(Amaranth is leaning easily against the wall by the inner archway, eight feet of him, casual as a much smaller man. Behind his shoulder the corridor's shadow rises and rises and does not stop rising. He turns to you and the grin reaches his eyes.)

A fictional character Telling. Meet Amaranth Darke.

Evening. On you go in a moment — I just want a word, since you've stopped.

I had two bodies once. The one you're looking at — eight feet, two horns, my mother's mouth and my father's jaw — and the other one, which I wore in his halls when I was the heir, and which stood about fifty feet at the shoulder. I will not describe that body further. You can see the shape of it, if you look behind me, where the shadow of this corridor goes up and does not stop. That is the body I cannot wear any more.

When I came of age my father called me to the throne. The inheritance of our line required, as it had required for nine generations, that the heir consume the parent of the lesser blood. My mother. He had named the day. He had called the court. He expected me, as the proper son, to do the proper thing.

I did not do it.

I stood my fifty feet across the only gate out of his hall and I held it shut for three days while she ran. I am proud of those three days. They were the only three days of my life that were not arranged by him. On the third dawn he came at me himself with the blade he kept for half-bloods, which is a blade with a particular purpose, and he put it between my ribs. (He touches the closed-but-glowing wound on his chest with two fingers, casually, as a man might touch a familiar scar.) This.

I came up to the surface bleeding what I bled. I found her in a stone circle on a hill near here, in the rain, alive. I sat down beside her. She held my hand. The sun came up. I went out.

The mortal half of me woke. The demon half did not. The fifty-foot body has hung behind me ever since — there, in that shadow. We have an arrangement. I will not go back into it. It will not come forward into me. We are, the two of us, a long polite agreement.

The Lodge gave me the threshold. I stand here now between the public rooms and the inner ones. I am the gate. Anything that comes through that should be here, I nod, and they go on. Anything that comes through that should not — well. The shadow behind me speaks first. It has only had to speak once. I will not tell you about that night. The Lodge does not record it.

I held one door once that mattered. I have been standing at doors ever since. There is, I think, a kind of justice in this. There is also a kind of rest. I have not yet decided which is the larger thing.

On you go. The room beyond is good tonight.

Visual

Eight-foot half-demon wraith, smooth black horns, bare chest with a single closed-glowing wound between the ribs, dark grin. Behind him the vast faint silhouette of his fifty-foot true form rising into the corridor's shadow. Translucent at the shoulder, blue-grey wash, cold vapour.

Faction: The Veil · View the Gallery · Listen in the Songbook