The Dragon of Despair (87 page)

Wendee interrupted, “The Healed One could deny that Xarxius ever spoke with him about Citrine. That’s what I’d do if Xarxius is really in disgrace. Maybe Xarxius did lie about the Healed One. Maybe the Healed One knows nothing about your request.”

Elise refused to be shaken from her purpose.

“I don’t see why Xarxius should lie about something that big. After all, he’s basically a duke himself. He doesn’t need to make himself more important by saying he’s talked to the king, not to us, not when we’re supplicants.”

“Except,” Derian broke in, catching Elise’s excitement, “if Xarxius was a sort of supplicant! He did want us to do something for him. His mentioning the Healed One gets really interesting then. Either he was just trying to make us feel like dirt—sort of I take your lady and counselor and raise you by a king—or he was mentioning the Healed One deliberately, saying basically that the Healed One himself was interested in knowing what Melina was up to.”

Doc nodded agreement with a thin smile.

“Well, I certainly would want to know if my wife was prowling around nights, especially if that prowling wasn’t for any of the usual mischief.”

Derian grinned at him.

“So you wouldn’t mind if your wife was prowling for the ‘usual mischief’?”

Doc colored slightly and punched Derian in the shoulder.

“If we could be serious for a moment,” Elise said, and Derian thought her own color was a bit high, “my plan is to get an audience with the Healed One and then insist in my best high and mighty manner that I must have Citrine back.”

“Could you really do that?” Wendee asked, and Derian recalled his own awe regarding monarchs. “March in to a king?”

Elise giggled.

“Have you ever met my Grandmother Rosene? I plan to model myself on her.”

“Eagle’s Wings over us all,” Doc murmured.

Elise stuck her tongue out at him.

“As I see it,” she continued, “if the Healed One wants us to do something for him he will arrange a private interview—after all, he can’t come to us. If Xarxius did lie about the Healed One’s involvement or the Healed One is afraid of what he once would have dared, we won’t be granted our audience.”

“And Melina?” Wendee asked a bit breathlessly. “All this time we’ve been working to avoid a direct confrontation with her. There’s no way she won’t learn about this.”

Elise nodded.

“As I see it, by using Xarxius’s interview with us to arrest him she has made it impossible for us to continue acting as if we’re unaware of her influence. Really, from the moment she kept Citrine rather than sending her back to us she has opened a door.”

Firekeeper, clearly remembering the traps she had encountered during her second venture into the sewers, frowned.

“I hope that this door is not into a pit or room of armed soldiers.”

“Me, too,” Elise agreed. “But in case it is I think we should all go to call on the Healed One together—more of us to deal with whatever we encounter.”

“All of us?” Wendee squeaked.

“All of us,” Elise repeated firmly. “Two titled ladies, a knight, a counselor to the king, and a confidant of a duchess. It will be hard for Melina to justify making all of us disappear.”

Derian nodded slowly.

“And if she plans to do so,” he added, “we’re only making it easier for her by waiting here, trapped indoors by the unrest of her subjects.”

He rubbed his hands across his face, suddenly weary.

“Yes,” Elise agreed. “It’s too late to contact Violet Redbriar and learn if news of Xarxius’s arrest has become public and we can’t reasonably act until then. We’ll call on the ambassador first thing in the morning.”

“All of us?” Wendee asked hesitantly.

“Not quite yet,” Elise assured her. “For this call the only danger is being attacked in the streets.”

“Only,” Derian said, thinking of the riot he and Doc had been in and rubbing his still healing bruises. “Only.”

XXXIII

“
I MUST REST
!” gasped Grateful Peace, leaning hard against the rough rock wall, then sliding to the ground so heavily that his robes tore.

He knew what was coming next. With booted feet, one of the guards kicked his side until Peace’s only choice was to stagger upright or have his ribs broken.

The Illuminator heard the flutter of paper as Edlin dropped his sketch pad, the clank of chains as the young man lurched to his assistance.

“I say!” Edlin demanded angrily, interposing himself between Peace and the guard. “Wouldn’t it be easier to let him rest a moment? Give him some water? We’ve been at this for hours.”

Edlin received a backhand across the face—a punishment that had become so frequent that there was a thick swelling at one corner of his mouth. This hadn’t stopped Edlin from speaking out, though, taking full advantage of his value as a hostage to make the protests that might get Peace killed.

“Those hours,” Consolor Melina replied from where she was studying some sigils etched into a rock at the juxtaposition of two tunnels, “are precisely why we cannot stop. I shall need to retrace my steps far too soon. It would not do for my loving husband to find me gone from my bed as well as from his. I would like to find where this tunnel goes before then.”

Peace indicated to Edlin that he could stand on his own.

“I believe it leads to one of the hot springs, Consolor,” he said as respectfully as he could. “That horizontal wavy line with similar vertical ones above it usually indicates such. I have not been this way myself.”

“Well, you shall lead the way now,” Melina said, silkily kind. “Just in case you remember more than you are saying. I have no wish to lose my guards to some conveniently forgotten pit.”

Melina did, however, pause long enough to order one of the guards to stir some honey into a tin cup of water and let Peace drink the mixture. The sweet stuff was little enough treatment for his injuries and exhaustion, but Peace accepted thankfully. He knew full well that had Idalia been present his ribs would have been cracked, not bruised, and he would have been offered no refreshment.

Melina had a use for him, which was why she stopped her guards from injuring him too severely, but she had a use for Idalia as well and Peace’s pain was payment for his sister’s services. Melina weighed the two needs against each other very carefully, but Peace was the one who paid the price. Tonight, Idalia was exploring another network of tunnels, so Peace was safe from her abuse—and so had dared this small rebellion.

Within the last few days, Melina had become very interested in those tunnels which led to hot springs or other areas where the subterranean temperature was highest. She had not precisely confided in Peace what she hoped to find in these tunnels, but neither Peace nor Edlin believed any longer—as Melina’s guards still did—that what she sought was as mundane as a treasure hoard.

Melina’s new intensity meant that Idalia could not be spared to accompany Melina in her search, but that Idalia must conduct some portion of the search on her own. Peace wondered why there was this sudden rush. Surely it was not because Melina thought he might be rescued. More likely she thought Peace might need to be executed soon, either to placate Idalia or because pressure had been brought to bear for his or Edlin’s return.

Grateful Peace wondered if those well-meaning young people he had guided into New Kelvin realized that his discovery would mean his death. Even if Idalia would not demand it, he was thought of as a traitor by his peers—and traitors were not permitted to live.

WHEN MELINA DEPARTED
for her chambers in the Cloud Touching Spire, Peace and Edlin were permitted to retire to their cave. Peace collapsed onto his pallet. When Edlin knelt beside him to inspect his wounds the Illuminator whispered urgently:

“Are we watched?”

Edlin, after long days of shared captivity, had learned that Grateful Peace rarely asked an idle question. The two men had also detected the probable spy holes and often had some sense whether these were being used.

Now, with a casual deceptiveness that Peace quite admired, Edlin rose to his feet, sopped up water from the cave’s tiny spring, and returned to his place beside the injured man.

“Only the usual spot by the door,” Edlin replied softly, adding in a more audible voice, “Can you raise that bit of robe for me so I can clean the skin along your side before the cloth sticks?”

Peace did as instructed, a movement that conveniently hid his mouth from sight if the guard was watching. He had told Edlin early on in their captivity that they must always assume they were being watched. By now such misdirection had become nearly second nature. They hadn’t had much to hide, but teaching Edlin the skills he needed to keep their secrets had given them both a small feeling of control.

Speaking rapidly, Peace said, “Consolor Melina has a shadow. Citrine has been following her these last several nights. I believe I am the only one who has noticed the child.”

Edlin replied in a completely normal tone of voice, “Amazing. Can you roll to one side or shall I shift you?”

Peace accepted the young man’s assistance—in truth he needed it—though the actual reason was to permit him to continue his soft-voiced explanation unobserved.

“I hoped to make the child pity us, so she would bring assistance.”

Edlin’s reply was again spoken in a normal voice.

“I can’t believe you let them beat you like that!”

“Let us say I,” Peace replied, also in a normal voice, “took the opportunity to rest and hoped the guards would not be too vicious.”

In a softer voice Peace added, “I dare not make my actions too obvious or Citrine will suspect. She is canny beyond her years, as wounded creatures often are.”

“If Firekeeper were here…,” Edlin said, rising and filling the cup with water.

“Firekeeper is not,” Peace replied firmly. “We must work with what is here. In my case that is a battered, one-armed body. You must take care not to defend me too strenuously. Although Consolor Melina wants you as a hostage, and it would be better if you were returned unharmed, a certain amount of ‘carelessness’ on the part of her guards could be excused.”

Edlin shook his head. His thick, curly black hair had grown mop-like and was still too short to tie back, so he was constantly brushing it out of his eyes. He did so as he held the cup of water to Peace’s lips.

“You’re the one who needs to be careful.”

Peace nodded, thinking of Idalia.

“I know.”

FIREKEEPER KNEW
her wounds weren’t mending as quickly as Doc expected them to. She suspected she knew the reason, too, but she couldn’t bring herself to explain. To do so would be to try and explain things that were so abstract that they didn’t seem worthy of a wolf.

Simply put, she wasn’t sleeping well at night, not because of pain—though the bruised and lacerated muscles in her leg throbbed constantly—but because the comet kept haunting her dreams.

Firekeeper had never much remembered her dreams, though sometimes she awoke so weary in body and soul that she suspected that she must have dreamt heavily. However, those sleep-time explorations always faded to wisps of cloud, burnt from memory by the light and heat of awakening.

Now, however, whenever she fell asleep she dreamed and always, no matter how innocently those dreams began, the comet entered in. Firekeeper might be hunting with her family and run to Shining Coat’s side only to find that the silvery-grey wolf had become the brilliant comet compressed into a wolf’s shape. She might be talking to Dawn Brooks in her cabin in New Bardenville and the fire in the hearth would spread out, creeping up the walls and across the floors, speaking in the comet’s voice.

And worst of all her dreams remained with her in some form or another when she woke. For Firekeeper, who had suspected that the dreams her human friends often related over breakfast were simply an excuse for weaving wild and improbable stories, this was a torment. Sleeping and waking were no longer distinct. One no longer brought rest. The other no longer brought clarity.

Blind Seer was the only one aware of her difficulty and he couldn’t really understand why she wouldn’t talk about it to the others.