And exquisitely tempted.
He'd broken every damned rule on his list but two, and now he'd come to this chamber to bend yet another one. He'd come to scry his future.
He paused before the brightly burning fire. Perhaps, if he had peered into his future the moment she had appeared, he might have glimpsed the disasters coming and been able to avert them. Perhaps he should have broken that rule first. Or perhaps he should have practiced scrying years ago and foreseen her arrival, but he hadn't for two reasons: He disliked using magic, and scrying was not an exact art. Sometimes he could see clearly, and at other times his visions were impossible to decipher, more confusing than helpful.
Circenn stared into the flames for a long moment, arguing with himself over such things as fate and free choice. He'd never been able to reach a solid conclusion about predestination. When Adam had first shown him the art of scrying his future days, Circenn had scoffed, arguing that to believe one could see one's future meant that it was unchangeable, which annihilated the concept of personal control, something he couldn't accept. Adam had merely laughed and goaded Circenn that if he refused to learn all the arts, he couldn't expect to understand the few he did know. A bird's eye views the entire terrain over which it flies, a mouse sees only dirt. Be ye free or be ye mouse? Adam had asked, his mouth curved in that perpetually mocking smile.
Sighing, Circenn knelt by the fireplace and ran his hand beneath the crack where the hearth met the floor. A portion of the wall containing the hearth silently revolved ninety degrees, revealing a pitch-black chamber behind it. He picked up a candle and stepped into the hidden chamber. With a slight movement of his foot, he depressed the lever that spun the wall closed. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the room with no windows. It was an uncomfortable place for him, a place he sought only in his darkest hours.
He passed the small tables, toying idly with the various "gifts" the blackest elf had brought him. Some he understood, some he never wanted to understand. Adam had given them strange names: batteries, automatic rifles, lighters, tampons. Circenn had explored a few of them, and one he'd found himself drawn to many times over the centuries. Adam called it a "portable CD player." His usual favorite was Mozart's Requiem, but today, however, he was more in the mood for a piece called Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner. Slipping the device over his ears, he thumbed the gauge to full volume and sank into a chair in the corner, staring at the candle flame. Papers crackled in his sporran and he removed them with a wry smile. He'd long ago forgotten stuffing those sheaves in the chest in his study, but he had narrowly escaped a disastrous situation by retrieving them. The last thing she needed to stumble upon was his scribbled and maudlin introspections. She would truly think him deranged.
He knew the first sheaf by heart:
~4 Dec. 858~
I have lived forty-one years, and today I have discovered that I will live forever, courtesy of Adam Black. I can scarcely dip my quill in ink; my hand trembles with rage. He gave me no choice—but what matter the wishes of mere mortals to an immortal race that has lost the ability to feel?
He didn't tell me until after my wedding today, and even then he would not tell me all, he merely acknowledged that he had slipped the potion in my wine sometime in the past ten years. Now I shall watch my wife grow old and lose her to death, while I continue on, solitary. Shall I become a monster like Adam? Will time dim my ability to feel? Will a thousand years make me weary beyond enduring and tinge my mind with that puckish madness that delights in mischievous manipulation? Will two thousand years make me become like them—enamored of mortal struggles they can no longer feel? 'Tis no curse I would wish upon my love; better she should live and die as nature intended.
Ah… was it only this summer past I dreamed of my children, playing around the reflecting pool? Now I pause and think—what, give the fool more fodder? What atrocities might he commit upon my sons and daughters? Och, Naya, forgive me, love. You shall find me seedless as the grape in wine.
And the second, the one that had laid the course of his life:
~31 Dec. 858~
My mind is consumed with this immortality. I have pondered naught but these questions during the waxing and waning of the moon, and now on this eve before the new year dawns—the first of forevermore—I have at long last achieved resolution. I will not permit the immortal madness to take me, and I shall conquer it thus: I have devised a set of rules.
I, Circenn Brodie, Laird and Thane of Brodie, do vow to adhere faithfully to these tenets, never to break them, for if I should, I may tumble headlong into Adam's destructive irreverence and become a creature who holds nothing sacred.