The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [34]
“Just so. Being married to a child is a difficult thing for a lass like her.”
They exchanged a grim glance, for that moment at least allies.
Later that evening, Bevyan remembered to ask Lilli about the lady Caetha in the privacy of her suite. Lilli repeated the story of the tainted meat and added that Caetha had died clutching her stomach in agony.
“How terrible!” Bevyan said. “I take it that your mother was ill as well.”
“She was. She’d eaten from that same meat.” Lilli considered with a small frown. “But she wasn’t anywhere as ill as poor Caetha, though she threw up ever so much and told us all how much pain she was in.”
“That’s an odd way of putting it, dear. Do you think she wasn’t in pain?”
“Oh, my apologies. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.” Lilli laid a pale hand at her throat. “She was; of course she was. It was awful to hear her moan and not be able to do anything for it.”
“No doubt. You poor child! Well, I’m so sorry about poor Caetha.”
“Oh, indeed. We all were.”
Yet once again Bevyan wondered.
Often over the next few days Lilli found herself drawn back to her mother’s chamber and Brour. She felt as if she were living the lives of two different girls. In the afternoons, she would sit and sew with Bevyan and the other women, talking over the news of the royal dun while the embroidery grew thick on the pieces of Braemys’s wedding shirt. But in the morning, she would watch her mother to get some idea of Merodda’s plans, and once they were established—a country ride, perhaps, or a session in the queen’s chambers—Lilli would slip upstairs for a lesson. Oddly enough, Brour always seemed to know that she was coming and would be waiting for her.
“Is that dweomer?” she demanded one morning. “The way you know I’m coming?”
“It’s not. I am your mother’s scribe, after all. She tells me when she’ll be occupied, and then I assume you’ll be coming up here. Although, to tell you the truth, sometimes I worry about her laying a trap for us, like.”
“So do I. But today I know she’s gone with the queen to the temple down in the city, so she should be busy for a fair long while.”
“Good.” Brour considered, tapping his fingers on the closed book. “I’ve got a thing of great import to tell you. Repeat back to me what I told you about the Wildfolk.”
“They are creatures of the Sphere of the Moon as we are of the Earth. They have eyes that see and ears that hear but not true wits. The dweomermaster can command them at will but should never trust them.”
“Excellent! And what of the Lords of the Elements?”
“They, too, are spirits, but of the Spheres of the Planets. They have the beginnings of true wits and thus are wily and hard to command.”
“Well done again. You have a fine mind, lass.”
Lilli blushed.
“What I’m thinking of doing,” Brour went on, “is the evocation of one of the Lords of Earth. There’s a thing I need to find, buried in the earth around this dun. I’ve asked here and there among the servants and the retainers, but no one knows where it lies.”
“What is it?”
“Haven’t you ever thought it odd that this dun doesn’t have a bolthole, a way out in case of siege?”
“You mean it doesn’t?”
“Not so as anyone remembers. And yet I’ve looked over the chronicles of the kings, as the bards and the priests have kept them. This war’s raged a long time, a hundred years and more, and as will happen in a war, the fortunes ebb and sway. There were times back in the early days when it looked black indeed for the true king here in Dun Deverry, times when one usurper or another had this city sieged. And each time the king disappeared from the dun and just like dweomer turned up in the Boar’s own city of Cantrae, where he could rally his loyal men and ride back with an army to lift the siege.”
“Was it dweomer, then?”
“I doubt it very much.” Brour smiled briefly. “I think there was a bolthole, some underground way out of this dun, and it must surface a fair distance from the city, too. Doubtless it was a well-kept secret, and it may have been too well kept. It seems to have died with the last king to use