Beginnings are a difficult affair to discuss.  In one sense, the story of Sybille and Konrad began in truth the day agents of the Dark Prince arrived in the small provincial village in search of a girl marked, they were told, by intricate examples of the tattooist's art in the very flesh of her back.  But in another very real sense, it began that day when the Legion of Light's long siege of the Brotherhood's mountain fortress was complete, and the Nine put to the torch, along with all the blasphemous works of their libraries.  Konrad and Sybille were separated, not to see each other again for more than a decade, when their destinies would once more entwine.<br/><br/>But even the siege itself had been prompted by another action altogether, and Sybille would never have been of importance to Konrad, nor Konrad to Sybille, had the Nine not so angered blind Destiny by attempting to divine that which man was not meant to know, and steal a glimpse on the great, bound book on which all events in human affairs, past, present, and future, was chronicled.  In retaliation, the god had declared a sacred holy war against the Nine, and commanded that their very names be obliterated from the pages of history, to a man.<br/><br/>And so on, on and on, to the beginning of time, and at no time was there a single moment that an outside observer could point to and say, "Yes.  That.  That is where it begins."  Unless it was at the beginning of the book, on the very first page of the great history, which read, according to rumor, "In the beginning, the light vanquished the darkness...<br/><br/>---<br/><br/>The light vanquished the darkness as the sun rose over the eastern sky, and Sybille stirred in her bed as her slatted window let a broken stream of morning into her room, across her face and reflecting from the looking glass on the wall.  The young woman stirred, disturbing the cats that had been nestled in the crooks of her legs, making them mewl in protest at the start of another day.  Throwing her robe over her shoulders, Sybille went to the window shutters and threw them open, letting a rush of cool air sweep through the room.<br/><br/>Looking out across the valley, she began brushing out the long, golden hair that gleamed in the sun's rays.  Even upon waking, her life was not one that allowed idle time, and she was grooming herself even as she shook the last cobwebs of sleep from her eyes and mind and gazing out across the valley.  The dew on the tulips was evaporating in the rising warmth, creating a low mist that covered the country roads, rows of early spring wheat, and thatched roofs of farmhouses in a gauzy blanket of white.  The sheep were being let out to pasture, and the church bell was even now chiming the dawn.  Another day in Brakensburg, another spring day in the country.<br/><br/>While she pinned up her hair, Sybille tried to remember the dream she'd had just before waking.  It was rare that she remembered her dreams, but that one had come to her before, she knew.  In her dream, she saw a fortress carved into a mountain, a thing of dry, red rock not at all like the snow-capped peaks she saw in the distance.  In her dream, she saw the fortress struck by lightning and split asunder, burning to the ground as if the very heavens struck it in their rage.  Immediately after that, she was lying on a stone slap, to which she was bound by oily leather straps, while men chanted over her in a strange tongue.  There was a nightmarish flight over the countryside, and the sense of being passed from one hand to the next like a sack of barley shipped on horseback and in wagons, on foot and by barge.  And then Brakensburg and then...<br/><br/>And then...<br/><br/>Nothing.  And even that was more than she really believed she'd been dreaming.  But where to separate the fantasies she'd held from the true images that had been hers before waking?  It was a futile task, Sybille knew, but she was still drawn back to it like a man with a sore tooth he could not keep from touching, though it pained him.<br/><br/>She had dressed before the last arc of sun had cleared the horizon.  As always, she made close inspection of herself in the looking glass before unlatching her door.  Her dress was roughspun, beige cotton, beneath a topcoat of green with a high collar.  Thick wool leggings, unadorned shoes, and a shawl over her shoulders.  Her arms were covered in long, fingerless gloves that did not allow a glimpse of a single bit of flesh to show through.<br/><br/>She was satisfied that she was presentable, and barely stopped to consider that, after an extended, awkward period of time spent as a gangly, plain youth, she had blossomed into a rare beauty, with a heart-shaped, full face, dancing blue eyes and thick, golden hair, darker than most, but still distinctly sunshine yellow.  Her body was trim and athletic, well-muscled from a decade of the hard labor expected of the daughter of an innkeeper man.  Her limbs, not that any save her adopted family had ever seen her so uncovered, were clean, strong with wiry muscle.<br/><br/>Her feminine characteristics could not be hidden beneath her clothes, however.  She had finished her growth, ripened, and matured into a voluptuous young woman, with a generous bosom and rolling hips that swayed as she walked, even with innocent intent.  Young men of the village could scarcely trouble themselves these days, it seemed, to pay her any less attention.  She knew that Dolf had heard several quiet marriage proposals for her matrimony, even though she was an orphan child of no inheritance or dowry, and not just from the shepherds and shopboys of the village.  It made her feel confused and vaguely disappointed for a reason she could not say, and she was grateful "Uncle Dolf" had not discussed it openly with her.<br/><br/>Sybille made certain to close and lock her door behind her, the key to the latch on a string in her apron pocket.  Her family did keep a public house, after all, and even if Barkenburg was not along any of the great trade roads, they still did a brisk business of merchants and their hired guard moving across the frontier, and it never hurt to take precautions to protect the few valuables she had.<br/><br/>In the common room of the inn, the chairs had been put up on tables the night before, and the floor swept.  She would have to clean it today before they opened, after she had checked in the kitchen to see if Dolf or Lora had left her any work, and that would mean several trips to the well.  With luck, the weather would be fine, and she would have time to enjoy it before returning to the inn.<br/><br/>Lora had made breaddough and left it near the oven.  Sybille moved aside the wax paper covering the large bowl and seen that it had risen quite enough.  She lifted the heavy ceramic bowl without complaint and moved over to the immense butcher's block, beneath the racks hanging with the gleaming copper pots and pans.  The kitchen was her second favorite place in the inn.  Everything else was Dolf's, but the kitchen was Lora's, every cut and scarred surface of the wooden counters, every nick and chip in every beerstein was etched with the woman's personality.  The room itself was large and open; Lora was as round and soft as her breaddough, and needed the space to move about freely in.<br/><br/>Sybille turned the dough onto the floured surface and began kneading it, expelling the gas that the yeast had produced as it feasted on the sugar.  Beneath her breath, she began singing a nonsense song she had had stuck in her head since she'd been a child.<br/><br/>---<br/><br/>Just another day in Brakensburg.  And that was the last moment this could be said to be true.  Sybille remembered nothing of her time before she arrived, only reliving the months and years previous to that in half-remembered dreams.  She knew that she must hide the marks on her body, knew that they made her (marked her) as being different, but she didn't know what those differences meant.  She did not remember the Brotherhood of the Prophecy, and would have been flabbergasted if she had been told.<br/><br/>But others did know.  For long years now, they had been searching for her, using every tool cunning and influence and fell sorcery put in their hands, to find one girl in all the world.  Though they all followed the same master, some were more favored than others in his service, and competition had been rife among these shadowy agents as they neared Brakensburg.  Blood had been spilled, alliances made and betrayed, for the agents knew that the reward, and glory, that would be theirs for finding this girl their master wanted, could belong to just one of them.<br/><br/>By means fair and foul, by survival of the fittest, one man approached the back door of Dolf's inn.  A decade ago, he had been a duelist and a swordsman of fame and repute, but his common birth was ever an obstacle to his advancement.  Rejecting a life of schooling the overindulged children of nobility the basics of the foil, he had opted to make his fortunes as a paid assassin.  His modus operandi, in those first years, would be to so incense his noble targets that they would challenge him, foolishly, to a duel, whereupon he could murder them in full view of the public.  Only later had he learned the skills of a huntsman, and a tracker, and a burglar.  He was known in the trade as "Blue Stones," for both the decorative gems hilt on the pommel of his sword, and for the calling card he left on his victims.<br/><br/>In Blue Stones' gloved hand was a talon at the end of a leather thong, a charm he had taken from the body of his recently betrayed partner in the hunt for the girl with the tattoos.  Contrary to the pull of gravity, it strained against the leather, in the direction of the inn, with a force and insistence it had never shown since he had taken it.  She was close, she must have been so close...but rather than assume that she must be within, Blue Stones wheeled his horse around the inn, noting that as he did so the pull from the talon remained constant, remained steady.  She was within, then.<br/><br/>Blue Stones tied his horse to an iron ring in front of the stables.  No boy was on hand to take his mount; not at such an early hour, and this suited him.  The assassin filled a clay pipe he kept in his vest and considered the situation as he enjoyed a long, leisurely smoke.  Just because he had found her did not mean that he had her.  He would still need to make the three-day journey through the mountains with the girl, and the method by which he left Brakensburg would determine much about the nature of that journey.  His horse was a good one, and he would hate to ride it to death, but he would if he had too.  He listened, straining to hear past the noises of the village waking.  He did not hear the sounds of any horses from within the stables.  He had not seen any barracks or militia headquarters in the village.  He thought about this with a fencer's patience.<br/><br/>The time had come to abandon deliberation, Blue Stones decided.  Not only could he seize her, but he could do so simply, directly, and make his getaway and elude pursuit long enough to cross the border.  Still not committing himself, the assassin thought about his plan from the point of view of someone trying to thwart it.  It could still be done, if a man or a woman left within an hour or two, dead on his heels and with full knowledge of his destination.  The odds were long, and he had enough of a gambler's flair to call them acceptable.  The only real risk to him, he decided, was one of his fellows that had not been decisively dealt with before now making a last-ditch effort to steal the prize from him, in the mountains or near the border of his Prince’s kingdom.  But nothing he did in Brakensburg would change that, and he would simply have to deal with that as it came.<br/><br/>To action!<br/><br/>---<br/><br/>Sybille heard quick, light footsteps approaching the back door of the inn just as she was putting the last of the dough into the loaf pans, to be baked before lunch.  Once she was finished scrubbing the common room floor, she would eat her breakfast and enjoy a break before men from the village came in for lunch and she would be called upon to serve them.  She had thought it was Hep, the boy Dolf had to haul beer kegs until it opened quickly, and violently, by a man dressed in riding leathers, someone not from the village.  He was lean, short, and long-limbed.  He had a bearded face the color of pepper-and-salt, close shaved hair to match, and moved in a slick, graceful way on the balls of his feet, every step forward a lunge.  Sybille had only the briefest of seconds to register her surprise before he had entered the kitchen, and even less time to raise her voice in alarm before he struck her with serpentine quickness on the side of her head.  She spilled onto the floor, unconscious.<br/><br/>“Sybille?  What’s that racket, girl?” came a raised voice just descending the stair.  Blue Stones turned just as the door to the kitchen swung open, and a middle-aged man in brown trousers and an open white shirt came in.<br/><br/>“Who the Devil are you?” Dolf asked.  But then his eyes took in Sybille’s prone body, and he bellowed in outrage, charging.<br/><br/>With a gesture too quick to be seen, Blue Stones drew his sword and stabbed Dolf through the heart.  The innkeeper stopped, slumping forward with a pained expression on his face.<em>But I never even saw him move…</em>was his last thought as he succumbed to darkness.<br/><br/>The foil had been sheathed in the man’s heart for less time than it even took for the steel to become bloodied, so Blue Stones sheathed it, dropping a gloved hand into a pouch and taking out a single azure stone, which he positioned carefully over the pinprick-sized hole over Dolf’s breastbone.   He knelt down over Sybille, a knife appearing in his hand as if by magic.  Rolling her onto her stomach, he made a slit in the back of her dress, splitting to just between her shoulder blades, and ripped the fabric away.<br/><br/>On her naked back were the marks he had been sent to look for.  The little he could see suggested a white core, or trunk, about which was grey barking, which itself had symmetrical, harsh black designs.  He could see very little, but even that little had been almost enough to enthrall him.  It seemed as if the marks on her backs were trying to tell him something, if he could just see more of it, study it a little longer, he would understand so much, everything would be clear to him…<br/><br/>It took almost every bit of will Blue Stones possessed to look away.  It was her.  It could be no other.  Even if the talon hadn’t been pulling towards her with the force of a stone straining against a sling, the glimpse he’d had did more to convince him than anything else could have.  Binding her wrists and ankles with thin silk cord, he lifted her up over one shoulder, letting out a breath as he settled her weight across his shoulders and hips, until he could walk without teetering.  It was a strain, but he managed to get the unconscious girl out the back door and across his horse’s saddle, just behind his seat.  He ran a third cord between the bonds on her wrists and ankles, and drew it right against the stallion’s belly, lashing her in place.  When he was satisfied that she was secure, Blue Stones did one thing more before departing Brakensburg with his prize.<br/><br/>The assassin went to the stables with a kitchen lantern.  With the same lethal force into which he’d exploded when he killed the innkeeper man, he battered down the door, surprising and frightening the horses within.  Just two, but that was too many to risk.<br/><br/>Without a backwards glance, Blue Stones hurled the lantern against the far wall, where the oil spilled, and the fire spread, and the hay caught.  Let them try to follow him now.  He mounted up, and wheeled his charger out of town by the shortest possible route.  He was seen, of course he was, but he had left the stables a fiery ruin in his wake, and the villagers could not ignore the risk of a fire spreading out of control to stop the interloper who was kidnapping Sybille.  They formed a desperate bucket brigade, and fought the fire.  It spread to the inn, collapsing the roof, but thankfully no one died.  But Dolf, and the two horses who’d been stabled.<br/><br/>By the time any of the villagers thought to give chase, it was too late.<br/>