There came the tramp of boots, many boots. Hands reached for me, and I yelled in wordless fury, flailing against them, my rage greater than any pain. The physician was back with his entourage of guards. With sheer numbers, their combined strength restrained me, forced me back down on the bed. I had never felt so powerless in my life, not even when I was very small and in trouble as I so often was as a child.
The entourage parted for a moment, Jazmene’s face hovering in the gap. “Merius, I’m sorry,” she said, true regret in her tone. Her sincerity made her words even more unpalatable, and I found myself shaking my head as she spoke. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but I can’t have you and Safire communicating with each other. Not yet. This won’t last long--I wager she’ll block you as soon as she realizes what it’s doing to you.”
*Oh dear God, Merius, my love . . . Safire’s words died in a cry of agony. My heart lurched at the sound.
I tried to swat at the sudden sting in my neck, cursing the men holding me down. I jerked my head from the man gripping it and turned in time to see the physician drop a small, thin-bladed knife, apparently used to make an incision in one of my veins, in a basin with sharp clang. A hollow dart followed the knife, its blunt point shiny red with my blood.
“Poison?” I asked.
“No. At most, it will give you unpleasant dreams and a dry mouth and headache when you wake. Now, if we have to keep using it--if you and Safire keep mind-reading, for instance--well, then it may have far longer and more potent effects.”
“Such as?” I felt my eyes slipping closed, my words already slurring as the drug turned the blood in my veins to thick syrup.
“Madness.” The poisoned honey of Jazmene’s voice was the last sane thing I remembered on my descent into dark delirium.
Chapter Twenty-Three - Safire
A mockery of soil covers the bones of the mountains, barren earth so dry that the wind drives it hither and yon in wild eddies. Powdery as ashes, it stings my eyes and nose, choking me until tears run down my face. The gust passes with a howl so high-pitched that it pierces my ears and makes me shiver to my bones at its empty rage and despair. I catch a glimpse of the wind harpy, a translucent winged woman with fangs, clawed talons instead of hands, and snakes of tangled hair. She meets my gaze as she sweeps overhead, her eyes glistening and dead as the scales flaking off a rotten mackerel. Her eyes reminded me of Arilea’s, that morning her ghost attacked me on the stairs in Landers Hall . . . I stopped myself, horrified. What if Merius had heard that? Even in his drugged state, he might remember and ask me later . . .
I struggled to wake myself and escape Merius’s nightmare lest I make any more slips, but the boundary between sleeping and waking, much like the boundary between Merius’s mind and my own, had become full of holes. I felt my spirit leaking through the holes, smoke through a sieve, and was powerless to stop it. Someone else would have to wake me. I could not wake myself. I felt myself drifting, drifting, then falling again. Falling into Merius’s head, my thoughts, feelings melding with his. Falling into terror . . .
I look at the path before me, a seemingly endless stair to a patch of darkness that marks the mountain pass. The wind harpy echoes in the cracks and crevices, wailing as if in pain. I raise my hand to wipe the cold sweat from my brow, my fingers meeting the hard weight of my helmet instead. Ahead of me, a dull silver line of helmets lurches up and down as my companions labor up the slope. One by one, they disappear into the darkness of the pass. I try to shout, try to warn them that ambush waits on the other side of the darkness, but the dust settles in my throat, and I choke instead. I would never have believed a man could drown in a place with no water until now.
If I can’t stop them, I can at least try to stop myself. I turn my head, only to see an endless line of helmets behind me. If I stop, they will crush me in their relentless march onward. I’m trapped. My feet carry me forward to the shadow, in lock step with my comrades. The mountains close around me. I can see nothing now but darkness, hear nothing but the thunder of hundreds of hobnailed boots hitting rock and the screams of the men in front of me as they meet what awaits us in the darkness.
All is night for several moments, hours, days . . . time doesn’t exist in the darkness. But then, after an eternity of night, a pinpoint of light pierces my eyes. Crimson light, the color of the sun rising through a storm cloud. Now I can see the craggy sides of the pass, rock edges painted with the bloody dawn, but I can’t see in front of me. There are too many men blocking my view. The screams of the men grow ever louder, each scream cut off as if the men’s windpipes are being crushed. And another sound, a rhythmic thud, the sound of an axe chopping wood. The man in front of me, a shadow with a helmet until now, suddenly falls to his knees, and I see there are no more men in front of him, only a pile of what look like rounded stones, scarlet with the dawn. The stones have eyes, great staring eyes. They aren’t stones at all. They’re heads.
The man before me struggles, kicks his legs and punches at the air, but to no avail. The wind harpy screeches through the tunnel with supernatural fury. I squint my eyes as she gusts over the man, forcing him down. An obsidian blade drops from the tunnel ceiling, and he screams as the blade slices through his neck. Blood sprays up, sunlight through blood, crimson dawn. The wind harpy snatches up his body, her mouth opening like a snake’s mouth, so wide she can swallow him whole.
I find myself on my knees, struggling as my comrade did before me. The overpowering force of the wind crushes me down on the rocks, snapping my bones like green sticks when I kick. I can hardly draw my last breath. The wind harpy cackles overhead, flattening me against the ground. I hear the deadly whisper of the blade cutting through the air above me. I glance ahead, as if trying to see the future, trying to see past my death. What I see is the head of my dead comrade. His eyes are open, wide and gray and young. There is still awareness in them as he gazes upon me. I kick one last time as the blade touches my neck. The lid of the head’s left eye drops down and then back up, and he smiles. My dead comrade’s severed head just winked at me. I scream . . .
“Safire?” The sharp smell of vinegar cut through the darkness. I punch blindly at the intrusion. My hand caught in folds of scratchy cloth, wool perhaps. A proper shadow should feel like velvet, not wool. I shook myself as the shadow grabbed my shoulder. “Safire, wake up.”
My eyelids were heavy. Perhaps someone had placed gold coins over them. Was I dead? They only put coins over your eyes if you died. I fought to raise my eyelids. The slit of light blinded me at first. Finally, my eyes adjusted enough to find the abbess’s dark gaze inches from mine. I started, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I put my hands to my face to hide myself from the world again. My skin felt clammy with tears or sweat.
“Sir Mordric is here to see you, and Sewell is hungry,” the abbess announced as she deposited my baby in my arms. He whimpered softly. My hands curled around his small body, and I clutched him to me. Thank goodness for him my instincts still functioned, even if the rest of me was lost.
I attempted to sit up, my head spinning. “Mordric is here?” My voice came from a great distance. Part of me was still in the mountains with Merius, facing death again and again, each horror worse than the last.
“Don’t worry about Mordric for now. He can wait.”
“I fear dying, my lady,” I said, unlacing my bodice with one hand before I raised Sewell to my breast. His eyes slipped closed, his long lashes brushing his chubby cheeks as I cuddled him. Helanes said she had never seen a newborn with so much hair, almost enough to be tied in a topknot. It was impossible to think about death with him in my arms--the air around him trembled with new life.
“The young often do,” she said with her usual briskness. “The young think they have so much to lose with death. The old know better.”
“The old have had all the life the young have yet to taste,” I retorted. Sewell, still young enough to be satisfied with simple things, settled into nursing with a quiet, steady contentment t
hat in turn soothed me.
“Those circles under your eyes get darker every time I come in here,” she said, her arms crossed as she examined me.
“They drugged Merius again.” I rubbed my forehead, blades flashing on the backs of my eyelids.
“Safire, I’ve told you. You need to block him, lest you both lose your sanity.”
“Do you think I want to drive him mad?” My breath shuddered as I forced back tears. “My poor dear heart--he has such a vivid imagination. In one of his nightmares, we buried him alive by accident. In another, his neck was on the block, and the severed head of the man executed before him winked at him just as the axe,” I swallowed, “just as he felt the axe on his neck. Other times I’m the one who’s died, and he’s shaking me, yelling my name, trying to bring me back. All the nightmares are like that--death over and over again. They couldn’t have devised a worse torture than this.”
“How can you say you’re blocking him when you know all these things?” the abbess demanded.
“You tell me how I block him when I sleep, and I’ll do it gladly. I wish someone could explain this mind bond, my lady. If I could understand it, I could control it so it's consistent. Then maybe I could help Merius more. As it is, I can block him sometimes but not other times. And sometimes when I want to communicate with him, I can't. It's more torture than anything else.”
She sighed and sat beside me on the pallet. Never, even when Sewell was born, had she been so familiar. I had a sudden memory of my mother sitting beside me on the bed after I woke screaming from one of my many nightmares as a child, her mere presence driving the demons away.
“I don’t know how to help you, Safire. This is beyond my small talent to understand.”
“What I don’t understand is why they drugged him again.”
“Perhaps he angered her. I can’t imagine he makes a compliant prisoner, even with bruised ribs.”
“No.” My sudden laugh startled me. “Not Merius. Never Merius. He detests any kind of confinement.”
“I wouldn’t have fathomed that,” the abbess said in her dry voice.
Sewell started to wiggle, and I shifted him to my other breast. He immediately calmed down. Odd--he was barely a month old, and already it felt like I had always done this, his small weight so familiar that I hardly noticed it.
“Where’s Mordric?” I asked.
“In the library--I told him he would have to wait until you were done with Sewell. He didn‘t object.”
“No, I don’t imagine he did.” Quiet dread settled over me like a cloak of dust. I wondered what Mordric would say. Would he accuse me of leading his son astray with my witch wiles? Merius would be safely married to some Cormalen royal cousin and ensconced in a council seat at court right now if Mordric had had his way. Instead, Merius had married me, a sparrow noblewoman with forbidden talents, a propensity for scrapes, and the possibility of ending her mortal days burned at a stake, her family left in disgrace.
Sewell soon finished nursing and fell asleep. I laid him in the basket beside the pallet, brushing the silky new skin of his forehead with my lips. He slept on a cloud of blissful infant ignorance, all earthly concerns far from him, at least until he woke up hungry again. “I wish things would stay so peaceful for you always, sweetling,” I murmured.
The abbess had left to go retrieve Mordric, which gave me a few moments alone to ready myself. When there came a quiet knock at the door, I was waiting to open it, a quick glance behind me to make certain the knock hadn‘t roused Sewell.
“I just got him asleep,” I said in a low voice as Mordric and the abbess crowded into the cell.
“Perhaps you two should talk in the library then,” the abbess said. “I’ll fetch Helanes to watch Sewell.”
“All right,” Mordric replied. I could feel the weight of his gaze on me even before I looked at him. His intent gray eyes made me shudder, and I looked away again--Merius’s eyes had sparked that shade of steel gray when I had told him I would leave him before I left Sewell.
“Come on, Safire,” Mordric said. He reached for my shoulder.
“I know where the library is, sir.” I shrugged his hand away, already feeling the weight of his anger at Merius's absence. He was angry at the situation, not me, but it still didn't change the fact he was angry and I was the one here for the brunt of it.
His pewter aura flickered, not silver like Merius’s aura, but scarlet, sparks from metal striking flint. “I’m not in the mood for your willfulness.”
“Come, before we wake Sewell.” I strode out of the cell.
The library, like everywhere else in the convent, had few comfortable spots for sitting. There was one ancient chair upholstered with leather that sagged so far in the middle that I feared I would be lost in it. Otherwise, everything was hard wood, not a cushion in sight. Evidently the nuns believed in depriving all parts of their bodies in order to prepare themselves for the next realm. I sighed. It seemed harsh to deprive oneself so fully of the delights of carnal life since this world was perhaps our last chance to enjoy having bodies. So I sat on the leather chair, sinking in it so far that my feet dangled off the floor and my knees seemed too close to my chin. I hid my hands under my thighs and hunkered down. Mordric stalked over to the fire dying on the grate and lit his pipe, ignoring me until he had a healthy wreath of smoke swirling around his head.
“Now, witch, what’s happened to my son?” he asked, meeting my stare.
“The queen and Toscar have him again.”
“How do you know for certain?”
I sighed and found myself rocking on my hands. Could I convince him without revealing that Merius and I could now mind read with each other? I trusted Mordric to do what he considered best for Merius and by extension me, but he was so terribly practical and caught up in court intrigue. I imagined he could find many nefarious uses for a mind bond. “I just know, all right?”
His eyes narrowed, his pewter aura contracting to a thin line of gray so dark it appeared black. “What are you hiding, Safire?”
I drew in on myself, my hands still out of sight under my legs. It was the only way I could shield myself from the midnight whirlpool that now surrounded him. “Merius and I have ways of communicating . . .”
“A mind-bond? Is that what you’re blathering about?” Mordric demanded, leaving the fireplace and striding over to stand before me.
I glanced up, then wished I had never sat down. It put me in such a vulnerable position. He towered over me, his aura such an intense black that it shimmered like volcanic glass, an aura that could topple opposition with the barely contained rage of a simmering volcano, an aura that made a merciless inquisitor.
“What’s a mind-bond?” I asked.
“Don’t stall--you do it poorly. Have you snared him with a mind-bond, witch? Well, answer me.” He grabbed my arm, his grip so tight I gasped. His dark aura thickened the air like smoke, and I choked on it.
“You let go of me now.” I glared up at him, concentrating on the scar on his chest. He glared back, then swore as the old wound flared.
“Damn you.” His hand slid from my arm, and he clutched his chest. His aura subsided, the pain of his scar distracting him from his anger for a blessed moment. “I thought you said you couldn’t curse people.”
“It’s not a curse, just a reminder. I’m sorry if it hurt, but after what’s happened to me, I don’t take well to men grabbing me.”
“I was just trying to get your attention,” he muttered, rubbing his chest through his shirt.
“Believe me, Mordric, you have my attention. Us quarreling won’t help Merius.”
He sank down heavily on a bench and took a long draw of his pipe. “So now you’ve snared him with a mind-bond--are you trying to drive him berserk? He‘s high strung enough as it is.”
“There was no snaring done, sir. Neither of us wanted this--we had a terrible quarrel, and then it just happened. Suddenly we were in each other’s minds. It’s awful--the only good thing about it so far
is that I know where he is for certain. Do you think I enjoy sharing his nightmares?”
“Nightmares?”
“Jazmene’s physician has given him some wicked drug. It makes him have vivid nightmares.”
“Why would she do that?”
“To punish him. She figured out we had a mind bond--” Here Mordric cursed, and I waited before I continued, “and she didn’t like that, so her men held Merius down and forced this poison on him. I don’t know how they gave it to him exactly--I remember a pain in my neck and a glimpse of a bloody dart falling in a basin before the madness started . . .”
“Dart in the neck?” Mordric mused. “That sounds like the poison the SerVerinese use when they want to subdue captives. Ursula’s Bane, they call it. Toscar and Jazmene must have some powerful secret allies in the SerVerin Empire to have even a drop of that poison--the SerVerinese guard the secret of its making even more jealously than we guard the secret of cannon powder in Cormalen. I never knew it could cause hallucinations like what you’re describing--perhaps Jazmene’s physician added something to it.”
I shuddered. “Jazmene said,” I paused, not wanting to continue, “she said it could drive him mad, if he has too much of it.”
"That ruthless bitch," Mordric muttered as he rose and started to pace. "She's overplayed her hand--it's a bluff to draw you out. She'll regret it. I’m prepared to make this a diplomatic incident--Rankin will back me, especially when he hears this latest with the Ursula‘s Bane. It shouldn’t be difficult. King Arian is none too fond of Jazmene, and any hint of her treachery in this matter will set the whole Cormalen court against her."
“King Arian is none too fond of witches, either,” I managed.
“The last thing Jazmene wants is you burned at the stake, Safire.”
“Me, yes, but what about the rest of the Landers if this gets out? What about my sister? If Jazmene reveals I’m a witch, King Arian won’t care what she’s done to Merius. He’ll probably think Jazmene torturing Merius is justified if it’s in pursuit of a witch. He’ll go after anyone in Cormalen tied to me, starting with Dagmar.”
Tapestry Lion (The Landers Saga Book 2) Page 44