Indraine Sarras

A Maiden

• Of Noble Birth

  The Sarras blood that courses through her veins, that bathed her in the womb and binds her to the earth, this blood shone blue under the light of the full moon. It was the Lunatic Night, when the stars pulse like quick beating hearts; it was the cursed night, when the spirits prowl to mark their prey; it was the purest night, when in shadow the pale moon is brightest. Under the weight of this night of omens, Lady Branwen fell into labor and gave birth to her first daughter, Indraine.
  
  Branwen beheld the baby, and saw her beauty. Indraine had her father's strong brow, her mother's soft jaw, and on her head sprouted little tufts of fire's orange. The sweet babe murmured, no cry from her mouth did sound. Her mother's joy, however, was fleeting. When Lady Branwen took hold of her baby's hand the next night, it was hot to the touch.
  
  Perhaps it was as the midwife said, and the cold of the night stole into Indraine's breath, or perhaps it was as the guardsman said; a spirit had marked her that first night, and now comes to steal her soul. Lady Branwen prayed it was as the priest said, a mere passing infirmity.
  
  But Indraine did not recover. Branwen watched in horror as her babe wasted away before her eyes, by cough and by fever, burning and then freezing. No remedy would help, no physician could do more than assuage the symptoms. The illness remained.
  
  The foreboding of the ominous birthnight wove with Lady Branwen's agitation over Dindraine's infirmity, and, like a braided vine, grafted onto the noblewoman's heart, striking her with a mother's desperate fear, Indraine's third curse.

• In Youth

  Under the restrictive hand of a worrisome mother, Indraine learned restraint. As a child, she was told no to every hopeful wish. She was never permitted to go outside, lest the cold take her again. No curse could pass her lips, lest it invite a spirit inside. Any unseemly gesture, any hint of misbehavior was to be met with harsh recompense. Lady Branwen instructed Indraine's tutors to do likewise, so that her daughter would be found in demeanor and behavior faultless. Then, she might be favored by the divine, protected from infirmity... perhaps even purified of her ill-fated birth.
  
  However, no matter what Lady Branwen came to believe, Indraine never learned to be perfect. She learned how to hide her imperfections. Resentment was stuffed into the darkest shadows of her heart. Envy, despair, anything less than gentleness, kindness, and grace did Indraine bar behind closed lips. Self-control, she learned that, and called it restraint, imagined it to be the power of free will.
  
  There were yet rays of dreams to meet Indraine's childhood. Each step outside the castle, every noble guest and intrepid bard came with the tantalizing taste of a world beyond. The mere taste was enough for Indraine at first. She smiled for bardic tales, her eyes lit up at foreign gifts, her keen ear turned to the heated discussions of diplomacy and law.
  
  She loved her father that seated her at his table, encouraged her to hear his every worldly way. A war was brewing, he would say, and she must learn how to run a castle when her husband's away.
  
  She met this husband-to-be when she was seven. Dressed in the drab colours of low nobility, the young man of eighteen had fierce blue eyes, whose knitted brow pulled down his short-cropped blonde hair. He had brought her a rose the colour of blood. It smelled like her mother's perfume. She knew his name, Sir Bors of Gorgewall. It was a name said often in ballads and war reports; at eighteen, he was the youngest of knights, the most chivalrous of warriors, and by his charge the Battle of River Grey was won. Her father believed he would only grow in greatness; now was the time to promise a union.
  
  So, Indraine hoped for the day she would be wed, when all this futile labor to behave as a perfect woman could be put to some use. The tasting and the hoping was enough, but these things did not last. When the war began, her father was called to take up arms. She watched him ride off with a battalion of armed peasants, and when her mother beside her rested a hand on her back, Indraine welled up with such sorrow that she could not keep from weeping.
  
  Within three years, father returned in a coffin. He was honoured for his service, his family rewarded lands and his wife a pot of gold. While the port city of Sarras prospered in trade and newfound wealth, Indraine grew in reclusion, and her bitter heart irritated her to fits of rage and onsets of sorrow. Lady Branwen's strict hand only replied with equal growth in harshness, until she knew not how to be harsher. When she caught Indraine scurrying out the servant's gate one moonless night, Lady Branwen knew only one thing to do. It was all she could think of, the only recourse. For a year's time, Indraine was exiled to Saint Wildred's Convent.

• In Adolescence

  The thirteenth year of her life may have been confined to an isolationist convent, but it was there Indraine found meaning in life. The young woman came to the convent downtrodden with grief. Though she was immediately assigned a multitude of responsibilities, she would not budge the quill in her hand, nor tug at the potato in the garden, nor raise her voice in song. Her silent rebellion was met with silent punishment. The nuns had her locked in the supply cabinet, which, locked by broom and chair, was quite the makeshift prison.
  
  It was the darkness that broke her pride, the deep timeless shadow that ate out her eyes and drowned her soul. So she submitted, wielding restraint once more, this time over a dead heart.
  
  Thoughts broke into her mind during mundane and useless tasks. She would wonder if everyone felt as she did, if they were so surrendered to the station they were made to obey. She imagined every man, peasant, merchant, gypsy, noble, had in their hearts and minds the chains of this slavery, and like her they were dead dolls made to play a game because it was less terrible than what the world would do to them if they refused to obey.
  
  In the midst of such thoughts, her mind belatedly recognized the words her hand did scrawl.
  
  "The noble's station is not to be taken lightly. It is a position honored not because they have been born in privilege nor for their father's works. The noble's birthright is a calling to bring about the rule of righteousness throughout the land, to destroy the wicked and evil-doers, so that the strong should not harm the weak. The noble enlightens the land, and his work furthers the well-being of mankind." [ 1 ]
  
  The nun watching her, Priscilla, told her what this meant, that it was the divine task set before nobility. It was not to obey the structure in place, but to obey the most high, and bring about the greatest good in every station. Every man has his place, and in it a chance to do great good. She chided Indraine not to be swayed by any teaching or authority of man, but to chase only knowledge, so that she may gain wisdom, and by it serve the divine to the best of her ability.
  
  "But always remember," Sister Priscilla said somberly. "Every man has broken the law. No person on earth can reach perfection."
  
  "Then why make a law at all?"
  
  "Our sin does not release us from our conscience! We must do what is right. At the same time, we must never be deceived into thinking we are better than we are. Man is a fallen creature that must be gifted with the righteousness of another; he cannot attain it by his own efforts."
  
  "So I must not be proud." The lady said.
  
  The sister nodded. "We must always be wary of pride."
  
  Indraine copied every letter of that book, and committed it to knowledge. She left the convent with the old codex Nobilis Habitus in hand, her eyes set on new horizons.