Dragon Rose (Tales of the Latter Kingdoms)

by Pope, Christine

The last thing I wanted was to swallow any more of that searing stuff, but I also didn’t want him to think me a coward. So I went and picked up the glass I had abandoned on the table, and forced myself to take the merest of sips, barely more than an exhalation of fumes over my palate. That seemed a little more manageable; this time the liquid going down my throat had the warmth of a welcome fire, and not the searing heat of a dragon’s breath.

  “Better?”

  “Much.”

  A silence descended, but this time it somehow felt companionable rather than awkward. Theran stepped away from me, going to stand only a few feet from the hearth. His robes looked very black in contrast with the golds and reds and ochres of the flames. He drank from his glass again, draining it. I wondered at him being able to stand that much, although perhaps his body was more suited to such heat than mine.

  He spoke then. “Your father loves you very much.”

  His words took me aback. There had been a questioning note to the remark, as if he were not entirely sure of the answer.

  “Well…of course. I am sorry he came here, though. I know that it isn’t done.”

  Theran turned toward me, empty glass dangling from between his black-clad fingers. “It isn’t done, Rhianne, because no one has done it in the past five hundred years. Until now.”

  His tone was so neutral I could not tell whether he was angry or not. “He only wanted to make sure I was well…”

  “There is no need to make excuses for him.” The Dragon Lord paused, as if checking himself. “That is, it is understandable why he came. You should not worry on his account.”

  “You won’t—you won’t retaliate?”

  “Of course not!”

  There was no mistaking the vehemence of those words. Again I had misjudged him, this odd husband of mine. “But there must be some reason why family members are forbidden to visit the Brides…”

  “‘And go forth, taking that which is his, and leaving behind the things of your childhood,’” Theran said. “Do you know what that is from?”

  It sounded familiar, but although I had been taught to read and write, books were a luxury in my household. I could not place the phrase.

  He seemed to take my silence as tacit admission that I did not, in fact, recognize the passage. “It is from the Book of Inyanna, where it discusses how a young woman must leave her family and make a new one with her husband. A tenet which is perhaps adhered to more strictly here than elsewhere, I am sure. And it is not always wise to come here, because the family may find—” And then he paused, possibly recalling at the last instant that some things were better left unsaid.

  May find what? I wanted to ask. But if he had stopped himself, I guessed he would not confide in me.

  “So it has become something of a tradition,” I ventured, and he nodded, as if relieved that I had not pressed the issue.

  “Precisely.” He moved back to the table and poured himself another glass of the methlyn.

  I might have sucked in my breath slightly at the thought of two such glasses drunk so closely in succession. Whatever the cause, Theran turned back toward me.

  “No fears, Rhianne. It does not affect me in quite the same way it does you.”

  Unfortunate that I had been so transparent. I managed a smile and replied, “I imagine not, or you would be doubled over coughing right now.”

  A chuckle. “Quite right…although it seems you’ve acclimated yourself to it somewhat.”

  “Perhaps.” To be sure, I had essayed one or two more careful swallows, but I thought it was safe to say that the methlyn would never replace wine as my drink of choice.

  His air seemed to change then; somehow he appeared taller, as if he had straightened within the enveloping robes, and the hood was tilted down toward me. “And it never occurred to you to leave?”

  “Leave?” I repeated, unsure of what he was asking me.

  “With your father. I was not there—it is possible you would not have been stopped.”

  “I would never—” I burst out. Then, in somewhat calmer tones, “That is, such a thing would never have occurred to me.”

  “And why not?”

  “It would not be the honorable thing to do,” I replied calmly. That sounded very noble, but I knew there was far more to it than that. “I mean…that is to say…”

  He said nothing, as if content to watch my verbal floundering.

  Damn it. Perhaps it would have been better to say nothing, but I did not want him to think that he had bested me. “Why should I leave?” I asked. “I have everything I need here.”

  At that he went very still. The dark robes could have been carved from basalt, so unmoving were they. Finally, “You do?”

  My cheeks flushed with sudden heat, although whether my blush was from the methlyn or something else entirely, I could not say. I thought I was being careful with the heady liquor, but perhaps it had loosened my tongue more than I had guessed, although more than three-quarters of what I had first poured still remained in the glass I held.

  “Well, I can paint as much as I want, and Sar has been very kind, and—”

  “And?”

  Oh, it was too much. I had not been raised to know what it was like to carry on this sort of a conversation with a man. If one could even call Theran Blackmoor a man. Be that as it may, while I’d had long discussions on painting techniques with Lindell, and of course interacted with my father on a daily basis, I had no real experience of what it was like to speak of anything save the weather or the most mundane inanities with someone of the opposite sex. So far I had skirted my inexperience by speaking of my paintings and other such commonplaces with Theran, but I realized we had crossed some sort of threshold here. Once again, it would have been far wiser to keep my mouth shut.

  Then again, he was my husband. Why should I hide things from him? Well…besides my painting of the strange man, safely hidden behind stacks of canvases and the closed door to my bedchamber.

  Since I had already begun, I thought I might as well go ahead and truly stick my foot in it. “And I like being with you…speaking with you.”

  He said nothing for a long moment. I found myself holding my breath, wondering if I had made some drastic blunder, said the words no woman in my situation should have uttered.

  Although he stood only a few feet away, it seemed as if a very great distance separated us. He appeared to stare down into his half-full glass, but then set it on the table before walking toward me. I did not move. I don’t think I could have, even if I had wanted to.

  He stopped then, although he stood very close to me, closer than he had been since the night of our wedding. Once again I felt the heat of his body, only this time, instead of being troubled by it, I yearned for it. I wanted to know then what it would be like if he reached out for me, drew me into his arms. What it would feel like if his lips met mine in earnest, and not in the cool kiss of ceremony.

  One hand reached out as if to touch my loose hair, but he stopped, gloved fingers a scant inch from my head. I saw then that they were trembling.

  “No,” he said clearly. “I will not do this. Not to you.”

  And he turned and fled the chamber, leaving me to watch as he slammed the door, and to wonder what I had done wrong. For the longest time I could do nothing but stand there, staring at that closed door. Then, almost as if it belonged to someone other than myself, my right hand lifted, and I bolted down the remainder of the contents of my glass, blinking at the sudden tearing in my eyes and telling myself that it was only the methlyn. Only a reaction to the bite of the liquor, and nothing else.

  I was glad of the dream this time, glad I could focus my attention on something other than Theran Blackmoor, if only for a little while. This time it seemed as if the stranger turned toward me and smiled. His was a beautiful smile, illuminating his whole face, accenting the laugh lines around his eyes. I wished I could somehow paint that smile into the portrait, but the set of his mouth was quite done already.

  That didn’
t stop me from getting out of bed and grasping a pencil, and picking up my sketchbook. Just a quick study, something to get down the lift of his mouth and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Perhaps when I was done with the first portrait I could do another one, this one with him smiling.

  I set down the pencil and shook my head at myself. Madness, really, as the first painting was far from finished. Besides, who had ever heard of a portrait wherein someone smiled? Portraits were serious matters, after all, a way of immortalizing oneself, and, I thought, giving one’s ancestors some idea as to what their forebears looked like. At least, that was how Lindell explained it to me, and since he had painted a great many members of the peerage, I supposed he knew better than most.

  The stranger smiled up at me from the paper, and I scowled. “I suppose you find this all very amusing,” I said aloud. “But you have done enough mischief for one day.”

  And I closed the sketchbook, turning instead to the painting of Lirinsholme’s valley. Truly, the piece was done, to all intents and purposes. I had thought perhaps to deepen some of the shadows cast by the stands of oak and elm which bordered the town to the south and west, but on further inspection I deemed that not to be necessary. No, all it needed was further time to dry, and then it could be framed and hung. Where, I had no idea; I thought Lord Blackmoor would decide where best it would reside. It was something I could discuss with him at dinner…if he could even bring himself to speak to me.

  I didn’t quite sigh, but I felt little of the accomplishment I had thought I would experience once this, my first grand painting, was finished. Perhaps with time I might become more seasoned to his lordship’s vagaries of mood and not allow such things to temper my own spirits. At the moment, though, I could only wish I had stopped myself before revealing truths he apparently didn’t wish to hear.

  Despite it being sandwiched between several other canvases, I felt the pull of my unfinished painting, the draw of the stranger’s eyes. Almost without thinking I stood and went to retrieve it, to hold it up in the clear morning light that streamed through the windows. Although the man’s expression was serious enough, I had painted in the smallest lift at the left side of his mouth, as if he were secretly amused by something.

  As well you should be, I thought, staring down at his features, which were slowly becoming as familiar to me as my own. What with haunting my dreams over and over, and making me waste valuable paint and canvas on something I dare not show to anyone else…

  Almost as if I had summoned her with my thoughts, I heard the door in the outer room open and Melynne enter, calling, “Breakfast, my lady!”

  At once I grasped the painting and dropped it down between the two blank canvases which had hidden it previously. My panic seemed foolish to me—after all, if Melynne did chance to spy the painting, I could always tell her it was of someone I had known in Lirinsholme, a cousin or something similarly harmless. But for whatever reason it felt vitally important to me that she not see it, and I did sigh in relief as I turned away from it just as she came in through the door.

  She seemed not to notice anything amiss, but only set the tray down on the table next to the bed. By this time she knew better than to clear any space on my worktable for such things. “There’s more of that pear sauce you like, my lady, and wheat griddle cakes. I noticed you hadn’t been wanting your tea the past few mornings, but seeing as it’s turning brisk—”

  Tea sounded like an excellent idea after the methlyn I had drunk the previous night. “That sounds wonderful, Melynne. I was thinking the dark green gown today.”

  “Of course, my lady.” She bobbed a curtsey and went over to the wardrobe, then began to lay out my clothes for the day.

  It didn’t matter to me all that much what I wore, as long as it was more or less suited for the day’s weather. However, by setting her to the task immediately, I gave myself a chance to eat my breakfast and drink my tea in silence, uninterrupted by any chatter. I liked Melynne, although it felt odd to be giving orders to someone only one or two years younger than myself, but that morning I found myself disinclined to conversation. My thoughts kept replaying that odd exchange with Theran the night before. I could have sworn he wanted to be closer to me, and yet he had run from me as if I were the dragon in human form, not he.

  Although I hadn’t much luck with Sar in the past, she seemed the most likely candidate for questioning. Of course I couldn’t speak to my husband of such things, not when he had made it so clear that there were to be no real confidences between us. So I ate my food and treated my aching head with several cups of bracing tea, and vowed to go in search of Sar as soon as I was able.

  I found her in the kitchen gardens, supervising the harvest of the last of the herbs against the onset of our first hard frosts. We had had a few light ones, ice crystals clinging to leaves and glittering like diamonds, only to melt almost as soon as the sun touched them, but the nights already grew colder, and the elms and oaks had begun to put on their autumn cloaks of red and gold and brown.

  By some good luck the two kitchen maids assisting her had just finished plucking the last of the rosemary and thyme, and had gone scampering back indoors with their baskets of herbs to prepare them for drying. Sar watched them go and then turned, her eyebrows lifting slightly in surprise as she saw me standing there.

  “My lady,” she said formally.

  “Sar. I thought I might speak with you.”

  “Of course, my lady,” was her automatic reply, but something in her manner turned guarded, as if she guessed I might guide the conversation in directions she did not particularly want to go.

  “How long have you been here at Black’s Keep?”

  She blinked at the question, although she replied readily enough. “Going on twenty-eight years now. I was younger than you when I first came.”

  “And did you—that is, were you summoned here?” Somehow I had the impression that service to the Dragon Lord was not exactly voluntary.

  “Good gods, no. I volunteered. That is, the steward at the time, Steen Larens, his name was, came to Greyton looking for a few likely lads and lasses. Even then I knew I didn’t much want to spend my life the way my mother had, bearing children until she—well, it didn’t much appeal to me.”

  I’d heard certain less-than-savory things about Greyton, how the young women there were rather free with their virtues. Of course no one would say such things in front of me, but Lilianth had heard from her cousin who had it from her older brother that some of the young men of Lirinsholme would travel up the mountainside to amuse themselves, and how such things were brushed aside in the tiny hamlet.

  “Otherwise, it would all be cousins marrying cousins, and the children would be born with crooked limbs…and worse,” she added, dropping her voice to truly sepulchral levels, as if to hint at defects best left to the imagination.

  I saw no sign of any such a thing in Sar, but there could be any number of explanations for that. Looking into her level brown eyes, I knew better than to ask whether she and her siblings shared the same father, or whether she had decided it was better to serve the Dragon than to be thought a plaything for the young men of Lirinsholme.

  “So you came to Black’s Keep…” I prompted.

  “So I came here and worked in the kitchens, and Master Larens was pleased enough with me that when he felt he could no longer continue his duties, he put me in charge.”

  “And he went back to Greyton?”

  “Of course not. The Dragon takes care of his own. Master Larens had his rooms still, and when he passed he was laid to rest out there.” She gestured vaguely toward the northeast, to a stretch of forested land I had not yet explored.

  The Dragon takes care of his own. Save, it seemed, his Brides, who had to be replenished every five years or so. “You know him well, then?”

  Her gaze sharpened. “The Dragon keeps his own counsel.”

  “But after twenty-eight years…”

  “It seems a great span to you, I know. And yet i
t is a short time for his lordship. He does not view such things the way you and I do. And he is not one to share confidences.”

  Apparently not. I had thought from her earlier reactions to some of my transgressions that he must have spoken to her of me, but now I guessed her disapproval had stemmed merely from her responses to his outward actions. Well, it seemed I had run up against a dead end.

  Stubbornly, though, I refused to admit defeat. “He must speak to you of some things, though. How else do you get on?”

  “As I always have, my lady. He gives his commands, and I do my best to follow them.”

  “And does that make him happy?”

  “Happy?” she repeated, as if she had never thought to associate such a word with the Dragon Lord. “It is not for the likes of me to comment on his lordship’s happiness.”

  “And what about the likes of me? I must confess, I have lived here for six weeks, and yet I fear I know little more of him than the day I came to this place. Does he hold all his Brides at such lengths?”

  “I would not presume to comment on such a thing.”

  “Who better than you?” I cried, my tone becoming wild. “For you have been here all these years, and seen these young women come and go. Did they, too, break themselves upon him like a ship foundering upon the rocks?”

  “My lady, do not distress yourself—”

  “There is no need for that. I find that his lordship does it for me.”

  And because I could feel my eyes begin to fill with tears once more, I turned from her and fled the gardens. No doubt she thought me a foolish girl, always either weeping or asking questions that had no simple answers. My rooms offered a spurious comfort at best, but they were the only place I could think of to go. Once there, I flung myself on my bed, thinking I could cry it out and have done, but somehow my tears seemed to dry themselves once I was alone.

  All I could do was sit there and think of the way his voice sounded, like silk and honey, and the brief, bitter heat of his touch. I was his wife, and yet he would not let me be that in truth, little as I knew of such things. I only knew that some part of me yearned for him in a way I couldn’t explain, ached for something I knew I could never have.