Mistress of Dragons (24 page)

With
subdued and pitying heart, Bellona came to the door of the Mistress’s quarters.
She was not surprised to find it open. Melisande would be waiting for her. She
would be grieving the passing, but she would be in control of herself. Bellona
had no worries on that score. A brief embrace, their tears mingling, then they
would take up their new duties and move on with their lives.

Although
it was now morning, a lamp still burned in the room. The heavy curtains
remained closed, keeping the room in shadow. As Bellona entered, she cast a
glance at the Mistress’s bed.

It
was empty. Bellona sighed deeply and blinked back her tears.

A
woman with a white, diaphanous veil cast over her head sat at the desk. She
might have been writing, for there were sheaves of paper on the desk before
her, but the quill had fallen from her hand. She sat in a somber reverie,
staring at nothing. She did not turn when Bellona entered, though she must have
heard her footfalls, the jingle and creak of her armor.

“Mistress
. . .” said Bellona softly and for all her heavy sorrow, her heart sang within
her to call Melisande by her exalted new title.

The
woman turned her head. Lifting her hands to her veil, she removed it.

Bellona
stared in shocked astonishment.

“Lucretta!
I didn’t expect. . . Where is Melisande?”

Bellona
was puzzled, but not overly concerned, though she did think it odd that, if
Melisande required help, she should have sent for Lucretta and not one of the
other sisters.

Lucretta
had always been jealous of Melisande, dating back to their childhood days.
Neither pretty nor charming, possessed of a hostile, cynical nature, Lucretta
was one of those people who live in the belief that others are whispering bad
things about them. She was tall and spare and lank. Her bony face was twisted
in a perpetual scowl, as much as to say, “I know you hate me and therefore I
will hate you first.” Though only twenty-eight, she might have been forty. Her
frowns had left their mark upon her face.

Her
nickname among the soldiers was “the Prune” or sometimes “the Prude” for it was
well known that she had never had a lover. She not only rejected any advances,
but had acidly lectured those who dared approach her on the sins of the flesh.
The only praise that could be given Lucretta was that she was dedicated, heart
and soul and body, to the Sisterhood. She had long felt that she should be
Mistress. She had long resented the fact that Melisande had been the one
chosen.

Lucretta
did not answer Bellona’s questions. She regarded Bellona with a supercilious
and most unpleasant smirk. A flash of gold sparkled at her neck. She wore a
locket that was sacred to the Mistress, worn only by her. A cold qualm shook
Bellona.

“Where
is Melisande?” she demanded, taking a step forward.

“Well
you might ask, Commander,” Lucretta replied haughtily, rising to her feet. “She
is gone.”

Her
eyes, which were the same washed-out gray as her skin tone, were small and mean
and gleamed with some inner pleasure. Lifting her hand, she fondled the golden
locket around her neck.

“Gone?”
Bellona couldn’t understand the woman. “What do you mean she’s gone?” A thought
occurred to her. “She’s attending to the cremation—”

“No,
she is not,” said Lucretta. “Melisande is gone from the monastery.” She paused,
drawing out the suspense. She was enjoying herself. “Melisande ran off with a
man, her lover. He came to fetch her in the night.”

“I
don’t believe you,” said Bellona flatly.

Lucretta
turned away. Reaching out her hand, she slightly parted the curtains, gazed out
the window, as if she might be hunting for the errant woman. “She has been gone
for many hours. Who knows where she could be by now?”

Bellona
strode across the room. Her fingers itched to seize the woman by her scrawny
throat and throttle her.

“Where
is Melisande? What have you done to her? Tell me, by the Eye, or I will—”

“You
will what, Commander?” Lucretta turned, fixed her gray, gimlet eyes on Bellona.
“Lay profane hands on your Mistress?”

Bellona
glared, her hands clenched to fists.

“For
I
am
the Mistress of Dragons,” Lucretta continued with detestable
aplomb. “I was with the Mistress when she died. I performed the cremation. I
scattered the ashes. Melisande abandoned her post. She abrogated her duties.
She left the Mistress to die alone. She betrayed the Mistress.”

Lucretta
smiled sadly, her tone pity-coated. “She betrayed everyone who ever loved and
trusted her.”

“I
don’t believe you,” Bellona repeated. “Melisande would never do what you accuse
her of doing. She loved the Mistress. She would have given her life for her.
She would have never left her to die alone.”

Bellona
eyed Lucretta. The woman had changed. She had never been this glib, this
articulate. She had never been this commanding.

Bellona
took a step closer. “You’ve done something to Melisande. I don’t know what.
Murdered her, maybe. You hated her enough for it. I’ll investigate. I don’t
care if you
are
Mistress. And I won’t be the only one. The sisters love
Melisande. Everyone loves her. They detest you!”

“What
they think of me is not my concern,” Lucretta replied, with a lofty calm that
was maddening to Bellona. “What you think of me is not my concern. Investigate,
by all means. You will hurt only your beloved Melisande, not me. For I have
proof.”

Bellona
dared not lay hands on one of the sisters, but she could intimidate and she did
so, pushing forward, using her strong, muscular body to crowd the scrawny
woman, shouting in her face.

“Where
is Melisande?” Bellona cried. “What have you done with her?”

Lucretta
did not move, did not flinch. She gazed impassively into Bellona’s anger-pale
eyes and quietly repeated, “I have proof. I will show you if you will get ahold
of yourself. Indeed, I must show you. For I am sending you to find her and slay
her.”

Bellona
stared at Lucretta, searched for the lie in her and could not find it. Bellona’s
anger burnt out, leaving her chill and numb, her mouth filled with the taste of
ashes. Her heart thudded. She found it hard to breathe, to think. She stood in
a stupor, her hands clenching and unclenching, trying to bring some feeling
back to her fingers.

“Show
me,” she said in a voice dull with pain.

Wordlessly,
Lucretta walked out of the Mistress’s chamber. Bellona followed her, not
knowing where she was bound, not caring. Her brain offered proof, her heart
refuted it. She was forced to believe and yet she couldn’t believe. She knew
Melisande, knew her as well or better than she knew herself. Melisande
was
herself,
a part of her. Dearer than friend, closer than sister. Melisande lying in her
arms, warm and loving and yielding, sweet kisses in the nighttime, softness and
shuddering, breathless passion. Could that have been a lie? Could she, all this
time, have been feeling the hands of her male lover? In the aching climax, was
it his face she saw? His name she whispered? Was that the true reason for her
exhaustion this past fortnight? Had she been meeting him in the night, giving
herself to him?

Her
suspicions roused, Bellona looked back on their time together and suddenly
certain words let drop, certain sentences left unfinished, certain deeds and
actions that had been of no consequence were now fraught with sinister meaning.

All
very well, logic stated, but how did her lover enter the monastery? Where did
they hold their trysts? The monastery was well-guarded. No one knew that better
than Bellona, who would stake her very life on the loyalty and skill of her
soldiers. A glimmer of hope flickered in the howling darkness of her agony. Let
Lucretta explain that, and then she would believe.

She
revived enough to note that Lucretta was leading her to the Sanctuary of the
Eye. The heat in the chamber was intense. The brazier had been stoked with fuel
and laden with incense. Yet, beneath it, Bellona could smell the reek of blood
and she very nearly gagged. She saw no signs of charring or any other
indication that a body had been burned here, but the stench was unmistakable.

An
urn of gold inlaid with silver stood atop the stone altar. Bellona glanced at
it, then lowered her eyes in respect. Her turmoil over Melisande had caused her
to forget that death had claimed the woman she had loved and honored and
revered for so many years. Bellona felt ashamed and guilty and that added to
her misery.

Lucretta
approached the Eye carved into the floor. Turning, she looked expectantly at
Bellona.

“Well?”
Bellona said, challenging. “Why bring me here?”

“Look
into the Eye,” said Lucretta.

Bellona
recoiled. “You know I am not permitted—”

“I
give you dispensation. This once. Look into the Eye and see the truth. Unless”—Lucretta
added, her lip curling—”you are afraid.”

Bellona
stood undecided. She wanted to declare angrily that she wasn’t afraid, that her
faith in Melisande and her love would disprove the proof, whatever that might
be. Yet, she was afraid, suddenly. Very afraid. The Eye was from the goddess
and could not lie and Bellona didn’t want to see. Bellona wanted to hold onto
her love, her faith, her pride.

“It
is your duty, Commander,” said the Mistress.

Not
so many months ago, one of the men chosen for the coupling had managed to sneak
a bottle of hard spirits into the monastery. In a drunken fit, he’d begun
punching and beating the woman chosen to partner him. Going to subdue him,
Bellona found out that he’d also smuggled in a knife. She saw the light flare
off the blade, saw it stabbing toward her. She could not dodge the blow. She
had to take it, and she had braced herself for the searing burn, twisting her
body so that the knife would glance off a rib, not strike to the heart.

She
knelt before the Eye.

Lucretta
knelt opposite her.

“Reveal
what you have seen,” Lucretta commanded.

The
images were fleeting and blurred, incomplete, but telling. A man, handsome, a
foreigner by his clothes, stood in this very chamber. Melisande was there,
white-faced, shivering, looking frightened, near to death, but then she would
be, wouldn’t she? She knew the enormity of her crime. He held out his hand to
Melisande, and she—wet from the rain, her black robes clinging to her body—ran
to him. He swept her up in his arms and carried her . . .

The
Eye closed. The images vanished, yet Bellona would see them forever.

Bellona
shut her eyes, bowed her head. Her agony was like some ravening beast let loose
inside her, clawing at her vitals, tearing at her, slashing and cutting. The
pain of loss, of betrayal, was unendurable and if she could have willed herself
to die in that moment, she would have done so.

Bellona
rose to her feet and with a wrenching effort caged up the beast inside her,
muzzled its howls of pain and rage.

“She
met him here in the Sanctuary, that is clear enough,” Bellona said with cold
and terrible calm. Her gaze fixed on Lucretta. “But how did he get in without
anyone seeing him? And where did they go?”

Lucretta
stood up, her lank body awkward and ungraceful. Folding her hands over her thin
stomach, she pursed her lips.

“The
Mistress of Dragons is given knowledge that others are not. I know how he
entered and I know how they both escaped. You do not need such information—”

“I
do if I’m going to go after them,” Bellona returned, knife-edged.

“No,
you do not!” said Lucretta. Her gaze lifted, met Bellona’s. “I’ll show you
where to pick up their trail. Come.” She reached out her thin and bony hand,
intending to place her cold fingers on Bellona’s. “We will return to my
chambers. I have there a map—”

Bellona
shifted her feet, avoided the touch.

“Please
proceed, Mistress. I will follow.”

Lucretta
did so, walking from the sacred chamber with what majesty her spare frame and
shuffling gait permitted. Bellona followed, the ravening beast quiet in his
cage.

To
keep it silent, to keep it from tearing her apart, she began to feed it hatred.

BY
THE TIME MORNING’S GRAY LIGHT SPREAD OVER the sky, washing out the stars and
reducing the shining, globular moon to a pale wafer, flat and insubstantial,
Draconas had his two humans safely ensconced in a shallow depression he had
found on a cliff side.

Melisande
sank to the floor. Sick with the shock and the lingering horror of the dragon’s
attack and the terrible thought that she might now be lying in that
bloodstained tomb, she could think of nothing but those hands clenched to fists
of agony, that mouth opened in its silent scream of pain, the dragon’s claw,
the golden locket.

She
did not know where she was, could not have said how she came to be here. The
flight through the darkness was unreal. These men who were with her were
strange and frightening. They had saved her life, but why? What had they come
for? Their presence didn’t make sense, it seemed sinister.

She
had never been around men much, just those who came to service the cows, and
she had always been disgusted by their largeness and their grasping hands and
the naked lust in their eyes. Crawling into a corner of the small cave, she sat
with her back against the wall, her arms clasped about her, watching the two
men warily.

“We
should build a fire,” said Edward. “Look at her. She’s shivering.”

His
gaze on her was anxious and worried. He was a comely man, she had to admit. His
hazel eyes, with their flecks of sunlight, radiated with admiration for her and
that warmed her, in spite of herself, seemed to steal away the horror of the
night. He had fought the dragon for her. He appeared open and honest, yet how
had he come to be there?