Memoirs of a Madwoman, a novel... by Rebecca Watters Options

[Lady Syl]

Prologue
Undisclosed Location in
the Shivering Isles, the
Realm of Sheogorath
3E 433

Looking at my reflection in the mirror before me, clad in the robe of an Order Priest, I never thought that this was where I would end up. I have betrayed my Lord Sheogorath. I am now an enemy of the man I once worshipped as the Madgod. He had been everything to me, just as He is everything to all of His loyal subjects, Manic and Demented alike. But now He is a man I despise. Sheogorath went too far when He allowed that outsider to come into the Realm and usurp the throne of Mania. Now I want Him to pay for what He did to Thadon, and to me, and to all that I loved. He took from me every person, everything that ever brought me joy and love, replacing it instead with fear, pain, and sorrow. He couldn’t stand the fact that my heart might love another more than it loved Him, so He took from me anyone He saw as a threat to my devotion to Him. How I didn’t see it before is almost shameful. But then, He keeps the truth hidden from us beneath the heavy and binding layers of madness which He claims is a blessing. That is the truth of the Shivering Isles. All of us that live here have been “blessed” with madness.

But no longer am I bound by those chains. The blessing of Order has freed me from slavery to that prattling fool, and my mind is no longer bogged down with insanity. I have come to a place of clarity for the first time in my life. I can now see how my life might have been, if not for Sheogorath and His Realm of Madness. Had I been given the chance to steer my own course, I might have led a normal life of no consequence. I might even have been happy. Instead, I am filled with anguish, and I feel as if my heart has been torn into a million tiny pieces while it still beat in my chest. Death will come swiftly; I no longer fear it, and I will welcome it with open arms. Only in death can I hope to find peace for what I have done. But even then, I may find nothing more than punishment—who is to say?

Thadon believed that when we die, we would all go to a place of perfect bliss and live together for all of eternity, never to feel pain again. But then, Thadon lived much of his life in his own false sense of bliss, a world created in his own mind with the help of his precious drugs. What a fool he was. And yet, what a beautiful soul he had. Even with all of his faults, I loved him. I still do, I guess. Our people can’t understand how a relationship ever developed between us; if you look at it from the outside, it’s easy to be shocked and confused by such an unlikely pair as Thadon and I. But one has to look much deeper, and return to the very beginning to understand. There is more to the story than what has been told, and only my heart still holds the truth of our love. Our love, conflicted by our madness as it was, was beautiful and pure. No one can understand that without knowing how it all began, and there is only one other person alive now who knows how the story goes. I began recording my story before the truth of my insane state became clear to me, and I gave it to a trusted confidant because I believe she will keep my story safely hidden away until the time is right for it to be revealed. Perhaps it never will be. One can only hope.

There is more to my life than what is here and now. I’ve lived 37 years, all within this Realm, and for an elf, I’m still very young. But in 37 years, I’ve had enough misery to last me an entire elven lifetime, and I’m ready to move on—whether to punishment or eternal bliss—or, more frighteningly, to nothingness. Whatever awaits me, I will face it with courage. I have no choice. The time has come, and I must answer the call, even at the cost of life itself, if necessary. And I take with me the only remaining link to Thadon that I have. The rest I leave behind me, and I pray that my story will not be lost. There is so much to it that has yet to be told, and all of it is part of who I am and who I was before. The events in my life have shaped me, like formless clay is molded into a twisted and beautiful masterpiece by the hands of a Demented artist. Everything that has happened to me has brought me to where I stand now, and it was all beyond my control. But the things I have witnessed, and the suffering that I have endured will not go down in history. Those who survive will view me only as a traitor, and I will be reviled.

But perhaps the time will come when my story can be told, and maybe then I will not be so misunderstood by all who have heard the echo of my name, trembled at the sound of my voice, and looked upon my cold and hardened face. So many have feared me. So many have ridiculed and betrayed me. And so many have seen me only as an enemy without a heart. But that is not all that true; I am not so cold and heartless as I have appeared. Like with each person, man or mer, there is more to me than what is seen on the outside. There are layers of emotion, thought, and experience that compose the depths of who and what I am. There is a side to me that was broken, and hidden away for many years. To those who truly knew me, I was a loyal friend, a doting mother, and a passionate lover. However, most people do not see the world for what it is. They see everything around them with a narrow view, and do not look beyond what is plain to see. Though I am a woman with a broken soul and a beating heart, to most I am only the Lady of Darkness, or the Mistress of Death. To them I am simply Syl, Duchess of Dementia….

Syl in Order robes

This post has been edited by Lady Syl: Sep 2 2011, 03:58 AM

[Lady Syl]

Chapter 1.2--The Unwanted Surprise

My father took a new mistress a few months before my tenth birthday, and my mother seemed more distressed than she had even been before, though I didn’t understand it at the time. She often cried herself to sleep at night, while I lay in bed, holding her and trying to help her feel peace. I was her only source of comfort and joy at this point, as my father’s hatred of her had become quite apparent. She confided in me often, though I was perhaps too young to hear so many of the things that she told me. She had no one else to talk to about her feelings, though, for all of her friends had abandoned her. Muurine was the only person she considered a friend anymore, but she knew better than to confide in her, as Muurine always had a love for gossip.

In those days, my mother had become much more depressed and paranoid. She trusted only me, and was certain that everyone else was out to get her, for whatever reason. I didn’t understand it, why she was always so fearful. To me the world was exciting and new, but to her it had become a living nightmare. Gone was the beautiful and loving mother I had always known. Now she was worn out, disheveled, and agitated. She rarely even left my quarters anymore, and every sudden noise made her jump from fright. She trembled when in my father’s presence, and she was always nervous and fidgety. She had hallucinations at times, and she would mumble constantly to herself about someone named Ceridwen, who she had apparently wronged, but it would be many years before I understood what that was all about.

Sometimes my mother would tell me that we were living in a terrible place, and that we needed to get out of the Realm, and return to her home in Valenwood, where she had grown up. This was a terrifying thought to me, as I had known only the Realm, and I longed to be nowhere else, even as a child. I thought my mother was speaking nonsense, but I always stayed by her side, holding her hand and pretending to understand what she was talking about.

“They are coming for me, Syl,” she said one day, looking very seriously into my eyes and tightly gripping my arms. “Do you understand me, girl? They are coming for all of us! We have to get out before it’s too late. We have to escape…. Promise me you won’t let them take you, Syl. Promise me!”

“I promise, Mama,” I tearfully replied, just wanting her to stop saying such horrible things. Though I thought she was only talking nonsense, a part of me was genuinely terrified that what she was saying might be true.

By this point, my father pretty much ignored my mother altogether. He spent most of his free time with Alanwen, who was much younger than mother, and also very clever. She had him wrapped around her little finger, and he hardly even noticed me when she started coming around. I became jealous of the attentions he paid to her, as I had never been ignored by my father before. But I believed she knew what she was doing, and I disliked her intensely. She would smile and wink at me in what I took to be a conniving and victorious manner, as my father went off to his quarters with her, instead of spending his breaks with me as before.

With my mother’s fearful ranting about Alanwen, I began to wonder if she wasn’t out to get us after all. If she could get rid of us, she would have my father all to herself; and she was insanely jealous whenever he did choose to spend time with me instead of with her. That’s when I would give her a little wink and a smile, the same way she always did to me. If looks could kill, I’d have dropped dead right then and there, for Alanwen hated me intensely in those moments.

Alanwen and I actually started competing for my father’s attentions, and I began very quickly to win more often than she did. That just went to show that no woman could ever come between me and Ada. I was the number one girl in his life, and nothing could ever change that. Sure, as I got older, we had our ups and downs; but overall, my father never abandoned me, and he was my hero. I trusted him completely then, even though I didn’t always agree with him, and I knew that he would never do anything deliberate to hurt me.

What did hurt me to see, though, was the way he treated my mother. When she was having one of what I termed her ‘episodes,’ sometimes she would go to my father and plead with him to “get rid of that witch,” meaning Alanwen. She also begged him to give her a Dark Seducer to guard her, as she was certain that her life was in danger. My father was very unsympathetic to her, and he would only push her away and tell her to go back to “hiding in Syl’s quarters.” He would only beat her if she continued to pester him, which she very often did when she was in that state.

It pained me to see such displays between my beloved parents, and I was torn between them both. I would sometimes pull at my mother’s hand, begging her to leave my father alone and come back to my chamber with me. When she didn’t listen, my father would send me away while he punished her for her “stubborn disobedience.” I would obey, but I always watched from the corridor, unable to pull myself away, my heart breaking with every blow he gave to her. Then, when my father was finished, he always went to his quarters to recover with Alanwen, and I would run back out to my mother, who was crumpled on the floor, beaten and too weak to get up on her own.

I helped her to my quarters, where she would lie on the bed and curl up into a ball to sob like a child. I could not heal her with magicka, as at this time my magical abilities were limited to only healing myself, and very little at that point. But seeing my mother injured and uncaring enough to heal herself made me eager to develop the ability to heal others, and it was in this way that I was quite skilled. I never worked so hard to develop my own healing abilities, and few people know this, but I am better at healing others than I am at healing myself. She was my inspiration in this way, and it has been very useful to me at times. If only I had been able to save her.

******

For my tenth birthday, my father decided at the last minute that he wanted to take me out for the day, just the two of us (and the Dark Seducer bodyguards that accompanied him everywhere). We went out riding in the countryside together on the most beautiful black mares in all the Shivering Isles. Horses were a rarity in the Isles, and only the wealthy could afford to keep them. But we did have some around back then, until our Lord decided that he no longer cared to have horses in His Realm, for reasons that were never made entirely clear. We rode freely through Dementia, though we never strayed from the roads, while the four female Dark Seducers ran behind us at a steady pace to keep up.

Let me take this moment to explain something, to any who may not actually be from the Isles. Most of the Dark Seducers and Golden Saints are actually female. Males in their culture are much rarer, and also less desired, than the females. When I speak of the Mazken and the Aureals, most likely they are females, unless I say otherwise. Males are regarded as being less dependent and mostly useless in their culture, and the females hold all the highest ranks and the best positions. Why this is, I do not know, but I have never seen finer warriors than the females I have fought with in battle…

My father and I rode to Ashwood, a beautiful and exotic city in the south of Dementia that has long since been destroyed, and we were greeted there with much Dementia-styled fanfare. Everyone recognized right away that the Duke was in their midst, and their attitude toward him seemed to be one of great reverence. I never saw any other attitude toward my father, except when there were assassination attempts on him, but I never understood that because I had never seen anything but admiration from his people. I assumed, as a child, that my father was well-liked by the people of Dementia, but I would come to learn that their praises of him were merely pretense. In truth, my father was greatly despised by his people, because most of them were starving and unhappy under his rule. He did little toward the good of Dementia, and spent most of his time amusing himself with women and indulging his skooma habit. If you’ve seen Crucible in its current state, you’d be surprised to hear that it was much worse when my father reigned as the Duke of Dementia.

When we climbed off our horses in Ashwood, he took me by the hand and led me to the Great Tower of Ashwood. The Great Tower was the tallest building in Dementia, not including New Sheoth Palace. Inside the tower was a large chamber, with stairs that wound around up to the top, and it was open to the roof almost like a lighthouse. There were lookout platforms at the top, and from there one could look out across the whole of the land and far into the endless sea. It was a sight to behold, especially to a child, and I was left in awe.

After that, we went to the dressmaker’s shop where my father surprised me when he ordered a new dress to be made for me that very day. I picked out a deep crimson taffeta, and I wanted it lined with black lace, and I felt like a princess being able to have a new dress just like that. I wasn’t aware that the reason the dressmaker was able to make a new dress so quickly was that she and her seamstresses had to put all other orders on hold to finish mine by the time that was specified by my father, or they would have been imprisoned in the dungeon in the House of Dementia and whipped for their incompetence.

While we waited for the dress to be made, he took me to the public garden in the centre of Ashwood. It was beautiful there, with lush greens and perfect flowers. An exotic wooden bridge crossed the lily-pad covered pond to a gazebo on a small island in the centre. I loved every minute of it. Father watched me with a smile on his face as I talked and laughed and played. I knew that he loved me, and that I would never lose him. I was the sparkle in his eye, and I never felt more beautiful and more worthy than when he looked at me that day.

At the end of the day, with my new dress neatly wrapped in paper and tied with string, we headed back to New Sheoth. It had been one of the best days of my life, and I thought that nothing could shatter that perfect day for me. I rode with a smile, talking about how much I loved my new dress, and I couldn’t wait to wear it at the party that evening. Mama was going to be so proud when she saw me in my beautiful new dress, and she had promised me that morning that she was going to have a wonderful surprise for me at the party that night.

When we got back to the palace, I took my dress from the Dark Seducer who had carried it, and I ran to my bedchamber, eager to unwrap it so that Mama could see. Father called after me, telling me to wait, and not to go to my bedchamber just yet, but I simply couldn’t wait to show Mama, so I disobeyed and pretended not to hear him calling. He would forgive me just this once, I decided, because it was my birthday. I giggled as I ran down the corridor, thinking how much fun it was to be a little disobedient, and knowing that this time I could get away with it.

When I threw open the door to my chamber, I saw my mother standing there in the middle of the room, and I started telling her about my dress. But she didn’t respond, and she looked at me with an empty gaze, and then she slowly disappeared. That’s when I realized that what I had seen was not what I had thought. All my life, I had always seen things that others couldn’t, and this was the very same thing. My smile faded and I dropped the paper-wrapped dress, feeling my stomach wrench as I noticed the body on the bed. It was Mama, and she was sprawled across the bed in an unnatural position; her eyes were partially open, and her arm hung off the side. On the floor nearby was a silver goblet, with a small amount of wine still lingering inside where it could not leak out with the rest, which had likely soaked into the deep purple rug that rested beneath it.

My father had been chasing after me, but he stopped when he saw me there, staring into the room at my mother’s pale and lifeless body. I was frozen in terror. I didn’t need to venture into the room any further to see that my mother was dead. Then all at once, I let out the most fearful and miserable scream and ran down the corridor to my father. I fell into his arms, screaming and sobbing while he held me tightly and asked me what I’d seen. I was certain he hadn’t known what I was going to find, but Alanwen stood behind him, staring at me with a look on her face I could not decipher. But I was certain she had something to do with it, and I began screaming and pointing in her direction, telling my father that she had killed my mother. But father wouldn’t believe what I was saying, and he took me away very quickly while the Seducers and servants went in to clean up the body. Alanwen just stood there, emotionless, staring at me the whole time; I was sure that I was next.

This post has been edited by Lady Syl: Sep 2 2011, 03:59 AM