The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (31 page)

“Get up on the table, Maen,” Bellyra said. “So everyone can hear.”

Obligingly Maen climbed, then read in his best public voice. As Lilli listened, she felt her soul split in half. One Lilli gloated over every victory; the other grieved for the young king in Dun Deverry and for all the lords whom she’d known there. Every now and then the letters would mention some lord slain or grievously injured; a fair number of Deverry lords had been captured and were being held for ransom. Although they described Tibryn’s death in some detail, Lilli found that she couldn’t squeeze out a tear for him, uncle or not.

Never did the letters mention Burcan or Braemys, but Lilli could assume that such meant they were safe. Surely such an important prize as the regent or his son would be worthy of mention, if they’d been slain or taken. She was aware suddenly of Degwa, unsmiling, one eyebrow raised, watching her. Lilli looked away out to the great hall, where the crowd grinned as it heard the news.

“The prince sends his best wishes to his wife,” Maen finished up. “Tieryn Peddyc and his son send their greetings to their daughter and sister, Lillorigga.”

So Peddyc and Anasyn lived, no matter who else might have died. At that moment the two Lillis reunited and laughed in sheer relief.

Maen climbed down from the table. As he was rolling up the letters, some of the servant lasses in the dun pressed up against the dais, asking him in low voices if such and such a man had been mentioned as living or dead, but of course, no one had thought to list the deaths of common-born soldiers.

“Maen?” Bellyra said. “Can’t you write down the names of the men they’re asking about and send the list with the letters back? Surely someone can spare the time to find out how they fared. The beastly siege is going to drag on all summer, after all, and through the winter, too, unless the gods take a hand.”

“Of course, Your Highness,” Maen said. “Wait here, all of you. I’ll fetch ink and pen.”

The women huddled at the dais looked up at the princess and murmured thanks. Some wept in unspeaking gratitude.

“Well, true spoken,” Elyssa said. “About the siege, I mean. I’ll hope and pray that the dun surrenders soon.”

“It depends on the provisioning, I suppose,” Degwa said.

Lilli suddenly realized that the princess and her two women were all looking at her.

“It’s awfully well-stocked, the dun,” Lilli said. “It’s huge, and they keep cattle and pigs right inside the walls.”

“A long, long siege, then.” Degwa looked away, chewing on her lower lip. “Well, there’s naught to do but pray.”

But of course, Lilli realized suddenly, she herself held the end of the siege in her hands like a trinket to drop or treasure. She could betray her kin and clan, betray the child—her own cousin—she once had honored as the king, and hand Maryn the victory. If she dared. If such a thing would be right and not unspeakable treachery. She felt her soul split again like ripping cloth.

“Lilli?” Bellyra leaned forward. “You look unwell.”

“I am unwell, Your Highness. I feel torn in half.”

“No doubt! Well, the outcome lies in the laps of the gods. There’s naught we can do about it anyway, like Degwa says.”

Lilli nodded for an answer, not trusting her voice.

All that day Lilli fought with herself. She went to her chamber, then walked in the gardens of Dun Cerrmor alone. No one came near her; she assumed that the princess had told the other women to allow her privacy. In so many ways Bellyra had treated her more generously than any exile could hope for, and Maryn was the true-born king and meant by the gods to rule. If she held back, wouldn’t she be going against the will of the gods? As for her old friends, well, wouldn’t everyone in the royal dun suffer if they starved through a winter? Maryn would pardon almost everyone—but not the Boar lords.

If she betrayed the dun, her clan would be wiped out, her surviving uncle hanged like a criminal. And what would she say to her mother, when they were sending Merodda off to some temple to be shut up all her days? She found herself thinking of Bevyan and weeping; for some ghastly reason, the image of the white blisters on her face had stuck in her memory beyond the dislodging. It would be vengeance for Bevva and Sarra, to betray the Boars. She wished that she could consult with Nevyn, but she knew what he would say. Nevyn was the prince’s man, heart and soul.

“And what am I, then? One of the prince’s people, or still a Boar? If I went back, would they take me in?”

Lilli knew at that moment what she would do. She left the gardens, but as she was stepping into a side door to the main broch, she looked back at the sky, framed in stone, and the new Red Wyvern banners that hung from the towers. She remembered then the omens she had seen in the black ink. So, she’d chosen wisely. The gods had ordained the death of the Boar, and there was naught that she, a mortal woman, could do against that Wyrd.

Lilli found Bellyra in the women’s hall, alone except for little Casso. She was sitting at a table, sideways to allow for her pregnancy, while the child knelt on a chair padded with cushions. They had between them a big wooden bowl of Bardek glass beads, which Bellyra was showing him how to sort by their color and size while he laughed, staring at the pretties. In the afternoon sun their blond heads, bent toward each other, gleamed as if they’d been gilded. Cerrmor was so immensely rich, Lilli found herself thinking, that they could use a bowl of treasures as a child’s toy! Real glass beads, heaped up as casually as if they were pebbles from the seashore!

At that point Bellyra looked up, smiling in welcome.

“Your Highness.” Lilli made a quick bob of a curtsy. “I’ve come to tell you somewhat. I know the way into Dun Deverry.”

Bellyra stared, her full lips slightly parted.

“There’s a bolthole, I mean,” Lilli went on. “It leads from a ruined dun outside the city right into the inner ward.”

“Oh ye gods,” Bellyra whispered. “Some of our men could open the gates.”

“Just so, Your Highness.”

Bellyra grinned, then wiped the expression away.

“It must have cost you horribly,” the princess said. “Telling me this.”

“It did.” Lilli turned away. All at once it seemed hard to breathe, yet she couldn’t say why. “I couldn’t just blurt it out. I had to think about it for a long time.”

“No doubt, what with your kin—But truly, Lilli, Maryn means it when he says he’ll pardon anyone who asks. Really he will.”

“I believe it, Your Highness. It’s just that most of them won’t ask. They’d be dishonored if they begged.”

For a long moment the two women stared at each other, while the sun streamed into the bowl of beads and touched them with fire, and a laughing Casyl ran his hands through them. Bellyra looked away first.

“Lilli? Find some pages, will you? We need to talk to the captain of the fortguard about getting you up to the siege.”

“Me? I—”

“Well, they’ll need to know everything you do, where the tunnel leads, and what lies inside the dun between it and the gates.”

Lilli nodded, gasping a little for breath. Bellyra got up and walked over, holding out one hand.

“Come sit down. You’re pale as death.”

“Am I?” Lilli sank onto a chair. “Please, tell me somewhat. He really is the true-born king, isn’t he? Maryn I mean. Oh ye gods, if he’s not, then what have I done?”

“But he is. I know it in the very marrow of my heart and soul.” Suddenly Bellyra knelt, as if she were the commoner and Lilli the princess, and caught her hands. “Help us, Lilli! Please? I’ll send Maryn a letter with my seal upon it, begging him to spare your kin for your sake. But tell him what you know, all of it.”

“Your Highness, do get up! Oh, don’t kneel like that! Of course I will. The Boars aren’t my clan anymore, anyway. They’d never take me back, would they? All I have is Peddyc and Anasyn and the Rams, and they’re the prince’s men now.”

“That’s true.” Bellyra did rise, dusting off her skirts with both hands. “My heart aches for you, though. But Maryn will spare your mother. I can’t imagine him harming a woman, I just can’t.”

“No more can I. But will he force her into a temple?”

“Not if you beg him not to. He’s going to owe you a lot, isn’t he?” Bellyra smiled, then glanced at Casso. “Oh, you little beast! Get those out of your mouth!”

At the sound of the princess’s raised voice, Arda came rushing in from the adjoining chamber. Lilli left them to fuss over Casyl and wandered across the room to look out the window. Between the towers of Dun Cerrmor she could just see a distant stripe of ocean, blazing with sunset. To her dweomer-sight the water seemed to burn, and in that fire it seemed she heard men screaming in rage.

“Look—the moon’s past full again,” Maryn said. “She looked like just that when we invested the dun. So far they don’t seem to be surrendering. I wonder why they’re so slow about it?”

Nevyn allowed himself a brief smile at the prince’s jest. They were standing outside the royal pavilion, a large white affair with a peaked roof hung with the banner of the Red Wyvern. In the pale dawn light the gibbous moon lingered at the western horizon. Since he was hungry, Nevyn found himself thinking that she looked like a spectral cheese with one good slice nicked off. All through the scattered camp the army was waking. From cooking fires thin tendrils of smoke began to rise, as ghostly as the moon. Maryn yawned with a toss of his head.

“I wonder how my lady fares. Well, the messengers should ride in today, don’t you think?”

“There’s been more than enough time for them to reach Cerrmor and ride back, truly,” Nevyn said. “But I doubt me if Bellyra will have given birth yet. Another turn of the moon, most likely.”

“Well, when her time comes, the messengers will know where to find me, sure enough.”

Messengers arrived that very afternoon, and with them aid for the prince’s cause beyond any Nevyn would have hoped for. He was helping the chirurgeons change bandages when he heard shouting in the direction of the main gates. Some while later, just as he was finishing up, a manservant trotted up to fetch him.

“The prince says there’s urgent news, my lord. Somewhat of a surprise.”

A surprise it was—when Nevyn ducked into the prince’s pavilion, he saw Lilli and two servant lasses, Lilli perched on a stool, the lasses sitting cross-legged on the ground—all of them wearing road-dirty brigga under their dresses. For a moment he goggled while Maryn laughed at him.

“I felt just the same, good councillor,” Maryn said. “Lady Lillorigga of the Ram has brought us a boon beyond wishing for.”

“Indeed?” Nevyn bowed to her.

“Indeed. She knows the location of the bolthole out of the dun. And needless to say, what leads out also leads in.”

Lilli nodded and tried to smile, but she seemed nearer tears. All at once Nevyn remembered that she had blood-kin trapped inside the fortress.

“You look weary, my lady,” Nevyn said. “We’d best figure out where you and your women can safely shelter. Of course, with your foster-father here to protect you, you should have naught to worry about.”

“Just so.” Maryn glanced around and saw a page standing at the door. “Go find Tieryn Peddyc and tell him his foster-daughter’s here.” He turned to Nevyn. “I’ll have the herald announce it to the camp, that any man who gives her women the least bit of trouble will be publicly flogged.”

“That should take care of it, truly.” Nevyn allowed himself a wry smile. “Lilli, will you and your lasses shelter near me? I have a large tent, which you three can have, and I’ll commandeer myself a little one to put outside its door.”

“My humble thanks, Nevyn.” Lilli glanced at the girls, who of course agreed in murmurs. “There’s much I need to talk over with you.”

“No doubt. It’s a grave thing you’ve done, but I honor you for it.”

Along with Lilli and her two lasses, Clodda and Nalla, Princess Bellyra had sent a cart with a royal amount of gear—mattresses, blankets, a little half-round chair for Lilli, a chest of clothes and oddments, even an old faded Bardek carpet for the floor. Once all these furnishings were set up in Nevyn’s tent, the place looked quite comfortable, as Nevyn remarked.

“Still,” the old man continued, “I wonder about the wisdom of your being here. I don’t like thinking about what might happen if the regent’s men sally.”

“We should be safe enough for now, my lord,” Lilli said. “Here between the outer walls.”

“True. Still—I’d like you sent home to Cerrmor as soon as possible.”

Together they left the tent and walked outside. In the sun of a cloudless day Dun Deverry loomed at the top of the view, still seemingly safe behind its inner rings and baffles. Somewhere in those towers, Lilli thought, was her mother, perhaps looking down at the enemy camp so far below while her daughter looked up at her.

“Nevyn?” Lilli said. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing?”

“Absolutely.”

“Even though I’m betraying my kin and clan?”

“Even so. Do you know how these wars started?”

“I don’t, truly. I mean, I must have heard the tale at some time or other. I just can’t remember it.”

“Very few people remember, it’s been so long since, and fewer still care. War is all they’ve ever known. And that’s why your betrayal is no betrayal, but an act of honor, because it will end the long war and let the people remember peace.”

“I hope you’re right, I truly do.”

“So do I. I’ve staked my own Wyrd on it.”

She turned to see him smiling, but ruefully.

“Very well,” she said. “Then I’ll serve the prince in any way that I can.”

Yet round her heart she felt as cold and hard as the stone towers, so dark against the sky. She stood looking up at them until a familiar voice called her name: Peddyc. She turned to see the men of the Ram trotting toward her.

“Lilli!” Anasyn threw an arm around her shoulder. “The page told us about the bolthole. How splendid of you!”

Tight in his brotherly embrace she could laugh; she felt safe, she realized, for the first time in weeks. Peddyc stood watching, smiling a little, his eyes, set so deep in his lean face, weary from the soul.

“Bevva would be proud of you,” he said. “You’re a daughter of the Ram, sure enough.”