The Lion of Farside by John Dalmas

“Good. Let’s find out. Start of interrogation.” He said the latter as if it were a formal opening.

“First we need to find your memories and open them to recall. Think of them as being buried. Deeply. Deeply. You’ll need to go deeply to see them. Imagine they’re so deep, you can only get to them by a deep spiral staircase, going down and down. . . .”

She recognized hypnotism; she used it herself. But she relaxed, letting it happen, letting his voice take her more and more deeply.

In time she woke up groggy, remembering nothing. “Thank you, Varia,” A’duaill said, “welcome to the waking world. We did well; you’ve been very helpful. Now, look around the room and tell me something you like.”

I don’t remember a thing, she thought. She was—not muzzy, but disoriented. A’duaill repeated himself. “Look around the room and tell me something you like.”

She scanned slowly, noticing what was there. “That rug on the wall,” she said, gesturing. She hadn’t noticed it when she’d sat down; preoccupied, she told herself. “It’s quite handsome.”

“Ah yes,” said A’duaill. “Look around and tell me something else you like.”

“Hmm! The—carving? Sculpture?” She pointed. “The dwarf on the shelf.”

“Either term is appropriate. It’s carved soapstone. Tell me something else you like.”

She looked and frowned. “In that glass pitcher. Is that ice?”

He laughed. “From our own pond. It’s cut each winter and stored in a deep bed of sphagnum moss, in an ice house built of logs. In our northern climate, it lasts from year to year.”

Varia frowned. Ice wouldn’t last in that pitcher very long. “I didn’t notice it before.” How long had it been? At least an hour, she decided. Surely that long.

A’duaill smiled. “It wasn’t there when you came in. When we finished, I allowed you to rest a few minutes; to ‘settle out’ as we say, before I brought you back to the present. I had it delivered then. It’s a bit after supper, but cook will have something for you. He knows we’re done; he sent the ice.” He held up a bottle. “Would you like some wine poured over it? There are those who consider that barbaric, but I like it, and the Cyncaidh does too.”

After supper!? They’d begun shortly after lunch! She accepted the offer. He poured her only a little, perhaps three ounces. It was as good as Sister-made, she thought, pink and dry, at the edge of sweet. What had he asked? What had she said? The scribe was gone, but presumably he’d written it down, or the gist of it. She doubted anyone could write fast enough to make a verbatim record.

When she’d finished her wine, A’duaill led her to the dining room and left her with the second steward. There she discovered she felt more than hungry. She felt empty! Neither Cyncaidh nor Mariil had eaten with the soldiers; they came in now to eat with her. To the detriment of conversation, she ate like Will after a winter day in the logging woods. And when she finished, felt desperately sleepy, despite having slept, or at least lain unconscious, all afternoon. Something in the wine? A serving girl led her to her room. She was too groggy to bathe. Fifteen minutes after eating, she was in her bed asleep, leaving her clothes for the girl to hang up.

She slept till well after sunup. The first part of the night had not been restful. She’d dreamed strong unpleasant dreams that brought her half awake repeatedly, only to slip back into continuations. The Tiger barracks had been part of it. And a troll, stalking her babies; when she ran to rescue them, the troll turned into Sarkia, who smiled a loving smile and turned her into a frog. Then Cyncaidh had ridden up and cast a spell that turned her not into a woman again, but into a woman-sized frog. He tried several spells, and she grew larger and smaller but remained a frog. Finally he kissed her and said he loved her, and that he’d take her home with him even if she was a frog.

She recalled being reunited with Curtis, too, only to find that the body on top of her was Xader. That time she’d wakened completely, and gotten out of bed shaking. The oil lamp showed her a small wine bottle, but when she’d raised it to her lips, what she swallowed wasn’t wine, but something faintly bitter, some medicine. She’d made a face and stumbled back to bed, this time to sleep deeply and unbrokenly.