Senses bristling and alert, Elthwen crouched on the steps in the cramped and darkened space below the floor. Time dragged on; anticipation grated on her nerves. Not even Gamba’s closeness could relieve her unsettling thoughts or the prickly sensations crawling over her skin. The impulse to scream, to say something…anything…took all her will to control.
During those moments when the room above echoed with sounds of terror, had Gamba not clamped his hand over her mouth and pulled her hard against his chest, surely she would have cried out.
Then all fell into an eerie stillness, the room having been abandoned. Even then, she dared not move.
When at last the false floor slid back and the drab light of a horn lantern filled their hiding place, Glaer responded with a feeble quiver.
“They are gone.” Nirie, her voice pinched, stooped at the top of the steps, her blood-streaked face revealing a depth of sorrow and weariness. “Now you must leave. You can’t protect both us and her…and we are beyond hurt now.” Convulsed with tears, she struggled to hold up her lamp. “He killed her…Myrwethen….That animal, Loknar…. He cut her throat like a lamb at sacrifice.”
Elthwen wriggled free of Gamba’s protective embrace and fixed her attention on Nirie. Awareness of what had happened sent an uncontrollable rage trembling through her. Her aunt died shielding her and Gamba with her silence.
“Loknar, you say?” Gamba rose stiffly holding Glaer aloft, her light pale and sputtering. On weakened legs, Elthwen followed him past the weeping woman.
“It was a good death.” Nirie scrambled to her feet, mopping away her tears with a sleeve. “She died quickly.”
The high priestess lay ashen and lifeless on the table at the end of the room, hands folded over her breast. One of the armored ghalthwen had fallen in a heap, dead perhaps from shock or simply unconscious from distress, she couldn’t determine. Two of her keening sisters knelt on either side. Others cowered in small groups, clutching each other, their bodies racked with sobbing. Only the aged Arenth and her daughter Nirie appeared to maintain any semblance of wits about them. As Arenth scurried around the room ministering to the others, Nirie, and Gamba conversed in a far corner.
As if mired in a nightmare and all she had to do was open her eyes, Elthwen tried to shake the surrounding chaos from her mind. None of it was real. It could not be. Yet the stark reality refused to be dislodged. Unable to avert her eyes from the appalling sight, Elthwen gazed in dark fascination at the still bleeding corpse of her aunt. A surge of nausea rose in her throat. The bleeding corpse might have been hers had Myrwethen not played her deadly game with Loknar.
A woman’s voice filtered through the jumble that had seized her thoughts. “Come away, child.” Nirie slipped her arm around Elthwen’s shoulders and drew her to her side while two women covered the high priestess’s body with a coarse blanket.
Fighting back the churning bile, unable to give voice to her confusion, Elthwen allowed the woman to lead her gently across the room.
Gamba regarded her with a bleak expression. “We must go now.”
Tears stung her eyes. “Elthric did nothing.” She had not seen him, had not heard him speak, but she had felt her brother’s presence in the room. “He did nothing.”
Gamba took her firmly by the elbow. “Your brother is not to blame for this.”
“How could he have watched this happen and do nothing?”
Her grandfather regarded her closely. “It is done. Nothing can undo it. Now we must leave here.”
“ Leave…?”
“We go to Elyndrus, to seek Aldain’s protection.” He added with a deep sigh, “I fear it will be a long journey with an uncertain end.” He shook his head. “I did not foresee this.”