The Fire Dragon (2 page)

“I do understand. I've got part of them off by heart already.”

“Splendid. Keep at it. But if you finish before I get back, there's no need for you to stay shut up inside. The more sun you get, the better.”

Nevyn hurried down the stone stairs, which still exuded a wintry chill, and walked out to the sunlight and the main ward of Dun Deverry and the looming towers of the dun itself. Not even the bright spring day could turn the smoke-blackened stone cheerful. The fortress spread out over the top of a hill, bound by six high stone walls, lying at intervals down the hill like chains upon the earth. Tall towers, squat brochs, wooden sheds, long barracks, and stables—
they sprawled in a plan turned random by hundreds of years of decay, the fires of war, and the disasters of siege, followed by what new building and fortifying the kings had been able to afford. In among the buildings lay cobbled wards and plain dirt yards, cut up by stone walls, some isolated, all confusing.

In the center of this tangle, however, lay a proper ward, and in its center rose the tidy cluster of brochs and towers that housed the prince, his family, his personal guards, and the many officials and servants that made up his court. Against the black stone, bright banners displayed a red wyvern on a cream ground, lifting and trembling in the breeze. As Nevyn was crossing this ward, he saw Princess Bellyra just leaving the main broch tower. With two pages and one of her husband's bards in attendance, she was heading for the door of one of the side buildings. Dressed in blue linen, she walked slowly, her hands resting on her belly, heavy with her third child. Her honey-colored hair was bound up in a scarf stiff with embroidery, as befitted a married woman of her rank.

“Nevyn!” she called out. “Are you off to the high council?”

“I am, Your Highness. Why are you going inside in this lovely weather?”

“It's that bit of old map you found for me. I simply have to go see the room it refers to.”

“Ah, indeed. I'm curious about it myself, actually. If you could let me know what you find?”

“I will. But you'd best hurry. Maryn's been looking for you.”

Nevyn bowed, then hurried through the double doors of the central broch. The great hall covered the entire ground floor, a huge round room scattered with wooden tables, benches, and a small collection of chairs at the table reserved for the prince himself. At either side stood enormous stone hearths, one for the prince's riders and the servants, the other, far grander, for the noble-born. Despite the spring warmth outside, fires smoldered in each to drive off the damp.

Nevyn wove his way through the tables and the dogs
scattered on the straw-strewn floor. About halfway between doors and hearths a stone staircase spiralled up the wall. He'd climbed only a few steps when someone hailed him from below. He turned to see Councillor Oggyn just mounting the stairs himself. He was a stout man, Oggyn, and egg-bald, though he sported a bristling black beard. He was carrying an armful of rolled parchments.

“Good day,” Nevyn said. “Are those the ledgers?”

“They are, my lord,” Oggyn said. “I've recorded all the dues and taxes owed our prince by the royal demesne. I'm cursed glad he can count on the Cerrmor taxes for a while longer.”

“So am I. Getting the army fit to march would strip his local holdings bare.”

“Just so. We'll have to wait for provisions from the south, and that's that. I just hope our prince sees reason. I know he's impatient to be on the move.”

“Oh, I'm sure he will. I'm hoping that our enemies are as badly off as we are.”

They climbed in silence to the first landing, where Oggyn paused to catch his breath. He looked out over the great hall below while he mopped his bald head with a rag.

“Somewhat else I wanted to lay before you, my lord,” Oggyn said. “I saw our princess going about her investigations just now. Is that wise?”

“Well, the midwives all swear that the walking will do her naught but good.”

“Splendid, but that's not quite my meaning. That bard. Is he fit company for her?”

“Ah. I see.”

Nevyn considered his answer. During the winter past, Maddyn, the bard in question, had caught Oggyn out in some shameful doings and written a flyting song about them. It was his right as a bard to do so, but in his shame Oggyn wouldn't be caring about rights and duties.

“He is, truly.” Nevyn decided that brevity was best. “I've never met a man more aware of his station in life. If anything, he's perhaps too modest for a bard.”

Oggyn set his lips together hard and stared for a moment more.

“Ah well,” Oggyn said at last. “None of my affair, anyway. Shall we go up?”

“By all means. We should find the prince and his brother there before us.”

“I shan't be able to climb around like this much longer.” Bellyra laid both hands on her swollen belly. “But I couldn't stand not knowing. I wonder if there truly is a secret passage. Tell me, Maddo. Doesn't that mark look like it means a doorway of some kind?”

Maddyn held the fragment of mouldy parchment up to an arrow slit for the sunlight. They were standing in a wedge-shaped chamber partway up one of the half-brochs, which joined the central tower like petals round the center of a daisy. According to the piece of map, this chamber should have had two doors, the one by which they'd entered and another directly across. Yet the inward bulge of the stone wall opposite showed nothing.

“It does,” Maddyn said at last. “Perhaps the door's been walled up.”

The princess's pages, however, gave up less easily. The two boys began poking at the mortar and pushing rather randomly on the stones. All at once the wall groaned, or so it sounded, a long sigh of pain. The boys yelped and jumped back.

“So!” Bellyra said. “I'll wager we have a spy's hole or suchlike here. The royal council chamber, the one on the second floor of the main broch, should be right near here.”

The pages set to again. Dark-haired and hazel-eyed, they were Gwerbret Ammerwdd's sons, and apparently they had inherited that great lord's stubbornness. They pushed, prodded, laid their backs against the wall, and shoved until, all at once, a section of wall swung inward with an alarming collection of squeaks, groans, and rumbles.

“Look, Your Highness!” said Vertyc, the elder of the pair. “Here's the door!”

“Not a very secret one, I must say, with a noise like
that.” Bellyra took a few steps forward to peer through the opening. “It wants oiling, most like.”

Maddyn joined her and peered through the opening.

“It's more a passageway than a room inside,” Maddyn said.

“It might lead to the council chamber. I wonder if the kings had this made to eavesdrop on their councillors. There was a hidden chamber like this in Dun Cerrmor. By the end my father didn't trust anyone, and so he had one built.”

“Shall we find out?” Maddyn said.

“By all means!” Bellyra gestured at the pages. “You two stay out here. If that door swings shut, we could be trapped. Don't look so disappointed! You can explore it once we come out again, and we'll watch the door for you.”

The narrow passage smelled heavily of mice. Some twenty feet along they heard voices: Nevyn and Councillor Oggyn. Grinning, Bellyra held a finger to her lips. When they stopped to listen, the sound came clearly.

“The spring's upon us,” Oggyn was saying. “We need to requisition mules and suchlike.”

“I've no idea how many we'll need,” Nevyn said. “It depends upon the muster.”

Bellyra could just make out Maryn's voice. Apparently he was sitting at some distance from the wall. As the two councillors continued talking about provisions and transport, Bellyra felt on the edge of tears. The army would ride out soon, leaving her and the other women behind with only the familiar summer terrors for company.

When she glanced at Maddyn, she found him leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. It never ceased to amaze her how fighting men would sleep whenever they could, no matter how precarious their balance. Grey streaked Maddyn's dark curly hair, and he was weather-beaten and gaunt from his soldier's life, but it was his kindness that had snared her. This summer she would worry doubly, she realized, both for her husband and for the man upon whose devotion she had come to rely when dark moods overtook her. For a moment she found herself
tempted to kiss him awake. The feeling brought a cold panic with it. As the queen of all Deverry, she would have to keep her honor as pure as a priest of Bel. She took a sharp step back, kicked a rattling stone, and woke him.

“It's stuffy in here,” she whispered. “Let's leave.”

Out in the cleaner air of the chamber Maddyn took a few deep breaths and rubbed his eyes. Bellyra sent the boys in for their look around, then watched him while he studied the fragment of map.

“Truly interesting,” Maddyn said at last. “So kings eavesdrop like commoners, do they?”

“It looks as if the ones here did. The next time Maryn holds a full council I'll remember this. I always wonder what he's like when there are no women around. He must be quite different.”

“One would hope.”

Bellyra laughed, and not very decorously, either. There was a time when that jest would have wounded her to the heart, she realized. Maddyn grinned at her.

“Now the real question,” she went on, “is when this passage was built. I've not found a thing about it in the records, which makes sense, of course. They could hardly keep it secret if they talked about it. But then, I wonder who did the building?”

“Perhaps the king had them slain afterwards.”

“Ych! I hope not. Although—” Bellyra paused, thinking. “Nevyn has an ancient book called
Tales of the Dawntime.
According to that, the earliest brochs in Deverry weren't built with proper floors and chambers and suchlike. They had double walls, with a good-sized space between them, you see, and they were empty like a chimney in the center, because there would only be one big fire at the bottom to keep everyone warm. And in those double walls were little rooms and some sort of corridor called galleries.”

“I see. This passage could be a remnant of a gallery, then. The heart of Dun Deverry's very old, after all.”

“Just so, and then the only thing the later king would have had to add would have been this door. And he might
have been able to have that made secretly, if he paid the mason enough.”

“True spoken. And especially if the mason were as close-mouthed as Otho, say.”

“Quite so. I wonder if our pages have had enough exploring in there? I hate to admit this, Maddo, but I'm tired, and I want to sit down.”

Maddyn called to the boys, and in a few moments they hurried out. Cobwebs glistened in their hair.

“There's a little staircase at the end, Your Highness,” Vertyc said. “But it doesn't go up to anything.”

“Unless it's a false floor,” his brother, Tanno, joined in, “but it would make ever so much noise to find out.”

“We'd best wait till the prince's council isn't in session, then,” Bellyra said. “But don't worry, we'll come back to look at it.”

They all hurried down the staircase and outside to find the sunlight leaving them. From the south, white clouds were gliding in, billowing up into the sky with the promise of a storm. Servants trotted back and forth, fetching firewood for the great hall while they kept an eye out for the rain. Bellyra picked her way slowly over the uneven cobblestones with Vertyc at her elbow to steady her. She was so intent on not falling that they were halfway across before she realized that she was hearing the sound of a man screaming in rage. She stopped walking and looked up, glancing around.

Across the ward by the main gate, two men had faced off. Their white shirts, each embroidered with a grey dagger down one sleeve, marked them as silver daggers, members of the prince's personal guard. They were both of them blond and burly, but one was a good head taller than the other—Branoic, she realized, and facing him Owaen, captain of the troop, pacing back and forth and shouting so angrily that his words made no sense.

“Maddo, what's that all about?” Bellyra said.

“Oh ye gods!” Maddyn said. “I don't know, my lady, but I'd best attend to it.”

“By all means. Let's go over. If I'm there Owaen will have to stop screaming like that.”

“Truly, and my thanks.”

Indeed the royal presence did bring Owaen to his senses. He fell silent and bowed to the princess, but he trembled all over, and his face had gone dead-white. Branoic was smiling, Bellyra suddenly realized, a wicked tight curve of his mouth, as if he were enjoying each and every moment of Owaen's rage.

“Your Highness.” Branoic bowed low. “Your husband has given me a splendid boon, and I'll thank you for it as well. I know you must have spoken with him about bestowing land upon me.”

“I did, and you're most welcome.” She turned to Owaen with as pleasant a smile as she could muster. “But what's so wrong, Captain?”

“Forgive me, Your Highness, but your husband is going to make him a lord as well.”

“Of course.”

“But the blazon—forgive me—you wouldn't understand, Your Highness.”

“Oh ye gods!” Maddyn broke in. “He didn't give Branno the eagles back?”

“He did.” Owaen could barely force the words out. “Just that.”

Branoic tossed back his head and howled with laughter. With one smooth curve of his body Owaen turned and hit him so hard in the stomach that Branoic doubled over. Maddyn grabbed Owaen's arm, but he could hold him for only a brief moment—just long enough for Branoic to get his wind back.

“You bastard!” Branoic snarled.

Owaen shook Maddyn off and charged. Branoic met him with the slap of one huge hand, then swung on him with the other. Screaming curses, Owaen grabbed his shirt with both hands and shook him like a rat whilst Branoic pounded on his enemy's back. For a moment they swayed back and forth like drunken men; then Owaen tripped, and
they both fell. Clasped in each other's arms they rolled around on the cobbles while they swore and kicked and punched each other. All Maddyn could do was dance around them and try to make himself heard.

“Stop it!” Maddyn was screaming. “Not in front of the princess! You cursed hounds, stop it!”