Another day gone by. The room is dim, a curtain hung over the single window, but it isn't dark. Farielle has all but tried to claw her way out of the room when the lamps were put out - and now one burns constantly.
Farielle is sitting on the bed, a thin blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and leaning back against the wall. Her eyes are shut. She has always been slender, but now she is gaunt; bones pressing against white skin. The hollows of her eyes are dark and bruised-looking, but better than they were a few days ago.
Eruphel moves into the room. In the past six weeks, her pregnancy has finally begun to show. And while she refused any sort of frisking, she left her guards down the hall, within hearing distance. She wears a worried smile as she walks in, but as she sees how the poor girl looks, she gasps, and moves forward to slip onto the edge of the bed. "Farielle!" she says in a conspiratorial whisper type voice, to wake her if she's sleeping.
Farielle's eyes flick open - she was not asleep. She blinks, focusing on Eruphel's face. A small frown draws her eyebrows together and she drops her gaze to her to own hands for an instant, rubbing the blanket edge between her fingers, before looking back up. "Yes...?"
"Farielle. You look /terrible/!" Eruphel says, scooting a bit closer with a concerned look on her face, and opening her arms for an embrace. "Come to me."
There is something in Farielle's eyes that has never been there before - a wall hard and smooth like glass, as if some essential part of herself has been withdrawn - and all of her reactions are subdued. Lessened somehow. She hesitates as Eruphel speaks. She won't shrink away if Eruphel hugs her, but she makes no move towards her either. "I am well," she says. A moment more passes as if she tries to think of some acceptable response. "Tired."
"You look tired." Eruphel says, her voice still sympathetic. She does not reach forward to hug Farielle, though. Instead, her arms lower to her lap. "We have been searching for you...the whole city has." She tilts her head, still trying to read the girl. "Are you ready to return to Seaward?"
There is the faintest tightening around the girl's eyes, but almost no emotion in her voice at all. "Whatever you say, Lady," she replies politely.
Eruphel seems to grow more tense at the girl's reaction. "I am giving you a choice, Farielle. Seems like you have not had one in a while."
A choice. Farielle looks suddenly, perhaps unaccountably nervous. Or perhaps it is not so strange after all. Her eyes slide away from Eruphel's and land on the plate. Oh, yes. She reaches for a piece of fruit and eats it slowly. "They are kind to me here," she says at last.
"Then you can stay, for now. I must talk to the tower's new Steward anyway, before you can come home. I had been thinking while you were gone...that I am in need of a Lady-in-Waiting, especially during this time. And you seemed to me well-suited. Things may not work out that way in the end, but what do you think?"
Farielle takes another piece of fruit, eating it equally slowly. Her eyes drop to Eruphel's stomach and the slight swell there. At last, she nods. "If you wish it, Lady."
"Well, that all depends on you, Farielle..." Eruphel smiles very slightly. "I do not take just any noble as a handmaiden. You would have to want such a position, for you cannot fill it passively." She starts to say more, but stops herself.
Something flickers in Farielle's eyes and she looks away, her mouth twisting slightly. But when she looks back, her face is smooth again. Courteously, she asks, "What does a lady-in-waiting do?"
"Keep me company, witness my dealings, chaperone, and occasionally run errands," Eruphel shrugs, and looks away. "I will also want you to recount your interactions with this Vain, so I might deal with him accordingly."
Farielle considers this, looking down at her hands so that her eyes are hidden. "I can do that," she decides at last. At Vain's name, she becomes even more still, and there is a long pause. "Now?"
"No. For now...rest." Eruphel says smiling, and she reaches forward to give a reassuring pat. "I will send people daily to check up on you." Now Eruphel stands. "And if there is something you need, I would send that also."
The girl doesn't flinch from the touch. She holds perfectly still, neither moving nor looking until Eruphel has stood up. Then she draws the blanket more closely about her shoulders; her face looks more drawn and weary, even in this short time since Eruphel has come. "Boots," she says softly. And indeed, she is barefoot - and there are no shoes set neatly by the door. "I would like some boots. I - I have lost my shoes."
"Ah...I see." And indeed, she does, now. "I will send an entire wardrobe before the night falls." the Tower lady says. She turns to leave, but pauses at the door, about to say something. But she chooses her words carefully. "I suppose after this, Lord Alphros' slights seem...slight. Childsplay," she muses to the girl.
Every muscle in Farielle's body is suddenly tense. Her fingers clench white on the blanket, and she forces herself to let go - only to dig the fingernails into the palms of her hand. "I saw him," she whispers, staring at the air in front of her - at something only she can see. "In the dark."
Farielle's reaction is not encouraging to Eruphel. "Ah. Well when you are feeling better, you can tell me all about it. Meanwhile, sleep." She offers a quick smile that is brief and worried, then steps out the door.
The small sharp pains in her palms grounds Farielle to the here and now. She looks up at the sound of Eruphel's voice, and her mouth moves in what should be a smile, did it touch any other part of her face. The lady leaves, and Farielle leans back against the wall, trying to relax again. It is not dark. There is no one here.
Only a few days new to the city though she may be, an Easterling tends to attract attention in Harad, especially one bound into the service of the Eye. That she was probably not doing anything priestly when she was hauled into this tower is evident enough by the young acolyte's lack of formal wear, but she does seem to adapt herself quickly the situation, following a distressed servant towards the pale-woman as the guards part before her.
Her dark eyes blink with suprise as she lays eyes upon the woman before her, curiosity sparkling in their depths more than disgust. For a moment, the young woman stares at Farielle before her expression hardens, becoming severe, "Tell me what happened to this woman and who is she again, servant... and this time catch your breath before you speak," she orders softly, her words shaped ever so slightly by a distant foreign tongue.
Or - there /was/ no one here. Almost as soon as it has shut behind Eruphel, the door opens again. Farielle turns her head to see who is coming now.
The serving woman, a bowed older woman of sunworn skin and modest garb, closes the door behind this latest visitor as quietly as she can, her breathing mastered, but not without a furrowed brow to mark her effort. "I hardly know all of it myself, do I? She's been seen only by a few. Ladies and Stewards and such," she answers, her voice gravelly with an age that the strangely accented Common language only seems to emphasize. "But she's been starved, clearly, and put under spells or poisons. Something like that."
Without waiting for further question, she sets about her other duties with nary a blink from the posted guards - folding linens and gathering dishes with as little noise as possible.
The Easterling gazes upon Farielle for a moment, her dark eyes seeming to be conflicted before at last the hardness there gives away.
"If I find I have been tricked into treating an enemy of my Dark Lord, I assure you I will be back with the high priestess to have your head and your lord's," speaks the girl, but it is more an after-thought as she kneels down as Farielle's side. Delicately, she pulls a glowing-eye talisman from within her blouse, and moves to open the pale woman's hand to place it between them.
"The Dark One blesses all who turn to his power, pale one. He turns none away who beseech his dread might for mercy," she whispers softly, her almond-shaped eyes darting about to avoid looking Farielle in the eyes.
"If it is exhaustion and poison I can treat this. However, if she is suffering from some kind of disease or... if there are spells continuing to affect her I will need to fetch one of the higher-ranking priests." S'aria speaks to the servant over her shoulder, before turning with a stern gaze, giving her a list of herbs and roots to bring to her. Some of them will likely be in the house, but several are rare and expensive and might have to be purchased from the market in the city.
The oddly accented words don't seem to be comprehended right at once, but then their meanings sink into Farielle's mind - quite obviously, by how her eyes widen, and she pulls away from the other woman. "No," she says, and more fiercely and loudly, "No!"
The strange woman's fingers touch hers, putting something into her hands, and Farielle stares down at it before flinging it away from her in horror. "No, I will - I will .. Never!" She is shaking, her voice wild.
The Easterling girl's threats only furrow the old woman's brow further, but any reaction she might have is cut short. Farielle's outburst gives the servant quite a start, and the carafe of water she had held in leathery hands is juggled and dropped. She makes a sound best described as a muffled shriek, her dark eyes skirting to Farielle warily as she stoops down to sweep the shattered clay into her apron skirt.
To the healer's requests, she adds a quiet nod that is not likely to be seen unless S'aria looks at her directly, then hurries from the room with haste, leaving nothing but a dark puddle of water behind where the jug was broken.
S'aria's dark eyes flash with sudden rage at the outburst, and yet the flames quickly die down as she realizes the woman is clearly half out of her mind. "That, I pray for your soul, was a fit of feverish delusion and not the blasphemy it so clearly seems to be," whispers the patient young priestess before she calmly slides one of her long bangs of hair back behind her shoulders.
She tries something different, not drawing too close yet, but beginning to hum softly. Gradually the melody rises until it becomes a soft-spoken Logathig lullaby. The words will doubtlessly be unintelligable to the other woman, but the melody remains calm and soothing. Gradually the priestess approaches again, trying to coax Farielle with gentle hands into a more relaxed position.
"She is feverish from the poison. One of you men should fetch a fan and water to keep her cool. We can do little but make her relax until the herbs are here to purify her system," she explains to the guards quietly, still humming the melody as she watches the pale-woman with more obvious curiosity now; she has never seen a Gondorian before after all.
As long as S'aria isn't forcing symbols of her people's long Enemy into her hands, or babbling cursed words of the Dark One, Farielle is more calm. She still watches the easterling woman with wide, horrified eyes, but she doesn't resist as she is helped to lie back. The blanket she has drawn about her shoulders bunches up, and she plucks at it, pulling it over herself, and shivers. The melody soothes her further - slowly, the girl's eyelids slide shut. Perhaps she will sleep.
"We'll not be leaving until the girl does herself," comes a gruff voice belonging to a tall, broad-shouldered guard swathed in the amber and crimson silks of Desert Tower. "Another will be sent for water." His compatriot, likewise built and clothed, opens the door just widely enough to relay rough words to another. Afterwards come dull, booted footsteps sounding down the hallway.
It is then that the first man speaks again to S'aria just as roughly. "Come, you may be shown to the gathering halls to wait for the tools of your treatment."
The Easterling girl cannot help a smile forming on the corner of her lips as Farielle rolls over to sleep. One delicate, olive-hued hand sneaks a brief brush of the other woman's hair just to feel it before she turns back around to face the others. She gathers herself with a breath, a wry smirk forming on her lips. "You would guard a corpse, then cure her wounds? Makes me think of some jokes about you Haradrim we tell back in the citadel..." she says with a snicker as she brushes past the men.
When she is in the doorway, she turns glance from one guard to the other, "I shall wait. But tell your Lord if he desires a care-taker, I will offer my services free of charges. I only need a servant's bed to sleep on. The high-priestess tells me to find practice and so I shall. Your guest will require several weeks' care to make sure she recovers properly..."
...
Umbar. It rose against the horizon, with the sea glittering beyond it. Lominzil squatted in the meager shade of a rocky outcropping and studied the city. Now that he was here, he was suddenly uncertain what to do.
He watched all that day, seeing the clustering of people and animals outside one of the gates, the caravans that set off across the desert. Then, in the dusk of evening, he stood up, shaking sand from his robe and gave himself one last look-over. He had applied the walnut-juice only a few days ago, and his skin was surely as brown as any Haradrim.
Hunching a little, he drew a fold of his robe up over his head, and wandered towards the gates. As he got closer, he watched them idly, uncaringly, and ambled into the stables. A man was shouting at a boy not too far away; the child cringing and holding up a crude, wooden pitchfork. From the way the man stabbed his forefinger at a row of filthy stalls, Lominzil guessed the boy wasn't working fast enough, or well enough. Or something.
He pasted an ingratiating smile on his face and slouched a little lower, coming towards man and boy, and holding out his hand for the pitchfork. He made a gesture towards his mouth, miming eating, then dug at the air vigorously with the tool. The man glowered at him, then spat harsh syllables - Lominzil was dismayed to realize he recognized none of them, despite his weeks of studying - and nodded, pointing towards the first stall.
The Gondorian began to muck it out. After a while, the boy returned, trundling a wheelbarrow, and hauled the filthy straw out. Together, they laid fresh, filled water buckets, and moved on.
At least knights were expected to care for their own horses (which meant, they had their squires do it for them), Lominzil thought wryly, and so his hands were hard and calloused. Otherwise he was sure he would have gotten blisters by the time he had them all done and dared to find a dark corner to curl up in and pretend to sleep.