Eahlah's Mark Ch. 4

         A sharp insistent rapping woke Eahlah. Where was Gahlah? she wondered groggily. She stumbled through her darkened rooms and opened the door. It took a crucial moment for her to realize what she was seeing. Four people stood in the doorway covered in black robes. They stood two heads taller than her and were twice as wide. They started filing in through the doorway and they filled it with blackness as they entered her room.
         Eahlah backed up. What should she do? Her mind seemed frozen and her body wouldn't respond. "Gahlah!" she finally shrieked, but it seemed a weak noise against these huge people.
         One of them reached for her and something in her mind snapped. She ran for the door to Gahlah's adjoining room. She grasped the knob and turned but it was locked. She turned around to see what her pursuers were doing and found them almost on top of her. She ran to the door that they'd entered which stood open still. She'd almost made it when she felt something grab her ankle and she tumbled to the ground with a painful thump.
         "No. Let me go!" she screamed. She struggled but she was like a fly in the spider's web, too tangled to be free. She screamed again; a primal thing.
         "Shut her up!" one of them said.
         She got a good backhand to the face that left a stinging mark along her cheek. The man who'd caught her bound her hands and ankles with quick practiced moves. She opened her mouth to scream again and a cloth with a sickly sweet smell was brought around from behind that covered her mouth and nose. Her only choice was to breath it in.
         "This will make it easier for all of us." She heard whispered in her ear before she passed out.