Darkness Rising 1 - Chained

Chapter 5 - The Lamb

“Nothing. It’s just a bad dream—everything here is just a bad dream.”

Torm nodded and touched her arm gently; his touch was burning hot on her cold skin. “Was it something that happened in the lower city, when you ran away? I’ve been worried about you.”

Emelia shrugged and looked away, ashamed of her tears. Torm had been the only one who had made an effort to talk to her since her caning.

“Why in the Pale did you come back?” Torm asked. “If I’d have got away I’d be half way to the ocean by now.”

“It’s safe, that’s why.”

“Safe? From what?”

“It doesn’t matter, Torm. I’m... I’m sorry. Get to sleep before someone gets the wrong idea.”

“I couldn’t care what anyone thinks in here,” Torm said petulantly. “You’re pretty much my only friend anyway.”

Emelia smiled and stroked his cheek. A trace of fluff had begun to grow on his face. He placed his rough hand on hers. She quickly turned and scampered back across the kitchen and into the dormitory, her mind in turmoil.

***

The Great Hall of the Keep had witnessed many celebrations in its thirteen hundred year history, and each one had left a mark on its weary timbers. Legend told that King Tilmoth the Eighth, the first Emperor of Eeria, planned the great push west into Midlund that was to signal the onset of the First Empire in this hall. Legend also had it that the coup that ended that self-same empire two hundred years later was ironically plotted at the long oaken table by Lord Ebon-Farr’s ancestors and the attendant Knights of the Air. 

Such history was lost on Emelia as she scrubbed the remnants of the previous night’s feast from those knowledgeable timbers. Yet even as she winced with each push of her arm, as the scabs on her back cracked and oozed, part of her wondered at what this vast chamber must have seen.

The past is just dust and whispers on the winds of nostalgia, said Emebaka.

It was true to some degree, Emelia considered. She was working on a stubborn red wine stain with her wire brush. It had taken almost all of the day to clean the hall. Where was the honour of yesteryear in the Ebon-Farrs now? Her respect for Lord Talis dwindled as each day between her and her move to the Enclave drifted past. Erica Ebon-Farr was like a vacuous kitchen cat, lapping up attention and fuss. As for Uthor: she still shuddered at the memory of the night a week ago that had earned her the welts she still bore across her back.

She paused to get her breath and surveyed the Hall. A dozen torches sputtered in their sconces along the walls. The room was a hundred feet long with a vaulted ceiling and stone walls adorned with memorabilia of an age far prouder than this. The other girls had been all of a twitter last night about the feast being held in honour of Uthor’s entrance to the Knights of Air.

Emelia had been confined to the kitchens where she was run ragged and had to endure the continual glares of Captain Ris as he sat at the edge of the hard graft. The death of two of his guard weighed heavily on him and the Enclave had been alerted about the presence of dark-magic within Coonor. Emelia was convinced Ris suspected that she was involved somehow. Yet logic clearly told Ris that a runaway housemaid could not really be implicated and after her caning Emelia did not dare to brooch the subject with him.

Gloom had returned to her mind during this last week. Every part of her life was shaded grey, like she was becoming as unfeeling as the stone around her. Her thoughts often wandered to the nightmare that had troubled her as a child. In the daytime she kept ruminating about the Dark-mage that she had disturbed that night and about the certainty that she was losing her mind.