The Fire Dragon

by Katharine Kerr

  “I think so, truly.” Lilli could barely speak. She felt the tears running down her face and let them. “She was so good to me when I had naught.”

  In the morning light Nevyn suddenly seemed not merely old but ancient, with every line on his face etched deep, his skin pale around the brown discolorings of old age, his eyes clouded and distant. His hands, all knuckles and wrinkled skin, clasped each other, then relaxed, flaccid on his thighs.

  “If Maryn had half your sense of honor,” Nevyn said at last, “Bellyra would be alive today. Do not blame yourself. As your master in your craft, I forbid it.”

  “Very well. I—it's just so hateful.”

  “It is that.” Nevyn spoke so softly that she could barely hear him. “It is that, truly.”

  Lilli managed to return to her chamber without meeting Maryn. The pages all told her that the prince had shut himself up in his apartments and would speak with no one. All morning Lilli lay on her bed, weeping at times, but mostly brooding on the princess's death. Was it truly Maryn's cruelty alone that had driven Bellyra to her death? She found herself remembering her mother, Lady Merodda, and her dark magicks that had caused so many so much harm. Her mother's curse had followed her into the sanctuary of Maryn's domain. Lilli could think of it no other way, that like poison in a well her mother's evil had seeped into all their lives. Could nothing lift it?

  “I'm her daughter.”

  Lilli got up and walked over to the window. Down below she could see the ward, gilded in the sunlight pouring through the remnants of last night's storm. It was falling to her, Merodda's daughter, to lift the curse. In that morning's meditation it came to her, that since the curse had been sealed with the blood of their clan, only blood-kin could lift it.

  “Have you seen Councillor Oggyn?” Nevyn said. “I haven't, my lord,” the page said. “Not all this morning.”

  “No doubt he's sulking in his quarters.”

  “No doubt.” The page turned his head and spat onto the cobbles. “He can stay there forever, for all I care.”

  Nevyn strode into the great hall and paused just inside the doorway. This late in the morning, the hall stood mostly empty, though a few servants sat at a table and gossiped. When Nevyn asked, they too denied seeing Oggyn anywhere. Nevyn couldn't blame the man for hiding. Fairly or not, half the dun blamed him for Bellyra's death. Nevyn went upstairs to Oggyn's apartments and found the door closed. He knocked, waited, knocked again the harder. Still no answer. A thin line of cold dread ran down his back.

  When he pushed on the door, it swung open easily. He stepped in, looked around, looked up, and swore aloud. Oggyn's body was hanging from a ceiling beam. His black tongue protruded from his swollen mouth, and he smelled of excrement. Under his dangling feet, a pile of tables, scattered and broken, showed how he'd managed to get up so high. No doubt he'd kicked them away when the noose tightened and his body spasmed. At least he'd given himself plenty of rope. His neck must have broken immediately and spared him the long slow agony of suffocation.

  Nevyn shuddered and stepped back out, closing the door behind him. He should, he supposed, go tell Lady Degwa this news himself, but the thought nauseated him. All at once he smiled, a smile as grim and cold and brutal as any a berserker ever felt on his lips. He would tell Maryn, he decided, and let the prince have the joy of dealing with it.

  “Hah!” Owaen said. “Slimy Oggo hanged himself. Have you heard?”

  “I hadn't,” Maddyn said.

  “The prince himself told me. He was pleased as a man can be.”

  Maddyn shrugged. They were sitting on their bunks, facing each other, in the silver daggers' barracks. All the other men had left, off readying their horses for Bellyra's funeral procession. Bright sun streamed in and turned the straw on the floor to pale gold.

  “I take it you're not pleased,” Owaen said.

  “I'm not. He was trying to get at me with his cursed gossip, not at her. If I'd never composed that wretched song, this never would have happened.”

  “That's horseshit and a pile of it!”

  “Oh, is it now? What do you mean?”

  “It's simple. If he hadn't been a grasping greedy swine of a man in the first place, you'd not have made up the song. He deserved every note of it. Ye gods, Maddo! Why in all the hells are you blaming yourself?”

  “I don't know, but I am.”

  Owaen rolled his eyes heavenward and got up, setting his hands on his hips. “Don't,” he said. “Are you going to ride with us in the procession?”

  The prince had planned a magnificent funeral for his wife: his silver daggers, his lords, their riders, all of them on horseback to follow the litter carrying her body, while the prince himself walked beside it, all humility. Behind the riders would come the servants, walking to pay their last respects. The priests would bury her among the sacred oaks behind the temple of Bel.

  “I'm not,” Maddyn said. “If he takes offense at that, he can choke on it.”

  “He won't. Suit yourself, then.”

  “I refuse to be there and see the earth fall on her.”

  “You what?” Owaen stared at him for a long moment. “Are you telling me you truly did love her or suchlike?”

  “I'm telling you naught.”

  Owaen shook his head in sadness, then strode out of the barracks. Maddyn lay down on his bunk and stared at the ceiling. In the empty barracks the noise from outside drifted back and forth. Assembling and putting in order such a procession took a lot of shouting and cursing while the jingling of bridles sounded a chorus like tiny bells. At last the noise began to dwindle; the men fell silent, the bells grew faint as the horsemen filed out of the main ward. In the silence Maddyn could let himself weep. He turned over onto his stomach, grabbed his pillow, and punched it with the hardest fist he could make, over and over, while the tears ran down his face.

  • • •

  Nevyn had forbidden Lilli to attend the funeral—not that she'd been wanting to go. In the silence of that long afternoon, with the dun nearly empty but for her, Lilli walked in the new royal garden among the roses and fresh-planted saplings while she considered plans. Once, quite deliberately, she ran her hand through a rosebush and gashed her flesh on the thorns. She let the blood drops fall into the earth as a sign of her pledge, that she would run any risk to bring peace back to Dun Deverry. All day she brooded over her dweomer learning until at last she had some idea of a ritual that might once and for all exorcise the evil. Although she considered consulting with Nevyn, she knew that he would only forbid her. That evening the servants told her that he was closeted with the prince. She had her chance.

  The full moon was swinging over zenith toward the horizon when Lilli went up to Nevyn's chamber. At the door she felt a strange prickly tremble of power in the air— some sort of magical ward, she assumed, and the sensation would have sent an ordinary person running. She opened the door and stepped in. The cluttered little outer room lay silent and dark except for a shaft of moonlight on the floor, where a throng of gnomes sat on silent guard. When Lilli knelt in front of the casket's hiding place, the gnomes merely moved aside to give her the room to work.

  Lilli pulled the wooden box out of the hole in the floor, then eased the loose board back into place. Even through the box, magically sealed with sigils and markings, she could feel the lead tablet sucking the warmth out of her hands. Its very malignancy would allow her to destroy it, or so she hoped. She tucked it under a shawl and walked out again. She met no one in the corridor. Back in her own room, she barred the door against interruptions, then lit candles. In their midst she set the box down. For a moment she hesitated, gasping in terror. With one long breath she steadied herself and flipped back the lid. She tipped the box up, dumped the lead tablet into the circle of candles, and tossed the box onto the floor.

  In the dancing light the strip of lead glittered like the eyes of some evil animal crouched in fear of its hunter. When she touched it, the gashes from the rose thorns ached with the pain she would hav
e felt from pressing her wounds against ice. She stepped back, flung her arms over her head, and invoked the Light. With her inner sight she saw it fall in answer to her cry, a long shaft of gold that pierced her from head to foot. She flung her arms out to the sides and let the Light stabilize within her, then picked up the tablet.

  A faint grey matter oozed from the lead, rising like mist from a lake. She clutched the strip in one hand, held it out in the candlelight, and began to pull the slime into herself. She saw the ooze begin to gather in ugly clots of disgust, as if it were wool and her body the spindle, gathering it up, twisting it fine and tight, around and around her until she felt herself choking and writhing from it. For a moment she felt all her mother's hatred of the world; she saw, briefly, with Merodda's desperate eyes; Merodda's smothering resentments clotted in her throat and made her gag.

  Once again Lilli called up the Light and felt it burst upon her as fire, a pale blue purifying fire that swept through her aura, her body, her very soul. She cried out once with pain, then set her jaw against it. She tried to drop the tablet on the floor, but all at once she hated to let it go. There was power in the thing, power that she could use against her enemies. I have no enemies! she thought and flung it from her to fall at her feet. When she stepped back, the blue fire fell upon it like a ravenous dog. The horrible grey threads blazed with fire, turning to a fine white ash and drifting to the floor.

  “Lords of Air!” Lilli cried out. “Aid me!”

  A silver wind swept through the chamber and gathered the ash, swept it up and scattered it. The fire around her cooled, then flickered and went out. At the windows the light was turning grey. Lilli blew out the candles and let dawn seep into the room. When she picked up the tablet, she found it only a piece of thin lead, its evil spent and gone. She turned it over and realized that even the very letters of the curse had disappeared, melted into a smooth scar upon the metal. With a laugh she flipped it over again: truly no letters, just a faint bubbling of the lead where once the curse had lain.

  “I've won!”

  The cough racked up from the bottom of her lungs and bent her double. Choking she spasmed, caught the edge of the table with both hands and steadied herself against the pain. Coughed, coughed, coughed until she felt something tear free inside of her, coughed one more time, and spat up rheum, bright scarlet red. A gobbet of blood and phlegm spattered on the tablet and slid, staining the metal. She felt stickiness around her mouth and on her chin like some poisoned sweetmeat.

  “This is the price.”

  Speaking tore another cough from her lungs. She staggered over to her bed and fell onto it, facedown, to cough and spit until the blanket lay stained red under her. When she tried to sit up, she fell back. Wildfolk manifested around her, reaching out with worried hands as they swarmed around her bed.

  “Get Nevyn,” she whispered.

  When they disappeared, she fainted, her face half-buried in the pillow. It seemed to her that she was floating down a river on a little boat, drifting far from shore toward the sea. Yet on the bank someone was calling to her.

  “Lilli!” Nevyn's voice, and Nevyn himself, banging on the door. “Lilli, for the love of the gods! Let me in!”

  “I can't—” She tried to call out, but the coughing rose and threatened to drown her.

  By an act of sheer will she managed to roll to the side of the bed and stand up, but as she turned toward the door, she fell to her knees. Coughing racked her. She heard him swearing; then all at once the heavy bar across the door slid up, wiggling free of the staple. Gnomes and sylphs were clutching and shoving the thing, until at last it leapt up and fell free onto the floor. Nevyn slammed the door open and rushed in. On her knees Lilli could only stare up at him while blood ran down her chin. He looked at the bloodstained tablet, then back to her.

  “You didn't,” Nevyn said.

  “I had to! My clan—I had to.”

  The old man nodded, slowly, deliberately while tears glistened in his eyes.

  “Let's get you into a proper sickbed,” Nevyn said at last. “I'll pull you through yet.”

  She tried to smile but failed. She could feel her death gnawing at her lungs like a beast desperate in a cage.

  For three days Nevyn battled to save Lilli's life, but she slid farther and farther away from him. He knew long before the end came that he'd never win, but he kept on trying to fight consumption with herbs, poultices, and warmed blankets.

  “It's like trying to fight an army with sticks,” Nevyn said. “But ye gods, how can I surrender?”

  Maddyn nodded. They were standing at Lilli's bedside while she slept openmouthed and propped up on bloodstained pillows. Old blood blotched the handful of rags lying beside her as well.

  “Is she bleeding to death?” Maddyn whispered.

  “She is. And in a way, she's drowning.”

  “Ah gods. She's so blasted young. I wish it were me. What use am I, a worn-out rider with naught to live for? Better it were me!”

  “Oh hold your tongue. This is no time for self-pity, bard.”

  Maddyn winced and turned away. Nevyn sat down on the edge of the bed and opened his dweomer sight. Her aura looked like wisps of mist clinging to her body.

  Long past midnight, Nevyn sat alone at Lilli's bedside. He had hung silver balls of dweomer light around the chamber, but all at once, the room turned oddly dark, as if some lord of shadows had entered and scattered gloom with a careless wave of a hand. Or some lady—the spirit appeared at the foot of Lilli's bed, all draped in black but still wearing her likeness of Lilli's mother, Merodda. Fortunately Lilli lay unconscious on her heap of pillows and could not see.

  “What do you want?” Nevyn snapped.

  “My daughter,” the spirit said. “Let me have my daughter.”

  “She's not yours, and you're not her mother.”

  “I shall wait for her all the same, when she crosses over.”

  Her words raked him like cold claws.

  “You shan't,” Nevyn said, “because I shall travel with her, and if you try to meddle, I'll blast you with a fire that will burn you to the marrow of your soul.”

  “You boast, old man, and naught more.” She flounced her black robes and smirked at him.

  All of Nevyn's rage at the prince, at Lilli's illness, at Merodda and her wretched curse tablet rose up and turned him for that moment into a berserker worse than any warrior. He snapped out a word of power, then raised his arms over his head. He felt the rage materialize as red fire, surging and seething.

  “Begone, you fetid bitch!”

  With a snap of his wrists he brought his arms down and blasted her with the red fire. Like a cataract it broke over her, foaming like boiling blood. She screamed, staggered, screamed and screamed again as she spun and tossed on the burning torrent.

  “Begone!”

  With one last howl of agony, she disappeared. Still shaking with rage Nevyn opened his dweomer sight—no trace of her.

  “Nevyn?” Lilli's voice choked, a bare whisper.

  He spun around and saw her trying to sit up. He perched on the bed next to her and put his arm around her shoulders while she coughed, spitting up more blood, bright and fresh.

  “Can't breathe,” she gasped, then died in his arms.

  Maddyn heard the news early the next morning. When he and Owaen went to the great hall for breakfast, they saw Lilli's maidservant, Clodda, sitting in the ashes of the servants' cold hearth and sobbing, her apron over her face.

  “Ah horseshit!” Owaen muttered. “That's a bad omen for our Lilli.”

  “The worst,” Maddyn said. “The poor little lass.” “Just so. I'll wager old Nevyn's all torn up about it.” “No doubt. I'll have to compose her a death song. She was a warrior in her way.”

  Although Maddyn saw naught of Nevyn all that day, the news went round the dun, that Lady Lillorigga had finally died of her consumption. Toward sunset, to get a little peace and quiet in which to think, Maddyn climbed up the catwalks to the top of the dun's i
nner wall. He wedged himself between a pair of merlons and looked down at the sprawling disorder of the brochs and walls, wards and ruins, sheds, huts, and pigsties. That wondrous day back in Pyrdon, when the silver daggers had hailed the young Prince Maryn as the true king, none of them had ever dreamt that royal splendor would look like a heap of charcoal scattered among sticks. None of them had ever dreamt how many of them would die, either, he supposed, though they'd all made a brave show of talking about the likelihood.

  In the west the sun was sinking in a clear sky. Overhead the dome of heaven shone a painfully bright blue, while below the ward lay already in shadow. Maddyn watched servants walking back and forth, bringing food and firewood to the great hall. In a moment or two the prince himself walked out of the great hall. He moved slowly, as if his grief had turned the air to something nearly solid, and aimlessly. He started toward the stables, then turned back, hesitated at the door of the hall, walked in the other direction, hesitated again, then suddenly strode off round toward the back of the dun. Maddyn lost sight of him among the sheds and clutter.

  The morrow came with more rain and a low dark sky. Despite the weather, Prince Maryn decreed that Lilli's body should lie in the sacred grove near his wife's grave. This time there would be no splendid procession, though the prince did accompany her in the ride across town to the temple hill. Nevyn debated, then decided against going, simply because Maryn's grief for his mistress was so much more sincere than that for his wife. There are some things, he told himself, that a man shouldn't watch.

  Some while after the small cortege left the gates, Nevyn returned to his tower room. The afternoon seemed so gloomy that he lit a pair of candles as much for company as for light. He was sitting at his table, trying to compose a letter to Tieryn Anasyn, when he heard voices on the stairs.

  “Who is it?” Nevyn called out. “I'm busy.”

  The door opened anyway, and Otho marched in, followed by Maddyn, who was carrying a basket of bread.

  “We heard you'd not eaten today.” Maddyn set the basket down.