Chapter Twenty-Nine
After tossing and turning in my bed for what feels like half the night, I decide to drag my duvet to Lillienne’s room, wanting to feel close to normality. To home. Something that is growing increasingly distant to me as time passes on.
I reach her room with little to no issue; Eliaz’s black book tucked under my armpit and dragging random scraps of wood from the foyer with the trailing end of the bedsheets.
The fire is still lit in her room, emanating smoky warmth that blasts into me as soon as I open the door.
Lillienne snores in deep sleep, lying on her side, mouth-open, drool dripping over her cheek.
Oh, how it annoyed me so when I would wake in the cottage to a wet splotch of her saliva on my pillow after she rolled over in the night.
A frequent occurrence that would drive me mad, and yet, feels like a thousand memories in the past.
I set the book on the stool by her bedside, before setting the duvet flat on the ground and laying down on top of it, head resting atop my arms, staring up at the ceiling.
There are tiny grey speckles on the roof, whether dust or decoration, I cannot tell.
Counting them in this moment seems productive, as though each miniscule mark on the white surface will bring me closer to the land of sleep.
But I count and count and my eyes don’t even begin to grow weary, no hint of sleep in every upwards blink.
Sixty-Six, Sixty-Seven, Sixty-eight.
If anything, my mind is growing more awake with each whispered number.
It’s no use. I sit upright with an exasperated sigh.
Lillienne stirs a little, mumbling sleepily about chocolate praline and begging with someone to stop throwing rocks at the window.
I stifle laughter in my hands, afraid I might wake her.
The black book on the stool seems to sneer at me, the rope coiled tight around its binding still. I’ve made no attempts to open it yet, too afraid of the rejection of it, or rather, out of fear of whatever horrors might lie inside – I brought it down here with me only to keep it safe.
However, the smugness with which the book sits there taunting me, is enough to drive me to cut it open if it does not wish to let me in, just for a peek inside. And besides, a little reading might just lure me to sleep.
The leather is cold on my tentative fingers despite the heat of the room.
Adjusting myself so that I am on my knees, sitting with my feet tucked under my bottom, I sit there, in the flickering of firelight, book in open palms like a desperate soul lost in prayer.
Although I doubt I will find much solace within these pages – only sin.
The rope comes loose with no resistance, causing me to doubt whether it had even shown any in the first place. One could argue I wasn’t in my right mind when I had it in my hands before, that I was under some Neyktar influence that warped my sense of reality.
But I know what I saw, what I felt. I just can’t prove it. The book did resist. It just doesn’t now. The frayed rope falls free, and grime and staleness are set free from the pages as I slot my finger between two pages, pushing the front cover of the book open.
The paper is thick and old, browned and burned at the edges. On it, is writing in the original language of Valtayre, smudged letters that speak of the time long before the Relic. Before the intervention of the gods.
It’s like reading the intentions of the Anti-god, whose name I do not know, and do not wish to ever find out. A piece of information I am better off being oblivious to.
There are paintings, scattered amongst the writing, images of blood-shed and suffering, of torn open bodies, hellish creatures and temptation. Most of the pages are unreadable, either with words I have not learned, or due to the smudging of the ink and the staining of old, crusted blood.
An aching wave of paranoia crashes into the back of my head, and I jump near out of my skin, my breathing strained and heavy as I scan the room for horrors or threats.
It feels vulnerable and unsafe to even look at the pages, whether I know what they mean or not.
When I turn my attention back to the book, I see something that drains the blood from my face, sending me dizzy with disbelief. The title of the page.
Nykrostes alnum mion. Death to the men.
And under it, hundreds of tiny little stick figures, representing what I assume is the men the title refers to.
The men lead to a numbered list, at the bottom of the page, and I can only make out few odd words in their unfamiliar combinations.
Gather all, intention, blood, spilling, and – death. Whatever power Eliaz has created for himself, from this book, seems like only the beginning of the evil these pages threaten to spill into the world.
I turn the page, blanketing my horror, suddenly overcome with the need to keep reading, and find myself staring at a page – unstained, relatively new-looking, and in the common language.
Sketches of the plants growing beneath the library, the Servaytor Peckati wind and twist around the edges of the paper. I don’t need to have seen his handwriting to know that it is Eliaz’s, for what I read is a recipe for a poultice.
One that can be used to treat the affliction.
He truly has taken the evil from this book and made good from it, his scored-out writings indicating just how many times he tried and tried to get the recipe right.
The recipe to that green, gritty substance that I saw him use on Lillienne when we first came here.
The cure to the affliction, delivered by its creator himself.
I lie down on the duvet once again, staring at the page the whole descent, unable to tear my eyes from the evidence of the true magic of the Umbrian king.
Not the smoke, the deception or the control of the mind. The ability to turn sin into salvation. To turn to evil to create good. My lips twitch with the beginnings of a smile that stretches into a yawn. Tiredness has finally come. And I welcome it, as the last ember of the fire ceases to burn.
There is a man standing in front of me. Dark haired, tall, muscled. Faceless.
I am shrunken down to half my size. He crouches slightly, resting his hands on his knees the way people do when condescending a child. A noise comes from him, a sound akin to words spoken into a feather pillow. The hair on my arms raise, and my stomach churns with anxiety.
The muffled noise grows louder the longer I do not acknowledge him. But I don’t seem to have the vocabulary that he seeks. In fact, my voice comes out as a strangled yell. Nothing intelligible by either of us.
Someone grabs my arm. A veined hand squeezes just above my tiny wrist. I follow the bulging trail of blue to the face of the second man. Balding, wrinkled, pale. Faceless.
A smothered scream erupts from him as I try to twist myself free from his grip.
Angered or upset. I have no way of telling.
From his belt he draws a dagger. One with a jagged edge.
It plunges into the flesh in my side before I can stop it.
And back out again before the pain can even register.
Gold shines through the crack in my body as though my blood is liquid sunlight.
Someone grabs the blade from the faceless, wrinkled, balding man and slices at his arm until I am set free.
A boy, with a face, a smiling one despite the violence.
He wears a blue scrap of fabric on his head.
He extends his hand to me. Shadows darken behind his back, forming the silhouette of a clawed humanoid monster that clicks and gargles.
He doesn’t hear. I scream. He doesn’t hear. He keeps smiling. He doesn’t seem to notice the dagger lifting from his fingers. He doesn’t even blink when the blade stabs into his neck. He doesn’t stop smiling, even when he’s lying at my feet, dead.
Someone touches my shoulder. Eira, they say, and it sounds like words this time. Eira, Eira, Eira, Eira.
‘Eira.’ Lillienne shakes me. And it’s morning. We’re standing on my ruffled bedsheet in the middle of her bedchamber. And I am drenched with sweat. ‘Eira, you were screaming something awful. I thought you were being murdered or something.’
I don’t look at her, certain she is just another part of the nightmare. ‘Stop. Please.’
Pulse pounding rapidly in my ears, her words barely register, my attention finding the black book lying splayed open on the floor near the door. Somewhere in my fitful state I must’ve thrown it away from me. No doubt as far as possible.
Whether it’s the lingering edge of smoke in the air, or the fact that the pages of the book seem to ruffle as though in an attempt to gather themselves and hide, I no longer trust my senses.
‘Eira, please. You’re worrying me. What’s going on in there?’ Lillienne taps my temple lightly.
I don’t answer. Instead, I go to the book and pick it up by its spine. The binding snaps together with haste, and I aid the effort in coiling the rope back around its body. And it tightens.
This time, something is ejected from the top of the closed book, parchment folded in half. How odd. Surely, any loose pages would’ve fallen on the floor when I had thrown it. Curious – or careless, I cannot tell – I pull it free and unfold it.
A letter. The addressee’s name causes my heart to screech to a halt, a biting cold rippling over my skin. I can barely breathe as I read.
Berian Delengranz, King of Reyhen.
Father.
I fold the letter back up as quickly as I opened it. Terrified of what it might actually mean. A letter to my father.
‘I have to go,’ I say to Lillienne, making for the door, book in hand. ‘I’ll explain later.’
‘Explain now.’
At the threshold, I send her a pleading look over my shoulder. ‘I’m fine, I promise. Sorry I scared you. There’s just something I have to do.’
She crosses her arms, and exhales. ‘Don’t start leaving me out now, Eira. We don’t do that to each other.’
I have never seen that look in her eyes before, hurt and disappointment swirling on the surface like smoke, but to tell her what I have just found I’d have to go through days worth of new developments that I have neglected to tell her. And I want to be able to give her all my attention when I do.
But first, I have to talk to Eliaz.
‘I will tell you, I swear. Just… later.’
She turns her head away, an action I can only hope isn’t to hide any welling of tears or wobbling of the lip. A sniffling bob of the head.
Out of guilt and to avoid hurting her further, I leave, gently closing the door behind me.
I hope she can forgive me.
I’ve never had to ask it of her before.