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Oct 5, 2017

The art for the piece was done expertly by @panda-capuccino, for which I am ever grateful and glad to get a commission from when I can!

This is of the Throne series.

SECTION I: TALE OF THE ORPHAN

1: Chair.

I believe it would be best that I stated clearly the beginning of this recollection is likely the least reliable. It has been some twenty-six odd years (Light, but where did they go?) since I was a girl of twelve winters, but it was that moment that seemed more important to me. Yes, many things of great value did occur prior to my twelfth year, but they were all summarized by a single thing.

A chair. A dusty old chair that sat unoccupied and unwanted.

My father ought have sat that chair, I believe, though I cannot say he has as much an impression upon me as the vacant chair itself. Indeed, naturally, there must have been a time that I loved my father most dearly, though I cannot say I remember it true. It is natural, after all, for all daughters to love their fathers – and if word of legend holds honest, then mine own was one far greater than any other. For he was a tall man, by any accounting, and bonny in that way that fierce lairds of Stromic yore are often reported to be: well-proportioned and fierce, with the dark red hair and pale blue eyes that have marked our family nigh since we were named. I do not doubt that I inherited some of my features from that legendary fellow, whose blood made up half of that which then coursed through me, but I cannot say I was ever thankful for them.

After all, my jaw must have been his for it is rare strong and oft remarked upon as ‘handsome’ where any girl would have wished to be mere ‘beautiful.’ The Pendletons, of my mother’s name, have square features to some extent but it is not the same. Not the over proud jut, or the harsh cut of it all. Whenever I looked into a mirror, in fact, I did imagine that his face was not so very dissimilar from mine own.

Foolish, of course, but then again a girl of the age twelve need not be a sage. Light, but that is a blessing – for I was hardly one by any measure! That empty chair spoke to me in silence and resentment.

Fortunately, my good uncle, Sir Jothaem, used words. “Your father would have sat this chair with great discipline and purpose,” he said. For as he said it, that chair was intended for the late lord Magnus, whose father and father’s father and father’s father (once and again) had sat it before him, reigning over this clutch of bloated and sour lands that we have come to vaunt higher than any other. From the golden fields of the Dawn to the black and empty pits of the Dread, all the power and command required to hold this province was stored within that dusty old seat. It seemed neither powerful nor commanding to me, but more like some squat fellow with stubby arms and stubbier legs, that wanted for any splendor save the dais upon which he sat. Many a man had died for this chair, though, and for that I was ever mystified.

In truth, I rather preferred to stand.

Yet, for all of that, I knew my uncle’s meaning and took not to mince words at his expense. “For that chair would have made him the man he ought be,” I replied quite certain I was correct. Sir Jothaem, that bold old champion whose hair was then only just beginning to show white within red, nodded but once in agreement. Indeed, the chair would have made my father the man he needed to be. For he had not lived as a viscount and certainly, he had not died as one either.

Magnus Albrecht was a name lionized by many. Oh, but he was handsome and spirited and so very young before he met his end. Those things ever breed a sense of romance within the hearts of listeners: they create a figure that one worships because in those traits they worship themselves.

And please, take me not as a detractor of mine own father, for I know he was a man of some ability. At an age not much older than I when I stared at his emptied chair, he had won acclaim upon the battlefield. It had been at the Battle of Dawnpoint, when dreaded Richard Falomyr did press his attack in a maddened rush to defile our most sacred of cities – Dawnhaven. Yet he was met ever readily by the Falconheart of that time, a woman to whom martial prowess has never been a more natural lover: Granddame Marcelyn Lichter, known as the Defiant by those that would ever doubt her skill. As that great knight, from a great household, met her great enemy in a great confrontation, there arose from her flank a terrible cry as foul and wretched Lord Aldrich Crowe did charge her and seek to bring to an end her glorious battle.

But there then rose my father – that lad, that boy of simple and innocent bravery who supped on chivalry and was but recently weaned from fear. Weaponless, he took up Dame Marcelyn’s standard and counter-charged the villain sharply. Poets have written of it – by the Light, you need but look to the arras behind you as you read this and see that valiant moment when Magnus Albrecht became “the Standard,” for he represented great gallantry and bravery.

Later, my uncle did tell me that his older brother had been terrified and stammering, but it was important that he did take up that standard. It was vital that he should pierce the black heart of a foul man and see his essence spread across the snowy field like rose petals scattered in a lover’s passing. For he had that day made love to the very ideal of chivalry and would never soon forget how sweet and warm her embrace had been.

Thenceforth began his legend. How many die because of a legend begun thus?

But though this may seem an exciting topic to you, for a girl of twelve winters it was a sentiment old and stale. I knew well my father’s prowess – I knew well that it mattered little in that moment. “Will that chair make me the woman I need be, good uncle?” I asked, all too innocently, for he took to such a look of surprise it was as though I had sprouted a second head and beseeched him a crown that might cover it.

Could it? Would it? For him it was impossible to say. In most lights, after all, my uncle should have been the one to sit within that seat. He had ever been a quiet presence in the realm, but he was respected and of blood no less noble than my father’s. Not within the history of our family had there come a daughter to rule in the place of a good male alternative, and I was little special to be considered more than a relic of a fallen hero. Had he but the desire – the compulsion, then he would have sat as viscount and my life might well have taken a drastically different path. But he did not, he did not and I believe in truth that he could not.

Magnus was the leader. And Jothaem had been born to follow.

The reason for my uncle’s consternation was easily understood, though: in Blackmarsh, women did not inherit power. In those times, the trace amount of Menethil blood that we knew meant little: so many stewards and great knights could claim similar or better that to carry such sacred vitae was not a prescription to rule, but rather a prerequisite. Sir Jothaem never did openly state why the chair was left vacant during my minority, but I had come to a few conclusions all my own.

Perhaps they were correct. Or perhaps the thoughts of a twelve year old are not so very bright after all.

There were, after all, others in line for the title of Viscount that did not immediately come from the House of Albrecht. There was Dietrich Lichter, readily and easily the richest and most powerful man in the Dawn during my childhood. His sons Heinrich and Edmond were both full grown and capable men, with the latter wed to Prudence Heartvale and the former a great knight within the Silver Hand. Heirs he possessed and as a Lichter, his blood was derived from Sir Ulric – that great hero that beat back the Pendleton menace when first we had been taken into Lordaeron’s bosom.

I knew my cousin Dietrich only fleetingly, for unlike my uncles Jothaem and Eugine (who will feature with great importance at later date), he was distant and often engaged in his own business. As far as the Dawn was concerned, he could readily and easily have sat that throne and not a person would have risen against him. That Lichter hubris would play prominently in future matters and cause me to make my first true choice – though that is later and deeper within my tale.

But he did not so move for the seat of power, and that was because it would have mirrored what then happened across the sea within the earldom of Falconcrest, which had fallen into a bloody civil war of succession that claimed thousands of live and broke alliances, families, and the very name of the region until well within my twentieth year. That struggle, known as the Anarchy, claimed the lives of several prominent members of Falconcrest’s nobility, which saw my uncle Sir Eugine dispatched with a handful of Blackmarsh’s finest soldiers to aid the incumbent Lady Constynce, mine own cousin so many times removed by way of my great-great (on and once again) grandsire, Helmuth’s, by-blow of a noble child.

That was why he did not move. Because no Pendleton owed any Lichter any allegiance. Nor did any Creed, Vine, Stanleigh, or Graves. The Dawn would have been his if he wanted, but Blackmarsh? Those alliances belonged to but one – the crimson falcon of Albrecht. They belonged to me.

Could Lord Dietrich have countenanced my uncle as viscount? Perhaps, but there was something to be said for the man’s ambition. Once, when my grandfather sat the throne before me, the houses of Lichter and Albrecht had nearly come to blows. Hadrian was a lordly man of magisterial bearing that restructured and reshaped our homeland in ways that to this day are felt. His Black Purge, from which the witches of outer realms were burned and tormented, did well to rid us of a great evil – but the price was to awaken in the evil in men. My tutor, Eberyl Schatten, did once share with me this: “in action against his lesser, man reveals his true form.” Those men that hunted and preyed upon the witches did just that.

Lord Dietrich’s elder son, Heinrich, would not permit.

Oh, but I will need explain Heinrich at later date for he plays most prominent in a chapter of my life that at twelve I could not fathom. That said, he challenged Hadrian to end the Purge within the Dawn after witnessing the barbarity of it and for one of the few times, my grandsire did step aside. It was a heated thing that lingered still in the air – one that threatened to erupt once more if Jothaem acted and Dietrich disagreed.

No, the vacant seat, that was preferred. Preferred and enjoyed by all.

“You have within you the power to become the woman you wish to be,” my uncle said at last as I divined the reason why he did not become that which he might have. His tone was softer when he spoke and his mind, as always, moved to my mother. My mother, a distant figure who had come of Blackwood and the House of Pendleton, to join two families that had been at odds since Helmuth’s knee fell before the grand king of Lordaeron. Oh, has ever there been a woman that was more squandered in means and ability? Piteously did she work thankless among the din of those that saw her a vile woman and a controlling despot. The blind, the stupid, and the cruel did not appreciate her what she did – though they disparaged her with full bellies and safe borders.

I did not know what a great woman she was until she was no more.

To this day, I must wonder, if I can comprehend her greatness even now. What more might I have learned from her, of ladyship and womanhood? Of the manners in which men act and women consider? She was a fount of knowledge untapped by my young mind, for it was often turned against her in petty rebellion. If ever there was a regret it was that I did not sup on her mind as I had her teat, and that I did not divine from her what strange power she held over her lesser men.

It was war that orphaned me once. And twice-over was I made orphan by that terrible thing called birth.

It is not so daunting to me how my father perished, even as a child I did not feel fear when they told me of it. An ogre, a beast that towered over the tallest of men and weighed more than six horses chained together, did stove his head in with the might commanded by a beast of such awesome strength. I quite doubt that to the ogre it mattered that my father sat a great chair – and in the end, it did not matter that my father had been a bonny knight of such fine heritage and pride.

Men and their boasts of power rely mightily upon the ability of another to respect their claims. They are not so different than kingdoms in that way: a border is not a physical thing, but an agreement to the extent of one’s power. All men of war are so composed, and in such a way, just as border skirmishes may force kingdoms to war so too might pride do no less. This image they rely upon – this pretense of power, makes them victims to the very prowess they extol. For it is that prowess that should it ever falter or seem wanting will be their undoing and so they must extend it and expand it. Surely, that is why Magnus charged headfirst past the lines and into that rampaging ogre. And just as surely, that was why I was without a father – and he without a head. If ever there was a lesson he had taught me, it was that one: no title, no matter how grandiose, was worth losing one’s head over.

But my father’s demise did not scare me and it never struck me as so very tragic. I was within my tenth winter when he fell, and it was that selfsame year that saw her demise find me as well, for she had been with child and fell in that eternal struggle women must know: that of life rested from the bowels of death.

I heard her screams. I heard his cries. And then there was silence.

Empty and cold, that woman that I had so rebelled against, became but a husk. The babe she struggled with so mightily supped only on air before it too perished.

There are cruel villains in this world that will lay claim that I, a child of ten, had seen fit to smother my brother Hadrius. It is a wicked thing to say and vile, for though my father did have a child other than I – bastard born and simple, named Marcellus and often forgotten by those that did not see us alongside one another – I have ever wished for a sibling. A true sibling, someone that would understand what it meant to be an Albrecht – someone that I might rely on wholly and fully. For make no mistake of this: blood alone binds us, for it is blood that marks us for what we are.

No, I did not slay my brother. I but saw him once, small and fragile – and hated him for what he had taken from me.

For all the glories I have shed upon my father, let me then speak to Margaret Pendleton in kind. For those that spoke freely of her then, my mother – your grandmother – was a cold and calculating harridan. She had not been born with lips meant for smiling and her eyes shone not with some mysterious and alluring desire, but rather the stark and disastrous inquiry that would have placed a Schatten to shame.

She was tall (I have ever imagined my height is more her boon than my father’s) and well shaped by the comment of even her most hateful detractors. With but the lift of a brow could she control a room, for her presence was so great. Light, how I did long to learn to do that and took many summers and winters and those months between them before I could master such command? But she required that command – she needed it, for she was a woman of wit and wisdom.

How often were those valued by history? She did not have the stuff that made people love her and so they hated her. Hated her for her quiet manner and distant ways. Hated her for her swiftness to act and her inability to forget. Hated her for her courage and her tenacity.

And most of all, they hated those that had found a way into her heart.

I do not doubt it was a jealous rogue that had stated my mother and uncle held some vile union between them. Maids whisper such, yes, but they know better than to state it proud – yet gossip speaks for itself, and the implication was so much that my mother was forced to abandon her only true friend. I do not doubt that Lady Margaret was a woman of unquestionable fidelity and that Sir Jothaem was a man of boundless virtue.

“Had your mother been born a man, then mayhap it would be a Pendleton that sat this throne,” my uncle said in his sad and absent way. “Fortunate for us she was not. Even more, that she gave us you, sweet niece.”

I accepted both the reality of that and the compliment that came with it. After all, it was true: the Pendletons had nearly as strong a claim to power in Blackmarsh as did mine own. When Helmuth knelt, Holden Pendleton had been right beside him, so thick and tight were they as brothers. Yet for all of that Dedrick – the second viscount – was a weak man that encouraged rebellion. The Blackwood Uprising, known as the Pendleton Insurrection by some, saw Blackmarsh devastated with war and bloodshed. From it, Albrecht rose and Pendleton fell.

The union of my parents mended much. Old wounds are hard healed though, and I knew there simmered something. In truth, it likely still does.

Nevertheless, my uncle’s compliment did a world of good for me back then. For though many may assume that as a child I queened it readily and wildly, and showed the world how sharp and charming I might be – at that age of twelve, unlike six or those between, I was decidedly absent words. Quiet would have been an overstatement of my affliction: I was nigh mute and there were rumors abounding that my parents’ demise had seen me made natural for all the good conversation did me.

I must wonder though, would that have been so terrible? Had I been born the lackwit – the dullard, then the world would have been given what it desired. The vacant, absent avatar of some vaunted bloodline need but be married and then set to whelping for the value I knew to be fulfilled. Blackmarsh was as quiet and remote as its newmade mistress then, a sort of curiosity that most avoided and few thought to speak of. The great king that conquered it did so to complete his quest of unification, not because a land of swamps and terrible marshes and fell witches intrigued him. If there was anything to recommend us then, it was that we were so very close to Quel’thalas.

So perhaps it would have been better if I were born stupid. A brood mare and nothing more, to be rutted and forgotten in some awful place until her bones betrayed her and her teeth fell out.

The battle of birth may well have claimed me. How many lives would have been saved thus?

But that girl of twelve knew little of the queen she would become. She knew only that she had blood that was valuable to some, and desirable to many. “If that power is within me,” I reasoned idly, “then I have no need for this chair. I might see it broken and cast to flames, yes?”

I touched the chair and felt nothing. I did not hear the words of ancient viscounts and feel some deep and glowing warmth for it to speak to me itself. No, I but saw a chair and the legacy of death it had encouraged and exacted upon my family line.

Sir Jothaem did not rise to my bait. “You could,” he said. For he knew I was thinking. But of what could I think? What could I do?

I walked about that chair and considered it. That squat man, that heavy armed and crooked legged bastard. The arras that coated the wall were of more value and certainly more pride: they depicted Otto’s triumph over Wargraf the Defeated, which brought an end to the Grimm hegemony. They showed the rise of Dedrick and the fall of Mortimer Pendleton. They spoke of Sir Anders’ final stand and of Marcelyn Lichter’s great triumphs. Those tapestries spoke of far more than the chair. So what did I need the chair for?

It was then that I heard the answer. Hollow and empty, but resounding. Because it was mine. It belonged to me and thus, none other could have it.

But as a girl of but twelve, with two old knights to her name and a viscounty that would rather she was silent than strong, I knew that I had few options of ever placing myself within that great seat of my ancestors. What would I need become to be worthy of it? What would I need do to see those that plotted against me brought to love their viscountess true?

“I needs must do something,” I said as my fingers graced the arm of that old chair. Sir Jothaem inquired, “What would you do?” “Build,” I began and then turned to him. “Lead.” My uncle was quiet and then spoke. “What would you build?” “Something.” “There are many somethings in the world, sweet niece.”

An internment camp? There were orcs enough that needed housing yet. King Terenas, my predecessor in so many ways, had been given an impossible task and meted it out the best that he could. The orcs, vanquished and defeated after their failed invasion of the north, were housed in locations that would pay for them to reveal their loyalty to the Grand Alliance. Did not Blackmarsh deserve such a thing?

I said as much to my uncle.

“Lord Dietrich would disparage it,” he said immediately. And rightly so. “The people will fear one of the beasts might escape into the wilds. And then what would happen?”

Without hesitation, I spoke frankly. “Mayhap it would be eaten by a grue – or perhaps some other ghastly thing?” The queer fauna, more spirit than beast, of Blackmarsh were quite formidable. I have since learned that Duskwood in distant southron Stormwind suffered a similar malady of land.

My uncle was not so convinced. “More likely some poor soul would be sundered.” For he had seen the battle with the orcs himself and survived their fury. A paladin true, he wore the mark of the Silver Hand even in somber times such as these. Not on his armor – but in his eyes. “It would be expensive and hard.”

I disliked that. I disliked that I could not have my way, but I did not tantrum and spoil. Instead, I looked to what was before me and reasoned out loud. “The orcs slew my father and harmed our kingdom.” “That is so,” he answered. “But to house them would be an inconvenience – for they are yet dangerous and wild.” “A beast injured is yet a beast, my niece.” I turned upon him then and looked into his eyes. “Then we must rid ourselves of them in one way or another. If we cannot keep them, we must see them away.” “And how would you do that?”

Injured beasts were yet beasts. If I could not fathom a means by which to become the keeper of such creatures, then I would needs must become the keeper of something that would itself vanquish them when the time should come. That decision – that stroke of childish genius, did well to ensure that Blackmarsh’s orphan might day become something so much more.

I would like to believe that I was motivated by some patriotic desire, or perhaps even the siren’s song of vengeance for my father’s sake. But neither thing held true then and I know they do not now. What prompted me to act – what pushed me to motion, was that I had been restricted from my desire by another’s might. The House of Lichter had proud men and powerful knights.

I had proud enough men, yes. But the knights…

“We will train knights,” I said. My uncle started slightly. “Knights?” “Have Eberyl prepare the letter.” I was certain of it then and could see the future with bright eyes and marveled at what it held for me. “Dawnhaven will house a score of paladins so brilliant that their luster will shame the very stars!”

#stories #madelynne i #throne #section i

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