Dragon Rose (20 page)

That thought brought home the events of the day. I had done a good job of shutting them out while I was working. Perhaps I had thrown myself back into the painting in such a frenzy precisely because I wanted to forget what I had seen.
 

Not so easy, though. I could see it clearly as if it still lay before me, that forlorn little clearing with its ranks of neat grey headstones. Someone obviously took care to keep it in that condition, for the area had been clear of weeds, and I thought I had even spotted the remnants of wildflowers lying on several of the graves. Whose grim duty was that? Mat’s? Sar’s?

What would Theran say, I wondered, if I went to him and asked outright what had happened to all those young women?

What happened to them…and what will happen to me?

He would give me no answer. What was it he had said?
I cannot speak of it.
But that had been in reference to the curse, and not to his Brides…unless they were one and the same.

Secrets lay heavy upon the castle, and I knew I would get no answers to them. Reason enough for me to keep to myself, to stay away from Theran Blackmoor. If he could not do me the courtesy of explaining even something of my reasons for being here, then I saw no point in extending him any particular favor.

That sounded very fine and proud. Whether I would be able to do such a thing for any period of time remained to be seen.

Weariness came over me then, and I knew I might finally be able to sleep. I cleaned my brushes and put everything back in its proper place, including the portrait. Before I settled it in its corner, I held it out at arms’ length, studying the man’s face. In my dream those lips had touched mine; it seemed I could feel them still. But that had been no true dream, only a wistful fancy. If it had been true, he would be here with me now, in the flesh, and not in this flat frame, with arms that could not hold me, and a mouth that could not kiss me.

It seemed then as if I could not bear to gaze at him any longer. I hurried to put him back in his hiding place, so I would not have to torture myself with that which could never be.

“It’s clear as day,” Lilianth was saying to me as we paused at Alina’s stall to ponder the various potatoes and turnips and leeks. “You obviously care for him. So why not tell him?”

The sky above us was a clear, bright blue, but we both wore cloaks and scarves, and I could see my breath hanging on the morning air. Not summer, then, but perhaps a fine early winter day on a rare respite between storms. Beneath her cloak I thought I saw Lilianth’s belly rounded in pregnancy.

Foolish, of course. Not that dreams had to make any particular sense, but I knew even if she had been with child when she wed Adain, she would not be showing so much barely three months later.
 

“I can’t just come out and tell him,” I protested, picking up a string bag of golden potatoes and inspecting it carefully to see if it hid any half-rotted specimens. “That would ruin everything.”

Her blue eyes were wide and guileless, a mirror of the sky. “Why?”

“Because—because—because he’s the Dragon! It’s not as if he’s the goldsmith’s apprentice!”

“All the more reason.”

I pulled a pair of copper coins from the purse at my belt and handed them to Alina, who had not appeared to pay much attention to Lilianth’s words. Just as well; even in a dream I really didn’t want someone overhearing such a frank conversation.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, gathering up my potatoes and moving on to the next stall, where skeins of brightly dyed wool hung from the wooden crosspieces.

“Don’t I? At least I know what it is to be in love…and I see all the signs in you.”

“Indeed?”

“Indeed. You moon over him constantly, worry about what he thinks of you, wish to be in his presence even though you do nothing to make such wishes a reality. It’s either love or an attack of some extremely ill humors.”

“The physicians of the Golden Palm don’t believe in humors,” I pointed out.

“They wouldn’t. Anyway, we were not talking about them, but about you. What’s the worst that could happen, if you told him the truth?”

“He might—he might laugh at me.”

“Do you really think that is what would happen?”

No, I didn’t. I knew he had enough courtesy in him for that. But I also knew he was very good at keeping his own counsel and maintaining a certain distance between us. There were times I thought he actually enjoyed being in my company, true. Yet he never confided in me, and never did anything to make me think he wanted anything close between us.

“He doesn’t
want
to care for me,” I told Lilianth. “Not when I’m going to die like all the rest of them.”

“How do you know that you’re going to die?”

“Because
they
all died.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to.”

I knew there had to be some way to point out the flaw in her logic, but somehow it escaped me at the moment. Frowning, I said, “Perhaps it’s my fate.”

“I’ve never heard you talk about fate before.”

“I never lived in a cursed castle before.”

She lifted her shoulders and gave a little chuckle, as if conceding my point. “All right, then. Look at it this way. Perhaps you are going to die. Would you not rather he knew the truth before you were gone? We always regret the things we have not done, not the ones we actually had the courage to try.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said slowly. “I’m still regretting those boiled sprouts your mother made last spring.”

“That is not what I meant, and you know it.”

Somehow I didn’t recall Lilianth being quite this wise in real life. But that was how dreams went, I supposed. We saw things in them as we wanted them to be, not as they really were. Why else would I have dreamt of kissing the stranger in the portrait?

Perhaps that was not completely accurate. Once upon a time, I did have dreams that were true, that showed things as they happened, or were about to happen. It seemed I had not had one, though, since I arrived in the castle. Was it because I had nothing left to see of any importance, or because something in the castle was blocking the visions from appearing to me?

Abruptly I asked, “Who was that man at your wedding?”

“Which man? There were many in attendance.”

“I don’t see how you could have overlooked him. He was tall, and wore a green velvet doublet with a heavy gold chain across his shoulders.”

Her fine brows drew together in a frown. “I saw no one like that.”

“He and I danced ‘Grey Mare’ together, and then…we stepped outside.”

“Did you?” Her eyes glinted. “And what precisely did you do outside?”

I said nothing, but instead pretended to be interested in a collection of pewter plates at the stall where we had paused.
 

She laughed then. “Ah, I see. So you went outside to kiss this stranger, and now you don’t know how you feel about the Dragon Lord of Black’s Keep.”

That seemed to sum it up neatly. Never mind that the stranger was no more real than the conversation I was presently having with Lilianth. But perhaps she had the right of it. Perhaps this inner obsession with someone I had never actually met or seen with my own eyes was somehow preventing me from admitting that I had come to care for Theran, more than I wanted to say.
 

Had any of the rest of them loved him, those women who lay sleeping in that secret clearing? And had he loved any of them back?

“Perhaps they all died of a broken heart,” I said, echoing my musings of some days earlier.

In my dream I had made no mention of the place where all of the Dragon’s Brides took their final rest, but Lilianth only nodded as if she knew exactly what I was talking about. Then she tilted her head and gave me a searching look. “People don’t really die of a broken heart,” she said. “That sort of thing is just for stories. Something else killed them, Rhianne, and you need to find out what it was.”

“Before or after I tell my husband I’m in love with him?” I asked, in semi-teasing tones, but she appeared to take me seriously, considering my question before replying,

“Afterward. You are both so busy building walls right now. If you don’t stop soon, you’ll never be able to tear them down.”

I was about to comment on her sudden sagacity, but she seemed to grow insubstantial before my eyes, to waver and then blow away like mist on the morning breeze. All around her, the familiar streets of Lirinsholme likewise began to disappear, the buildings and people and smells and sounds dissolving into nothing. A bright light touched my eyes, and I awoke.

The sun streamed through curtains I had forgotten to close the night before. Unlike the previous storm, this one seemed to have been short-lived.

I blinked, and just as they had done in my dream, the words from my conversation with Lilianth blew away, leaving my mind as if they had never been there. Such was the way with dreams, but this time I had the impression I was forgetting something vitally important, if I could only recall what it was.
 

However, the harder I tried to hold on to those wisps of memory, the more they slipped away. My head ached, and I found myself feeling disinclined to get out of bed. Well, Sar had told me to get my rest. What did it matter whether I slept the day away or not? Even the thought of getting up so I might paint more was not appealing, and so I rolled over in bed, pulled the covers more tightly around me, and drifted off back to sleep.

No dreams greeted me that time, nothing but oblivion unbroken until I heard Sar’s voice from somewhere above me.

“My lady!”

I rolled over, noting vaguely that the bright sunlight had quite gone. Sar held a tray in both hands; behind her broad silhouette I could see the dim traces of a sullen sunset through one of the windows. Had I really slept the day through?

It seemed so.

“I thought you might like some supper,” she said, her tone uncharacteristically hesitant. “Or do you still feel ill?”

I paused to consider. The ache had gone from my head, though I still felt oddly listless. But my stomach apparently decided that it had had enough of lethargy, and growled.

Something that might have been the beginnings of a smile touched Sar’s mouth. “Not so ill you couldn’t eat, I wager.”

“I could try something,” I admitted.
 

Suddenly brisk, she set a clever little four-legged tray down on my lap. It was the sort of meal an invalid would be likely to enjoy—potato soup thick with cheese, a fresh wheaten roll, a mug of cider. I set to with more energy than I’d thought I would be able to muster, demolishing the roll and most of the soup before I’d even stopped to decide whether I was all that hungry.

“You seem to be on the mend,” was all she said, but a certain gleam in her eye told me she was almost amused by my wolfish appetite.

“It would appear so.”

I didn’t wish to waste time on speaking then, not while I still had some of that delicious soup to eat. Perhaps I could be excused; it had been a very long time since my dinner the previous night. And although I had not forgotten the shocks of the day before, they’d already begun to take on a hazy, dreamlike quality, as if they had happened to someone else.
 

Sar bustled about, putting away the clothing I had dropped across a chair, placing my boots on the floor of the wardrobe, even condescending to straighten the brushes and little jars of pigment I’d left sitting on my worktable. I thanked the goddess I’d retained enough presence of mind to hide the portrait of the stranger where it could not be easily spotted. I did not wish to have that conversation this evening…or ever, if possible.

Luckily, enough of the scent of linseed oil hung about my workspace that Sar had no wish to linger there, or perhaps it was just that I had finished all of my supper, giving her an excuse to return to me. Whatever the case, she stepped back toward the bed and retrieved the empty tray.

“Very good, my lady. It is probably best if you sleep some more, to regain your strength.”

“I’ve already slept the day through,” I protested.

“True enough, but rest is the best thing when you’re not feeling well.”

I supposed so; I hadn’t been ill enough in my short life to know for sure. We Menyon girls had always been a robust lot, soldiering on when most of our acquaintances sniffled and coughed their way through the long winter season. At any rate, this hadn’t been that sort of illness.
 

Assuming it had been an illness at all. If I were the sort to find drama in everyday occurrences, I would have said it was simply the sting of Theran’s cold words, followed by that gruesome discovery. Such things might be enough to send some girls to their beds. I’d never been the sort to suffer the megrims…and besides, my mother wouldn’t have allowed such a thing for even two minutes.

Curiously, though, I found I was weary after eating, and probably could sleep again. So I said, knowing it would make Sar happy, “I do think I will shut my eyes for a while.”

“Very good.”

I did close my eyes, but not all the way, watching her through my lashes as she set the tray down on my bedside table for a moment so she could move the bowl and cup closer to the center where they’d be less likely to fall. Her expression was more troubled than I would have expected, given that I had done as she wished, and promised to sleep some more. She shot me a troubled little frown, her forehead puckering, before she shook her head and picked up the tray, then went out.

She hadn’t shut the door to my bedchamber, most likely so the heat from the hearth in the other room could penetrate to where I slept. I found myself wanting to dream, but as sleep overtook me this time, it was deep and black, depthless as the ocean, taking me with it.

And so it went. I slept that night, and the day after, and the next night, rousing myself only to take a little food and attend to such necessities of hygiene as were required. Sar did manage to coax me into a hot bath the morning of the third day, and braided my hair herself as I tried not to let my face crack from yawning. It seemed I could not get enough sleep, no matter what I did. The line of worry between Sar’s brows only appeared to deepen as time passed, and I wished I had the strength to tell her I was fine. Somehow I lacked even that motivation, however.