Back only a short while, I managed to get myself on the lists at the Tournament, where I soon enough found my third round would be rather daunting. Daunting it should have been, at least. Being daunted would have been a waste of worry. There were two rounds to get through first, and no point in giving him any more advantage than he already had. And two days before Swords would even meet.

He is Riochal of the King's Word, and this is my memory of the first day of the Tournament.

The opening day is indeed incredibly crowded. The displays of magic, art and costume that fill the morning are absolutely splendid, and remind me of when I was a child, everything being so impressive again. I have been away too long. At the back of the encampments area, I can just barely see the small pavilion flying the colors of the Word.

They have a position nearest the back wall, shadowed by a small piece of a building that juts at an odd angle into the field. Morning sun will hit them, but by afternoon they will be in shade. With winter's chill in the air, one has to wonder at this. Is it the most defensible place? The one they are least likely to be bothered at? Are they trying to be out of the way?

I gaze at it. I could meet anyone there, really, but seek only the one. I pull my hood up to hide my foreboding. It seems unlikely anything good will come of this, but I desire to look into the man's eyes. I stand, and the amusements still draw a smile from me as I pass them. We can take what joy we find, or not. Today I will try for joy.

I make my way beyond the gates into the encampment field, a study in restrained excitement. Human servants and assistants rush about, and craftspeople work on armor, weapons, sashes and favors. The knights sit about half-armored, or pacing, or bluffing about their casualness in hands of cards and games of chess outside the tents. The place is a riot of color and noise, and the smells of many lunches being taken early.

As I travel toward the back area, this disquiet hits me. It's in the air, how everyone around is behaving. Though the noises still reach me, it is as though no one is turned this way, and their speech does not carry. We are afraid of them, our very protectors. This should never have happened.

Standing in front of the pavilion, apparently just finishing a conversation with a young Alfari woman, is a black-haired man with a long queue of hair over his shoulder. He is very tall, broad across the shoulders, long enough of leg to move quickly even though he is muscled like foot soldier. He's one of them, I think, but I have no idea what any of them look like.

His dark eyes move across me and I hear the clash of sword on sword, sword on armor, sword on bone. I pull my hood back as I approach. They must sense the disquiet around them. Seeming not to take note of me, or his projections, he dismisses the girl, picks up his bag, and starts heading out along the path I entered by.

"Excuse me, sir. I seek Riochal if the King's Word. Do you know if he is about here?" I ask, making a motion toward the tent with my eyes.

He continues a step before stopping, as though stopping were an afterthought. He turns fully to look at me, up and down. Whatever he is measuring brings a small smile to just one corner of his mouth. A faint smell comes off him; oil as used on armor, horses, leather, and something else, something like a battlefield newly sown with corpses. "I am Riochal," he informs me.

A sadness fills my eyes as I look back at him. What they all must have endured, it is unthinkable. And so I smile and raise an eyebrow, a study in contradictions, I know, but I tend to be. "Well Met, sir," I say, and bow to him. "We may be fighting later, so I wished to meet you sooner. Are you as talented as they say, then?" I wonder, returning his earlier appraisal.

His smile fills out. "'They' say I have talent, then? I'm not so sure. My Oath has made me artless, I fear. And it has been a while since I've whetted iron in Alfari blood."

"Sometimes, raw talent has an art all it's own. But perhaps you'll get over that before you get to me... were I to make it so far," I say humbly, yet with a smile full of confidence. "Are you off to practice then?"

He laughs. The sound carries that battlefield scent to me more strongly. If it is a glamour it is subtle and strong. "I'm off to lunch." He looks at me again. "It seems since word of my master's dalliance has got out, all of us are to be troubled by the attentions of beautiful women."

I laugh despite myself. The tale was their Oaths prevent them from taking partners in love, though not from the atrocities some relate to sex. But this is bold of him to suggest. "It's your steel sword I'm interested in, not the other one. Go have your lunch then. I wouldn't have you in less than top form if we happen to meet on the field. I would have a fair contest of my art against your raw ability." Again, the confident smile, but honest amusement behind it this time. "And you can hardly blame the women, if they think the rules have changed. I hadn't heard this rumor. Do you speak of Eoghan?"

"I do."

I am disappointed and worried by this. It is my House, after all, and Eoghan's, even if he's been long gone, and always belonged to the Word and not us. "Oh. That's to bad. I hope it was worth the cost."

"It was not a cost. It was a sign." He looks deliberately towards the King's Tower, west in the distance, and far above, then back at me. "Perhaps the end of things. That Oath could not be broken. Those among us who have forgotten have found their loved ones hearts in their mouths."

I follow his gaze to the tower, and suddenly I feel anger on their part, instead of pity and sadness. I look back at him, then, and wonder if they can recover from what they have been. Perhaps the monsters are already through the Veil. How could they not be, with nearing a century of this, and more for some, doubtless? "Perhaps there are some things that should end. Some burdens have been carried far too long. Mayhap you should try it then. How much worse can it get?" I suggest, ending in a hopeful grin, but quickly realizing what that looks like an invitation to. "Not that I'm volunteering," I clarify, "but I'm certain you wouldn't have trouble."

"Would it tell you more about me or about humans to know..." his smile withdraws, and his voice goes low, "I never had trouble before, either." The word 'before' he invests with power, with an achingly long time of blood. "Many were willing to see if they could somehow signal the end of that... cycle."

I nod and sigh. Does he mean these things literally? How devastating. "I suppose you should be more interested in the answer than myself. Is there some other oath I might help you break, then, if you're interested in testing? I rather thought the Word's attendance signaled something in itself, but I have been gone some years, and just returned, so I am less informed than I'd like."

"No other oaths. To protect, and to place no others before this Oath. I realize now I made it sound as if many know of Eoghan's... love." It appears difficult for him to say that word. I feel something in me forgive him whatever he's had to do; he's paid the price. "Only some few know, and most of those too stupid to feel what import it has."

"What will you all do then? Besides remake your names in this Tournament?" I ask, and wonder at how I seem to be worthy of telling secrets to by a stranger I intend to bring to his knees in front of the passionate throngs of Alfari, shortly. Perhaps I do look that harmless.

"I think we will wait and see what lies beyond that door when it comes." He flexes his wrists, one, then the other. "You plan to sit and get cold watching, or do you care to test yourself a while?"

I laugh again, for the first time with a little nervousness. "Ah, why not? I have as much to learn from you as you do from me. You should move your pavilions to a brighter place, you know. People might start to think you like the dark," I suggest, stepping up and motioning for him to lead the way.

"We will find a piste among the ruins, I am sure. I'll bring my blade and put my lunch on hold for now." He holds up a staying hand to me, and turns back to the pavilion, emerging a moment later with a thick blade. It's longer than my pair but shorter than, though about as heavy, as the bastard swords and hand-and-a-halfs that some of the swordsmen carry.

"Follow, then?" he begins heading a different direction than he had started, towards the northside entrance to the field, where many of the knights are starting to enter, leading their horses for the afternoon's jousts.

I nod, simply, and follow. I watch his back, and the way he moves. I look for old injuries and vulnerabilities. Likely they are mostly not on his body, because his movement gives none away. Even more, I watch how the people watch him. I smile at the horses, and hope they don't die this afternoon.

Away from the pavilion, where it is barely possible he is just another Alfari, come in from a long journey, there is less avoidance, but only slightly less. That sense I read off him, the battlefield he carries, is still with him. He moves smoothly, quickly. He is used to people getting out of his way, and strong enough to continue without faltering the very few times they do not. His long black hair, an amusing vanity when nothing else about his attire sends that message, catches sun and shines back almost blue.

He doesn't glance back as he steps into the cooler space in the shade of the ruins. One level down, he glances side to side and takes a right, towards the river. We have to change levels several times, and come across rooms full of furniture gone to threadbare dust, places where light filters down through odd angles in ancient marble, and finally to a larger room that seems to have once been a small dining hall with a curved balcony overlooking the river. The room is empty except some crumbled rock dust. I wonder if he was here, before it was a ruin. I know almost nothing about him.

Riochal stands in the opening that used to be a west-facing window, and then jumps down into it. "This looks to do." He opens his waterskin, drinks briefly, and offers it up to me.

I take it, and drink, vaguely hoping it is something stronger than water. "I've never been in here before," I admit, handing him back his waterskin. "It's... well, we won't be bothered, will we?" I smile and turn to remove my cloak.

I adjust my leather gloves and rub the insides of my vambrances together for good luck. I silently thank Master Ganryu for everything he taught me, and hope to do him the honor of learning something more here than the inadequacy of anything put up against a long lifetime of warfare. My hair gets tied back with a leather thong I'd had in my back pocket. I cross one arm over another and lay my hands on the hilts of my blades. "Shall we just go at and see, then?" I ask. I prepare myself for some rejection of my other-worldly plain clothing, black cotton tunic and dark leather pants - and my favorite boots, though not the ones I'd have chosen had I known I'd be practicing today.

He pulls off his travel belt and tosses it carelessly in a corner, and then removes the sheath of his sword and does the same. The sword is somehow both oiled and rusted at the same time. It is dark, a ragged patchwork of dark stains and rust color along it. It is notched in many places, but obviously sharpened past the notches, so that those places along its edge are the only shine to the blade. The room fills with an animal smell of death. He half-bows to me. "I lack my helm, but will not on the field."

"Ah, something to aim for later. Very well. I'm most like dress like this, but with light cosmetics," I tell him. I return the bow. I do not ignore the scent of death so much as disregard it. He is a killer, it's not as if I did not know it already. I wonder if he can smell anything of me past that horrid odor he must live with. I wonder what I could possibly smell like already. Then I cease to wonder, and draw my blades, taking a defensive stance.

"You need not hold back," he says as he starts circling. "Our healer is the best in all Alfar."

"Well, that's good to know," I smirk, but do not take the bait. I follow his circle with my own, happy to be moving in circles so soon. "I'm more worried I'll need a Smith than a healer."

"Those are to be had as well." He grins.

Riochal's stance is low, his swordarm not quite casual at one side, the other arm ready to counterbalance any movement.

"Why don't you use a shield?" I probe, with a quick in and out step to see if he'll give up his speed.

He doesn't even flinch, but replies, "I didn't have it with me."

He gives a strong, lunge-like stroke, from low inside line to high outside. It is a strength move, belying no particular speed. I decide to test it; better now while I'm fresh. I step into it, sliding right up against him in an effort to exchange the force, slip under it, and end up at his side or even better, behind him.

Were my motion simple, or were I more confined, he'd have simply brushed me off. As it is, at that speed I can feel the parry failing and still move and turn, closing a little. MY arm brushes his, and as I complete the turn he pivots to turn as well, and the back edge of his empty hand strikes me hard across the bridge of my nose, bringing sparks to my eyes as he jumps back out of range of my bladework. The shield would have slowed him down.

I wrinkle my nose against the pain, and then disregard it too. It's there, but there is nothing to be done for it. I can't help but smile. "Rabbit," I accuse. I move up on him as quickly as I can, now. I try a vambrance trick, using one to try to deflect his blade, and get up inside his guard with my free blade. If I can get that far, I will have him skewered.

I come circling in to him, picturing his large form within my influence, the intersection of his sphere with mine clarifying my body's action. He turns himself, fast, but that way only brings him to another intersection with me. As opponents sometimes do, he takes a middle way, finally letting our blades engage as he strikes for the inside of my upper left arm.

The attack hits with bone-numbing ferocity, but I angle my blade and deflect his -- just barely -- to that vambrance. That arm feels almost useless for any fine work, but I have cleared his guard, and I punch forward with my right-hand blade; the heavy tip of it doesn't even catch on cloth and skin, but slides through a good foot of meat before some resistance gives it pause.

For a split second I think there should be some cessation of movement, some evaluation, or pause, but no. He hasn't stopped moving. Of course not - there is no yielding on battlefields.

Instead he moves further into me. The scrape of blade on bone communicates up my blade to my hand, and before I have time to worry that I've taken this too far, his hand is under my arm, the thumb deep in the soft flesh, the rest of the hand wrapped around my upper shoulder. He steps up and wrenches hard, turning my arm out and back from that shoulder like turning the wing in an overcooked fowl.

The hand at the end of that arm goes numb, which seems a blessing as the rest of that arm is on fire. He kicks forward with his knee, hitting just over the top of my groin and following up with his full weight. We go over, with him on top. My blade protrudes from the left side of his gut. He can't lever his blade out from under me, but his hand comes up and slams down on my throat.

Then, he stops.

He is breathing heavily, his nostrils flaring. I'm quite relieved he's stopped. A man like this might forget where he is. He half-coughs, and turns his head a little to spit black blood to the side of my head. I only feel a little guilty. The pain is too overwhelming to think too much. But I have survival thoughts.

"Do you yield?" I manage, trying to take the edge that is making my whole body tense, away.

The fingers on my throat flex slightly as though trying to decide whether to rip it out. My pinky twitches on my sword, but I wait. Thankfully, the man throws back his head and laughs a second, really laughs, until he has to turn aside to retch up more blood. He pushes himself off me and lets himself gingerly to the ground so as not to move the blade further.

"We're going to have to carry each other back," I mumble, and try to sit up using my somewhat good arm. I don't think he'll make it back, but outside of here might be good enough to get us help. My left arm is just a little numbed and sore from his initial blow. As I sit up something loose happens in the other shoulder. I force myself not to be sick.

"I should... call Bronn." His voice is thick behind a coating of blood.

I make a face, and push up with my left hand to try to get on my feet, but slowly, so if I'm going to faint there isn't far to fall. "Or I should go find... him?" I try to ask.

I get to my knees, breathe, and then my feet, before he says, "I can call him here."

"Well, hurry up," I suggest, worried he's going to die on me. Eyes closed, he nods.

He opens his mouth, and what is perhaps a word escapes him, along with more blood from his stomach. In that word, for an almost imagined moment, is a thin silver thread. The thread suddenly unspools from him and becomes invisible, and from the direction it went, perhaps three feet from the room's inner wall, a black rent appears in the air.

Three feet, six feet... the full height of the room, the split in the world is jagged like lightning and wrong like an infected wound.

I watch, but not in awe. I hurt too much for awe.

Stepping through this… portal, casual as stepping through a door, is a tall, leather-tanned man. "Eoghan will have your head, man, calling across Alfar," he tells Riochal. This must be Bronn. The man's glance flicks to me, and then to the sword protruding from Riochal's abdomen.

I shrug. "We were practicing." It sounds ridiculous even to my ears. Riochal tries to laugh, which would have made me smile, had not the pain of trying to move my shoulder hit my consciousness. I wince mightily, and try to fight off tears.

"Get this pigsticker out of me, dog, before I give my blood Oath on this floor," Riochal chokes out.

Bronn sneers at him. "Wait there, I'll tend you next," he says to me before leaning down to take hold of the handle of my sword. He seems to believe me, at least. Riochal screams out as Bronn pulls the blade free of bone and gut. A gout of blood and thin yellow liquid pool out immediately. I bite my lips and focus on Riochal's pain. It's easier.

Bronn kneels heavily beside him, claps his hands together, and puts both down over the wound. Riochal's body arcs. I can see the moment where he tries to remain conscious and loses the fight. The tears win. It turns out to be no easier. I look away.

It's healing, but I still can't watch it, even with Riochal now still. Time passes. I look at how time tears things down, and try to ignore how strange my pain feels. The quality of Riochal's breathing gets deeper. He coughs hard a few more times, spraying blood first, and then just bloody spit. Mercifully, he doesn't awaken.

Bronn sits back from him, rubbing his blood-covered hands absently on his blue linen leggings. He clears his throat. "Lady, you have need of me?"

"I... yes, but I don't really know all what's wrong... what all is wrong," I correct. "My shoulder is ripped up for certain." I make myself look at him. "I would appreciate it," I breathe through the pain.

He nods and pushes himself to his feet. "Here, sit." He guides me to the sill of a blocked window. I go, and sit gingerly, afraid to move too much for what it brings. He puts his hands to the collar of my shirt, then as if realizing late what he is doing he asks, "May I look?"

I look at him a moment as if he is slow, but then it slowly comes through the haze of pain that he is only being polite. "Please, do whatever you must to be thorough. I took a knee to the lower abdomen too. I know pain layers, and since I'm feeling the worst, I'm not feeling the rest, but I have to fight, so... anything you can find to fix. Please do." I take a deep breath. "Are you part of the King's Word, then?"

He nods, contemplating a moment whether he can lift my shirt off rather than tear it, but he goes with his original plan and the fabric parts between his huge hands like gossamer. I think immediately perhaps I shouldn't have looked. My right arm hangs from my shoulder by skin and muscle alone. There is massive bleeding under the skin from someplace deep under my arm, which, in a sort of clinical way, makes me think it makes sense that I feel so cold and dizzy.

He frowns. "Hmmm. Lovely," I mutter, and look at his face instead, feeling even sicker. I'm tempted to laugh at how he looks at me, knowing how I must look, but I'd rather not sound hysterical. "I know your name from somewhere. Will it distract you if I talk at you?"

"No," he allows. I watch him but can not at all remember why I should know him. "I don't think I can do this without adding to your pain for a moment," he warns me.

"Well, I might scream then," I inform him, with all the dignity I can muster.

"That's fair." He puts his hands around the upper part of my arm and lifts it slightly, closer to the shoulder. I draw in half a breath and scream for my life as he moves my arm and the pain changes from nearly unbearable to pure torture. When I run out of air, I get some more, only to scream again.

About ten seconds in, in retrospect, though it felt like forever, partway through my third good breath, the pain suddenly stops, replaced with a dull heat. All the channels for pain are still open, jangling, raw. But the pain is gone. I can feel his rough hands, rubbing gently over my shoulder as though smoothing a piece of clay.

He could ask me for anything, and I'd do it. There are no healers like this in Alfar. There are no healers like this in all the Worlds.

I try speech again, because it seems like I should. "Oh, oh, well, I... quite impressive. Bronn. Huh. I suppose it's good you were with the Word. And the creating a veil within Alfar... is that what that was? That's something else." I breathe. I keep breathing, but the tears start again in sheer relief.

"Was it a veil to a person?" I ask, clinging to words to fight back the sobs that want to come now.

He holds my shoulder another moment. I can feel some gentle motion within me between his hands. "Yes. Like that somewhat." He then moves his hands across the top of my chest to the shoulder of my other arm, down that arm to the aggrieved elbow, where a quick pass of heat brings relief.

It's amazing, and impossible. He motions for me to turn a little to one side, and puts his hands one in front, on the lowest part of my belly, and one in back. Heat again seems to flow between them through me. There is motion again, mostly under his hand in the front, as though the muscle structure there was reshaping itself.

"Here I'd thought for sure I'd killed him, because you don't exist, but you do, so I'm glad not to have to carry that, as it wasn't my intent," I explain, and realize I almost sound coherent, at least within my own head. I try again to stop the tears, and it begins to seem possible.

He stands back from me, looking me over. Suddenly he reaches forward and lightly brushes the bridge of my nose with his fingertips. My lack of reflex speaks of my still somewhat unfocused mental state.

He nods. "I think that is all I could sense wrong."

"Oh, excellent," I sigh, and then snort. "How long will it be before he wakes, do you think?" I look at Riochal and see how much he needs cleaning up, on top of everything.

"I could kick him awake now, if it please you," Bronn says gruffly, but I see he is smiling, almost.

"Why don't you like him?" I whisper, but grin.

"I know him." He grins back.

"That's fair," I shrug, now that I can.

"Here, take my shirt. It will cover you until you can get another." He shrugs out of his shirt, which is huge but relatively clean except for the very edge of one sleeve. I smile brightly. I hadn't even thought that far.

"You are only the second person I have healed who is not of the Word."

"My gratitude, for all of it." I slip into his warm shirt. I feel brand new. "Really. Is it different, somehow?"

"It was not required. Not allowed."

"Ah, more oaths-over. I see. Well, it's good, isn't it?" I watch his face.

"No. But it is inevitable." He looks between me and Riochal, and then goes and picks up my blades to hand them to you. "It would seem you got in too close, if I can offer an opinion."

I use my ruined shirt to clean the blood from the one. "I'm happy for advice. I need to get behind him, get a sword in and out and keep moving faster than his turn as he goes, I think. I'm not sure I can though, but I must. Do you know a way? I'm hoping his helm hurts his field of vision," I add.

Bronn shakes his head. "It won't. And he's quicker with it. But not as quick as you, I'd guess. Don't let him trap you. He could have killed you. I am... somewhat surprised he did not."

"We were sparring. He told me not to hold back. He could have killed me, and I can be stupidly stubborn, because with his hand at my throat I was still prepared to twist and jerk that blade," I confessed. "But yes, I will do all I can not to let him get those hands on me again. He doesn't need a weapon."

"No, that he does not."

"Well, I'm relieved he can tell when he's not on a battlefield," I say, and I am. It would have been a very bad thing for him to go over into a blood rage on me. "Can you 'send a calling' like he did? Can all of you do that?" I prod, setting my swords aside. I get up with the shirt and make to start cleaning up the mess all over the poor man.

"I would not count on his... ability to discriminate on every occasion. As I said, I am surprised at the outcome we have here. As for the callings, yes, that is something we have among ourselves alone. If the ability will outlast our Oaths, I do not know. Bronn put a staying hand on my arm. "Don't bother with him. I must take him back with me and we can clean him up there. I would be pleased for Eoghan to see what his man's foolishness has brought him to, in any case." He stands and goes to the corner to collect Riochal's belt and sword sheath. He puts them unceremoniously across Riochal's body, and bends, scooping Riochal up as if he were not a two-hundred pound man but rather a child. For all their words and name-calling, they bear the very mark of their camaraderie in all their interactions.

"Where do you travel now? You could... pass through the portal with me to the field, if that is closer on your way," he offers.

"Are you going through another? That is very tempting," I hesitate, thinking. There will be plenty of time for walking later. "If you wouldn't blame a man for giving a woman a chance to spar before they meet on the field, I'd appreciate it," I add, the last a bit tightly. If he was foolish, what was I? It's hardly unnatural to feel a need to defend him - he did, after all, give me what I wanted.

I try to soften it with a smile as I roll up the sleeves of his shirt, grateful I'll have my cloak. I reach up to let my hair back down. There is something about my hair against my temples that makes me feel more myself. "I suppose I'll go through with you, if you think it's safe. Have you ever done this before with one not of the Word?" I pick up my swords and sheath them.

"Oh, yes, Lady. Many a time." He doesn't make it sound all that comforting. A moment later a new rift appears before him. A small trickle of fine dust cascades down the far wall as though the room had taken a sudden shake. "I'd best go first; come along sharply." He steps into the blackness, disappearing completely.

Not even taking the time to swear, I move for the portal, grabbing my cloak as I go. I take a deep breath as I step through, hoping I'm not about to be pounded by some unfamiliar force. These things are beyond my ken; portals and pure healing and glamours and such. The breath is all the delay I'll allow myself, not knowing if the thing might close with me halfway through.