The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (7 page)

Not that the hall looked particularly royal these days—a hundred long years of civil war had left the king poor in everything but men. Tapestries sagged threadbare and faded on the rough stone walls; straw and torn Bardek carpets lay together on the floor; the tables and benches listed and leaned, all cracked and pitted. The lords and the servants alike ate from wooden trenchers and drank from pottery stoups. Only the king’s own table retained some semblance of royal splendor. From where she sat Lillorigga could just see a page spreading a much-mended and somewhat stained linen cloth over it while others stood by with silver dishes and pewter mugs. Behind the boys came the royal nursemaid with cushions to raise the seat of the royal chair; King Olaen had been born just five summers ago.

Lilli was the king’s cousin—they shared a great-grandmother through the maternal line—and her uncle, Burcan of the Boar, stood as regent to his young highness. Her rank brought her bows and curtsies every time someone passed her bench or looked her way. She answered each one with a nod or a smile, but she hated the way the various lords looked her over, as if they were appraising a prize mare ready for market. Soon her mother would be arranging her betrothal to some son or another of one of the king’s loyal men. She could only hope that when the time came, her husband would treat her decently.

Across the hall a herald called out for the men to make way. A procession of women was descending the huge stone staircase, with Queen Abrwnna at the head. Older than her royal husband, the queen was almost a woman, no longer a girl. Behind her came her retinue of maidservants and noble-born serving women, who included Lillorigga’s mother, Merodda, a widow and sister to both Tibryn, Gwerbret Cantrae, and Regent Burcan. In the flickering dim light, Merodda looked no older than the young queen. Her yellow hair lay smooth and oddly shiny, caught by a silver clasp at the nape of her neck. Her skin was the envy of every woman at court: smooth and rosy just like a lass, they said, and her with a marriageable daughter and all! She walked like a lass, too, and tossed her head and laughed with spirit. A marvel, everyone said, how beautiful she is still. If they only knew, Lilli thought bitterly. If they only knew—her and her potions!

At the bottom step Merodda paused, looking over the great hall, then turned to speak to a page before she rejoined the queen’s retinue at table. When Lilli realized that the page was heading for her, she rose, briefly considered bolting, then decided that if she angered her mother now, she’d only pay for it later. The page trotted over and made her a sketchy bow.

“Honored Lillorigga,” he said, “your mother says you’re to come to her chambers when she’s done eating.”

Lilli felt fear clutch her with cold, wet hands.

“Very well.” She just managed to arrange a smile. “Please tell her that I’ll wait upon her as she wishes.”

With barely a glance her way he turned and trotted back to the queen’s table. Lilli saw him speak to Merodda, then take up his station for serving the meal. Lilli herself was supposed to eat at one of the tables reserved for unmarried women of noble birth. Instead she grabbed a chunk of bread from a serving basket as a page carried it by and left the press and clamor of the hall.

Outside the sun was setting, dragging cold shadow over the courtyard, one of the many among the warren of brochs and outbuildings. Lilli hurried past the cookhouse, dodged between storage sheds, and slipped out a small gate into a much bigger court, the next ward out, ringed round by high stone walls that guarded pigsties, stables, cow sheds, a smithy, a pair of deep water wells—everything the dun needed to withstand a siege.

At the gates of this ward someone was shouting. When Lilli saw servants hurry past with lit torches, she drifted after them, but she kept to the shadows. Down at the wall, the torchlight glittered on chain mail and a confusion of men, arguing about who would do what, a debate the captain of the watch finally ended—he ordered his guards to man the winch that opened the enormous iron-bound gates. They creaked open a bare six feet to let an exhausted rider stumble through, leading a muddy horse.

“Messages for the king,” he croaked. “From the Gwerbret of Belgwergyr.”

Servants rushed to take his horse. Lilli trailed after the messenger and the watch captain as they hurried up to the main broch.

“Good news, I hope,” said the captain.

“Bad,” the messenger said. “His grace the gwerbret’s lost more vassals to the false king.”

Lilli felt suddenly sick.

She trailed after the messenger and his escort as they hurried to the great hall. By then all the important lords had gathered around the king. On his cushions at the table’s head Olaen, a pretty child with thick pale hair, was eating bread and honey. At either side of him Lilli’s two uncles—Tibryn, Gwerbret Cantrae, and his younger brother, Burcan, the regent—sat as a matched pair between the king and the rest of the gwerbretion and other such powerful lords who dined at this table. Both of them were handsome men, tall and warrior-straight, with the wide-set blue eyes they shared with their sister, Merodda, but unlike her they showed their age in grey hair and weather-beaten faces.

As the guards hurried up, everyone stopped eating and turned to look. The messenger knelt before the king, then pulled a silver tube out of his shirt and handed it to Olaen with a flourish. Burcan leaned forward and snatched it, then gestured at the man to speak. The great lords huddled around, narrow-eyed and grim. At the queen’s table the women fell silent and turned, leaning to hear the news. From her distance Lilli could hear nothing of what the messenger said, but a rustle of talk broke out, first at the royal table, then spreading through the great hall: more lords gone over to Cerrmor. With a curt nod, Burcan dismissed the messenger. King Olaen was watching the regent with eyes full of tears.

Lilli saw her mother turn and leave the queen’s table, hurry up the staircase, and disappear into the shadows at the top. With a wrench of will, Lilli forced herself to follow. On the far side of the hall, near the stairway, a page was seating the messenger while a serving lass brought him ale. Lilli hesitated, then stopped beside the messenger, who hastily swallowed his mouthful of ale and started to rise.

“Oh, do sit,” Lilli said. “You must be exhausted. I just wanted to ask you if Tieryn Peddyc of Hendyr’s gone over to the rebels.”

“Not him, my lady. He’s steady as a stone.”

“I’m so glad. He’s my foster-father.”

“Ah.” The rider smiled briefly. “No wonder you wanted to know. He and the Lady Bevyan are in good health and as loyal as ever.”

“My thanks.”

Lilli hurried away and climbed the staircase. Maybe Bevyan would come to court with her husband when he joined the muster. She hoped—no, she prayed so, as hard as she could to the Lady of the Moon. Merodda had sent her and her wet nurse to Bevyan when Lilli had been a few weeks old; until she’d seen twelve summers, Bevyan had been the only mother she’d known. If only I could have stayed with Bevva—her eyes threatened tears, but she squelched them and at the top of the stairs paused for a moment to catch her breath. The fear clutched at her heart again, but she had nowhere to run or hide. With one last gasp, she hurried down to her mother’s chambers.

Merodda herself opened the door. She was carrying a long taper in a holder, and in the candlelight her face, her hands, glistened like wax.

“Good. You’re prompt tonight.”

In a pool of candlelight near the chamber windows stood Brour, the man her mother called her scribe—a skinny little fellow, with an oversize head for his body and wispy blond hair, so that at times he looked like a child, especially since his full lips stuck out in a perennial pout. Merodda laid her hand on Lilli’s shoulder and marched her down the length of the room. On the table in front of Brour, among the candles, stood a grinding stone, a chunk of something black that looked like charcoal, and a flagon of water. Apparently the scribe had been making ink, and a prodigious amount of it at that. He put a handful of powder ground from the ink block into a heavy silver bowl, then added water from a pitcher a little at a time, while he pounded and stirred with a pestle.

“Here she is,” Merodda said.

Brour put his tools down on the table, then considered Lilli so coldly that she took an involuntary step back. Her mother’s hand tightened on her shoulder. In a hand black with dry ink Brour took the taper from Merodda and held it up to consider Lilli’s face.

“No one’s going to hurt you, lass,” Brour said at last. “We’ve just got a new trick we’d like you to try.”

“You have strange gifts, my sweet,” Merodda said. “And we have need of them again.”

For a moment Lilli’s fear threatened to choke her. She wanted to blurt out a no, to pull free and run away, but her mother’s cold stare had impaled her, or so she felt, like a long metal pin pushing into her very soul.

“Come now!” Merodda snapped. “We women must do what we can to serve the king.”

“Of course, Mother. Of course I want to.”

“Of course? Don’t lie to me.”

Lilli blushed and tore her gaze away.

“But I don’t care if you do or not,” Merodda went on. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

Brour grunted and set the taper down among the others. On the table the candles danced and sent light glinting onto the black pool in the silver bowl. Lilli found herself watching the glints, staring at them, caught by them while her mother’s hand slid from her shoulder to the back of her neck. She felt her head nodding forward, pressed down by the weight of a hand grown suddenly heavy. The ink pool seemed to surge and heave like waves on a black sea that swelled to fill her sight, to fill the room, it seemed, and then her world. As she sank down into the blackness, she heard Merodda’s voice chanting, low and soft, but she could distinguish not a single word. The syllables clanged like brass and seemed to reverberate in her ears, foreign sounds linked into alien words.

In the blackness, a point of candlelight, dancing—Lilli swam toward it but felt her body turn to dead weight, as if she hauled it behind her when she moved. The point brightened, then dilated into a circle of light that she could look through, as if she’d pulled back a shutter from a round window and peered out at the sunny world beyond. From some great distance she heard Merodda’s voice.

“What do you see, Lilli? Tell us what you see.”

She felt her mouth move and words slip out like pebbles, falling into the black. In the window things appeared, creatures, vast creatures, all wing and long tails. Around them a bluish light formed and brightened, glinting on coppery scales, blood-red scales, a pair of beasts sleeping, curled next to one another. One of them stirred and stretched, lifting its wings to reveal two thick legs and clawed feet. A huge copper head lifted, the mouth gaped in a long yawn of fangs.

“Wyverns. I see red wyverns, and now they’re flying.”

“Good, good.” Her mother’s voice slid out like drops of oil. “Where do you see them?”

“Over a grassy plain.”

Down from the mountains they swept, their massive wings slapping the air, and to Lilli it seemed that she flew with them while her voice babbled of its own accord. They circled round a meadow where a herd of swine fed, then suddenly stooped and plunged like hawks. Shrieking and cackling they struck. The blood-red wyvern rose, flapping hard, with a big grey boar clutched limp and bleeding in its talons.

In her vision Lilli flew too close. The wyvern’s enormous head swung her way. The black eyes glittered, narrowed, and seemed to pierce the darkness and stare directly at her. Lilli screamed and broke the spell. She staggered, stumbling forward, knocking into the table. A candle tottered and fell with a hiss and a stench into the black ink.

“You clumsy little dolt!”

Merodda grabbed her by the hair and swung her round, then slapped her with her other hand. Lilli yelped and sank to her knees. Pain burned and crawled on her face.

“Stop it!” Brour snarled. “She can’t help it. She can’t control the trance.”

Merodda stepped away, but Lilli could hear her panting in ebbing rage.

“She needs to be trained.” Brour’s voice had turned calm again. “I don’t see why you won’t let me—”

“We will not discuss this in front of her.” Merodda leaned down. “Oh, do get up!”

Lilli scrambled to her feet.

“You may go to your chamber,” Merodda said. “Leave us. And if you ever tell anyone what happened here—”

“Never, I promise. Never.” Lilli could hear her own voice swooping and trembling. “I’ve never told before, have I?”

“You haven’t, truly.” Merodda considered her for a long cold moment. “You have some wits. Now go!”

Lilli gathered up her long skirts and raced from the chamber. She dashed down the hall, ran into her tiny chamber at the far end, and barred the door behind her. For a long moment she stood in the twilight grey and wept, leaning against the cold wall; then she flung herself down on her narrow bed and fell asleep, as suddenly as a stone dropped from a tower hits the ground.

•   •   •

That same spring evening, at the stillness before the sunset, Lady Bevyan of Hendyr stood at her bedchamber’s narrow window and considered the ward of her husband’s dun. Stone framed her view: the stone sides of the window slit when she looked through, the stone billow of the squat broch tower when she looked down, the stone walls of encircling fort when she looked toward the distant west and the silent gold of an ending day. All her life, stone had meant safety, thanks to the civil wars, just as winter had meant peace, despite the snows, the storms, and the ever-present threat of hunger. Only lately had she come to think of stone as meaning imprisonment. Only lately had she come to wonder about a world in which summer, too, might mean peace.

Not that such a world coincided with her world, not yet at least. Below her, deep in shadow, the preparations of war filled the cobbled ward: extra horses, tethered out for want of room in the stables; provision carts, packed for the morrow’s march. Her husband, Tieryn Peddyc of Hendyr, had called in his allies and vassals for the summer’s fighting, defending the true king in Dun Deverry from the would-be usurpers gathering on the kingdom’s southern borders. Or so her husband and his allies always called Maryn, Gwerbret Cerrmor, prince of distant Pyrdon—usurper, pretender, rebel. At times, when she wasn’t watching her thoughts, Bevyan wondered about the truth of those names.