Chapter 5

Blue night

The melody was so sweet, so beautiful. It seemed to fill every longing which had ever existed in him, seemed to soothe every ache his soul had ever had to endure. His fingers strung the instrument as light and skillfully as if playing this song was his one destiny in life.

"Such a perfect song…" he thought, letting his fingers gently slip from the lyre's strings and listening entranced to the dying away of the last few crystal clear tones. There was no doubt that this melody was the best piece he had ever written and played--it had to be the song of his life. The song of their life. He needed to play it to her, right away and his heart leapt with joy and anticipation as he left the room, trying to find his fiancée.

"Anna!" he cried, storming into her room without knocking, then stood dumbfounded upon realizing that she was not there. The chair in front of the marble dressing table was unoccupied and the white embroidered silken sheets on the bed looked untouched…His former joy was crushed a bit by the disappointment of not finding her here and he felt impatience arising within him, driven by the fear that he would forget the song if he could not play it to her right away. However, he knew that this could not happen. The song was in every vein of his body, in his heart. There was no way he ever could forget this most beautiful tune of all…

"I'm calling it "The Song of Love"," he thought and though this name was probably a name hundreds, thousands of melodies were bearing, there was no song he could think of to which the title fitted better.

He left Anna's room and quickly made his way down the stairs to the hall of the castle and into the dining room. Surely she was eating breakfast there with his parents; however, the room was empty…

"Where could she be?" He tried to calm down. The castle was huge and Anna knew her way around it well and had many places she liked. Still, she was neither in the throne room nor in one of the various studies of the castle… Slowly, it really started to worry him that all rooms were empty, but he couldn't think clearly about it as the melody in his head was playing on and on, telling him that everything was alright. However, as he stood again in the great hall of the castle, panting slightly, he no longer knew where to search.

"Milord, can I help you?" a worried voice spoke to him and he realized that one of the castle servants was standing next to him.

"Have you seen, by any chance, the Lady Anna? Has she left the castle this morning?" he asked the servant, once more joy flaring up in him. Surely the other would be able to help him and he finally could share with Anna the wonderful emotions the melody invoked in him.

 "But, Milord…Don't you know?" the servant asked, a look of confusion on his face.

"What? What is it I don't know?" He was still smiling, the melody making him feel so alive and cheerful.

The castle's chancellor appeared, inquiring if there was a problem.

"He doesn't know…" the servant said, earnestly, nearly angry…

The chancellor sighed. "Milord, please remember…"

What? What should he remember? The song in his head got softer as his thoughts raced. Had he forgotten an important audience? About an official visit Anna wanted to undertake with his parents? No… no, there was something else… Something terrible, something causing his stomach and head to hurt, something making him feel giddy… Still, he couldn't grasp it and the more he tried to think about it, the more he felt dizzy. He got aware that other castle servants had assembled around him, watching him with looks of pity, but also incomprehension. Yes, some were regarding him nearly with disgust…

"What should I remember?" he asked. As there came no answer he nearly shouted in a desperate attempt to break through the silence of the people around him: "Tell me! What should I remember?!"

"She's dead, Milord." The answer of the chancellor came hard, cruel, matter-of-factly.

"No! This is not true!" he exclaimed. How could she be dead if there was this beautiful song he needed to play to her?

"Get a grip on yourself, Milord! She's dead, dead like your parents."

"Dead like everything you loved, dead like your music," the voices of the servants around him confronted him, though he refused to believe them.

How could his music be dead? He still could hear the wonderful tune in his head!

"It's still playing!" he exclaimed, nearly triumphantly. If this song of love was not dead, Anna surely was still there, as well.

"No, Milord. Listen carefully…"

"But I can still hear it! I--" The last traces of his smile vanished as he realized that the melody had become very quiet. All the bright colours the song had inflicted in him were darkening…

He tried to concentrate on the tune, to bring the notes, the colours back, but he couldn't… And with each note that died away he became more aware that he never would be able to play this song to Anna and he was overcome by an unbearable panic. He slumped to the floor, holding his head, as if trying to hold the melody back from getting sucked into the void of oblivion…

"No! Bring it back! It's disappearing! Bring her back! I need to play it to her before the melody dies away! Before I forget how to play it!"

But no one was helping him and his head felt as if it was about to burst open in its effort to understand what was happening, in an effort to grasp what he didn't want to grasp, to accept. It couldn't be that his parents were dead…That she was dead…

That he should lose this one song now when he had finally found it…

As Edward awoke, silence greeted him. He stared for a moment with panic stricken eyes towards the ceiling, the shock of his former "experiences" still gripping him. Slowly, he realized that he had been dreaming again and he closed his eyes, feeling weary and exhausted.

"The melody is gone…"

The blanket of red velvet suddenly felt heavy and made it hard to breathe. For a moment he reveled in the experience and wondered what it would mean if he had to suffocate here and now, but then he realized, nearly a bit disappointed, that the velvet wasn't heavy and that the pressure was just his imagination. Nevertheless, feeling restless, he flung the blanket aside, quickly dressed and madehis way to the front door of the castle. The stony halls were silent; the carpet lined grounds even swallowed the sounds of his steps. He passed two guards, the only members of the castle staff who were awake.

"Up so late, Your Majesty?" they asked, slightly worried upon the strange expression on the face of their ruler.

"I just need some fresh air…" Edward replied, not even bothering to smile as he rushed out into the nightly desert.

The sky was clear and full of stars and the air was crisp, clear and cold, but Edward took no notice of all this. He was still caught in the folds of the dream, caught in the emptiness and darkness of his mind--but most of all caught in the silence of it…

"The melody has died away…"

He wished desperately that he could remember at least one note of the beautiful tune from his dream, that, just one more time, he could hear one tone of it… But there was only silence.

He turned around to look at the imposing front gate of the castle which stood dark in the night and it suddenly had something repulsive to it. It was like the entrance was the cause of the silence around him, sucking in every sound into the blackness behind. He suddenly dreaded returning to the building, returning to the quiet rooms which would never be filled with Anna's laughter again; returning to the much too big Throne Room where no voices of mother and father would ever give orders again; returning to the bleak sandy coloured halls which never would hear another beautiful melody…

But there--couldn't he hear a whistle? Disappointed, he realized that it was only the cold desert wind.

"Still, even the desert isn't as silent as Damycan…" it struck Edward and he took a step forward as if he wanted to follow the wind, afraid that its whistling would leave him like everything else. He took step after step, fearing that if he lingered, the black maw of the castle might suck him and the sound of the deserts with him in... As he finally stopped breathlessly and turned around, the castle was barely in sight any longer. 

The nights in the desert were cool and Edward shivered. Still he knew that there was no turning back now if he wanted to hear at least the melody of the wind -- and the melody that was now playing softly in his head…

However, it was not a merry, bright song like the one from his dream, but an endless sad, dark, desperate one…

It was a tune that could possibly bring him and Anna together again…

~O~

The bar of the "Golden Turtle" Inn in Kaipo had been a crowded place – at least before Golbez had entered it. Now only a few frightened looking customers were still sitting at their places. Often, Golbez didn't know what annoyed him more: the people who feared him or the people who hated him.

"No, worst are the people who actually like me…"

A barmaid approached him nervously and put a bottle and a glass on his table.

"I haven't ordered anything…" Golbez looked at her with a frown.

"Your companion, Sir Tristan told me to serve you some wine and to tell you that he has urgent business to accomplish and will join you later." The girl reeled off the message as quickly as she could in order to be able to also hurry away as quickly as she could.

"Sir Tristan?" Golbez looked after her slightly bewildered.

"He probably told her that he was a Knight of Baron, too… All his mouth ever spits out are lies. Then again, lately you lie a lot, too…"

Tristan's former words were bugging him. "We're one of a kind…" he had said… Was it true? Was all evil, whether low and harmless or powerful and destructive, the same?

"Surely not…"

One thing they might have in common was that they weren't "normal" people and dragged attention to themselves wherever they were. Just now Golbez noticed that two little girls were watching him curiously from the frame of a door at the other end of the room. Suddenly, one of the children laughed and stuck her tongue out to him. Golbez was slightly taken aback by this--he was used to the disgust of the people, but for some reason the gesture of the little girl sent a sting through his soul.

"Fine, so let them have what they expect." Narrowing his eyes, he made a "head off gesture" towards the children, whose eyes first widened, then filled with tears. Startled by the sobbing, the mother of the children, the innkeeper's wife, pulled the two away from the door, giving Golbez's an angry look.

"Here we go again…" This time, though, Golbez did not feel happy about the attention he had drawn upon himself. After the unpleasant discussions with Tristan earlier he just wanted to be left alone.

"I have definitely told the other too much…" Wishing that he could make things undone, he filled his glass with wine and took a little sip. It tasted cheap and too sweet, but it washed away a bit of the awkwardness thathe felt. The second cup brought him to brood over the strangest things, the picture of the mother and the girls suddenly strongly before his eyes...

"I wonder how it would be to live a normal life… To have a family… To fall in love…"

He closed his eyes and shook his head. "It makes no sense to think about the unthinkable…" In fact there was no sense in all of this, no sense in his existence.

"I should have never been awoken again... Klu Ya must know why…" The disgust he felt at his own being became so strong again, that he nearly felt the urge to throw up.

"This wine is really bad…" Golbez thought as he poured himself another glass. "Just like me..."

~O~

Several glasses later, Golbez registered only barely that Tristan was approaching the table, a young woman at his side. "Hey Golbez, look what a fine guide I hired for the journey to Damycan!"

From seemingly nowhere, Golbez could barely make out a soft voice: "Nice to meet you. I'm--"

This voice… Something about the bright tones of it pulled Golbez out of the stupor of his deep brooding. It didn't pull him out of the drunken stupor though, and he had to blink several times to "rearrange" his sight.

"Slender figure, white hair, blue eyes, calming aura—"

"Dawn!" he exclaimed, sounding more emotional than he wanted. To Tristan and the woman it appeared just as an incomprehensible whisper before they came to witness how Golbez slumped forward onto the table and fell asleep…