Mordric crossed his arms and leaned against a bookshelf, his head down as he pondered his boots. “You‘re right.”
“Maybe I should give her what she wants and stay here. Maybe I shouldn’t go back to Cormalen,” I murmured in the silence that followed, clasping my hands. “All I’m doing is endangering Dagmar, Merius, you, myself . . .”
“That’s out of the question,” Mordric barked, still staring at his feet.
I gaped at him. “Why? She’d let Merius go if she had me."
He came toward me, so swiftly and silently that I had no time to do anything but stare at him. His eyes were Merius's eyes thirty years from now, an eerie familiarity seen at a great distance. The incense of his abandoned pipe was all around us as his large hand suddenly covered mine, the skin of his palm rough and warm. Startled, I tried to jerk my hands away, but he held them firmly under his grip. "Listen, Merius will never leave you here. And neither will I, so don't even think like that. We'll find a way out of this, all right? All right?" he repeated when I didn't respond.
I nodded, too overcome to speak for a long moment. "Thank you, sir," I managed finally. "Merius wouldn't be half the man he is without your influence."
Chapter Twenty-Four - Merius
A veil covers Safire’s face, a wisp of material so sheer it appears woven from cobwebs. Cobwebs would make a strange bridal veil, almost strange enough for a witch. I smile at my odd fancies and gently lift the cloth. Perhaps a kiss will bring some of her color back, rouse her from this slumber. I lean down and brush my lips against hers, but there is no answering warmth. I smooth her hair, run my hand down her cheek. Her skin gives at my touch like cooling wax from a candle lately lit but now snuffed out.
“Safire? Sweetheart?” I ask. I reach for her shoulder, hidden under the bed sheet. My eyes notice things my mind refuses to contemplate. The stillness of the sheet over her form, as still as the snow-shrouded hills in winter. She makes no sound, not even the sigh of the slightest breath. Her translucent skin, usually lit with the pearly sheen of some mysterious inner light, is lackluster. She now wears the skin of a corpse. Her soul has fled this place.
“No!” I try to yell, my voice strangled in my constricting throat. “Not you, never you--there has to be some mistake. A mistake . . .” I rip the sheet away so fast that it whips the air.
My love lies naked, the cold, passionless nudity of a statue. Someone has enfolded our stillborn son in her arms. The babe is perfect, ten tiny fingernails for ten tiny fingers, eyelashes and brows to match his pale hair, gray eyes like mine under lids that will never open. He is too perfect to draw breath in this imperfect world.
The sheet beneath Safire is crimson, dyed with the blood she shed giving birth. Cursed child, dead before he’s even born. Cursed child, to take his mother’s life in the same moment as his own. I stare down at her and the babe, both still as stone. I must become stone myself if I am to bear this. I imagine myself as a mountain, dark, barren rock, with jagged edges, my heart carbonized, burned to diamond, a rattling echo against the hard walls of the empty darkness within me. No need to breathe, no need to live. What use has stone for living? Stone exists while life flutters past, frail, fickle life.
I grab Safire’s shoulders, her skin cold now. “Damn you, you witch--you mend wounds, cool fevers, save Father from death even, but you don’t save yourself? Damn you . . .” The light fades. Darkness takes its place so completely that I can no longer see Safire and our nameless son. Her shoulders shrink in my grip, her skin crumpling like linen. A sheet--I’m gripping a sheet. Another nightmare . . .
“Shh, Merius, it’s naught but a nightmare,” a warm female voice purred, a cool hand smoothing my hair back from my brow. But it was all wrong. Wrong voice, wrong hand.
I opened my eyes to a blur of darkness and light and vague shapes. It reminded me of opening my eyes under water. I blinked, but the blur remained. If I tried to rise at this moment, I would immediately tumble to the floor, clumsier than any drunkard. This poison rendered me helpless as a newborn. It sometimes took a good hour after awakening for the effects to wear off fully. My head felt as if someone had split it down the middle with an axe. I squeezed my eyes shut, putting my palm to my brow.
“Does your head hurt?” the wrong voice asked. When I nodded, cold glass pressed against my lips. I opened my mouth, the glass tipped up, and I gulped down the water that ran from it. Bitter medicine powders followed, with more water to wash them down. I took them without protest. A few days ago, I would have spat them out, but at this point, I’d risk the possibility of more poison if it would rid me of the headaches.
“Safire?” I whispered without thinking. I knew she wasn’t here, that I was a prisoner, but I couldn’t help but say her name. She would have healed this wretched headache by now, and she wouldn’t have had to use any powders to do it.
“Shh, shh, the powders will work soon, I promise.” The voice ran in my ears like warmed honey, Jazmene’s melodious voice in training. Lips touched my forehead, the heavy, unpleasantly sweet scent of the marapolos flower lingering in the air. Esme. I groaned and tried to push her away, my drunken arms flailing in the strait-jacket of the bedclothes.
“Esme.” Jazmene’s tone was anything but melodious this time, a sharp claw scratching a warning on her listeners’ eardrums. “Leave Merius alone.”
“But Mother, he’s ill . . .”
“I can see that--I’ve summoned the physician. It’s not your duty to sully your hands ministering to the sick.”
“I’ve found I enjoy easing another’s pain.”
“Ha,” Jazmene scoffed. “If you enjoy it so much, go to the dungeons and tend the men there.”
“Those dungeons are a disgrace. I’m likely to catch the plague.”
“And not likely to catch a handsome foreign nobleman?” Jazmene’s tone was exquisitely dry, an interesting contrast to Esme‘s audible gasp. “My dear child, don’t look so scandalized. I know all about your flirtations. Do you think I was any different when I was your age, in the first rosy blush of my youth? Do you think I really mind you sporting with the men, as long as you‘re discreet about it? Aesir knows most of the fickle devils deserve to be a woman‘s sport for a change. But not this one. I have other plans for him, and you’d get more than you bargained for, in any case. So run along now--it’s long past your bedtime. And if I catch you up here,” there was a delicate pause, “ministering to him again, you’ll wish you’d left well enough alone.”
“Is that mad wife of his really a witch?” Esme asked.
“Why, what did he say?” Jazmene kept her tone casual, but I was sure Esme knew far better than I did what a sham her mother could be.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Esme said airily. “Likely it was muttering brought on by his delirium. Probably doesn’t mean a thing.”
Oh God, what had I said? I searched the fog of my nightmare memories, but nothing emerged. Whatever it was, the last thing I wanted was for this evil cat and her kitten to bat it between them like a tempting mouse.
“You know better than to be coy with me. What did he say? Who knows, if you’ve heard something useful, I may let you minister to him again.”
I could hear the grin in Esme’s voice, a naughty child giggling over some dread secret. “He said that Safire was a healer . . .”
“Oh, half these girls from Cormalen claim to be healers and the other half fortune-tellers when they‘re on foreign soil and no longer fear the stake. Silly creatures. Some people fall for their stories--the glamour of the forbidden to the small-minded, you know.” I opened my eyes then and glanced in Jazmene’s direction, only to find her glittering gaze fixed on me. “It’s sad that someone with Safire’s talent for drawing feels compelled to make such wild claims,” she continued, the long train of her gown swishing over the stones as she turned her back to me. “Even sadder that her husband would make such claims for her.”
“Merius is in a delirious fever. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, but that doesn�
��t mean that some of it isn’t true. Why couldn’t his wife be a witch? It would explain some of her,” Esme paused, just like her mother had earlier, “oddities. There are witches in Cormalen--why else would they burn women at the stake?”
“Because Cormalen is a backwards nation, still lost in the last century. Safire’s no more a witch than I am. Perhaps Merius fears her appeal to other men, and those fears take the form of her being accused of witchcraft when he‘s having a nightmare. Nightmares are naught but symbols of commonplace fears gone awry.”
Esme stamped, as bad as any toddler. “Let me finish, Mother. You never let me finish anything without one of your theories or lectures. Merius said that she saved his father’s life, healed him of some deadly wound apparently . . .”
Jazmene stiffened, the shadow lily on the floor drawing in upon itself as it grew narrower and darker. “Safire saved Mordric’s life?”
“That’s what Merius said. His exact words were, ’damn witch. You mend wounds, tend fevers, save Father from death even, but you don’t save yourself?’ It seems he had a nightmare about Safire dying.” Esme smoothed my hair then, and I quickly shut my eyes.
“Poor man,” Jazmene murmured, and I heard the whisper of her train grow louder as she moved toward the bed. “What terrible nightmares he has. The physician can give him some poppy seed potion so he sleeps without dreams.”
“Do you see this cut on his neck?” Esme remarked. “It doesn’t seem to be healing.”
“I’ll have the physician look at it. We should leave now, Esme--I want you fresh for council tomorrow, and you shouldn‘t linger too long here. I doubt Merius‘s illness is contagious--he no longer burns with fever--but I would hate to test it too far.”
And then they were gone with a rustle of brocade over the stones. As soon as I heard the door clang shut behind them, I opened my eyes. Outside the barred windows, dusk fell, night on its heels. The patch of western sky I could see turned first blood red, then maroon, then blackish-blue, the color of a bad bruise. I shook myself--the last thing I needed was more melancholy thoughts. Sailors took a red sky at sunset as a good portent, so I decided that I would too.
Gingerly, I shifted to the edge of the bed, glad they had quit binding my leg to the post after the first night. All my limbs seemed in working order, but the real test would come when I tried to stand. I pulled myself to a sitting position, ignoring the twinge from my side. Good thing I could block Safire at this moment--she would be a frantic wail in my head, yelling about bruised ribs, demanding that I remain in bed. It had been a week since my little escapade with the queen’s guard, and although my side still hurt when I moved, it didn’t seem like any ribs had actually been broken.
Gripping the bedpost, I pulled myself to my feet. The chamber spun for a moment, dipping up and down around the axis of the bed as I blinked. Then it righted itself and slowly stopped revolving. I shut my eyes, my stomach in knots. I had eaten some bread and cheese and an apple God knew how many hours ago, before they had forced another dose of that poison on me. I should feel lucky, the sour taste of a small victory in a hopeless cause rising in my throat. This time, I had managed to free one of my arms and knocked the hollow dart from the physician’s hand, so most of the foulness had leaked on the floor instead of in my veins. Now that I had time to think, it surprised me they hadn’t tried to give me another dose, except perhaps they weren’t certain how much I had gotten and didn’t want me to have too much of the stuff. This was both comforting and terrifying. It comforted me that I was still valuable enough for Her Majesty to keep alive and somewhat sane. It terrified me, though, that the doses had to be so precise. If they made a mistake and gave me a drop more, would it kill me? Death might be preferable to irreversible madness. That was a grim thought.
I began to move around the chamber, at first staying close to the bed until I was certain my legs were steady enough to keep my balance. Like an old man or a toddling infant, I thought in disgust. Thank God no one could see me now. I glanced in the gold-leafed mirror hanging above the washstand, half expecting to see my hair gone gray. Instead I saw my reflection, a bit paler than usual with sunken eyes and a straggled beard. I resembled one of the tormented men pictured in Mother’s book of religious verse, a gaunt soul caught forever in the updraft from hell. What had my sins been, to deserve such a fate?
Was recklessness a sin? If so, perhaps I deserved this punishment. I had been a reckless, disobedient son, a reckless, rabble-rousing comrade, a reckless, impatient husband. How else had I ended up a prisoner of this evil queen? I would have blamed Father once, but I was a man now, responsible for myself and Safire, and I had brought us to this accursed Sarneth with its diversions and hidden pitfalls. All these nightmares of death made me consider my sins with painful clarity, dropping each on the wrong side of the immense, invisible scale that determined my fate.
I removed the silver dome lid from the tray on a side table. Cold roasted fowl swam in congealed gravy, greasy potatoes that had been new and appetizing this afternoon but now looked the worse with age, wrinkled peas stuck in hardened butter, and dried-out bread. A flagon of water stood nearby, a metal goblet of wine likely warmed and soured to vinegar beside it. My supper, missed hours ago when I dropped into poisoned delirium. I lifted the flagon straight to my mouth, half the water gulped down my dry throat before I realized it. Setting the flagon down with a clang, I found myself eating with the same mindless desperation. All the food was gone in a matter of minutes, the wine goblet drained. Sinner or not, I had to keep up my strength if I ever expected to escape this place.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Noon found me the next day staring out the barred window at a crow perched on the parapet below. Sunlight gleamed on its outstretched wings as it leapt into space and swooped down over the city. Its sudden movement made my breath catch in my throat. My eyes traveled the plains of the Sebond River valley past the city walls, following the crow’s meandering journey until it became a speck in the blue distance. Patches of snow glittered down there under the cold pale light of the winter sun. In Cormalen, we would have long since brought out our ice skates and skis and sleighs, the hard jingle of the bells both near and distant at the same time in the thin January air. I remembered the cold, the river gliding away with terrible swiftness under me, the sharp whisper of my skate blades and the howl of the wind over the frozen river both lost, muffled when they reached the snowy bank.
Safire had said once that all sounds vanished in the winter woods--the land and trees, asleep under their blanket of snow, refused to carry even the rumor of sound in their dreams. There was no silence like the silence of winter, she’d said, the silence of God holding his breath. In that silence in the midst of the deepest woods, one could hear a snowflake fall. The unearthly witch's musings made me feel the shiver of quiet delight I had sometimes when I read a mystic’s verse.
I missed Safire’s silences. I missed skating. I missed the slap of cold wind against my cheek. I missed walking in the woods. I missed hunting. The convent had been quiet, not silent. This prison was quiet, not silent. Quiet contained the breath of other people, even if they spoke little and walls separated them. Silence could only be found far from other people, in the depths of the forest, on the top of a hill in winter, in the hush between waves breaking on a lonely beach. Silence soothed me, but quiet made me restless.
My eyes caught a shimmer of black movement below. The crow was back, perched on the parapet again. Apparently a favored perch, judging from the grayish-white stains of bird droppings stark against the red stone. I grinned, then found myself leaning against the window, my hands fisted high above my head as if I could bend the bars out and escape by sheer force of will. Then I turned away with a sigh. Even if I could bend the bars, how would I get down to the ground? They had me perched high in a palace tower. No rope seemed long or strong enough for me to climb down. Now, if I had the glider I had built when I was fourteen, perhaps that could have carried me over the city to the freedom of the plains
.
A glider. I turned back to the window with a pang for the open air beyond it. The crow was still there—he little realized how lucky he was, to have the freedom of flight. Long had I desired to build another glider. I would make it better this time--surely I could find a way to control the wings so that I could steer it. Rankin seemed to know about such things--he had a book on his desk about silken canopies filled with hot air, which made them rise from the ground. Balloons, I think he had called them. If something as cumbersome and slow as a balloon could be steered, why not a glider? Hell, they shifted sails on a ship to catch the wind in different directions . . .
So lost was I in my speculations that my ears didn’t catch slight click of the key in the lock or latch of the door lifting. Only when Jazmene ordered the guards to leave us did I whirl around, sudden pain like a knife in my side. I gave the barest mockery of a bow, just a quick incline of my head.
“Tsk, tsk, Merius--your father would be displeased at your inattention. He taught you better.”
“Do you think me so dull that I wait here for hours with bated breath for your arrival?”
Her slap to my cheek was expected, and therefore, perfunctory. I barely moved in response, gazing at her with what I hoped was utter impassivity. This would likely infuriate her further and bring more torments raining down on me, but I couldn’t help it. Starting with my father, I had never been successful with authority figures who took their authority seriously. It was this contrariness that would be my undoing someday, perhaps sooner than later where this queen was concerned. People like Rankin who wore the power of their offices lightly, like a tattered cloak, I followed with few questions because I knew that if I did have a question, they would at least answer it. Father had only just started answering my questions after twenty-one years of terse silence, which was the one reason I was finally starting to trust him. Jazmene, with all her wordy rhetoric, never gave a straight answer to any question, which was one of many reasons I would never trust her.
Tapestry Lion (The Landers Saga Book 2) Page 45