Author's Notes and Disclaimers:  Hope ya'll had a Happy Thanksgiving 
or a Happy Four Day Weekend/Week!  Here's chapter four, email! LOL 

inspiredthoughts@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/keitree

Standard disclaimers apply

Name Index:
Serena-Serenais
Selenity-Selenai
Lita-Leinta
Rei-Rhi
Mina-Minka
Ami-Aimes

Darien-Darius
Kunzite-Kunzath
Nephrite-Nepran
Jadite-Jadreth
Zoicite-Zaite


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Nightmares Chapter Four~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


"I don't understand Valan, why you?"  Her lover grimaced and turned 
away from her words, angry beyond reason at her questioning.  
"Leinta, just leave it be!  Accept that I was sent for and that I will 
go!"  She hated it when he spoke to her like that, like she was a 
child, and not the woman that shared his blankets and guarded his back 
in a fight.  She glared and let her hands ball into fists at her 
sides.

"Why damn it!  You're good Valan, I'll give you that, but you're not 
the best, not by a damn long shot.  Why would the Queen request you, 
specifically?"  Valan's jaw clenched and he wore the black look he 
always did when she crossed some unspoken but always understood line.  
He stared at her for a long moment, his dark eyes flashing, before he 
made a visible effort to clam himself.  

"Leave it be Leinta.  Leave it be."  There was warning in the 
undertones of his deep voice and she sometimes wondered if he knew 
how truly frightening he was sometimes.  Valan wasn't a physically 
imposing man, not by any means.  He was well built, of average height 
and weight, though more lean than most.  His face was agreeable, in a 
rugged battered way that matched many of his fellows.  His hair was a 
sable mass that was several shades darker than her light auburn.  
There was nothing outwardly fierce about him, nothing, besides his 
scars, that would suggest a fighter's life.  But his eyes...

People feared him for the depth of those intensely black eyes.  He 
never meant to frighten but when he turned the full power of them upon 
someone few could withstand their strength.  Leinta was one of a hardy 
few.  She loved a challenge, and bitter Valan, bitter-loving Valan was 
most definitely that.  He was so tender, so passionate in a way that 
roused her nature even as it confounded her because, she loved him but 
it was the love of the moment, not a lifetime, and he knew it.  He 
held her so tight sometimes she wanted to weep.

But Valan was a man and men glorified in secrets, in shadows.  He was 
nearly twice her age, a fighter nearing the end of his prime, while 
Leinta was just now entering hers.  He treated her as an equal; it 
rarely mattered that he was thirty-three and she was a mature 
nineteen, except for times like this...  When Leinta discovered traces 
of his past and dug...

"How would the Queen know you Valan?"  He fumed and she knew, had she 
been any other, he might have struck her, but she was his partner.  
She knew his every strength, his every weakness, and one move that 
caught him flat on his back, panting, every time she used it on him.  
The Defensive Mounts were a well-trained military unit, but a well 
trained, disciplined group used to settling arguments with brawls.  
Valan had never had a reason to restrain his fists with his fellows, 
but Leinta, who had endured her share of black eyes from group fights, 
refused to sport bruises given by her lover.  The one time he had lost 
his temper, when she had pushed him too hard about some trivial 
question and he had tried to slap her, she had whirled and in the 
blink of an eye he had gone from the aggressor to the victim...  As 
Leinta straddled his chest and toyed with a dagger, face clam, eyes 
furious.

He did not strike her but he did try to intimidate her by placing 
himself nose to nose with her, letting the full force of his satanical 
gaze rest on her light brown eyes.  "Don't push," Valan repeated 
roughly, low voice full of carefully restrained anger.  "I was called 
and I shall go."  Leinta stared at him, speculatively, for a moment, 
before laughing with something that sounded nothing like amusement.

"You know her, Queen Selenai."  It had been a guess but, once said, it 
had the ring of truth, truth echoed by a flash of alarm in Valan's 
face, before he managed to render his features into a mask of barely 
reined fury.

"How?" Leinta insisted, against even her own better judgment.  Valan 
growled and she knew that she had struck a nerve; eagerly, she 
continued, with little concern for her own safety.

"You served in the Palace Guards, didn't you?"  Valan's eyes 
brightened for a moment, flared with some inner memory before fading 
again to that charcoal darkness.  He set his jaw against answering her 
and Leinta rested her fists against her well-shaped hips as she 
waited, impatiently, for her lover to break the acid silence.  
Finally, something within Valan's face broke and he grimaced before 
stepping back, his anger still there but less dangerous, less 
fearsome.  

"The Royal Guards."  Leinta raised surprised brows.  It was one thing 
to be part of the Palace Guards, men whose duty was to protect the 
inner city of Blanchant, Bleserd's capital, it was another thing 
entirely to be accepted to the Royal Guards, elite of the elite, who 
protected, not the city, but the heart of the city, the royal family, 
from harm.  Valan swallowed before continuing.

"I... I was sent for because I used to be one of the Royal Guards."  
Leinta narrowed a piercing green gaze and pursed her lips, 
speculatively.  

"Very well lover, that explains why you were called and how you know 
Queen Selenai, but it doesn't explain why you are not longer part of 
the Royal Guards, and why you are a farmer's brat's lover in the 
rugged mountains that separate Bleserd and Roshana."

"And if that's one secret I don't wish to reveal before I leave 
Leinta?" Valan demanded, face suddenly pinched, tired.  She wasn't 
fooled, there was more.

"Valan?"  She made a question, and a demand, of his name as she 
stepped forward to put one steely grip on his arm.  He tensed under 
her touch and flinched.

"Valan...

"Valan, I've shared your bed for two years, been under your command 
for three.  I've killed grown men and made it in a profession that 
discourages women.  I'm not a child.  We're not in love, not like soul 
mates, I'm not fool enough to even dream of that... but we have 
something solid, something real.  You can turn your back in a fight 
because I will always be there, always, until you send me away.  But 
until you do, what sort of man am I protecting Valan?  What sort of 
man am I holding in my arms at night?  Who are you Valan?  Who?"  

His gaze wavered and broke before hers.  He leaned forward, kissed her 
brow, smoothed back curls with roughened hands, and touched his 
forehead with hers.  There might have been tears in his eyes but 
Leinta wasn't sure.  She was suddenly afraid of the response she knew 
was coming, the answer to her questions, but she didn't know how to 
stop it...  How to stop him, after she'd broken his protective walls.  
When he finally, for the last time, answered her question his voice 
was broken, detached, cold.  She was no longer beloved; she was no 
longer loved.  He would tell her his secrets but he had closed himself 
to her.  

"I am the man you have known for three years.  But I am also a father, 
and fathers have duties."  Silence held them there, for another 
moment, before Valan rose to his full height.  He stared at her, gaze 
sad but assured.  He would not change his mind.

"Goodbye Leinta," he said softly before he picked up his pack and 
left.  He didn't have to send her away, he had sent himself.  Numb 
legs brought Leinta to the blankets they had shared that morning.  She 
sunk onto them, face a careful blank.  She mourned his loss already, 
not deep mourning, but grief none the less, for the man who had taught 
her so much.  She ached, but she was also reeling.  Her pain would be 
temporary, that Leinta knew, but her astonishment, her bafflement, her 
disbelief...

The Queen had sent for Valan because he was Serenais's father.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Verl, King of the Five Kings, breathed deeply, smelled the earth as it 
had become, and smiled.  He stood in a redwood's shadow in a forest so 
overgrown that little darknesses bled into each other and formed one 
huge blanket that covered the entirety of the forest itself.  It was 
warm here, with a hint of heavy mists and the coming of winter.  

Verl placed on hand, palm down, against the rough bark of the 
redwood.  The trees weren't part of a darkness that he was used to.  
They were vibrant, alive, and despite the faint uneasiness the forest 
created it was nothing... nothing... and would be nothing the moment 
he reclaimed what was his.  

Before trees, before grasses, before humans, he had walked.  And where 
he and his fellows had trod, the earth had bled red.  The ground had 
been molten, and rivers had steamed.  Verl had come before time, 
before life, and he had been master of that hell.  And he would be 
master of it again.  

Fingers curled, became claws, and gouged deeply into the heart of the 
trunk.  Warm sap oozed sluggishly from the wounds he had rent as it 
slowly covered his hand.  Verl curled the hand into a fist and gazed 
at it a moment before looking up, golden eyes finding the sapphire 
blue of the sky.  And for a moment the blue warped, changed, and 
became cerulean eyes...  Innocent eyes...

A man stared at him sadly, even as he bled from the wounds Verl had 
inflicted upon both his body and his soul.  His clothes, once white, 
were muddied, torn, unrecognizable.  The face, beautiful and masculine 
at the same time was serene, despite the cuts, and the burns.  Singed 
hair, more golden than Verl's eyes, caught the breeze, bringing him 
the man's scent; strength, vitality, life. 

"Sandere..."   The name escaped from curled lips, through fangs that 
promised death to all who dared breath.  And then the image was gone.

Verl blinked, sighed, and uncurled his fists, his control once more 
absolute.  The wind touched him, brought him the smells of this new 
world that had sprung from the ashes of His, while they had slumbered, 
helpless to stop it... The Sleeping Ones...

There was more than just life in the air though, more than 
civilization, there was something else...  Traces, trails, lines of 
spider silk...  The Five were alive...  They flashed before him, those 
who had banished him and his to eternal sleep, for not even the Five 
had possessed the power to serve them death.  Four men and one woman, 
Five who had ruled just as absolutely as they...  

They had not been the heroes that the world of today had imagined.  
Heroes didn't exist in that time.  All who survived were marked by a 
certain amount of tempered cruelty, by blood stained hands.  There 
were no true innocents, except for perhaps Sandere.

Verl knelt and scooped up a fistful of the earth.  The ground teemed 
green and rich browns but even as he held it, it withered, died at his 
touch.  He hissed in a frightening version of laughter.  This earth 
remembered him, remembered his rule.  It feared him, and it had 
reason.  He stood again and cast the gray dirt down.  

He placed his palm once more against the redwood and smiled, 
terrifyingly.  

The forest froze and turned to stone between this breath and the 
next.  The grass and leaves withered, died, and became ash as the 
mighty oaks and redwoods hardened and died, bare branches entreating 
heaven for aid.  Birds, wolves, and bears cried out and flared, each 
one a brief burst of flame that left nothing but oily smoke in its 
wake.

With a thought Verl levitated and rose above the tortured treetops.  
He surveyed his work and chuckled.  He saluted the barely visible 
castles of Roshana and Bleserd before reclaiming his place among the 
clouds.  He had sent his message.  The next time he touched the ground 
it would be to celebrate more than revenge, it would be to toast the 
Sleeping One's bloody triumph.  This land would die, burn, and once 
more be His.



~Kei