The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [55]
“Unfortunately, that’s true.”
“Indeed.” Burcan flung himself down into the chair opposite her and stretched out his legs with a long sigh. “Not much sleep last night.”
“I doubt if anyone in the dun did sleep well.”
While they waited for Lilli, Burcan drowsed, his head nodding against his chest. Merodda watched him, but she was remembering their father, all those years ago before she’d been married off to serve the clan. Father and Tibryn, his little namesake—a perfect pair they were, she thought. How I hated them! And I had naught, unless they threw a few scraps my way, not so much as a decent dress after Mother died. But once she’d made an ally out of her brother, seduced Burcan the only way she knew how, then things had improved for her. Only then, with a man to speak up for her, did they listen to what she wanted and even on occasion give it to her.
“My lady?” It was the page, standing in the doorway. “I can’t find Lillorigga anywhere.”
“Oh, she’s probably moping around somewhere because of Lady Bevyan. Never mind—I’ll speak to her at dinner.”
In his chair Burcan had roused, yawning and stretching. He waited to speak until the page had left.
“Can’t you do the scrying yourself?” he said.
“I can, at that. Wait here.”
Merodda hurried into her bedchamber and barred the door behind her. Under the bed lay a collection of small chests; she knelt and pulled one out. Inside lay two big leather bottles, their mouths plugged and tied shut, and a collection of small pottery jars. There was as well one small glass bottle, containing greyish-white crystals called Dwarven Salts—a gift from Brour, who had got it from the Northlands, or so he claimed—a dweomer-potion indeed, because it worked both fair and foul. Mixed with liquid and drunk, it would poison the drinker; used as a face wash, it kept the skin young and radiant. Merodda held the bottle up to the light from the window; it was nearly full, but she felt a stab of worry. With Brour gone, she’d not be getting any more of these miraculous salts.
For a moment she allowed herself the luxury of wishing he’d escaped. The man had dweomer, after all. She could lie to Burcan and say that Brour had hid himself with some magic spell and that she couldn’t scry him out. But what if Burcan were angry with her? She could remember his anger all too well, the sudden way he turned on her, the slap from the back of his hand that flung her against the wall. Without thinking she laid her free hand on her face, as if she could feel the welt and broken skin there still. Over Aethan, that was. Oh ye gods! Aethan! She’d not thought of him in years, the one man she’d ever loved for himself alone—and Burcan had forced her to betray him.
“I feared he’d kill me. I truly did.”
Her sweaty hand tightened on the bottle so hard that it threatened to slip out of her fist. And who was she talking to, anyway, she asked herself? Aethan, perhaps, or perhaps, the gods.
With a shake of her head, Merodda put the dweomer crystals away and took out the leather bottle of black ink, then found the silver basin, also cached beneath the bed, and emptied the ink into it. She sat cross-legged on the floor with the basin in her lap and stared into the pool of darkness. Although she lacked Lilli’s natural talent for seeing omens, she had learned from her first teacher of dark things to scry out people she knew well. When she turned her mind to Brour, she murmured a chant, not magical in itself, but the memory key that unlocked this particular power of her mind. The surface of the ink seemed to swirl and tremble.
Merodda first saw flecks of sunlight, then a dusty road and Brour. Carrying a pack like a peddlar, he was trudging along beside the river. Ye gods! was he heading to Cerrmor after all? At that point she saw trees and realized that the morning sun was casting clear shadows toward the west, which lay at Brour’s left hand. With a toss