she answered his question without him having had to ask it. She, as the rest, thought of him as Lord Ayreg as well. The man they called Gareth shifted uncomfortably before speaking,
"...I do not know," he said, quietly, and after a pause, "my first memories, the memories that I know of to be mine, at least, were about a river. They fade in and out, I assume with consciousness, but there are.. other things. A net. Hands. Dirt. Air blown into my lungs. The first time I remember actually waking up was to the face of a small family - the ones who pulled me from the river, they said. They said I was stuck with an arrow when they drew me out, and that I had lost a lot of blood. A ten-day wonder, the goodwife informed me, that I even managed to survive. She said... that there must have been pain. Great, great pain. I was cut to ribbons, see, slashes and gashes, some by the rough edge of rocks, others that they said could only have been done with knives, and welted and bruised as if I had been beaten head to toe for days on end. The water they pulled me from was salted. Great pain.
"And that is that. That's the first memories I have. A few of the people thought that with whatever sort of pain I had to suffer through in the biting salt of the ocean before it became a river that I was swept into, my mind... shut it out. Turned off, as it were. To block out the pain, see, but it seems to have blocked out considerable parts of my life. They called me Gareth there, and I worked a farm for a man named Ichaso. They were helping me build a house when your al'Caer showed up and swept me away. He, that fat man, Dulmor, and everyone else in the bloody world call me Ayreg. And I've been having... dreams, lately. Some of them are pleasant, most of them are horrifying, and much of it is beyond useless to me. But I've seen enough now to actually accept that I am this Lord Ayreg that people keep calling me.
"So tell me," he said, then a heartbeat later added a belated, "Emperess. Who am I?"
"Who are you...?" Alysia voiced short, cynical laughter. "If I knew the answer to that..." She trailed off, then after a small pause continued, "You must have been on the verge of death, if not beyond it." She turned, paced back to her desk, and leaned against it. She appeared to be deep in thought, as if contemplating the very thing that he himself had accepted long since: He had been stricken with amnesia. She looked down. Not at him. "Be seated, if you wish."
He did want to sit. In truth, the fancy red coat with all of its gold embroidery and threadwork made it a touch uncomfortable to sit, but he readjusted his position a bit. Ah. Of course. It was only really tolerable at all if he sat on the edge of the seat, bolt-upright, without a hint of attempted comfort. This Lord Ayreg man must've been wound tighter than a coiled spring.
"I really don't know where to start, " she began. The Emperess sounded surprisingly tentative, almost awkward, and her voice was very quiet. "There is so much of your life that I never knew. First, you're not Gareth. I'm fairly sure of that. As I knew you, you were Jodiah Ayreg. Once you served with me as a sort of bodyguard, then left my service to become a knight for another... another power. You were a blacksmith - armor, weapons - made me a set of soulsteel armor. You saved me from an assassin by chance, and by choice helped me regain the throne of Rhilshen."
"Shot and beaten... obviously you still have significant enemies." Alysia mused, alabaster features darkened to an expression that he would very nearly call a scowl. "Gods and demons, Ayreg, can't you remember a bedamned thing?" She sounded accusatory, then shook her head as if in abrupt realization. "I'm sorry, this must be a trying time for you. Maybe Suliss' can help more."
"Suliss?" But he shook his head, answering the question that came out of her mouth as if she were a judge handing down a death sentence, "I remember... bits and pieces. Here and there. I see them in my dreams, or something will come to me and it will be familiar. Some stretches of the corridors to get here, for example, some of them I felt as if I had traversed them a dozen times. A hundred. But the stretch before and the stretch after might as well have been yesterday's smoke for all I know of this place. It's very disconcerting.
"More to the point, the images I see in my head... you, though I was a much younger man then, a woman in white with yellow hair... the things done afterward. Dark things. Dark as night. I see them, and I know that man felt no remorse, no chill, no shudder, not the slightest hints of hesitation before he did... the things he has done. Oftentimes, I am not so certain I want this man and I to be the same."
He trailed off for a moment, then spoke again, "But I am, aren't I? Do you suppose it will continue? The little flashes of insight here or there, remembrance lost suddenly renewed?"
"I wouldn't discount those dreams. Probably, you'll regain little fragments of memory, but there may be things you never recall." Alysia fell silent, thinking. In that silence, the golden-haired minstrel got up and fetched a pair of wineglasses brimming with bloodspiced wine. The first was offered to Alysia, the second to himself. Alysia accepted it, then nodded at him. He accepted the offer as well, sniffing it faintly. The scent made the hackles on the back of his neck want to rise, but it would only be polite to take a sip. It burned his tongue, and yet at the same time tasted oddly cool. A bizarre wine, for sure, but after he swallowed it down his head felt... clearer. Like breathing in the air after a good, hard storm.
"The woman in white with yellow hair," the Emperess continued, "that was Emma Frost. She's a psion, a sorceress. She might be able to restore you, but there are many who don't trust her in their minds," Her full lips quirked in an amused smile at that notion. "However, it occurs to me that you are at a crossroads, Jodiah -- Gareth, whichever you prefer. Your past does not need to taint you. You could choose who and what you wanted to be: an amalgam of what you remember, or something entirely different. Even -- just a farmer, if that's what you chose. As much as that would fill me with dismay."
The man they called... the man in the red coat (but no big yellow hat) sat silently, peering down into the glass of wine. His brow furrowed and creased, flesh scrunching together under the leather strap of the rough eyepatch that covered his right eye before he looked up to her again.
"We are who we are, Emperess. I can not hide from it. I know as much of this... this Jodiah Ayreg as a pig knows about blacksmithing, but we are who, and what, we are." Dark things. Dark as night, "I never felt right on that farm, even though I did what I had to. Something always pulled at me, tugged at me, told me that I was not doing what I was meant to do in life."
"I am Jodiah. And if this psion, this Emma Frost is the only way to lower the veil between what I am, and what I was, to become what I was meant to be -- then so be it."
"We'll see." She tasted the wine, then took a longer drink. "I will summon Emma to the Fortress, though it may take some days before she arrives." Alysia smirked, adding conversationally, "You may change your mind after you've spoken with her."
"Perhaps, but we'll have to wait until then," he took another sip of the wine, then leaned forward just enough to set the glass onto the edge of her desk. He rose to his feet, a thing far easier done in that coat than he would've thought. This time, though, he did offer a short bow. It was not an elegant thing; as if he had never truly given one before, and was only just learning now. "If you will excuse me, I do not wish to take any more of your time, and I would like to rest a bit. I've been on the horse for so long in the coming here that my bottom has taken on the shape of the saddle."
She laughed - perhaps not at his awkward bow, but at his words. It was a terribly formal way of saying his ass was stiff and sore. "Be at ease, Lord Ayreg. You must be tired." She nodded toward the door, commenting gently, "Your quarters are down the hall to the right. I'm sure the captain can show you there."
He nodded his head, then turned, but took only one step before pausing and turning back to her. "Before I go, Emperess," he said, resting his hand on the back of the chair he had just vacated, "you.. mentioned someone else. Suliss'. Who is this?"
"She was your... companion?" Alysia ventured, as if unsure of their relationship. She spoke cautiously, "A warrior - she is... drow, if you know what that is. They have dark skin, silver hair, vicious and savage and cruel, for the most part. Suliss has unusual eyes - yellow-gold."
The priestess smiled remotely, glancing toward the fire. "She was concerned with your disappearance. I thought she would be pleased to hear of your return."
"Yellow eyes," he said just under his breath. Jodiah looked down at his hand on the back of the chair, studying the scars on his hand, criss-crossing his knuckles. Some of the scars he could tell were offensive, from punching and the like; the rest were defensive, fending away knife blows and bleeding for it. His brow furrowed again in thought before he nodded, and looked back up to her. Dulmor had called her his lady-friend. In a more full voice, though it was still rough at the edges, the voice of a man who'se throat had been ruined at least once, like a strip of velvet rasping across steel, he spoke, "Thank you for your understanding, Alysia. I will retire now, for the moment. You've given me a great deal to think on."
He nodded to her, a deep nod, almost a bow in itself, and left the room. Captain Yolanda Meriz fell in at his side, and was indeed quite helpful in him finding his rooms. A tall door made of iron-strapped oak, unadorned and unmarked. He thanked her before he opened the door and stepped inside. Exploring the room - his quarters - would be a task for a later time. For now, he wished to rest. As soon as he found the bed, he doffed his boots and that fancy, red, embroidered coat and laid his head onto the goose-down pillows.
A great deal to think on.
Dark things. Dark as night.
