Dragon's Treasure (4 page)

"That was me."

"I heard she was ill."

"She was. She died in January—not January this year, but the year before that."

"May the Mother receive her." Maura bowed her head a moment. "Why did she leave Sorvino?"

Maia said, "She left because my father did not want her—or me, either."

Maura said, gently, "That must have been very hard for you." She poured more cider into Maia's cup. "So, your grandfather is dead. Your brother is gone, perhaps dead, perhaps not. Your home is gone, too. What will you do now?"

"I don't know. I slept last night in a cottage by the river. I would like to stay there."

A child's voice said, "Mama? Who are you talking to?"

Rising, Maura lumbered to the near sleeping stall. "We have a new neighbor, Rianna, sweet," she said. "She has come to visit us. Her name is Maia."

"What does she look like? I want to see her."

Maia stepped to the sleeping stall. A small child half-lay, half-sat in the narrow box-bed. She had Angus's light reddish-brown hair, badly tangled now, and his fine, regular features. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were bright with intelligence and fever. A toy lay athwart her legs: a wooden doll, dressed in scraps of silk.

"Hello," she said. "Why is your dress torn?"

Maia said, "I was walking in the woods."

Rianna shook her head. "You shouldn't, you know. There are bandits in the forest. You have to be careful." She coughed, a painful barking sound.

"You are right," Maia said. "I shall be, I promise." The ginger cat jumped on the bed, turned about twice, and began to wash.

Maura coaxed Rianna to drink. She straightened the bedclothes, crooning.

When she emerged, Maia said, "How long has she been like this?"

"Three days. She is better today than she was yesterday. She strengthens with the sunlight. But then at night the cough returns."

"If you will lend me a pot, and a flask of wine, I will brew a tisane to help control the cough."

Maura said, "You have skill in such matters?" Maia nodded. "I will give you a pot." She brought one from a cupboard and set it on the table.

Maia said, "She is a beautiful child."

Maura nodded. "Yes. By the Mother's grace, she has Angus's form and features, not mine."

"He is a fine-looking man," Maia said carefully. "And he seems very kind."

"He is the sweetest soul alive."

"You have just the one child?"

"Yes. I wanted more, but I lost two before they were born, and two died after. Rain the midwife says there will be no more."

* * *

When Maia left the Halland farm, Angus went with her. She carried a clean blanket in which reposed a pot, a skein of thread, three bone fishhooks, a needle, a jar of soap, half a dozen candles, a shirt, and a pair of Angus's pants. Angus carried a coil of rope, a hammer, and an ax.

That afternoon, Maia swept and cleaned the hut. Angus mended the walls, plugging grass and moss into the chinks between the stones. While Maia pulled sweet-grass and reeds from the riverbank to make her bed, he found the door hidden beneath a mat of brush, and fastened it back onto its pegs. Maia went fishing, and caught two trout. She cut off their heads, grilled them, and seasoned them with rosemary plucked from the woods. As the sun moved slowly into the western sky, Maia looked for herbs. She found bellflower. She found basil and thyme. She found yellow agrimony, lemon balm, and hemlock. She found parsley in the field below the house, and licorice beside the river. She even found some elecampus root.

That evening Maia ate stewed squirrel by candlelight. She slept on dried sweet-grass, under a clean blanket. In the morning she took soap and her new clothes to the river. Using the pot, she scooped the cold river water over every inch of her body. She scrubbed her feet, and her hair. Shivering, but clean, she washed the blue gown. Then, moved by an impulse she did not understand, she gripped it between both hands and tore it down the middle.

The next day she brought Maura the tisane she had promised. It held elecampus root, licorice, and bellflower. She had guessed at the proportions. Master Eccio had always warned that herbals meant for children should be more dilute than those made for adults.

"Let her drink this when she coughs. You can put honey in it if she finds it too bitter. How is she?"

"Not so well as yesterday. Angus is with her."

Angus lay stretched on the small box-bed. Rianna was curled in his lap. Her face looked drawn. Her father rocked her. The ginger cat watched from the foot of the bed.

"She won't eat," Maura said. "She says it makes her cough."

"She must eat," Maia said. "She needs the strength. Don't give her milk. Give her water, or soups if you can." She tried to remember what she had heard Master Eccio say when the cook's children were sickly, as they were, every winter. "Rub her chest with grease, and bind it lightly with flannel. It will help to keep her warm."

The following day, she was in the meadow, her arms full of grass, when Angus appeared. He was ruddy-faced, and breathed as though he had been running. He
had
been running. The grass slid through her fingers.

"Rianna," she said. "She's worse?"

His grin was wide as the ocean. He mimed sleeping, and eating. Then he extended the flask in which she had poured the tisane. It was nearly empty.

"I will make more," Maia said.

* * *

In the months that followed, Maia realized that happenstance—
the gods' will
, Maura said, but then she was a devout woman in her way—had given her a friendship, one without which she might barely have survived the winter, and certainly not in any comfort. She had anticipated solitude, and that she had.

In November it grew cold. In December the storms blew over the mountains, veiling the fields with snow. Throughout December and well into January, days went by when she saw no human face. But then a gloved fist would pound on the door, and she would open the door to find Angus at her doorstep, fur-clad, breathing steam, pulling a laden sledge. Sometimes it held salted meat, once a half round of cheese. Often he brought bread. Maia knew how to bake, but her bread never seemed as tasty as Maura's.

In times of thaw, she sometimes went back with him to the house. She sat beside the hearth, petting the ginger cat, listening to Rianna spin elaborate tales with wooden dolls.
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess....
There were many dolls. They were, Rianna declared, all kings, queens, wizards, warriors. They were gorgeously dressed, in lace and fur, silk and wool, taffeta and satin. Their heads and trunks and limbs were wood. Angus whittled them, and Maura dressed and painted them.

"What do you do with them?" Maia asked.

"Sell them at Castria Market." She picked up one with red wool for hair and a haughty look on her smooth painted face. "This one is for Chloe, Nini Daluino's daughter.

"Mama, you must call her Elisabetta. That's her name," Rianna said severely. She took the red-haired doll from her mother and walked it over the table.

Rianna had given all the dolls noble names: Gaharis, Atalaya, Genevra. She was a loving child, playful and quick-witted. She adored her father, and seemed to find it unremarkable, even natural, that he had no speech. Angus, in turn, would have walked through flame to bring his child a cup of water. He was a strong man, a knowledgeable farmer, and clever with his hands.... His bound tongue seemed his only deficit.

Once, when the two women were alone in the house, Maura spoke of how she and Angus had come to wed.

"We made a bargain. He did not wish to remain on his family's land: they treated him like a lackwit, which he is not. He needed a wife who would help him. I wanted children. And no man who was not simple or blind would marry me if he had other choices."

"The farm is yours?"

"Aye. My mother left it to me. She inherited it from her mother, and she from hers. It is not so big, but it serves us. We have a cow, a horse, a goat, chickens, and bees. And Angus can do anything other men can. He simply cannot speak."

* * *

Twice that winter Maia glimpsed others in the forest. Once it was a bearded stumpy man dressed in rags. He wore a shapeless cap on his head. She asked Maura about him.

"I don't know his name. He lives with his brother in the woods," Maura said. "In autumn they come out to help with the harvest."

The second time, she was gathering bark from a slippery elm when Morga growled: the low steady rumble that warned a stranger to come no closer. Maia turned. A woman stood watching her. Her white hair blazed about her seamed, strong face. Her clothes were stained, shapeless, and ragged.

Maia said, "Good day, Grandmother. Is there something I might do for you?" But the woman did not answer. Maia returned to her task. When she next glanced behind her, the woman had vanished. She asked Maura about that, too.

"You saw the old woman? Not many do. She lives deep in the forest."

"Who is she?"

Maura shrugged. "I don't know. She's lived there forever. My mother used to leave bread for her on the step. Folk in Castria think she's a hedge-witch."

"What do you think?"

"I think she's harmless." Maura stirred her stewpot. "I leave bread for her, too, in winter, and meat sometimes, when I have it. What can it hurt?"

* * *

After New Year's Moon, soldiers from Dragon Keep visited the Halland farm. They brought a load of wood, a bag of winter apples, and a huge slab of salted meat from the castle storerooms. They also brought news.

"Herugin Dol has returned," Maura said to Maia the next time she came.

"Who is Herugin Dol?"

"The cavalry officer your brother took with him for safe conduct. He came back last week."

"Came back—from where?"

"From wherever your brother is, I suppose."

So Treion had survived. Maia closed her eyes, giving thanks to whichever god had saved him. No doubt it was Vaikkenen, patron of thieves. She wondered if any of the others had lived: Edric, Nils, Nittri, Ulf.... Some, she knew, had not. Their bones had been found on the hillside, and buried with those of the Dragon Keep's soldiers and the luckless horses.

In Dragon Keep, the men of the war band, and particularly the riders, rejoiced to have the captain home. He arrived wearing ragged furs, on a swaybacked, weary horse. The cut across his face had scarred. Karadur came striding down the tower stairs to greet him in the courtyard. Relief and delight were plain on his face. He clasped the rider's hands in both of his. "Welcome back."

"Thank you, my lord," Herugin said. "I'm glad to be here."

Later, in the close, octagonal chamber of the tower, Karadur questioned him. "Where were you? Where did they take you?"

"Into Nakase, my lord, to the hill country north of Yarrow. He has gathered men to him. They call themselves the Bastard's Company."

The singer Azil Aumson spoke from his high-backed chair. "How were you treated?"

"It was not too bad," the rider said. "They fed me."

"Did they make sport of you?"

The scar on Herugin's face darkened. "No. Some wanted to, but Unamira did not permit it, and they obey him."

"Why?"

"He feeds them. He has gold. It was Reo Unamira's gold, I think. He's got quicker wits than most of them, and they know it. A quicker temper, too. They fear his sword."

Karadur asked, "What are his allegiances?"

"He has none, as far as I can tell. He's rootless."

"Does he mean to come north again?"

"No," Herugin said. "He has an enemy, some Nakasean lord. I think he means to ride south, and make mischief."

* * *

In mid-February, Angus swam through snow to Maia's hut. His face was drawn. He mimed coughing. Maia wrapped herself in the cloak Maura had woven for her, and thrust beneath it two flasks containing Rianna's tisane. She had brewed it in October, and stored it through winter for just this moment.

The snowdrifts were high and crusty. A relentless wind blew without surcease out of the north. By the time they reached the farmhouse it was dark. Maia's fingers were numb beneath her cloak. Maura opened the door. Her face was the color of candle wax. Behind her, Rianna's coughing made a doglike sound.

Maia thrust the cold flasks into Maura's outstretched hands. "Heat it gently. Don't let it boil." She bent over Rianna's bed. "Hello, princess."

Rianna's eyes were hollow, and her lips had a blue tinge.

"I hurt," she croaked.

"I know," Maia said calmly. Master Eccio had always been calm with his patients. "But you shall be better soon." She gathered the little girl into her arms, feeling the unnatural heat of her.

"There's snow on your cloak," Rianna whispered. "Is it snowing? Where's Morga?"