The first thing Sapphire felt was the throbbing pain in her head and the burning behind her eyelids as she came to consciousness. She jerked awake, head spinning, vision clearing. Panic gripped her, welling in her stomach and coiling around her chest, stretching forward to prickle at her neck as sweat dripped down her forehead. And then, Ileeyan was there, appearing before her like an apparition in her dreams and she nearly fell out of the softness beneath her.
Ice wrapped itself around her and she shivered. She looked towards Ileeyan who stood like a silent sentry beside her, a candle in his hand, the wax not melted enough to flow over onto his hands. It was a few moments later that she realised his eyes were closed. The man was asleep while he stood. She looked around.
A hearth flared bright at the end of the room and yet the fire had a spectral presence about it. It was too still, too vibrant. Her head spun once again and she gripped what she realised was fur beneath her hand and willed her vision to steady. She remembered being shot and she twisted around, trying to get a glimpse of her own back and failing when pain erupted in her arm. She looked down to see a cloth wrapped around her forearm.
The room was full of shelves, brimming with odd glass vials and books with cracking spines and loose pages peeking from between their volumes. A table stood between the room, layered with cracked glass and overturned tripods. Two candelabras held the candles upright, the thread cold and the wax frozen in odd patterns. She pulled herself up, pushing on her arms and wincing lightly. Her vision blackened and she steadied herself against the stone wall beside her bed. Once she could see clearly she shuffled forwards, giving one strange look towards the sleeping man. She moved towards the shelves, letting her eyes travel over the jars collecting dust, the parchment glued to them yellowing. She swiped her finger on one of the jars, the liquid inside a deep clear blue that reminded her of the northern seas she had seen in one of Rueen's illustrated books.
"Aconite," she read under her breath. She moved on to the next one and vaguely recognized the liquid as something Uncle James used to put people into a deep sleep before some terrible surgery; it was usually a case of appendicitis or from Alder's Lung Rot. After reading the tag she realised it was the extract of belladonna. The next jar made her stop. Despite the dust blurring out the contents she recognized them instantly.
She remembered when an old crone with claws for hands had cornered her in the traders' market, pulled her into a dark corner and shoved a similar jar into her face while she spat gibberish and her eyes blazed with an invisible fire. Sapphire was nine then. The woman had held her arm in a vice-like grip and pulled Sapphire with her towards a wagon. All the while Sapphire had whimpered and tears had streamed down her cheeks.
"Such pretty eyes!" the woman had hissed. "Such pretty hair!"
She didn't know what would have happened if Orion hadn't appeared and pulled her away. She never understood the words the woman was saying, but the few words she had caught clearly, sent shivers down her spine after all those years. The woman had hissed at her about salamander tongue, child flesh and stew. She reeled back from the jar and hastily moved towards the table.
She breathed deeply. The air was stale. Her hands travelled over the papers scattered on the wood and she lifted her eyes. She caught the burning glare of an orange haze from the shutters that hung loose and limp from the window opposite her. She straightened. Through the haze of her memories, she pulled at the thread that burst to the forefront of her mind. The lines blurred together but she was sure that she was not imagining the clouds of Vakhor that had swallowed them whole right before she lost consciousness. It was confusing and daunting. She knew people who had ventured into Vakhor lands never returned. Trappers and travellers had brought words about it to them; she had read about it a few times in the papers at Ta Todhg's place. Then why was it that she was breathing? Her wounds made sense. Ileeyan probably healed her with Draedech. She still did not know how to feel about that.
Draedech was tainted and black. It was the smell of the rotten beef in Delster's shop. It was the harbinger of death and destruction and all things bad. And it had touched her. It had healed her and she did not know what to make of it.
She lowered her head and sighed, leaning against the table. The Vakhor hadn't killed them. They hadn't burned them. Why?
It makes no sense!
For months, the events had thrown her into a flurry of thunderstorms and pulled and ripped at her sanity. She did not know what to do. An earthquake had trembled forward and knocked Sapphire's entire life apart, scattering into pieces that she could not collect. It had turned it over and left her with a view she did not understand; like a farmer thrown into a war council. She was used to hunting and hiking so far into the Bathran Range that it gave her family headaches. She was used to dipping her feet in the cool waters of the Golanda River during the summer. She was used to mucking out stables. She was used to cutting down the crops for their share in the harvest. She was used to plucking the flowers and weaving them into chains with the other village women during the Bloom Festival at the start of spring, while all the men stood far away, playing lutes and drums, singing, dancing and occasionally showering the women with sprigs of fresh grass and lavender.
She was not accustomed to dealing with soldiers chasing after her. She was not at home being framed for a murder she never committed. She was not used to being plunged into the dangerous territory of the Vakhor and defying all the stories that came with the circumstances. She did not know how to deal with the death of her family and her friends, a grief she had pushed deep down so it did not feel like a gaping hole in her chest that threatened to swallow her sanity and being completely, like some dark twisting monster. She could not lose herself in that madness. She had too far to go, yet. There were roads that she had to travel, still.
She took a deep breath and it released itself in a deeper sigh. She opened her eyes and they landed on a small chest on the table. Its wood was dark and crumbling but the silver lining the edges remained intact. She pushed it open. For a moment, she wondered what the owner of the house was thinking in his last moments. She shoved the thought away.
The chest revealed a chain of deep silver and gold curled around itself like a coiled snake. She lifted it up. It turned out to be a necklace. The pendant that hung from it must have been the craft of a skilled master. It was delicate and intricately designed. Two thick rings of gold lay in a concentric arrangement, held together by an arrangement of much lighter overlapping rings, running all along the space between the two larger rings. A merge of polygons - of which she didn't know the names; she had only ever seen them in passing in James' books - formed a circle at the centre. Above it all sat what she could only classify as a crown. She reckoned it was made of platinum. She knew her metals, but she could never be sure. The outer edges of the design glowed lightly.
She removed the chain from the box and let it pool in her hands. It was beautiful. She admired it for a few moments more, before putting it around her neck and hiding it beneath the neckline of her tunic, where the VannØrn and Borskalle chains rested. She had given the Undenlegt chain back to Rueen when they had fled from Pyropa. It was no use keeping it with herself. She shivered when her fingers brushed against the snakes on the Borskalle chain and withdrew her hand immediately. She still hadn't revealed that to James and Rueen. With a jolt, she realised that Cygnus didn't know. The thought sent fear coursing through her veins.
"You're awake."
Ileeyan's voice made her jump.
"I should be the one asking you that," she said, turning around. "Where are we?"
"Smanri," the word had a slight mocking tilt to it that Sapphire chose to ignore.
"What happened? After I was hit, I mean."
"I managed to take the men down," Ileeyan said, settling down on the cot. "The only way to lose them completely was plunging head on into the Vakhor territory. So, that's what I did. They descended on us like hounds after blood. They screamed. Almost burned us and then they dispersed back into the sky. Once they had retreated I brought you here."
She arched a brow at him. She was inexperienced, not foolish. There was something he was not telling her. And the beast inside her roared, leaping to get to the piece of meat it had sensed.
"And the Vakhor left us, just like that?"
Ileeyan nodded, but the flicker of his eyes to the ground made her clench her teeth.
"What are you hiding from me?" her voice came soft. "Something happened that you're not telling me about. What is it?"
And the look in Ileeyan's eyes sent a wave of dread coursing through her veins. They had turned cooler, the brilliant green becoming darker as he glared at her.
"You have an enchanted chain around your neck," he said and Sapphire resisted the urge to flinch under the words that came crashing like a whip. "The eyes of the snakes came alive and shone brighter than the sun on a cloudless summer day."
Sapphire froze. She was sure that had the table not supported her weight, she would have tumbled down to the dirt covered stone floor. For the man in front of her, she was the one to not be trusted. No one ever put their faith in a Borskalle.
"Whatever enchantment lingers on that chain, it sent the Vakhor away," Ileeyan continued.
Sapphire wanted to pull the offending item off, no matter if it left scratches down her neck. But she couldn't. Not even if she tried with all her might. It was the last thing she had of her mother. The last memory she had of her. She would not toss it away, no matter how much trouble it brought forth with it.
"I thought you detested Draedech," Ileeyan said as she lowered herself to the ground. Her head was spinning again.
"I do!" she said vehemently. "I never believed in it. And all the stories I've ever heard about it, have only ever talked about destruction. I saw it burn an entire village to the ground. And now... Everything has turned on its head and I don't know what to believe."
There was silence for a few moments.
"It was Dorha Draedech that destroyed your home. Ordinary Draedech is a healing force."
The words stirred her memory and she was sent months back to Orion's forge in the backyard, where she had said similar words. She did not answer. Perhaps one day, she would completely believe what she had said. At the moment, the old wounds festered. They were too fresh and the horrors too clear. So, she sat clutching her knees and staring at the floor in front of her.
They sat in silence for a long time after that and she almost fell asleep again till Ileeyan was pushing a bowl in front of her.
"Here," he knelt down. "You lost a lot of blood. We have to get out before the Vakhor try to attack again."
The silence swallowed them whole.
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