Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [81]
Once again Lilli called up the Light and felt it burst upon her as fire, a pale blue purifying fire that swept through her aura, her body, her very soul. She cried out once with pain, then set her jaw against it. She tried to drop the tablet on the floor, but all at once she hated to let it go. There was power in the thing, power that she could use against her enemies. I have no enemies! she thought and flung it from her to fall at her feet. When she stepped back, the blue fire fell upon it like a ravenous dog. The horrible grey threads blazed with fire, turning to a fine white ash and drifting to the floor.
“Lords of Air!” Lilli cried out. “Aid me!”
A silver wind swept through the chamber and gathered the ash, swept it up and scattered it. The fire around her cooled, then flickered and went out. At the windows the light was turning grey. Lilli blew out the candles and let dawn seep into the room. When she picked up the tablet, she found it only a piece of thin lead, its evil spent and gone. She turned it over and realized that even the very letters of the curse had disappeared, melted into a smooth scar upon the metal. With a laugh she flipped it over again: truly no letters, just a faint bubbling of the lead where once the curse had lain.
“I've won!”
The cough racked up from the bottom of her lungs and bent her double. Choking she spasmed, caught the edge of the table with both hands and steadied herself against the pain. Coughed, coughed, coughed until she felt something tear free inside of her, coughed one more time, and spat up rheum, bright scarlet red. A gobbet of blood and phlegm spattered on the tablet and slid, staining the metal. She felt stickiness around her mouth and on her chin like some poisoned sweetmeat.
“This is the price.”
Speaking tore another cough from her lungs. She staggered over to her bed and fell onto it, facedown, to cough and spit until the blanket lay stained red under her. When she tried to sit up, she fell back. Wildfolk manifested around her, reaching out with worried hands as they swarmed around her bed.
“Get Nevyn,” she whispered.
When they disappeared, she fainted, her face half-buried in the pillow. It seemed to her that she was floating down a river on a little boat, drifting far from shore toward the sea. Yet on the bank someone was calling to her.
“Lilli!” Nevyn's voice, and Nevyn himself, banging on the door. “Lilli, for the love of the gods! Let me in!”
“I can't—” She tried to call out, but the coughing rose and threatened to drown her.
By an act of sheer will she managed to roll to the side of the bed and stand up, but as she turned toward the door, she fell to her knees. Coughing racked her. She heard him swearing; then all at once the heavy bar across the door slid up, wiggling free of the staple. Gnomes and sylphs were clutching and shoving the thing, until at last it leapt up and fell free onto the floor. Nevyn slammed the door open and rushed in. On her knees Lilli could only stare up at him while blood ran down her chin. He looked at the bloodstained tablet, then back to her.
“You didn't,” Nevyn said.
“I had to! My clan—I had to.”
The old man nodded, slowly, deliberately while tears glistened in his eyes.
“Let's get you into a proper sickbed,” Nevyn said at last. “I'll pull you through yet.”
She tried to smile but failed. She could feel her death gnawing at her lungs like a beast desperate in a cage.
For three days Nevyn battled to save Lilli's life, but she slid farther and farther away from him. He knew long before the end came that he'd never win, but he kept on trying to fight consumption with herbs, poultices, and warmed blankets.
“It's like trying to fight an army with sticks,” Nevyn said. “But ye gods, how can I surrender?”
Maddyn nodded.