Come closer to the fire, my dear ones. Come closer so that I might see your faces. I am old, my children, and my eyesight is not what it once was. Nor is my memory. Faces fade in and out. Time, too. Where are we? Beside the fire—yes, I know that, I’m not completely blind—but where? Tucked into the inglenook of a village inn? No, somewhere more intimate.... Perhaps warming ourselves beside the great hearth of a grand manor house or perhaps of the same town named...no, no, don’t tell me! Sorenton? Cernedo? Something else? Is the manor house old or relatively new? The inn in the town behind us as well? Perhaps both, rebuilt more times than anyone can recall, a manor and an inn in a town as fading as my eyesight, or perhaps this is just a folly only built to look like a moldering manor house or quaint inn in some public pleasure garden?

Would that not be a joke! Me, not an old woman, just an actress playing the role of some gossiping old dodderer, here to spin a yarn and tell a colorful tale, my face wizened with walnut juice, my hair whitened with flour, or all of it just a grandmotherly mask. Or not even a mask—the marionette of a beldame mirrored on a half-lit glass like a charlatan’s false ghost! I am old and I have seen many wonderful things in my day...but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you.

You’re not my children, are you? My grandchildren perhaps, grown up? But no, that’s impossible—two girls, cut down before their time.... Well, except for one. Perhaps. But that all depends on you, doesn’t it?

Who am I? Oh, it hardly matters now, does it? Call me grandmother if you must or perhaps Catherina if we must be formal. Crystina did that when she wished to be respectful, which was often. She was a dear child. Is. Was. Will be. Oh, but don’t you understand? It all depends on you! Can you do nothing to quiet that dreadful storm!? The wind howls like lost souls, and it is all because of me! I am to blame! If I had only held my tongue, kept my selfish fears to myself, none of this would have come to pass!

But let me tell you my tale and perhaps you can make sense of it. And maybe, perhaps, if all hope is not dead, there is something you can do....

I was born Catherina, to a good family. Good not in the sense of goodness itself but in the sense of wealth and respectability. My family’s sins, if extant, were slight and forgivable. Their virtues, likewise, were similarly unremarkable, apart from the usual charity expected of the wealthy and the associated social niceties. Their one greatest sacrifice was myself, to the Temple of Solaria, Lady of the Light, for I was a surplus daughter and a consequent drain on my sisters’ dowry chests. But being a bookish child with a kind heart, I was a good fit for the priesthood, and so I was both given a place and made it my own.

I learned of Holy Solaria beyond the vague platitudes and proper, if uninspired, lip service of my family; I studied her holy miracles and wondrous deeds, and, in turn, I learned of the dark forces that opposed her. I will not give voice to their names for to do so is to invite foul memories and fouler portents and the attentions of beings best left unnamed. I will not speak of them, no matter how much you entreat me.

What are they? What were they? Do not ask, and if I must give you an answer to your foolish question, what vague answer would satisfy you without attracting their attention? Would you like to call them dark gods? Fiends from the pit? Ancient things best forgotten like Atlantis and Lemuria lost beneath the waves?

Oh, fine, if you must have a name, let us call them the Dread Lords and have done with it. I will not speak of them beyond that, even if I did have the misfortune to learn their other, more specific, names which speaking aloud or even thinking upon might draw their fell attentions. Should I have learned these names? No. All I can say in my defense is that I was younger once, and foolish, and I knew no better. I thought that all knowledge, even knowledge of evil, could be used in service of the light and blessed Solaria. But the darkness is as much ink as it is shadow, and to touch it is to take its stain upon yourself, a mark which the Dread Lords may see and may know. And what they know, they may wish to claim.

How did I learn such things? Why did I learn such knowledge? I was a priestess, as I said, one devoted to the blessed illumination of Solaria. And in time I was sent to minister to one of her most devout families, and it was there I met their son and heir, my beloved Gavrial.

Gavrial was the most shining knight, valiantly setting out to fight the minions of the Dread Lords, wicked magicians and foul beings from the farthest corners of the night. I was the young priestess who tended to his wounds when he returned, always valiantly but seldom unharmed. Once he returned home, stung by a blindworm whose sting bore a fell poison, not just for the body but for the soul, the worm a beast empowered by the Dread Lords themselves.

I prayed to Solaria for wisdom, then, when my prayers did not immediately avail me an answer, I turned to my holy books, and when those failed me, I turned to the somewhat less holy, herbals and books of alchemy and chirurgeons’ books of possets and poultices, seeking something to save my beloved Gavrial.

Some of the potions slowed the poison but did not stop it, and in his fevered sleep, my Gavrial raved of the dark worm vying for his soul, as if he still fought the beast in truth and not just its foul black venom. Yet his visions reminded me of something I’d glimpsed, a dark illumination in the margins of one of the wicked magicians’ books.

I had set them aside, safely under lock and key, for I had counseled Gavrial that little good and much evil might come from such things, but that they should be set aside and not destroyed in case one with more wisdom might find something fair to save from the foulness they contained.

Something fair like my Gavrial.

I tore through the wicked books until I found the illustration I had glimpsed before when opening them to discern their contents: the tatzelwurm. And from the wicked magicians’ notes, I learned which of the Dread Lords had empowered it and commanded it, and in so doing, I learned that Dread Lord’s unspeakable name.

It is a dark thing to learn such knowledge and it is a darker thing to use it, but it was the only tool I had at my disposal to command the unholy venom poisoning my darling Gavrial. All of the prayers Solaria had granted me had failed, so opposed to her was this wicked venom. All of the herbalists’ and alchemists’ potions and poultices that I could prepare with my small skill had no more than slowed it. But the dark name of the wurm’s master? As it commanded the worm, so it commanded its venom, and with an unspeakable whisper, the venom flowed out of the hole left by the sting, black as ink wrung from a starless night, darker than nightshade and a thousand times more poisonous. I drew it into a vial which I dashed into the fire, letting the foul fumes go up the chimney and away.

My Gavrial was saved, and when he opened his eyes and saw me, he asked me if I would be his bride. And I, of course, said yes, for I loved him with all my heart.

Great was our joy and wondrous was our wedding, held in in the small chapel on his ancestral lands, resplendent with the glory of the sun’s light and the goddess Solaria and her solar wheel for which I was named. Or was that the fiery wheel of St. Catherine, servant of the Christ, saved long ago? I grow confused. Worlds fade into words. But it is no matter. Call me Catherina, wife of Gavrial and priestess of the divine Solaria.

Why does that wind scream so? Why do I hear it calling names? Jazef? Rosarino? Tashana? Yes, those were my children’s names, and I loved them so, loved them as I loved my Gavrial, but they are all now dead, do you hear me? Dead! But they cannot rest, and more’s the pity, neither can I.