The Jarl's Son, Chapter 3-2

The Sickly Child, Part 2

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One by one, Gaiur began to remove the layered furs from the boy’s bed. Pelts of wolf, deer, elk, and bear were each removed and piled onto the floor beside her. Erik, meanwhile, had remained calm. However, that changed when she tried to remove the wool blanket that remained. The boy didn’t just recoil and whine, he thrashed and screamed! The suddenness and violence of his reaction startled Gaiur and Marten both, but she looked to the warrior and repeated the need to restrain him.

Frowning and steel-eyed, Marten nodded and pinned both of Erik’s arms to the bed. The boy kicked and screamed, thrashing his shoulders this way and that!

“Be calm, Erik!” Marten pleaded. “It’s your brother! We’re only trying to help!”

No change. As Gaiur frantically pulled the wool blanket off the bed and bundled it in her arms, the boy screamed out such a forceful cacophony that he alerted the rest of the house. Outside the door, Gaiur could hear the thud of many soft soled boots against the wooden floors. A couple moments later and the door to Erik’s room burst open. Jarl Ostock filled its frame, two of his merchant advisors behind him.

“What’s the meaning of this?” the Jarl shouted, his features pale at the sounds and sights of his son’s screaming and flailing.

“Help us restrain him!” Gaiur ordered, paying no mind to courtly decorum. When the Jarl stood dumbfounded, Gaiur snatched the old lord by his wrist and repeated the command.

To his credit, Jarl Ostock appeared to recognize the importance in what Gaiur and Marten were doing. Aware of himself once more, he nodded and moved to the foot of the bed to hold down Erik’s legs. This resulted in him getting kicked hard in the jaw at least twice, but the older man ignored the red welt that was forming beneath his beard and held his son firm.

Slow and gentle, Gaiur started to remove young Erik’s tunic. Behind her, she could hear the pair of advisors muttering under their breath. She caught words like unusual, inappropriate, and passing strange on their tongues.

“Dismiss them,” she told the Jarl. “They’re a distraction. They’ll only make this harder for the boy.”

He nodded, and with a harshly barked order, they were off and closed the door behind them. Now that it was just herself and the family, Gaiur could focus on her task. One long, wooden clasp at a time, she unfastened the boy’s tunic and, with Marten’s help, peeled it free from his body. The garment, normally a pleasant pale green color, was yellowed by his sweat. His would-be-white breeks fared even worse, stained with sweat and waste thanks to him being fully bedridden. Gaiur grimaced as she pulled those away, tossing them into a far corner. She’d see to disposing of them later.

“I’m sorry,” Jarl Ostock said between grunts of effort. The sick child’s violent tantrum hadn’t let up in the least. “We tried to keep him clean, but you see how he reacts to the touch of others.”

Gaiur only grunted in reply, retaking her spot opposite Marten near the head of the bed. Now that he was undressed, she began searching Erik’s body for strange signs that the rest who inspected him might’ve missed. She started at his neck, then went down to his shoulders, torso, and finally groin. He sweated profusely from each spot, but apart from his paleness she saw nothing unusual. The same was true of his arms. Both she and Marten each had to hold one firm to inspect them, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“Hold his arms firm again so I can check his legs,” she told Marten. Wordlessly, he did as ordered and she moved beside the Jarl.

“Just what is it that you’re looking for?” the older man asked.

“I’ll know if I find it,” she replied.

It wasn’t the answer he wanted. “That doesn’t inspire confidence,” he said with a sneer.

“I’ve other means of finding out what’s wrong with him if we find nothing this way,” she said as she took firm hold of his left leg.

Erik’s voice was getting hoarse from the constant screaming. As she tilted his leg up to check along his calf and inner thigh, she could see Marten and Jarl Ostock each leaning an ear against their shoulder to help muffle the piercing cries. Gaiur, however, simply tuned them out, channeling all her focus to her inspection. She had to be thorough, to search every part of him. The final detail Marten gave her stood out in her mind, the darkening of the shadows around them just before Erik seized. If her suspicions were correct and the boy’s condition wasn’t the result of infection, but rather because some shadowbound fiend had attacked him, then there should be a visible sign of that somewhere on his body. So far she found nothing, and she began to wonder if she might need to resort to those more desperate means after all. However, as she wrapped an arm around Erik’s thigh, just above the knee, and tilted his lower leg back, she sucked at her teeth and cursed.

“His calf,” she said, pointing to a spot just above the back of his ankle. “Do you see it?”

Jarl Ostock leaned in, squinting his eyes. He shook his head. “I see nothing but his pale flesh.”

She turned to Marten, who gave the same answer. Then she sighed. “I’m not surprised you can’t. Neither of you has the sight.”

“Sight? What sight?” Marten grunted, now pressing the opposite ear to his shoulder as Erik continued struggling against him.

Gaiur set the boy’s leg back down and stood, beckoning for both men to let him go and rise as well. They did, and almost immediately, Erik quieted and went almost completely still, save for shivering outside of the blankets. Jarl Ostock was quick to toss the large wool blanket back over his young son’s naked form.

“I don’t know its true name, if it even has one, but the sight lets me see the things most people can’t,” Gaiur said. “It’s how I was able to see the strangling fiend that assailed Jerrin at night, and it’s how I can see that your son was stricken by a similar creature.”

Her eyes were cast down at his calf. Lying down as he was, she couldn’t see the markings anymore. However, once she lifted it, they stood out plainly against his pallid skin. Twin spots, puckered and sunken like old puncture wounds. They were purple in color, but a purple so dark they bordered on being black. She described all of this to the two men with her, as well as her suspicions at their source.

“He’s been bitten by something. A shadow adder, I think.”

“You think?” the Jarl replied.

Gaiur nodded. “I’ve not encountered one directly before, but the spot I showed you on his leg has the twin punctures of a snakebite.”

“How can that be?” Marten asked. “How can he have been bitten and no one noticed it?”

“The bite came from a creature not of our world,” she said. “Most people wouldn’t be able to see it. Even Oasyrians or Khavosans, for all their magical gifts, would struggle.”

“But you can?” the Jarl asked suspiciously.

Again, Gaiur nodded. “I’ve been granted the ability to see and hear what lurks beyond the senses of most mortals,” she said, making no effort to hide any displeasure she felt about that fact. After all, the destiny that was foisted upon her was one she never asked for. “Because of it, I can see what you’re blind to, and that includes the wound on the boy’s leg.”

The Jarl started to speak again, likely to ask another question, but Marten interrupted him. “Why do you keep calling him boy?” he asked bluntly.

Gaiur turned to him. She felt her cheeks grow cold as she paled.

“You know Erik’s name, and even went so far as to do all of this to help us,” Marten continued, motioning to the boy as he wheezed and whimpered on his bed. “But you still refuse to call him by his name. Why?”

There was no malice in Marten’s words. He asked the question purely out of confused curiosity. It was a fair question, too. She’d just inspected the naked body of a boy, a stranger, all in hope she might save his life from malicious entities of shadow which she only partly comprehended. She owed no obligation to him or his family, nor did she come to the city for any reason other than her own benefit. Yet here she was, freely giving what aid she could, and yet she was still unable to bring herself to utter his name. It was little wonder Marten found that so bizarre.

Still, strange or not, she couldn’t bring herself to answer him. Not yet. The knots in her stomach and the lump in her throat muted her speech in this regard. Funny, for all the terrors she’d faced in the years she’d wandered, none seemed as difficult to overcome as the challenge of uttering the name of her son, even when it wasn’t her own son she was talking about. She took a hard swallow to clear that painful lump. How many times had she done that today? Too many, she wagered, but it was enough to allow her to speak again.

“I’ll need to watch him tonight,” she said. “Alone, to see if I can learn more of his condition.”

Marten started to protest, still wanting an answer for his question. For a mercy, Jarl Ostock put a stop to his elder son’s inquiries. From his sympathetic mien, Gaiur thought he might understand her reluctance, at least in part.

“Come, my son,” the Jarl said as he opened the door. “Let’s leave the Wolfmother to her work.”

Marten wasn’t keen to agree, his hard gaze fixed upon Gaiur’s, but after a moment he rose and joined his father. However, before they left, he stopped at the door to ask her one last question.

“What will you do for him?”

Gaiur didn’t look away from the sleeping child. He was quiet, near silent. Compared to his screaming as she tried to look him over, the stillness with which he slumbered now felt almost deathlike. A moment later, she realized she hadn’t answered that query, either.

“Try to confirm my suspicions, to see if the bite truly is a shadow adder’s,” she said.

“How will you do that?” Marten asked.

This time, she did turn to him. “By consulting a friend,” she said, feeling her confidence return.

Thank you for reading.
The Jarl’s Son sees Gaiur the Valdunite return to embark on a new adventure and acts as the follow-up to my dark fantasy mystery tale, In the Giant’s Shadow. The previous story isn’t required reading to understand and enjoy this tale, but doing so will enhance the experience.

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