Alone in the study that night, I pressed my back against the ripped monogram of my father’s chair.  I refused its repair, wanting instead to feel the rough leather as a reminder of the Count’s deeds.  Wind billowed through the still torn curtains and made the candle flames dance.  I put my hand on the unfeeling urn that contained my father’s ashes and savored the cold rage that hid in every Goodman’s breast.  It spread through my body, growing inside of me, overwhelming me.

 

One of the candles on the desk flickered and blew out, the now dim light of the remaining one matching my dark mood.  I put a stick of ceremonial incense into a holder and placed it next to the lonely candle and centered the Crystal in the middle of the desk.  The gift dagger lay in front of it.

 

“It’s time to pay you a visit, Count, and look into your dark heart.”

 

I concentrated on the Sighting Crystal as Fescher had taught me and pushed the incense into the dancing flame.  The pungent smoke tickled my nostrils with its sweet peppery smell and wafted about my head.  The Crystal glowed and pulsed in its ornate golden base and I grew weary.  The room became vague at the edge of my vision.  A fog descended.  Only the crystal burned brightly.

 

My hands tightened on the arms of my chair.  Through the mist, I saw Fescher in his chambers, touching a ceremonial dagger in his sash, nearly identical to the one that sat before me on the desk.  He paced back and forth in front of an upright mirror, studying his agitated reflection.  With motions swift and sharp, his whole demeanor took on a feral quality, his gray eyes quick and focused as he looked about the room.  He fixed his gaze on the gift portrait of my father over his mantle, then at his reflection.

 

The image in the mirror fought for control.  The Count’s body jerked and twitched while his mouth formed unspoken curses.  His hands pulled at a stole of Crescent and Stars that hung garlanded about his shoulders.  It was covered with the emblems of one who stood high in the priesthood of the Oustlanders.  He held his hand across his chest and breathed deeply, averting his eyes from the portrait and reciting a focusing prayer.

 

Fescher stopped his pacing and studied a velvet letter pouch that lay on his desk, one marked with the crest of our House.  It was the one that had lain on my father’s desk the night before.  The top of the scroll protruded from the pouch.  In my father’s handwriting, I could see the Count’s name and Hassa’s.  I recognized the formal proposal of marriage he had penned just last evening.  The blood rushed to my head and I gritted my teeth.  The Crystal on my desk flared and pulsed.  

 

“Jeroch,” he cried looking up at my father’s portrait.  “You diminished me yesterday in front of all in your House.  You spoke not as we had in the past.  You sent me away with my rage unchecked.”

 

Fescher picked up the scroll and threw it into his fireplace where it erupted in flame.

 

“You could have told me of your plans.  I thought you ready to take Hassa from my heart and my House.  Your Goodman’s heart appeared to turn so stony.  You called to the beast in me to strike.  Jeroch, you failed me at the hour of my need.”

 

He stood in front of the mirror and spoke to his reflection.

 

“And I failed you!”

 

He kicked the mirror so it spun.  In the dark recesses of the room, its reflection revealed two cat’s eye pupils glowing in the dark.  Watching.  Fescher walked and stood in front of my father’s portrait.

 

“You were so agreeable to the needs of these new Goodmen, keeping them as guests in your House.  Your courage must have enraged the Beast when he paid his visit to carry out my mission.  You died trying to protect your guests when my friend sought our revenge.”

 

Fescher took a candle from his desk and walked to the corner of the room, toward the eyes.  The Beast stepped forward and knelt before the Count, two pendants swinging across his hairy torso as he did; one pendant marked with the crest of the House of Fescher, one with the House of Jeroch.  Fescher put his hand on the head of the Beast.

 

“Not your fault, my friend.  You only followed your nature and my command.”

 

The Beast growled.  Fescher then knelt in front of him, took the pendant of my father in his palm, and placed it to his own forehead.

 

“Not your fault, Jeroch.  Mine.”

 

I growled in my throat as I saw the pendant.  The Crystal grew brighter on my desk.  In the Count’s room, a similar glow pulsed on his desk.  In the misty vision of the Crystal, Fescher rose and paced in his own study, looking over his shoulder as if he felt someone spying on him.  A glow escaped from under a black cloth on his desk.  He sat down and pulled back the cover to reveal a Sighting Crystal, then rubbed his temples and studied it carefully.

 

In my vision, the Count now lit a brazier of smoking incense.  His hands played with his Oustlander dagger.  The incense in the brazier flared and the Crystal on his desk pulsed with light.  The Count raised his head and stared into it.  My head throbbed.  The Crystal in my study pulsed as well.  All about me danced in jumbled, misty vision.  In this mystic haze, his rooms and my study, his desk and mine, the two Sighting Crystals ablaze with fierce light, all became one.

 

Through a mist that hung between us like a fine morning rain, he now sat across from me in my study.  His gray eyes appraised me coolly.  The green eyes from my Father’s gift portrait behind him did so as well.  The eyes of the Beast glittered in the darkness.

 

“Liam, it seems I have taught you well.  Why do you come to visit me thus?  Did you think to see me strut in glory at the Viscount’s demise?  Are you surprised at my grief over the death of your father, my best friend?”

 

Fescher leaned forward, one hand over his chest, the other reaching out as if to take hold of my hand.  His arm disappeared into the mist between us.

 

“I loved him.  I love Hassa.  I love you.  But the death of Briok and Enlil, the temerity of the Viscount, the events in the Great Hall yesterday drove me…”

 

He fought for control.  Even in the midst of his grieving, he struggled against the Oustlander rage that lay just beneath the surface.  The Beast came out from the shadow behind him, its eyes ablaze, ready to do the Count’s bidding.  After a few moments, a shudder ran through the Count and he slumped backward into his chair.

 

“How can I atone for this terrible mistake?” he asked in a quiet voice.  “What penance would you have me do?”

 

I looked behind him to my father’s portrait that hung in his room, then took the gift dagger from its sheath and touched its point to the urn containing Jeroch’s ashes.  My words came out distinct and cold as I tapped out each one with the point of the dagger.

 

“I-would-have-you-die.”

 

His mouth opened, but no words issued forth.  His friend Jeroch, my father, was dead.  Dead by his bidding.  Fescher knew now the blood feud would continue, as it should.  Not by his bidding, but by mine.  His eyes bored through the mist and gazed directly into my own.  He knew my thoughts.  The Count and I prepared ourselves for what was to come.

 

I leaned forward, blew out the candle.  Fescher’s image slowly faded into the darkness that surrounded me.