Dubhaine Family/Brigdha/Roleplays/2016/January

January 30th, 1016 -- Evening -- Oligarch =

Brigdha crossed the plains largely unremarked, a craggy old woman wrapped in a ragged shawl, leaning heavily on a crooked staff, grey hair hanging limply about her shoulders, a tattered satchel of cheap trinkets clutched tightly in claw-like fingers.

The sun was westering by the time she joined the last stragglers seeking admission at Oligarch's great southern gate, barely remarked by the watch and instantly forgotten. The kind of frail figure beneath the notice or contempt of noble and warrior alike.

The mission which brought Brigdha to Oligarch, the heavily-fortified armed camp at the heart of Duke Garas's rebellion, was largely one of compassion. There'd been much in his letter which stunk of a trap but still she felt a connection to Lady Catherine which demanded she seek the truth for herself, though it was yet far from obvious how to act upon her instincts.

She made her way swiftly through well-chosen backstreets to the Temple of the Flow, avoiding Darton Plaza and slipping unremarked through one of the side entrances used by acolytes on temple business. Shutting the door behind her Brigdha slipped its bolt into place and dropped the glamour which had brought her this far.

​Tonight she'd sleep soundly and on the morrow seek out Lady Catherine.

Catherine Chamberlain

Her breathing was heavy and ragged.

Looking down at herself she noted with dismay the blood soaked into her gown. The image of it... red on white... blood on sheets. The image made her shake and taught fingers curled and uncurled the small blade clattering to the ground. She had to silence the screams, they were distracting her from everything and nothing.

The ewer had tumbled across the floor and now lay empty and useless in the corner. Rubbing her hands on her skirts she returned to the looking glass and set her trembling soiled fingers to braiding her hair.

Brigdha Dubhaine

Brigdha awoke with a start to a darkened bedchamber, her nostrils filled with the heavy, metallic scent of freshly shed blood. For a brief moment she tensed, lungs pausing, preternatural senses reaching out in expectation of treachery. Had Garas drawn her here to end her life? But as her mind's eye studied the threads linking life to life she heard a familiar song, reverberating across the city in melancholy, atonal phrasing.

Washing and dressing with minimal fuss, Brigdha took a moment to check her appearance in the mirror. The ancient crone who'd crossed the plains was gone, discarded as easily as the ragged shawl she'd worn to be replaced by an imposing woman in conservative court attire, a hint of grey in the raven tresses framing her well proportioned, if somewhat pallid, features.

The letter from Garas was the guarantor of her safety, so she slipped this into her purse. She doubted anyone in the city administration would recognise her from her last visit or be aware of her role as Lord Speaker of Sirion, and if they did she had shadows watching her every move, but still if the letter could forestall any unpleasantness it was worth a hundred bows concealed in the darkness.

However these precautions proved unnecessary, the grand dame strolling unchallenged towards the palace, arm-in-arm with her young beau, dainty parasol guarding her delicate complexion, giggling like a giddy schoolgirl.

At the palace gates weak-willed guards barely questioned her business, swiftly handing her into the care of a succession of footmen, valets and minor officials as she navigated her way to Lady Catherine's personal staff.

Catherine Chamberlain

She noticed through the dull fog in her head that the Mother of Oligarch did not walk so briskly as she had, indeed she looked positively grey against the white of her robes. They had stopped her training with her captain and now she seemed confined to the most banal of responsibilities. She held council each day in her private apartments, at least she thought it was each day... one day was so similar to the next they often passed without note. It was so quiet. Nobody came any more. The mewling of the baby was battering at her head again. Sitting up she noticed the crib in the corner of the room. The Mother of Oligarch regarded both her and the crib apprehensively then returned to grinding her tinctures.

The sound and the crying of the babe filled her with a haunted dread. She attempted to move from the bed and looking down found her hands tied to the sides of the frames. In panic she pulled at the cords opening old wounds and burns on her forearms. She managed to scramble backward bumping against the unrelenting headboard. She was so weak, even her hair felt heavy on her head. The Mother sighed, moving stiffly across the room she positioned herself behind Catherine holding her in an embrace that involved both arms and legs. Catherine cried freely: "Why?" she wailed into the Mothers shoulder.

"I'm sorry Lady, you must be yourself for this, or it will poison the prince." She pressed the goblet to Catherine's mouth, forcing the liquid between her lips. She began to convulse throwing her head trying to dislodge the older womans grip. The Mother called two more Maunts to hold her and disentangled herself from Catherine. Her fumbling old fingers, once so deft now pinching with exhaustion pulled at the lacings of her shift exposing her breasts. They were hard and painful, Catherine bucked weakly against the restraints and the Maunts, and screamed in horror as she began to express at the increased mewling of the child as he was brought toward her.

She could feel the fetid breath of horses and the grasping hands of elves on her body and wished that she could be claimed by an oblivion that would not come. Then the grasping leech was upon her, pulling at her and swallowing her screams to a choking wail.

Catherine lay motionless, eyes wide looking at nothing, her hair pasted to the side of her face with sweat. The maunts fed thin soups and water into her mouth and watched tentatively for the small movements of her throat as she swallowed. The child grew fat as his mother faded further from the World, each day she fought less, but still never accepted what her body was telling her was right. The Mother had supplemented his feed with goats milk after the unfortunate incident with the wet nurse, but when a fever had threatened, her experience told her that the mothers milk was what was necessary, she had been a Queen, but in these circumstances a prince far outweighed the needs of his mother.

As the Catherine she had known had become more distant in her memory, she had found herself increasingly indifferent to her violence and screams. It troubled her at times that she felt so, and her prayers to Ora did little to salve her feelings. Watching the Maunts now tend to the Lady, she unstrapped the wounds on her own legs, cleansing and binding them afresh. Sighing she collected her sickle. The black roots of the sweet sleep bush were difficult to source and pare from the hard earth in Oligarch. If she were back in Nivemus she knew of many a plentiful grove, but here the few plants were becoming more sparse at her repeated harvesting, but the feeding had become a pattern and she knew Catherine's stunned catatonia would be short lived without the medicine.

She took her leave, the upper levels of the tower were largely unattended and guarded from without in Catherine's current state and she traveled the staircases unmolested but for the brief nod of the young Captain her mistress had been cultivating. Leaving for the main courtyard she filled her lungs with the fresh air and her ears with sounds of normal life and already felt a little more at ease. Yet something tugged at her senses, a presence grey and undiscerned to the eyes but there none-the-less. It was almost an echo familiar yet distant among the hubbub. She was no priestess, but she had spent enough time around the Oracle to know when she should seek out what attempted to be unseen. Dropping her basket she surveyed the grounds, breathing a tremulous breath as she extended her senses seeking what would remain hidden.

She was a talented amateur but she felt without seeing the eyes of another drawn to her as she sought the whispers of the presence.

Brigdha Dubhaine

Crossing the inner courtyard towards the Queen's Tower, Brigdha's senses reeled at the discordant flock of facies circling it, cawing and sparring like crows arguing over the charnel ruins of a great battle. Somewhere deep within that stone edifice a woman lay dying and these were the carrion spirits come to feast on her anguish, vengeful creatures of the high-firmament drawn to the black dreams of the cult of Ora.

Brigdha had heard tell of such magics in her journeys to the north, half-remembered and barely understood snippets of pharmacopeia preserved from lost Rancagua and the world's youth. Old Naevan the physician had written two entire volumes on the subject when Fontan's writ ran north of Ashforth, which Brigdha had studied several times over the years, most recently after reading Garas's letter.

For two whole days she'd sat in her private study, quill in hand, scratching copious notes in her distinctive cursive script on the pages of a small leather-bound codex, letters precisely placed and interspersed with carefully drafted diagrams and illustrations capturing the forms of particular plants and the shapes of utensils used in the leechcraft of the Maunts. A codex memorised on the long walk west.

Much of what she learned made for grim reading, the blood rituals and superstitions of a feral people obscuring their genuinely efficacious concoctions and practices. It was unclear whether this was the deliberate design of the Maunts, to maintain their grip on the minds of the northern tribes, or their own genuinely and deeply held belief. Such deceit was not without precedent even amongst the priesthood of The Flow. Long ago the Cult of Darton had followed such a path, and more recently there'd been a heresy drawn to the Turbulence, to the dark gifts of blood sacrifice and unrepressed emotion. Under such influence the Kinseys had raised entire regions in a bloody insurrection during the final days of the Great War and even now Brigdha's stomach turned at the memory of that carnage, the thousands lying dead in the streets of Karbala and Negev, of Al Amarah and Krimml.

"Not now Brigdha. This isn't the time to dwell on the past. There's work to be done," her inner voice anchored her senses in the Lilith Within, activating the particular patterns of perception which allowed a Balancewalker to withstand the full sensorium of the Flow. All about pale shadows of a multitude hues walked, and co-mingling with each shadow a fleshly form, a servant of the palace about their business, inner thoughts babbling yet melodic and of one purpose like small streams descending from the highlands to form a smooth-running river.

And there in their midst a withered tree, her roots deep in the soil of the northern groves, thoughts dark with the sorrows of many years, an alien transplanted to this land of neat-cut stone and neatly cropped grass. If Brigdha's sense didn't deceive her this was one of the Maunts, deep in shadow, beyond sorrow and despair in that unremarked country where death deceptively promises sweet oblivion.

"We'd better hurry Hrolf, there are forces at work here your blade is no match for," she tightened her arm about his, a gay smile upon her face, and without seeming to do so steered him towards the haggard old woman.

Meanwhile in the High Firmament she cast aside her cloak of shadow, revealing a bright amber flame to those with eyes to see. Above her the facies sensed her naked power and took fright, swooping across the courtyard and scattering with a hideous screeching.

For now they were dispelled, and with them the night terrors by which they fed. They were no threat to her but this was no time for complacency, they'd soon screw their courage to the sticking place and if Catherine yet slept on their return there was little even a Balancewalker could do to keep them from their feast.

Catherine Chamberlain

Although the Mother of Oligarch had been searching for the presence, it was only when the woman was virtually on top of her that she was aware of the Lady of Negev. Her 'disguise' did little to hide the force of will she had exhibited as she approached the tower. Having seen the Oracle practice some of the seven masteries she had little fascination with her display of force. She was still disconcerted to see her here and now.

"I shall make a great clamor Lady Negev, the Prime Minister himself suspected you long for the poisoning of your master in Sirion, if you intend to finish his work with my mistress you will find me more resourceful than I look."

The priestess barely acknowledged her, her eyes following something unseen above the tower, her march toward the door an unrelenting progress. The Mother backed up not taking her eyes from the woman, stumbling over her own basket as she reached the lower door. The lack of guards was evidence of the lack of visitors to the tower that was becoming increasingly known for the howling wails of its mistress. A scream from this tower would barely be acknowledged so she reached to stop the door herself. As her back hit the door she placed her arms wide, the small sickle yet in her hand.

The priestess stopped regarding the woman with an arched brow.

"The Lady is ill, surely you would not seek to torment her..."