Nessalir the Red

Nessalir told her tale:

"I never knew my mother, though I knew of her. Myra of Dark Moon, the people called her, for she was a skilled and feared witch. In the years before my time, she would make her home in a steading deep in the forests of Lorveg, and the people would come to her for all manner of charms and cures. Myra was known to vanish for months at a time, but always she would return to that kingdom that she called home.

"It was after she had been away on one of her mysterious excursions that Myra of the Dark Moon one day arrived at the hall in the heart of the kingdom and made herself known to King Longren. As it was told to me, she arrived at midday, and all were astonished to see that the witch was swollen with child.

"She told the king: 'In years past, I aided you in securing this throne, and in return I asked only that you grant me one request at a later date. Heed me, O King, for I have now come to make that request. Within a month's time, I will give birth to a child. You will take this child into your court and have it raised in the ways of a warrior. Do this, and your debt shall be paid.'

"Ask me not of how Myra helped Longren ascend the throne. I do not know that story, and none I have asked have ever told it. I suspect that the only two souls who knew the truth were Longren and Myra; one now dead, and one not seen for many years.

"But the time soon came that Myra returned to the hall of Longren carrying with her a newborn infant. The child was given over to a wetnurse, who was horrified to see that her eyes were inhuman, and that red scales were blossoming on parts of her skin, and that a small tail grew from the base of her spine. Word soon spread that Myra's daughter was a drakkowar, half-human and half-dragon. Some sought out the witch to learn the truth of the girl's father, but after leaving the hall that day, Myra vanished from Lorveg, never to return.

"My mother left me with no gifts and no inheritance, save for my life and my name. To the king and the wetnurse, she said that I was to be called Nessalir. And with that, Myra of the Dark Moon was gone from my life forevermore.

"King Longren kept his word. Once I could both speak and walk on my own two legs, I was taken to be trained by the warriors of the kingdom. My childhood was spent with blade in hand, sparring with other trainees, working each and every day to build my muscles and train my body into that of a killer. By the time of my first bleeding, I had already earned a reputation for ferocity. And it was during my fourteenth year that my king first called on me to serve him in battle.

"Long had the kingdom of Lorveg been rivals with its neighbor, the kingdom of Brün. They had traded raids back and forth, capturing and recapturing villages along the edges of the Great Bear River. King Longren felt that I was ready at last to participate in these raids, and he wished for King Vigis of Brün to know that his rival had a drakkowar in his service.

"I can still remember the fear I felt boarding that longboat for the first time, rowing alongside men older and more experienced in warfare than myself. Some made barbs about the little girl in their number. A few brave ones made comments inviting me to their beds. But none dared act beyond words, for I had the scales of a dragon, the protection of a king, and the blood of a witch.

"Our boat made it across the river in the early morning, the mist covering our approach. We leapt ashore howling our battlerage, and we tore through the village, putting down what meager resistance we met and taking anything of value we could find. The raid was a success. More than that, to me, it was easy. If this was all battle was, I thought, then surely a warrior's life would be a simple one.

"Over the course of the next year, I participated in three more raids. On occasion, the king had me join patrols along the villages on Lorveg's side of the river. Soon, all the people knew of the drakkowar of Lorveg. I held my head high with pride. I fought and I killed, and I drank with the other warriors. One night, my blood singing with the glory of battle, I gave my maidenhead to a farmboy whose name I never bothered to learn. My life was a good one.

"Then one morning, when I was sixteen years of age, as I nursed a headache brought on by too much drink the night before, I heard from the shore the battlecries of Brünish warriors.

"It was a retaliation, of course. Looking back, I believe they were waiting for their chance to catch Longren's drakkowar unaware. If that was their intention, then they succeeded in it. I rushed to meet the warriors of Brün with blade in hand and the fog of mead still in my head.

"What I saw that day nearly stopped me in my tracks. Villagers under the protection of Lorveg--under my protection--running in terror, cut down with casual cruelty by the raiders, their homes pillaged and ransacked. In that moment, a rage unlike anything I had ever felt before filled me, and I fell upon the invaders in a blind fury.

"I killed two, maybe three of them. I was arrogant and overconfident. These were not the fishermen and farmers whom I'd fought before, but trained warriors with years of experience in bloodshed. I met them thinking I could kill the lot and the claim the glory, yet soon enough I found myself in the dirt with a spear through my side.

"My fellow warriors fought off the raid. They tended to me, but the wound was too deep for battlefield medicine. I was taken back to the king's hall, where Longren turned me over to the services of the master healer Janek, and his apprentice Koroth.

"That apprentice… He spent hours tending to my injury, working to soothe me when the fever came and brought with it delirium. Stars, but he was a scrawny thing! Weak and thin, and I felt as though I could break him without effort. And his eyes… they were kind, always filled with warmth. There was nothing of the battlelust that filled the other men I knew."

Nessalir found her voice beginning to break as her throat closed up and choked. This happened often, when she thought of Koroth. She steadied herself, breathed deep, and when she was ready, she continued with her story.

"I thought it a humiliation, to place my life into the hands of a man so weak and so soft. Even as I recovered, even as he worked tirelessly to save me, I resented him.

"But no matter how viciously I spoke to him, no matter how cutting my barbs, he would simply smile with endless patience and continue his work. Koroth had a duty to heal me, and it was duty he took with the utmost seriousness.

"In those days, I could never have imagined how deeply I would grow to love that man."