Chapter 1.8

Matters of love are best left to the Bards and the Heathens. We who see life and love as but parts of the greater nature of things know best how to love freely and easily, and how to travel the twisting paths of the entwined heart. We understand the ebb and flow of love, how whims and fancies can change with the phase of the moon. We work with love, rather than dictate to it and mold it into a sellable, tradeable commodity. A couple that has been sung together may be sung apart, if things do not work as they should.

Christians believe that marriage must stay as it was when it is bound, with no changes, no exceptions. It is an investment, and worthless if there is no dowry. Companionship and beauty mean nothing; only land or money makes a marriage good. And so it was with my lord, who smitten not by the lady, but by her dowry: the Eastern Green Forest.

I myself would not take the Eastern Green Forest, even if it came with a tower filled with beautiful maidens. At its heart lies an evil, a well-spring of the twilight world, and through its shadows roam bodies without souls and souls without bodies. The Silver-eyes live in that forest, they who feast on pain and treachery, and they claim all who step beneath the green leaves. No Heathen would go near such a nest of Faerie. Yet my lord was determined to have it.

Despite my warnings against the evil wood, he arranged to marry the Lady Laurice during the Harvest Festival. Yet the harvest had come and gone, and there was still no lady in Songless Castle. This was an omen, I told my lord, that the marriage was not fated to be – but he waved my warnings aside and sent a messenger to Rockridge Castle to ask about the delay. The news that messenger brought back had thrown my lord into a rage.

And now I was to go, the next sacrifice.

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