Bones of the Dragon - Margaret Weis [103]
“I risked my life. I won a great victory,” he told himself. “I deserve to be Chief of Chiefs! Yet now my father hates me. Garn won’t speak to me. I have to marry an old hag. . . .”
He sagged down onto the deck and closed his eyes, trying to think things over.
“Forgive me, lord. . . .”
Skylan jerked his head up.
The Kai Priestess was back again, kneeling in front of him. “I am sorry. I should have attended to your wounds.” She started to tug on his boot.
Skylan was about to tell the old woman impatiently that his wounds were nothing. He had no need of her fussing over him. Then he noticed Garn and his father both watching him, and he choked back the words. He forced himself to sit in silence, allowing Draya to pull off his boot and bathe his wound with a cloth she had dipped in seawater. The salt in the wound stung worse than the bite of the axe, and he clamped his teeth over the pain. Her fingers were cold; her thin hands were bony, like claws.
She is all bone, Skylan thought, no softness anywhere. He counted ten gray hairs on her head. Her breasts were barely visible beneath her dress, and he imagined them sagging down to her belly.
At least she is so old she will not expect me to bed her, Skylan thought, comforted. No matter that he was married, he would not break his vow to Aylaen, that he would love no other woman except her.
“I am sorry, lord, did I hurt you?” Draya asked in concern, feeling him flinch.
“No, Priestess,” he said. “My leg is much better.” He hurriedly pulled on his boot before she could offer to do it for him. “My throat is parched. If I could have a drink—”
“I will gladly fetch you something, lord,” Draya said eagerly and hastened away.
He heard laughter. A group of Torgun warriors had come aboard the dragonship to do honor to their new Chief, and he saw them laughing—he thought—at him.
“Shut your mouths!” Skylan said angrily.
The warriors stared at him in puzzlement, and he realized they had been laughing because they were in good spirits. The Torgun had gone from being the clan at the bottom of the dung heap to the foremost clan of the Vindrasi, the clan of the Chief of Chiefs, and they were celebrating.
The Kai Priestess came to his rescue. “The Chief of Chiefs is right,” Draya said reprovingly. She looked pointedly at the corpse wrapped in its bloody shroud. “The dead have not departed. Your mirth is not seemly.”
The warriors spoke their respectful apologies. Horg had been this woman’s husband, after all, and although the Priestess did not appear to be overcome with grief, she might be bravely covering her true feelings.
The Priestess handed Skylan a horn filled with ale. “I thought you would find this more refreshing than wine, lord,” she said, and she gave him a tremulous smile.
Her eyes were large and brown and liquid, like a cow’s.
“Thank you, Priestess,” Skylan said. Her hand touched his as he handed back the empty drinking horn, and she blushed like a maiden.
“I will bring you more, lord,” she offered.
“Not now,” he said, adding, “I must apologize to my father.”
The Kai Priestess glanced at Norgaard; then she looked back at Skylan. “You have nothing to apologize for, lord. You fought the Vutmana. The choice was rightly yours.”
“I know that, but I made a vow to him and to Torval that my father would be Chief of Chiefs,” Skylan said, sighing. “Will I be punished for breaking that vow, Priestess? Torval gave me the victory—”
“He did, lord,” she murmured.
“Then how can he punish me?”
“None of us knows the minds of the gods,” she said gravely. “But I believe that they are fair and practical and take many things into account, such as the need of the people in these troubled times for a strong Chief of Chiefs—”
“That is what I was trying to tell Garn!” exclaimed Skylan, pleased. “My father should understand that.”
“I am certain he will. Come,” Draya said, and she held out her hand to him. “We will