Chapter 10. Accursed Mesmers

still hate him, Morisedd thought angrily as he sat at Pendaran’s bedside, Die, you scum.  It would make it easier for all of us.  You would make a great number of people extremely happy just by having the decency to stop breathing."

Yet it was difficult to maintain his rage, much more difficult to heap hatred upon a barely breathing corpse.  Bled white and tensed with pain, Pendaran looked neither handsome nor threatening.  Sad and frail were better words and even Morisedd could not bring himself to be so callous.

He looked across the bed at Teleri who would no longer look at him.  She had found a new friend in her grief and no longer derived any comfort from him, her brother.  Anger tightened his throat as he studied the woman named Kantele, the one who had reputedly fought at their side and guided them to this place moments before death might have claimed Pendaran forever.

Perhaps because she was not close to any of them, she was able to maintain a calm and soothing presence.  Her gentle arms now wrapped around Teleri’s exhausted form as they sat upon a hard wooden bench.  She preferred a stranger over him now.  Is that what he had become to her after all these years?  She slept, her sweat and tear matted hair lying in a tangled mass around her strained face as her head rested in the crook of Kantele’s neck. 

Sensing his gaze, the woman lifted an elegant hand to sweep her auburn hair from her gentle face and gazed up at him with soft blue eyes.  He recognized what she was.  Accursed mesmers.  Pretty rogues and liars.  He was through with them.  And if Teleri thought he would stand by and let a mesmer warp innocent Mabane’s mind, she had another thing coming.

“Speak of your pain, for I can feel it as if it were my own,” she breathed, taking care not to disturb Teleri’s precious moments of slumber.

Morisedd scowled, enraged by her invasion of his mind.

“Stay away from me, Mesmer, or you will regret it.”

“I regret only that you are so alone among people who love you so deeply.  I envy you your friends and family.  Were they mine, I would not waste my time in anger over their flaws, but love them for their humanity.”

Taken aback, his threats died in his throat.

“You torment your sister with your hatred,” Kantele said, her eyes gleaming now with sadness, “You ask her to choose where there is no choice.  Pray that he lives for your own sake.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your hatred has blinded you,” Kantele replied, lowering her hand to stroke the tangled hair from Teleri’s sleeping form.  She was flushed and  had been forced to leave several times over the course of the vigil, sickened.

“No, not sickened, pregnant,” Kantele said, “Her grief has afflicted her and the child within her weeps as well.  Their child, Morisedd.  And you want this one to be without a father as well?”

“No,” he sighed, horrified, “Of course not.  She never told me.  Why did she never tell me?”

“She could not even risk telling Pendaran for fear of the conflict it would cause between the two of you.  You turned her cause for joy into a bed of thorns, Morisedd.”