The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [24]
The crashing impact would have slain any normal beast. The trunk of the tree shivered and split, torn but still standing, boughs rained down all around, and Lady Embra Silvertree somersaulted over backward among them in an undignified landing that bounced the breath out of her, spun her around, and thrust her dazedly up into a sitting position amid a tangle of riven wood.
She found herself staring into one open, many-toothed maw from inches away. Gurgling, the nightwyrm lunged to engulf her.
"Will you not eat, Lady?"
Mressa's voice was almost a sob. To see her young charge this desolate tore at her heart even more than the evil this girl's father had done to her mother. An evil that might yet stretch-such a little, little way-to claim the younger Lady Silvertree, too.
The girl turned away fiercely. Mressa watched her dwindle along the battlements, a black-robed wraith drifting… to her doom? Silent and bone white, waiting to be struck down as her mother had been. Or would Embra choose the moment of her dying, looking at the rocks in the river below-as she was now-before flinging herself out and down, down, in a brief and broken flight that could have only one ending?
Mressa brought the spurned platter back against her ample bosom, watched a still and silent Embra looking down at her own death, and shivered. She dared not go to the girl, now, lest her approach be the spur that made Embra end it all, screaming.
Screaming… as her mother Tlarinda had done all that long night, howling out her agonies strapped to a table under the tortures of her lord husband. Screams that had ended just before sunrise, when her mutilated body breathed its last and the gently smiling Baron Silvertree turned away, drenched in the blood of his wife, to ask calmly if his requested bath was ready and warm.
Mressa shivered at the memory-and then froze. High on the topmost tower a lone figure was standing, watching Embra even as she watched the Silverflow slide endlessly past. A vulture perched above prey he knows can't escape, the cold weight of his gaze a dagger pinning the maid in place.
Mressa could feel his cold smile. She tried to gasp but could find only breath enough to tremble. She kept her eyes on the silent girl she must call the Lady Silvertree henceforth, not daring to look up again. She was rooted here, fated to stand watching while Embra Silvertree decided whether or not to die.
Learning his error, he'd shrugged and smiled. Mressa would never forget that smile.
Still smiling, he'd drained his stirrup cup as always and ridden off to buy for his breeding stables, changing his plans not one jot. It was then the fourth morning since Tlarinda had died at his hands, butchered for the sin of faithlessness.
The baron had seen her talking with a man in a lane-a man the Lady Silvertree had seemed delighted to see; they'd kissed, embraced, and laughed together. A stranger, who was in irons in a cell when the bloody pieces of Tlarinda were delivered to him by the baron's order… and hauled out into the main square, before the morning was an hour older, to have his arms and legs hewn off, the wounds sealed by flame whilst the cruel spells of Gadaster Mulkyn kept him alive… and be left there, naked in the sun, to starve to a slow death.
The stranger who'd been Tlarinda's long-unseen brother.
That was the news that had made Faerod Silvertree shrug and smile. A smile of trifling regret, as if he'd worn the wrong cloak or lifted an empty decanter rather than the full one beside it. A passing error not worthy even of an oath, let alone remorse or amends. A stunned Mressa watched as the remains were fed to the castle hogs, and the matter was done. Leaving behind a quiet, dreamy girl, given to wearing gem-adorned gowns and reading alone in the gardens. A girl now silent and shattered, who'd neither spoken nor taken off her black mourning gown since the deaths.