Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [85]
Klava brightened. “Oh! I did! The Law of Contagion! That which once touched always touches! My magical abilities are not strong, but perhaps they will be enough!”
Katya nodded, decisively. “There, we all have important jobs. Since I can sense him, I will keep watch for the Jinn and warn you when he returns to the castle. And then—find the bottle and I can read it and tell you the Jinn’s name if it is there.”
Sasha drifted off to sleep feeling monumentally better. A good bath, a good meal, and the ministrations to his multiple bruises by—
No, not a comely wench, which he was just as happy about. A competent young fellow who seemed more than happy to rub some sort of pine-smelling green goo all over him in a very impersonal manner. Whatever it was, it worked wonders. He stopped aching and fell asleep immediately without really paying attention to his surroundings.
But when he woke up again, clearheaded, he wondered with a shock if he had been drugged, precisely because he had been so incurious. He couldn’t even remember what the bed looked like, much less the room….
Well the former was easily remedied; from the feel, it was a good featherbed, and there was a feather comforter over him, which was just as well as he was stark naked. He remembered getting undressed, but he didn’t remember getting into bed….
And there was a moment of panic as he made sure that he was alone in that bed.
The repercussions of bedding a supernatural creature were ones he really didn’t want to contemplate, and just about everything down here was probably magical or supernatural in one way or another.
The repercussions were especially critical since he had already pledged himself to another magical creature. Traditionally speaking…that was a recipe for disaster.
But he was alone and there was no sign that he had ever been anything but alone in this bed. One worry dealt with.
The bed was curtained; another good thing. He rolled over to the side, noting as he did so that although he still ached it was distantly, as if the bruises were a week, rather than a day, old. He parted the curtains slightly.
The room beyond was lit, dimly, by a single glowing globe in a sconce fastened to the rock wall. He couldn’t tell just what was in that globe that made it glow. A candle? An oil lamp? Something magical? A fire-bird feather? There was no way to tell. It didn’t flicker as a candle flame would, though. That in itself was interesting.
It wasn’t a large room, but it was luxurious by his standards. Just about everything seemed to be beautifully carved of stone. He had never seen such artistry in his life; it wasn’t that the carving was elaborate, because it wasn’t. It was that it was so very perfect. Every flowing line, the polish—perfect.
What wasn’t stone was metal, copper in fact, just as most of the stone was malachite, and the metal was as exquisitely wrought as the stone.
There was a stone bench and two copper chairs, a stone chest, a small stone table beside the bed, which itself was made, he now saw, of stone.
There were, of course, no windows. But there was a huge, highly polished, copper mirror. And on either side of the mirror, two narrow beaded hangings like the one in the throne room, but smaller. Each one showed half of the mountain.
The air felt slightly chilly, but there was no fire…but of course there was no fire. How could anyone get a chimney to reach down here? And you really didn’t need a fire, the temperature in a cave was always the same. But it would make those featherbeds and comforters and blankets a necessity.
He parted the curtains a bit more, noting that they were heavy velvet. Very luxurious. Either he was a most honored guest or the Queen was wealthy enough to supply even her flunkies with this sort of luxury.
Then again…this was a woman with a malachite throne….
There seemed to be a neatly folded pile of clothing on the bench. He slipped cautiously and quietly out of bed, and eased silently to the bench. For some reason—and he was not sure why—he didn’t want the “assistance” of any more of the Queen’s attendants.