“Majesty.”
Sabran looked her up and down with half-lidded eyes. She wore a sleeveless rail over her nightgown, and a blue sash around her waist. Ead had never seen her so undressed.
“Forgive me,” Ead said, to fill the silence. “I thought you would not retire until later.”
“I have slept ill of late. Doctor Bourn tells me I should try to retire by ten of the clock to promote a quiet mind, or some such,” Sabran said. “Do you know some cure for sleeplessness, Ead?”
“Do you take anything presently, madam?”
“Sleepwater. Sometimes caudle, if the night is cold.”
Sleepwater was the Inysh name for a decoction of setwall. While it had some medicinal properties, it was clearly doing little good.
“I would recommend lavender, earthapple, and creamgrail root, simmered in milk,” Ead said, “with one spoonful of rosewater.”
“Rosewater.”
“Yes, madam. In the Ersyr, they say the scent of the rose brings sweet dreams.”
Slowly, Sabran unfastened her sash.
“I will taste your remedy. Nothing else has worked,” she said. “When Kate comes, you may tell her what to bring.”
Ead approached with the barest nod and took the sash from her. Sabran’s eyes were circled with shadow.
“Does something trouble Your Majesty?” Ead helped her out of the rail. “Something that disquiets your sleep?”
It was meant in courtesy, with no expectation of an answer. To her surprise, Sabran gave one.
“The wyrm.” Her gaze was on the fire. “He said the thousand years were almost done. It has been just over a thousand years now since my ancestor vanquished the Nameless One.”
There was a furrow in her brow. Standing there in her nightgown, she seemed as vulnerable as she would have looked when the cutthroat had beheld her.
“Wyrms have forked tongues for duplicity, madam.” Ead hung the rail over the back of a chair. “Fyredel is still weak from his slumber, his fire not yet fully lit. He fears the union of Berethnet and Lievelyn. He speaks in riddles to sow misgiving in your mind.”
“He has succeeded.” Sabran sank onto the bed. “It seems that I must wed. For Inys.”
Ead did not know the acceptable way to reply to this.
“Do you not wish to wed, madam?” she finally asked.
“That matters not.”
Sabran had power in all things but this. To conceive a legitimate heir, she must wed.
Roslain or Katryen should be here. They would soothe her fears while they combed her hair for bed. They knew the right things to say, the right way to comfort her while keeping her in the state of mind necessary to her union with Prince Aubrecht.
“Do you dream, Ead?”
It came from nowhere, but Ead kept her composure. “I dream of my childhood,” she replied, “and things I have seen around me by daylight, woven into new tapestries.”
“I long for that. I dream of—of terrible things,” Sabran murmured. “I do not tell my Ladies of the Bedchamber, for I think they would be afraid of me, but … I will tell them to you, Ead Duryan, if you will hear them. You are made of firmer stuff.”
“Of course.”
She curled up on the rug beside the fire, close to Sabran, who sat with a taut back.
“I dream of a shaded bower in a forest,” she began, “where sunlight dapples the grass. The entrance is a gateway of purple flowers—sabra flowers, I think.”
They grew at the end of the known world. It was said that their nectar glowed like starlight. This far north, they were legendary.
“Everything in the bower is beautiful and pleasing to the ear. Birds sing charming songs, and the breeze is warm, yet the path that leads me on is jeweled with blood.”
Ead nodded her reassurance, even as something glinted in the back of her mind.
“At the end of the path, I find a great rock,” Sabran continued, “and I reach out to touch it with a hand I do not think is mine. The rock breaks in two, and inside—” Her voice wavered. “Inside—”
A chamberer did not have leave to touch the royal person. And yet, seeing that drawn face, Ead found herself reaching for Sabran and clasping one of her hands between her own.
“Madam,” Ead said, “I am here.”
Sabran looked up. A moment passed. Slowly, she moved her other hand to cup the braid of their fingers.
“Blood overflows from within the cleft, and my arms, my belly, are awash with it. I step through the rock, into a standing circle, like those in the north. And scattered all around me are bones. Small bones.” Her eyes closed, and her lips quaked. “I hear terrible laughter, and I realize the laughter is mine. And then I wake.”
Ead kept the queen in her gaze. Sabran had been right. Roslain and Katryen would have been frightened.
“It is not real.” Ead tightened her grasp. “None of it is real.”
“There is a story in this country of a witch,” Sabran said, too far into her memory to hear. “She stole children and took them into the forest. Do you know it, Ead?”
After a moment, Ead said, “The Lady of the Woods.”
“I suppose Lord Arteloth told you, as he did me.”
“Lady Margret.”
Sabran nodded, her gaze distant. “They tell it to all children in the north. Warn them to stay away from the haithwood, where she walked. She lived long before my ancestor, and yet the fear of her lingers among my subjects.” Gooseflesh stippled her neckline. “My mother told me stories of the sea, not the land. I never believed in a Lady of the Woods. Now I fear there was a witch, and that she lives still, working her sorcery upon me.”
Ead said nothing.
“That is but one dream,” Sabran said. “On other nights, I dream of the childbed. As I have since I had my first blood. I lie dying while my daughter struggles out of me. I feel her tearing my body, like a knife through silk. Between my legs, waiting to devour her, is the Nameless One.”
For the first time in the eight years Ead had been at court, she saw tears bead on Sabran’s eyelids.
“The blood keeps flowing, hot as iron in the forge. It clings to my thighs, sticks them together. I know I am crushing my child, but if I let her breathe … she will fall into the jaws of the beast.” Sabran closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were dry. “That nightmare torments me the most.”
The weight of the crown had taken its toll on her. “Dreams reach deep into our pasts,” Ead said quietly. “Lord Arteloth told you the story of the Lady of the Woods, and it has come back to haunt you now. The mind often wanders to strange places.”
“I might agree with you,” Sabran said, “had I not had both dreams since long before Lord Arteloth shared that tale with me.”
Loth had told Ead once that Sabran could not sleep without a candle. Now she knew why.
“So you see, Ead,” the queen said, “I do not sleep because I am not only afraid of the monsters at my door, but also of the monsters my own mind can conjure. The ones that live within.”
Ead held her hand a little tighter.
“You are Queen of Inys,” she said. “All your life, you have known that you would one day wear the crown.” Sabran watched her face. “You fear for your people, but cannot show it to your court. You wear so much armor by daylight that, by night, you can carry it no longer. By night, you are only flesh. And even the flesh of a queen is prone to fear.”
Sabran was listening. Her pupils were large enough to almost blot the green from her eyes.
“In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it,” Ead continued. “It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed—but never think that you are the night.”
The queen seemed to mull this over. She looked to their hands and slowly circled her thumb in Ead’s palm.
“More of your comely words,” she said. “I like them well, Ead Duryan.”
Ead looked her in the eye. She imagined two gemstones falling to the ground, shattering from within. Those were the eyes of Sabran Berethnet.
Footsteps just beyond the threshold. Ead stood and clasped her hands in front of her just as Katryen came in with her arm around Lady Arbella Glenn, who was in her nightgown. Sabran reached out to her oldest bedfellow.
“Bella,” she said, “come to me. I want to discuss the marriage preparations with you.”
Arbella smiled and hobbled to her queen, who took her by the hand. With dewy eyes and a serene expression, Arbella stroked Sabran’s black hair behind her ear, like a mother tending to a child.
“Bella,” Sabran murmured, “never weep. I can’t bear it.”
Ead slipped away.
Once Sabran and Arbella were abed, Ead told Katryen about the decoction, and though the Mistress of the Robes looked skeptical, she sent for it. Once it was tasted and delivered, the royal apartments were sealed, and Ead took her position for night duty.
Kalyba.
That was the name the Lady of the Woods had gone by in Lasia. Little did the Inysh know that the witch was very much alive, though far away. And that the entrance to her lair was guarded with sabra flowers.