do not weep, maiden, for war is kind
because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
and the affrighted steed ran on alone
do not weep, for war is kind.
Orestes lays awake at night and tries not to remember the journal of Alaksi, the head hunter under Zolin’s reign.
The man had led the persecution of the Davke. His methods had been extremely successful, but his talents lay not only in the systematic, “open desert” hunting, but a much more brutal genre. Torture. Oh, Alaksi detailed it often enough in the diary he kept. Orestes purchased it from a travelling caravan; many pages were torn out, and worn. The gypsy who sold it—Leksis?— shrugged. “It was only a diary, but we decided it would eventually be of some worth. My grandmother knew of him, when she lived in Solterra, but had never met him. Most of us haven’t even been bothered to read it. ”
Orestes had. The phrase that stuck with him most brutally, barbed like a Goat’s head thorn in the flesh, was: the screaming sands.
He lays awake at night, in his chambers, and thinks of how the suffering Zolin had caused stretched out in the whole wide desert of Solterra, and no gods had acted, no other Court had intervened. It roils within him like a storm. It boils, even, until he feels a bitterness so deep it is a wonder he is not a native Solterran after all. Orestes cannot sleep and so he rises from his overly luxurious quarters—the servants insist, although he more often than not falls asleep in his cluttered study—and exits the sandstone palace. It walks out into the torch-lit streets and wanders to the entrance of the catacombs. The way has been fenced off but, knowing his people, this deters very few from exploration. Including their king.
Steeling himself, Orestes stares down into the darkness.
He is not alone long, however. He hears the telltale sound of hooves against sandstone and looks in the direction of the noise. The king almost smiles, but the excursion seems too somber for that. “Would you care to join me?” Orestes asks.
"Orestes." || "Ariel." ||
swift, blazing flag of the regiment
lion with crest of red and gold
