The Fire Dragon (24 page)

“I never meant,” she was whispering. “I never meant harm.”

Maddyn ignored her and walked over to the improvised bier. Bellyra's face—he stared, shaking, at what was left of her beauty, smashed against stone, purple and red, raw like meat.

“I'll lay a bit of silk over her,” Elyssa whispered. “For the burial.”

Maddyn nodded and turned away. He had meant to kiss her farewell, but her injuries had made it impossible, a last injustice that made him swear aloud. For a long time he stood staring at the floor, thinking of very little, listening as Degwa wept and Nevyn and Elyssa talked of the children and what must be done to help the lads deal with losing their mother. Finally, he heard a door open behind him. The talk stopped, though Degwa wept the louder. He knew that the prince must have entered even before he turned round to see Maryn, standing bewildered by his wife's dead body.

The prince was unarmed with his back turned. Maddyn felt his hand touch his silver dagger of its own will. Madness rose in his throat like a howl; madness blinded his eyes with a red mist. He could draw, step forward, stab, avenge. The word vengeance throbbed in his blood. Vengeance—and then what? He would have broken every vow he'd sworn to Prince Maryn, shattered the last bit of his honor and ground it underfoot. I'll not, he told himself. The thought seemed to clear his vision, and he could see Nevyn, watching him calmly but for the rise of one bristling eyebrow.

Maryn spun around, his arms held a little out to each side, as if he'd just realized that Maddyn stood behind him. Maddyn forced himself to kneel as the courtesy to his sworn lord demanded.

“Get up,” Maryn snarled. “For gods' sake, don't kneel to me tonight. I'm not worthy of it.”

Unable to speak, Maddyn nodded and rose. For a long moment they looked at each other, bard and prince; then Maddyn bowed, turned, and strode out of the hall. He trotted down the corridor, clattered down the stairway, and
rushed out into the damp night air where at last, it seemed, he could breathe.

All night Lilli lay awake, terrified that Maryn would come to her. If he wanted comfort, what would she say to him? He never opened her door, and toward dawn she fell asleep at last and dreamt of being an exile again. Once again she rode into Cerrmor and stood in the sunny ward, but this time it was the princess who walked up to her and smiled in welcome. She woke in tears, dragged herself up, and dressed. She crept downstairs, afraid at every turn that she'd see Maryn, but the great hall stretched out silent in the grey light. A few servants were just rising from their beds in the straw by the hearths. They ignored her as she hurried outside.

The storm had broken, and brilliant sunshine glittered on the freshly washed cobbles. The blue sky above seemed like some insult to Bellyra, as if the sun himself should have been mourning her. Lilli ran into the shelter of Nevyn's tower and puffed up the stairs. His chamber stood open, and he himself sat on the windowsill.

“I thought you might come here early,” Nevyn said. “Did you talk with Maryn last night?”

Lilli shook her head and sat down, panting for breath, on the chair. Nevyn leaned forward in concern.

“You look decidedly unwell.”

“I am. I hardly slept.”

“No doubt. I didn't either. This is a horrible thing.”

With one last gasp, Lilli got her breath back. “And it's my fault,” Lilli said. “At least partly.”

“It's not,” Nevyn snapped. “It's to no one's shame, not even Maryn's, though I must admit I'm feeling very ill disposed toward him this morning.”

“You don't understand. He was going to send her to Cerrmor because of me. I mean, because I ended the thing between us.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“And he grew furious and decided to send her away, where you'd not worry about her?”

“I think so, truly.” Lilli could barely speak. She felt the
tears running down her face and let them. “She was so good to me when I had naught.”

In the morning light Nevyn suddenly seemed not merely old but ancient, with every line on his face etched deep, his skin pale around the brown discolorings of old age, his eyes clouded and distant. His hands, all knuckles and wrinkled skin, clasped each other, then relaxed, flaccid on his thighs.

“If Maryn had half your sense of honor,” Nevyn said at last, “Bellyra would be alive today. Do
not
blame yourself. As your master in your craft, I forbid it.”

“Very well. I—it's just so hateful.”

“It is that.” Nevyn spoke so softly that she could barely hear him. “It is that, truly.”

Lilli managed to return to her chamber without meeting Maryn. The pages all told her that the prince had shut himself up in his apartments and would speak with no one. All morning Lilli lay on her bed, weeping at times, but mostly brooding on the princess's death. Was it truly Maryn's cruelty alone that had driven Bellyra to her death? She found herself remembering her mother, Lady Merodda, and her dark magicks that had caused so many so much harm. Her mother's curse had followed her into the sanctuary of Maryn's domain. Lilli could think of it no other way, that like poison in a well her mother's evil had seeped into all their lives. Could nothing lift it?

“I'm her daughter.”

Lilli got up and walked over to the window. Down below she could see the ward, gilded in the sunlight pouring through the remnants of last night's storm. It was falling to her, Merodda's daughter, to lift the curse. In that morning's meditation it came to her, that since the curse had been sealed with the blood of their clan, only blood-kin could lift it.

“Have you seen Councillor Oggyn?” Nevyn said. “I haven't, my lord,” the page said. “Not all this morning.”

“No doubt he's sulking in his quarters.”

“No doubt.” The page turned his head and spat onto the cobbles. “He can stay there forever, for all I care.”

Nevyn strode into the great hall and paused just inside the doorway. This late in the morning, the hall stood mostly empty, though a few servants sat at a table and gossiped. When Nevyn asked, they too denied seeing Oggyn anywhere. Nevyn couldn't blame the man for hiding. Fairly or not, half the dun blamed him for Bellyra's death. Nevyn went upstairs to Oggyn's apartments and found the door closed. He knocked, waited, knocked again the harder. Still no answer. A thin line of cold dread ran down his back.

When he pushed on the door, it swung open easily. He stepped in, looked around, looked up, and swore aloud. Oggyn's body was hanging from a ceiling beam. His black tongue protruded from his swollen mouth, and he smelled of excrement. Under his dangling feet, a pile of tables, scattered and broken, showed how he'd managed to get up so high. No doubt he'd kicked them away when the noose tightened and his body spasmed. At least he'd given himself plenty of rope. His neck must have broken immediately and spared him the long slow agony of suffocation.

Nevyn shuddered and stepped back out, closing the door behind him. He should, he supposed, go tell Lady Degwa this news himself, but the thought nauseated him. All at once he smiled, a smile as grim and cold and brutal as any a berserker ever felt on his lips. He would tell Maryn, he decided, and let the prince have the joy of dealing with it.

“Hah!” Owaen said. “Slimy Oggo hanged himself. Have you heard?”

“I hadn't,” Maddyn said.

“The prince himself told me. He was pleased as a man can be.”

Maddyn shrugged. They were sitting on their bunks, facing each other, in the silver daggers' barracks. All the other men had left, off readying their horses for Bellyra's funeral procession. Bright sun streamed in and turned the straw on the floor to pale gold.

“I take it you're not pleased,” Owaen said.

“I'm not. He was trying to get at me with his cursed gossip, not at her. If I'd never composed that wretched song, this never would have happened.”

“That's horseshit and a pile of it!”

“Oh, is it now? What do you mean?”

“It's simple. If he hadn't been a grasping greedy swine of a man in the first place, you'd not have made up the song. He deserved every note of it. Ye gods, Maddo! Why in all the hells are you blaming yourself?”

“I don't know, but I am.”

Owaen rolled his eyes heavenward and got up, setting his hands on his hips. “Don't,” he said. “Are you going to ride with us in the procession?”

The prince had planned a magnificent funeral for his wife: his silver daggers, his lords, their riders, all of them on horseback to follow the litter carrying her body, while the prince himself walked beside it, all humility. Behind the riders would come the servants, walking to pay their last respects. The priests would bury her among the sacred oaks behind the temple of Bel.

“I'm not,” Maddyn said. “If he takes offense at that, he can choke on it.”

“He won't. Suit yourself, then.”

“I refuse to be there and see the earth fall on her.”

“You what?” Owaen stared at him for a long moment. “Are you telling me you truly did love her or suchlike?”

“I'm telling you naught.”

Owaen shook his head in sadness, then strode out of the barracks. Maddyn lay down on his bunk and stared at the ceiling. In the empty barracks the noise from outside drifted back and forth. Assembling and putting in order such a procession took a lot of shouting and cursing while the jingling of bridles sounded a chorus like tiny bells. At last the noise began to dwindle; the men fell silent, the bells grew faint as the horsemen filed out of the main ward. In the silence Maddyn could let himself weep. He turned over onto his stomach, grabbed his pillow, and punched it with the hardest fist he could make, over and over, while the tears ran down his face.

• • •

Nevyn had forbidden Lilli to attend the funeral—not that she'd been wanting to go. In the silence of that long afternoon, with the dun nearly empty but for her, Lilli walked in the new royal garden among the roses and fresh-planted saplings while she considered plans. Once, quite deliberately, she ran her hand through a rosebush and gashed her flesh on the thorns. She let the blood drops fall into the earth as a sign of her pledge, that she would run any risk to bring peace back to Dun Deverry. All day she brooded over her dweomer learning until at last she had some idea of a ritual that might once and for all exorcise the evil. Although she considered consulting with Nevyn, she knew that he would only forbid her. That evening the servants told her that he was closeted with the prince. She had her chance.

The full moon was swinging over zenith toward the horizon when Lilli went up to Nevyn's chamber. At the door she felt a strange prickly tremble of power in the air— some sort of magical ward, she assumed, and the sensation would have sent an ordinary person running. She opened the door and stepped in. The cluttered little outer room lay silent and dark except for a shaft of moonlight on the floor, where a throng of gnomes sat on silent guard. When Lilli knelt in front of the casket's hiding place, the gnomes merely moved aside to give her the room to work.

Lilli pulled the wooden box out of the hole in the floor, then eased the loose board back into place. Even through the box, magically sealed with sigils and markings, she could feel the lead tablet sucking the warmth out of her hands. Its very malignancy would allow her to destroy it, or so she hoped. She tucked it under a shawl and walked out again. She met no one in the corridor. Back in her own room, she barred the door against interruptions, then lit candles. In their midst she set the box down. For a moment she hesitated, gasping in terror. With one long breath she steadied herself and flipped back the lid. She tipped the box up, dumped the lead tablet into the circle of candles, and tossed the box onto the floor.

In the dancing light the strip of lead glittered like the
eyes of some evil animal crouched in fear of its hunter. When she touched it, the gashes from the rose thorns ached with the pain she would have felt from pressing her wounds against ice. She stepped back, flung her arms over her head, and invoked the Light. With her inner sight she saw it fall in answer to her cry, a long shaft of gold that pierced her from head to foot. She flung her arms out to the sides and let the Light stabilize within her, then picked up the tablet.

A faint grey matter oozed from the lead, rising like mist from a lake. She clutched the strip in one hand, held it out in the candlelight, and began to pull the slime into herself. She saw the ooze begin to gather in ugly clots of disgust, as if it were wool and her body the spindle, gathering it up, twisting it fine and tight, around and around her until she felt herself choking and writhing from it. For a moment she felt all her mother's hatred of the world; she saw, briefly, with Merodda's desperate eyes; Merodda's smothering resentments clotted in her throat and made her gag.

Once again Lilli called up the Light and felt it burst upon her as fire, a pale blue purifying fire that swept through her aura, her body, her very soul. She cried out once with pain, then set her jaw against it. She tried to drop the tablet on the floor, but all at once she hated to let it go. There was power in the thing, power that she could use against her enemies. I have no enemies! she thought and flung it from her to fall at her feet. When she stepped back, the blue fire fell upon it like a ravenous dog. The horrible grey threads blazed with fire, turning to a fine white ash and drifting to the floor.

“Lords of Air!” Lilli cried out. “Aid me!”

A silver wind swept through the chamber and gathered the ash, swept it up and scattered it. The fire around her cooled, then flickered and went out. At the windows the light was turning grey. Lilli blew out the candles and let dawn seep into the room. When she picked up the tablet, she found it only a piece of thin lead, its evil spent and gone. She turned it over and realized that even the very letters of the curse had disappeared, melted into a smooth scar upon the metal. With
a laugh she flipped it over again: truly no letters, just a faint bubbling of the lead where once the curse had lain.

“I've won!”

The cough racked up from the bottom of her lungs and bent her double. Choking she spasmed, caught the edge of the table with both hands and steadied herself against the pain. Coughed, coughed, coughed until she felt something tear free inside of her, coughed one more time, and spat up rheum, bright scarlet red. A gobbet of blood and phlegm spattered on the tablet and slid, staining the metal. She felt stickiness around her mouth and on her chin like some poisoned sweetmeat.