As I sit here writing this, I fear greatly my safety, for my shaded past. And I remember clearly all the lessons with my one-time lord, Daffyd to teach me the way of words and the way of understanding. He was no cruel master, though, I admit, he would be alive this day if he had undertaken the harshness of spirit that dominated the city of Ossin and it's terrible plague of religion at the hands of the goddess Badb.
It is because of her that I leave this, a record to my folly and perhaps a deeper hope that mayhaps I will look back, alive, and read these words to my children's children.
There will never be again one born such as me anf for that I am thankful. I was a strong bairn and my mother almost died from the strain of my birthing. The mid-wife had told my father to expect the worse. To be sure he did and was terrified...And rightly so for I bore the mark. The mark of the crow. I had the look of it in my eye. In the paleness of skin and the brightness of hair. My hair still remains my only vanity.
I do not remember my family, they are long dead, their souls put to rest. I was christened Magdala Shane Quentin in secret. To give name to a curse was a very ill thing indeed.
My memories start on the day when I had upon me four years. I remember my mother's smile, but not her name. I do not even know if they were buried in the proper manner, facing towards the rising sun so that they may always have the blessing of that sight. But I remember the men, their rank stink, the brightness of the blood spilt on the floor of our tiny home. I recall every detail of what they did to my mother. How they bound and gagged her, how they forced my father to watch as they raped and tortured her. I will never forget their grunts, their laughter...The tears in my mother's eyes.I was left alive, they had seen the mark, they knew well that I had been chosen.
It was night when she came and found me shivering. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, I was later to learn that it covered a ugliness of spirit and force. Badb...The crow. She had long shimmering black hair and her eyes glowed darkly too. Hypnotic was her stare, I would say now, as I sit here hardly able to breath from recalling that face. Her words were like velvet rubbed the right way, so silky, so soft. And I felt safe. The woman told me that she had been looking for me for such a long time and where had I hidden myself these four short years?
Time didn't matter to Badb and it had taken her those years to divine what she would do with me, this war goddess. I was to be her avatar, her closest follower. And I was to be stripped of everything that made me human...My love, my memories...To be a weapon, albeit I was to act friendly for the folk, to disguise my lack of care. I was taken to Ossin which had just overcame a change in leadership...Daffyd...
I loved him, I know this now, even though he had wife and childe...I loved him like no other...And ultimately that was why he was killed like a lamb to slaughter. He never knew what hit him.
My lord did not worship the black-haired beauty that was the crow, but he let his people continue their practices and asked for a champion learned in Badb's way, in her timeless mastery of the sword and battle.
It is altogether another story, my training, but some details must be told. I was given to a man I called Master, to this day I do not know his name. I never will. It was in the hills beside the city that he lived. There my goddess had taken me, left me. Master was to break me in half, to scrape out the insides and replace them with the battle rage and the feel for war. There were other children, but I was pushed the hardest. He kept my head shaven to show I was the lowliest of creatures and that long locks were meant for women of noble birth. And that it would get in the way of training.
He was right on that, my hair never fails to get in the way, but I refuse to cut it, perhaps to trim it, but I love the feel of the waves and their burning colour. Night and day for sixteen years. Sixteen years I was beaten, taught to control my pain. Trained was I in the craft of the sword, honed to perfection in fighting. To kill with a touch, to kill with a quickness. And also to kill with a cruelty and slowness.
(More to come later)