He was in the temple when the message first came to him, in contemplation of the tiny cracks in glass. In their fractal infinities, so the sage said, could be glimpsed the structure of mortal existence. To Sir Striketrue March of the Order of the River, it was time that he valued enormously. The demands of his duties as his liege’s protector were seemingly without end, though he was a good and honorable man who ruled lightly, unlike some that March had heard tell of. To some, a lord who did not seek out war was a sign of weakness, a notion that March existed to disabuse them of.
The messenger, a stable boy from outside of the village that sat on the slopes near the castle, related to him in a quite breathless manner how it was of importance quite paramount for him to make his way to the lord’s keep. March stood up at once, for he was a dutiful sort, and pausing for only a moment to straighten his tunic he made his way with great purpose towards the hitching-post outside the temple. He was a handsome, well-proportioned man who looked older than his years thanks to a life spent in the training fields of Rose Valley. His hand instinctually rested on the hilt that hung at his belt, a magnificent artefact but for the fact that it held no blade. He mounted his horse, a pale grey animal called Mist, and spurred her on to ride towards the tall, square edifice of the Castle double-quick with a cry of “Take flight!”

The bent figure came bustling down the hallways of the castle, armfuls of papyrus and clay phials threatening constantly to fall behind the masked individual whose humanity was betrayed only by the wide eyes that stared out from behind glass lenses. She was the court’s Medician Physick, called Makepeace Vitriol, and every servant knew what this kind of response meant. They stood out of her way – well out of her way, for fear some errant curative would find their lips and stain them blue, or turn their eyes dry and sightless. Most of this was founded in rumour, and in fact Vitriol was a very good doctor, her fixation on ‘miasma’ notwithstanding.
“Stand aside, stand aside!” said Vitriol to the tall figure in her path. Then she looked up and saw the stone visage of March. “Oh, it’s you. Come. Lady Kalila sent for you.”
As they walked, March said: “Who is it that you move so urgently for, physician? Is our liege, the great traveller that he is, host to some exotic contagion?”
Vitriol’s eyes looked grim. “I thank the Gods it is not so, March. Yet the truth is as troubling again, and doubly so for yourself I think.”
The big man’s eyes narrowed as he contemplated the implications of her words.

His questions, worries and doubts were given rest a moment later, when the door to the great master chamber was flung open by the short-bearded dandy, the forward-thinker, the explorer of the unconquerable, Lord Simas of the Source Lands. He wore a troubled expression on his brow.
“She grows yet sicker in thy absence, healer!” he said, clutching at Vitriol’s tunic. “Minister to my wife and make her well, or the fee shall be great indeed!” He looked to March. “Honorable Sir March. You have always been my friend, and a friend to the land. My wife entreats you now to take her side that she may speak with you.”

The woman laid in the grand bed, with its feather-stuffed pillows and deep maroon hanging drapes, looking tiny among the exuberant luxury. She was no longer a young woman, though particularly beautiful, and in happier days she had been possessed of a radiant warmth that reminded March of a crackling hearth.
The embers were dying now, reduced to a dull glow. He knelt by her side, and they spoke shortly.
“You’re here,” said she, Lady Kalila, the diplomat’s daughter, musician without peer among the ladies of the court. Her voice was barely more audible than a scratching reed.
“Of course, my lady,” said March. “By Uulan, I would never leave my lady’s side if she so wished.”
They talked for a scant few minutes more before her ladyship grew too tired to continue.

“It is no malady of earthly origin,” said Vitriol to the lord and the knight after consulting her scrolls and casting various runes of divination over the woman’s head and heart. “It is an illness of White Soul, and it is killing her.”
“The White Soul…” said the lord, slumping against a high-backed chair. “I had thought that I had heard the last of that vile being. Can there be any cure, Lady Vitriol?
The healer took her time answering, to Simas’ irritation. Finally, she proclaimed:”There can. But it will be a difficult path. To purify Lady Kalila’s infected spirit, I will need to prepare a draught with the petal of the Aligey flower, among other things.”
“Anything,” said the distraught nobleman. “Name any help I can give and you shall have it, only let her live!”
“The flower only grows in a handful of places, my lord, all of which are much too far to travel and return in time. With a single exception.”
“Anything.”
“In the petty kingdom of Gystis to the north, the Prince Regent prides himself on his royal gardens. I have heard tell that his most prized specimen is indeed an Aligey flower,” said the healer, wringing her hands. “But the prince is a spoiled, mean man (or so says his reputation), and the kingdom of Gystis has little love for yourself, my lord, after you refused to send your armies to aid them in the Battle of Vystan Hollow. I would not wager (were I a betting woman) on the prince being disposed kindly towards your request.”
“Then, damn him!” said the lord, turning his back to her and the knight and looking out of the tall window, over his lands that rolled out before him like a green blanket. Something seemed to come to him, and he turned back, wide-eyed. “March. Faithful March. Honorable March. Sworn protector…”
He trailed off. He had said all he had to. March had closed his eyes, outwardly the picture of peace. But within a battle was raging. His oath forbade him from ever acting dishonestly, even to an enemy. But as his liege said, he was also sworn to defend her, to do all he could to save Lady Kalila no matter the cost to himself.
March bowed. “I understand, my lord.”
That was it. He didn’t need to say any more. Lord Simas looked relieved, but very tired.
“Waste no time,” said Vitriol. “For our lady Kalila has precious little to spare.”
“Aye, and be ready for my return,” March pronounced. He knelt beside the bed of his lady once again, and thought of reaching out to kiss her hand, but did not. Suddenly, her eyes locked to his, and she spoke.
“My brave knight,” she said, and held out a delicate hand. Over it was draped a silk handkerchief. “Go with my blessing, and take this.”

The handkerchief pinned to his tunic, March rode on along the North Road towards Gystis. His thoughts were clouded by the events of the day. He had felt a sense of foreboding during his contemplation in the temple, and those feelings had been borne out. Perhaps there was something in the words of those old sages after all.
The gentle rhythm of the saddle rocking below him as Mist carried him onwards seemed to him to be like the swaying of a ship at sea, and at sea was just how the knight felt then. His knightly honour was, as had been impressed upon him when he was but a squire, his most treasured posession, and the mere thought of this deception gave him a pit in his stomach. But for Lady Kalila, March would have walked straight into Hel with open eyes, for that woman was like the sun itself in his world. Though so much as to tell her would be grievously forbidden, he was fundamentally, deeply powerless to stop the feeling which he almost couldn’t let himself think the name of.

The hoofbeats were nearly lulling him to sleep when he became aware that someone was watching him from the side of the road up ahead. Half-hidden by a black boulder, the figure ducked out of sight when it realised it had been spotted. March slowed Mist to an unhurried walk, resting one hand on the sword-hilt hanging at his belt.
After a minute, the figure re-emerged, deciding apparently that it would be pointless to continue hiding, and levelled a pistol at him.
“!” he said, the words snatched away by the wind over the long distance.
“What?” said March.
“!” repeated the figure. March put his hand to his ear, then gesticulated broadly for the figure to come closer.
Evidently exasperated by the events of the last minute, the highwayman lowered their gun. “Who are you?” they said, walking closer. “You even carry money?” They looked him up and down.
“Do I look like I cary money?
”Yes,” said the figure. “You’re a knight of the realm, I thought you all were loaded.”
As they spoke, March kept one eye on the treeline and, sure enough, it began to rustle as if on cue. “Who goes there?” he said, narrowing his eyes. Then they emerged, one by one – bandits!
“I was going to say, ‘your money or your life,’” said the lead bandit, a hairy man with a a bright red beard that downright offended the eye.

They pulled him off his horse before he could react, and, his head spinning, he could barely fend off the first vicious knife strike at his heart, deflecting it into his left shoulder where it left a shallow cut that stung and sharpened his mind into the instant. He formed a rune with his left hand and cast it with a flick of his wrist, sending a coruscating ring of power out that made the nearest bandit execute a flawless backflip back into the bushes belly-first. The other bandits suitably cowed, muttering among themselves – What was that? He’s a White Knight! Kill him! You first! – he pulled his sword-hilt from his belt. This brought a laugh.
“Blade still in the shop, eh?” said the leader, who March noted was still hanging well out of blasting range. There was a roar of laughter from the others, and one finally felt bold or embarrassed enough to step forward and raise his own blade. As he brought it down, March brought his own hilt up and parried the overbearing strike with practiced ease.
How’d he do that?
March raised the hilt. Extending from the point where one would ordinarily find cold steel, there was a shimmering blue edge in the air. The ghost of a blade, or the memory perhaps, unearthed in the tomb of an angel and bequeathed to him by a four-hundred-year-old man after March broke the black seal that restrained him in eternal torment.
None of this was known by the bandits, who turned and ran like hell.