The Soul Seer’s Daughter

In the silence, I could hear Lexa breathe too quickly, almost a pant, as if not enough air was getting into her lungs. Ontari stood just beyond the bars, a dark shadow with an invisible face. Could Lexa be right about her so-called peace offering?

"What was in that bottle?" I asked.

"Wine," said Ontari. "She drinks too much and holds her liquor badly. Hasn't she told you that, now that you have become such friends?"

There was a sound from Lexa, halfway between a gasp and a laugh. "Oh, yes, cousin," she said. "She knows. She knows me inside out."

Ontari was silent for a while, black and unmoving and almost hidden in the dark. "So...," she finally said in a thoughtful tone of voice. "Her mother's daughter? Come here, little Seer-girl, and I'll let you out."

"No."

"No? What do you mean, ‘no’?"

"Not until you help her. Not until you tell us what was in that bottle and what we can do to make her well."

I could hear the key turning in the lock. "Hasn't your mother taught you to obey your elders? Well, then, I suppose I'll just have to come and get you myself."

"Help her first! She might... she might be dying!" Despair burned hotly in my throat.

"Clarke... please go...," said Lexa in her raspy, winded way. "Go with her."

"No!" I clutched her hand and held it very tight. "She'll help you. She has to. You’ll be okay. I’m not letting you die!"

The door opened, and Ontari entered the cell. She stood squarely in the middle of the moon stripe, but I still couldn't see her eyes. The hood of her cloak cast a shadow over most of her face. It wasn't the cloak she had been wearing that afternoon. This one was black, so black that it seemed to absorb the light around it.

"Come here, Clarke," she said calmly, and almost gently. "Come to me."

In the Dragon Pit that afternoon I had been so scared that I had not thought it possible that anyone could feel greater fear. I had been wrong. Right now, right here, I was more afraid of Ontari than I had ever been of the dragons. And wasn't there... wasn't there something of the dragon smell about her now, that harsh and rotten odor that had been so strong in the Pit? I got up slowly, still holding Lexa's hand.

"Why won't you help her?" I whispered. "She is your cousin." Ontari moved a step closer, and now I was certain about the dragon smell.

"Cousin?" she sneered. "Oh, that's really just a polite little lie. You see, when you are just a bastard daughter, you don't really belong to the family." A fold of her cloak brushed my cheek, and I shuddered. What was that cloak made from? It felt cold and damp and raspy, like being licked by a cow.

"Cousin," said Lexa hoarsely, "what was in that wine?" Ontari went down on one knee beside me and put her arm around my shoulder. I tried to pull away, but her grip was very firm.

"Shall I tell you?" she said. "Will that make your little friend here happy, do you think?" She rested her free hand on Lexa's forehead for a moment. "You really aren't feeling very well, are you? But I didn't poison your wine, dear cousin. On the contrary. I merely spiced it with dragon blood."

"Dragon..." Lexa panted even worse than before. "Dragon blood?"

"Yes. Dragon blood is not a poison. It makes you swift and strong and helps you overcome numerous minor weaknesses. In small doses." She patted Lexa's cheek almost lovingly. "Of course, you're not used to it. Perhaps it is too strong for you after all."

Suddenly I knew what Ontari's cloak had been made from. It was a dragon hide. In the heather dales at home, I had seen the adders shed their skin, leaving behind a strange empty ghost of themselves. Did dragons do the same thing? Or had she killed a dragon to get both skin and blood from it? And what did she mean by saying Lexa wasn't used to it? Did she herself drink dragon blood?

The cell door was open, only a few paces away. Somewhere, not very far away, was my mother. Somewhere even closer were people who did not smell like dragons and who did not drink dragon blood for breakfast. What was I waiting for?

I gave Lexa's hand a small squeeze and then released it. With a sudden move, I twisted free of Ontari's grip and headed for the exit. I never reached it. Ontari lashed out with one foot, tripping me up, and I slammed full length onto the cold stone floor. While I lay there, trying to get my breath back, she clanged the cell door shut and leaned against it, casually watching me.

"Where did you think you were going?" she asked. "One minute I can barely drag you out of here, and the next you want to go charging off like a madwoman."

Lexa had pushed herself more or less upright on the ledge, but the effort was costly. Her lungs were working like bellows, and the air whistled and wheezed in her throat.

"Leave her... alone...," she gasped.

"Unfortunately, I can't," Ontari said. "I need her. But if you want to keep breathing a while yet, you had better lie down and keep still."

"Need... her…" Lexa managed. "For what?"

Still lying on the floor, I fumbled for my little knife, the one I had used to carve the soap with. The blade might be no longer than my finger, but it was still a knife, wasn't it? Whatever Ontari needed me for, I did not feel like being used by her. I got to my feet, clutching the knife, and tried to nail her to the wall with my eyes.

"Let me go," I said in my best Soul Seer's voice. It only shook a very little. She laughed, a harsh and humorless sound. "They don't work on me, all your little Soul Seer tricks," she said. "You might as well go and stand in front of one of the dragons out there and try to make it feel ashamed. You might have more luck there."

She hadn't locked the door, only closed it. I took a deep breath and started walking. I'd make her move, I thought. Actually, it seemed to surprise her to see me marching right into her reach. And when she finally made a grab for me, I plunged my knife into her hand. She yelped and let go of me, holding her hand up in front of her. Blood welled from a narrow cut in the palm, almost black in the moonlight.

"Devil brat," she snarled. But she didn't move away from the door.

"Let me pass," I said. "Or I'll stab you again!" This did not seem to frighten her very much. Actually, the shadow of a smile crossed her narrow lips.

"A knife," she said thoughtfully. "A very small knife, but still a knife." She laughed again, and this time there was a note of triumph in it. "This is so much better..." she said softly. "I had meant to use my hands, but a knife is definitely better!"

I fervently wished that I had never shown her the knife. There was something hungry about the way she stared at me. Almost the sort of look our old cat used to give the mice it caught. This was before Ernie came to us, and the cat moved in at the smithy instead. And before I had even quite finished the thought, she moved. I'm not quite sure what she did. But a moment later she had her arm around my neck from behind and her other hand around the wrist of my knife hand.

I think I screamed, or at least some sort of noise escaped me; I kicked at her leg and threw back my head, trying to butt her chin, but this was nothing like fighting Callum. The arm at my throat tightened, making it very hard to breathe, and her thumb dug into my wrist, deeply and painfully. I didn't want her to have the knife, and so I flung it away from me as hard as I could, which wasn't very hard.

Ontari snarled something, but I couldn't make out the words. The pressure on my neck grew worse, and things started to go strangely red and blurry. I wanted to call for my mother, or Callum, or even Ernie, but they weren't there, and I had no air to shout with, and the red got darker and even more blurry, and I was very much afraid that this was what dying felt like, this darkness, now...

And then I could breathe again. I was crouched on all fours on the cell floor, taking one whooping gasp of air after another, even worse than Lexa. And right next to me lay Ontari, and she was breathing strangely too, a wet and gurgly sound that got weaker and weaker and finally stopped entirely.

I looked up. Lexa was standing over us with my little knife in her hand, and both the blade and the hand were sticky with Ontari's blood.

"What happened?" I whispered, when I could speak again. Lexa just stood there, staring at the knife in her hand. "I think I've killed her," she finally said in a peculiar thin voice, sounding no older than Madi. "Now they'll have my head for sure."

"She was trying to strangle me."

"She said... she said..."

"Lexa. Why did she try to strangle me?" I was shaking all over.

"They will think... you did it... she said..." Lexa's breath was wheezier than ever. "They will think... you killed... the Soul Seer's daughter..." She shuddered and shook herself, like a dog wanting to get rid of something in its fur. "But she... was the one... who got killed..."

She looked around wildly, confusedly. "Out," she gasped. "We... have... to get... out... before they come..."

"Who?"

"Ontari's men. We must... get away..."

"Come on," I said, getting to my feet. "Let's go."

There was a whistling sound from her chest for every step we took, and I made her put her arm over my shoulder, though I really wasn't tall enough to give her much support. But a few steps down the passage, she suddenly came to a halt.

"The Pit," she said. "We need... the cloak..."

I didn't see why. I couldn't understand what she wanted that smelly, disgusting dragon hide for. But Lexa would move no farther without it, and so I finally made her lean against the wall while I went back to the cell.

Ontari still lay on the floor in the moonlight, wrapped in her black dragon hide. I didn't want to go any closer. I had seen dead animals - slaughtered pigs and lambs, and once the miller's mule, which had dropped dead one day in front of the cart and keeled over, harness and all. But I had never before seen a dead human being, and there was a difference.

"Lexa..," I croaked, sounding like a frog, "I'm not sure I can do this."

"Let... me...," she said, but she could barely keep herself upright, and the thought of two dead people made me cold all over.

"No," I said. "Stay where you are. I'll manage."

I took three quick paces into the cell, grabbed hold of the hem of the cloak and pulled. Ontari's body rolled onto its back, and the cloak came free. I held it out, stiff-armed, not wanting it to touch any part of my body. What a stench. But at least I could now get out of there, out of this jail and out through - and then I realized. If we were to get through the Dragon Pit, we needed Ontari's keys. Which meant that I would have to touch her.

How I wished that I could ask Lexa to do it. Or that Callum was here, or mom. Anyone at all. But there was only me. No one else, no way out. Just me. And so I bit my lower lip, crouched next to the corpse, closed my eyes, and fumbled along her belt for the key ring. And suddenly, something touched my leg.

I leaped to my feet and screamed my head off, and Lexa came stumbling up the passage outside, with one hand on the wall. "What... is it...?"

I didn't answer. Petrified, I stared down at Ontari's hand, which had somehow closed itself around my ankle. And while I stood there staring, Ontari very, very slowly turned her head and looked at me with her midnight blue eyes.

"Help me," she whispered, almost soundlessly but very clearly.

On one side of her neck, I could see the dark wound Lexa had made. "Give me the bottle." Her grip loosened, and the fingers opened like a spider giving up its prey. But her eyes still held me.

"The bottle..." I looked around. It lay just a pace or two away, but far, far out of Ontari's reach. Barely a mouthful or two remained of the contents. But what did she want with it? From where I stood, I could clearly hear Lexa's tortured breathing. For a woman wounded as badly as Ontari was, even those few mouthfuls might be enough to kill.

And then I thought that that might be what she wanted. That it might hurt, and hurt badly, to lie there and be not quite dead. I gathered up the bottle and put it into her hand, and her fingers closed around it.

"Thank you," she said, and slowly brought the bottle to her lips.

How much was left I really didn't know, but she drank it greedily. And then she closed her eyes.

"Clarke...," Lexa called as loudly as she could. "We have... to go." I looked at Ontari one final time. Then I turned my back on her, not knowing whether she was still alive or not, took the dragon cloak and the keys, which I had dropped in my fright, and left her and the cell behind.