Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [74]
“Stop it, stop it!” Tears were running down Elyssa's face. “Please, please don't talk like that.”
“My apologies. I'll stop.”
“I'm going to wake up the pages.” Elyssa slid down from the stool. “They'll fetch water and firewood, and we'll brew you up those herbs Nevyn left to help you sleep.”
Elyssa hurried out of the chamber. As soon as the door closed, Bellyra threw back the covers and got up. Carrying her clogs, she went to the door and opened it a bare crack. Outside the dark corridor stretched silent. She left, shutting the door again to give Elyssa an extra moment's delay, and hurried down the corridor to the staircase. The great hall stretched dark; near the banked hearths servants and dogs slept in the straw. Bellyra crept through, then put on the noisy clogs once she'd reached the ward.
In the dark night, most people would have been lost immediately in the madman's maze of the huge broch complex, but Bellyra knew it better than anyone else ever had. She ducked through the servant doors, crawled past the windows of occupied chambers, dashed across internal courtyards, and found her way to the base of the east tower at last. She felt nothing, not the rain, not the night wind, not the feel of rough stone under her hands as she groped her way to the staircase.
Her shame no longer burned; it had receded to a kind of warmth, an anticipation of the pleasure she would gain by being free at last of both her shame and Maryn's coldness. She should blame herself, or so she thought, for being sent away. What man wouldn't want to escape from a woman who kept demanding love from him? It seemed true, at any rate, as she climbed up the long winding stairs, that Maryn had a perfect right to want her gone.
All at once Bellyra heard the strange echo of voices. Where were they? She paused, heard men's voices at the bottom of the stairs, and sobbed once. The servants must have seen her after all. She kicked off her noisy clogs and hurried on, gasping for breath, sweating even in the cold, faster and faster on burning legs and feet. At last she burst free of the stairwell and found herself on the narrow parapet.
Down below in the dark ward, so far below that they looked like flowers of light, torches bloomed. She heard yells, saw men rushing to the tower, heard from behind her another set of yells to match them. She stepped to the edge and expected to feel fear, but when she looked down, she saw not the ward of Dun Deverry but her little garden back in Cerrmor, bright and sunny with summer. All she had to do was step forward and she would fall into summer. She could see this now, so high above the world and the doings of men.
“Lyrra! Don't!” It was Maryn's voice, loud behind her. “Stop!”
She turned and saw him at the top of the stairs, dressed only in a pair of brigga, reaching out to her with naked arms. He's not really there, she told herself. You're seeing things. With that she spun around and took the last step into night. For the briefest of moments she heard him screaming, but the wind grabbed her and washed his voice away. Down and down—it seemed to her that she fell forever, but darkness rose up with a sword of stone and stabbed her. There was pain, and then only the darkness, wailing around her with Maryn's voice.
Half-naked in the rain the prince knelt on the ground and cradled his dead wife in his arms. In the light of the lanterns that servants were holding, Nevyn could see the blood from her smashed face running down his chest and arms, but the prince seemed not to notice, any more than his eyes seemed to see.
“Why?” Maryn whispered. “Why would she do this?”
Nevyn felt his patience shatter. “Because you were sending her away,” he snapped. “Right in the midst of her birthing madness, you sent her away.”
“It was only for a little while,” Maryn