A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [35]
She could still remember the wonderful feasts and musical entertainments her father had given to mark the birth of a new heir. She could also remember the lies, the whispers behind his back, and the moaning coming from her mother’s chambers when the truth became inescapable: his second son had been born stone-blind and could never rule as king. Just a year after his birth, the baby disappeared. Bellyra never did learn what had happened to him, and she was still afraid to ask. She had, however, recorded his disappearance in her book with a note speculating that the Wildfolk had taken him away. And now her father was dead, and her mother living on Bardek wine in a darkened bedchamber. There would be no more heirs unless she herself provided them to some man the regent and the court would pick out for her.
On that particular day she held the codex in her lap as she drowsed the afternoon away in the willow tree. She would read a few lines, almost at random, then daydream about how splendid the old days must have been, when her clan was strong and powerful, when its great kings had coffers filled with tribute and its mighty warriors had a chance of winning the civil wars. Now victory seemed profoundly unlikely, even though Cerrmor’s loyal lords all told her that the gods would help them put her on a queen’s throne in Dun Deverry. Every now and then Bellyra would look up through the leaves and consider the top of the tallest tower in the dun, just visible over the main broch. Once, or so her book told her, a hostage prince of Eldidd had languished in that tower for over twenty years. At times she had the awful feeling that she too would languish there, a prisoner for the rest of her life, until she died of old age and the Cerrmor line was dead.
“They might just strangle me, of course,” she remarked to the tree. She often talked to the old willow, for want of anyone else to listen. “You hear about that every now and then, women being strangled or smothered to make sure they never have any babies. I don’t know which would be worse, I truly don’t, being dead or being shut up for ever and ever. The servants all say I belong in the Otherlands, anyway, so maybe it would be better to get smothered and be done with it. Or I could take poison. That would be more romantic somehow. I could write in my book, you see, as the poison was coming on. The noble Princess Bellyra raised the golden cup of sweet death to her lips and laughed a harsh mocking laugh of scorn for the beastly old Cantrae men pounding on her door. Hah hah, you dogs, soon I will be far beyond your ugly… ugly what? hands? schemes? Or here, how about, far beyond your murdering base-born hands. I like that better, truly. It has a ring to it.”
The willow sighed in the breeze as if agreeing. Bellyra chewed on her lower lip and considered her plan. It would look splendid, once the Cantrae men broke down the door, if she were lying on her bed, her hair artistically draped across the pillow with a last sneer of defiance on her face. She would have to remember to put on her best dress, the one of purple Bardek silk that her nursemaid had cut from an old banqueting cloth they’d found in another storeroom. The Cantrae king might even shed a tear for her beauty and be sorry he’d been planning to smother her. On the whole, though, judging from what she’d heard about Cantrae lords, she doubted if they’d feel any remorse. Relief, more like, that she’d spared them the job.
Across the garden came a scrape of sound, the door into the broch opening on un-oiled hinges. She went still, her hands freezing on her book.
“Bellyra! Princess!”
The voice belonged to Tieryn Elyc, and through the leaves she could just see him, standing on the edge of the little bridge across the stream. To Bellyra the tieryn always seemed as ancient as the sorcerer of her daydreams, but in truth he