The Wyvern's Spur - Kate Novak [63]
Aunt Dorath glared up at him. "All right," she replied hotly. "Cole used to tramp about the countryside in the company of rogues and ruffians, and whenever he left, he took the spur from the crypt. Not that I blame Cole. Your Uncle Drone, to his everlasting guilt, aided him, and Cole hadn't the force of will to resist the spirit of that she-beast. She used those awful dreams to seduce him from his family's side."
"She-beast?" Giogi asked. "Do you mean the guardian?"
Dorath's voice rose sharply as she retorted. "Of course I mean the guardian. What other she-beast lurks in our family?"
Giogi bit the inside of his cheeks and fought back his urge to reply.
"Who else," Dorath asked, "is always babbling about the death cry of prey, or the taste of warm blood, or the crunch of bone?"
"She's talked to you, too?" Giogi squeaked in astonishment.
"Of course she's talked to me, you fool," the old woman replied. "You don't imagine that out of fifteen generations of Wyvernspurs you were the only child ever locked down in that crypt by accident, do you?"
Amber gurgled and squawked in her cradle, and Aunt Dorath rose to pat the infant reassuringly. Frefford's daughter quieted.
"Do you have the same dreams, too?" Giogi asked.
For a moment, it looked as if some fearful memory disturbed Aunt Dorath's composure, but she shook her head once, the way a horse would to dislodge a gadfly, and her face grew calm. "I had them once," she admitted softly, then added more sternly, "but I ignored them, as would any well-bred young woman."
"But they don't go away," Giogi whispered.
Aunt Dorath turned from the cradle and put her hands on Giogi's shoulders. "You must keep ignoring them," she insisted, giving him a shake. "You are a Wyvernspur. You belong with your family in Immersea. All that gadding about the Realms with the spur got your father was killed."
"He didn't die from a riding accident like you said, did he?" Giogi accused the old woman. "How did he die?"
"How do all adventurers die? Fell monsters hunt them. Ruthless bandits slaughter them. Evil wizards turn them to dust. It didn't make any difference to me. Cole was dead. He died far too young and far too far from home. Your Uncle Drone fetched his body back. We never discussed how he died. My only concern was that it should not happen again."
"I need to know the spur's power," Giogi said. "It could be a clue to who the thief is."
"No," Dorath answered. "It's not. Even if it were, I wouldn't tell you."
Giogi sighed with exasperation. "Aunt Dorath, I don't want to use the spur," he insisted. "I just want to know what it does."
Aunt Dorath shook her head in refusal. "I'm doing this for your own good, Giogi. I won't watch another member of our family destroyed by that cursed thing." She turned back to the cradle and readjusted the blankets around the baby.
"If you won't tell me, Aunt Dorath, I shall have to find out from someone else," Giogi threatened.
"There is no one else," his aunt said, stroking Amber's hand with her finger.
Giogi racked his brain for an idea of who could tell him about the spur.
"I'm the last member of the family who knows," Aunt Dorath whispered down to the baby.
"Then I'll have to ask an outsider," Giogi said. It came to him suddenly. There was someone who'd known his father, someone who'd promised to talk more about him. Someone his aunt would hate to think of as telling him the family secrets. "I'll have to ask Sudacar," he said.
Aunt Dorath whirled and glared at Giogi. "That upstart?" She sniffed. "What could he possibly know? He doesn't swallow without advice from his herald."
"He met Cole at court. He knows all about Cole's adventures." Giogi answered, hoping it were really true.
Aunt Dorath's eyes narrowed into slits. Giogi could tell she was calculating what Sudacar knew. She called her kinsman's bluff. "Go ahead," she said. "Ask Samtavan Sudacar. You'll he wasting your time, though."
"I will ask him," Giogi retorted. "Right now." He leaned over and stroked Amber's little ear before turning about