Dragon Rose (8 page)

But that thought only saddened me, as I wondered how they had fared this evening, sitting down to a table with an empty seat where I should have been. Had they wondered if I’d gone mad, or had they merely tried to see my precipitous decision as some sort of sideways retribution from the gods, a judgment brought down on their headstrong eldest child?

I truly couldn’t say. I knew my parents would mourn, and Darlynne and Maeganne as well. Of Therella’s reaction I was less certain. We had squabbled more often of late, possibly because she was impatient for me to be wed and out of the house so she could have her own turn as eldest, as the one who could bring honor to us through some advantageous marriage or other.

Well, I was wed now, albeit not in a manner even my sister had probably imagined. I wondered then where the Dragon had gone, whether he had returned to his own rooms, wherever they might be, or whether he roamed the castle’s corridors in darkness. Did he even need to sleep?

Then I yawned, the exertions of the day finally catching up with me. Perhaps the lord of Black’s Keep had no need of slumber, but his Bride did. I was safe for now at least, and I would worry about the morrow when it came. I washed my face and scrubbed my teeth, and clambered into the tall bed. It felt strange and far too large, but apparently even its strangeness was not enough to keep me from slumber. I closed my eyes, and let myself fall into the dark.

I dreamed again that night.

No nightmare visions of shadows swooping down from the heights, or even the commonplaces I might have hoped to see—my family, or Lilianth safe with her beloved Adain. In fact, I could hardly call it a dream at all, but instead just a snippet, a brief glimpse.

I had never seen the man before, or at least I did not think I had. And what I did see was little more than the outline of a fine jaw, a glint from eyes the color of the sea…or at least the sea as Lindell once described it to me, as I had never seen it with my own eyes. The stranger turned and walked away from me, dark hair blowing in an unseen wind, the ragged locks catching in the fine embroidery of his high collar.
 

And then he was gone.

I sat up in bed, blinking, and realized morning had come. Golden sunlight, tinted with the rosy hues of dawn, slanted in through the narrow windows on the wall opposite my bed. And with that light the image in my dream seemed to fade and disappear, just as the morning mists were burning away in the valley below.

A compulsion came on me then, a driving need to get down what I had seen before it left me completely. I pushed back the covers and climbed out of bed, rushing across the room to the small table under the windows. But its drawers were empty—no paper, no ink or pens.
 

I turned from the table and went into the main chamber, thinking furiously. No doubt the table out there would be as bereft of supplies as the one in my bedroom, but there were the remains of the fire from the day before. Surely there must be a lump of charcoal I could use for my purposes…

“What in the world are you doing, my lady?”

Sar’s astonished tones made me draw back from my mad scrabble through the spent ashes. I stood and turned away from the hearth. Without thinking, I reached down to smooth out the skirt of my nightgown. A large black smudge appeared at once, and I let go of the fabric immediately, although the damage was done.

She was too well-trained to chide me for my heedlessness, but I saw a pucker appear between her eyebrows as she took in the results of my carelessness.

“I was looking for a piece of charcoal,” I said.

“Whatever for, my lady?”

“So I could draw the—” I broke off then, for I knew if I tried to explain I wanted the charcoal to draw a picture of a man I had seen in my dreams, she would have thought me completely mad.

“His lordship said you were an artist.” She didn’t precisely sniff, but I could tell she was less than impressed with my avocation. “He said you had need of supplies, but I hadn’t realized your need was so desperate that you’d be digging in the ashes.”

“I—that is, I saw the sunrise and thought it might make a fine sketch.”
 

Another lift of the eyebrows. “Well, I’ll see that we bring you a pen and ink and some paper to start. No need for dirtying yourself, my lady.”

“Of course not. I am sorry.” I knew then that even the charcoal would have done me no good. The image was gone. I couldn’t even remember whether the man’s eyes had been blue or green. Besides, it would have been silly to waste my time on such a thing. Lindell had always told me the best paintings were those done from life, and not from the artist’s mind. Too much chance of embellishing, of drawing that which was not there, if one did not have the real person or object in front of them.
 

“No need for apologies, my lady, but I think I had better send for another bath. I had thought this morning we could go over your wardrobe, to see which gowns would suit you best. I’ll then store the rest.”

I nodded, and let her sweep me away into a series of commonplaces that managed to consume most of my morning. Better that way, really. Concentrating on the fit of a gown helped to dispel some of the odd ache that had lodged somewhere in my breast, like the gnawing pain of a hunger which couldn’t be satisfied. Where it had come from, I couldn’t say, but it seemed to follow me throughout most of the day, akin to the persistent dull nag of a toothache. I told myself it was homesickness, or unease in my new surroundings.

Somehow, though, I knew it was much more than that.
 

Chapter Five

The lord of Black’s Keep was as good as his word. As soon as I had given the list of my required supplies to Sar, Theran dispatched a man named Mat and a wagon to Lystare to bring back everything I needed. In the meantime, I was provided with a quantity of paper and enough ink and pens for a small army of sketchers.
 

No one seemed to raise an eyebrow at my pastime, or at least they did so out of my presence. The castle was mine to roam in as I pleased, save for the north tower, where his lordship kept his suite. As he had said, there was a very fine rose garden clustered at the base of the tower, and though the tower itself was off-limits, the garden was not. True, oils or watercolors would have suited their vibrant late-summer colors better than pen and ink, but it was still something to be able to sit there for hours, exploring the differences in their branches and blooms, and finding the delicate nuances that perhaps the broader strokes of a paintbrush might not have revealed.

This was a luxury I had not looked for. When I had spoken out in the town square, I had thought only of saving my friend. I hadn’t realized that offering myself as the Dragon’s Bride bought me the time I had always craved for my work. No one disturbed me, save to call me in to meals. And every night I sat down with my husband.

Husband
. It seems an odd word for the man who dwelt in the castle with me, for certainly we were not husband and wife in any commonly accepted sense of the phrase. I saw him only after sunset. What he did with his days, I could not say, although there were times I thought I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, as if someone or something moved in the highest chambers of the tower that overlooked the rose garden. Whenever I turned to discover the source of that movement, however, I saw nothing.

Whether he watched me in secret, I did not know, and of course I had not the courage to ask him such a thing. Instead, when we sat at dinner, he would inquire about my drawings, or the weather, or my rooms, such commonplaces as a stranger might feel safe to discuss. I wished I had the courage to make the conversation somehow more personal, but I could never find a way to do so without sounding either abrupt or downright rude, and so I rattled on as best I could, sharing shallow intimacies with someone who apparently intended to always hold me at arm’s length.

The dream did not return.

Some ten days after my arrival at Black’s Peak, Mat returned with my wished-for supplies. Truly, although I had been careful when composing my list, I hadn’t realized what an impressive collection all those items would make when assembled in one place. I had to do some rearranging of the sitting area in my suite, and called for another table so I could properly set out all the jars of my pigments, along with the collection of fine brushes of squirrel and mink. The alcove that faced southward seemed the perfect place for my new easel, and I set it up there, intending to make the valley of Lirinsholme my first painting.
 

Sar seemed less than pleased with the havoc I created in my rooms, but as they were mine and not hers, she said nothing, instead settling for a few carefully timed raised eyebrows.
 

“And you don’t mind sleeping in here with the smell?” she asked, after I had opened one of the jars of linseed oil and began mixing the first of the pigments for my study of the valley. I would need a careful combination of verdigris and umber to get the correct tint for the warm hues of the late-summer grass.

I knew that was her way of criticizing the enterprise, and smothered a smile. I had been in the castle for less than a fortnight, but I already knew she thought of Black’s Keep as her place to rule, Dragon Lord or no. It wasn’t that far off from the truth; I had yet to see Theran Blackmoor order anything more than another flagon of wine for our dinner table.
 

“It smells sweet as roses to me,” I said. “Just having the pigments I need, and all that canvas! I daresay Mat brought back enough for me to make a hundred paintings.”

I had thought she might raise an eyebrow again, or perhaps smile at my grandiosity, but for some reason a shadow passed over her face at my words. Then she shook her head, as if to clear it of an unpleasant vision.

“Paint as many as you like. But be sure to have Mat make the canvases for you. I can only imagine what his lordship would say if he discovered you were out in the workshops, hammering nails together for a frame.”

“Well, I had to show Mat how to do it properly,” I protested.
 

No, Sar had not been exactly pleased to find me out in the workshop, sleeves untied and tossed to the side, as I showed Mat, who seemed to be the keep’s general handyman and dogsbody, how to stretch the canvas over the frame so it would be equally taut on all sides and not bunch or sag. But really, the best way to learn is by example. That was how Lindell had taught me to do it, and my first few attempts were quite pathetic. Mat did far better at it on his first try, but then, he had longer arms and was much stronger than I.

“Hmm,” was Sar’s response to my remark.

“Anyway,” I went on, sprinkling a little more verdigris into the mixture on the thin wooden board I used for preparing my paints, “Mat is doing very well at it, so no need to trouble his lordship with tales of me sawing boards or stretching canvas.”

“Thank goodness.”

She left me then, stating some pressing need in the kitchens, but I really think her haste to leave stemmed more from her distaste of the scent of the linseed oil than any culinary emergency. The smell was so familiar to me that I didn’t think twice about it. Besides, I had the windows open to let in the fine summer air, but I didn’t mind her leaving. I had work to do.

“Sar tells me that you are quite consumed in a painting,” Theran Blackmoor said to me over dinner several days later.

I wondered how often the two of them discussed me but decided, again, that there was no way for me to ask without sounding too forward. “I’m painting the valley. The hues on the hillsides are quite lovely this time of year; I want to catch them before autumn comes upon us in earnest.”

“It must be quite a gift, to see things as you do.”

His words made me start a little, until I realized he spoke only of my artist’s eye, and not that far more troublesome one, the one which brought images to me in dreams. Since that first night, none of my dreams had been particularly vivid or memorable, and even the one that had troubled me so had faded almost completely. If it meant anything—which I doubted—most likely it had been my way of saying goodbye to any hopes of marriage to someone more suitable.
 

“Oh, well.” Deprecating my talents came as naturally to me as breathing, and I did it without thought. Lindell had praised my work, and said it was a shame I was a girl, for I should have been plying my trade in Lystare and beyond. My family, though, tended to ignore it, save when they could use it for their own gain. No, that was not fair. I’d felt glad to be of some use, dull as the work might have been. Far better that I should have been gifted with a needle, or in the kitchens, for at least then I could have made a contribution they didn’t have to hide from the world, but that was not my fate.

“Rhianne.”

Although I still found myself thrilling to the sound of my name in that dark-honey voice of Theran’s, I couldn’t help but detect a note of reproof. To my surprise, he drew a piece of paper from somewhere within the folds of his robes and then laid it flat on the table between us, smoothing it with a gloved hand. Although the one candle sitting next to my plate did not provide much illumination, I could still see the piece of paper was one I had discarded earlier that day, a sketch of two roses clustered together. I hadn’t been entirely satisfied with the shading, and so I had thrown the scrap into the waste bin in my room.
 

How he had come by it, I had no idea, although I guessed either Sar or Melynne, the girl tasked with keeping my rooms tidy, must have fished it out and given it to him.

“It was wasteful, I suppose. I should have used the back of the paper before I put it in the waste bin, but—”

“That is not what I was about to say.” A black-clad finger traced the lines of one rose stem, then paused, still resting on the paper. “To see the truth of a thing…to be able to put that truth down on paper, or canvas…well, it is a rare gift. You should not disparage it.”

“I wasn’t—” I broke off, since I realized I had been doing that very thing. Well, it was never easy to shake off the habits of a lifetime. “So you don’t think it odd, that a woman should want to be a painter?”