Page 211 of Eldritch
I trailed my gaze to the right of me, where a familiar face offered a small bit of relief. Corwin, sitting beside a table where a woman in a long, black dress and feathers attended to a wound at his head. He gave a slight smile and waved, which I acknowledged with a nod as my eyes swept the room for Zevander and Aleysia, flicking over the blazing firepit at its center.
I spied them on the other side of it, where the two of them lay on wooden beds.
Motionless.
The moment I stepped toward them, an arm smacked against my chest on a hard crack. I let out a grunt, rubbing the spot where I’d been struck, and turned to see a woman, also bearing black feathers, with piles of fabric that made up the long, black dress she wore. Like that of the man beside me, a bird’s skull hung around her neck, amongst other various bones I couldn’tidentify. Claws dangled at her waist, clanking as she stepped in front of me. Atop her head sat what appeared to be a human skull, adorned with feathers, like some strange sort of crown.
“They are ill.” Her voice spilled like silk over iron—gentle yet hard and articulate.
“Who are you?” I growled back at her.
“The priestess of the Lyverian tribe,” Father said from behind, and I swung around to see him hobbling toward me on a single crutch, his entire leg wrapped in thick bandages that seeped blood.
My brows came together as I took in the state of him, pale and sickly, recalling the vyrmish that’d dragged him out of the church. “Father …”
“It’s all right. By the grace of our good god, I’m alive.” He waved toward the strange, feathered woman. “The priestess here, she has no ill intent.” His brows pulled tight, and he lowered his gaze. “They’ve determined Aleysia is infected.”
“Infected?” I tipped my head to get his attention, but he seemed reluctant to look at me. “By the plague?”
“Yes.” He dared to look up, staring past me toward where she lay. “There’s a mass on her flank there. It grows inside of her.”
“She’s traveled for days with us. She’s…been herself for the most part.”
“That is a testament to her strength. And yet, the plague continues to feed on her from the inside.” The priestess glided toward one of the bowed shelves, and two of the men with spears quickly crossed the room and knelt low in front of her, their foreheads pressed to the floor. She stepped up onto their backs and swiped one of the apothecary jars from the shelf.
“So…what do you intend to do? Kill her?” Hands fisted at my sides, I surged forward. “Because I’ll kill you, if you so much as?—”
“Quiet yourself,” she snapped. She sauntered back toward me, her steps more of a glide, and reached out for my gloved hand that I quickly drew back. Wearing a look of indignity, she reached again, snatching it up before I had a chance to draw back again, and with it in her grasp, she twisted it, studying it. “A rider’s glove.”
“Rider?”
“Of dragons.” Carefully running her finger over the vein that Aleysia had cut herself on, she smiled. “We’ve not seen one for centuries.”
Allura, the bone scribe I’d met in Aethyria, had told me only those who’d lost their senses would attempt to mount a dragon.
As much as I didn’t particularly care for the woman on first impression, she certainly knew how to stoke my curiosity. “I didn’t think that was possible. How?”
“In time. First, we must exorcise your sister.”
“Exorcise. You are not going to even attempt?—”
“Maeve, it’s all right.” Father placed a firm hand on my shoulder and gave a slight squeeze. “She does not mean it in the same sense as Sacton Crain.”
“You will not speak his blasphemous name in my house again.” The woman’s lips twisted with disgust.
Father lowered his head. “My apologies, Priestess.” He turned his attention toward me. “They are going to attempt to remove the infection.”
“How? Is that possible?”
The priestess waved a hand and spun away from me, her dress flowing behind her. “It is the will of Morsana. Not mine. Not yours. If she has no use for her, she will return her.”
“Return her?” I rounded the cauldron after her, in which something bubbled around bones sticking up over the top of it. “What does that mean?”
“Maevyth, you must trust her,” Father urged behind me. “Aleysia will die, otherwise. She will become one of those repulsive monsters.”
“Trust her? I don’t even know her!” A shock of pain struck my temples, and I screwed my eyes shut, wincing at the throbbing ache. As I stood alongside my sister’s bed, I noted the easy rise and fall of her chest. “Morsana is death. Will Aleysia die?”
“From death, we rise.”
