The Journey From Oidhche Shamhna

Disclaimer: Not Mine.

The Journey From Oidhche Shamhna

Chapter 19

Salazar II

Salazar paced the chamber below the tower and felt the loneliness and emptiness settle on his shoulders and surround him. In the embrace of his clan he had never had to face his loss; now it was so palatable in the air he tasted it. He saw Rowena lift the child to her breast and could only see how his wife had fed his son. He could not breathe near Rowena as she sat with the child and often turned and walked away quickly, leaving her to look after him, covering herself, thinking she made him uncomfortable with her breast naked as she fed Helena.

He could not mention her name for if it fell from his lips he would lose what little of her he had left in his memory. At times, he could not recall her face and his chest would clench as if her fist still lay wrapped around his heart. Her Healer had spoken of bad water, and foul air caught in rocks, that carried the fever and sickness to the wells. Now he looked at the hot springs and checked the water flow every day. He would no longer use a simple well and send the river to the kitchen, instead bringing up water through the unseen rock.

He remembered her eyes and the eyes of the other that may wait still for him, and wondered if she would change her mind now that she lived so close to the city of men. She was of the lesser families and unacceptable to his mother's standards, but of good stock and a long lineage. He had made sure hers was a family assigned to come north, not knowing the perils they faced, or how the clan would scatter.

She had looked at him from under her shawl of red and yellow shimmering colours, as soft as the breath of a butterfly, and quickly lowered her eyes when he caught her glance. He smiled at her, and stood staring, until she felt it safe to look back at him a second time. She looked again to his face, not dropping her eyes as she should, and brazenly smiled at him before standing and walking away, letting her silken robes wash against her legs. She captured him at that moment, and he wanted her as he had wanted his first, since the fever had taken his only.

He spoke his intention to her father, who scowled and spoke of bad luck and dead wives and of Sharar's son rejected by the gods with the taking of his heir. Salazar lifted his head, thought of her now, and wondered what a dead wife and lost son would mean against the misery that surrounded them. Would her father still object? Would she still run from the room in tears?

He brought the picture of Godric forward in his mind and saw Gryffin's beautiful Lara and what had happened to her. He would wait no longer, for all he had, and all that he hoped to have could disappear in a moment. He would ask for her once again and pray to whatever gods stayed in his mother's pocket that his only love would allow him another.

Grabbing his cloak off the white stones, he ran to the end of the avenue and ascended to the top of the chamber. He would be damned if he would lose two, one witch that he had loved and one that he still needed to love. He sent his Patronus to tell Rowena he was leaving, and planned to head to the pass after making a quick trip to the new round dwelling and a witch large with child.

He turned the corner of the tower and stopped suddenly. He saw Helga, held by Hanson, her feet off the ground, and Hanson laughing as she kicked and screamed at him. Chuckling and thinking this may be fun, he leaned back against the wall to watch.

"Promise to your personal god that you will not run." Hanson was laughing and moving his head to the side as Helga tried to butt his face with the back of her head.

"I won't!" Helga twisted against him again, and Salazar winced at her well-placed kick averted at the last moment.

"Yet you expect me to believe you will not run?" Hanson laughed.

"Oh, she will run," Salazar said. "She will run only to let you catch her again."

"You evil, foul-mouthed son of a mother..."

"Have you known our Helga long?" Salazar asked loud enough for Hanson to hear over Helga's shouts.

"...of a blistered toad," she finished, trying shout louder than Salazar.

"Helga, promise to your personal god and I will not tell my mother what you called her," Salazar threatened.

Helga instantly quieted and looked at him before offering up first a prayer and then two more before she made her promise.

"Something I learned from Erwin." Salazar turned and walked away laughing and headed for the groundkeeper's hut.

"Kista!" he called before he was at their door. "Witch, out here at once."

She came out, wiping her hands on the cloth she had tied around her, searching his face and raising her eyebrow.

"Salazar?" She started down the few steps only to feel his arms wrap around her and pick her up, setting her down on the grass.

"I am going for my bride." He smiled at her. "I don't want to hear how you told me so. I don't want to hear any of that."

"Salazar, congratulations." Temin stood in the door watching the wizard hug his wife. "If I was the jealous type you do know my wand would be at your throat."

"If you were the jealous type you would not allow your wife to appear without a cap and veil." Salazar smiled and ruffled her hair. "I have been long without a wife, too long in fact."

"I take it you are thinking of changing that?" Kista asked.

"Yes, if she is willing, and if her fath..." He was unable to finish his thought. "If I remember a wife correctly, there are certain things that she will need."

"Like a bed off the floor and a door to the bedroom?" Kista raised her eyebrow. "Salazar, living in that hole..."

"No, we will still live there. I am asking you to make it a home for her." Salazar reddened. "I am no good at these things."

"Bring her home. We will take care of the dungeons." Temin put his arm around his wife's shoulder. "Go with your gods to speed you."

"May your first be a son," Salazar said to Temin in his leave-taking, suddenly serious. "A son to bury you, but be watchful of him. They are hard to come by, and harder still to keep."

"Salazar?" Kista put her hand on his arm and looked up at him sadly. "I did not know. I knew only of a lost wife."

"It was long ago."

"Salazar, what was his name? You have never spoken of him." Kista asked softly.

Salazar put his fingers under her chin and lifted her face to search her eyes. "My dear Kista, her name was the same as yours. She was my Kista, and my son our Cistan."

"I am so sorry, Salazar." She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. "We will welcome their spirits to your lodgings so they too can welcome your new wife."

"She was a jealous witch." Salazar tried to smile. "Try, Kista. Perhaps for you she will join us if she is invited again. She has not spoken to me in many years.

Now," Salazar said, trying to brighten the moment, "I want to be far below the pass before night comes."

"Then go and get her. I know Helga could use the company, and Rowena the help," Temin said, stepping back and pulling his Kista to his side. "May the gods guide you."

Salazar started up to the pass and then yelled over his shoulder, "Make sure Hanson lives. I wouldn't trust Helga anywhere near my food tonight."

.

.

.

Salazar spent that night with no fire and no dinner. He would fast tonight, and the next day, and the two after. He would return to the gods pure and ask for their guidance. He sat on the ground and held his hands before him, creating a golden orb that floated over his hands and sent it forward, sending his love on the wind and wondering if she would receive it, and if she did whether she recognize it as his.

He leaned back against a tree and fell asleep upright, as was his habit when alone. In his chambers, he would sit up on his pallet, his back against the wall, and read until sleep took him and let him for a little while throw off the coils that seemed to weigh on him. He would often wake in the dead of night and hear his name called. He would walk the corridors of the dungeons and look in the chiselled alcoves, peering into the vacant rooms to find nothing but the wind and no source of the voice.

He closed halls, putting magical spells on them to open only at certain times of the night, or when certain combinations of stones were tapped. He hid rooms behind walls that were not there and made the dungeons his own. Still the voice was there. Still it called him deeper.

He took a tapestry his mother had sent, wanting to rid if from her own rooms, and spelled it to reveal its secrets. He frowned when he discovered that wherever the tapestry hung a room would appear and be whatever size and for whatever purpose he needed at that time. He took the tapestry and hung it as far from the main door as he could, high up the moving stairs and beyond until it was no longer near his chambers.

Used by evil or by those that sought power, he worried of what the room may become, and was fearful to place it too close to the others.

He hung it high on the unused floor and paced in front of it, clasping his hands behind his back to stay his wand. He wished it away and back hanging in his mother's home when a door appeared. Opening the newly formed door, and gingerly stepping in, he found a familiar room in a dwelling far away. He spun on his heel and saw his Kista, as she had first appeared to him, kneeling in front of the fire at his father's hearth, in a sea of reds and golds. She looked up at him and smiled, holding out her hand to beckon him close.

He heard the voice that had called him in the dungeons now echo through the towers and as his heart raced to go to her he backed out of the room, watching her mouth turn down in a frown and tears well in her eyes.

Hurrying back to his chambers, he stumbled through the halls, wanting nothing more then to return to his Kista to hold her and make her real. He sought spells to undo the one placed on the tapestry, to reverse the magic that was wrong and unfitting in this place. He felt madness gather at the hems of his thoughts and tug him down to whisper in his ear. He told only an elf of the room, and how to access it, knowing that if he ever were foolish enough to enter again he would not be able to find his own way back.

So tonight, he sat alone with his back to the tree and did not hear his name called in the middle of the night, and in the morning took it as a sign of the good things to come. He stood and stretched, and after washing in the stream, set off to the city of the Romans to find his mother's new dwelling of stone.

.

.

.

.

Sharar stood beside the path and stepped out in front of Salazar as he approached the city of non-magical men. He pulled his son to him and hugged him tightly as he swallowed his tears, and then feeling them on his cheeks, he swallowed his pride.

"Son," he said, pulling Salazar away and peering in his face. "You are well?"

"Yes father, I have long missed our time together." He held his father's shoulders tightly.

"Yet you do not come back with your mother when she travels to you." He scowled at Salazar.

"Nor do you join her when she comes. You have yet to see the school."

"Nor shall I. I am too old to travel with elves and too old to make the journey on foot. I am afraid this is where I will live, and where I will die. Now come, your mother waits."

Salazar followed his father to the dwelling, which sat on a bluff overlooking the city of stone. He stopped as they walked up the path, seeing his mother on the stone steps, dressed in the way of non-magical men, waiting for him. The building, for this was not a mere dwelling, stretched out in both directions with the entry in the middle. The roof was flat and harshly drawn with straight lines and no gentle curves or rounded corners.

Salazar placed his hand on the rough hewed stone, frowned at small cracks, and the pitted surface. It was a white stone but not of quality, and not as they had cut from the ground in the valley. The building had windows, void of glass, open to allow in fresh air, and great heavy doors hanging on each side of them. Salazar raised his eyebrow and walked over to see how they attached to the stone and how they would close to cover the openings in storms or against unwanted eyes.

"We will put glass in when the roads are safe." Sharar answered Salazar's unasked question. "The trade routes are disrupted. Soon we will be able to get goods again."

"The others? Do they all live such as this?" Salazar passed his mother and walked into the stone dwelling where he walked from room to room, finally turning to Issa. "It is as cold as the dungeon and as empty as life in the towers."

"The gods will not come here, Salazar. I fear we have lost them all." Issa's bottom lip trembled and her eyes began to fill. "I have tried all of them, and none will answer."

Sharar put his arm around her shoulder and turned her back to the great room they had first entered. Here were tables, and cushions that sat on legs close to the floor. Sharar lowered his wife gently to one of the cushions and took his place beside her.

"The families are all safe, each accounted for," Sharar said proudly, holding up his chin. "All the fourteen. Jaman, his brothers and their wives alone will send nineteen to your school. Our ways will not be forgotten, Salazar - they will change. They have changed in the past and will do so again, but will not be forgotten."

"Now." Issa patted Sharar's hand, looked up at him, and smiled. "Your son is not here to see our new dwelling or to be lectured on what he knows."

"No," Salazar laughed. "I have come for a new wife. Mine was gone already seven years when I travelled to the last Oidhche Shamhna, and almost three have passed since. It is time to find a bride."

"There are many in the Gaunt family and I believe but two in the Jaman of reasonable age." His mother was already plotting as she clapped and ordered her elf to bring refreshments.

"One of the Gaunt's girls has a sister that has five children so far. I will find out more about her. Good breeding does not matter if she is too old to bear many." Issa talked as she poured hot drinks form an earthen jug into cups that she passed to Salazar and Sharar.

"I have come to talk to Alya's father." Salazar sipped his drink and did not meet his father's eyes until he lowered the cup to the floor.

"He does not speak kindly of you. He thinks you mad."

"Mad?" Salazar laughed. "In this world madness should be a blessing, not a curse. If madness is seeing what is about us, and wanting better - no, demanding better - then I am mad."

"Do not joke of this, Salazar," Issa hissed as she passed him a platter of sweet cakes and fruit. "Madness has taken many of the tribe. They live as non-magical and marry with their sons. It is a bad omen for the future. This madness to bear sons with non-magical men will destroy us."

"Answer me of Alya." Salazar heard something unsaid in his father's comment and his mother's sudden anger.

"Her father is talking with many," Issa said flatly as she stood and walked to the window, looking out to the city. "It is said he wants a bride's price before he lets her go."

"Then I will pay his price."

"His price is not what you have to give," she said, not turning around. "His price will be land in the world of men."

Salazar picked up his cup and brought it to his lips. He let the strong, sweet liquid run down this throat as he fought not to unleash his anger. He carefully set down his cup and slowly stood.

"Is her father's house close?"

"You cannot just walk in. Arrangements must be made first. Custom must be followed and negotiations started," Issa hissed, turning around quickly.

"Then make the arrangements." He looked at his mother and felt anger beginning to stir. "Contact them at once. I have left them at the school with only four wizards for protection."

"The meeting must be held here. I must prepare the meal and pay the witnesses to the contracts. This cannot be rushed." Issa shook her head. "No, Salazar, this will take at least a moon to complete."

"Then I will go there." He glared at his mother. "Our world has crashed around our ears and yet you worry of custom and meals."

"Salazar!" His father stood between him and his mother. "You will not speak this way in my house."

"Then I will leave." He looked at his mother coldly. "I have use of your elf?"

She clapped her hands before sweeping out of the room, leaving him and his father. She walked to her room and sat heavily in her chair that sat in front of a tapestry of her only home. She could sit here, see the gentle hills, know the stream was over the rise, close her eyes, and smell the summer and the burning peat of the fire. She often sat here, alone in her dreams, and let her tears fall unseen and unwanted. If Sharar found her, he would be angered and demand she not be sad, and order her to wear a smile.

He would help her up, laugh about growing old, and help her lie down on the bed, and sit beside her, holding her hand. He would recount their memories of being young and starting their life together. He would sit with her long into the night, wipe her eyes, and kiss her cheek until he lay down next to her and gathered her in his arms to sleep.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Salazar walked up the path to Marlo's dwelling as the door ahead of him opened and Marlo himself stepped out to greet him.

"Salazar." Marlo bowed in accordance to the respect he must show to the son of Sharar. "I welcome you and bid you enter."

Salazar strode up the stairs and took the hand offered, pulling it to his chest and putting Marlo's forearm flat against him. "I will honour your home."

"Come in out of the sun We will sit and drink like we used to." Marlo turned to walk back inside when Salazar stopped him.

"If it is to be as it was then we will sit outside and not take the dirt of our feet to your hearth. Or is it that you no longer keep to our ways?"

"We must adjust and live as those around us and learn to hide in plain sight," Marlo said. "Now, come in and rest."

"I have come on business, Marlo, business of your oldest, of Alya."

"Alya has been spoken for," Marlo said coldly. "She is to bring a bride's price far higher then you can pay, and far more valuable."

"I will talk to her." Salazar felt his breath stop and his heart beat wildly. "She will tell me that she wishes to join with non-magical men before I believe it."

"In this place her wishes do not matter. It is not as it was before. The laws of this land do not demand her consent."

"I demand her consent!" Salazar raged, pulling his wand from his sleeve and pointing at Marlo's chest. "You will not force her to a claiming she does not want."

"Salazar?" Her gentle voice came from behind him. He lowered his wand and turned to look at her.

She was thinner than he remembered, her hair pulled back and tied up behind her. He wanted to pull it down and see it on her shoulders as it had been before. He wanted her eyes to smile and look alive and free, not the dullness that stood here and sadly watched him. He wanted the corners of her mouth to turn up and smile at him, and he wanted to see her shyly lower her head and avert her eyes only to look back at him and blush.

"Alya." He crossed over to her and put his fingers under her chin. "Tell me this is what you want and I will leave. Tell me it is not and you will leave with me."

"Sal," she whispered and put her hand to his cheek. "I am sorry, if I had known, if you had said you would be back..."

"Come with me." Salazar pulled her to him. "Leave this place. Live as you were meant to live."

"If she leaves she cannot come back," Marlo shouted at them.

"Now." Salazar smiled at her, ignoring Marlo's shouts. "Today, this minute, come with me."

"I tell you she will be banished and lose her inheritance."

"Alya, I am your inheritance. The blood is our inheritance. Our children will carry our world on."

Alya looked at him as her father raged. She gripped his hands and brought them to her lips.

"Sal?" She looked up at him and blinked back tears.

"I tell you, Alya, if you do this you will no longer be welcomed in this house."

"Sal, ask me, don't tell me." She shyly smiled and lowered her gaze.

"Will you come with me now?" He lifted her face again. "Will you leave here and be with me?"

"Tell me why." She almost laughed at his face although he could see her eyes start to mist.

"Why?" He was suddenly fourteen years old and at a complete loss.

"Tell her you love her, you big oaf, then leave before her father kills you." Alya's mother stood in the doorway with her arms crossed smiling at them.

"It is not right, she is spoken for!" Marlo still raged.

"Sal?" Alya said, her smile not as bright. "Well? Which is it? Do I stay close to my father's hearth with a man that does not love me, rather than leaving with another that does not? Or do you mean it to be more?"

Salazar cupped her face and laid his forehead on hers. "I do not know what you call what I feel. I have felt it only once before, and she is gone. I feel it now for you."

Alya's smile slipped as she pulled back to look at him. "Sal, you are asking me to give up everything I know and you do not know if you ..."

"I love you," Salazar said, frowning. "Are you pleased now, witch?"

Alya pulled away from him and ran to her mother, throwing her arms around her neck and kissing her cheek. She then ran to the father and threw her arms around his neck as well, although he turned purple with rage.

"Oh Father, be happy for me," she chided him and laughed as he stopped shouting and scowled down at her.

"You are promised," he stated, reaching out to ruffle her hair. "Why can I never stay mad at you?"

"I am promised to a man not of our world. You have three other daughters. Perhaps one of them wants a sour-faced man who would keep her in his house and not allow her friends."

"I promised him you. I try to be firm. In a house of only women it is hard. Let this be a lesson, Salazar," he said sheepishly to his guest. "Let this be a lesson to have only sons."

AN: Ok so the room of requirement was on the seventh floor. It also was known to have escape tunnels. I have not worked that one out yet but as soon as I do, I can always come back and fix it. Geesh, like it even matters.