The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [143]
“What’s wrong?” Caudyr said sharply.
“Naught, naught. I’m just very tired.”
“No doubt. Here, I’ll be going. Get some sleep. Your fellow physician commands it.”
“Very well, and I’ll follow the order gladly.”
And yet, although he did lie down and try to sleep, Nevyn lay awake for many a long hour. Nothing would ever take Maryn’s victory away, not the mightiest black dweomer in the world. The dweomer of Light had turned the tide of history and swept back the sea of blood against all hope. In the inner planes the balance was righting itself deep within the Deverry group-mind, and there would be peace for the kingdom. But the curse-tablet and the sheer malice it represented could reach out filthy hands and infect those who had won the victory, turning all their joy into a sickness of the soul.
Finally he called upon the Light that he had served so faithfully. If he could win the battle at all, he would win it in the name of the Light and not by his own strength alone. At last then he could sleep, and for the first time in months, he slept soundly.
With the dun given over to Prince Maryn, Lilli reclaimed her old chamber. She had her maids bring her things up from the tent and add them to her own clothes in her wooden chest, which had stayed untouched. Doubtless no one had had time to worry about a traitor’s pitifully few belongings. Clodda folded everything neatly, then reached in with a small laugh.
“Part of your dowry, my lady?” She held up the front of what would have been Braemys’s wedding shirt.
“So it was.” Lilli took the piece from her. “You may go now. Tell Oggyn to find you and Nalla a nice place to sleep. Tell him I’ll make sure it’s nice, too, so he’d better not skimp you.”
Clodda curtsied and hurried out. Lilli closed the chest, then sat down and laid the piece of shirt in her lap. Bevyan had embroidered those rows of interlace and added the Boar blazon on the yoke above them. Lilli stroked the stitches, so smooth and tiny, with her fingertips, but instead of grief, she felt only weariness.
“They hanged your murderer, Bevva,” she said aloud. “I wish I thought you’d be pleased. You’d probably forgive her, knowing you.”
But I can’t. The thought hung in her mind, too painful to voice, even to the empty air.
That night Lilli dreamt of her mother. In the dream she was a child new to Dun Deverry, and she’d gotten lost in the tangle of towers and wards. She looked down a long corridor and saw Bevyan standing at the end, but when she went running to meet her, the figure turned into Merodda, holding a dagger. Lilli screamed and turned to run, only to find Burcan blocking the way, and he, too, held a knife upraised. She woke with a cry to find herself standing next to the bed, clutching a blanket in one hand.
At first Lilli thought herself dreaming still. The chamber stretched around her utterly silent and shadowed except for one ray of pale light that fell across the wooden chest. When she glanced around, following the beam back to its source, she found that a leather shutter had torn from its hook at the window and sagged to allow the moonlight in. The leather must have rustled as it slid, waking her. She laughed and told herself that she’d been silly, letting herself be so afraid of a dream. When she turned to climb back into bed, her mother was standing at the other side.
Dressed in a grey shift and glowing like the moonlight, Merodda stood motionless and stared at her daughter. Her mouth hung open; one hand clutched at a throat deep-furrowed and bruised. Lilli stared back across the rumpled bed until her mother’s lips moved, as if she were trying to frame words.
“What is it?” Lilli whispered. “Ah ye gods, you’re dead!”
The apparition began to move toward her, but it didn’t walk—rather it seemed to glide around the end of the bed. Lilli stepped back, and back again, and back, but she hit the wall behind her. The rough stone bit into her skin as she pressed against it. Merodda raised her arm and reached out a long white hand.