“Charming,” Erdhart said. The drink had muddled his head a little. He saw the dancers as smears of color. He ate more of the lobster. Sliding his hand under the table, he laid it on Marioza’s thigh, and she gave a start. He moved his fingers higher, inward, between her legs, pushing the cloth down, rubbing her there. She sat soft and yielding, her head down, and after a moment shifted her legs apart so he could reach the folds of her body more easily.
His head reeled. Soon he would be there. But now, all the dancers were clapping and they were staring up at him and Marioza.
“Dance! The King and Queen must dance! Make the marriage lucky and fruitful; dance!”
He sat a moment, startled. This seemed beneath his dignity. But she was rising, smiling at him, her hand out. He took her hand, thinking of the kisses. Her hand in his tightened, warm. He thought he could smell the excitement of her flesh. They went down and took their place at the head of the dance. Everybody, all through the room, was clapping. He watched her feet, and moved forward, caught her hands, and they spun around each other, and came together, and their lips met.
The heat of her mouth stirred him all the way to his loins. They parted at once, and whirled around again, the room thundering with applause. He leaned toward her again, and their mouths met, and her tongue slipped between his lips.
He gasped, his member throbbing in his codpiece. He spun her, and this time, when they kissed, he caught her against him; he pressed himself against her from mouth to thighs, his hands on her backside. The whole room whooped. She clung to him. For an instant, face-to-face, he saw the glitter in her eyes, and a sudden cold alarm flooded him. When he tried to pull back, the floor seemed to tip under him. He lost his balance, and staggered, and with his hands gripped in hers, her red hair flying, Marioza whirled them both toward the lip of the terrace and danced with him out onto the empty air.
* * *
Luka turned on his heel; back by the wall a pikeman stood, slack jawed, staring at the terrace, and Luka leapt at him, snatched the pike out of his hands, and sank the butt end deep into the man’s belly. “Jeon!” Luka bounded onto the table, kicking the wedding hams out of the way, and bolted toward the door. Somebody screamed, “Stop him!” but most of the crowd was rushing the other way, toward the sunlight, where the King and Queen had just disappeared over the edge.
In the open doorway a soldier faced him, his pike across his body like a shield, and Luka at full stride jumped on him, feet to his chest, smashed him down, fell himself, staggered up off the body, and dashed out.
That passage was there again, the one opening up on the right, this time a stairway. He plunged into it, going down three steps at a time. Someone was coming after him and he wheeled, the pike ready. Down the dim steps his brother rushed toward him, his face white, his eyes shocked white. Luka reached out, and he and Jeon locked their arms a moment. Then without a word Luka turned and raced on, Jeon on his heels, down the twisting, steepening stairwell, toward the sound of the sea.
* * *
Oto saw his father disappear into the air and a wild triumph filled him. The shrieking crowd rushed by him, going to gawk over the edge of the terrace, but Oto stood silent, stone hard, collecting himself.
This was the opening; this was what he needed.
Too late, he saw Luka racing away out the door and shouted but could not stop him. Oto went up through the crowd to the front of the terrace. Broga, the besotted fool, was on his knees at the edge, screaming, “Papa!” All around in the stunned crowd women were weeping. The priest was praying in a loud voice and another language. Nobody moved, except Oto. The soldiers were mixed into the crowd and he went around to them one at a time, shaking them by the shoulder and giving them orders. Seeing Mervaly and her sisters standing at the far side of the terrace, he went straight at them, six men at his back.
They made no effort to escape. Mervaly had her arms around the other girls and they were all sobbing. For a moment he could not get them to pay heed to him, so he could order them locked up in their room, but once he had Mervaly’s attention she obeyed him. The freemartin was jabbering nonsense at him, and the other girls took her by the hands and led her away. The cousins and aunts had vanished while he was confronting Mervaly. Tears streaming down his face, Broga rushed up.
“I’m going down to find Papa. He’s down there somewhere.”
“Go,” Oto said, and waved him away. Slobbering, Broga raced off. Oto turned to the priest. “I am King now. I will be crowned at once.”
The priest’s eyes popped. He said, “My lord, I don’t know the rite—”
“Make one up. There has to be some authority here. I am the only one. I shall be King. Tomorrow.” He raised his arms to the rest of the soldiers, and led them off to find the missing red-haired Princes.
* * *
In a high-pitched, ragged voice, Mervaly said, “I shouldn’t have let him order us around. I live here. This is my place, not theirs.” She strode around the room like a small storm, so that the birds on their perches rose up and flapped their wings.
Casea wept. “There’s nothing we can do. Nothing good, anyway.” She sat down on the bed, put her face in her hands, and gave herself up to her grief. Mother, Mother, she thought. Mother, why did you leave us like this?
Before her she saw the whole of her family coming apart, like a fabric unraveling, all the threads apart, and all the patterns gone.
Across the room, behind the bed, Tirza was creeping along the wall. Even she was crying. At the same time, with both hands, she was groping along the stones of the wall. Casea knew what she was looking for, and presently saw her find it, saw her fingers push gently at what seemed like solid stone, and open the seam, and slip into it. Slowly the wall closed behind her.
Casea thought, Even that, even that, will make things worse. She folded her arms around herself a moment, trying to sort this all out, and finally went for her needlework, to keep her hands busy.
* * *
There was no way straight down the cliff from the castle terrace; Broga had to go miles around, along the flat grassy meadow at the top of the cliff to the angling narrow trail down to the beach, and then up the beach to the foot of the beetling rock where the castle stood. At full tide the waves beat against the sheer cliff face as high as the edge of the terrace, but now the tide was going out, draining from the jagged seams of rock along the beach.
A white cloud of birds screamed and flew upward at his approach. Beneath them they left Erdhart, lying there on his back below the terrace. Broga gave a cry, and splashed out through the last of the tide. His father had fallen onto the rocks, his body sprawled, the subsiding water around him stained with blood. Over his chest and face the crabs were already crawling.
Broga charged in through the ankle-deep water, and stamped and kicked at the crabs until all had scuttled off or lay crushed in the rocks. He sank down beside the ruin of his father. In the cups of their sockets Erdhart’s eyes were bloody slicks. The gulls and crabs had already opened wounds on his face. His hair flooded on an eddy. The side of his skull dented inward. Broga put out his hand, to form the head back into shape, and the matter squished under his fingers. He doubled over, wracked with grief.
The three soldiers he had brought stood at the edge of the water. He forced himself calm. Someone would pay for this. He would make someone suffer for this. He straightened to his feet, and caught the sergeant’s eye.
“Go find me a stretcher, a litter, some way we can carry him back to the castle.”
“Yes, my lord.” With a salute the sergeant led his men back toward the village.
Broga turned his eyes again to his father’s body; his heart beat unsteadily, a cauldron in his breast. He looked around for the other one, the woman who had done this, who was here, too, somewhere.
He would trample her into something not even crabs would eat.
The rocks came up through the sand like the ragged edges of baskets, holding pots of water. He searched around where Erdhart lay,
but she was not there. Broga went wider, all along the foot of the cliff, out to the retreating edge of the sea. She was not there.
He growled, aching with frustration. She was here somewhere. He searched again, all along the rocks and sand, everywhere. He found nothing. The soldiers came back, with a litter they had made of poles and cloth, and two mules.
He stood watching as they lifted his father carefully up. The sergeant did most of the work, directing the others, folding the broken body together, arms across the chest, leg over leg. He stretched a cloak on the ground and they lifted Erdhart onto it, wrapping the cloak tight around him, so that nothing spilled. They carried the litter off toward the mules.
The rocks where Erdhart had lain were bloody, and clumped with awful stuff. Through the water something gleamed. Broga stooped, and took up a piece of gold. A ring. He held it up into the sun. By the twist of the gold he knew it: not his father’s but Marioza’s ring. Broga stood again, and looked all around him, among the rocks, the puddles, the distant surf, but there was nothing left of her, except the ring that had pledged her to Erdhart.
Abruptly in Broga’s mind’s eye he imagined her carried off by gulls. Spreading wings and flying away. Turning into a great fish. His belly clenched. He could not see what this meant. Convulsively he flung the ring away. The soldiers had rigged the litter between the mules in tandem, and were waiting for him. He tramped by them with a curt wave and led them off the long way up to the castle.
At the castle’s big main gate, four of his own men saluted him. The walk had calmed him and he stood to one side and watched without a shiver as the others carried in his father’s body. He said to the sergeant, “Go lay it in the hall, in state, as befits a King.” But he hung back when the litter went on.
To the guard on the gate, he said, “Has my brother caught the Princes?”
The guard cleared his throat and glanced at the other men. “No, my lord. We were just talking about that, my lord. Nobody can find them.”
Broga looked around him at the gate yard. There was no other way out of the castle. “If they haven’t tried to get through this way then they’re hiding somewhere in this infernal place. What about the women?”
“They’re locked up, my lord. I heard that myself from the tower guard.”
“Where is my brother?” Broga loved to see Oto getting something wrong. But first there was Erdhart, and Broga said, “Stand a continual watch, here, then; they will have to show up here sometime. Seize them then and send to me,” and went into the castle to care for his father.
* * *
Pal Dawd, who had come here as sergeant of the Archduke Erdhart’s guard, was having some difficulty deciding who his officer was. Both of the Erdhartssons kept giving him orders, although Oto was to be crowned King, and perhaps that would solve it.
On Broga’s order Dawd and his corporal Marwin laid out Erdhart on the stone table in the hall. Dawd sent the corporal up to the lord’s chamber for his best cloak, and to find servants and water to wash the body. Broga was pacing around and around the terrace room like an ox driving a millstone.
“I want a railing built across that open edge. Maybe we can block it up entirely.” His voice rasped. “But first I’ll throw every one of the children off the edge. Let them feel what my father felt.” Broga flung himself down on his knees beside the corpse. “Oh, God. Take him into Your pure bosom; let him find Your perfect peace.”
Marwin came back with the cloak, a fine brocaded cloth with fur and gold, but no servant had appeared with water. The body was filthy. Dawd went out to the next room, the big, round antechamber where all the stairs began, and looked for someone to help but there were only soldiers. Finally he beckoned over a couple of grunts and took them into the hall.
Broga was still praying, fervent, his fists clutched to his face. Dawd pointed the two men at the corpse. “Get water and wash him.”
Marwin came over to Dawd, his eyes sharp, and made a gesture with his head toward the corner. Dawd glanced at Broga, who was wholly bound up in his mourning, and followed Marwin over to the wall.
“You know,” Marwin said, his voice eager, “this is all coming apart, here.”
“Sssh,” Dawd said. Marwin faced him; over the other man’s shoulder Dawd could see Broga and he looked for signs he was listening. Hunched into his prayer, Broga did not move, except his shoulders, which trembled. The men washing the body were making enough noise to cover a whisper. Still Dawd moved off along the wall, toward the front of the terrace.
Marwin pursued him. “Did you hear what they said, back there? They can’t find the Princes. And Oto wants to be King. But who’s to say? And these people hate us.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m just asking you, that’s all.”
Dawd looked out toward the sea. In the blazing late sun the sea was rising, its surface breaking into whitecaps, the long combers crashing over the shore rocks. A cormorant teetered on the wind near the edge of the terrace, so close he could see the black disk of its eye. The death of Erdhart weighed on him, the Emperor’s brother, a man of the golden blood. They had come here thinking this tour of duty would be easy. Dawd remembered looking forward to this.
He had been born and raised in the Holy City, far to the east of here, where the water was a placid lake. He became a soldier because there was nothing else to do, for a lowborn man, except shoveling dirt. He was a good soldier; he understood his orders and obeyed them perfectly and he kept himself ready to fight. He had spent some time in the hard wars in the south, where the Empire was increasing over the savage desert tribes, and the move here, with the House of Erdhart, had been a promotion, even a chance to settle down.
“Do we follow Oto?” Marwin said. His voice dropped to a murmur. “Broga is the better man.”
Dawd wheeled on him. “We’re Imperial soldiers. We do as we’re told.”
Marwin snapped up straight as a plumb line. “Yes, of course.” Without moving his head, he shifted his eyes, not far enough to see Broga, far enough to indicate him. “I never had any doubt of you, sir.” He cocked up his forearm, his palm turned out, saluting. “Thank you for justifying my faith in you. Glory to the Empire!”
Dawd growled at him. “Glory,” he said, and flapped his hand, returning the salute. He gave another glance at the ocean, and went over to the body again. Naked, still damp, the corpse’s skin had a ghastly greenish tinge. He helped the men slide Erdhart onto the beautiful cloak and lay him out on the table. Marwin went up again to the royal chamber for Erdhart’s sword. Through it all, Broga prayed. Dawd went out to find a servant, remembered, and got one of the many idle soldiers to find him some candles. The soldier came back, eventually, with lamps, and they put them at Erdhart’s head and feet.
Dawd’s hands were shaking; he felt the coldness of the corpse under his fingertips even when he lit the lamps. He sent Marwin away and put the other two soldiers to standing guard. The ocean was booming under the terrace, the tide rising, Dawd thought, the water reaching out again for Erdhart, and he shivered, and he went out of the room.
In the big, round antechamber beyond, where all the stairs began, the idle soldiers had begun a game of bones. Dawd stood a moment wondering what to do next, and then, off on his right hand, at the foot of a staircase, he saw the littlest girl, the one everybody called the Goblin, half the size of anybody else, with her mop of frizzy red hair and her enormous blue eyes.
So even the girls were not really locked away. He went toward her, and for a moment she did not move; she stared at him with those piercing eyes, and then went off up the steps behind her. Dawd followed. On the next landing, ten steps up, she gave him a long look and then went into another passageway that led, not up, but off sideways through the wall.
He stopped, his gut contracting. He had not seen that long, narrow way before. He did not come here often and yet he was sure it had not been there before. But she was standing just inside, watching him. He went cautiously toward her.
&n
bsp; At the very threshold of the passage, with the girl almost within arm’s length, he put his foot out, half-expecting to meet solid, if invisible, rock. His foot went on beyond the threshold and came down on the floor. The girl went back another step. He crept after her.
“Come, now. Come to me. I won’t hurt you.” If he caught her, he could get her back into the bedroom and Oto and Broga never had to know she had escaped. She watched him a moment, and stepped backward, and behind her in the gloom the corridor bent and she disappeared around the corner.
Abruptly a light glowed on the rough black rock of the passage wall. She was just there, just beyond that turn, and she had lit a lamp. Dawd went a few steps on, going well to the right, so he could see around the corner before he reached it.
The light retreated as he moved. When he saw her again she was standing in the middle of the narrow way, one hand on the rock, the lamp in the other. The passage was narrowing with each step, and behind her, he saw, it ended in a blank wall. He had her trapped.
He said, “Come, now. I won’t hurt you. I’ll just take you back to your sisters.” This was the one who could not talk, and he wondered, briefly, if she was deaf also, but he had seen others talk to her. He crept on cautiously toward her, to keep from frightening her, crouching to make himself smaller, whispering, “I won’t hurt you. I want to help you.” And she turned toward the blank wall and was gone, and the lamp with her.
He stood in utter darkness, a black like nothing.
He was only a few feet from the staircase back down to the antechamber. He put out his hand, feeling for the wall, and his fingertips grazed the rock. Turning, he groped his way along, going back the way he had come in. When the corridor turned he would see light. He kept one hand on the wall always, so he would not lose his way.
Dragon Heart Page 8