Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [80]
“I'm not,” Maddyn said. “If he takes offense at that, he can choke on it.”
“He won't. Suit yourself, then.”
“I refuse to be there and see the earth fall on her.”
“You what?” Owaen stared at him for a long moment. “Are you telling me you truly did love her or suchlike?”
“I'm telling you naught.”
Owaen shook his head in sadness, then strode out of the barracks. Maddyn lay down on his bunk and stared at the ceiling. In the empty barracks the noise from outside drifted back and forth. Assembling and putting in order such a procession took a lot of shouting and cursing while the jingling of bridles sounded a chorus like tiny bells. At last the noise began to dwindle; the men fell silent, the bells grew faint as the horsemen filed out of the main ward. In the silence Maddyn could let himself weep. He turned over onto his stomach, grabbed his pillow, and punched it with the hardest fist he could make, over and over, while the tears ran down his face.
• • •
Nevyn had forbidden Lilli to attend the funeral—not that she'd been wanting to go. In the silence of that long afternoon, with the dun nearly empty but for her, Lilli walked in the new royal garden among the roses and fresh-planted saplings while she considered plans. Once, quite deliberately, she ran her hand through a rosebush and gashed her flesh on the thorns. She let the blood drops fall into the earth as a sign of her pledge, that she would run any risk to bring peace back to Dun Deverry. All day she brooded over her dweomer learning until at last she had some idea of a ritual that might once and for all exorcise the evil. Although she considered consulting with Nevyn, she knew that he would only forbid her. That evening the servants told her that he was closeted with the prince. She had her chance.
The full moon was swinging over zenith toward the horizon when Lilli went up to Nevyn's chamber. At the door she felt a strange prickly tremble of power in the air— some sort of magical ward, she assumed, and the sensation would have sent an ordinary person running. She opened the door and stepped in. The cluttered little outer room lay silent and dark except for a shaft of moonlight on the floor, where a throng of gnomes sat on silent guard. When Lilli knelt in front of the casket's hiding place, the gnomes merely moved aside to give her the room to work.
Lilli pulled the wooden box out of the hole in the floor, then eased the loose board back into place. Even through the box, magically sealed with sigils and markings, she could feel the lead tablet sucking the warmth out of her hands. Its very malignancy would allow her to destroy it, or so she hoped. She tucked it under a shawl and walked out again. She met no one in the corridor. Back in her own room, she barred the door against interruptions, then lit candles. In their midst she set the box down. For a moment she hesitated, gasping in terror. With one long breath she steadied herself and flipped back the lid. She tipped the box up, dumped the lead tablet into the circle of candles, and tossed the box onto the floor.
In the dancing light the strip of lead glittered like the eyes of some evil animal crouched in fear of its hunter. When she touched it, the gashes from the rose thorns ached with the pain she would have felt from pressing her wounds against ice. She stepped back, flung her arms over her head, and invoked the Light. With her inner sight she saw it fall in answer to her cry, a long shaft of gold that pierced her from head to foot. She flung her arms out to the sides and let the Light stabilize within her, then picked up the tablet.
A faint grey matter oozed from the lead, rising like mist from a lake. She clutched the strip in one hand, held it out in the candlelight, and began to pull the slime into herself. She saw the ooze begin to gather in ugly clots of disgust, as if it were wool and her body the