Mistress of Dragons (19 page)

As
he carried her to the door, the coverlet dragged behind on the floor, tangled
under his boots. Fearing it would trip him, he paused to try to gather up the
coverlet’s ends with one hand, while still supporting the woman’s frail body.
He was involved in this when he heard voices.

Edward
halted all movement, listened intently.

The
rain thudded on the roof and, far in the distance, a rumble of thunder. Voices
spoke, then came footfalls—the slap of wet sandals against a marble floor, the
sounds of someone moving in haste and with purpose.

The
murderer.

Edward
entered the hallway, carrying his burden toward the door that he’d left
slightly ajar. The elderly woman’s head bumped gently on his chest. The
coverlet trailed behind him.

MELISANDE
WOKE ABRUPTLY. SITTING UP IN BED, SHE threw off the sheet and started to rise,
only to realize that she had no idea what had awakened her. She stared around
in a sleep-dazed state, suspended halfway between dreaming and waking,
listening again for the sound that had roused her with a suddenness that made
her heart race, her blood throb in her temples.

Her
first thought was for Bellona and she reached out a hand in the darkness to
touch her, to make certain she was beside her.

Bellona’s
breathing was deep and easy. She responded to Melisande’s touch, but only as
does a slumbering cat, stretching her body, then sliding back into sleep.

Melisande
said to herself, “A dream,” and was starting to lie back down when she heard
the voice.

“Melisande!
Come to me! I need you!”

“Mistress!”
cried Melisande, starting up and staring around the darkened chamber.

The
only person with her was Bellona, half-wakeful at Melisande’s cry.

“Melis,”
she murmured drowsily, “what is it? Did you call me?”

“No,
dear, no. I’m fine. Go back to sleep,” Melisande said, drawing the blanket over
Bellona’s shoulders. The rain had begun again, and the night air was damp and
cool.

Melisande
listened, unmoving, not breathing, for the call to come again. She heard
nothing, however. A dream, she said to herself. Yet the voice had been very
real. She could hear it still, hear the urgent timbre, hear the panicked,
desperate tone.

Fear
constricted her heart, squeezed it so that for a moment she could not breathe.
Her limbs went numb. Prickles stung her fingertips. She rose hastily from her
bed and fumbled her way through the darkness to the door. The thought came to
her that she could not go into the presence of the Mistress naked and she
grabbed up the ceremonial gown she had been wearing the night before.

She
was so shaken that she tried to thrust her head through the sleeve opening, and
she paused a moment to calm down. She would gain nothing by haste. She draped
the purple-dipped black gown over her head, settled it around her, and clasped
the belt around her waist. She remembered, incongruously, Lucretta complaining
of the blood marring the sheen of the gold-embroidered hem. Melisande had
soaked the dress in cold water the next day, scrubbed off the blood. She slid
her sandals onto her feet.

Her
mind still fogged with sleep, she opened the door to their bedchamber without
really knowing what she was doing and hastened out of the barracks into the
quadrangle.

A
steady rain continued to fall. The cool water on her face woke her thoroughly.
She knew where she was and what she must do. The night was very dark and quiet,
heavy with clouds and rain. The couples slept, worn out by their pleasures. In
the nursery the newborn babes, product of a past Coupling Night, slept the
sleep of innocence. The sisters slept and dreamed of dragons. The warriors
slept and dreamt of blood, except for those who kept the watch. The sound of
their footfalls were drowned in the rain.

“I
am coming, Mistress,” Melisande said softly.

The
rain was falling so heavily that she had the feeling that the night had taken
liquid form and darkness itself pelted her, its drops hard and stinging. Her
robes were soon sodden and the heavy fabric clung to her body, its weight
dragged at her, the wet skirts wrapping around her legs, hampering her
progress. Her hair dripped water into her eyes. Tree branches, their wet leaves
dangling, clutched at her.

She
thrust the branches aside, splashed through the rivulets of water running along
the walkways. Slipping in the mud, she hastened on through the night and the
rain, feeling her way more than seeing it, and at last reached the quarters of
the Mistress.

The
guards were at their post. Huddled in cloaks, they bowed their heads against
the rain. The sound of Melisande’s footsteps roused them and they started up,
raising their spears. Their grim expressions changed to startled surprise, to
see Melisande, soaked and bedraggled, come running out of the darkness.

“Let
me pass,” she commanded, thrusting aside their spears, as she had thrust aside
the wet branches.

“Is
anything wrong?” one asked, alarmed.

Melisande
turned back, her hand on the door.

“No
one is to enter. No one.” She paused, her throat constricting, then said
quietly, “The death watch begins.”

“Yes,
Priestess,” said the guards, their faces ghostly glimmers in the rain. “The
Mistress’s blessing be with you, Priestess.”

The
guards pushed open the great bronze doors. The hallway stretched before her,
dark and quiet. The doors closed behind her, the guards pulling them shut
gently and quietly, not wanting to disturb the hushed and fearful silence.

The
thought came to Melisande, unbidden, that when next she entered this door, she
would do so as the Mistress of Dragons.

“I
am not ready. It’s too soon. Mistress, walk with me and grant me strength!” she
prayed.

Then,
straightening, she wiped her eyes of tears and rain. Lighting one of the
candles that were always kept on the table by the door, she lifted up the
candle in one hand and took hold of her wet skirts in the other. Swiftly, with
heartaching trepidation, she walked down the silent, dark hallway.

She
wondered as she went if she had truly heard the Mistress’s voice in her mind or
if it had been a dream or maybe a combination of both, her dream speaking to
her from her aching heart.

Reaching
the end of the hall, Melisande rounded the corner and entered the hallway that
led to the Mistress’s room.

She
halted, staring in dismay. So shocking was the sight that for a moment she was
paralyzed, unable to move or think or make a sound beyond one startled gasp.

The
door leading to the Mistress’s room was open and, farther down the hall, the
door that led to the Sanctuary was also wide open. Light flared out into the
hallway and in the light she could see a man holding what looked to be a bundle
of the Mistress’s bedclothes. Melisande’s dazed brain could not think why any
thief should want to take a coverlet; then she caught a glimpse of a limp hand,
dangling down from the folds of blue and green silk.

Shocked
understanding gave her voice and strength.

“Mistress!
Stop!” she called desperately, but, at the sound, the man bolted into the
Sanctuary, carrying the Mistress with him.

The
door slammed shut. The light vanished. The hall was dark, except for the
flickering light coming from the Mistress’s chamber.

Melisande
started to run after them, but at her first step, her wet sandals slipped upon
the marble floor and she fell heavily, landing on her hands and knees, bruising
her knee and spraining her left wrist. Fear for the Mistress numbed the pain.
Melisande scrambled to her feet and dashed frantically down the hall.

She
stopped at the Mistress’s chambers only long enough to make certain that she
had seen what her disordered mind told her she had seen.

The
Mistress was gone from her bed, as were the bedclothes. The man had carried her
off. The Mistress, knowing she was in danger, had cried to Melisande to help.

“Too
late!” Melisande moaned in agony. “I am too late. Bellona! I must summon the
guard—”

She
started to turn back toward the entryway, but her heart misgave her, and she
turned again, a prey to indecision. Every second counted perhaps.

“He
is a man,” she faltered, quailing, “and he is armed . . . and I am armed,” she
said, calming herself. “Armed with the magic.”

A
strange sensation swept over her, one of resolve that banished all fear.

“The
fool! The stair leads him to the sacred Sanctuary—a dead end for him, who would
dare steal away the Mistress.”

Melisande
ran after them. The magic that she had only ever used in anger against dragons
burned on her lips and in her belly.

“Mistress!
stop!” the woman cried.

In
Edward’s excitement, her voice was the hissing, sibilant voice he’d heard in
the cave, the voice promising that this night, the Mistress would die. Edward
looked back to try to see the assassin’s face, but she was in shadow and he
could not make out her features.

Anger
swelled in him, and he would have liked to have been able to halt to confront
this assassin, but his first care must be for the elderly woman he held in his
arms. He would see to it that she reached safety. He would hand her over to
Draconas, then he would deal with the fiend seeking to take this poor woman’s
life. Edward had his plans already formed. He had decided that he would remain
here in this kingdom. He would capture this treacherous female alive and turn
her over to the proper authorities. He would see to it that the elderly woman
received proper care and attention. Finally, he would start his own
investigation regarding Grald, the soldiers, and the mysterious baby smugglers.

All
this he thought through in an instant, as he clattered down the stairs, heading
for the firelit chamber.

He
held the old woman firmly but gently, worried that he would stumble and trip
over the trailing coverlet in which she was wrapped. She never stirred, but lay
comatose in his arms, sunken in her drugged sleep, oblivious to the jostling
and the shouting, the tramping of his feet, and the clanking rattle of his
sword hitting against the rock walls.

He
reached the altar room, with its white marble altar, and its strange and unholy
Eye in the floor, an Eye that flickered in the firelight and seemed intent upon
him.

“I
have her!” Edward called to Draconas, hastening across the chamber, moving
rapidly toward the wall and the place on the floor where his glove lay. “Someone
is following us—”

Edward
glanced down at the woman and his voice suddenly seized in his throat. She had
come, all unexpectedly, to life. Her eyes were open and they were dark and
filled with fire and the reflection of his face. He saw no fear in her
unblinking eyes, only a strange and impassive calm that was unnerving, made his
skin crawl.

“Madame,”
he stammered, his wits scattered, “Madame, I am not going to harm you. Please
believe me—”

“Melisande,”
the elderly woman said, “are you here?”

“I
am here, Mistress,” said another voice, low and sweet and terrible.

Baffled
and confused, still holding onto the elderly woman, Edward turned.

Pale
beauty gleamed in the firelight. Eyes of blue flame and rain sparkled. A face
of oval ivory, pure cut, chiseled smooth, touched with carnelian and rose, was
drenched in water, freezing to ice. Her face. The face in the topaz. Melisande.

He
stared, confounded, unable to speak or move. The young woman said nothing. The
elderly woman was silent. Three hearts beat away the seconds, then, suddenly,
the door slammed shut. Edward started at the sound. His nerves were unraveling.

Melisande
glanced over her shoulder at the door, but then swiftly shifted her blue-flame
gaze back to him. “Release the Mistress,” she commanded. The words of
explanation Edward longed to say grew tangled in smoky perfume and wet tendrils
of long fair hair, conflicting thoughts of assassins and magic, insane monks
and false nuns and holy quests and somewhere, long ago, the tale of a wild
witch of the wood with whom, if a man fell in love, he was lost forever.

“Mistress
Melisande, I mean, Madame”—his words labored to escape the tangle—”I have no
intention of ... that is ... Your Mistress is in danger. I overheard—”

Melisande
made a gesture at once so commanding and so filled with grace that it broke the
threads of his thoughts, sent them drifting away like strands of cut cobweb.

“You
have committed sacrilege,” said Melisande, her tone dire. “You have laid your
foul hands on the sacred body of our Mistress and that is an unpardonable crime
for which you will surely be condemned to death.”

Edward
felt the hot blood suffuse his face. He looked down at the elderly woman in his
arms, who had remained quiet through all this, letting her minion deal with the
situation. She did not move, she did not even seem to breathe. Her eyes held
him in their keeping and he was beginning to grow more and more uneasy.

He
knew himself to be in the right, and yet he felt unaccountably in the wrong. He
had to explain himself. He had to warn her and the Mistress that somewhere out
there was an assassin. His one worry now was Draconas. Edward didn’t want him
interfering, and he cast a swift, sidelong glance at the wall that wasn’t a wall,
at his glove lying on the floor. Try as he might, he could not penetrate the
illusion. He hoped Draconas saw that glance and took its meaning.

“I
will release your Mistress,” Edward said, temporizing, “if you give me a chance
to explain myself. I assure you, I mean her no harm.”

Melisande,
by her raised head and tightened lips, seemed about to refuse.

It
was the Mistress who spoke. “We will hear him,” she said.