SJ: Thanks.
Julia: What kind? You'll see.
And no, he's not one of the 3. This probably won't come up in either story so I'll go ahead and say that he's the one who tells of the coming of the 3.
Anyway, on with the story!
[center]The Ersatz Esther Goldman[/center]
Part 8
Rated: PG-13, I think.
So there I was, lying on the bed in the very classy bedchamber my family had prepared for me, surrounded by all the dreaded, comfortable sights and smells and incidental house noises I'd grown up with. I was far from being the lost, alienated child I'd been when last I'd seen these walls--I'd done a lot of growing, lived a lot of life, made decisions that had changed me forever, and found a new family far better than the one I was born to.
Yet after just half an hour with my mother I felt as small and lost and alone as though I'd just stepped out for a few hours walk. I was staring up at the beams of the ceiling, not really seeing them, and tears were falling unnoticed down the sides of my face. I'd tried to fathom Mother's actions for a while, but had just ended up spiraling down into this unsettled melancholia.
I don't know how long I would have lain there if Isaac hadn't come calling. The sound of his footsteps outside, followed shortly by a knock I recognized, was like a much-needed wake up call. I sat up, drying my face, and with a voice that was much smaller than I'd expected I invited him in.
Good old Isaac. He didn't say a word, just came and sat next to me, waiting. After a minute or so, I sighed and leaned on him, my head on his shoulder. "I've a brother named Isaac, you know."
If the non sequitur confused him, he did not show it. "Yeah. You told me once, I think. Back when we met."
"He's probably still around here somewhere. Things don't change too much here, even in half a century."
"Long lives and all that." Isaac nodded in understanding.
"No, not just that," I replied, my mouth twitching into a bitter smile. "That plays a part, yes, but it misses an important factor. We may look like ordinary people, and sound like it, but we're not, really. We're inhuman, and our actions passions and motivations are likewise inhuman. We don't change things much because we don't
want to. Family, and the search for lore and power, are as important to us as the basic desires for sex, food, challenge, and love are to you. Very few other things are at all important. It's a Machiavellian dream--no compassion, no connection, no joy. Only power and scheming. For the good of the family, of course."
"Doesn't sound much like you," he said, giving me the reassurance I'd been fishing for but hadn't had the courage to ask for directly. "You're compassionate, warm... I'd say you're very human. And as for love..." He trailed off just long enough for me to blush and look down. "It's no secret, you know. Just because you don't make it public doesn't mean the people around you don't see it." He grinned, obviously very pleased with himself.
"Yes, well," I said too quickly, "Occasionally it is determined that one of the family women mate with an outsider, in order to keep the line fresh or to assimilate a powerful bloodline. Usually a male of another family like ours is chosen, but sometimes there is an advantage seen in mating with a human mage. In such cases, the child is often... difficult. And that's me. The difficult child." I shrugged, a rueful smile all I could manage. There was no way to communicate the mix of fierce pride and quiet despair that comes from growing up as an automatic outsider within a close-knit family. I'd tried before, but it just isn't something you can understand unless you've experienced it.
"But that's not important," I said, rushing on before he could comment. "What's important is, something has changed around here. The old matriarch, Adelaide, is either dead or moved to replace someone that died elsewhere--a matriarch can't leave. My
mother has taken up the position."
The stress I'd given the word 'mother' was not lost on Isaac. "And the prophet?"
"No deal. Not until I finish some old business."
Shortly before my acrimonious departure all those years ago, I had gotten into some very bad confrontations. During one of those, I challenged my mother to a duel. I really don't recall what I was trying to prove, or even gain... adolescent pride, I suppose. In any case, I'd left without ever having the duel, and hadn't much thought about it since.
Mother, apparently, had. But why was she bothering with it now? There are no standards of honour in my family, and if there were, my mother is the last person I'd expect to be a stickler for them. What was she
doing?
Isaac had no better idea than I did, though we racked our brains about it for quite some time before we finally retired.
***
The next morning, I awoke to find my old tutor, Ginevra taking a bundle of clothing from my armoire. "Get up," she said shortly, and I automatically responded, as though I were a thirteen year old girl again.
How I hated them for that.
"I can dress myself, thank you," I snapped. "Ginevra, what is my mother doing with this challenge business? Doesn't she have better things to do?"
She just stared at me. There wasn't even enough emotion in her stare to call it 'cold'. She dropped the clothing on my bed, and left my room without a word. It was only then that I noticed the rapier and main gauche that lay upon the low dresser beside the door.
I stared for a long time, not quite believing. "This isn't right."
What the
Hell was she thinking?
***
It was an hour later, and I was sitting with Isaac in a foyer near the main courtyard.
"They're almost
always magical duels, Isaac! And what's more, I've never heard of Mother doing any sort of fencing at all!
I'm the fencer. What can she be trying to
accomplish?!
"Maybe she's going to use magic to stack the odds in her favour. Maybe picking a sword was her way of shaming you." He shrugged.
"No, that's stupid. She's no mage, just a hedge witch. A thaumaturge, like the rest of them. She can't possibly count on beating me that way."
I was being awful to him, snapping and being impatient. Feeling helpless was really getting to me. As was being there. As were a lot of things. I did apologise later, when he brought it up, but at that moment I was distracted. A girl I didn't recognise was just arriving to take me out into the courtyard.
***
Mother was waiting for me in the centre of the yard, sword and dagger readied. She looked rather better in her fencing costume than I did in mine, I noted with restrained bitterness.
"What is all this about, Mother?" I shouted, the rage in my voice fueled by fear and confusion.
"It is about what it has always been about, daughter. Life and death. Life and death and family.
You may have forgotten these things, but I have not." And so saying, she attacked.
I backed away quickly, noting that many family members, old faces known to me, were watching avidly from the surrounding windows. "I withdraw my challenge!" I shouted, still trying to get out of this... whatever 'this' was.
It didn't work. She kept coming, her eyes burning with the fire of obsession. I'd seen her like this before, but that look had a very different feeling when seen behind a sharp steel blade coming toward my throat.
I fought back. I fought hard. And it took me less than a minute to realize that she was better than I was. Through whatever training or enchantments, she was better. I was probably going to lose this duel, and if the look in her eyes was something to go by, that meant death.
As I stumbled backwards to avoid a thrust--I was already bleeding from three shallow cuts on my arms and shoulder, and she was moving in for the kill--I thought about what I had to lose. About the things in my life still left unfinished, the things I still wanted to explore and discover, and one woman in particular who was waiting for me, somewhere in the southern sky.
I fought harder then, fought with a strength and speed I'd never had. It was as though the world slowed down and I was seeing things with a greater clarity because I'd realized I really had something
worth fighting for.
It didn't matter. She beat my sword aside and stabbed me through the belly. Not a fatal wound, not for me, but I wasn't going to be able to stop her next stroke.
Then she pulled the sword (painfully!) from my body and made a grand gesture of pulling back for the finishing thrust--and I saw my chance. Rolling onto my side, I caught her sword in the guard of my dagger and sank my sword up into her ribcage.
She smiled as she died, and even as I pulled my blade out, even as I used my magicks to resuscitate her, I realized how blind and stupid I'd been. How well she'd manipulated me, and how damned foolishly
stupid I'd been this whole time.
My own wounds distracting me with pain and dizziness, I listened frantically at her chest, hating her more than ever. As her heart started beating again, I thought ruefully back to my conversation of last night.
"The old matriarch, Adelaide, is either dead or moved to replace someone that died elsewhere--a matriarch can't leave. My mother has taken up the position."
My mother had died. There were dozens of family witnesses to that, probably several of whom had been monitoring our life signs somehow. And I was there with her, her daughter and her killer. And that meant...
Her eyes opened. Her smile, though weak, was victorious. And why not? She'd finally beaten me, finally found the one way she could trap me here forever.
"Matriarch," she said.
I screamed.
TBC