Getting through the whole night without eating any chi'darro was a hell unlike anything Gwen had ever known.
Gwen found herself shaking for no good reason. Her thoughts kept returning to the plate of lamb that had been brought up for her a few hours after she'd left her father in the dining hall. Figuring to hide it somewhere until she could safely dispose of it later that evening, she'd brought it into her room, dumped the food into an old, empty jewelry box in her closet, then left the empty plate on the stone steps just outside of her bedroom door.
Then, for the next hour, it seemed as though she couldn't think of anything but that cold chunk of lamb meat and serving of roasted potatoes, just sitting there in the bottom of her closet. No matter how she tried to distract herself, she'd find her thoughts wandering to the herb-covered food just waiting for her, less than four short strides from her bed.
Finally, able to stand it no longer, she'd gone to her closet, fetched her jewelry-box, and thrown it out of her bedroom window.
She watched the wooden case fall just shy of the moat, hitting the hard-packed ground heavily enough to break open slightly. Squinting, Gwen thought she could make out one of the potatoes.
Shortly after disposing of it, she'd stared down at the small, broken box longingly for nearly ten minutes before realizing that's what she was doing.
Chiding herself for an idiot, Gwen returned to her bed, took a deep breath... and began thinking about the tiny flecks of blue-green herb still clinging to the surface of the empty plate that lay just outside her door.
It took all of her will to keep herself from even opening her bedroom door to check the plate. Sometimes, she'd tried convincing herself she was just going to take a peek, so she could make sure it had been taken away by the castle staff. Deep down, however, she knew the real reason why she was tempted to open the door. It was those tiny flecks of herb, just sitting there.
And so she'd forced herself to lie there on her bed, staring at the ceiling, trying like mad to think of anything besides how badly she wanted to kick her bedroom door open, pick up her plate and lick it clean.
When she finally heard one of the servants creep upstairs and quietly take her plate away, she'd wept, but only partially from relief.
Though exhausted, it seemed she could sleep no more than five minutes at a time, because every time she dozed off she would have such intense, nausea-inducing nightmares that she'd be jolted awake, her heart racing. Grotesque, misshapen monsters would appear from the shadowy recesses of her mind and chase her, calling her by name, laughing. Some would transform into a wolfish likeness of Anifail, snarling and bristling. Others would simply collapse before her and start smoking and bubbling, crying out in pain. Sometimes they turned into people she'd accidentally hurt during her childhood. Other times, they became enormous, whimpering dogs, looking at her with desperate, pleading brown eyes as they smoldered and burned.
That had been Gwen's first whole night without chi'darro, and it had been hell.
The following morning was even worse.
Bleary-eyed, Gwen staggered out of bed, feeling so weak and dizzy that she began to wonder if she'd caught some sort of cold the day before. She realized she'd lost track of time and had forgotten to wash herself last night, which was when she had originally planned to discretely dispose of the food that had been brought for her. Then again, impulsively tossing her food out the window had eliminated the need for that trip, she supposed.
In addition to feeling terrible, she noticed her neck was swollen slightly, and that she'd developed a strangely patterned rash high up on her arms, near the shoulders.
It took nearly an hour for her to get dressed. At first she suspected something had been done to her clothing, because whenever she tried something on, it seemed to hurt. She even found her finely woven silk blouse scratchy and bothersome against her bare skin.
Eventually she descended the stairs of her bedchamber tower, slowly and carefully, her legs trembling almost as badly as a newborn colt's. Once she was safely down the stairs, Gwen made her way to the kitchen and informed the cook in an unsteady voice that she would like her breakfast sent up to her, due to the fact she was feeling sick.
The expression on the cook's face made it clear he required no convincing of this fact. He practically shooed her out of the kitchen with a half-loaf of rye bread and a cup of warm cream and honey, which he assured her would calm her stomach if it was giving her problems.
Grateful for the fact that the cook had neglected to sprinkle either item with any herb, she accepted the proffered food, thanked him wearily, and began the impossibly long journey back to her bedchamber.
Her legs cramped several times as she ascended the stairs to her room, forcing her to stop periodically. By the time she reached her bedroom door, she found herself out of breath and fighting to stay awake. Every part of her just wanted to lie down and rest.
Gwen stumbled inside her room, almost spilling the contents of her cup while attempting to perch it and the rye loaf on a nearby stool. Then, bread and honey-cream forgotten, she fell into her bed. This time, unlike the previous evening, she was asleep the moment her head touched the pillow.
And then her nightmares began anew, though stronger and more vivid than the ones from before. Each new dreamscape that popped into her head provided her with fresh horrors dredged from her imagination, impossible to ignore.
Huge spiders with crowns atop their brow chittered at her from the darkness of a dungeon cell, their mandibles salivating, their legs twitching with eager anticipation. Dire wolves with hollow, bleeding eyes rushed at her from a copse of trees near the apple yard, snarling, and yelping, and frothing black tar from their mouths. Half-remembered toys and comfort dolls from her childhood playroom fell apart or began bleeding at her touch, shrieking for her to stop. Sad, mournful folk regarded her in the labyrinthine hallways of a dark, sinister castle, each of them holding up a mirror that Gwen found herself unable to look into for too long. Her reflections were always corpse-like, or snake-like, or some other foul horror to behold.
In one mirror, she appeared as a likeness of her father.
Her troubled sleep was deep as well, and when the sights and sounds of her night terrors were finally enough to jolt her out of her slumber, it seemed a comparative mercy. She lay there in bed for a long time after, trembling uncontrollably and gasping for breath.
After a while Gwen slowly rose from her bed, her every muscle taut and sore, and she went to the window to try and gauge the time. According to the sun, it was still only mid-morning.
One full day down, four to go.
When she opened her bedroom door, Gwen discovered that a more substantial plate of breakfast had been left outside of it. There were poached eggs, a thick slice of ham, and a small wedge of yellow cheese, each of which had been dutifully covered with a small sprinkling of a familiar blue-green herb.
She stood at her open door for a long, long time staring at the plate and its contents. Just the thought of being that close to the stuff stirred feelings of anxiety and dread. It felt to her as though getting too near her plate would result in her being unable to control herself.
It was nearly five full minutes before she mustered up the courage to kick the plate and its contents over, sending them tumbling down into the darkness of the stairwell. Almost immediately she regretted her decision, since word of what she'd done might get back to her father, and she didn't wish him to become suspicious during her ordeal.
Kicking her food down the stairwell might be brushed off as a childish tantrum or something of that sort, which her father would likely interpret as sulking, so she'd probably be okay. Still, she resolved to make sure her next meal was disposed of properly. Like she'd planned.
Closing her bedroom door, Gwen spied the food the cook had provided her with earlier, sitting there on a nearby stool. Realizing she was ravenous, she devoured the honey-cream and rye with wolfish abandon, though it seemed to taste far more bland and stale than it aught to have, especially with her being so hungry. Regardless, she finished it quicker than she'd thought possible, and prayed it would settle her roiling stomach as the cook had suggested it might.
An hour later, she was practically hanging out of her bedroom window, retching noisily, clutching either side of the stone window frame for balance.
She was there for a good fifteen minutes or so, alternating between being sick and taking huge gulps of air. When the intense nausea finally did pass, Gwen stumbled back to her bed and sat down, staring at nothing. The room was spinning a little, and dark spots appeared around the edges of her vision from time to time.
Hunger no longer troubled her stomach, but her abdomen felt tight and cramped. Her throat burned, and she was parched.
Her water jug was very nearly empty, she noticed. That was odd. She'd filled it last night, and couldn't remember drinking from it recently.
Gwen picked up the jug and, walking with slow, careful steps, she opened her bedroom door and headed back down to the kitchen. Somehow, this trip took even longer than it had earlier that morning. Though her legs were still shaky, she managed to haul the now-full jug, another loaf of bread, and a wedge of hard cheese up the stairs and back up to her room. While the very notion of eating was repugnant to her right now, gathering untreated provisions for later seemed like a good idea.
Once she'd wrapped the food in a blanket and hidden it in her closet, she hobbled back over to her bed and sat down, smoothed her dress against her legs, sighed lightly... and then burst into tears.
She didn't even know why she was crying exactly, but she couldn't seem to stop. It just felt like her entire world had suddenly transformed itself into an empty void – a vast expanse of bleakness and despair. She cried harder than she could remember ever crying before, and by the time she managed to stop she discovered her throat was once again parched, and the inside of her mouth had gone bone dry.
Gwen drank almost half of the jug of water she'd brought upstairs with her. Then she decided to lay down on her bed and attempt to relax, perhaps stare up at the ceiling a while and just focus on breathing and calming herself. She inhaled a deep breath of air through her nose, and then another....
And suddenly, it was late evening. Her entire room was dark.
Perplexed, Gwen sat up in her bed, or tried to. Her arms felt shaky, and didn't appear to be up to the task of propping her up. Groaning, she rolled herself to one side of her bed and lowered her feet to the floor, doing her best to ignore the cramps that had taken up residence in her calves and thighs, as well as the terrible itching sensation she felt around her shoulders and upper arms.
She hadn't slept, had she? It certainly didn't feel like she'd slept, that was for sure. Her eyes felt dry and scratchy.
After a few moments spent trying to steady herself and remain upright, she lit a lamp atop her dresser and then shuffled over to her door, feeling about a hundred years old. When she opened the door, she spied a bowl of stew and a small, buttered dinner bun sitting on the top stair. The stew had gone cold long ago, and looked slightly greasy.
The smell of chi'darro and stew hit her without warning, and her stomach lurched unpleasantly. Gwen couldn't tell if the smell was making her hungry or ill, but regardless, she covered her mouth and nose with her hand and hastily retreated away from the door.
About a minute later, she found herself retching out of her window once more. Thankfully, it appeared there was nothing left for her stomach to get rid of this time.
When Gwen came away from the window, her abdominal muscles were hurting quite a lot, especially when she tried to stand up straight. Hunched over, she walked back over to her open door and silently considered the bowl of stew, still half-covering her mouth and nose. A short while later she was rooting through her closet for some dress or other outfit she'd grown out of – one that might not be missed. When she found one, she brought it to the doorway, threw it over the bowl, gathered everything up into a bundle, and then dashed over to the windowsill and shoved the whole thing, dress, stew and all, out into the night air.
She couldn't see what happened to the clay bowl, but she could hear it crack and break apart as it careened off of the stone of the castle wall and fell to the ground below. That one definitely came short of the moat, she realized, and it was too dark to see where it ended up. Still, not many people walked the area between the wall and the moat, so it probably wouldn't be noticed.
A missing bowl might be noticed, however.
Gwen cursed quietly under her breath. Why had she done it like that? She wasn't being very smart about this at all! At the time it seemed like the most important thing was to get the food out of her room as quickly as possible, and she'd panicked. Why was the mere thought of that herb making her so anxious all of a sudden?
Well, she should probably try to relax, possibly even try to sleep some more. It certainly felt like she needed it.
Despite once again being exhausted, most of her evening was spent tossing and turning. She couldn't get comfortable, and the itch that had started high on her shoulders was now bothering her lower back and legs. Any time she felt like she was about to drift off, she'd suddenly feel like she couldn't breathe, and would sit up in her bed, gasping for air.
At some point in the pre-dawn hours, Gwen was possessed by a feeling of terror and dread that practically suffocated her, and the strangest thought forced itself into her head.
She needed honey. Or black-current jam. Now. Or bad things would happen.
Heedless of how her limbs felt, Gwen got out of bed, threw open her door and raced down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she felt mere inches away from death.
Halfway down the stairs, she realized she'd suddenly forgotten her reason for leaving her bedroom in the first place. The urgent feeling had disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived.
Confused, and more than a little afraid of what was happening to her, she climbed back up the stairs with agonizing slowness and returned to her room.
Her brief sprint and sudden anxiousness made her even more tired than she already was, and she found herself unable to make it all the way to her bed, collapsing to the floor beside the door instead. Her heart, though racing mere moments ago, now felt as though it were barely beating at all.
She was deep asleep before she'd even finished moving.
If possible, the nightmares were even stronger this time around, with everything appearing bigger, moving faster, scenes rapidly shifting from place to place, disorienting her. For hours and hours she was eaten alive, cut into pieces, burned to cinders, and drowned. Eyes stared at her, and snarling lips pulled themselves back to reveal far too many rows of sharp, gleaming teeth. A pair of bright yellow vipers had somehow found a way inside her chest, and were desperately throwing themselves in every possible direction, trying to get out.
A loud knocking noise at her door jolted Gwen awake, and she could hear a young girl's fearful voice calling to her. She noticed it was morning.
She also noticed a dragon made entirely of shadows lurking by her dresser, and spiders the size of her hand roamed the stone walls of her bedroom.
Her nightmares had followed her into the real world.
The knock at her door came again, more insistently this time, and Gwen could make out the words 'feeling okay?'
Ignoring the shadow-dragon, which was now hissing at her and bleeding liquid fire out of both eyes, Gwen opened her mouth and tried to yell the words 'I'm fine, thank you.' A hoarse, apologetic wheeze was all that came out. She coughed several times before trying again, and heard herself half-scream the word 'fine!' at the door, her voice sounding more like a raven's than a young girl's.
She had to keep control, she realized. This was all just part of what was happening to her – just momentary torment she'd have to endure for a couple of days more. Rising slowly to her hands and knees from her spot on the cold floor, perspiration beading her brow and upper lip, Gwen forced herself to ignore the nightmarish apparitions in her bedroom and focus her thoughts.
It was morning, she figured, so the girl at the door had probably been bringing her breakfast. If that was the case, she needed to get rid of it.
Gwen half-crawled over to the door and reached up, gritting her teeth and doing her level best to ignore the fact that her ornate door handle was now a mass of writhing snakes. She grabbed it, twisted her wrist, and slowly pulled the door open.
A bowl of porridge sat there, roaches and other armoured bugs crawling all over it, chittering noisily. Beside it was a glass of bubbling blood.
That wasn't real, Gwen told herself. She'd been brought her breakfast, that was all. It wasn't a glass of blood, and those weren't bugs.
She steeled herself and reached out to take the shallow bowl in both hands, but when she did it felt like she couldn't close her hands all the way, like her fingers had fallen asleep. Still on her knees, she tried several times to pick up the bowl, doing her best to keep from getting upset or frustrated at how impossible that simple task seemed to her all of a sudden.
Eventually she opted to slide the bowl along the floor and into her bedroom. She made it almost five feet inside before the bottom of the bowl caught a groove in a rough bit of stone and sloshed half its contents onto the floor. Dozens of shiny black newts erupted from the slopped porridge and quickly scurried in all directions.
Gwen was too tired to be upset. She could deal with the mess later. Right now she was seeing things from her nightmares, so attempting to clean things up was kind of pointless anyway. The porridge was no longer outside her bedroom door, and she hadn't eaten any. That's what was important.
With agonizing slowness she crawled over to her bedside, pulling the sheets right off of her mattress so she might have something to wrap herself in. She did so, collapsed to the floor, and instantly began to shiver.
Her bedroom door was still open, she noticed, but she was suddenly too tired to care.
It didn't much matter if she kept her eyes opened or closed, the nightmarish things danced around before her regardless. She lay there, musing quietly that being exhausted actually seemed to be reasonable protection against things like nightmares. It was hard to become anxious about snakes and wolves and dragons if you were too tired to be properly scared of them.
Hours passed this way, her passively watching the horrific, macabre sights that were being offered up by her imagination. After a while, she realized she could hear some of the apparitions as well. One of them made a sound exactly like a girl's scream.
Eventually, she thought she could make out a gruff, angry voice spitting curses. She caught the word 'porridge', and another word that sounded like 'mess'.
Rough leather talons gripped her skin through the blanket and rolled her over, and Gwen tried to cry out. Now on her back, she opened her eyes halfway and blearily looked around her room.
It was dark. A marmot the size of a large dog was by the door, trembling. Standing above her was a sinister-looking black lion, with curls of fur poking out at odd angles, a tarnished crown perched crookedly on its brow.
Her father, she realized.
Gwen quickly tried to smile and say she was just feeling a little ill, but her voice didn't want to cooperate.
Eyes widening, the black lion turned into a growling bear, who then reached down and pulled away a corner of her toasty warm blanket. Immediately, a horde of spiders made up of ice and snow skittered over the stone floor and began biting her arm, the icy chill of their venom making her cry out in fear.
"Goddess! Her arms!" she heard her father's voice gasp. "You! Fetch Captain Anifail, at once!"
The marmot bowed and scurried away.
Cursing and muttering under its breath, the black bear wrapped the rest of the blanket around her and picked her up with its gloved paws, depositing her roughly atop her bed. It looked at the porridge on the floor, and then back to her.
"What in the name of the seven hells did you think you were doing?" her father's voice roared.
Gwen protested weakly, and tried to say she was fine... but she couldn't tell how successful her attempts were. Really, she just wanted to sleep... that's all she wanted to do right now. Sleep and rest.
She felt a hard slap across her face.
"No you don't!" Her father's voice snarled. "Anifail!"
"Highness?"
"The brat hasn't been eating – she's got that rash on her arms again! My study, desk drawer, bottom-left side! A leather pouch with red string around the top. Run!"
Gwen tried to shake her head, and managed a small whimper of objection. Then, she realized she was being shaken, and an angry voice was screaming at her to stay awake.
Before she knew it, rough hands were forcing Gwen's jaw open, and gloved fingers hooked into the corner of her mouth and pulled it to one side. A familiarly bitter, chalky taste flooded her senses, and she suddenly realized what it was they were putting in her cheek.
Urgently, she began thrashing around, biting at fingers, attempting to spit as much of the chi'darro out as she could. She heard a short hiss of surprise, and then a short time later, she heard the sound of a man screaming through violently clenched teeth. It sounded a lot like Anifail.
"Hold her still! We've got to get her to eat some of it!" her father shouted.
Cool water was poured onto her lips and face, and she suddenly found herself choking and gasping for breath, involuntarily swallowing some of the liquid that had been poured inside her cheek. Within moments there was a warmth in her stomach that began spreading up to her shoulders, and then slowly out to the rest of her.
The nightmarish visions slowly began to recede.
She'd failed.
"Okay. That should be enough," her father muttered. Then he turned his attention on her, looming over her as she lay on her bed, his face a mask of fury. "What in the name of all the gods did you think you were doing, Gwenwyn? You could have died, you stupid, stupid girl!"
A soft, agony-filled hissing through clenched teeth could be heard coming from her doorway. Bryn looked off to one side, and his brow furrowed.
"Right. Captain, let's go have a look at that hand. I've got something in my study that'll take the edge off, speed up the healing. You! Guards! Nobody in or out of here until I give the order. Got it?"
Without even sparing her a glance, the king left her bedside and exited the room.
The warm feeling she felt in her chest was growing stronger, and a euphoric bliss seemed to envelope her, promising happiness and warmth and safety.
Despite this pervasive sense of well-being, Gwen turned over onto her side and began weeping softly into her pillow.