by Serena Chase
I rested my forehead on my foster brother’s shoulder. I needed a hug in the worst way, but I only stayed there for a moment before taking a wobbly step back, right into Salvador, but he stood like a stone pillar, supporting me through the offense.
“Oh dear,” Erielle’s voice came from the left. “You look terrible.”
“Erielle!” The hissed reprimand came from either Gerrias or Julien, I couldn’t tell. “You forget yourself!”
Ahh. Julien, then.
“Oh, calm yourself Sir Stiffness. Rozen can take it.”
“How bad is it?” I angled my question in the general direction of her voice. Since she didn’t answer, I assumed she had moved on, but my hand was still on Kinley’s shoulder. “Did she go?”
“No, I’m here,” Erielle replied. “I was just trying to think of a diplomatic way to answer your question.”
I groaned.
“Let me put it this way,” she said slowly. “Be glad you already have a suitor, because otherwise you might end up a very lonely Queen.”
I think I heard Julien’s teeth grate against one another just before he growled her name again.
“Is it . . .” another abbreviated sob slipped between my lips, “permanent?”
“No.” Kinley’s voice was soft. “You’ll be fine in a day or two, most likely.”
“Most likely?”
“You’ll be fine,” he repeated. “I promise.”
“On a brighter note,” this came from Gerrias, “at least we don’t have to worry about Fennik recognizing you.”
“I don’t even recognize you,” Erielle laughed. “Um, sorry.”
“Fennik? Are we near?”
“Yes,” Gerrias said. “Risson went ahead to alert the old man to our arrival. He’s not one you want to surprise.”
“Then I hope Risson warns him about Rozen’s face!”
“Erielle! That’s enough!” I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard Julien so angry. “You claim you want the honor of knighthood, yet you cannot even censure your own tongue?”
“Julien, I was only—”
“Enough! Consider your silence for the rest of the evening as your gift of penance to us all. You may spend the air you might otherwise spoil with your impertinence in the task of filling Fennik’s tub. You will be the last to bathe and find your rest tonight, I think. Perhaps tomorrow’s fatigue will help to tame your careless words.”
As Erielle’s friend, I wanted to stick up for her and argue with the punishment Julien doled out. But with his father away and Erielle still a few months shy of seventeen, he was the head of their family. I would not question his leadership again. And he was right, in a way. Her teasing had hurt me when I was vulnerable. Even if my vulnerability was steeped in vanity, it still hurt to have my gruesomeness flung in my face—especially in front of a group of men, one of whom I wanted to find me beautiful above all others. I wouldn’t hold it against her. Perhaps when the swelling went down I might even find it funny. But at the moment, it stung, and Julien was in the right to point it out.
“Your Highness—”
“Shhh!” About six voices shushed Dyfnel at once.
“My apologies.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve gathered a few herbs to make into a poultice. Once we’ve reached Fennik’s Glenn I’ll crush them, mix them with a bit of water, and apply it to your face.” He paused. “Of course, if Sir Fennik would happen to have spirits available it would make it all the more effective.”
“Oh, I don’t think that will be a problem,” Gerrias said with a chuckle.
“He’s not a drunkard, is he?”
I could almost see Dyfnel’s brow crease with concern, just by the tone of his voice.
“Oh, no. Not Finnick. He doesn’t touch the stuff. He does a right fine business selling it, however.”
Risson soon returned and we continued on toward Fennik’s Glenn.
Before the sun hit my face, the smell of rotting grain permeated the clogs in my nostrils. By the time the brightness of sunshine came through my swollen lids, it had faded.
“What was that awful smell we passed?”
“That’s the smell of money, pretty boy.” The gruff voice was unfamiliar. “You passed by my distillery.”
“Rozen,” Julien said, “this is Sir Fennik de Selwen.”
“Gums, boy. You’re a sight. Must’ve near stuck the bloomin’ yellowhocks up your nose to come out like that,” Fennik said. “Well, come along, then. Sir Risson said you’d need a wash off and I got a tub ready for you. Foolish boy.”
“Errol.” Julien’s use of Erielle’s squire name was telling. He didn’t even want Fennik to know that his sister was along. “You go with Rozen. Fennik, why don’t you help us with the horses?”
The old man grumbled something about pompous Regents ordering him about his own home, but he complied.
Julien dismounted and then helped me down, and Erielle took my hand to lead me to the house. I stumbled about six times before I hollered back at Julien, “Sir Julien, would you please allow Errol to speak before I break a leg?”
There was a moment of dead silence in which I assumed Julien made some sort of gesture that gave Erielle permission to talk to me because she said, “There’s a tree root three steps ahead. Easy, easy. There. Good job.” Finally, we made it into the house.
“Wow. It’s nicer than I expected,” she said, then laughed. “But the tub is right here by the fire! Here, sit.” She led me to a chair. “Thank goodness there are curtains, but we’d best make this quick or I’m afraid the old knight will walk right in and see how not-a-boy you are.”
I groaned. Would the humiliation of this day know no end?
“Ah, but there’s a bolt on the door. Good.” The metal slid home and she returned to my side to help me undress and guided me to the tub.
“Oh, Rynnaia. It’s cold.”
“Is it clean?”
“Yes, but—”
“That’s all that matters.” A moment later, when I cramped my long legs getting into the short, narrow tub, however, I wasn’t so sure. My teeth chattered. “L-let’s make this quick. No hair.”
“I wondered, since you left the hairpiece and cap on.” Erielle gave me a rag and said, “Here. I’ve soaped it for you.” I scrubbed at my skin faster and harder than I ever had before. A few moments later, I stood. She said a quick, “Sorry!” and poured a bucket over me to rinse. And again.
She shoved a towel in my hands. “Look on the bright side. Our next baths will be at Castle Rynwyk. And warm.”
“Not if we follow the scrolls,” I said. The scrolls promised more than one opportunity to get wet within Mount Shireya.
“That’s not exactly my idea of a bath. And I’m fairly sure the water of which Lady Anya wrote didn’t include soap or towels,” she said. “But maybe our swims will help get the stink out of our clothes.”
I groaned. “I forgot I’d have to put those same filthy clothes on again.”
“Unless you want me to get your spare set?”
“No. I’ll want them clean and dry later,” I sighed. “We all agreed.”
“Yes. How idiotic was that?” She was quiet, helping me keep my balance while I did my best to dry off with the scratchy towel.
“All right, wrap me back up.”
She had me bound and dressed in no time, which was no small feat considering how I shivered throughout the ordeal and kept losing my balance since I couldn’t see.
“Now you just sit here by the fire,” she said, guiding me to a chair that was surprisingly soft and comfortable, given the man who owned it. “I’ll get Dyfnel and see if he has that poultice ready yet.” She paused. “Rynnaia?”
“Yes?”
“I once met a girl in Stoen who suffered many of the same symptoms you are going through.” She paused. “The difference was that her ailments were caused by the curse of a Cobeld and there was no hope for their reversal.” Her voice grew quieter. “Her name was Nella. She was the daughter of a Sengarren Earl. Shortly
before she was cursed, she had been betrothed to the heir to a dukedom in Stoen, but when he saw the result of the curse, the agreement was broken.”
I gasped. “She’s better off without him, if his love was that shallow.”
“Yes. Well, no actually.” She was quiet for a moment. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry I made fun of you. It was cruel. Especially when I consider Nella’s pain.”
“Thank you. I forgive you,” I said. “And when we get the Remedy, perhaps you can be the one to deliver it to your friend.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” There was a slight tremble in Erielle’s voice and I wondered if I could see her face if there would be tears. “Nella took her own life a month after her betrothal was broken. She could no longer take the pain and humiliation the Cobeld’s curse had brought about.”
My hand fluttered to my heart. “Erielle, I’m so sorry,” I whispered, suddenly feeling like such a whiner. “My face isn’t nearly as sore as my vanity. I’ve been so worried about how monstrous I must appear that I didn’t consider the passing nature of my ailment.” My mother’s face flashed through my mind. “The discomfort of a day or two hardly excuses my whining when compared to that of your friend, or that which my own mother has suffered.”
“There were rumors at Holiday Palace that she is getting weaker.”
“She is,” I admitted. Father, Julien and I had admitted it to few, hoping to keep the Kingdom’s hope alive. “I tried to contact her about a week ago, but she could barely—”
I paused. The memory was fresh with pain. “It seemed all she could do just to hear me. She could not respond in kind.”
“Perhaps you contacted her during a bad spell and another day might find her in better health?”
“Perhaps.” But I knew better. And if my face wasn’t so grotesquely swollen, Erielle would have seen the falseness of my response.
“You will find the Remedy, Rynnaia. And I’m sure Dyfnel and . . . whoever will be traveling with him,” she paused on that mystery of the scrolls, “will get it to the Queen in time. And as for your worries about your appearance?” She laughed. “Don’t bother to include a fear that you might lose Julien’s affection. My brother thinks you’re an angel. His opinion of me, on the other hand . . . ?”
I laughed. “I imagine it will be a long night for you.”
“Indeed.” She sighed. “I’d best fasten my lips and seek out the physician now. Rest easy. Dyfnel will have you looking yourself again in no time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The nightmares began almost as soon as my eyes closed that night. I awoke screaming, fighting anyone who came near, until Kinley, Julien, and Erielle were finally able to convince me of who they were and that they meant me no harm.
With the help of Dyfnel’s poultice, day by delaying day, the swelling slowly receded. But the dreams did not. Each bit of sleep I caught was plagued with restless images and deep, haunting laughter that taunted me, challenged me, and caused my mouth to fill with the taste of fear.
“They’re like traps,” Fennik said of the yellowhock fields after dinner one night. “I’ve mapped their locations and come up with no other conclusion but that their positioning is meant to keep people from coming too near the mountain.”
“I thought yellowhock was a native plant,” Gerrias said.
“Aye, it is,” Fennik replied. “But it doesn’t grow that way naturally, taking over an entire space like that. It has to be cultivated to that end. And neither does the inhaling of a native yellowhock cause that like what your young friend has experienced. No, only the crop fields do that.”
“Crop fields?” Kinley spoke up. “Who would be able to stand being within that field long enough to harvest a crop?”
“Cobelds.” Fennik’s tone grew dark. “It’s harvested twice a year. But try as I might, I’ve never been able to catch the little demons at it.”
“Then how do you know it was them?” This, from Erielle.
There was a long pause with no noise but the crackling of the fire. Finally, Fennik spoke. “Have you ever suffered from night terrors as your friend does?”
“Yes.” The admittance was hard won from Erielle.
“Do you remember the feeling you had upon waking from such a dream? The creeping of your scalp and the clenching of your insides that said you’d just escaped a great evil? The surety that, had you awakened a moment later, you would surely have died from the fright in your sleep?”
His description sent a shiver through my bones, and though blurred, I noted the slow nods of several members of our group.
“That,” he said, “is how I knew it was them that gathered the yellowhock when I came across a recently harvested field.”
No one argued with his assessment. Instead quiet descended as we all wondered what use the Cobelds would have for such a toxic substance, or if they were somehow immune to its pollen.
We stayed at Fennik’s for four days in all, but from the first, terror-filled night, Fennik implied that my dreams were a side effect of my reaction to the yellowhock pollen. But in his thoughts I saw that, although he considered it a possibility, it wasn’t a symptom he had ever seen before. Why he lied, I could only imagine was to soothe my pride, because although he continued to address me as “Squire Rozen,” I think he began to suspect my true identity as the swelling went down.
How could he not, with a quartet of knights, two Andoven, and a squire hovering so? Still, the act of kindness surprised me from such a gruff old knight.
But then again, as a young man Fennik had sworn fealty to my grandfather, King Rynitel, and later to my father before retiring to his solitary home in Shireya. Perhaps it was the Knight’s Oath itself that made him able to recognize the Ryn.
Even with Fennik’s ready supply of spirits, the poultice wasn’t powerful enough to perform a miracle. My features had nearly returned to their normal size, but the bruising around my eyes made me look like I—in Fennik’s words—had “tried to steal from a pirate.”
I’d have to share that comment with Cazien the next time I saw him. Then again, if this was just the first of the booby traps set to keep us from finding the Remedy, there might not be a next time.
The last night we spent at Fennik’s found me awake more than an hour after the deep breathing of my companions proved their passage into dreams. I was anxious, fearing the visions that would come in my sleep. And even more pressing than that was the mire of embarrassment my vanity had delivered me to. Having finally convinced Fennik to allow me a glance in his looking glass, I had been expecting a sense of relief. But it was not to be. Most of the swelling had receded, but my nose was red and chapped from dripping and wiping, and a yellowish ring around my mouth still remained as evidence of the bruising caused by my swelling lips. But worse still, the skin around my eyes was mottled with purple, black, and green. I looked nothing like a princess. An apt description of my face might even allude to an ogre out of a child’s storybook or a Veetrish tale. Even the ugliest Cobeld would likely find me so repulsive that he would flee.
When I said so, Kinley had joked, “Well, we won’t be complaining about that now, will we?” But his humor had faded when he noted the tears gathering in my eyes.
I was ugly and I was vain and I was exhausted, but the promise of sleep wasn’t as alluring as it might have been had it not seemed to guarantee a wealth of terror. I stared at the fire, watching the flames dance. Since everyone else was asleep, I figured I could wallow a bit.
A tear rolled down my cheek and I swiped it away, cursing my vanity as well as the stupidity that put me in this position in the first place. Grinding my teeth, I rolled over. As I slid my hand under my pillow, however, my fingers touched a scrap of parchment.
My heart lifted. Julien.
The light from the fire was dim, especially since I was facing the opposite direction, but his few words imparted more warmth to me than any that might have made its way to me from the hearth. It was the shortest note I�
��d yet received from him, which wasn’t surprising given our close quarters, but somehow, in those spare lines, Julien expressed exactly what my wounded vanity needed to know.
Never doubt.
My heart is yours.
I read his note over and over until my eyes began to droop. Carefully, I folded the parchment and stuck it into the binding under my tunic, close to my heart.
The nightmares were longer in coming that night, but they eventually found and captured me. At first I was aware that I was dreaming, but too quickly the dream became too real to allow me to know anything but the terror from which I could not escape. Regardless of my sleepy prison, however, my screams roused everyone else. When Julien’s voice finally broke through my dream, the look in my friends’ eyes told me that no more sleep would be had by anyone that night.
Dawn had just crept into the woods when we finished our breakfast of deer sausages and fried bread. Shortly after, we packed the horses, bid Fennik good-bye, and resumed our journey toward the ever-looming mountain.
With four days lost to the Cobelds already, we resumed our path toward the Sacred Mountain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I was alone, standing in the middle of a yellowhock field. The only light came from the tirandite torch in my hand.
“Julien?” I whispered his name again, but my voice only echoed back on me, almost as if I was surrounded by walls of stone.
I looked down at the flowers. Tears, caused by their pollen, streamed down my face. All at once, the bud of each flower quivered. A moment later, a pair of black eyes blinked from each center. Another moment passed and the stems became bodies, and the leaves, arms and legs.
And then, appearing on the very edge of each bloom, a long, gray beard.
Was that a breeze, rustling these strange-featured flowers? No, it was a whisper.
“Fail.” Followed closely by another. “Die.”
Suddenly, the blooms weren’t flowers anymore. They were wrinkled old man. Cobelds!
