Free Vengeance Hammer (Viking Vengeance) by Jianne Carlo Page A

table.” Dráddør captured his wife’s wrist and brushed his lips against the soft underside. “While Xára cannot speak, she uses this sand tray to write her thoughts. I have not had the time for answers to these questions. So write, Xára. I will read your answers.”
    All eyes were upon her by the time he finished and Xára’s face warmed as an anticipatory silence fell. Her throat felt suddenly dry as it did when she’d had the use of her voice, and been embarrassed to speak before a crowd. How foolish of her.
    Dráddør plucked a warm loaf from the tray, tore off a chunk, and offered her the rosemary-fragrant morsel. Hungry all at once, she popped the bread into her mouth and bent to the sand tray.
    “Attack. Throat pierced.” Dráddør’s deep voice reverberated in the nigh empty hall. “Who attacked you?”
    Xára shivered at the leashed rage in his growled query. Dare she tell the truth? Nay. Not until she knew more and not in such a public location. She scribbled furiously.
    “Bandits? Were you outside the castle walls?”
    His hot breath skipped over Xára’s cheek and distracted her for a moment. Dráddør read aloud as she formed the words in the sand. “Journey from Circe to Touft Abbey—”
    “We all wondered why you left so suddenly. And the Abbess would say naught. Did your father send for you?” Nyssa accepted a slice of cheese from her husband.
    Xára didn’t want to mislead her childhood friend.
    “Nay. The abbess sent me to Touft.” Dráddør gave her a peculiar stare while reading her reply. She tried to ward off a sudden uneasiness and wriggled her shoulders. Focusing on the sand, she decided to draw their attention to Jennie and away from her deliberate deceptive inference, and wrote furiously.
    “Xára wants me to tell you of Lady Jennie. The chief man-at-arms, Liam the Lucky, recounted the whole tale to Tighe and me. Two nights before we took the castle, Lady Jennie poisoned Arnfinn’s wine. Arnfinn was in the habit of using his wife as a taster. There had been attempts to poison him in the past. She drank the goblet intended for him and then poured him more. He continued to drink, but she did not.”
    “’Twas deliberate? Lady Jennie killed her own husband?” Konáll asked.
    Xára bowed her head and studied a dark knot on the wooden table.
    “The people of the keep seem to think so and to believe Arnfinn rightly deserved it. But, not a single man or woman would tell us why Lady Jennie took such a drastic step. Do you know why your mother poisoned your father, Lady Xára?”
    Earl Tighe was the one who posed the question to her. She jerked to meet the highlander’s piercing stare searching furiously for an answer that would appease their curiosity, but not give away the dire secret she dared not tell. How to reply?
    “’Tis of no import right now, Highlander. Know you what poison she used, Xára?” Nyssa asked.
    She nodded and traced the word.
    “Belladonna,” Dráddør read.
    “Mús must have sent me here to heal Lady Jennie,” Nyssa mused. “I have ne’er dealt with poison.”
    Konáll swore and slammed a fist on the table. “I will not allow it. Nyssa, you know you absorb the injuries of others. What if the poison seeps into our babe? Nay. I forbid you. You will not heal the lady Jennie.”
    Heal? Xára scribbled and tugged on Nyssa’s sleeve.
    Nyssa shifted her gaze to Xára’s. “I am a healer. I did not come into my healing powers until my tenth and seventh summer.”
    Powers? Her tenth and seventh summer? A frisson of fear crept over Xára’s nape. For ’twas the exact time she had come into her immortal abilities.
    The sound of booted footsteps drew her attention and she glanced over her shoulder. A delicious fragrance preceded the entrance of the maids and kitchen boys, a mingled aroma of herbs and a broth enriched with the heavy meatiness of roasted marrow bones.
    Nyssa began questioning Tighe about the taking of Lathairn.
    Xára pushed aside the sand