Acid? A blowtorch?
She cried out in pity and despair.
The gentle hands caught her, guiding her down. The soft voices soothed her. “Rest now, you’re safe….”
Chapter Two
Slowly, the burning heat faded. The dreams receded.
Brit woke weak and exhausted. She found herself in a large wooden room, bare rafters overhead. The windows were small and set high up. Thin daylight bled in through them. Very carefully she turned her head.
She saw a big, round-bodied stove in the center of the room, the chimney rising through the rafters above. And a pair of long, plain benches on either side of a plank table made of whitish wood—a deal table, she would have bet. Deal was the pale wood that came from the Norway spruce. There were oil lamps set in sconces on the walls. She lay on a bench-like bed built into one wall. Her blankets? A nest of furs. Someone had dressed her in a soft cotton nightgown.
There was a woman—a slim, straight-backed woman with white hair. She wore a thick, coarsely woven ankle-length tan dress and good-quality rough-terrain lace-up boots. She sat on a high stool at the far end of the room, her back to Brit. She was working at something that looked as if it might be an old-fashioned loom.
Brit licked her dry, cracked lips. Was this real? Was this actually happening? Or was it just another of her endless, swirling dreams?
She sat up. Her shoulder throbbed, her stomach lurched and her head spun, but she didn’t lie back down. “Valbrand?” she managed to croak out through her parched throat. “Eric Greyfell…?”
The woman rose and came to her. “There, there. It’s all right. You’re safe.”
She remembered that kind, wrinkled face, those loving eyes. “I… I know you. You took care of me.”
“You’ve been very ill,” the woman said as she guided Brit back down and tucked the furs around her again. “We feared we’d lose you. But you’re strong. You will recover.”
It came back to her then: the Skyhawk, the forced landing, the death of her guide. “Rutland… my guide?” Maybe that part—the part where she saw the guide dead—was only another of the fever dreams.
The kind-faced old woman shook her head. “What can be done has been done.”
“But I…”
The woman had already turned away. She went to the stove, dipped up liquid from an iron pot with a wooden cup. Cup in hand, she returned to Brit’s side. “Your guide’s body was sent to his family in the valley just south of this one.”
So. That part was real. Twin tears dribbled down the sides of her face. “My fault…”
“No. What fate has decreed, no mere mortal can alter.”
“It wasn’t fate, it was my own arrogance, my own certainty that I could—”
“Here.” The woman bent close again, lifted Brit’s head and put the cup to her lips. “Drink. This will soothe you.”
“But I—”
“Drink.”
Brit lacked the energy to argue further. She drank. The warm, sweet liquid felt good sliding down her dry throat.
“There,” said the woman. She set the empty cup on the floor. It must have tipped. Brit heard it roll beneath the wooden ledge that served as her bed. The woman ignored it long enough to carefully smooth Brit’s furs again. “Rest now.” She dropped out of sight as she got down to reach under the bed. In a moment, with a weary little grunt, she was on her feet, cup in hand. She started to turn.
“Wait…” The old woman faced her again, one gray brow arched. “My brother. I want to see him.”
The woman shook her head. “Princess, you know that your brothers are gone.”
“Kylan, yes.” Kylan was the second born. He had died years and years ago, when he was only a child. “But not Valbrand. I saw him. In this room, while I was so sick. His face, the left side, it was… badly scarred.”
There was a short silence. The fire crackled in the stove. Then the woman said, “A dream, that’s all. A dream brought on by your fever.”
“No, he was here. He—”
“Prince Valbrand is dead, Your Highness. Lost to us. Surely you knew. He was taken by the mother sea a year ago this past July.” The woman spoke so tenderly, with such sincere sympathy.
Brit opened her mouth to argue further, but then the woman leaned close again. A silver medallion dangled from her neck. It must have swung free of her dress when she bent for the cup. Brit couldn’t resist reaching out and touching it. It spun a little on its chain, catching the firelight. The sight made Brit smile.
The woman smiled, too, the web of wrinkles in her face etching all the deeper. “My marriage medallion.”
Marriage? Brit frowned. And then she sighed. “I have one, too.” Brit pressed the place where her medallion lay beneath the nightgown, warm against her breast. “From Medwyn, my father’s grand counselor. But mine’s only for luck.”
“Ah,” said the woman, a strange and too-knowing expression on her wise, very lived-in face. “Sleep now.”
Brit did feel tired. But she had so many questions. “Where am I?”
“You are where you wished to be, among the ones they call the Mystics.”
“How long have I been… sick?”
“This is the fourth day.”
Her plane had gone down on Monday. “Thursday? It’s Thursday?”
“Yes.”
“How did I—?”
“Eric found you. He brought you to us.”
Hope bloomed, a small, bright flame, within her. “Greyfell found me—in Drakveden Fjord?”
“That’s right.”
“But then, it must be true.” The woman frowned down at her, clearly puzzled. “I saw him—Eric Greyfell—in Drakveden Fjord, where I crashed the Skyhawk. Valbrand was with him, I swear he was. Wearing a black mask. And there was this guy with a crossbow…” She laid her hand over the thick bandage on her shoulder. “Someone shot him before he could—”
“Hush.” The woman’s warm wrinkled hand stroked her brow. “No more questions now. Sleep.”
“My father. My mother and my sisters… they’ll be so worried….”
“Word has been sent to the king that you are safe with us.”
The questions spun in her brain. She needed the answers. But the woman was right. There were too many to ask right now. She could barely keep her eyes open.
“Sleep,” the woman whispered. Something about her was so familiar.
“Please… your name?”
“I’m Asta. Medwyn’s sister. Eric’s aunt.”
So, Brit thought. Medwyn’s sister. She should have known, of course. Medwyn had told her of Asta, and she could see the resemblance around the eyes and in the shape of the mouth. “Asta.” It was pronounced with the As like twin sighs: Ahstah. “It’s a pretty name.”
“Thank you, Your Highness. Now sleep.”
“Yes. All right. I will. Sleep…”
* * *
Brit heard the playful giggle of a child. She opened her eyes in time to watch a mop of shiny blond curls disappear over the side of the sleeping bench.
A