Castle Eastwatch, 28 SC
Castle Eastwatch is an ugly place. It is a drab and gray building of stone, unimaginative in its construction. Built from the stones of a fortress that was cast down by rebels during the civil war that gave birth to Solamnia, it was constructed with very little else but functionality in mind.
The one flourish it has is a balcony upon what was intended to be the Lord's quarters. After I expressed an appreciation for the view it afforded of the harbor and the sea beyond it, Lady Riva had given it to me as my quarters. Despite my protestations.
"I want to be treated as just another Knight," I had said.
"You are not 'just another Knight,'" she had responded. "And while not every one serving at Castle Eastwatch knows this, I and Sir Francis do. That is why he is stepping aside as the ranking Rose Knight and why you will take his place. It is also why you will have these quarters."
When a Knight of Solamnia has made up her mind, there is nothing one can do to change it, I've learned. Riva was even able to show me, both in the Revised Measure and in the one that was in effect in my youth, why taking her quarters was in accordance with the Code that we were both to uphold.
That night, however, as the foreign moon that appeared in the sky when the gods abandoned us all to our own devices shone upon the choppy winter waters of the Sirrion Sea, I took little solace in the view.
For I had heard Gilthanas call out to me in my sleep. I felt his heart yearn for my presence.
The bond silver dragons share with mortals is not something I will ever be able to fully explain to someone who isn't one of us, including other dragons. Many decades ago, I had an opportunity to actually have civil dealings with a blue dragon named Cobalt. I tried to explain it to him, but it was impossible. Even gold dragons find the concept unfathomable, although they acknowledge intellectually that the bond exists. Blue dragons like Cobalt, of course, furiously insist that we are merely weak in spirit and that we imagine our bond with mortals because we wish to be like them.
Only other silver dragons know that we feel the emotions that we inspire in mortals as surely as others might feel a gentle caress or the harsh blow of a fist. Those sensations are increased dramatically should we ever be fortunate-or unfortunate, depending on your point of view- enough to ever meet that one single mortal with whom are spirits are in complete harmony. Most silver dragons live their entire lives and never experience such bliss and torment, but for those who do, it is a relationship that we must pursue or wither and die. Some would say that the brood that gave birth to me was cursed, for both my sister and I met that one mortal. For her, it was Huma. For me, it was Gilthanas.
I wanted him to love me as I loved him. I needed him to love me. For a time it seemed as though it would be, as we battled together against the forces of the Dragonarmy and risked our lives for the good of all. But after we settled in Kalaman, that changed. He started to ignore me, to lose himself in "work" created for the soul purpose of allowing him to avoid and ignore me. It was only when the city was in crisis that it seemed as though he could acknowledge the bond between our souls. All my attempts to explain how his disregard of me wounded me at other times fell on deaf ears.
As I became more insistant on making him pay attention to me and on making him understand that the bond we shared was not a casual thing for me, we had occassional arguments. During one of them, he told me that he could never forgive me for not revealing my true nature as we lay in each other's arms on the shore of the Thon-Sorpon. He refused to see that I had been frightened of the reaction that he might have. There was no way he could have understood the pain his fear and horror would have inflicted upon me, just as he couldn't understand the pain his indifference was putting me through in Kalaman. No matter how hard I tried to explain it to him, he failed to understand the nature of a silver dragon's soul, and so he refused to let his resentment fade. He simply could not accept that Silvara, the elf-maid who thought he had loved, did not truly exist.
I finally decided that the only way to make him understand how I was suffering was for me put him through the same pain. There was no choice but for me to leave Kalaman behind. Once he realized that my absence was as painful to him as his indifference had been to me, he would come for me. I left Kalaman and drifted through the hills for several months, longing desperately to have him near, expecting him to come searching for me. But he never did.
Assuming that he had was still receiving reports from peasants who spotted
me in the hills and that he was thinking I was playing coy rather than
teaching him a lesson, I left the area. I waited some more. Finally, the
pain became too much to bear. I had to retreat to the Dragon Isles and
the comfort of my own kind.
But even there, I found no solace. My longing for Gilthanas was too
great. I eventually returned to Ansalon where I struggled with my pain
for many months, hoping and praying that he would finally recognize that
he needed me as much as I needed him and seek me out.
But he didn't. I eventually came to face that fact that my mortal soulmate had rejected me and that the pain of his rejection would kill me. But then I found a way to be as free of him as he had made himself of me. I found a way back to the life of contentment I had once known, and I threw myself into that life with abandon.
But now, decades later, I had woken up from a sleep, my soul once again singing with the love that Gilthanas had for me... or the love that he had for Silvara, to be more specific.
I rose and put on a robe. I called for a page to bring me a ranking scribe and all the dispatches about Dark Knights, elves, and any ships that were expected to arrive on Southern Ergoth. The page tried to argue with me. He suggested that there was nothing so important that it couldn't wait until morning. Further, he said, he was afraid that he might be whipped if he were to awaken a senior scribe at this early hour. I proved to him that I was a far greater threat than a scribe's leather belt. I displayed the strength I posssess even in the apparently frail human form I have adopted and lifted him with one hand up under the ceiling. "You will fetch a scribe," I snarled at him, allowing my human form to waver, permitting him to look into my eyes as they truly are. I dropped him to the floor. my eyes to flash with a silver glow. He fled in terror, a dark stain spreading down his trouser leg. The scribe arrived less than fifteen minutes later.
I stood on the balcony, that one touch of beauty on the castle, letting the wind wash over my skin as a portly man with what few hairs he still possessed standing on end from his pillow. He went on about Dark Knights threatening the stability of Ergoth, about more thanoi arriving on Southern Ergoth, about nothing that I had any interest in hearing and nothing that brought to mind the sensations I had felt when Gilthanas touched me in my sleep.
I eventually realized that the man's teeth were chattering, as the wind from the sea-which merely slid across my skin as pleasantly as silk slides across a mortal-was rushing into my quarters and chilling him to bone. I dismissed him.
"Y-y-yes, L-lady Arlena," he said, shivering violently. "I h-h-hope the inf-formation was of use."
"Yes, Dolan. You have been very helpful."
I remained on the balcony for another few minutes after he departed, looking in the direction from which I had sensed Gilthanas. I saw the snow-shrouded hills of Eastwatch glittering under the pale moon. Beyond them, I could barely make out the night-black sea.
This was not the first time in recent months that I had sensed Gilthanas in my sleep. On other nights, I had awoken unsure whether it had merely been a dream. But tonight... tonight, I was certain. I had had about Gilthanas in the past months. I had sensed him on other nights, but the sensations had never been as strong as had been this night. Somewhere, nearby, Gilthanas was thinking of me, longing for me. I could go to him. The dream was still strong enough in my memory that I could find him. I spread my arms and stepped closer the railing, preparing to take on my true form and to soar into the sky.
No. I would not do this.
Gilthanas never loved me. He loved Silvara, a Kagonesti elf. And she no longer exists.
I turned from the balcony and returned to the comfortable surroundings of my quarters. I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror in the dressing area. I paused to study myself, to study the form of Lady Arlena Plata, Knight of the Rose.
In recent years, I've found that I am unable to even adopt a form that isn't pleasing to the eyes of the species I am trying to emulate. In the years immediately my return to Ansalon from the Dragon Isles, I made several attempts to do so-I found myself longing to be among humans but I did not want to attract attention, so I endeavored to make myself plain. I failed. I made one last attempt a few months after I had returned to Castle Eastwatch, but settled on the form I wear to this very day. I don't know if I could ever manage to make myself appear as an ugly specimen of the species I am trying to emulate.
I let the robe slip from my body and studied myself carefully. I appeared thinner than what I've come to know that most human males find attractive, as Sir Francis once put it, I appeared like the kind of female who "die trying to bring a baby into the world, but who kin dance circles 'round most Dark Knights while carvin' 'em to bits." The bridge of the nose was too straight. The lips were too thin. The hair with its plain straw color would never inspire bards to write songs. Nonetheless, everything was in perfect proportion, I was as beautiful as the average woman, and still moreso than many-and that after an attempt to not be attractive.
Still, this form was no Silvara. With that thought, my form changed, almost unbidden. My shoulders narrowed as my body grew shorter and slimmer, my skin darkened and my eyes grew larger and more slanted. My hair turned a silvery-white. The image looking back at me in the mirror was Silvara, a female who was the very definition of the pinnacle of what the Kagonesti considered beauty.
It was the form that made knees of young Knights weak and old Knights forget themselves and behave in a disrespectful fashion.
"We want your guidance," Lady Riva had said when I first came to Castle Eastwatch with the intent of aiding the Knights here. Naturally, I wore the form of Silvara. "Your experience, wisdom, and insights will be an invaluable aid as we gather strength to oppose Gellidus the White and his minions. But I cannot tolerate you appearing in that fashion. My Knights will find it difficult, and the mercenaries will find it impossible to take your seriously when you appear like that. They will either view as a fantasy come to life, or they will treat you as a barbarian savage. I need you to be a Knight of Solamnia, not an elf whom my troops might look down upon. "
It was a form that had inspired bards to write songs. It was a form that had set the heart of my beloved Gilthanas aflame. It was a form that had brought me much pain and suffering.
It was the body of a woman who was dead. And with her, the bond I had shared with Gilthanas had also died. The day I became Lady Arlena was the day the pain ceased.
With a thought, I resumed the appearance of Lady Arlena. She was respected by her peers and feared by those who would do evil both on Southern Ergoth and in the goblin nation of Sikk'et Hul. She was a warrior whom other knights trusted and whom they knew would always come to their aid no matter how impossible a battle might seem.
Lady Arlena was a woman who had no need for love, who felt no such feelings toward anyone or anything except the Knighthood of Solamnia. The Knighthood was both her husband and child. She had many friends and enjoyed their company, but she would never brook any suggestion of romance between herself and anyone else. She is married to the Order of the Rose, and there is no room for anything else in her heart. Silvara loved a mortal and now she is dead. Lady Arlena now existed where once Silvara had been, and Lady Arlena had only love for the Solamnic Orders.
Silvara is dead. The love she had for Gilthanas died with her. The love I felt for Gilthanas died with her. I am Lady Arlena now. The dreams of a dead female mean nothing... and Lady Arlena would not cry over such trifles. The heat from the fireplace is causing her eyes-my eyes-to water.
Lady Arlena does not cry over the lost love of a different life.
I do not cry over the lost love of a different life. I do not.
I do not feel Gilthanas' love burning within me. I feel nothing. I feel
nothing.