Oracles of Ice

Oracles of Ice 19

Aethelfrith stepped out the city gate into the darkness of the pine, three guards following him. Gaielle had stumbled out of the house dressed in only Anya's cloak and no one had followed her. Having waited for her nearly a bell, he worried she had gotten lost, but a search of the city with torches revealed she was nowhere to be found. The head watcher at the gate reported that she had gone off into the pine, and she seemed confused and disoriented.

The black night seemed to swallow up the light even from the torch the guards carried. It felt fitting to him. It was the way his heart felt after watching Iseult spill Anya's blood into the earth and call the manipulation to encapsulate her and contain her essence. His wife had died in his arms, but he took some comfort knowing she didn't suffer and that there was a possibility he could call upon her through the girl. It was with a heavy heart that he searched for Gaielle in the pine, but he knew he had to do it. He couldn't raise the babies alone, and it was a small consolation knowing they could be together at last.

Fighting his way through brambles, he realized he had led his horse down the wrong path. In his haste, and the fogginess of his grieving heart, he had turned too far to the south and lost sight of path leading to the shore. His horse persisted, forcing its way through the thorns. Aethelfrith's legs had cuts on them, and he could feel the dampness on his trousers from blood that had soaked them. He could hear the men calling out to Gaielle from a short distance away. He assumed they had followed the proper path, though in the dark he couldn't tell. Their calls grew more and more faint as they covered the ground more quickly, not battling with the briars.

When he broke through the thicket, his horse fell into a rhythmic gait, closing in on the shore. The men and their torch were nowhere in sight, though it didn't bother him at all. His mind was elsewhere. The light of the third-quarter moon illuminated the way for him; he didn't need their torch. He didn't need their protection either. The way he felt, he was certain no wolf or beast would dare mess with him. Aethelfrith had been so overwhelmed with grief watching Anya die that the anger he now felt rising up in his chest for Iseult was a welcome relief.

He approached the shore and dismounted, seeing Gaielle's silhouette on the rock. The men who had accompanied him out the city gate were nowhere to be found, but it was just as good they weren't. He knew she had been uncomfortable with so many people in his cabin, and he also didn't want anyone around. The tide was beginning to come in, however, and with the spring melt and flooding, they wouldn't be able to stay on the rock long.

"Hi," she murmured as he sat beside her.

"Hi." Aethelfrith felt the cuts on his legs beneath his trousers stinging, but he tried to ignore them. The thorns he had ridden through must have been those of a spiny nettle, a bush he was allergic to, but one he couldn't have seen in the dark. The pain was more intense than it had been in the pine, but he pushed through. The worst reaction he'd ever had to the bush was a wretched painful rash, followed by several days of vomiting and headaches. He was a fool to not follow his men with the torch, but he hadn't been thinking clearly, his mind replaying the sight of Anya's wrist being slit and her blood pouring out of her body over and over.

"You came?"

"Of course, I came. Why wouldn't I?"

"Your wife..."

"Oh..." He sighed. She hadn't seen what had happened. She knew nothing of the manipulation or the witch's ways. The complexities of earthen life escaped her because she was from a different place. He wondered about Pelagius and if they had manipulators or witches in the deep. He wondered if the plaith was right and she needed to return to Pelagius to rid herself of the infection. It couldn't be good for her to have given birth, swum so far to shore while she nursed her twins, and walked the few bells back to the shore, all with an infection raging in her body.