by Jeff Wilson
“I mean to return it to him, but I am not sure he will take it back, and I am afraid that I might put a draugr back on his trail if I do,” Aelsian said, outlining the intractable situation.
Realizing what Aelsian was about to ask, Ludin interrupted. “Do not trust this weapon with anyone else, myself included.”
“I have to trust someone, I can’t leave Ossia just yet.”
“Then you will have to keep it safe until you can, and then take it back to him directly,” Ludin Kar insisted.
“If I can’t convince you to do this for me, can I ask you to come with me when the time comes? I would like you to meet him.”
There was a long quiet moment as Ludin took in the gravity of the request. “I would be honored,” he responded with deep reverence.
Chapter 8
Eithne
Edryd drifted through a wash of invented recollections and half remembered experiences as he surfaced from a prolonged languor. He saw Irial’s concerned face more strongly than anything else, covering his head with a cold cloth, worrying over him, and begging him to recover. He imagined Logaeir talking with Irial. They argued, discussing something in serious tones. Edryd also remembered the voice of an old man, speaking in hushed tones as he described an infection that had tainted the suffering man’s blood and might soon claim his life. He told Irial that he had done what he could.
Opening his eyes slowly as these impressions faded, Edryd was unprepared for what was about to happen. A young girl, with long black hair and intense blue eyes, stood leaning over his face studying him silently from just mere inches away. He was not half so startled or shocked as she was. She released a pitched shriek that assaulted his eardrums and set his head reeling with pain. Her cries continued, but declined in volume, as she turned and ran from the room. The little banshee had more than thoroughly woken him all of the way up.
Edryd felt out of place as his thoughts began to clear, disconnected from the expected and the familiar, lying flat on his back resting in a soft bed. He tried to sit up, but his efforts failed completely and he felt full of sudden fear, believing that he had been restrained. He had been, in a sense, if you counted being tucked into a bed and being so weak that he was unable to pull the sheets loose. Slowly, and with exhausting effort, he rolled his shoulder and twisted until he was positioned on his side. It took repeated kicks from his bare feet before he eventually freed himself from the cocoon of coverings. He could now move, but he waited, resting from his efforts, before lowering his feet off of the bed. He allowed the weight of his legs to assist in raising the rest of his body into an upright posture as his feet came down upon a smooth stone floor.
Supporting himself with one hand on the rounded end of an oaken post on the bed’s headboard, Edryd made a study of his surroundings, searching for clues that might tell him where he was. The doorway through which the young girl had fled moments earlier still hung open, but revealed nothing other than a hallway decorated with a brightly embroidered wall hanging. Turning his focus to the interior of the room, he found it reasonably large but sparsely furnished. He knew that the room was in the corner of a larger structure, for there were two exterior walls, both of which consisted of plaster covered infilling between large wooden timbers that were joined to a solid oak sill atop a stone plinth that formed the lowest section of the walls. One of the two interior walls, which he guessed separated this room from another right beside it, was basic wood paneling. The other, contained the entrance to the bedroom, and had been built primarily out of roughly squared stones.
The low ceiling was made of wooden planking. There were small cracks and fissures between the boards, which allowed in a little light from the loft above the room. The stone wall, against which was set the bed he had been sleeping in, radiated diffuse heat into the room from carefully placed granite blocks, which were made warm through the influence of a fireplace on the other side. A simple wardrobe constructed from pine planks stood in one of the corners, and against the far wall opposite the bed, a small mirror on a simple stand rested atop a narrow table.
Made careful by the weakness that he felt when he stood, as well as the pain that came with each movement he made, Edryd slowly walked across the stone floor towards the wardrobe. He hoped to find something else to wear other than the basic linen nightshirt he was clothed in, but he found only well cared for dresses and an assortment of women’s clothing. Edryd realized he had seen someone wearing some of the items before. This was Irial’s clothing. Impulse drove Edryd to close the wardrobe out of a sense of propriety.
He moved away and walked over to the front of the table he had noticed earlier. Ignoring assorted combs and a few pieces of modest jewelry, he looked at his image in the mirror and loosened the strings at the top of his shirt. He began to examine the blighted skin across his chest, but saw only faint traces of the bruising, outlined in lingering areas of faded discoloration. The apparent improvement would have been a welcome sight, if it were not for the startling appearance of his emaciated body. To have lost this much weight, he must have been starving for an extended period. Edryd sank at the sight of his atrophied flesh and sickly thin frame, seeing muscles conditioned through years of training now weakened and wasted. The cause of the pain and the fatigue that he was feeling was only too apparent in the reflection staring back at him. Fighting with despair, he shook himself and turned away from the frail image in the mirror. Using what strength he had left, Edryd returned to the bed and collapsed with relief onto the soft mattress.
***
Eithne shivered, not from the cold air outside on the road above the cottage, but from the fright she had taken. She normally enjoyed being outside, listening to the songbirds in the trees and tracking them as they flew through the sky, and she liked nothing more than the feel of the wind coursing over her and the warmth of sunshine on her face. She couldn’t enjoy any of this now though. She was in a panic. If something should happen—if the man got worse or if he hurt himself—it would be her fault.
Other than bouts of incoherence early on, which Irial had monitored closely even though the sporadic utterances were impossible to piece together, the man had been silent in his time at the cottage while under Irial’s care, lying near to death and completely still. Eithne had observed nothing else in all the countless hours she herself had spent watching the man sleep, as she had taken to doing with Irial’s encouragement. Eithne hadn’t believed that the man was going to die, as nearly everyone else did, at least not yet; he was too important for that.
Something had felt different to her this morning though, and she had looked in on him, getting close enough to check his breathing. She had often done this before, sitting at his bedside for hours and making up stories about the important things that she imagined he would do in the future, but there had never been any signs that he was recovering, and so she had not imagined that he could actually have been awake.
She was in awe of the poor man, and with no one else there at the cottage, she had been afraid. She had not known what his eyes looked like until that moment when he first opened them. They had been dark and grey, and deeply frightening, and Eithne had not known what she should do. Having had some time now to calm down and think, Eithne knew that she needed to either go and get her sister, or go back home and watch over the man. Irial was in town though, where Eithne was not permitted to go, and Eithne was not yet over her fright; she could not bring herself to return to the cottage.
She would have forced herself to go back now if she could, but nothing seemed to lend her the courage that she needed to do so. Instead, Eithne sat down in the grass beside a high point atop a hill along one side of the old dusty road and looked out to the west, waiting for Irial to return. Thinking of the blame she would face for having left the sickened man alone, and believing that she would be in serious trouble for which she would not be easily forgiven, Eithne began to cry, still not knowing what she could do.
***
It was a long sleepless hour before an
yone came. Irial knocked on the wood panel wall to get his attention as she stepped into the room. The dark haired girl who had been there before stood behind Irial. She stared at Edryd darkly from just outside the room, sheltering behind the doorframe. The older woman evaluated Edryd from the entrance, her short height standing only a few inches taller than her young companion.
Edryd turned in the bed and sat so that he could speak. His voice, unused for so long, did not come easily at first, and the words that he could produce were spoken with a dry, faltering inflection.
“Where am I?” he managed to ask.
“You have been sick, Edryd,” Irial answered, her concern easing, and showing visible relief upon seeing her patient awake and talking. “You still are. Eithne and I have been taking care of you.”
“Who’s Eithne?” Edryd asked. Before Irial could give an answer, Edryd thought of the little banshee, whose earsplitting greeting had frightened him and welcomed his waking soul back into the world of the living. Surely that was the answer to his question.
“Eithne is my sister,” Irial replied, confirming Edryd’s guess by turning to look in the direction of the young, dark haired girl.
Eithne shrunk further behind the doorframe.
“She is a little nervous of you, but don’t expect that to last,” Irial said.
“I need to go home,” Edryd replied without thinking, his throat loosening and the words coming a little more easily now.
“You don’t have a home, not here in An Innis,” Irial said, her voice soft and gentle. “You have to remain where you are for a while. It is going to take some time for you to recover.”
As if taking those words to be a challenge, Edryd stood and tried to head towards the doorway. Eithne disappeared in a flash at his approach, receding even further into the hallway, but Irial cut Edryd off, and grabbing hold of his arms, awkwardly walked him backwards to the bed and sat him down. He felt doubly humiliated when he discovered that Irial was more than strong enough to counter his attempts to stand back up. She kept him in a seated position and turned back to the doorway where the young girl had now reappeared.
“Eithne, bring a bowl of broth from the cook pot,” she ordered.
Eithne, who had yet to speak in front of Edryd, or even make a sound apart from the one very high pitched shriek, left without a word. She returned less than a minute later. The cook pot must have been nearby.
Drawing a chair up beside the bed and collecting the bowl from Eithne, Irial took a seat and prepared to help Edryd eat. He wanted to protest that he was not so weak that he couldn’t hold a spoon, but he didn’t. Instead he allowed her to portion the warm broth and place it to his lips. He hadn’t felt hungry, but as the soup hit his stomach he reacted immediately. His weakened body trembled, as if in response to being summoned from out of its long inert state. It made him all the more aware of his pitiable condition, and he felt intensely vulnerable, but the sensation of warmth in his stomach was wonderful. He wanted more but he was embarrassed at being fed like an infant. Sensing the discomfort, and understanding its source, Irial offered the bowl to Edryd.
“Do you think you can hold it steady?” she asked.
Edryd remained weak, but the trembling was subsiding, allowing him to load up the spoon without difficulty. He carefully moved it into his mouth to prove that he was capable. Greedily, he shoveled in several more spoonfuls, each one faster than the last.
“Not so quickly,” Irial admonished. “We need to go slowly, or you will make yourself worse.”
Obediently, Edryd took a more measured pace and began to savor the warm soup, noticing its flavors for the first time. There were no vegetable pieces or chunks of meat, but he could clearly taste the wild celery and the rich duck fat that flavored the broth. There had been only an inch of liquid in the bowl and he finished that quickly. Edryd wanted another helping, but he was too proud to ask for more.
“I have to go back to the estate, but I will be back for good sometime midafternoon,” Irial said as she collected the empty bowl from Edryd.
“Does Seoras know I’m here?” Edryd asked. It was a stupid question. Edryd didn’t know where ‘here’ was exactly, but Seoras wouldn’t have been uninformed on his whereabouts. He remembered enough to know that Seoras was the last person he had seen before he collapsed.
“You are here with his permission,” Irial answered, in a tone which suggested the semblance of an apology.
Edryd wondered why he wasn’t kept in a room at the estate. It would have been easier for Irial and others to have cared for him there. Deciding not to rush an answer to that question, Edryd instead took what comfort there was in knowing he had some distance from his captor. Irial’s home was preferable to the dark empty estate that Seoras dominated, so he could count himself lucky to be here.
Irial placed her hands on her knees, preparing to get up. Edryd didn’t know why but he did not want Irial to go. He tried, but could think of no objection that would justify asking her to stay.
“Eithne will be here if you need anything before I get back.” Irial said before leaving.
Alone in his room he overheard Irial talking to Eithne out in the hallway. “In an hour, bring him milk. If he wants it you can give him more broth, but under no circumstances let him have anything solid to eat,” she said.
“I will make sure,” Eithne answered, her voice nervous but determined.
With his eyes closed, Edryd listened to Irial’s booted footfalls on the stone floor, and then the sounds of iron latches moving on a door as Irial exited the cottage. He did not hear Eithne when she entered, softly stepping into the room on leather soled shoes, but he sensed her movement from the air she disturbed as she took up a position in the chair beside his bed, attentively warding over him.
Edryd opened his eyes with trepidation, anxious about a possible repeat of the frightened performance Eithne had given before. She wasn’t frightened this time. Rather, she had on a mothering look that might have been mimicked from the one Irial had displayed earlier. Realizing that Edryd had noticed her, Eithne’s entire demeanor changed. Her dark eyebrows narrowed, and her face tightened in a look of annoyed malice and disapproval. She hadn’t mastered this expression. It was all very serious on the surface, but beneath it all she was barely hiding and restraining a feeling of profound self-amusement. Though the whole effect was vaguely uncomfortable, it made Edryd want to laugh. He couldn’t tell what Eithne was thinking, but her fear of him was fading, and it was being replaced by something else.
“Did I do something wrong?” Edryd asked, playing along.
Eithne shook her head, but said nothing.
“I am sure I did something,” Edryd insisted, “or you wouldn’t look so upset.”
Eithne refused to react to the comment.
“I suppose you are not going to tell me then,” Edryd sighed.
“You’re supposed to be dangerous,” Eithne finally responded. “But you’re not. You can’t do anything.”
Her words were meant to sound mean, but there was no meanness in them. She was curious, and she was clearly gaining confidence through mocking and provoking him. She had, however, quite neatly summarized precisely how Edryd saw himself in that moment.
“You probably can’t even hold a sword,” she continued.
“I can do much more than that,” Edryd reacted automatically. Thinking about it though, right at this moment he wasn’t at all sure that he could. Her comment probably wasn’t random. Irial had told her that he was a swordsman.
Eithne eyed him with skepticism.
“Get me a stick or a long branch,” Edryd offered, “we can practice right here and I will show you a trick or two.”
Eithne eyed him with even more skepticism.
“Get one for yourself as well, and I can show you how to hold it.”
“I don’t want one. Girls don’t fight,” Eithne said, insisting upon this point as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and Edryd was a complete idiot.
“Then what do they do?” Edryd asked
The question momentarily confounded Eithne as she struggled for an answer. Now she really was a little bit angry with him. A satisfied smile broke across her face as she found her response. “A woman uses knowledge and intelligence,” she declared.
“And you are a woman then?” Edryd asked, showing amusement at her comment. Eithne didn’t look like she was any older than ten.
Eithne was well and truly mad now, and she forgot what little was left of her fear of, and her respect for, this man who had insulted her. Mentally, Eithne was intelligent beyond her age. Emotionally and physically though, she was even more immature than she looked, and owing to the one, she was highly sensitive about the other.
“I’m eleven years old,” she said with emphasis on the eleven. This was quite old in her estimation. She clearly was taking great pride in all the wisdom that those eleven years had conveyed upon her.
“That is a long time,” Edryd agreed.
Eithne couldn’t tell if Edryd was being sarcastic or not, but she began to calm down. “A woman studies things, and uses persuasion and reason to achieve what she wants,” she continued, elaborating on her previous thought.
Edryd smiled. He found he could easily agree with most of that. “So in other words, with blackmail and by means of other devious manipulations,” Edryd teased.
Eithne’s mouth fell open in surprise. Closing it tight, she turned on her heel and made an exaggerated march out of the room to show her disdain. For a moment, Edryd wondered how badly he had upset her, but that notion was dispelled when he heard Eithne vainly trying to stifle a fit of laughter out in the hallway.
A few hours and five confrontations later, Eithne was getting better at her mask of malice and disapproval, improving rapidly with practice. It was all good humored and playful, but still pretty perplexing to Edryd. He didn’t understand the game, but somehow it was fun to play along. Each conversation had been profitable as well, yielding something new each time.