Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [179]
“My thanks, good dragon,” Admi said. “Raena, come forward. What say you to these charges of such grave import?”
With a toss of her head, Raena walked over to stand in front of the table of judges.
“I can say naught,” she said, “for who will believe me no matter what I say? Mine enemies have banded together to kill me with their lies. Should you believe them, they will succeed, and there be naught that I may do but swear my innocence.”
Rhodry turned to face her, and he smiled, an arrogant smirk. Raena's face blanched. With one smooth motion she scooped Yraen's dagger from the table in her clumsy left hand and leapt forward, swinging her arm to stab up from below. Admi yelled, Zatcheka screamed, the men of the town watch surged forward—all too late. Dallandra barely saw Rhodry move. He flung one arm around Raena's shoulders and grabbed her jaw with the other hand. There was a sickening sort of crack, and Raena's head flopped back, her neck clean broken. Rhodry let the corpse fall and glanced at the judges.
“So much for that,” he remarked. “You're better off rid of her.”
For a moment the silence held, then like the first few drops of a breaking wave a woman screamed. Voices followed, crashing down and thundering across the plaza in a babble of confusion and fear. Dallandra realized that Rhodry was leaning over the table and gripping it with both hands. A bright red stain was spreading across his chest and abdomen. The dragon leapt to her feet and roared, a boom of angry thunder that sent the crowd running.
Dallandra rushed forward and reached Rhodry just as Zatcheka hurried around the table to do the same. His face was pale as ice and twice as cold, it seemed, but Rhodry smiled at her.
“Dwarven silver,” he whispered. “It burns an elf like me. Ah gods, the hurt of it!”
Between them the two women managed to pick him up and lay him on the table. His head lolled to one side in a faint. His breathing was dangerously shallow. The dragon hurried over with her peculiar lurching walk.
“Save him, curse you!” Arzosah was roaring the words out. “Or I'll take a blood price from Cerr Cawnen that the stinking humans will remember down the long centuries of years! Save him!”
“Don't you think I will if I can?” Dallandra yelled back at her.
For an answer the dragon merely growled, tossing her head back and forth. Dallandra grabbed the bloody edges of the cut in Rhodry's shirt and ripped them back. The wound was a small stab, but she could hear his death in every gurgling breath he drew.
“Did it pierce a lung?” Zatcheka said.
“I think not, but he's drowning in blood all the same. It's the dweomer on the metal, I think, that's doing so much harm.”
The dragon roared in rage and grief both. The very earth seemed to shake—no, it was shaking, a tremor deep inside Citadel. Dalla grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself, but the tremor passed as quickly as it had come.
“If he dies,” Arzosah snarled, “pray to your gods, elf! I shall call forth fire, I shall make the earth shriek beneath us, I shall drown this wretched city in fire!”
“And will that bring him back to life?” Dalla snarled right back. “Don't disturb me again, you lackwit wyrm! I'm trying to do what you want.”
Arzosah crouched and said naught more. Dallandra leaned over the table and put her hands on either side of Rhodry's face. Beneath her fingers his skin felt not only cold but slimy. As she stared down at him, trying to conjure some desperate dweomer to force life into him, he stirred and woke, smiled at her—and in that faint smile she saw the truth, that he no longer wanted to live.
“Rhodry,” she hissed. “Arzosah's crying for vengeance. She says she'll destroy the town, and she can.”
“Ah gods.” His voice was so faint that she could barely