The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (17 page)

“Where’s the glory in killing women?” she hissed. “May the Goddess curse you all!”

He hesitated, mouth half-open, staring at her in agony. His companion swore, leaned forward, and stabbed. She saw and recognized the wide blue eyes beneath the edge of his helm.

“Burcan!”

The pain hit in a wave of fire that broke over her and dragged her tumbling down to the dust in the road. For a moment the world spun. Blackness claimed her with the hot smell of blood.

•   •   •

Rather than watch Bevyan ride away, Lilli hid in her chamber. Since she’d walked many miles through the escape tunnel and back, she fell asleep on her bed—only to wake suddenly. She sat bolt upright and listened, sure she’d heard a woman screaming, but the chamber lay silent around her. Through the narrow window the sunlight of late afternoon streamed in, flecked with dancing dust motes.

“That was Sarra’s voice,” she said aloud. “An awful sort of dream, I suppose.”

Dread, cold clammy irrational dread, wrapped her round so tightly that for a moment her breath caught, ragged in her chest. She got up, but the feeling kept hold of her, making her tremble. To get away from the silence she hurried down to the great hall, filling with people as time for the evening meal drew near. But she couldn’t stand the noise, either, and went outside, wandering through the twilight wards and towers of the dun. The dread walked behind her and clutched her shoulders in cold fingers until she ached.

Finally, when the stars were coming out in a velvet sky, she fetched up near the main gate. The guard was changing, and weary men climbed down from the catwalks, calling out to one another and talking mostly about food. Just as the gates were closing, Lilli heard a silver horn on the road outside. Men shouted; she could hear hooves clattering in a trot and the jingle of tack. The guards threw their weight on the handle of the winch and stopped the gates, which halted, open just far enough for a single rider to pass by.

First through into the pool of torchlight inside the ward was Uncle Burcan. Lilli shrank back against the wall where no one would notice her and watched the Boarsmen ride their horses in. Some of them were wounded, she noticed; they must have run across a disloyal lord or Cerrmor raiders. At each saddle peak hung a shield, painted with the Boar blazon, but behind each saddle they carried a shield-shaped burden wrapped in old sacking—odd, she thought, and peered through the uncertain light for a better look. One sack had slipped to dangle down and expose the ship blazon of Cerrmor. Decidedly odd, and with that thought her dread threw its arms around her and clutched. Something was wrong, horribly wrong.

Lilli waited until the warband had long left the ward, then went back up the hill to the great hall. Inside, the Boarsmen had taken their places with the other riders at the long tables, but there was no sign of Uncle Burcan. Lilli hurried upstairs before anyone noticed her. If she never got a message from her mother, she couldn’t be expected to wait upon her. Unfortunately Merodda had seen her go and followed her, calling out on the landing.

“Lilli, wait! I want a word with you.”

Lilli stopped and arranged a smile. Merodda hurried over, her mouth twisted in rage. Here was the crux, and Lilli visualized her aura growing hard and smooth around her, just as Brour had taught her.

“Where’s Brour?” Merodda snapped. “Do you know?”

“I don’t, Mother. He’s not in your chambers?”

Merodda cocked her head to one side and peered into Lilli’s face. Lilli went on smiling and imagined her aura as a wall, turning to stone, a fortress around her.

“He’s not,” Merodda said at last. “He’s not in the great hall, and the bards don’t know where he is, either. How very odd!”

“There’s some servant lass he fancies, isn’t there? I heard gossip about it.”

“I never thought of that.” Merodda looked up with a startled little laugh. “You might be right.”

Merodda turned and swept off, heading back to the great hall. Lilli walked decorously back to her chamber, but she felt like dancing in glee. It had worked! Brour’s trick had worked! She need never fear her mother’s ability to ferret out lies again. Yet once she was alone, watching the candle-thrown shadows on the stone, she remembered Bevyan, sent away from court into political exile, and all her pleasure in the dweomer vanished. She spent the evening hiding in her chamber, and mercifully, Merodda never sent a page to summon her. All night she had horrible dreams, where a blond woman, naked in moonlight, her mouth full of bloody fangs, ranged among the sheep like a mad dog, killing as she went.

At the noontide Lilli learned the meaning of her omens. She was sitting at her mother’s table and trying to eat bread that seemed to stick in her exhausted throat. A ripple of excitement at the door caught her attention: a road-dusty messenger strode in. Although he bowed to king and regent, he hurried past them and flung himself down to kneel at Tieryn Peddyc’s side. At that moment Lilli knew. She felt cold sweat run down her back and thought: Bevva’s dead. Without thinking she rose, leaning flat-handed on the table to watch the rider talking urgently to the tieryn while Anasyn leaned over to listen. Peddyc’s face turned white, then flushed scarlet, then whitened again. With a toss of his head he got up from his chair and headed for the royal table. Even from her distance she could see that Anasyn wept.

“Do sit down, Lilli!” Merodda snapped. “What’s so wrong?”

Lilli turned and looked at her mother, whose face was its usual bland and shiny mask.

“Somewhat’s distressed young Lord Anasyn,” Lilli said.

“Ah.” Merodda looked across the hall. “So it has. How odd.”

Yet Merodda was fighting to keep from smiling—Lilli could see it in the tightness of her lips, the forced wideness of her eyes. Lilli swung round and saw Burcan rising from his chair to speak to Peddyc. All around them silence spread through the hall like a wave from a stone dropped into a pond, as those close fell silent to listen first, then those farther on.

“Oh ye gods!” It was a girl’s voice, squealing through the silence. “They’ve murdered Lady Bevyan, and I sent her away, and it’s all my fault!”

Shrieking the queen leapt up and rushed through the hall in a careening flight toward the stairway. Merodda rose and, cursing under her breath, hurried after as maidservants ran to do the same. All through the hall everyone began talking and yelling back and forth. Cerrmor raiders, they all said—Cerrmor raiders this far north and dishonorable enough to kill women on the road! Lilli stood by the table and tried to think. At first she had trouble identifying the feeling that flooded her, that made her burn and freeze in turn. At last she found its name: hatred. Her mother had killed Bevva somehow, she was sure of it—and Sarra as well. When she remembered the screams that had woken her the day before, she knew that Sarra lay dead without needing to be told.

“Cerrmor raiders, was it?” she whispered. “And there were Uncle Burcan and his men, riding in with Cerrmor shields.”

In the uproar no one heard her. She watched as Peddyc and Anasyn left the great hall with the king and his escort, with both the regent and the various gwerbretion in attendance, including Tibryn.

All afternoon Lilli hung around the great hall and fished for news. The rider who’d brought the message was one of Lord Camlyn’s. When Lady Bevyan and her escort had failed to arrive, Camlyn’s lady had sent out a search party, and they’d found the slaughter. Everyone was dead—every single man, even Bevyan’s little page, as if the raiders had meant to leave no witnesses to their treachery, though carelessly enough, they’d left two dropped and broken shields behind. When she learned this, Lilli’s certainty grew. Burcan wouldn’t have dared let even the page escape, for fear someone had recognized him.

Toward evening she found a maidservant who’d overheard Tieryn Peddyc’s plans. He’d gotten permission from the king to leave Dun Deverry in the morning with his men and go attend to the burying of his wife. He would then return and join the muster.

“And oh, how ever so angry he is!” the girl said, all wide-eyed. “Swearing and carrying on and saying no Cerrmor man will ever have quarter from him again! I’ll wager he kills ever so many this summer.”

“No doubt,” Lilli said. “Tell me somewhat. Yesterday morn, did the regent happen to go to my mother’s chambers?”

“He did, truly. Why?”

“Oh, I asked her to ask him a favor for me. But it can wait, what with all this trouble.”

With a nod, the maidservant hurried off about her chores. All at once Lilli realized that she wanted to scream in rage at everyone over everything—and nothing at all. She fled the unwelcome sight of other people and hurried to her chamber. She barred the door, then leaned against it and looked at the pieces of Braemys’s wedding shirt, lying on the wooden chest where she’d put them the day before. They were the last thing Bevva would ever give her.

“Why can’t I cry?”

The hatred seemed to have dried all her tears. She lay down on her bed to watch the evening darken beyond her window. The worst thing was that no one would ever suspect Burcan of this crime, or Merodda, either, who had put him up to it. Lilli was sure of that. Brour had always told her that one day she could read the omens for her own purposes, and she understood now what her dreams had brought her.

“I know the truth, and I’ll get revenge—oh don’t be silly! What can I do?”

At that she did weep, sobbing into her pillow until she fell asleep. She dreamt, but this time of armed men and vengeance. She woke abruptly to find the chamber dark except for pale moonlight falling through her slit of a window. Once again the omens had come to her for the reading. She was smiling as she got up and left her chamber.

Tieryn Peddyc and Anasyn still slept in Bevyan’s old suite. By the time Lilli reached it, her dream courage had faded like the moonlight. What if Peddyc refused to listen to her? What if her mother found out she’d been to see him? Silent, so silent in the corridor—Lilli crept terrified, certain that her breathing would bring every guard in Dun Deverry running. Four doors, five, and under the sixth a gleam of pale light—so, Peddyc did wake still.

She darted across the corridor and plastered herself against the wall beside the door. Dimly she could hear voices, masculine and unintelligible. She should knock on the door, but what if someone heard? In the dark corridor nothing moved, nothing made a sound. She forced herself to raise her fist, hesitated, felt sweat run down her back. She should turn away, run away, race back to the chamber before her mother found her gone. And what? Let Bevva lie unavenged? Lilli gulped once and slammed her fist against the wood.

The voices inside stopped, then one grew louder along with the sound of a bar scraping as someone lifted it. The door opened a bare crack to reveal Peddyc’s face, pale and unshaven.

“Lillorigga!” he said. “What’s this, lass? Can’t you sleep?”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “Please, let me in?”

Puzzled, he stepped back. She slipped inside, then stood listening to her heart pound while he dropped the bar across the door. Anasyn stood by the hearth, his face a mask, but his eyes were red and puffy. Lilli knew that she could wait not a heartbeat more and still keep her nerve.

“It wasn’t Cerrmor men,” she blurted. “It was a trick. It was Boarsmen. My mother sent them with captured shields.”

Peddyc stared, his mouth open. By the hearth Anasyn grunted like a wounded man. Lilli knew she was trembling, and sweat ran down her back.

“I saw them,” she went on. “My uncle and his men. They were riding back into the dun on tired horses, that night I mean, after Bevva was … after she was slain. And they carried Cerrmor shields. There’s a lot of them in the dun, captured from one battle or another.”

Anasyn threw up his head like a stag who smells dogs.

“I saw Boarsmen ride out,” he said. “Do you remember, Da? I mentioned it to you, that some of the Boar’s men were leaving the dun, and a cart followed them.”

Peddyc nodded. On his temple a vein throbbed.

“And this morning, when the news came, I watched my mother, and she smiled.” Lilli’s courage came back with a rush. “She tried not to, but she smiled. And I knew then she was behind it.”

Anasyn had gone an eerie pale in the lantern light.

“By the gods,” Peddyc whispered. “That stinking rat of a man! The regent himself, was it? May every blessing in life be yours, lass, for bringing me this news.”

“Father.” Anasyn stepped forward. “I want vengeance.”

“So do I, and if Merodda weren’t Lilli’s mother we’d go to her chamber and slit her lying throat before we went and did the same for Burcan. But she
is
Lilli’s mother, and by the gods, cursed if I’ll hang for avenging my wife! Let me think, just let me think for a moment here.”

Lilli sank to her knees, unsure of why she couldn’t stand. Peddyc bent over and grabbed her hands.

“Come sit down,” he barked. “Sanno, pour her a drop of mead. Here, here, lass, you’re all to pieces, and who can blame you?”

In a flurry of murmurs Anasyn and a page sat her down in a carved chair, handed her mead, and brought a cushion for her back. All the while Tieryn Peddyc stood at the hearth and stared at the flames. Lilli took one sip of the drink, then realized her hands were shaking so hard that the pale gold liquor danced within the cup.

“I’ve got to get back.” She set it on the table. “If she finds me gone, she’ll kill me, too.”

“No doubt.” Peddyc turned from the hearth. “And when me and my men don’t come back when we’ve pledged, there’s a good chance she’ll kill you then, if she and her precious regent guess who told me the truth. You’d best ride with us on the morrow.”

“You’d take me away?” Lilli found that she could barely form the words.

“If you’ll go, of course we will! You’re my foster-daughter, aren’t you? And even if you weren’t, what kind of a man would I be, leaving you behind with that murdering bastard?”

Anasyn knelt beside her with a fluid motion and caught her hand in both of his.

“Come away with us, Lilli,” he said. “We’ll dress you in some of my clothes, and cut off your hair, and no one will notice another manservant or suchlike riding with us. And then you’ll be safe, back at Hendyr if you like, or you can come with us to Cerrmor.”