Theran put out both hands on the rug beneath him, using them to force himself slowly upward. For a long moment he stood there, unmoving, and at last he reached up to push back the hood of his cloak.
I gasped then, and let go of the bedpost. Unwise, because my knees trembled so violently I wasn’t sure I wasn’t about to collapse to the ground myself. It wasn’t possible. This had to be yet another vision from a fevered mind.
For the man who stared back at me was the stranger from the portrait.
Chapter Fifteen
“It can’t be,” I breathed. “You aren’t real.”
“Oh, but I am. You have broken the curse, Rhianne.”
I shook my head. This was all happening too fast. And yet, somehow as I gazed at him, I felt something within me shift, as if some alien presence removed its hand, allowing me to return to myself. That fog of madness, of delusion, seemed to be burning away, lifting like the morning’s mist.
“Yes,” he said, and stepped forward before pausing, as if unsure what my next reaction might be. Instead, he gestured toward the painting. “That was the stipulation the mage laid down, so many years ago. I would wear that dread form until the woman I married could see past it to the truth of my being. He did not seem overly concerned that such a thing would ever happen.”
No, I supposed I could understand that. After all, the odds were not very good that any given Bride would have any artistic talent, let alone my odd true-seeing dreams. And I supposed that was what the portrait had turned out to be, as if some force had guided that strange gift of mine and channeled it all into the portrait. No wonder it had consumed me…
Seeing him like this, hearing the voice I so loved emerge from the face that had possessed me during the last few months…well, it was almost more than I could bear. I sat down on the bed abruptly, as if my legs could no longer support my weight.
“I know it must be a great deal to take in,” he said, as he moved around so he faced me more or less directly. “It’s a bit overwhelming for me as well.” And he grasped one of the gloves and pulled it off, then stopped to stare down at his exposed fingers as if he had never seen them before.
Not in five hundred years, at least.
He was pale, very pale, as anyone would be whose flesh hadn’t seen the sun in centuries. Otherwise, though, he looked exactly as he did in the painting. His hands were beautiful, too, with long, clever fingers. I thought I should very much like to sketch them.
Later, I told myself. At least, I supposed there would be a later. We were still husband and wife, even if he was no longer the Dragon.
I could not let myself be distracted, even though every movement, every shift in expression, revealed something of him that I had not yet painted. The portrait had not captured the true glint of his blue-green eyes, or the lift of his eyebrows. And I could not let myself focus too closely on his mouth…
“What happened to me?” I asked him. “Why was I behaving in such a way?”
If the questions surprised him, he did not show it. A slight tightening of his lips, perhaps, before he replied, “It was the curse, Rhianne. It was all the curse.”
“Then perhaps you should tell me something of it. Or is that still forbidden?”
“No. All those constraints are gone now as well. I am free.”
Then I will be free…
Only this was not the freedom that poor, doomed Bride had imagined, and not the freedom the curse had tried to impose on me. I shivered then, thinking of how close I had come to being yet another grave in that quiet, lonely cemetery.
“You are cold,” Theran said, apparently noticing my shudder.
“No, I am fine.” I realized then I faced him clad in my chemise and my dressing gown, which had come halfway undone during our struggles. To tighten it now would only draw more attention to my disarray, and so I did my best to ignore it. “Please, tell me what happened. I think I deserve to know.”
“Of course you do.” He turned away from me for a moment so he could fetch one of the side chairs from where it sat under a window, and positioned it so he could sit facing me. “Many years ago, not long after I had inherited Black’s Keep, I went to visit Lystare. Like many other young men visiting the capital for the first time, I amused myself with the usual carousing and wild living. It was a chance to taste freedom, if only briefly—I knew at summer’s end I must return home and choose a suitable wife from the candidates my father had chosen for me before he died. It was my duty, and I did not have any notion of shirking it. However, I met a young woman in Lystare.”
Foolish as it was, I experienced a pang of jealousy at the thought of this unknown woman, even though I knew she must have passed away many years earlier.
Luckily, Theran appeared to notice no alteration in my expression, for he continued without pausing, “Like me, she was new to the capital, and somewhat swept away by the social whirl, one might say. One might also say that her father was rather lax in letting her roam the city so freely, attended by a maidservant only a few years older than she. At any rate, this young woman and I formed an attachment—one, it turns out, she took far more seriously than I. She spoke of her father being a scholar of some sort, but even I, fresh from the country, knew that meant he was a mage. Such a match would not have been suitable, of course, but she did not want to believe that. When it was time for me to return home to Black’s Keep, she thought I would take her with me.”
“But you did not,” I said softly.
His expression darkened, and the heavy lashes swept over his eyes for a moment as he appeared to contemplate some long-ago, bitter memory. “No, I did not. Our parting was not pleasant, but I thought that would be the end of it. We had only known each other for a few months, a summer of idleness and diversions. I liked her, enjoyed her company, but I knew I could not marry her. And I, in my blindness, thought she understood how things were between us.”
This time I said nothing, but only watched the fleeting emotions cross his features, and thought how different, and how unexpected, the reality of his face was, even though an hour earlier I could have sworn I knew it by heart.
His fingers clenched on his knees where they rested, the skin so shockingly pale against his dark garments. “I came to Black’s Keep…and she followed, begging me to let her stay, to let her be my wife, that her reputation was now ruined because of me, that she feared her father, his reaction when he found out how she had behaved over the summer. I tried to be kind, but I would not allow myself to be cajoled in such a way. I bade her to return to her father in Lystare, beg his forgiveness, and think no more of me. She went away, cursing my name. And then…”
I hardly dared to breathe. I thought I might know what was coming next…or at least I guessed.
“She did not go to her father. Instead, she went forth from this place and into the woods, where she ate some of the toadstools growing there, and died in great agony. It was intentional; have no doubt of that. Her father had schooled her in herb lore, so she knew exactly what she was doing.”
My heart ached for her, this unknown young woman who had thrown her life away in such a precipitous fashion. I could not even judge her, for I knew what the depths of despair could drive a person to. I was suddenly ashamed of my earlier jealousy.
Theran hesitated for a few seconds, as if halfway expecting me to say something. When I did not speak, he sighed and went on, “There was little we could do except bury her in the forest, and raise a stone to mark her name. And I sent word to her father in Lystare, so that he might know where his daughter lay, even if he could do nothing to save her.”
“Would he not have known anyway?” I inquired. “After all, one would think that a mage of such powers would have some way of discovering his daughter’s whereabouts.”
Theran lifted his shoulders. “One would think…but he showed no evidence of knowing where she was or what she was doing that entire summer we spent together. He was a man buried in his studies, not seeming much connected with the world. And
living now, you know only of legend and rumor, but back when the mages still wielded their powers, those powers were not always consistent. True, the small magics, the harmless ones, all of the mages could perform. But when it came to the greater powers, one man might be able to call down the lightning and storms, and also create terrible curses, while another could find anything that a person had lost, or strengthen a castle’s walls so they were well-nigh impregnable. This was partly why at the time there was competition amongst the nobles, to secure a mage whose powers were most useful.
“At any rate, my reaching out to him was a mistake, but it was done out of kindness. I did not wish for the man to forever wonder what had happened to his daughter, even if he did not seem to keep a very good watch on her while she was alive. And then one day he came to Black’s Keep.”
I thought then of the mage who had cursed Alende, all those years ago, and whether the two men shared the same choleric temperament.
“He blamed me, of course, this Udell of Lystare. Said I had seduced his daughter, given her false promises, lured her away from his protection. None of that was true, but I could not protest too much, for I could see how much pain he was in. Perhaps it was the hurt of someone not knowing what he had until he lost it, but I could not blame him overmuch for that. And then…”
Theran went very still, his gaze looking somehow past me, as if into a dark day now centuries gone. “He laid upon me the curse, saying I should no longer have a form that would tempt young women, but which would instead earn their revulsion. And this form would be mine forever, until I somehow found a wife who could see past my hideous being and recognize my true self.” Surprisingly, he smiled then, his expression warming as he looked on me. “He did not think that was something which would ever come to pass.”
“But that was not all.”
The smile faded at once. “No, it was not. He said also that I, who had avoided marriage, must take a Bride from among the townsfolk of Lirinsholme—”
“Rather rough luck on us, I should say,” I interjected. “What did we have to do with it?”
“Only that Lirinsholme has always been under the protection of Black’s Keep, and so I suppose he thought you should share my doom.”
It still seemed grossly unfair, but I thought then that this unknown mage did not seem to be the most logical of men. I lifted my shoulders.
Theran appeared to take that as his signal to continue. “Having done his work, and taken from me my body, my person, he disappeared. I thought he had done his worst, and although it was dreadful beyond words, I thought I might someday come to live with it. Surely it could not be so difficult as it sounded to find a young woman who would learn to look past what the curse had wrought, to see the man I had once been. But then the first Bride came to Black’s Keep.”
His hesitation this time was so lengthy I began to wonder whether he intended to say any more. At last he said, “She feared me, of course, but she was treated well, and at first I thought we might be able to get along together well enough, even if she could not love me. Then she began to act oddly…stayed in bed for days at a time, would not speak to me, would not speak to anyone. And then one day, only three months or so after she had come to live in the castle, she flung herself from the tower.”
I shut my eyes, trying to will away the image of the young woman’s body hurtling from a window, gown fluttering in the air before she smashed into the pavement below. That could have been me.
It almost was.
Theran’s voice went on, “I began to see then. I vowed I would not take another Bride. That resolve lasted a good seven or eight years. Then a mysterious wasting illness struck the population of Lirinsholme. I thought it only a coincidence. But immediately afterward the River Theer flooded its banks and devastated half the town. Out of desperation, I called for another young woman to be sent to me. And the illness faded away, and the river receded to its proper course. Obviously, the mage had foreseen I might avoid taking a new wife, and so made sure the consequences of doing so would be far worse than the death of a single woman.”
His voice was calm, quiet, as if he were relating events that had happened to someone else. I opened my eyes and saw that his hands were knotted into fists, almost as though he still strained against his past impotence. Obviously his calm was but a surface thing.
“I thought I would be clever this time. This urge to suicide did not come suddenly, but crept in after weeks of malaise. And so when I saw the signs in my second wife, I made sure she was watched around the clock, and never left alone. When she attempted to drown herself while taking a bath, a servant was there to pull her out, and she was kept in her bed, restrained, so she might do herself no harm.”
The corners of his mouth lifted in the slightest of smiles, but there was no humor in the expression, only a weary amusement at his naïveté. “That seemed to work for a time…until one of the servant girls slipped on the steps in this very tower and broke her neck. The next day, one of the grooms was thrown from a horse and trampled to death. My steward suffered a palsy and collapsed in the courtyard. And so I understood that here, too, was no refuge. If I prevented my Bride from taking her life, just as poor Lianna had taken hers, then everyone in my household would be made to suffer. Again, I could not sacrifice many lives just to save one. And so I removed the restraints from Elliane myself. The next night she broke the pitcher of water by her bedside and slashed her wrists.”
I wanted to shut my eyes again, but I could not. I could not turn away from the agony naked on his face. “It seems a terrible sacrifice for simple heedlessness. You could not have known Lianna looked on your time with her as anything more than the casual amusement you thought it was.”
“Perhaps. I was young and foolish, and knew little of young women. I should have taken more care. But even with that, the punishment was…severe. I can only think Udell wanted me to suffer as he had, for me to see a young woman cast herself away and know I could do nothing to stop it.” He shook his head. “I cannot begin to understand his madness, and his vengeance. I only knew I was doomed to watch this horror repeat itself through the years, for in cursing me with a dragon’s form, he had cursed me with a dragon’s longevity as well. And so it went, for more years than I wished to count. Until…”
“Until?”
“Until you came here, Rhianne.” Some warmth returned to his features, and the thin lines of his mouth softened. “You seemed different to me, but I tried to tell myself that was only a vain wish. I did not want to become close to you—I only wanted to make sure you were comfortable here until the inevitable time came.”
No wonder he had done everything he could to keep some distance between us. He could not allow himself to care, not after so many years, so many deaths…. “I fear I did not take the hint.”
“No, you did not, and may the gods bless you for that. I felt the first stirrings in my heart, the first glimmer of hope. And then when you seemed to slip away, when all seemed lost again….” He shook his head. “I could not bear it, and yet I knew I could do nothing.”
“And yet you saved me.”
“Yes. The gods only know what it was that sent me roaming the corridors this night, for it is not something I often do. But I saw your door ajar and set out to find you. I knew you had gone to Sirella’s tower before—”
“And here I thought no one knew anything about that.”
“I have my ways of keeping track of people’s comings and goings within the keep.”
I wondered at that, if it were a part of his dragonish powers, or something to do with all those ingenious little devices in his chambers. Perhaps one day he would tell me. At the moment all that mattered was that he had known where to find me.
“And now—” I began, then stopped, as I was not sure what I had meant to say.
“And now,” he said heavily. The aquamarine eyes were fixed on me in an odd mixture of hope and dread. “The curse is broken, and you will always have my thanks for that. I fear you must
stay here, for you are the lady of Black’s Keep, but I will make sure you have everything you need, all the supplies—”
I stood then and placed my hands on my hips, and stared down at him. “What by all the gods are you going on about, Theran? You fear I must stay here? You do not want me?”
His lips parted, and he shook his head. “It is rather that I thought you would not want me. Not after you knew the truth—knew I had been the cause of so much misery and death.”
Oh, how could he possibly have gotten it so muddled? I dropped to my knees before him and took his hands in mine. His fingers were cold now, the inhuman dragon heat long gone. I would have to do my best to warm him. “You were not the cause of anything, Theran, and your only guilt—if one could even call it that—was a certain heedlessness, which poor Lianna certainly shared. It was that mage Udell…and if his curse is any indication of the sorts of magic the mages used to perform, then no wonder they were all hunted down and killed! I will stay here, because I am your wife, and I love you. I loved you when I thought a monster was hidden under those robes, and I loved your face when I did not even know it was yours. I fear you are stuck with me, Theran Blackmoor.”
The light breaking over his features was like the coming of dawn after a long, cold winter. He grasped my hands and pulled me upright, then gazed down into my face. “You are quite certain?”
“I have never been more certain of anything in my life.”
And he took me in his arms, and kissed me, and it was like the kiss from my dreams, only so much better, because this was the real man holding me, the real Theran, everything so vivid and true, from the faint taste of wine on his lips to the sweet herbal scent of his robes.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world for my body to press itself against his, for him to fumble with the laces at the neck of my chemise, for the two of us to fall to the bed, our need bringing us together. I understood finally just what I had ached for, as Theran touched me, stroked me, made me cry out his name. And then we were no longer two halves, but a whole that could not be denied, a consummation all the more sweet because I had never dreamed it could truly be mine.
Dragon Rose (Tales of the Latter Kingdoms) Page 21
