The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (44 page)

Suddenly it was gone. Lilli took one step forward and fainted.

She woke to find herself cramped and exhausted in a shaft of daylight from the unshuttered window. Her mouth felt as if she’d been licking stone; when she touched her painful lips she found them swollen. She managed to get to her knees, then clutched the bed for support and fought her way to her feet. All she could think of was water. By leaning against the bed she managed to get to the chest on the other side, where a pitcher stood by a basin. She sat down on the floor, poured some water into the basin, then hoisted it with both hands and drank.

By the time she’d drunk half the pitcher’s worth, she felt well enough to stand. Only then, looking out her window at the familiar view, a stripe of blue framed by two brochs, did she remember her visitor of the night before.

“Dream,” she whispered. “Naught but a dream.”

But the pain in her lips belied her. She should tell Nevyn, she knew, but a sudden loathing for the man overwhelmed her. Hadn’t he been the true cause behind the death of her kin and clan? Oh don’t be stupid, she told herself. Of course he isn’t! With that her mind suddenly cleared, and she realized that her mother had slid the thought like a thorn into her heart, deep into her heart, because all the time she dressed, she had to fight the loathing. Crossing the room to the door exhausted her. When she lifted the bar, the wood seemed to weigh as much as solid iron.

Staggering like a drunken woman, Lilli walked down the corridor. Each step seemed harder and harder; often she paused to rest, leaning against the wall, because she knew that if she sat down, she’d fall asleep. Once she’d heard a tale from a man, one of the servants at Hendyr, who’d nearly frozen to death but been rescued at the last moment. He’d described this same terrifying exhaustion and the equally terrifying lust to simply sit down and die.

At last she reached the head of the stairs, and there her legs failed her. She took a single step down and felt her body fold under her like a piece of dropped cloth. She did manage to sit rather than fall all the way down, but she settled in the shadows, huddled against the wall. All she could do was pray that someone would be coming up or down soon to find her, and that she could still talk when they did.

Down below the great hall stood nearly empty. A few servants were wiping tables; a few riders still lingered over the last of their breakfast. Even from her distance she could recognize Branoic, simply by his sheer size. If only she could call out to him, or somehow will him to look up and see her. In her mind she repeated his name, over and over—a foolish effort, she thought, but all at once he stood up. He turned around fast to peer up the stairs.

“Lilli!” he called out.

No matter how hard she tried, her mouth refused to frame words. Branoic, however, came bounding up the stairs two at a time.

“What’s wrong?” he snapped. “I heard you calling me. Are you ill?”

When she nodded, he stooped down.

“You’re white as snow! Here, Nevyn better have a look at you.”

At the mention of Nevyn, her loathing welled up strong, but fortunately Branoic misinterpreted.

“Are you sick to your stomach?” he said. “You look it. There’s no use in you trying to walk.”

He stood, then reached down and picked her up with barely an effort. She wrapped her arms around his neck and managed to whisper, “My thanks.” Moving cautiously he carried her downstairs.

“You’ve got to eat more, lass,” Branoic said. “You don’t weigh much more than a hundredweight. That’s not good.”

Held in his arms she felt warm again and suddenly realized that she’d been shivering cold. But why? What had happened to make her so ill? Something had—she could remember that she’d woken up ill, and that perhaps she’d had a bad dream, but all the details were slipping away. Was she even remembering correctly; had there been a dream? More likely she’d merely woken to find herself ill.

“Here we are, down on the nice safe ground,” Branoic said. “Now let’s find the old man and give him a look at you.”

Lilli lifted her head from his shoulder and looked around. Someone was coming toward them, but she couldn’t recognize him until he spoke.

“What’s all this?” It was Maddyn the bard. “Is the lady ill?”

“Very much so,” Branoic said. “I’m taking her to see Nevyn.”

“Nah nah nah, take her back to her chamber and then find Nevyn. If she’s ill, she shouldn’t be out in the air.”

Terror slid cold hands over Lilli’s back.

“Not my chamber,” she whispered.

“Why not?” Maddyn said. “Come now, lass! You’re ill and not thinking right.”

“Not my chamber. Branoic, please, don’t.”

Puzzled and insistent, Maddyn’s face loomed over her. She wanted to scream at him to go away, but her voice failed her.

“What the lady wants,” Branoic said, “is what I’ll do. She doesn’t want to go back, so make yourself useful, Maddo. Go on ahead of us and round up Nevyn.”

Lilli laid her face against his shoulder in a luxury of relief. With Maddyn hurrying ahead of them, Branoic walked outside to the sun and air of the ward, where, she somehow knew, she’d be safe. When he bent his head and smiled at her, she smiled back and wondered how she could have misjudged him so harshly, how she had missed seeing that indeed, he was the kind of man she could love.

After his long night’s sleep, Nevyn took his time dressing. He was thinking about going up to the dun and scrounging some breakfast when he heard voices directly outside his tent.

“My lord? Are you in there?”

“I am, Maddo. What is it?”

“The lady Lillorigga’s fallen ill. It’s like she’s had all the life sucked out of her or somewhat.”

Nevyn grabbed the tent-flap and held it up. Maddyn was standing just outside, and Branoic came right behind, carrying Lilli.

“Bring her in, lad,” Nevyn said to Branoic. “And my thanks. Set her down on my cot.”

Even with the dim light in the tent Nevyn could see the fiery blister on her lips. Under her eyes dark marks like bruises smeared her skin.

“Maddo, Branoic, leave us,” Nevyn snapped. “Stand guard outside or suchlike.”

Lilli watched them go, then crumpled against the pillow as if her head had become too heavy to hold up. Nevyn pulled the blankets off and bundled them up.

“Let me get these under your head, too. There, that’s a good lass. Now, what’s happened?”

“I don’t know.” Lilli was frowning down at her hands. “I’ve been trying to remember. It was some kind of dream, and I woke, and I was ill.”

Nevyn sat down on the floor cloth. When he opened his dweomer-sight, he could see that her aura, shrunken and pale, clung close to her body. Instead of a smooth ovoid, it formed a ragged cloud, as if something had torn great chunks of it away. Had the dead lad’s aura looked like this? He’d died too soon for Nevyn to get a look at it. Certainly his lips bore the same mark. He brought his sight back to normal.

“A dream, was it?” Nevyn said. “Try to think, lass. Let’s start with when you woke up and try to work backwards.”

“Woke up! That’s right, I woke in the night.”

“Good, good. So you woke and it was still dark in your chamber. What woke you, a noise?”

“It was. One of the hides over the windows, that’s right. It slid down and rustled. And there was light in the room.…” Lilli let her voice trail away for a long moment. “I woke up on the floor in the morning.”

“Aha! So. Somewhat happened betwixt those two wakings. Try to cast your mind back.”

Her mouth slack, Lilli stared off into memory.

“I can’t,” she said at last. “I just can’t. I do remember that I wanted to go find you, but then I felt this horrible feeling, a kind of loathing, at the very thought.”

“That’s important, I’ll wager.” But why? Nevyn couldn’t quite tease the significance out, not yet at least. “But in the morning, you woke on the floor.”

“And I got up and dressed, but it was ever so hard. I felt so exhausted, as if I’d been running for miles and miles.”

“No doubt. Here, let me try a little trick. Perhaps if you feel more lively, your memory will come back.”

Nevyn knelt beside the cot and laid one hand just below her ribs and above her stomach. When he called back the dweomer-sight, he could see the knot in her aura just above his hand, the Sun Knot where so many energies from different parts of the body weave together and exchange their forces. In Lilli’s case it glowed as dim as a cinder flung to lie too far on the hearth from the fire. Nevyn called upon the Light and felt it gather above his head like a crown. Wildfolk came rushing into manifestation all around him to watch with solemn eyes. Nevyn visualized the light, then willed it down, flowing down his spine and out of his fingertips. It poured into Lilli’s aura like a spill from a full bucket into an empty one.

With a thanks to the Great Light itself, Nevyn took his hand away and sat back on his heels to watch. The golden energy wrapped around her deosil, and all at once she laughed, stretching like a sleeper just awakened.

“A trick you call that, my lord?” Lilli sat up and grinned at him. “A wondrous one!”

“You feel better then, do you?”

“I do, a thousand times over.”

“Good. I figured it would work splendidly for you, with your dweomer-gifts.”

“Well, it certainly did.” Lilli looked away, thinking hard. “But I still don’t remember.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth, just as so many people do when thinking, and yelped. “Oh, that hurts!”

“No doubt. You’ve got quite an odd mark there, somewhat of a blister, somewhat of a swelling like a bee sting.”

Gingerly Lilli touched the mark with one finger.

“I remember the pain,” she said. “It was cold and hot all at the same time. But I don’t know what caused it.”

“Well, I’m putting together a few things. Somewhat got into your chamber in the middle of the night. It touched you there, on the mouth, and drew off enormous amounts of your life-stuff. You’re lucky you’re young and healthy, lass. It would have killed an old woman.”

“I believe you, my lord. I felt so ghastly in the morning.”

Nevyn felt the insight like a shock of lightning, running down his spine with a crackle.

“Ghastly, indeed,” he said. “Ye gods! Could it be? I always thought it naught but a silly fancy!”

“What, my lord?”

“Let me think on this before I say anything more. Here, we’d best get up to the dun. You need sustenance, and I feel hungry enough to eat a wolf, pelt and all.”

Later that day Nevyn received proof of his peculiar theory. After spending some long hours with the King’s Council, he was walking in the main ward when he saw a gaggle of maidservants gossiping by the well. Something about the urgency of their talk caught his attention. He strolled over, but before he could eavesdrop Clodda saw him and called out.

“My lord Nevyn, oh please, could you spare us a bit of time?”

“By all means,” Nevyn said. “Is somewhat wrong?”

The women all turned to one of their number, much better dressed than they, and began murmuring things like “go on, tell him!” Finally she got up her nerve and curtsied.

“My name’s Pavva, my lord. And I—well, you’ll think I’m daft but I saw Lady Merodda’s spirit walking in the dun.”

Nevyn caught his breath in a low whistle. Pavva misunderstood and blushed.

“Don’t feel shamed,” Nevyn said. “I believe you, actually. Where was this and when?”

“Just now, my lord. I went up to bring Lady Lillorigga fresh water. It’s ever so dim in the halls up there and cool, but when I shut her door behind me, it was just like winter, it was, ever so cold. And all the hair on my arms stood up, like. And I saw Lady Merodda, standing in the middle of the corridor. She looked so horrible, with her throat all bruised like that, I couldn’t even scream. She was trying to say somewhat to me, but I couldn’t hear her. And so I told her I was so sorry she was dead, and she smiled and disappeared.”

Nevyn felt a touch of the ghast-cold himself.

“How long ago was this?” he snapped.

“Not very. I came straight down and found Clodda and the lasses, and so I was just telling them.”

“Where’s your lady, Clodda?”

“Up in her chambers, my lord. That’s why Pavva was bringing her the water.”

Nevyn swore like a rider and took off running, leaving the lasses staring after him.

Since Nevyn’s cure proved temporary, a mere trick as indeed he’d warned her, Lilli had felt exhausted again by the middle of the afternoon. She’d asked Pavva to bring her a pitcher of water, then gone to her chamber to sleep. She barely noticed when the girl came in, and by the time Pavva shut the door behind her, Lilli had dozed off—only to wake with a start some moments later.

“I didn’t bar the door.” Yawning, she got out of bed.

Between her and the window her mother appeared, materializing like a fall of dust in a beam of sunlight. All at once Lilli remembered everything: the dream, her mother’s ghost, her mother’s revenge. Her heart started pounding.

“You’ve come to kill me, haven’t you?” Lilli began to back away and circled toward the door as she moved. “You want to take me with you to the Otherlands.”

The glimmering bluish-white image smiled and began to move its lips as if it spoke, but once again Lilli could hear nothing. When the apparition moved forward, Lilli stepped back, but Merodda followed, gliding a foot or so above the ground. Her lips framed the words “my daughter, my daughter” over and over. Slowly she reached out one hand and one long pale finger, ready to pierce Lilli’s aura and drain her very soul.

With a scream Lilli bolted and ran, banging out of the chamber door and into the corridor. Down at the far end a man was running straight toward her like Burcan in her dream. She screamed again, then clasped both hands over her mouth to shield her lips.

“It’s just me!” Nevyn stopped running and strode up to her. “I saw Pavva out in the ward and got here in time, and thank the gods for that!”

Lilli was shaking too hard to object when Nevyn took her arm and guided her back into the chamber. The apparition had fled. Nevyn shut the door behind them.

“Now,” he said, “tell me what you saw.”

“My mother’s spirit. She was standing at the end of the bed and looking at me. And I remember now, my lord. It was her, the other night. She came to me and touched me on the lips.”