The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [136]
Merodda smiled, a narrow-eyed gloat.
“Indeed, old man?” She spat on the floor at his feet. “Then stop it if you can!”
“Guards!” Nevyn turned away. “Come take her!”
Nevyn unbarred the door and flung it wide. The soldiers hurried in, and as she strode over to meet them, Merodda burst out laughing.
When Nevyn returned to the great hall, the sight of the empty High King’s chair next to Maryn hit him like a blow. No wonder a white mare had proven impossible to find! Merodda’s curse had begun its work even then.
It was late in the evening before Nevyn had a chance to talk with Maddyn. He searched for him through the dun, then went out to the encampment on the hillside below and found where the silver daggers had pitched their tents. Maddyn sat by a small fire under the open sky and played his harp in a medley of songs, while all around him the Wildfolk danced and leapt like the flames. Nevyn sat down on a stump of log, and Maddyn let the music die away.
“Have you come to scold me? Because I had the king crush a viper?”
“I’ve not,” Nevyn said. “Because I doubt me you’d listen.”
“Well, by the gods!” Maddyn smacked his open hand on the harp strings and made them chime a discord. “What kind of a man would I be if I didn’t avenge my friend?”
“I don’t know.”
“And then there’s Lilli’s foster-mother, too. Merodda had her butchered like a hog.”
“So she did, but I doubt me if you were remembering Lady Bevyan today.”
“Well, what of it? I want Merodda dead. Tomorrow I’m going to stand in the crowd and laugh when the hangman shoves her off the drop. And then Aethan will finally have peace in the Otherlands.”
Nevyn merely sighed. In the fire a log burned through and fell, sending a long plume of flame into the dark above. And what am I going to say? Nevyn thought. How could he explain without touching on the great secret, that each soul lives many lives, not one? Aethan was doubtless long reborn, and Merodda and Maddyn both would be, but now a chain of Wyrd would link them, whether they wanted the binding or not.
When Lilli asked, one of Maryn’s pages told her where Lady Merodda had been taken, a proper room in a side broch instead of the common jail as a small sign of respect to the noble-born. She’d brought coins to bribe the guards at the door, but one of them, a stout man with greying hair, recognized her.
“It’s the lady’s daughter,” he said to the others. “I don’t see any harm in letting her say farewell to her mother.”
The others nodded; one of them lifted the heavy bar while the second opened the door a crack and let her slip in.
By the light of a single candle Merodda was sitting on a narrow bed, little more than a straw mattress and a blanket. In the uncertain light, and, with her blond hair down and untidy, she looked no older than her daughter. Lilli felt herself gasp for breath while Merodda considered her with shadowed eyes.
“Why are you here?” she said at last.
“I don’t know,” Lilli said. “But I had to come.”
Merodda sighed and leaned back against the wall.
“Do you want me to leave?” Lilli went on.
“I don’t. I’ve been wondering somewhat myself. Would you have spoken for me if Anasyn had let you?”
Lilli’s heart pounded once.
“It’s because of Bevva,” Lilli said. “I felt torn apart.”
“Ah. So you wouldn’t have spoken.”
“I don’t know. It was too late, anyway.” Lilli heard her voice choke and tremble. “But there’s Brour, too. He’s dead, isn’t he? You had him killed.”
“Not I, but Burcan. That was his doing.” Merodda got up to face her. “And you’re a fine one to talk, betraying your kin and clan! What did you tell your precious Prince Maryn? Where all the gates are in the dun? How many men we had? It must have been somewhat like that. I heard him talking about all you’d done for him. You traitorous little bitch!”
Lilli stepped back and found herself against