The princess! A day could pass when he was occupied, harried to and forth, but then a dream, a smell, a voice through the thronging village streets, would send him back to her. It would send him back to his shivering hell and then he would grasp at the walls, a mockery to all who passed him by, for there is the knight that was once called Wilstender the Brave.
In the beginning of his life, the longest and shortest part, he hadn't lived like this. As Wilstender the Brave he had brandished the word of the one true God to all the corners of the land, trodden down evil in his path, saved the maiden fair, and carried out messages to the old and lonely, wherever they might reside.
And as a humble knight he had been suitably humble when he also, on his holy way, had been found by a messenger summoning him to the one true king of the Western Reaches. That had been his greatest honor. What he didn't know was that it would later become the horrid thing that tormented his long nights. He could feel it now, the stiffness, the terrible lust that filled him. But her face! Like an angel pure and silken skin! Ah! She formed in the woodsmoke from his fire, moaned with silent lips far from his reach, and in his dreams he found no peace.
--
The royal halls where echoing in their vastness and was a dizzying sight for eyes that had seen nothing but the countryside for weeks on end. Gold and silver covered every surface. Wine poured forth from fountains. Beautiful ladies of the court glided along the cold white floor.
But when Wilstender the Brave met their playful eyes and flirting smiles he shook his head like an old man and let them pass him by in disappointment, for Wilstender the Brave was a handsome man, was what many said, and many a girl would have sacrificed the family honor on his sword. They did not know that he had traveled to the cloister of St. Albertine to receive the blessing from the saint, herself in harmonious correspondence with the one above all, that he should remain pure of heart and body, chaste and Godly all his days, till death should carry him to his final resting ground. Since that day he had sinned no more, never had an impure thought, never lusted and never lied. Every day at dawn he went down on his knees to pray.
"Wilstender the Brave!" spoke the Mouth of the King. "He calls you forth."
Every eye in the hall turned towards him as he went to meet his ruler above all, save one.
As a young man the king had been a tall and gangly figure, almost like a scarecrow, and though he had been a formidable fencer in his youth it was well known that he had never had any constitution for war. Now the eyes beneath the crown testified to his long illness and a surge of pain coursed through the knight as he thought of the suffering that this meeting caused the monarch. The table to the left of his throne carried the weight of all that medicine could do to alleviate the suffering. The knight would have left him to his rest but he was summoned, and the doors to the king's chamber closed behind him. They were alone and soon all that was heard above Wilstender the Brave's doomed heart were the rasping of the king's breath.
Without a word Wilstender the Brave fell to his knees and said, "My king!" over and over again. He dared not look up but waited for a sign to rise.
He did not know how long he stood bent over like that. Long enough to give him some cramps. But nothing could have moved him from his place. He would have remained till the end of days. Only... He heard a tittering sound. And silky steps started to move. Still, he knelt.
"Oh! Rise, my knight!"
The voice was unexpected but very familiar and he rose up like a beanstalk and gasped, "Your highness!"
Gasped indeed, for he had never seen any woman, lady or otherwise, as he now saw the king's only daughter, Lucia the Ember, princess of the Western Reaches.
Her eyes glowed, true to her name, like the last living ember on the gray coal bed. Her skin also, but like a frosty morning, and though he never saw her hair he had always heard it spoken of as oaken honey. He could almost smell it now as she leaned against her father's seat in a thick, grey dress that flowed close over her hills and meadows and gazed at him with all the fire left in her.
She smiled heavily at him, sadly even, as she patted the king on his shivering forehead.
"I must beg your pardon, sir, for my fathers weak state." She turned to look down at him. "The only thing keeping him alive now are these ghastly tinctures, and would you call this existence life?"
"Your highness!" Wilstender the Brave said again. Starting to suspect why he was there his heart quickened. "Tell me what I can do to help?"
"Stop that," said Lucia the Ember with a frown. "It's no use anymore. He would have died long ago, only..." Here she dried some spit from the royal lip. "I have a soft spot for him after all these years."
