Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley
wouldn’t leave me to burn…”
Bards started to speak, to disclaim it, to say it had been Paul who physically climbed those stairs while he, the child’s father, had been held helpless by his own guards, king or no; but Paul said loudly from where he bent over Melisendra, “That’s right, my Prince, your father came to fetch you out of the fire!”
He said fiercely in an undertone, “Don’t you ever tell him anything else! You
were
there! I couldn’t have made it without your strength! And he’s got to
live
with you!”
His eyes met Bard’s, and suddenly Bard knew they were free of one another forever. He had given Paul life, from the death of the stasis box; and now Paul had given him back a life more precious than his own, the life of his only son. No longer bound with a deadly tie, dark twins, but brothers, lord and respected paxman, friends.
He bent over Erlend and kissed his son. This
nedestro
heir should never feel himself unloved, or suffer the torments he had known. Melora might never bear him a child—she was older than he, she had
worked long as a
leronis
and healer in the blighted zone—but she had given him Erlend’s life. And as he watched Carlina, in her dark robes, bending over Melisendra’s limp body—now tortured with the racking coughs as they forced the smoke from her lungs—he knew that he was free of them both.
Melisendra would find her own happiness with Paul; and Carlina’s life was given to the Goddess. He would deny it no further. In his lifetime, he would see the priestesses of Avarra leave their Lake of Silence and come into the world as healers under Varzil’s protection. The priestesses and the Sisterhood of the Sword would form a new Order of Renunciates, and Carlina would be one of their founders and saints; but that was all in the future.
With a tremendous roar, the roof of the main wing of the castle fell in and the flames engulfed it. Bard, sitting beside Melora as the healers dressed the burn on her arm and breast, shook his head and sighed.
“I am a king without a castle, my beloved. And if the Hasturs have their way, a king without a
kingdom; lord of no more than my father’s estate—I should think they’d give me that. Will you be a queen without a country, Melora, my own love?”
She smiled up at him, and it seemed that the morning sun was no brighter than her eyes. Bard beckoned to Varzil, smiling up at him, and said, “After the wounded are cared for, there is a Compact to be sworn. And an alliance to be made.”
And, turning back to Melora, he kissed her full on the lips.
“And a queen to be crowned,” he said.