Chapter 19 #2
Not surprisingly, the room had changed from her memories, either due to the passage of fifteen years or because she hadn’t noticed much beyond the sorcerer and his tools on her previous visit.
The long, rectangular table had stayed the same, with probably the same heavy chairs around it.
They lacked the chains she recalled so vividly, though they had been assembled with heavy nails and studs, which made her think she’d embroidered that image with her overwrought and childish fears.
Though she wasn’t supposed to remember receiving the blood geas, she did.
She particularly recalled being strapped down to one of those massive chairs.
The memory of that day flooded back in crisply unpleasant detail.
A strange man with cold eyes had awaited her in that room, rising slowly from a seat at the far end of the table, where an array of arcane instruments shone silver and black against the polished wood.
He wore robes made of rich furs and studded with jewels, finer than any she’d ever seen, even on the fanciest courtiers visiting the keep.
“This won’t take long,” he told her parents. “You can wait outside.”
“Be brave,” her father instructed, ruffling her hair, “and it will be over in a minute.”
“What will?” Rose asked.
“A necessary evil,” he answered, jaw and voice tight. He glared hard at the strange man, who only gazed back, unbothered.
Her mother knelt down to meet her eye to eye. “It’s only a rite of passage. We all went through it. Your father. Me. And see? We’re fine. You’ll be fine, too.” But Rose caught the welling tears in her mother’s eyes as she stood.
“Sit in the chair there.” The robed man indicated the chair nearest all the tools, and Rose slowly shook her head.
“No, thank you,” she said, very politely, then looked to her father for support. Surely he wouldn’t allow—but her parents had already left her there, sealing the door behind them without another word. Wildly, she looked around for escape, already knowing there wouldn’t be any.
“No need to panic,” the sorcerer said. “You’ll barely feel anything and, if you do, it will hurt only a moment. You won’t even remember the ritual. No one does.”
But it did hurt and she did remember.
When he reached for her arm, she jerked back. “Don’t touch me,” she commanded. “I don’t like it.”
“Then don’t fight this.”
She sat in the chair, figuring she had no choice, trying not to flinch when he strapped down her wrists and ankles, his hands as cold as his eyes.
She didn’t exactly fight, doing her best to be cheerful and obedient as she’d always been, as her parents expected her to be, but fear made it difficult and she struggled more than he liked.
Still, it was no contest. She ended up immobilized, by straps and by magic, and—to her additional humiliation—in tears.
“Tsk,” the sorcerer chided. “So many tears and for what? I haven’t hurt you.” He turned to the array of implements, selecting one with a long, fine blade. “I won’t even leave a scar on your young pretty skin, little rosebud.”
His magic fell over her thick as irresistible sleep, a shroud that dimmed the small chamber and dulled her mind.
Yes, the fear, the desire to resist also faded—but a thorny, hard part of her will remained sharp and alert.
She couldn’t yet perform the sorcery to put one person to sleep, let alone entire cities like the great and terrible Oneira, but resisting magic isn’t the same as making it and she could muster enough mental discipline to keep herself awake.
He’d strapped her left wrist and elbow to the arm of the chair with her forearm up.
The adult-sized chair made her lean awkwardly to the side, her arm nearly at the level of her shoulder.
Magic intensified, smelling dank in the air, flashing in her vision like black sparkles.
The almost ticklish slide of the blade down the length of her forearm hissed like a thin scream inside her head and she would have thrashed at the excruciating noise more than the rising pain from the slice except that she couldn’t move.
“That’s why we strap you down,” the sorcerer commented with a genial smile, tapping her on the nose.
She couldn’t jerk her head away. “Some of you sprogs just aren’t sleepy enough to be biddable.
” Humming a jaunty tune, he used another device, something that looked like a clear glass bubble, to suck up the blood that welled from the cut.
“Nice and bright.” Her blood vanished within, no sign of the crimson in the transparent sphere.
Magically disappeared. “Lovely density of magic, too,” he observed.
“You’re going to be one of the greats, rosebud.
Remember me kindly when you are, if you do remember. Some of us aren’t so gentle as I am.”
He busied himself with the glass bulb, performing a complex incantation involving passing it over and through a scroll dense with words.
Rose couldn’t make them out, her vision dim, her mind woozy.
But the tingling in her heart penetrated the fog.
Like a stomachache, but centered in her chest, the burning sensation grew, sending out tendrils from her heart into her torso and winding into her backbone.
The sorcerer observed her with those cold eyes. “You’d have done better to sleep,” he noted, “but the discomfort will soon pass. And the memory, if you have any, will soon fade.”
She gasped, wanting to say something, but her throat and mind closed on the lost words.
The tendrils snaked up her spine, through the back of her neck, and slipped inside her skull.
She lost more than words for a spell, time moving with a sluggish thickness, and when her thoughts and vision cleared, the sorcerer was unstrapping her and offering her a glass of juice.
He grasped the scroll in his other hand, holding it aloft like a torch.
“Sip,” he said, not unkindly. “It helps.”
She didn’t want the juice, but something that felt like a net under her skin flexed and she obeyed before she’d realized.
“Excellent. One more test.” He lifted the scroll. “Stand up.”
She slipped out of the chair and stood, rather cross with herself for complying so easily. But that golden-feeling net under her skin buzzed and did it for her.
“My work here is done,” the sorcerer declared. “Let’s admit your parents and Madame Hendricks, transfer the contract, and then I believe you have a party to attend, pretty rosebud.”
The memories blurred after the imposing Madame Hendricks accompanied her parents into the chamber.
They talked business for a very long time while Rose fidgeted, uneasy with the still-prickly net under her skin, though all the adults assured her the sensation would quickly fade.
She wouldn’t even notice the blood geas after another day or so.
As long as she obeyed the implicit will of her contract holder, they would never have to command her and she’d never feel any pressure from the enchantment, which would bind her until she paid off her debt.
And, in truth, she never had felt that pressure of a direct command again. But then, she’d never had cause before to rebel. She might have one now. Did she dare test the invisible collar that restrained her?
Shaking off the chill of those dark thoughts, Rose made herself take note of the changes to the room, the clear passage of time since that day.
The “poppy” moniker clearly came from a painting on the flat part of one longer wall, which she was sure was new.
It depicted an endless field of scarlet poppies under a stormy sky.
The heavy overcast of the storm muted the otherwise bright colors of the poppies.
The dark color of old blood, the blossoms tossed in the wind so vividly and silently depicted.
Was there a message in the artwork? It seemed passing strange.
She whirled around as the door opened behind her, feeling oddly caught out, as if she’d been looking at something she shouldn’t.
“Rose?” her mother gasped, quickly shutting—and locking—the one door. “It really is you.” She didn’t sound at all happy about it.
“Lovely to see you again, too, Mother,” Rose drawled, trying not to sound as hurt as she felt.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” her mother said, coming around the table that nearly filled the room.
“Of course I’m happy to see you. I’m just surprised.
” She embraced Rose, lightly and briefly, as her daughter had always preferred—if she had to be hugged at all—then pulled back.
“How did you get here—were you, can you walk the Dream now?”
Despite everything, Rose felt a flush of pleasure as she nodded. In all the turmoil, that achievement had gotten lost. Yes, she’d taken that final step without Master Zoltan’s permission, but she’d done it. Successfully. And more than once. “Yes, but it’s a secret. You understand.”
“I’m so proud and I do understand. I won’t tell. But, you don’t have permission to be here,” Shoshan said, not a question. “Do you have any idea how much trouble—”
“It’s important,” Rose interrupted. “There’s something I have to ask you.”
“You couldn’t write a letter? You have to come here and talk to me in the poppy room, of all places. The one room in the entire keep that screams something secret is happening.”
Just then, Durst knocked and, upon being admitted by an exasperated and annoyed Shoshan, left a laden tea tray. Locking the door yet again, Shoshan put her back against it, looking decidedly cornered. “You’ve been indiscreet, Rose. What servants know, everyone will know.”
“I was as discreet as I knew how to be,” Rose replied, angry and weary. She’d never really seen much of herself in her mother, but she certainly saw Thorn in her, so that said something. “I knew we’d need the wards for this conversation.”
“You’re not pregnant, are you?” Shoshan asked, aghast. “That would be a terrible complication at this point.”