The Veiled One

Chapter Four: The Feast

I pad back along the pathway, now in search of my quarters. My hair has become unbound and snarled, the ribbon clenched in my fist as I wipe my forehead with the back of my arm. I want a cold bath now, to wash the sweat from my body and to relax my exerted muscles. My arms are quivering, but that's how I used to like to fall asleep: exhausted to the bone, but content.

True to the Veiled One's word, the way up the stairs is lit with lanterns glowing with a teal-colored moss. I follow them, wondering why an immortal witch would bother with such a kindness as this. If she intends to kill me, why not do it now and get it over with?

I climb four flights of stairs until the lanterns indicate that I should get off at a landing. I follow them down a long hallway until they stop in front of a massive set of double doors. I push them open, and my jaw drops.

Not even before the village had I lived in such luxury. The room I am now to inhabit takes up almost half of the fourth floor, an enormous four-poster bed with white satin sheets dominating one wall while an ebony wardrobe that could easily fit my old bed and kitchen table with room to spare takes up another. Braziers on the walls burn with a soft orange fire, and as I approach, they dim slightly. Taken aback, I determine that the color of the light must change to suit my needs or my moods.

There is a doorway leading off of the sleeping quarters, and my feet step off the cool stone and onto the thick white fur of a bearskin rug. I cross it and open the door. The door leads to a small study, of which one wall is windows overlooking a spectacular garden and another is a wall of leather-bound books and a fireplace. A leather wingback chair is seated by the fire, and the air is richly scented by books. I haven't read one in such a long time. I used to read a lot, before.

The suite of rooms continues on to another door. A large soaker tub almost as big as a small pond is set into the floor, a set of stone stairs carved into its bottom leading into the cool blue waters. A stack of towels is neatly folded beside the water, as if waiting for me, and a caddy of bathing products is resting alongside it. There is a toilet and a sink beside that, which appear to have running water and flushes. Compared to the chamber pots or crude bench toilets of the village, this is heaven. The floor is a warm, creamy gray marble that almost seems to yield beneath my feet. Windows strategically placed from the lip of the bath up allow me to sit and look outside at the rolling hills that lead to the rest of the kingdom.

After I kill my wife, I may just come back here to live.

As I set my sword down on the vanity, a note appears beside it. Startled, I pick it up and read it.Dear husband, I hope you find your suite to your liking. If there is anything you should desire, simply clap three times, declare it, and if it is suitable, it shall appear. I hope you enjoy your stay here. Meet me for dinner in three hours in the dining room. The lights will show you the way. Cordially, Your wife.

I set the paper down and strip off my robe. I wonder what I'll wear after, and also how the robe will get clean. But those are questions for later. I stare in the mirror at myself, and I wonder how the boy who used to have cheeks just a bit too large for the rest of his face and wide blue eyes that stared at everything and anything, his build just short of chubby, could have turned into the gaunt man staring back at me. My cheeks are hollow, my eyes bruised and empty. My body has had all traces of fat stripped away, transformed into a single continuous streak of lean muscle.

Uncomfortable, I turn away, leaving the prayer chain on even though it is almost uncomfortably cold against my skin. It is the only thing I have to remind me of Endor. I step into the waters to push my sorrows away, marveling at the way they are exactly the temperature I wanted. The gentle warmth soothes my aches, but it is cool enough that I feel my exertion draining away. I swim over to the bath products and find a cake of goats' milk soap that smells vaguely of mint. I wash myself with it, and when I am done, I dunk under the water to rinse. The tub is so large, I swim laps through it, remembering the way I had done so as a lad in the cold ocean waters while my mother and father looked on approvingly.