Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Eliaz, stripped free of his black cloak, is nearly caught alight by the hellfire he’d set just seconds before as he hunches over the hanging pot.
His eyes lit with a striking insatiability, he licks his bottom lip with great relish at the sight of the deep red liquid he decants, his breathing eager and tight against the fabric of his shirt as the liquid sizzles upon the heated charcoal.
Steam drifts up to meet his hair, wetting the auburn strands that fall loose onto his forehead. His eyes jump up to me through his hair, devilish and unhallowed in the way they seem to tug at me, to claw at me, compelling me to do anything that is asked of me.
He grins, and his eyeline flits to the other side of the room, then back to me. ‘Bring me the book, and the satchel.’
Although I have no real sense of what he asks of me, or where to find the items, my body seems to heed the command with full understanding.
With the loss of control, there is no fear or inner disagreement, just a resounding calm, each step a beautiful mystery as they lead to a destination not yet known by me.
Something changed in Eliaz as soon as he lit that fire and began filling that cauldron.
A switch between the kind part of him, the side to his soul that drives him to do anything for anyone, Reyheni and Umbrian alike, to a darker depraved part that lies dormant until he pulls it free.
He seems ravenous for something, something only he knows how to satiate.
Power, control, whatever it is. It changes him, and those around him.
When I reach the desk he had just been rummaging through a few minutes ago, I latch my hand on the handle of the top drawer and slide it open. Inside, is a single black book, bound in crumbling leather and embossed with gold lettering that has faded into illegibility.
A single brown cord of rope is wrapped around its body at least three times over, and when I lift the book from the drawer it tightens further into the leather binding as though it is sentient enough to protect itself against prying strangers.
Deep in the intoxicating trance, I bend down and reach beside the wooden desk and somehow come back up with a frayed brown satchel in my other hand.
Walking back to Eliaz, my vision begins to blur, like fogged up glass, the room and his movements faint and barely distinguishable.
My knees buckle when I reach the cauldron, the blurred room spins around my head, and I close my eyes to try and shut it out.
The book and the satchel drop to the ground, a mere foot from the pit of fire.
I press my fingers firmly into my temples, wincing.
‘What’s happening to me?’ I groan. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’
Eliaz appears next to me to retrieve the items I dropped, a haze of shadow and electric white with that odd smudge of red. ‘I am not doing anything, Princess. It’s the fumes. It’ll wear off, and I can only hope it takes your whining with it.’
The room fizzles back into focus as soon as Eliaz begins pouring various herbs and substances from vials, which I presume were in the satchel. I right myself, leaning on a wall with the fear that I might faint from the dry heat emitted from the flames.
My lungs feel heavy with smoke, and scratch with each laborious breath. Oh, how I wish he could’ve just answered my questions with words instead of this heinous display of sacrilege. How I regret interrogating him at all.
I need to concentrate on something, anything, to keep me from falling back into that inebriated state.
Eliaz’s hands are a questionable pick, but I am too dizzy to redirect my eyes elsewhere, I’d most likely projectile vomit if I did.
There is a deftness to the way his fingers tip vials and sprinkle dried up grains into the now bubbling mystery mixture.
A sureness in the way he stirs it all together with what appears to be a long wooden cane.
His right hand disappears behind him and reappears with that old black book in his hands, the one that didn’t seem too fond of my touch.
I watch in anticipation of its reaction to his fingers, waiting for its rope to recoil and fasten itself further into the leather.
But it does no such thing. The brown chord falls loose as soon as he tries to tug it free, the book opening in a flurry of excited pages to a spread that casts an orange light on Eliaz’s chin.
His teeth appear pointed and perk when his lips widen in a smile that devours his face. His eyes flash a brilliant red as he runs his tongue over his sharpened teeth and laughs. The whites, his pupils and those honeycomb irises all bleed into the same shade of old, festering blood.
Just like Calli’s.
I gulp down the acid rising upwards in my throat. My head whirls and twists with all possible explanations, all potential realities and meanings for what I continue to witness – all too much to consider as the truth when I can no longer trust my own senses.
‘Sulmnan, Ercran, Blodran.’ The voice that slithers from Eliaz’s does not sound like his own. It’s deep and gravely and utterly blood-curdling, if that’s not too insensitive a thing to say in this precise moment.
‘Sulmnan. Ercran. Blodran,’ the voice repeats.
‘Eliaz, please. You’re scaring me,’ I beg him.
‘Sulmnan. Ercran. Blodran.’
‘Stop! Please!’ I plead, the sound unbearable and piercing in my ears. I don’t even know if he can even hear me. If he does, he certainly shows no inkling.
‘Sulmnan. Sulmnan. Ercran. Ercran. Blodran. Blodran.’
My face is flooded with cold, salting tears that overflow into my mouth as I continue to plead with him, my voice hoarse as my words melt into a frantic scream.
And he stops.
His face, slick with sweat, and his eyes back to their natural state as they roll my way before staring down into the simmering horror of the cauldron.
He clenches his jaw, the book still laying wide in his open palm, and says the one word I was desperate for him not to say.
The final word to his crazed and terrifying spell of repeated words.
The word to confirm my suspicions on what this whole display meant.
The answer to my continuous questioning.
All answers bundled up into the one seven letter word.
‘Neyktar.’