Dragonshadow

by Elle Katharine White

  The pearled spikes of a crown broke the water at the center of the school, followed by the bearded face of the Mermish king. “Do not swear an idle oath, dragonmaster,” the king said in Arlean. “The last time we spoke you said you would hunt down the creature that murdered Idar. That was many days ago, and now one of my school is dead. Is this what you have to show for your bond-price, Blood of the Fireborn?”

  Alastair’s throat worked up and down. “We are looking, sire. We have hunt—”

  “You have hunted rumor and myth, not monsters,” the king said. “Yes, my people have told me of your dragon’s questions.”

  There was a rustle and snap of branches behind us. Rhys and Selwyn clambered over the driftwood barrier, Rhys with his sword, Selwyn carrying Rhys’s crossbow. “What’s going on?” Selwyn asked. “We heard the cries and saw your dragon . . .” He stopped when he saw the mermaid. His face went very white.

  “It’s back,” Rhys whispered. “Sulfurous hells.”

  “There may be truth in those rumors, Your Deepness,” Alastair said. “What do you know of a creature called the Green Lady?”

  There were hisses from the merfolk who understood Arlean. Selwyn flinched.

  “It has been generations since that creature has stirred from her haunt in the Northern Wastes,” the king said. “What do you want with one of the Eldest, dragonmaster?”

  “The cantor of Morianton said she was an ancient spirit of vengeance. Have you heard the story?”

  The king’s gills ruffled along the side of his neck. He shifted uneasily in the water. “Of course. We all have.”

  “We believe she was responsible for the death of Lord Selwyn’s maid. Could she have done this as well?” He gestured to Lyii-Lyiishen.

  The king bared his teeth. “Never. She is an ancient and pitiless spirit, a guardian of the Northern Wastes, but she has no quarrel with the Oldkind. Some have even called her our protector.”

  “If that’s true, why would she lead Isolde to her death?” I asked. “Isolde was northern-born.”

  The king gave me a scornful glance. “I said she was our protector, not yours.” The waterweed that formed his beard trembled and he turned back to Alastair. “Be certain of this, dragonmaster: it was not she who murdered the Idar of Ommeera. And if a human was responsible for this evil, know that the Hag-of-the-Mists will not rest until they are brought to justice. Now Lord Sentinel, Lord Daired, give us back the body of our Lyii-Lyiishen. We will return her to the depths with the dignity she deserves.”

  Akarra lifted the mermaid’s broken body with her wings and carried it into the lake. The waves lapped at her belly as she placed it in the outstretched arms of the one the king had called her shoalmother. The merwoman’s wail carried across the water, a haunting lament without words, and the king and the others followed as she sank out of sight, leaving only the echoes of her cries in our ears.

  There was a minute of terrible silence broken only by the slap of the water against the stones, its surface tinged silver with Lyii-Lyiishen’s blood.

  “This has gone on long enough.” Alastair turned to Selwyn. “It ends today.”

  Selwyn stared at the naked steel in his hand. “My lord, what are you doing?”

  “My duty. The Green Lady said she was invited here and I think you know why.”

  “I don’t know what that creature wants!”

  “You do know. I’m not going to ask again.”

  Selwyn looked wildly from Alastair to Rhys. “Owin? Owin, we had an agreement.”

  “I’m sorry, Selwyn, but Lord Daired is right.” Rhys avoided his eye. “We need to know what’s really going on here.”

  The crossbow in Selwyn’s hands jerked up, then fell to his side. “As you will,” he said through gritted teeth. “I think, or I’m afraid she thinks I stole—”

  A twig cracked behind us and Selwyn stopped. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see Chirrorim, or perhaps even Mòrag, but it was neither. Colors like cold flames licked through my mind’s eye, giving meaning to that red cloak, the blond hair, and above it all, those green, green eyes.

  Tristan Wydrick stood at the edge of the beach.

  Not a ghost or a bad dream or a memory, but smiling and whole and very much alive.

  Rhys’s voice came dimly through the humming in my ears. “What are you doing here?” he asked the red-cloaked figure, but then Akarra’s roar drowned out everything but her rage, and I felt fire, and hatred, and then, like a terrible tide, the warmth of blood.

  Shouts rose around me. Wydrick swept his cloak aside and turned toward the woods. I caught fractured glimpses of something monstrous clinging to him, darkness like spider’s limbs buried in his back, before a swirl of valkyrie feathers swept Wydrick and the not-thing up into the sky. Akarra flew after them, trailing dragonfire.

  I sank down on the nearest log. “Alastair?”

  He didn’t move, didn’t answer, staring at the place Wydrick had disappeared.

  “What was that thing?” Rhys said. “And what was that Ranger doing here?”

  “Alastair?” I said again.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “None of this makes sense.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Selwyn, we need the truth.”

  Voices merged, and droned, and faded. My breath rattled in my throat, dry like the rasp of old bones. The Green Lady wasn’t the only thing hunting the shores of Lake Meera. Red and green, the green and the red. Another ghastradi. Too many impossible things. This wasn’t right. None of this was right . . .

  You’re bleeding.

  I slid off the log. Blood stained the sun-bleached wood where I’d sat. The world snapped back into focus.

  “Alastair!”

  My scream broke Wydrick’s spell. Strong arms wrapped around my shoulders and I gasped as Alastair helped me up.

  “Khera?”

  “It’s happening again.”

  He swore. One arm beneath mine, he half led, half carried me toward the castle. I saw nothing else, heard nothing else, knew nothing else. All my senses turned inward, where a new battle raged. Terror upon terror condensed into a single refrain that beat like war drums in my head, knifing through consciousness even as pain knifed through my body. Janna, please no. Not our child.

  “How long has she been bleeding?”

  I came to myself in the main hall of the castle. Mòrag’s chilly touch forced my eyelids open as she felt my forehead. “It happened before, this afternoon,” Alastair said, his voice rough with panic. “The midwife said she was all right.”

  “Get her upstairs. I’ll have a maid fetch Madam Threshmore.”

  He carried me up to our chambers and set me on the bed. I lay back gingerly, listening, as Madam Threshmore had said, to the quiet cries of my body. The pain had eased but I could still feel muscles tensing inside me, waiting for any excuse to contract.

  “Alastair, if we lose—”

  “No. Don’t say it.”

  I didn’t need to. The words were already pounding inside me with the relentlessness of thunder. Another spasm took hold of me and I felt more blood flowing, crimson and clotted and hot. I reached for Alastair’s hand. “Tell Mòrag to hurry.”

  Madam Threshmore didn’t arrive until dusk. She looked me over a second time, ordered clean rags and a pitcher of water, and helped me exchange my bloody dress for a shift. A few minutes later Mòrag reentered with water, cloths, and Cordelia in tow. Alastair paced in front of the balcony door; despite Madam Threshmore’s insistence, he refused to leave this time.

  The midwife directed Mòrag to soak the rags as she felt my abdomen. Her face was graver than before. Cordelia laid a hand on my forehead as the midwife continued to probe, murmuring words in Mermish. I caught the names Aquouris and Uoroura. She repeated them several times. It sounded like a plea.

  I raised my head off the pillow. “Madam Threshmore?”

  “Aye, child?”

  “You said we were going to be all right.”
r />   “As best I could tell, mind. Ye seem to have had quite a shock.”

  Yes, a dead man smiled at us from his grave. Fresh cramps seized me. “What can I do?” I panted when they passed.

  “Nothing to do, dear. Only rest. And pray, if ye believe it’ll help.”

  The sun set, and rose, and set again. Pain and blood ebbed and flowed like some terrible tide. One minute I felt fine; the next I wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball and weep. Alastair never left my side. Glassy-eyed and quiet, he did as Madam Threshmore told him. Neither of us slept well, but he hardly slept at all, dozing off next to me for a few minutes at a time before jolting awake, reaching for the knife at his belt.

  Minutes melted into hours, hours into days. Sleep, eat. Shuffle around the chamber. Clean up the bloody cloths. Wash. Rest, or try to. It was all I could do. Listen to my body scream, and whimper, and scream again.

  And then, silence.

  I knew. Madam Threshmore told me anyway, that iron voice rusting even as she offered her condolences. I thanked her, and Alastair thanked her, and she left with Mòrag and Cordelia. He shut the door behind them. The chair nearest the door creaked as he collapsed into it, his head in his hands.

  I threw on a dressing gown and slipped out onto the balcony, away from the echoes of the midwife’s words, which hung in the air like some kind of foul insect. Lost. As if we could find our child if we looked hard enough. No need to worry, my lady. He’s hiding in the gargoyle peaks of Nordenheath. Don’t fret, my lord. She’s pitched a tent in the pastures of Pelagios. Lost, only to be found again. Perhaps in some world, but not by us. Never by us.

  Flakes of snow stung my face as I stepped into the wind. The lake was foam flecked and choppy beneath the stormy sky. Mountains stood guard around the valley like soldiers, dull and leaden and silent. No Mermish songs rode the crest of the wind. No winged shapes hovered against the roof of the sky. Not even the gulls’ cries echoed over the lonely lake. The air was cold, gray, and empty. I went inside.

  Alastair didn’t stay in our chambers long. He said he needed to run, to exercise, to spar with someone, to do anything but sit in silence. I watched from the balcony as he met Akarra in the garden. Her lament shook me even to my cold and empty core and I hurried inside, resisting the urge to cover my ears.

  Days tugged at the rest of the castle like a river from its bank. The water rushed on, but in the little cove called now it had no power over me.

  Whatever the servants brought up to our chambers, I ate, if I remembered.

  I stood at the window and watched the lack of birds.

  I sat in the bath, knees drawn up to my chin, following every movement of the ripples as they broke against the walls and faded into nothing.

  At night I lay at Alastair’s side in a shroud of blankets and prayed for dreamless sleep. It was the only prayer I had left. The gods had nothing to say to me, and I had nothing to say to them.

  Whispers from the rest of the castle trailed in after every dinner tray. Rhys and Chirrorim took up the guardianship of the castle. On one of her visits to our chambers, Cordelia told us they patrolled the grounds from the safety of the outer walls, as Selwyn had forbidden anyone from leaving the castle in case the Green Lady returned. Cordelia talked, but she didn’t try to get me to join in her conversation. Nor, to my relief, did she try to comfort me. Perhaps she sensed how hollow it would sound.

  Once I dreamed of Uncle Gregory. In wavering, watercolor strokes, I watched as he helped me to my feet after I’d fallen on the breakwater rocks outside of Edonarle. My knee had been badly skinned. Young me wailed when he took me to wash it in the ocean, and in my dream I heard his voice, calm and kind and patient. Remember, Sweet Alyssum, saltwater will do any wound a world of good, he said. Hurts like the blazes, but cleans better than you can imagine.

  Yes, Uncle, I said. But it won’t bring our child back.

  “Lady Daired?”

  I woke with a start. Mòrag stood in the doorway, a tray in her hands. I sat up, bleary-eyed, blinking at the depression in the mattress next to me. I hadn’t felt Alastair leave.

  “I believe he’s in the garden.” She set the tray on a table. “You need to eat, my lady. You hardly touched your meals yesterday, or the day before that.”

  “Where’s Cordelia?”

  “With His Lordship.”

  “Why didn’t you send a servant?”

  “Because they will not make sure you eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Silver clinked against china as she set out a tea service. “No. You’re beyond that now.”

  She was right. I’d passed from hunger to a gnawing, bone-deep emptiness, desperate to be filled with something, with anything. But I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to eat. I faced the wall. The tinkle of cutlery stopped and a cushion sighed as she sat. I closed my eyes. If she’d stay, she’d stay without me. Sleep, or at least its dark and thoughtless approximate, called me back.

  “I’m not leaving, Lady Aliza. I need to talk with you.”

  “So talk.”

  “And I need you to listen.”

  I opened my eyes.

  “This can’t continue. The longer you stay in here, the worse it’ll get.”

  “I don’t see how that should bother you.”

  “It probably shouldn’t.”

  I rolled over. “Why are you here?”

  “Because I’ve taken a vow to serve House Selwyn, young lady, and you are a guest of my master. I do whatever I need to do to protect those in this house.”

  Protection. Inside I sneered at the word. Yours and Cordelia’s and Alastair’s and the gods themselves, and it still won’t bring our child back. “I mean, why do you care?”

  “You’ve been a friend to Lady Cordelia.”

  I stared at her.

  Gnarled fingers twined and untwined in her lap as she studied the tiles. It was a minute before she spoke again. “Because what you’re feeling now,” she said in a low voice, “that gaping wound inside your chest you think will never be whole again . . . that’s not something I’d wish on my bitterest enemy.” She looked up, and there, shining for an instant in those icicle eyes, I recognized a familiar pain. Hers was an old scar, scabbed over many times, while mine was a fresh wound still bleeding, but the shape was the same. She had the hollow stare of a woman whose womb had borne too many children and whose arms had held too few.

  In that moment we two—an old housekeeper withered by grief and a young mother who would never hear her child’s cry—we understood each other.

  I hung my head. “Does it ever go away?”

  “No. But you live.”

  “How?”

  Mòrag stood. “You get out of bed. You eat something. You get dressed. You go downstairs and comfort your husband, and let him comfort you. You find a reason to do it again tomorrow. That’s all you can do.” She turned to go.

  “Mòrag?” I asked in a small voice.

  “Yes?”

  “How many?”

  Ages might’ve passed in the seconds it took for her to answer, and in the single word I felt the weight of worlds, of the lives and hearts of countless mothers like her. Like us.

  “Five.”

  I forced the words past dry lips. “I’m . . . sorry.”

  “Yes, child, so am I. But you cannot—” She stopped. Her chin trembled, eyes fixed on the floor near the foot of the bed. “N-never mind. Eat your meal, child, and remember what I’ve said.” She hurried out.

  I looked down, searching for what had caught her gaze. There was nothing on the floor besides my riding boots, a handful of pillows I’d kicked off the bed, and, peeping through the open mouth of a crumpled pannier, a corner of the silver box.

  Chapter 23

  Water and Blood

  For a long time after she left I sat there, buried in blankets. There was too much I didn’t understand. Fresh apathy beckoned and offered escape, but this time I fought it, sifting my soul for some shred of strength
that could tip the scales against indifference.

  “Find a reason,” she’d said. Madness and mystery and the shadow of monsters still hung over Castle Selwyn. If we could do nothing else, we could find answers. We could finish what we started. No one else would die on the shores of Lake Meera.

  I got out of bed, ate the food Mòrag had brought, washed, dressed, and went downstairs.

  I found Alastair in the garden. He didn’t turn as I approached, my footsteps muffled by moss and dead leaves. If I’d been wearing iron-shod boots on a flat marble floor, I don’t think he would’ve heard me either. The defeat of a clump of whitethorn growing in the corner of the garden consumed his attention, the makeshift quarterstaff in his hands a blur as he lashed out at the hedge. His Rider’s plait hung limp and greasy down his back. Akarra was nowhere to be seen.

  “Alastair?”

  The staff fell to his side. Slowly he faced me. The faint glisten of tear tracks, dried and remade and dried again, showed on his cheeks. A hundred leagues’ distance crammed into the arm’s length separating us, and the air took on the textured silence of a thousand things not spoken.

  “You’re back,” he said at last. His voice was hoarse.

  “I am.”

  “Are you . . . all right?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither,” he said as he pulled me into his arms. I buried my head in his shoulder, needing to cry, wanting to cry, but my eyes stayed dry.

  “Where’s Akarra?”

  “Patrolling with Rhys.” He released me and sank onto the rim of the fountain. “What now, Aliza? What do we do?”

  “What we came to do.”

  “And what is that? I’m not even sure if I know anymore.”