Anna von Wessen (24 page)

XXIV:

Blood

S
he lay in her chamber for a long while, thinking of Vaya; and she could not dispel the thought, that she was one of but a few in all the world who knew the truth of her. The fact engendered even more sticking thoughts, all of which worked to demolish everything she had
thought
she knew of her. She was very preoccupied with the task of constructing, all from very small and fragile pieces, this unknown individual, for long hours ere finally she managed to fall asleep. But the sleep did not last long; for she was roused by a visitation of hunger, the demanding and painful likes of which she had never known before. She was coated all over with thick, slippery sweat; flushes of heat darted across her frigid skin like arrows tipped with red-hot iron; her frozen heart was keeping up a steady pounding, now. Her eyes seemed nearly useless in the black chamber.

She bolted out of bed, and flew to light a lamp. As she reached to execute the motion, however, she noticed something more alarming than anything she had endured so far. She stood with a pained expression, looking down at the backs of her white hands, which were covered with dark, coarse hair.

For a little she was utterly bemused and discombobulated, and quite unable to begin any ratiocination of any kind. But after a time she began to calm herself, and stood in the circle of lamplight beside the bed, only concentrating on the newness of her breath. She held up a hand before her face, and felt the warm moisture surge over her skin. Frightened as she was, nevertheless the sensation was thrilling – for it made her feel
alive.
It was a feeling she had never known, one that she relinquished too young to recall.

But even the positive emotions were quick to wear away; for her attention was recaptured by the strange black hair. The sight of it made her stomach turn. She rubbed it ruthlessly; she tore it; but it would not leave her. Her efforts remained no less than desperate for several minutes – but after that short period of time, her hunger came again to call, and she found herself quite suddenly in the kitchens, having shifted without realising it.

She shielded her eyes from the bright light, and cast a quick glance about the great pair of shining rooms. The cleaning was done; and but a single servant occupied the vast space. After a moment he caught sight of her, and with a very timid countenance moved towards her, to offer her a plate of food which had been left under a silver cover. She hid her hairy hands behind her back, and nodded to indicate that the servant should set the plate upon the counter.

“Thank you,” she said. “Please leave me now.”

The servant hurried speedily away, and Anna was left looking down at the plate, which was full of red flesh. She sniffed it; brought a little to her mouth; but simply could not eat it. She went instead to the great cold-case where the servants’ food was kept, and extracted from it a large portion of beef. Again she sniffed, and found this time that she was only made more ravenous by the smell. She took a piece in her mouth, and chewed it for a long moment, tasting it. But this experiment proved too torturous for her hunger; and before she knew it, she had devoured some pounds of the stuff.

Finally she was sated. She returned to her chamber, trying very hard to still the thick cyclone of swirling thoughts which filled her mind, so that she might go for a little back to sleep, and forget quite everything till the arrival of the new day.

When she lay down upon her bed, she was pleased to find that her sickness had abated. With the hunger had gone the burning of her skin, the hair
upon
the skin, and the beating of her heart. She could even see a little more clearly, now.

She profited very little, however, from this latter improvement; for the moment she laid herself down, her eyes slid shut, and did not open themselves again. Yet still she saw something, something there in the darkness behind her lids. It seemed far away, at first; but then it moved nearer, and came clearer and clearer into focus, till she realised finally that she looked upon the face of Vaya Eleria. It had naught to do with what Anna had learnt of her that night; for all that was presently vanished, and hiding in some place where Anna could not see it. She only lay in a sort of half-
slumber, watching as the face swam to and fro. Sometimes it smiled; and sometimes it frowned. It remained locked behind Anna’s eyes, all the time until she fell completely asleep. But this sleep was very deep; she had no will left to wonder; and she knew nothing more for a considerable length of time.

~

When she woke, it was only to see Greyson, kneeling upon the floor beside the bed, with his face  merely an inch or two from her own.

“Good morning!” he chirped. “How did you sleep? It seemed to me you slept well.”

“Seemed to
you?
”

“I’ve been here for a while.”

“And how long is that?”

“An hour or so.”

“For goodness’ sake, Greyson! That’s not a normal thing to do, you know.”

“It isn’t?”

“It isn’t.”

“Ah! Well, then, I suppose I shan’t do it anymore. But it was so very nice, to see you sleeping so peacefully! I’ve worried over you, you know, these past few days.”

Anna turned her face from him, and went across the chamber, as if she were searching for something. “Why would you say that?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. You’ve only seemed a little odd. And then, last night – well, in the dining hall, you know. It only seemed odd!”

“And all this,” Anna muttered, “from King Odd himself. Tell me, King Odd – how do you diagnose me?”

“In that case you should call me Doctor Odd. But, semantics aside – I deem you frazzled, Anna von Wessen, and very overtired!” He peered into her face, and cocked his messy head to one side. “By the way,” he added, “have you talked any more with Vaya Eleria?”

“And why would I have done that?”

“Ah!” he exclaimed, as he bounced up and down on his small feet, and pointed with a thin, pale finger. “You have, you have!”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But I know it just the same!”

“Oh – begone with you, Greyson!”

He stopped his bouncing, and looked very seriously at Anna. “Do you think,” he said, “that you and Vaya Eleria will come to be friends?”

“How could I know that, Greyson?”

“If you did not want to be her friend,” said he, perhaps more sobre now than Anna had ever seen him (save only for the night upon which he woke Vaya), “then you would have answered differently.”

“Would I, now?”

“You would, now.” He paused; and then, as if he had only just recollected it: “Remember, too, how you told me you would inform me, at the precise moment when you changed your mind?”

“Changed my mind about what?”

“About Vaya Eleria!”

“I recall nothing, to begin with, about any ‘precise moment.’ Perhaps I agreed to tell you when my acrimony had subsided; and for all that I tell you it has.”

“Ah!” Greyson clapped his hands together, and smiled brightly. “It has!”

Anna laughed, here, and went to tousle his hair. “Go now!” she said. “I need to dress.”

He grinned very cheerfully, and shifted away.

~

Anna went alone down to the weapons room, where she intended to take a bolt-gun, and proceed out into the grounds to fire it – repeatedly. When she came through the doorway, however, she saw that the place was not empty. Vaya Eleria was positioned at the opposite end of the chamber, with a goodly number of thick wooden poles propped up on the floor, so that they each stood six feet tall. The top of each, apparently, represented the head of some loathed individual – for Vaya was springing this way and that with her sword, and chopping the tops off of all the poles, with motions so fluid and deft, and a speed so impossible, that it was difficult even to see exactly where she was, at any given moment.

Anna stood watching her for a little. After a time, though, she spoke her name; and Vaya ceased immediately with her violent project, to turn and look after the source of the sound. She spoke nothing at first, but began moving away from the demolished poles, and towards the doorway where Anna stood. After what had passed the night before, Anna knew not what to expect; knew, in fact, hardly at all what to say. So she said, “Good morning.” But then she looked to the windows; saw the sun already sinking down below the fiery clouds; and corrected herself by adding, “Good evening, rather.”

“And a good evening to you,” said Vaya, taking the hilt of her sword in both hands, pressing the blade to the floor, and leaning her weight upon it. She watched Anna for a very long time before asking, “What brings you here?”

Anna pointed towards the wall, where all the bolt-guns were hung. “I am come for one of those,” she said.

“Do you wish to fire at something?” Vaya asked with a smile.

“It would do me no harm today, I assure you.”

“Your day has gone so well?”

They were quiet for a moment; but then they both began to laugh.

“Actually,” said Anna, “my day has not gone as much of anything. I’ve slept all through it.”

“That’s a good thing, I think,” replied Vaya. “You looked very tired last night.”

“The second person to tell me so! And what does that mean, I wonder – to look tired? Do I appear so terrible to all of you?”

She meant not to let this bit of raw emotion creep into her voice; but all in an instant, it seemed, she realised how very tired she truly
was.
She put a hand to her face, and found that it trembled. She hid it quickly away, almost afraid that it should be covered again in black hair – and that Vaya should see it. But the remembrance of the stuff only served to upset her further, and soon she was leaning back against the wall, doing quite everything she could to quell the breath that was attempting to rise.

“I meant that not at all,” said Vaya. “I think, on the other hand, that you look very lovely. I daresay no lack of sleep could change that.”

Anna looked at her cautiously.

“Anyway,” said Vaya; “you came here to vent a measure of your frustration, it seems. So why not have a little duel with me?” She laughed, and added, “Though I hope I won’t have to tell anyone that I’ve injured you.”

“Did Ephram ask you?”

“He did. I confirmed the story you gave him.”

“Thank you, Vaya.”

“You needn’t thank me.”

“Well, anyway – you shan’t have to worry over it again. Next time I skewer myself, I’ll tell the full truth of it.”

She stopped here, and narrowed her eyes at the floor. Why had she said that?

“Skewer yourself?” repeated Vaya. “You hurt
yourself
yesterday?”

“Yes,” Anna said shortly.

“How?”

“With my sword. It’s no matter.”

“Then why could you not tell my father?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Anna cried.

“All right,” Vaya said slowly. “All right, Anna. I apologise. It’s none of my concern, anyway.”

“Certainly it’s not.”

“All right!”

Anna fell back once more against the wall, and turned her eyes towards the high ceiling. “I’m sorry, Vaya,” she said. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me today.”

“Probably you do,” said Vaya. “But if you don’t wish to tell me, that’s your right.”

“Thank you.”

“How about that duel, then?”

Anna assented, and went to take up a sword. She and Vaya moved to the middle of the floor, and then began a series of blows and parries. But it was not long into it, that Anna felt her heart begin to beat again – more quickly, now, than it had ever done before. The warm air came short and sharp into her cold lungs, piercing like a thousand knives, and catching in her throat.

“Avast!” she cried. “Half a moment!” 

She fell back from Vaya, slammed a hand against her chest, and toppled down to the floor.

“Anna!”

Vaya came to kneel beside her. She looked down inquiringly, but said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Anna said to her. “Really I am, Vaya. I don’t know – I don’t know what’s . . .”

“You don’t know what’s wrong.”

“No.”

Vaya looked hard into her face. “It’s strange,” she said quietly. “You look almost as if you were . . . out of breath! Silly as that sounds, of course. And it seems like you’re –”

She put a hand to Anna’s face, to feel at the viscid forehead with her fingertips. “It seems almost like you’re sweating,” she said.

Her expression changed, then, from simply thoughtful, to discomfortingly piercing. First she took a look all around, as if ascertaining whether others were nearby; and then her eyes probed Anna’s once more. “Pray tell me the truth, Anna,” she said.

“The truth?” Anna rejoined defensively. “The truth about what? I’ve no truth to tell.”

“Then let me help you up, at least.”

Anna nodded; for still her chest ached terribly, and her legs felt as if they were made, for the moment, of nothing but gelatin. Vaya’s arms circled strong round her waist, and lifted her effortlessly.

They stood for a moment upon the scuffed and dirty floor, both their sets of eyes cast downwards, and absolutely silent. Anna remarked nothing about it; but still Vaya’s arms had not released her.

Their eyes rose, it seemed, at the very same moment. Each looked long into the other’s face, as if wondering at something that she saw there.

“Might I tell you something, Anna?” Vaya asked softly.

“I’m not entirely sure that’s a good idea.”

“What does it matter?”

“It matters,” said Anna, as she pressed her hand gently to the side of Vaya’s face. “It matters very much, Vaya. You should be careful of me, I think.”

She tried to pull away; but strength was not hers this day, and there was no surpassing Vaya.

“You’re leaving?” Vaya asked.

“I must.”

“But why?”

“I simply must!”

She leant forward quickly, and pressed her lips to Vaya’s smooth cheek. Then she shifted away.

As she went, though, she experienced something that she had never experienced before; and this time it had naught to do with heartbeats or hair. When she tried to shift to her chamber, there occurred a strange stutter in the motion, and she came up some corridors shy of her goal. Worse yet, she stood in the very one where Valo’s chamber was situated. She saw him leaning against the jamb of his own doorway, where somehow Ari had come to be also. Valo was looking down into her face, and murmuring to her.

Anna attempted, again, to shift away; but found that she could not. So she turned, then, merely to creep off down the hall. But Valo’s ears caught the sound, and he whirled to face her.

“Anna!” he cried.

Anna kept on without looking back at him; but in an instant he was before her.

“I suppose you can’t bear to stay and talk to me? I suppose it would be much too unpleasant for you – wouldn’t it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Valo. I only have somewhere to go.”

“Somewhere to go! Ah, but Anna von Wessen always has somewhere to go! Always somewhere to be; and never any time for me.”

“You’re being silly, Valo.”

“Am I?”

Anna looked round his high shoulder, and caught a glimpse of Ari, smirking at her through the shadows that separated them. “Why don’t you go on?” she shouted. “This is none of your affair.”

Ari made not a move, but merely kept her place, with her arms crossed confidently over her chest, and her putrid little white lips still smirking, smirking.

“Go!” Valo screamed at her. “Get on with you!”

Ari’s face fell; and she was gone in a moment.

Before Anna could even turn her face properly back to Valo, he reached out, and began to shake her.

“What are you doing?” she hollered, as she pushed with all her might against his heavy hands. “What is the matter with you?”

“Oh, I hate you!” he shrieked, as his grip grew tighter upon her arms. “I hate you, Anna! All this time I’ve loved you – but now I hate you, just as you hate me!
I despise you!”

“Stop it, Valo! I don’t hate you. I don’t – won’t you just let go . . .?”

She tried to fight him away; but her strength, already taxed by her brief duel with Vaya, was now entirely sapped. Valo smiled horribly, when he realised finally that she could not defend herself from him.

“Not so strong as everyone thinks you are – are you, Anna? Not so perfect, eh?”

He threw her into the wall, where she collided with such force, that a partial outline of her body was smashed into the stone. She crouched for a moment on the floor, looking up at him. He advanced with the blank countenance of a maniac; extended his hands towards her throat; and began once more a fit of shaking.

She pushed out again, and managed this time to put a foot or so of space between them. She struck the wall with a loud curse; her shirt rode up on her stomach; and the brilliant blade of her dagger was exposed.

Valo’s eyes seemed almost to glint, in the harsh silver glare of torchlight upon metal. He snatched the dagger from Anna’s belt, and in a fearsome frenzy, flew forward to pierce her breast.

Anna closed her eyes; for she was almost sure that she would die. But they snapped open again, when the blade entered her skin some inches off the mark. It was painful, yes – but not lethal.

Looking up at Valo, and wondering what could have caused him to miss the blow, she was rendered astonished. Valo was no more hovering over her, but was, rather, prostrate upon the floor, with his sharp teeth gnashing, and a boot to his throat.

Anna’s eyes followed the boot to the leg; and the leg, up and up, all the way to the face. Vaya Eleria stood in the midst of the flame and shadow which filled the corridor, hissing viciously, and crushing her brother’s neck with her foot.

She kept this activity up not very long, however, before her eyes shifted to Anna, and she flew to her, leaving Valo moaning upon the floor.

“Anna! Anna, are you all right?”

Anna looked for a long moment into her face. She reached, very briefly, for her hand; but was interrupted by a fierce pain starting up in her chest, where her own dagger had cut her. She wrenched the blade loose, and felt a warm dripping along the skin beneath her shirt. Pressing her hand, then, to the wound – and casting a last miserable glance into Vaya’s black eyes – she shifted from the spot, and this time suffered no obstructions in her path.

She went to her chamber, took a single item up in her hand, and then absconded again just as quickly as she could manage. After a moment of whirling, humming blackness, she found herself in the midst of the forest. She wandered for a little, flitting from one place to the next, till she came to a small clearing in the heart of the thick tangle, where the overhead canopy gave way, and the starlight sifted itself down to the ground.

She fell upon her knees in the dirt, and looked upwards into the clear white light of the black velvet vault. Her thoughts were naught but a spotty welter which rolled slowly through the confines of her skull, till her head ached and her eyes crossed. But after a while she managed to shake them away, and began with the business which it had been her first intention to complete, upon venturing into the lonely wood.

She started a little fire just in front of her, and laid open her shirt. She viewed the wound for long seconds, having of course expected something of what she saw; but perhaps not exactly as she saw it. She was, at any rate, half-crazed with fear, as she ripped a length of cloth from her sleeve, and fell to stanching the affected spot.

Probably she kept up this office for a number of hours, as the spotty welter continued to roll, and the white light continued to sift down from the vault – though now hardly to any of her own notice. Finally she considered herself obliged to remove the cloth; whereupon she saw only more of what had displeased her so greatly already.

The wound was some three inches long, and had been parted slightly by her blade’s serrated edge, to form a crooked opening which she could not seem to close. Trickling from it steadily was a thin flow of hot liquid. It had begun as a thick, cold gel, but had deliquesced rapidly. The stuff was nothing, now, like the brown secretion which had started up the last time. Rather, it seemed quite a lot like blood. It ran red and slick, and was possessive of a distinct coppery odour.

Presently she took up that single item which she had removed from her chamber. A moment later and she could be seen, by enemies or harmless creatures alike which may or may not have lurked in the darkness beyond the ring of firelight, holding a cast-iron poker over the flames; heating it to a fierce orange glow; and pressing it to her wound, which flowed like the bloody Nile all down the pale white skin of her chest. Just as soon as she deemed herself able to remove it, she tossed the poker away, and clapped a hand over her mouth to suppress a scream. Quite naturally (and mostly due to those aforementioned enemies, which may or may not have lurked), she had planned only to stay for a very short while in the forest, while she saw to the business just explained. But scarcely had the poker flown across the clearing, and stricken down a narrow tree in the fierceness of its flight, before she slid like a mass of shedding snake skin down to the ground, and fainted away.