The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (42 page)

With a gasp for air Lilli leaned back against the door. Merodda laughed with a toss of her head and stepped closer.

“So how does that sit with you?” Merodda went on. “Your ever-so-dear Bevyan had guessed the truth. So I silenced her before she could shame you and get you stripped of your inheritance.”

“She never would have. Bevva never would have hurt me.”

“Oh, are you so sure? I’m not!”

Lilli forced herself to raise her head and look at her mother, smirking in the candlelight. It can’t be true, she told herself. It’s not true, it’s not! But a flood of memory was rising, threatening to drown her—little remarks overheard, the expression on a face when someone mentioned her inheritance, the gossip about her mother’s tarnished honor. Drop by drop the flood built.

“And who was my father, then?” Her voice shook on a whisper.

“And why should I tell you? Soon I’ll be dead, and you’ll never know.”

“Fair enough. No doubt I owe you that much, a little torment to get some of your own back.”

Rage bloomed on Merodda’s face. So! Lilli thought. I was supposed to wheedle and beg!

“Farewell, Mother,” Lilli said. “I’ll leave you now, since you can’t stand the sight of me.”

Lilli turned and laid one hand on the door.

“Wait!” Merodda snapped.

Lilli turned back.

“Think about your uncle, Lilli. Surely you heard the gossip about him and me.”

“I never listened. I knew they just envied you.”

“Oh, envy me they did, but the gossip was true enough. You’re twice cursed, my bastard daughter. Burcan was your father—your uncle, my brother. His love was the one good thing the gods ever gave me in life, and I would have been a fool to throw it away.”

“You’re lying!”

“I’m not!” Merodda smiled, and the curve of her lips seemed to drip poison in Lilli’s dweomer-touched sight. “It’s the cold truth. And when you were going to marry Braemys, didn’t the old cats in the dun hiss and mutter about that? You must have heard them, wondering if I’d marry you off to your own brother. You were a Boar twice over, Lilli, as much a daughter of your clan as any woman could be.”

With a shriek Lilli spun around and slammed her fists against the door. A guard pulled it open from the other side. As she stepped out she could hear her mother laughing in a long peal of hysteria behind her.

“Well now,” the guard said, “I don’t know what she said to you, lass, but remember that she’s beside herself. In a bit you’ll remember the good things, eh?”

Lilli burst out sobbing and ran down the corridor, flung herself down the stairs so fast that she nearly fell and preceded her mother to the Otherlands. She fled outside and into the middle of the silent ward, stood sobbing for a moment until she could collect herself.

“It’s not true. It can’t be true.”

The flood of memory rose up and broke over her. Burcan defended me from Tibryn. He offered land to keep me safe.

“Bevva!” Lilli howled the name as if her grief could truly wake the dead. “Bevva, Bevva!”

Gasping and stumbling she ran again, ran blindly, careening through the ward. She found the gate out by sheer luck and ran again until her burning lungs pulled her up. Gasping and choking, she leaned against a cold stone wall and looked around her. She’d fetched up in the main ward, and over her rose the royal broch. Torchlight spilled out the windows, and she could hear men laughing and singing.

When she slipped in, they were all too drunk to notice her. She crept upstairs, found her chamber, and collapsed onto the bed. Sleep rose up and took her.

“My lord! My lord Nevyn!” The voice came bellowing through the dark. “Are you in there?”

Someone was shaking the tent-flap as well. Nevyn sat up and threw his blankets back.

“I am! Who is it?”

“Caudyr sent me. The little false king is dying.”

Nevyn pulled on his brigga and boots, grabbed a shirt, and ran out of the tent. The servant—little more than a boy—carried a lantern, and Nevyn followed its gleam as they hurried up the hill. At the door to the royal broch he paused and pulled the shirt over his head.

“Where are Caudyr and the lad?”

“In the false king’s old chambers. Prince Maryn had him put there under guard.”

As soon as Nevyn opened the door to the royal suite he smelled vomit, and the stench had a bitter tinge. He ran into the bedroom and found it ablaze with lantern light. On his narrow bed the child-king lay, his wooden horse beside him, while Caudyr stood at a table littered with packets of herbs and medicaments. The room stank of vomit and excrement. Nevyn crossed it in two strides and flung the shutters open at the windows.

“What have you been doing for him?”

“Salt water and lots of it. He’s been vomiting on his own, and I’ve been trying to wash his insides clean.”

Nevyn went to the bedside and laid a hand on the boy’s face: clammy and cold, and his skin had a greyish tinge. At the touch he opened his eyes, then closed them again. A vomit stain lay on the blanket near his face.

“Blood,” Nevyn said. “You can see the tinge. Let’s hope it’s just the straining.”

Caudyr turned and pointed to a basin on the floor. Blood and a lot of it clotted in the watery vomit. Nevyn squatted down beside the boy and touched him again. He wanted a look at the child’s pupils, but this time Olaen kept his eyes shut.

“Come now, lad, look at me,” Nevyn whispered. “We’re here to help you. Open your eyes and look at me.”

Not a twitch, not a stir, not even when Nevyn gave him a gentle shake. Carefully he pried the lad’s eyes open and found the pupils widely dilated even though it seemed he slept. When Nevyn swore under his breath, Caudyr came limping over.

“Is it too late?” Caudyr said.

“I fear me it is. He’s slipping away from us.”

Caudyr let out his breath in a long sigh. Nevyn got up and pulled a blanket over the boy’s thin shoulders—a futile gesture, but he had to do something.

“When did this happen?”

“Well, a guard fetched me some while after midnight,” Caudyr said. “He’d looked for the regular chirurgeons but couldn’t find them. Someone thought of me, and so I gathered up my supplies and got here as fast as I could.”

“He’s been poisoned, of course.”

“Of course. The last person to see him was his nursemaid. The guards told me she brought him up some honeycake—a little treat, she said, from the kitchens.”

Nevyn glanced around and saw, lying broken on the floor, a pottery plate. When he picked the pieces up, he found them sticky. One trampled bit of cake lay near the table, which he scooped up with a fragment of plate. When he sniffed it, he smelled nothing unusual. With a shrug he laid it on the table.

“I want to talk with the nursemaid.”

“Through there.” Caudyr pointed at a little door in the wooden partition. “Come to think of it, I wonder why she didn’t hear the noise I’ve been making?”

Nevyn felt abruptly cold. He flung open the little door, stepped into the tiny chamber, and in the spill of lantern light saw what he’d feared to see, a middle-aged woman lying twisted and dead on the floor. A rumpled pallet, all stained with excrement and vomit, lay nearby. She must have lost control of herself, Nevyn supposed, and got up to get a chamberpot, only to fall and die. He knelt beside her and laid a hand on her face—barely cold. If Caudyr had only known about her, lying there helpless, he might have saved her. With a shake of his head he rose to see Caudyr in the doorway.

“Ye gods! I never heard her moan or cry out.”

“She looks frail. The poison might have killed her very quickly. No doubt she shared the little treat someone had so kindly sent the lad.”

Despite the sound of their voices, Olaen never moved, not even a twitch. Nevyn strode to the window and leaned out to breathe the cleaner air.

“So,” Caudyr said. “Who did this, do you think? Councillor Oggyn?”

“It’s a good guess. He feared our Maryn’s talent for mercy.”

“Where do you think the old sot got the poison?”

“I don’t—oh ye gods! I do know. From Lady Merodda’s things, the ones the guards brought him along with my book.”

“Do we go to the prince about this?”

“How can we? We don’t have a scrap of evidence.”

“Evidence?” Caudyr looked as if he’d spit. “Ask Oggyn outright. You can always tell when a man is lying. The prince will take your word for it.”

“So? My word’s not evidence under the laws. As much as I’d like to see this poor woman avenged, it would be a grievous thing if the prince broke the laws to do it.”

Caudyr stared at him for a long time, then sighed.

“Sometimes,” Caudyr said, “I think that I’ll never understand you, no matter how long I know you.”

“Indeed? Well, you’ve had a hard life.”

Olaen never woke again but died just as the first dawn silvered the sky. Nevyn had the guards summon servants to clean up the murderous filth and lay the dead out properly, then went down to the cookhouse behind the dun. Although he’d hoped to find the cooks and question them, what he found was chaos. Half the high-ranking servants had fled the dun and taken their tools with them. Cleavers, iron kettles, and the like fetched a high price in the war-torn kingdom. Maryn’s own servants were trying to restore order and scratch together some kind of breakfast for the prince, his noble allies, guards, councillors, and themselves while keeping a cautious eye on those who’d once served the false king. Merely from watching, Nevyn realized that no one in the confusion of preparing last night’s meal would have noticed Oggyn or a plate of honeycakes coming in or going out.

Nevyn also realized that he didn’t even know the poison’s name. How could he go to Maryn babbling of poisoners if he couldn’t even name the thing out? He paused in the ward and looked up at the tower where Lady Merodda was imprisoned. That wretched fool of a bard! he thought. There’s so much I could ask her if only the prince had been able to pardon her! There’s so much I need to ask her—in his mind he could see all too vividly the image of the lead tablet, scribed with evil dweomer in the ancient tongue. What did it mean? How could he turn it harmless? Merodda would never tell him now, and he couldn’t even find it in his heart to blame her.

It occurred to him, however, that Lilli might know about her mother’s poisons. He was heading out of the dun gates toward the encampment when he heard someone call his name and saw one of Lilli’s maidservants hurrying toward him.

“My lord Nevyn!” Clodda said. “Have you seen our lady?”

“I’ve not. Did she leave her tent?”

“She never came back to it last night. We’ve been ever so worried. I couldn’t find Tieryn Anasyn or you when I went to look.”

“Well, I’m here now. Go back to the tent and wait there. I’ll look for her.”

As soon as the lass was gone, Nevyn leaned against the wall and glanced at the sky—apparently just an idle look at the clouds, but he was scrying Lilli out. He saw her immediately, sitting fully dressed at the end of a bed in a chamber, up in the main dun from the look of it. But where? He went back and in the great hall he found one of the servants left over from the old regime. The girl did indeed know what suites had formerly belonged to the Boars, and for a copper was glad enough to tell him.

“And Lady Lillorigga had the smallish one, right down at the end.”

When Nevyn found the chamber, he knocked, then kept knocking until Lilli let him in. He first thought she’d taken ill. Her hair hung in dull wisps around her dead-pale face, and dark circles pouched under her eyes.

“What’s so wrong?” Nevyn said.

“I—I had terrible nightmares.”

Lilli sank down on a wooden chest at the room’s one narrow window. When the morning sun glared on her face, she winced and got up, stood looking around her, then finally sat on the end of her bed. Nevyn took the seat in the window.

“Terrible they must have been,” he said. “About what awaits your mother?”

“Some of that, truly. Although it gladdens my heart she’s going to die.”

“Because of Lady Bevyan?”

Lilli nodded, then reached up with a trembling hand and began trying to brush her still-short hair back from her face. She would tuck a strand into place only to have another fall forward, over and over, until he felt like screaming at her to stop.

“What are you doing up here?” Nevyn said. “Your lasses are worried about you.”

“Oh ye gods! Last night, I was just so upset. I bolted for my old chamber without thinking.”

“Lilli.” Nevyn softened his voice. “Somewhat’s gravely wrong, isn’t it?”

“I went to talk with my mother last night. I’m sorry now.”

“Did she curse you?”

“She did, and she told me,” a long pause, “things.”

“Things?”

Finally she stopped fussing with her hair and clasped her hands in her lap.

“Did you want to see me about somewhat?” Lilli said.

“I did.” Nevyn considered, then decided to leave his prying till later. “The poison your mother had, do you know its name?”

“Dwarven Salts. Brour called it that.”

“Not much of a name, but it will do. And how did it work?”

“You put it in someone’s food or drink, and then it ate at their vitals. It was terrible, just like someone dying from eating tainted meat or spoiled milk. There was one woman, Caetha, and everyone said my mother poisoned her because—” She broke off, staring out at nothing.

“Well, your mother did confess to one poisoning.”

“Then it’s true.” Lilli was whispering and mostly to herself. “Everything points to it being true.”

“The poisoning?”

Lilli stared at him, her mouth a little slack.

“What’s so wrong?” Nevyn said again. “I can see it’s somewhat truly grave, or I wouldn’t be badgering you like this.”

Lilli turned her head and stared at the wall.

“Mother told me,” she said, “she told me that I’m really a bastard, that her husband wasn’t my father.”

“Ah. Well, no wonder you’re so troubled! My heart goes out to you, lass, but no one need ever know. Here, Aethan wasn’t your father, was he?”

“I only wish.” Lilli paused as if gathering her strength. “She told me that my father—that my father was—well, her own brother. My uncle.”