The Wyvern's Spur - Kate Novak [80]
As exhausted as he was, the nobleman lay awake for a long time, afraid to fall asleep and dream. If only Cat's wish of sweet dreams for him could come true, he wouldn't feel so anxious.
He thought he heard Cat crying once, and he hovered on the edge of the bed for several minutes, debating whether he should leave her to her privacy or go in and try to comfort her. The crying subsided before he'd made up his mind. Part of him was relieved, since offering comfort to a lady in the middle of the night could be misinterpreted, but part of him was disappointed he'd missed his opportunity to show he cared. He got back into bed feeling agitated and unhappy. He sat propped up against the headboard, listening for any further sounds from the lilac room.
Finally, unable to resist the silence and his fatigue, he drifted off, still sitting up. As the guardian had threatened, the dream came.
As usual, he soared over the meadow. The field was different tonight, though. It was the meadow atop Spring Hill, and the House of the Lady stood in the center. A great black bear stood on the temple stairs. The young girl acolyte ran through the meadow. Giogi had no control over the dream. His flight was quick and smooth, and the girl didn't stand a chance. She dodged and darted like a rabbit, but, in the end, Giogi dropped down on her with his rending claws. She shrieked with the death cry of all the other prey in his dreams.
Giogi started awake. He was drenched with sweat but very, very grateful he'd missed the end of the dream.
Then he realized he still heard the shriek. It came from Cat's room.
13
Olive's Investigation
Giogi leaped out of bed, burst from his room, and dashed down the dark corridor to the door of the lilac room. Before he got there, the shrieking had stopped. Bursting into a lady's room could prove awkward, but the silence coming from the room seemed even more ominous to Giogi. He flung open the door without knocking.
Cat had lit a fire in the fireplace, but a few glowing embers were all that remained. Dressed only in his nightshirt, Giogi shivered with cold. Moonlight streaming through the windows silhouetted everything in the room. The mage, looking pale and shaken, sat up in her bed.
"Are you all right? What's wrong?" Giogi asked.
"There was someone in here!" Cat gasped. "He tried to smother me with a pillow!"
"Where did he go?"
"Through the wall!" Cat cried, pointing to a spot next to the fireplace. "Like a ghost!" The woman's cool, analytical manner had crumbled. She sounded terror-stricken.
Giogi turned up the wick in the lamp on the dressing table, and lit it with a bit of burning straw from the fireplace. He drew aside a silk wall hanging, but there was nothing behind it but wall. He tapped it. It sounded solid.
"I've never heard of a ghost in this room before," Giogi said. "What did he look like?"
"Like Flattery," Cat said with a sob. "But that's impossible."
"Is it?" Giogi asked, uncertain.
"If Flattery were trying to kill me, he wouldn't leave the job half-finished," Cat insisted. "He wouldn't have needed a pillow, either."
Giogi positioned himself prudently at the foot of Cat's bed. She now wore one of his mother's nightgowns, and though it was a prim flannel thing, it was, after all, only a nightgown. "Are you all right?" he asked.
Cat lowered her head and nodded. Her long, loose hair veiled her face, but from the way her shoulders shook, Giogi could tell she was crying.
Damn propriety! the nobleman thought as he rushed to her side. "It's all right," he insisted, sitting beside her on the bed and wrapping his arms around her. "Everything's going to be fine."
Cat laid her head against Giogi's chest and hugged him close. It was a full minute before her sobbing subsided. Then she sniffed and pulled gently away from his arms. "I'm sorry to be such a coward, but I've cast all the magic I can for the day. I'm