The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [104]
With his other hand Burcan held up the lantern he was carrying and peered into her face.
“It’s quite warm, as a matter of fact,” he said at last. “Let’s get you to your chamber so you can rest.”
Yet after he’d left her, Merodda got out her scrying basin. Every time she thought of Lilli, she felt torn ’twixt joy that her only daughter was safe and bitter envy. That night she scried for Lilli in the same spirit as she’d poke a bruise to ensure it still pained her. When she thought of Lilli, nothing came. The surface of the black ink stayed black without the slightest trace of an image upon it.
When Merodda tried to pour the ink back into its leather bottle, her hands shook so badly that she let it be. This could only mean one thing, that Lilli was here at the siege where Nevyn could protect her. But why? Peddyc and the Rams knew the dun better than she did, after all. What did she know that she could bring to the Usurper, a traitor’s gift? Or was it—Merodda’s hands turned so cold that she tucked them into her armpits. No doubt this Nevyn knew of the child’s gift with omens. No doubt he wished to use it for himself, just as she had.
Her own daughter had become a knife, laid against the heart of the dun.
On the morrow morning, Lilli escorted the prince to the opening of the bolthole. As soon as she’d described the ruins to Peddyc, he’d recognized them, and now he led the prince there, along with the Ram warband and the entire troop of silver daggers. For good measure Nevyn tagged along as well.
The sky hung heavy with clouds, promising summer rain. When they rode up to the broken wall and the stump of a broch, the oppressive air muffled sound. Even the cawing of the ravens seemed far away.
“This broch’s been deserted for many a long year now,” Peddyc said. “It’s supposed to be haunted.”
“Of course,” Nevyn said, grinning. “Aren’t they all?”
Peddyc laughed, but uneasily. Everyone dismounted. The Ramsmen took over the horses while the prince, Nevyn, Lilli, and a few silver daggers, Branoic among them, walked into the waist-high weeds flourishing in the old ward. For a moment, seeing the place from a new angle, Lilli felt disoriented, but she recognized a spray of fallen stones.
“Around here, Your Highness,” she said. “If you’ll follow me?”
“Gladly, my lady,” Maryn said, bowing. “But we’ll send one of my men ahead, just in case someone desperate’s found the shelter.”
Without incident, though, everyone trooped round the side of the broken broch. The gaping entrance to the stone steps lay just where Lilli expected it.
“Down there, Your Highness. There’s a cellar and then a heavy door.”
“Splendid!” Maryn started forward, but Nevyn caught his arm.
“My liege, please.” The old man sounded weary. “Do let your guards precede you.”
While the prince and five of the silver daggers poked around in the cellar, Nevyn and Lilli sat down on a hunk of broken wall to wait. Overhead the skies were growing darker; the ravens had fallen silent and flown off to hide from the coming rain. Lilli felt sweat trickling down her back. She wiped her face on the long sleeve of her riding dress.
“Ugly sort of day,” Nevyn remarked.
“It is, my lord. I keep thinking of Brour. The last time I saw him was just there, heading off west with a peddlar’s pack.”
“And now he’s dead. A sad thing, truly.”
All at once it struck Lilli that Nevyn had never doubted her dweomer-produced knowledge that Brour was dead. Her mother would have probed like a judge.
“I wish she hadn’t had him chased down and killed,” Lilli said. “My mother, I mean. All he wanted was to get away.”
“I assume she was afraid of what he knew about her. I—” Nevyn hesitated.
From the cellar came a most unroyal whoop of triumph. With muck and dust all over his shirt, Prince Maryn emerged into the ruined ward. A cobweb gleamed in his golden hair.
“Cursed heavy door,” the prince said, grinning. “How did you get it open, Lilli?”
Hearing him use her nickname made Lilli blush, though she couldn’t say why.
“I didn’t, Your Highness.