Gwenhwyfar_ The White Spirit - Mercedes Lackey [61]
The whole castle seemed frozen, plunged into an unhealthy sleep. And there were no normal night sounds at all: no insects, no owls, not even a bat overhead. There were night noises in the far, far distance, but nothing near.
The whispering grew more urgent, and there were definitely two voices in it. Then one made a wordless cry of triumph, which was mingled by the squall of a cat, swiftly cut off in a gurgle—
And suddenly, Gwen found she could move.
She snatched up her blanket and rug and ran, without thinking, blindly, and in pure panic. She didn’t know where she was going, and she didn’t even know how she got there when she came to herself again in Dai’s stall, with the stallion sleepily whuffling her hair.
She cast her rug and blanket down and huddled in them, still shaking with fear, and remained there until morning. At some point she must have fallen asleep, for after a timeless age of mindless terror, she found herself awakened by the sound of ordinary voices.
She was roused by the other squires coming to feed their charges; no one commented on her sleeping in Dai’s stall, but it was not unusual for squires to do so, if a horse was restless or acting a little “off.” So she shook the straw out of her clothing, attended to Adara and Dai, and then shuffled back to the castle, still feeling horribly ill. Bronwyn immediately intercepted her at the door.
To her shock, Bronwyn looked just as ill as she felt—but there was an air of triumph about her. “Drink this,” the old woman commanded, shoving a beaker at her. It was something pungently herbal and very nasty, but it immediately made her feel better. When she gave the beaker back to Bronwyn, the old woman grasped her chin and made her look up, into her eyes.
“Aye, you felt it,” she declared grimly. “There was dark magic last night, and this morn, there’s a black cock missing from the hen roost, a black rabbit from the hutch, and a black kitten from the stable. But look yon—” she jerked her chin at the high table, where Gwen saw with astonishment that Anna Morgause and Morgana were picking at breakfast. Astonishment because they looked—common. There was nothing of the enchanting queen and her bewitching sister about them this morning.
The Queen of the Orkneys was wan, her cheeks sallow and waxen, her hair and eyes dull. Morgana was plain, and she could hardly even manage to nibble at a bit of bread and honey.
“It was them, for nought else would have rebounded on our protections on the king. What they did came back on them,” Bronwyn said with angry triumph. “Let this be a lesson in magic to you—what you try can be cast back on you, and you’ll suffer for it if it does.”
Gwen nodded and rubbed her head. It still ached a bit, but it looked as if the Orkney pair had heads that ached much worse.
“I’ve told your masters that you’re ill and got you leave to sleep off what I gave you,” Bronwyn continued, and gave her a little push toward the huddle on the women’s side of the hall, where she could see Gynath’s blonde hair among the sleeping women, several others, at rough count.
“Why—” Gwen began. She meant to ask, why did you know I would be ill? But she never got that far.
“I reckoned, given all in all, you’d be sick too.” Bronwyn did not explain herself, and after another moment, Gwen felt a heavy lassitude creep over her that smothered all curiosity. She stumbled toward a pallet, pulled a corner of blanket over her head, and slept till nightfall.
And when she woke, she learned that the queen and her sister had taken to their beds to be nursed, struck down by the “mysterious” illness that seemed to have struck so many of the women. The men did not ask about it—but then, that was hardly surprising.
“. . . we will be grieved to see you go, my lady,” the king said politely, but in tones of indifference that brought that flash of annoyance into Anna Morgause’s eyes before she swiftly covered it. She and Morgana were long back to their enchanting selves, and whatever safer ploys they had tried to bewitch the king had also failed so much