The Druid Queen - Douglas Niles [2]
It seemed to the woman that her husband had never looked so old. She noticed that the tint of gray in his hair had grown to an entire fringe. His beard remained full, but even more gray than his once chestnut-colored hair. His dark eyes still blazed with grim determination, but now a hint of despair lurked within them.
It was a despair that Robyn could well understand. Like King Tristan, the queen sagged wearily, and her face was drawn and pallid. Her long hair had lost none of its inky blackness, but now it lay carelessly across her shoulders, uncombed and lacking its usual luster.
The man and woman, High King and High Queen of the Ffolk and the Moonshaes, sat down together on the couch, neither quite ready to return to bed. The great moorhound, Ranthal, rested at their feet, large ears pricked upward to catch any sign of distress or danger, as if the dog, too, sensed that these minutes of nocturnal peace were too rare, too precious to consign them to sleep.
Scarcely a week following their triumphant return to Corwell, fresh from a daring rescue of the imprisoned king, the royal pair had no concerns other than the health of their daughter Deirdre. During the daytime, the young princess lay awake, weak and exhausted from a sleep without rest. Deirdre had little appetite, nor did she ever seem to feel thirst. Indeed, if Robyn did not force her to drink and to eat a few crumbs, she feared that her daughter would take no sustenance at all.
Yet these bleak days were nothing, it seemed, when compared to the nights. Deirdre regarded the approaching sunset with apprehension that steadily built into terror. For hours, she would lie awake, sometimes talking to her sister or one of her parents. On other occasions, she grew shrill and irrational, demanding that her visitor leave, screaming and writhing in apparent agony until her wish was granted.
Finally, then, sleep would claim her. For a precious few moments, her body lay still, relaxed at last. Then, all too quickly, the nightmares began. Or perhaps, the nightmare. Robyn had begun to suspect that each night her daughter suffered the same dream over and over again, so consistent and predictable was the pattern of her distress.
Each night, as the dream began, Deirdre stiffened reflexively in the bed, thrashing with her feet. Her chest rose and fell as if she gasped for breath. Every attempt to awaken her-many had been made-failed to wrest her from the internal trance. Indeed, they seemed only to heighten her terror, so at last there was nothing to do but wait for the nightmare to run its course.
It would not do so until the terror built to the climax that always exploded in a scream of mindless, ultimate terror. Then Deirdre would awaken, and for a short time, her father or mother would hold her as a little girl again, gently rocking her to sleep, not knowing how many hours-or minutes-might pass before the cycle began again.
"She came for me… to rescue me!" Tristan groaned softly, acutely conscious of the young woman who finally slept in the next room. "This wouldn't have happened except for that! How can any father bear that guilt?"
The image still burned in his mind: He saw his daughter holding the crystal mirror, the powerful artifact of a dark and evil god, Talos the Stormbringer. The agent of that god had attacked them savagely, but when Deirdre had confronted the beast with the mirror, the glass had shattered and carried the monster to a horrifying demise.
But then, for Tristan, the real horror had begun. The shards of the broken mirror had swirled into a small cyclone, surrounding Deirdre, trapping her in a glittering, whirling column. Then the whirlwind collapsed, and Tristan had stared in horror as the bits of glass had knifed through his daughter's skin, piercing her in a thousand places.
Yet she had lost not a drop of blood-indeed, they could find no physical wound whatsoever upon her. This malaise instead gnawed at her spirit and her soul, they knew.
"She came willingly