The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [133]
Lilli began shredding the bread into crumbs. After a moment she heard him sigh.
“I’m being so strict about your health for a reason,” Nevyn said at last. “At the moment your cough results only from a congestion of the lungs. What if it turns into a consumption?”
Lilli looked up fast and felt as if all the blood were draining from her face. Nevyn leaned back in his chair; never before had she thought of him as truly old, despite his white hair, but that night he did look old and sad as well.
“It’s a terrible thing to have your youth eaten up by illness,” Nevyn said. “But it’s better than dying young.”
“Just so.” Lilli felt her voice shake. “I didn’t realize this cough was so perilous.”
“Well, it is. Will you swear to me you’ll guard your health, no matter what the prince may or may not do?”
“I will, truly. I’m so frightened.”
“I’d hoped to spare you that, but mayhap I wasn’t being wise. You deserve to know the truth. I brought back my books of physick and herblore when we visited Cerrmor, and I’ve been studying them most carefully. There seems to be little to be done for a consumption in the lungs. Not Galyn, not the great Ippocratrix himself, not even the Bardekian Karliko know how to cure it. Ippocratrix does say that if a lass be losing flesh and having trouble with her breathing, the best preventative is intercourse with a man. I have my doubts, but then, you’ve taken that medicament on your own.”
Lilli blushed, and he laughed at her.
After Nevyn left, Lilli dragged her chair over to the fire and sat down close to the warmth. Life seemed so bitterly unfair. She’d blossomed as a woman and found the great love of her life—but had everything ended so soon? She could see herself ending up a prisoner to ill health in the grim towers of Dun Deverry, or at the best becoming Branoic’s poor frail wife that everyone pitied. On the hearth the fire cracked and blazed in a shower of sparks, glorious and gold only to die away in a few heartbeats. Perhaps her life would do the same.
And what of Branoic? she asked herself. She’d not seen him in days, shut away as she’d been. Once before she’d managed to call him to her by dweomer. She thought of him, sounded his name in her thoughts, and all at once she saw him in the fire. First it seemed that he and Maddyn the bard were sitting, as tiny as dolls, in among the logs; then her vision suddenly swooped into the flames, and it seemed that she stood near them at a table in the great hall. She could hear nothing, however, but the crackling of the fire in her hearth. A puzzled Branoic was looking around him. He got up, said a few words to Maddyn, then headed for the stairs.
Her triumph died when she remembered that Nevyn had forbidden her to work any dweomer, not even simple exercises, and scrying was far from simple. She broke the vision and found herself back in front of her fire. The warmth, the feel of the chair under her, the smell of pine smoke—they were all so solid that she decided she really hadn’t had a vision. She’d fallen asleep and dreamt it; that was all. In the fire a log slipped in a fine spray of flame-red jewels. She got up, looking for the poker, just as Branoic knocked on her door and called her name.
Lilli screamed. She stuffed her hand into her mouth to stifle it just as Branoic shoved the door open and strode in, reaching for his sword’s hilt.
“I’m all right,” she said. “You just startled me.”
“Did I? I could have sworn I heard you calling me.”
“Well, so I did, but I never thought it would work.”
Branoic stared at her, then burst out laughing. He turned and shut the door.
“We’re a fine pair, aren’t we?” He walked over to the hearth. “Here, I’ll mend up the fire for you.”
“My thanks.” She handed him the poker. “My maidservants brought up some big logs—there, under the window.”
Lilli sat back down and watched him fussing with the fire.