Heartblade

My obsession with Sebastian Lance began early. It was born during one of my very first days in attendance at Oxford, whilst still wide eyed and enamoured with the ancient institution. I was spending a sunny, spring afternoon exploring the campus, getting my bearings and finding my classes in advance, when I spotted him at the ornate gates to The Queens College. He was actively helping those less fortunate, and I would come to learn that this was not at all unusual for him. The divine glow of the impossibly early, English sunset, bathed him in a light that mirrored his pure soul and even at first sight, he was perfect. Sebastian was offering directions to a crowd of new students, which was actively growing in size as he spoke. As soon as he sent one green freshman happily on their way, two more would join the queue. Yet he never wilted, never paused and continually smiled as each youngster asked their question and departed confidently in the direction he pointed.

I stumbled across him by accident several more times through those early semesters. Once, he was handing out food packets on the high street to the homeless. The next, it was bottles of water, to anyone who might need it on a sweltering campus lawn. Third, I turned a corner in the old, stone library to find him administering first aid to a girl, who had collapsed amongst the stacks. Soon, I began searching him out, bearing silent witness to his never-wavering good deeds. I was not a stalker by nature, but something drew me to him. Like a calling for closeness that I was powerless to deny. It wasn’t until deep winter of that first year, having become accustomed to the grandeur of my new surroundings, that he noticed me in kind.

“What’s your name?” He asked, emerging from the darkness between the sandstone columns that fronted my home dormitory.

I startled so hard at his sudden, deep voice, resounding between the ever listening walls that I almost dropped my books. I gathered myself, trying to still my racing heart, which beat ever harder when I recognised his face, and whispered my response.

“Gwen. Do you always start conversations so bluntly?” I asked, gathering my confidence alongside my rising voice.

“No, but I have noticed you watching me. I feel it only fair, my lady, that I know you as well as you seem to know me.”

My fondness for him blossomed from that one statement. We spent the following weeks, in what I would call a courtship. But looking back, I’m not so sure that it was. We shared lunches, walks and conversations, but in hindsight, I learned so very little about him. All our time was spent pontificating about abstract ideas and the future, never exploring his past, but instead analysing my viewpoint. It was like a continuous test of my character. The mystery and ever-present question hung over him like a cloud, one that I could never place an answer to. How could someone be so selfless, so giving and so kind? He seemed to inhabit a place that was somehow apart from any familiar reality I understood. All I really knew for sure, was that he was a filament to my moth; his chiselled features, endless grace and perfect auburn hair perfecting the image that attracted me. I realised only after I killed him, that I didn’t even know for sure whether he was a student at the university.

Snow blanketed the city on the morning that he died. My fingers were numb as ice, having misplaced my gloves. I entered Queens college through its grand doors, accompanied by a swirl of white wind. Turning, I gripped the oversized handles as tightly as my frozen hands would allow, and pushed them closed against the weather. I found Sebastian where he had been for the past two days, labouring unpaid for the local stonemasons, who were patching up the eastern corridors. It took barely a moment for him to notice that I was waiting, the cut stone in his grip immediately forgotten.

“Greetings, Gwen!” He said, pleased as always to see me. His eccentric way of speaking never failing to impress.

“Hey, Sebastian. How’s the repairs going? It looks like hard work.” I said, admiring the tightness of his muscles, as he hefted the block of sandstone.

“It certainly is! But who can put a price on preserving such an important part of our history.” He said, placing the piece down reverently, for the craftsmen to take up and position with an expert eye. “Beware though, the entire wall is unstable. The mortar has been perishing for decades.”

“Perhaps you should leave it to the professionals?” I suggested, wondering if the price he mentioned, should include at least some pay for him.

“I wouldn’t dare put my hands to the repairs themselves,” he said, dusting down those rough but powerful fingers, and caring only for the project, “I am only lending my back. Now, come closer, I would embrace you, as I have so desperately wanted to do all day.”

Flustered by the chivalrous words, I did not think. I reached out with my icy touch and pressed my cold fingers to his bare arms. I wanted only to squeeze the firm biceps that had held me rapt since my arrival. But my touch stung, like quenching water to forged steel. It forced his body to recoil and as he flinched backwards, he caught his heel on a discarded stone. Sebastian yelled in surprise and with a knowing fear. He was well aware of what was behind him, even before he crashed into the ornately carved, but barely stable wall of sandstone. I knew he was dead. The dust still clouded the air, obscuring my view, but I could feel that he was gone. The silence was too strong for anything else.

The ringing daze that followed, seemed to put an eternity between my thoughts and my senses. As a result, my ears struggled to register the clatter of steel that broke the fallen quiet. I only heard the sliding of metal against stone after it had already passed. The sword came to rest smoothly against my locked in place toes. It had fled the chaos as quickly as my vision had blocked the same scene from my vulnerable mind. I picked it up, not knowing what else to do, confused and numb with shock and cold. The mobilisation and shouts of workmen were muted to my ears, and instead, my eyes traced the incredible weapon in my hands. Its blade was sheathed in red and gold. Its handle was long and wrapped in brown leather that was smooth in my hand. Its long cross guard was hard steel and cast in swirling patterns. It was incredible. I had no idea where it had come from. When the workmen began yelling and ripping at Sebastian’s cairn, I ran. I don’t know why. I was afraid, I suppose.

As soon as I found the clear air that existed between the white blanket of the courtyard and the open grey sky, I collapsed onto my knees and cradled my new sword close. Tears spilled from my eyes unbidden and I screamed into the roaring wind. It was like a dam had broken and my grief, shock and horror all fled my body as if competing for dominance. My hair whipped around my face and I ignored the pain that was seeping from the snow into my legs and bare hands.

I felt the swords voice before I heard it. Sensed its presence. It came on like low humming, a vibration through my skin that began to emit a soft warmth. It gently brought life back to my limbs and bid me to move. I listened. I had no choice. The calming buzz of its emitted sound led me onward, growing stronger in one direction and abating when I turned wrong. It quickly led me to a door. One I had not seen before. One always there but never noticed. An old, bolted shack of cobbled timber, that swung open to my touch and offered shelter from everything I needed to escape. I closed it behind me, pressed my back to its shield, and marvelled at the treasure in my hands that had seen me to safety.

I don’t know how long I hid there, on the inside step of an unknown door. When my thoughts finally found some coherence, I noticed that it was dark inside. All that resolved into view were a few stone steps leading downward. Thankfully, these were a grey, medieval stone rather than the more common sandy examples. Those, I never wanted to lay eyes on again. As if reading my mind, lamenting the lack of visibility, the sword in my hand began shedding a ethereal white light. I slid it from its scabbard, and it shone out down the stairway, leading the way once again. I was careful not to brush its sharp edge, but as I cautiously walked on, the blade seemed to shrink slightly, lightening and moulding itself more naturally into my grip. Soon, it felt like it had always belonged in my hand. Placing a pause on my wonder at the sensation, I focused on the unsteady path ahead. I crept down the wide stairs, along a carpeted hallway and past more closed timber doors. My sword led the way, and I followed, as if no other option existed. I would take any path but the one that led back to my guilt, and the grief that lay waiting at Oxford.

Eventually, I reached double doors that were larger than the rest. They cut off the hallway and light spilled out from the cracks in the frame. My breath was heavy with fear, but nothing beyond them could be worse than returning to the university. To living as a murderer. I took hold of the iron rings that acted as handles, twisted and pulled them open with a grunt of effort. Inside, I found the table.

The wide, stone room was empty but for the enormous, heavy set, timber table. It was round and filled the majority of the space. Set around it were twelve high backed chairs and before each of those, an indentation carved into the dark, polished wood. I scanned the room, taking in the sight and marvelling that such a treasure could be hidden just below the college buildings. The same light that emitted from my sword, for it felt like my blade, was flowing from intermittent blocks in the walls and illuminating the room in a soft white glow. I stepped forward and traced the moulds in the table with my fingertips, until I found the one that, despite its recent changes, perfectly fit the weapon in my hand. With a deep breath and a resignation that I couldn’t leave the mystery unsolved, I sat gently in the chair and placed my sword into the space that was made for it.

A story slammed into my mind at such a pace that I was sent swimming in nausea. The sword, ‘Nightwhisper’ she was called, was speaking to me more clearly than ever. It relayed the entirety of Sebastian’s life from the moment they had met, directly into my mind, as if I had lived the memories myself. I saw a thousand years of noble deeds, adventures and honourable questing. I saw his struggles, his loves and his desires. I felt his needs, his wants and his failures as keenly as if they were my own, and when it was done, I had learned everything. I finally knew the man that I had yearned to explore, more intimately that I could ever have dreamed. I wept anew at his loss, more keenly and with more grief than I had a right to, as his killer.

Although, even my role in his death was shed in a new light. Not only had I embraced Sebastian’s long life, but I had grasped much of Nightwhisper as well. She was a heartblade. A sword imbued with magic that allowed her to connect with her wielder in a way that was…symbiotic. She had granted Sebastian Lance his long life, among a myriad of other powers that were like something from a fable. Kept hidden by her own glamour, she had accompanied him everywhere at his waist. For as long as he had agreed to live within her rules, followed her requirements, he had access to her strength. Until he didn’t. For reasons I did not understand, she had chosen me to take his place, and left him behind to die. It had been her that had caused his end, not me. Not really.

I sat there at the table, processing all I had learned and imagining what on earth I would do next. I could leave Nightwhisper where she lay and return to face the music of my life. Or I could take her up and continue Sebastian’s work. For the trivial acts of kindness that I had seen him perform were only the surface of what he had achieved in his lifetime. The number of souls he had touched, saved, was staggering. All the while there was the humming, the vibration of Nightwhispers touch, urging me to join both her, and from the look of the table, eleven others in their society of chivalry.

Eventually, I made my decision. I ran my hand down the warmth of the blade before me, and when I reached the leather of her handle, raised my new companion, never to release her until she deemed it time to part in death. How could I have ever thought to choose differently. What she offered was not something to be refused. She was mine, and I was undoubtedly, hers. I thrust her forward and pressed her tip to the centre of the table in a way that I knew and remembered would summon the rest of the society. Then I waited, and when the first of my fellow heartblade bearers entered the room, it was with an unexpected panic and insistence that sent the doors flying wide as he entered.

“Good. You are bound. The enemy has risen! Come! Quickly! The time for trivial good deeds is done! You are needed, bearer of Nightwhisper!” He yelled, and as quickly as he had entered, his tidy beard was replaced with the sight of his wide shoulders, as he turned immediately and stalked back toward the surface.

I sheathed Nightwhisper, and followed the command of my sword. She desired to follow the man, and so we went. We were needed by the society.