Mistress of Dragons (28 page)

“Men
take life and women give it, is that it?” Draconas asked.

Before
Edward could respond, Melisande came limping back out of the thicket, and he
forgot everything in his concern for her. Leaving Draconas to finish with the
horses, Edward went to speak to her.

“You
will be glad to hear we are not going to ride anymore. Draconas has found a
boat. We will take to the river. How are you feeling? Any better?”

She
had regained some color in her pallid cheeks. She still limped, but her walk
was stronger. She looked past Edward at the river, running high and fast due to
last night’s rainstorms. The surface of the dark green water was littered with
flotsam the river had caught up in its passing: tree snags, bundles of sticks
from an old beaver dam, a log covered with green lichen. The current carried it
all swiftly downstream, into the shadows of the willow trees overhanging the
riverbanks.

Edward
saw the river in her eyes and he knew her thoughts, knew them as well as if she’d
spoken them aloud.

“So
too are you caught up in the swift current,” he said. “Swept downstream to an
unknown fate. You are not alone, Melisande,” he added earnestly. “Never think
you are alone.” He glanced out at the river that ran so very fast and broad and
deep and the end of it nowhere in sight. “Wherever the water takes us, it will
take us together. So I do swear, upon my honor.”

Her
blue eyes held the river in them for long moments, then their gaze shifted and
Edward saw himself reflected in them. He touched her hand and this time, she
did not flinch. Fingers brushed his and they were frightfully cold. He curled
his fingers over hers and felt her skin start to warm.

A
horn call pierced the air. High-pitched, thin and wailing as a wraith’s dismal
cry, the call spooked the horses and raised the hair on Edward’s neck.
Melisande’s hand clutched his spasmodically, and the two stood immobilized
until long after the horrid sound had ceased.

“What
was that?” Edward gasped.

“Bellona,”
Melisande said in a low voice. “The call is meant for me. She is telling me
that I cannot escape my fate.”

“Nonsense—”
Edward began.

She
pulled away from him.

“You
heard that horn call?” she asked Draconas.

“The
dead heard that horn call, Melisande,” he replied.

“I
am a danger to you,” she went on, not heeding him, talking rapidly. “To both
you gentlemen. You should leave me here. Bellona will not come after you. She
wants only me.”

“Absolutely
not!” Edward said angrily.

“I
thank you for what you have tried to do for me, Your Majesty,” Melisande said
gently, “but it is of no use. I know Bellona. She will not rest until she has
...” Her voice faltered, but she rallied and continued on calmly, “until she
has found me. You risk your life for me, Sire, a perfect stranger, and that is
not right. You should live to return to your kingdom, your people.”

“I
wish I could claim that His Majesty was completely disinterested,” said
Draconas coolly. “But he’s not. He has a stake in your welfare. As I told you
this morning, His Majesty came to Seth for—”

“That’s
enough, Draconas,” Edward interrupted, the hot blood mounting to his face. He
looked back on his “quest” as a silly, schoolboy adventure, a journey into a
minstrel’s tale, not meant to be taken seriously. He realized now how wrong he
had been in everything he had done and he was bitterly ashamed of himself. He
could not let her die because he had been a thoughtless fool.

“Believe
me, Melisande, when I tell you that I never meant for matters to happen the way
they did. I intended to come before your Mistress, dressed in my finest, with
gifts precious and valuable, as befit a queen. I meant to bend my knee before
her and ask her, humbly, to do me the favor—the very great favor—of traveling
to my kingdom to rid it of the dragon who has brought upon us so much misery
and destruction. Nothing has turned out as I planned and it is my fault. I knew
I was doing wrong to sneak into* the monastery like that. I was playing at
being a hero.”

Draconas
stood at his elbow, plucking at his sleeve. “Your Majesty, that horn call was
very near. We don’t have time for this.”

“Yes,
we do,” said Edward sharply. He drew in a deep breath, never taking his eyes
from Melisande. “I have need of you. I’ll not deny it. I am responsible for the
lives of my people. I am pledged to God to give my life to save them, to place
myself between them and danger. And I am helpless before this dragon. You have
been raised to fight dragons with your magic. Come to my kingdom. Use your
magic to save my people. I can never in my life repay you, but I will try, all
the rest of my days.”

“But
what of
my
people?” Melisande asked. “I cannot abandon them, now that I
know the truth.”

“You
will come back to Seth,” Edward promised. “And I will come with you. We will
come back with an army and you shall ride at its head.”

Melisande
was obviously much impressed with him, but still she hesitated. Perhaps she
still did not trust him. The horn blast sounded again, much nearer. She cast a
despairing glance in the direction of the sound.

“And
if I do not choose to go with you?”

“Then
I will stay with you until the warriors find us. I will stay here and tell them
the truth about the dragon—”

Melisande
shook her head. “They won’t believe you.”

“Then
I will tell them to take my life,” Edward said proudly, “for I am the one at
fault. And I will beg them to spare yours, for you are innocent.”

She
gazed intently at him, trying to see into his heart and beyond, to his soul.

He
faced her confidently, steadfast in the knowledge that, if she chose, he would
do what he promised.

*

“I
believe you would do that,” she said at last in a kind of wonder. “Why? I am a
stranger.”

“Because
I brought you to this,” Edward answered simply. “The responsibility is my own
and I accept it.”

A
faint blush mantled her cheeks. Her breast rose with a quick, indrawn breath.
Her clasped hands trembled. Edward saw admiration in her eyes and something
warmer, softer, and his blood tingled through his body, prickled in his
fingertips and rushed from his brain to swell his heart, so that he was giddy
and light-headed.

“Will
you come with me, Melisande?” he asked. “Or will we stay to face death
together?”

Melisande
turned her head, gazed upstream, to where the eerie echoes of the horn call
seemed to linger in the air. She bowed her head, gave herself to swift-flowing
fate.

“I
will come with you.”

“You’re
very persuasive,” Draconas remarked, as he and the king hastened down the bank
toward the boats. “No wonder your people love you.”

“I
meant what I said,” Edward returned coldly. “And keep your voice down.”

He
glanced at Melisande, walking slowly behind, her arms folded across her breast,
her head bowed in thought.

“How
close do you think those soldiers are?” Edward asked, abruptly changing the
subject. He was still angry at Draconas, but this was no time to start a fight.

Draconas
flicked him a sidelong glance and came as near to smiling as he ever did. “Close
enough so that we should not dawdle. Help me haul out the boats.”

“We
don’t need both of them,” Edward protested, eyeing the boats. “They’ll seat
eight people, at least. One will do for us and our supplies with room to spare.”

“True,”
said Draconas, “but I don’t want to provide that commander with the means of
coming after us.”

He
and Edward dragged off the tarp that covered the boats, carried them one by one
out from under their makeshift shelter of tree limbs.

“There
were at least six boats here,” said Draconas, indicating indentions in the wet
ground. “The baby-smugglers took three of them, left three behind.”

They
hauled one boat to the water, loaded it with their supplies—food, blankets,
water skins. Edward helped Melisande into the boat. She eyed it warily, entered
it with trepidation. She had never before been on the water. Using his staff,
Draconas staved in the bottom of the other two.

The
boat came equipped with a pair of oars set in oarlocks. Draconas volunteered to
handle the oars. Melisande sat in the prow, wrapped in a horse blanket for
warmth. She stared nervously at the water rolling past the gunwale. Blanching
at the rocking motion of the boat in the current, she clutched the benchlike
seat with both hands.

Climbing
over Draconas to reach the stern, Edward bent down to say in passing, “Which
way do you think those baby-snatchers went?”

“Downstream,”
said Draconas.

“The
same route we’re taking.”

Draconas
nodded absently, absorbed in testing the movement of the oars in the oarlocks.

“Is
that wise? Suppose we run into them?”

“We
won’t,” said Draconas.

“How
do you know?”

Draconas
shrugged. He tested the oars, first one, then the other.

Edward
bent close, his breath hot on Draconas’s cheek. “I wish just once you’d tell me
what you know and how you know it!”

Draconas
looked up at him. “No, you don’t, Your Majesty. And now, we’d best be getting
under way.”

Edward
opened his mouth, snapped it shut again. He made his way to the stern, cast off
the lines. The river carried the boat rapidly away from shore. A few strong
pulls by Draconas on the oars steered them away from the bank and dangerous
tree roots and snags.

Edward
was wondering what Draconas had meant by that enigmatic statement and trying to
decide if he should have it out with the man, when he heard hoofbeats on the
shore. He turned around, stared back into the trees, expecting at every moment
to hear the deadly hum of arrows. He saw, receding in the distance, the horses
grazing calmly on the grass near the riverbank. No sight of the female
warriors.

Women
warriors. He’d never seen women like that, women with hard-muscled bodies and
scars roping their arms and legs. Women racing toward an enemy with the fire of
death in their eyes. Feminine hands wielding spears and bow and arrows instead
of tapestry needles. Half-naked, all of them. He pictured them riding toward
him, bodies gleaming in the sunlight. Half-naked and not ashamed, their
thoughts focused on their duty. He saw again the curve of a breast as one drew
back the bowstring, saw the play of muscle in the arm, and the tightening of
the taut, bare abdomen.

They
were beautiful in a disturbing, unsettling way. He didn’t like thinking about
them, yet he couldn’t help himself.

Melisande.
His thoughts did not return to her, for they had never truly left her. The
images of the warrior •women were so much flotsam, floating on the surface.
Melisande was the murmur of the river, ever with him.

“Go
ahead and sleep,” Edward told her. “You’re safe, for the moment.”

Melisande
was too exhausted to argue. Wrapping herself in the blanket, she curled up on
the bench, and, despite her awkward and uncomfortable position, the rocking of
the boat lulled her into slumber.

The
boat drifted in and out of the shadows of the trees.

The
sun’s rays touched her hair, caused it to shimmer with a golden radiance. Her
face, in the shadows, was pale and sad. Her sorrow and her beauty touched
something deep within him.

Edward
watched her, and he felt empowered, the guardian of her sleep. Her champion.

“I
am responsible for her,” he reminded himself. “She trusts me. She has given
herself into my care. I must cherish her.”

Cherish.

The
word brought to him, unbidden and most unwelcome, the memory of his wedding
vows. Those brought to him the memory of his wife.

Ermintrude’s
face with its cheerful smile and flashing dimples opened up the door of his
conscience and peeped in at him.

He
slammed the door shut with haste and stood with his back against it, guilty and
ashamed.

FROM
THE TIME THEY WERE CHILDREN, BELLONA HAD loved Melisande. She had been a
beautiful child—golden-haired, fair-skinned, her blue eyes possessing a wisdom
not usually seen in children, as if she had been born knowing humanity’s
secrets. It was not her beauty that had attracted Bellona, though the older
girl had loved to watch the little child with hair like sunshine play about the
courtyard. The same qualities in Melisande that had brought her to the notice
of the Mistress, brought her to the notice of Bellona. At six years old,
Melisande had led the games of the other girls. Her quick intelligence had
impressed her teachers. She was strongly gifted with the blood bane magic—a
skill that Bellona lacked and one that she secretly mourned.

Slated
to be a warrior, Bellona had been marked by her superiors as one who would
advance in rank and power. Dark-eyed, dark-haired, her spirit reposed in
darkness. She said little, opened her heart to no one, watched, observed,
taking part only in those activities that tested her body, enhanced her
physical strength.

As
the two girls grew older, Melisande, sensitive to the slightest touch, felt
those dark eyes often upon her and she found in the quiet, strong Bellona a
place of rest, a place of ease.

The
dragon encouraged love between the women warriors and her priestesses. Thus she
kept them both bound to the monastery, bound to each other, bound to her.
Neither knew this, of course, and it would not have made much difference if
they had.

Bellona
remembered the first time she had made her love known to Melisande. The memory
came to her as a torment, as she was riding her horse along the cliff’s edge,
seeking out Melisande, with orders to slay her. Bellona used the memory to spur
herself on, jabbed it repeatedly into her flesh until the blood ran. The pain
was searing, but it was easier to bear than the pain of loss that left her
empty and aching.