The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (56 page)

T
IERYN
(Dev.) An intermediate rank of the noble-born, below a gwerbret but above an ordinary lord (Dev.
arcloedd
).

W
YRD
(trans. of Dev.
tingedd
) Fate, destiny; the inescapable problems carried over from a sentient being’s last incarnation.

Y
NIS
(Dev.) An island.

TABLE OF REINCARNATING CHARACTERS

I must apologize to the regular readers of this series. There are errors in the incarnation chart given in the back of
A Time of Omens.
The attributions above are the correct ones
.

And be sure not to miss
Book Two of
The Dragon Mage
Available now in trade paperback!

In summer, the fog from the Southern Sea crept in daily at sunset and covered Dun Cerrmor with grey mist, swirling so thick along the ground that one could see it move. On the evening before she gave birth to her second son, Princess Bellyra stood at a window in the women’s hall, high up in the royal broch, and watched the fog advance. The setting sun off to the west turned the first ranks to gold, promising splendor, but once the mist enveloped the town, the gold faded to a cold, relentless light.

“Your Highness?” Elyssa came up beside her. “What’s wrong? You look so distressed.”

“I was watching the fog. Did you see it turn from gold to grey?”

“It always does that, Your Highness, this time of year.”

“I know, but I was just thinking that my life’s rather been like that, all gold when I married, and now …”

Elyssa stared, her dark blue eyes narrowed in puzzlement. Although the serving woman was the older by a few years, they had been friends since childhood, but now, Bellyra supposed, Elyssa hardly knew what to make of her. She hardly knew what to make of herself at times.

“It’s just the baby,” Elyssa said at last. “It should come soon.”

“Very soon.” Bellyra laid both hands on her swollen belly. “He feels ready to move down.”

“You’re so sure it’s a lad.” Elyssa smiled at her. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”

“I won’t be. No lass would kick her mother’s guts as hard as this little beast has.”

“Let’s hope, anyway.” Elyssa considered her, the smile gone. “Are you frightened?”

“Very, but not of the labor or suchlike. It’s what came after.”

Elyssa reached out and caught the princess’s hand twixt both of hers.

“You’ll do splendidly this time. I swear it. I’ve made ever so many prayers to the Goddess.”

“But did the Goddess give you an answer back? Oh, I’m sorry, Lyss, please, don’t look so distressed. We’ll deal with what comes if it comes.”

In the middle of the night Bellyra woke sopping wet and in pain. Her water had broken. She got out of bed, stood for a moment considering her contractions—not too bad, but strong—then flung open her bedroom door and yelled to her serving women.

“It’s begun. Send for the midwife!”

She sat down on a wooden chest and let herself sprawl, legs akimbo. In a few moments Elyssa and Degwa came hurrying in, carrying candle lanterns. Degwa’s dark hair hung in two tidy braids, while Elyssa’s fair hair tumbled down her back, all tousled.

“Let me just put a dress over this nightgown,” Degwa said, “and then I’ll go down and wake the pages.”

“Send young Donno,” Elyssa said. “He knows the town well. And get a couple of serving lasses up here to light a fire and suchlike.”

Panting from the pain, Bellyra leaned back against the wall and let their concern cover her like a warm quilt. Servant girls came soon, and after them the midwife. By the time the dawn broke, her labor filled her world. She clung to the birthing rope and thought of naught else but the child fighting within her to get out. The pain, oddly enough, helped keep the fear at bay. When the sun was well over the horizon, the baby came with one huge squall of rage at being shoved into the light.

“A lad!” the midwife crowed. “Ah, the Goddess has favored you again, Your Highness.”

“I told you,” Bellyra whispered. “Give me some water.”

The afterbirth came clean and whole. Only then did she truly feel safe. Once again, she’d had an easy birth, or so the midwife told her. Laughing and chattering, her women washed her and brought her dry nightclothes, then tucked her up in her freshly made bed. By the time they’d drawn the hangings around her, she was asleep.

In a little while they woke her. When Degwa brought the new prince to her bed, he mewled like a kitten. Bellyra took him with unsteady hands and settled him at her breast. He grabbed the nipple in his mouth and began to suck the false milk so hard that her breast ached.

“Oh, he’s so beautiful,” Degwa crooned. “What a little love, isn’t he?”

“Just so,” Elyssa said. “What lovely little hands he has!”

In truth, Bellyra thought, Marro was red, wrinkled, and squashed-looking about the face still. His sprinkling of pale hair lay coarsely on his skull. She lay back on the mounded pillows and stared up at the bed hangings, embroidered with a repeating design of three ships bound round with interlacements. The ships were brown, the waves blue, and the interlacements red. She could remember embroidering them, back when she was first married and still happy.

“You must be so proud,” Degwa said. “Two sons for your lord!”

“I’d hoped for a daughter, in truth,” Bellyra said. “But you remind me. How is Casyl? Jealous?”

“Of course.” Elyssa was smiling. “But I explained to him that he’ll always be the oldest and the Marked Prince, while his brother will have to make do with a lordship. I don’t think he truly understood, but he was the happier for it.”

Bellyra smiled, and at that moment her new son opened his cloudy-blue eyes and looked up at her with such an intense animal devotion that she laughed.

“You are precious!”

He shut his eyes tight and slept. When Bellyra handed him back to Degwa, she could read the profound relief in her dark eyes. Elyssa too was smiling.

“We need to send the prince the news,” Bellyra said.

“I thought we’d best wait a few days,” Elyssa said, hesitating. “Just to make sure that little Marro lives.”

“True spoken. Unfortunately. Still, Casyl was healthy enough, so I have hope.”

Bellyra spent the next few days in a pleasant sort of exhaustion. Although all the important men in the kingdom had followed the prince off to war, the noblewomen who lived within a day’s ride came to see the new princeling and to offer her their congratulations. All morning she would sit with the guests and gossip. In the middle of the day the sun poured into the women’s hall; she sat in a chair at a window with her women while they embroidered the pieces of the dress she would wear when her husband was finally invested as high king. Yet every night the fog slid over the town and turned her heart cold.

All too soon the morning came that she’d been fearing. She woke, sat up, pulled back a bed curtain, and burst into tears at the sight of the chamber beyond. She flung the hanging closed. For a long while she wept, until Elyssa heard and came hurrying in. She pulled back the hanging and peered round the edge.

“I’m just so tired,” Bellyra stammered. “It’s all the visitors and such. Just let me sleep a bit more.”

And yet she stayed abed all that day. Finally, in the evening, when Degwa carried in the new prince for a feeding, Elyssa insisted on pulling back the bed curtains.

“To let some air in, Your Highness,” Elyssa said. “There. Isn’t that better?”

The cold grey fog light hung in the chamber and seemed to pick out every detail in an unnatural glare. The streaks and chips on the stone wall, the grain on the wood windowsill all seemed marks in some mysterious writing. If she could read them, she knew, they would tell her tales horrible beyond her imagining. She forced herself to look away. In the breeze from the open window the hangings swayed. The ships seemed to bob up and down on their embroidered waves.

“Your Highness?” Elyssa’s voice had turned tentative. “You seem so sad. Would you like us to sing to you?”

“I wouldn’t.” Bellyra looked at her suckling and wished she didn’t hate him. “Get him away from me! Get him a wet nurse! It’s all starting again.”

She felt the tears run, but sitting up to wipe them away lay beyond her. Clucking and murmuring, her serving women swept the squalling baby away and at last left her alone. She managed to flop onto her side and weep into the pillow. Some long while later, Elyssa came back.

“One of the kitchen lasses has a year-old son and lots of milk. Degwa’s making her have a bath, and then she’ll come up and take little Marro over.”

“It’s very odd, these tears,” Bellyra said. “They fall of their own accord.”

“Ah, my lady! It aches my heart to see you like this again! What—I wish I could—if we only understood—”

“I want to go to sleep. Please leave me alone.”

“It’s not good for you to—”

“Get out of here!” Bellyra propped herself up on her elbows. “Get out of here and leave me alone!”

Elyssa fled. Bellyra could hear her whispering with the other women just beyond the door, but she could understand nothing of what they said. She flopped back down onto the pillows and stared at the hangings until at last she fell asleep.

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