Chương 422: 13.8

Leo was concerned for the spiritual health of his Countess. He had not known either Lord Rochford or Captain Muriel. But it would take a blinded and deafened fiend devoid of any heart to not see Jewel had cared for them both. Or how their loss had hurt the Wyrm. She 'did' duties, she attended with her Brother the obligations of her family in the rituals of the valley of Rochford and their pact with the Veles.

But the god wearing the elder man offered her no peace or support as might have been the place with a mortal lady. Nor had she mustered more than passing interest in what Leo was certain was a family loved tradition on her 'hatching day'. Moreso it was obvious in the manner of her children, the spawn were dimmed in their speech, in action, in any form of activity. The family that might have supported her all shared her grief for the loss of the family's now departed Patriarch.

Her brother and sister were just as consumed by the spectre of grief. All through the winter and into the first days of spring he had watched this continue. Her thirtieth winter should have been a time to celebrate, the naming days of her two youngest spawn after the longest night a renewing celebration, a thing to bring warmth to the dark of their loss.

But Eunika and Jadwiga despite the sorcery of their 'births' making it possible for either to speak had been utterly silent since the wailing for their grandfather. Leo was no scholar of beasts or the lore of wyrm, he suspected that even the most learned of such would fail entirely in his circumstances honestly, yet it was clear to him that despite all the sorcery and wyrmish power in the strange family of his Countess this mourning was leaving a stain in the spirit of all of them.

The spawn ate only the minimum, their mother, once a beast of prodigious appetite, hardly touched her normal portions of stew all through the winter. In spring it became even more notable, the eldest and paradoxically smallest did not go out as the staff of Valasect whispered was her custom. Letters came and the Countess did not write replies as diligently he'd seen in his brief time in her employ.

As a court priest it was supposed to be Leo's role to offer guidance and aid for the Countess and her family's health both corporeal and spiritual, yet he was uncalled for, The Countess in fact was barely acknowledging him, or anyone else outside of her most direct duties, he saw what occurred at her side, an outsider to the household in all but name, but he still listened, watched and heard. He saw and what was beginning to fester in them concerned him greatly. So action had to be made.

"Count Consort Paul." The Countess' Husband took a heavy breath and looked at Leo from the missives he was reviewing.

"Yes, Priest Leo?" Leo took a breath, the Count Consort was a noble, but he was an affable man, taking to a strange sort of role in the shadow of a Wyrm as his wife he made himself approachable where the Countess was not. But he was still a noble.

"My Lord Paul Bathory, your wife, we have to do something for her." The man that by all rumors went to bed with a dragon nearly every night and still was able to walk the next morning gave a tired sigh." She's mourning her father Leo." Leo met the eyes of the man despite the danger of offense.

"She's lost what might as well be a Mother and Father both sir, in less then a year apart from one another. Either one of those I've seen brings men and women to a ruin of themselves within years of one another, and she only barely had one from one to the next!" That brought a pause then another heavy sigh and the Count Consort pushed himself back from his desk to lean into the axebreaker chair that all the 'portable' furniture in Jewel's household was made of.

"Okay, fair point, she was still reeling from the loss of Muriel even before she went off to war. Some grieving is justified-" Leo interjected.

"To grieve one must accept, make peace and begin to live and the Countess has done none of that! She shuffles through her meals, neither she nor her spawn seek anything of joy, nothing of life, they move, they labor, those that must eat and you know the Countess herself has stopped that all but entirely, and then they sleep! I am a Priest! I am trained in the healing of men, and the Countess is acting as I have seen men who are taking in a poison of the spirit!"

Paul's brow furrows and his lip curls towards a snarl that very much resembled his wife's own ire, but Leo holds firm with his own glare. He was the Countess' Priest, taken on as the tutor of her daughter and advisor for her in matters of health and the manner of the spirit and the gods. And this was his responsibility!" She takes her baths, it is one of the only joys she still affords herself." Leo glared at the man as he offered his rebuttal, one who had the vigor and bravery to bed a dragon.

But he heard the voice of desperation, of worry, of even a hint of fear in his tone.

"Look me straight in the eyes, Paul of House Bathory, Count Consort of Visnove, Husband of the Shining Wyrm, is she finding any joy or respite in her baths? Any comfort in their warmth? Or does she simply lay in them and wallow?" The man's face fell, he fixed his gaze to Leo and he had to give him credit for not trying to lie to a temple worker that had learned to pry the most terrible shames from men and women alike for the sake of their own health. This novel is published on a different platform.

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"No, she goes, she lays in the water but she does not return from it renewed like she once did, she does not even always remember the time, right now she should have been down here an hour ago but she has not shown up." Leo's brow raised, that was far worse than he thought, the Countess held her duty above even her own health and happiness, but if even that was failing the poison of her grief was dire indeed! But Paul was not done, like a break in a dam his words continued.

"I'm at wits end! She barely speaks to me some nights, she doesn't sleep, Smithson can't even get much more than a word or two out of Gem even when we can get them apart, I've woken in the night to hear her crying, Jewel has never weeped in the night like that, not so often and certainly not without talking to me about it!" His tone, the fear was growing evident, his face going from anger to grief.

"She spoke with me when my mother died. I hated my mother and yet I still weeped and cried and needed comfort for her loss. Jewel loved her father, she loved Muriel as well and we spoke about that the year before but she won't let me help her this time!" His eyes were wet, and he leaned towards Leo over the table.

"We no longer talk properly about what pains her, but I listened in confidence about Muriel, and I've heard what she and Gem cry out as they sleep. What haunts their nightmares." He dropped his voice lower and lower as he spoke, forcing Leo to lean close." She blames herself Leo, she blames herself for the death of both of them!" The words were shrill, hissed in a whisper, but they were loud enough for him to hear, Leo considered that then nodded hard.

He dared not reach out to touch the man, a commoner no matter how elevated as a Priest did not do such for a lord. But he tried to keep his voice steady, reassuring.

"I see, then as an advisor to the Countess and your wife in matters of the spirit and the gods, I see that there is a vital act I must perform. And I will need your assistance in executing it." Paul, Count Consort of Viznove, husband of the Shining Wyrm of Rochford and Valasect looked at him with a mad light in his eye, desperate hope in every line of his face.

"You, need me?" Leo gave a firm nod.

"Yes, for this I think I will, I expected that she would make the request herself some day for Captain Muriel, but if she harbors such guilt, I can see now she foolishly fears the answer. I will need your assistance in getting your wife to agree with a vital service I have failed to provide." The Lord pushed himself to his feet, a frantic energy to him.

"What service is that?!" When Muriel's soul had departed her mortal flesh and the corpse needed to be sent after it he had felt that to suggest this would have been too soon, but if the stupid Wyrm truly was harboring such poisonous guilt over the passing of those she viewed as close as parents? Leo shook his head hard at how blind he had been.

"I will call on the gods and they will summon forth Lord Rochford and Captain Muriel's souls and the two of them will tell your moping snake of a wife that they don't blame her for their deaths so that she can finally begin to heal from their passing." The look upon the Count Consort's face was a truly irritating one, what was with these nobles that they overlooked something every spinster and farmer knew was possible?" You are going to need some assistance convincing Jewel to do that.

The gods have always had quite a lot of trouble dealing with her." Leo nodded, he yearned to just grab the man by the wrist and drag him to his wife so that the absolute disaster of a spirit poisoned wyrm could be avoided as soon as possible but there were limits to interposing on a man of his station.

Fortunately the desperation of a husband's wish to help his wife or perhaps Leo's tone had the man striding ahead of him out of the study and near jogging through the wyrm sized hallways of the Manorhouse of Valasect, forcing Leo to run to catch up on the winding path upward, one bend after another. Leo had never come this way before, what was it- Oh, no! Absolutely not!

The sound of gently flowing water and the muggy heat told him where they were going before they made the final bend to reveal great axebreaker wooden doors, lavishly engraved with images of wyrms, fountains, waterfalls, nymphs and shoots of lavender. The great works of art which sealed off the portal to The Countess of Viznove's Bathing Room.

The steam spilled from around the edges of the door like smoke from a fire and quite suddenly Leo remembered all the more garish books in the Temple that compared the lairs of dragons with the heartless monstrosity of a fiend's pit. Of all the wroth that one could call down upon themselves disturbing such beasts in their places of comfort. The scent of freshly fallen rain and thunder suffusing the hallway as it intermingled with that of Lavender oils.

It was no brimstone but it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end all the same. Leo met the Count Consort's gaze, the near feverish mania that he had inspired in the man to bring them both here and now.

"Well then my lord, you can tell the Countess that when she is ready I will be preparing f-for her in h-her study." The look of confusion on Count Consort Paul was the last Leo saw of him as he, Court Priest of Viznove, promptly turned on his heel and marched back down the hallway to prepare for something imminently less dangerous than disturbing a morose Wyrm in her bath. Such as preparing the delicate act of a divine invocation of necromancy and the summoning of a winter spirit out of season.

When he made the first bend away from the terrifying doors of certain doom he allowed himself a full body shudder at how close he might have come to utter annihilation. That absolutely brazen man! Helping the Countess was important, but not even he should have dared to disturb a melancholic dragon in her bath. Husband or not!