The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage. Katharine Kerr
basin in a vast wave, catching her, pulling her under. This time the wave seemed so real that Lilli gagged and coughed, sure that she would drown. She could feel her mother’s hand pressing on her neck and pushing her down into trance. All at once she floated in blackness, and the choking vanished.
‘Tell us what you see.’ The words swam after her, imploring. ‘What do you see, Lilli?’
At first, nothing – then in the blackness the familiar circle of light appeared. Lilli floated through and found herself back in the dun, back in her mother’s chambers, in fact, but a pale sunlight poured in through the open windows. ‘Who’s there, Lilli?’ The voice sounded so strange, all syrupy and drawn out, that she could not tell if Brour or Merodda spoke. ‘Who do you see?’
‘No one. But there are things.’
A wooden chest stood open; dresses lay scattered on the floor; an empty silver flagon lay in the ashes on the hearth. In one corner sat a little doll, made of cloth scraps stuffed with hay. Lilli recognized it as something that had belonged to her years ago; Sarra had made it for her, and Bevyan had embroidered the little face. With a laugh she ran to it and picked it up, hugged it to her chest as she used to do, back in Hendyr.
‘Can you leave the room?’ The voice poured into her ears.
‘There’s no door to be seen.’
‘Look into the chest.’
Still holding her doll, Lilli skipped across the chamber. She leaned over the chest and nearly screamed. Only her fear of her mother’s slap kept her from screaming. Yet she must have made some sound, because the voice sounded urgent.
‘What is it?’
‘Brour’s head, just his head, and the neck’s all black with old blood.’
‘Come back!’ Her mother’s voice said, and this time it was clearly her mother’s. ‘Come back now. Go through the window.’
Lilli found herself floating up and out, as light as a dandelion seed, up up into the blue sky and through the sky to candle flame. She found herself on her knees by the table in her mother’s chamber. Merodda knelt in front of her, her waxy face sweaty-pale in the dancing candlelight.
‘We’ve done enough for one night,’ Merodda said. ‘You need to rest.’
‘Just so,’ Brour said. ‘Just so.’
With Merodda’s help Lilli got to her feet. In a moment her head cleared enough for her to stand without help.
‘Shall I go with you to your chamber?’ Brour said. ‘Will you get there safely?’
‘I will, truly.’ Lilli couldn’t bear to look at him, not with the vision of his severed head still hanging behind her eyes. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Lilli hurried across the chamber and out, but as she closed the door she paused briefly and glanced back to see Brour and Merodda standing facing each other like a pair of swordsmen. She shut the door quietly and for a moment leaned against it to gather her strength. All at once she realized that she was – of course – no longer holding the doll. She would have wept, but she was learning that tears were merely her reaction to the scrying sessions and no true thing.
Yet all that evening and on into the night she found herself missing that doll. In her dreams she searched for it in strange chambers filled with armed men, who never noticed her as she crept along the walls and slipped through half-open doors. In the morning when she woke, she reached for the doll, which had always slept with her when she’d been a child.
‘Of course it’s not there, you dolt,’ she told herself. ‘You lost it when they brought you back here.’
What if somehow her mother had found and kept it? Perhaps it really was in that chamber, where she’d seen it in vision. Toward the middle of the morning, when she was sitting in the great hall, she saw her mother and Bevyan both in attendance upon the Queen. No doubt the three of them would go to the royal women’s hall and be busy there for some long while. Although she felt foolish for doing so, Lilli hurried upstairs.
In her mother’s chambers she found not the doll but Brour, sitting sideways by the window so that the sunlight could fall upon the pages of an enormous book, about as tall as a man’s forearm and half-again as wide, that he’d laid upon the table. With his lower lip stuck out, and his big head bent in concentration, he looked more like a child than ever. When she walked in, he shut the book with some effort. She could smell ancient damp exhaling from its pages. Grey stains marred the dark leather of its bindings.
‘I can’t read, you know,’ Lilli said. ‘You don’t have to worry about me seeing your secrets.’
‘Well, that’s true.’ Brour smiled briefly. ‘Are you looking for your mother, lass? She told me that she’d be waiting upon the Queen all day.’
‘Ah, I thought so. I just wanted to see if I’d left a little thing here.’
‘Look all you please.’ Brour waved his hand vaguely at the chamber.
Feeling more foolish than ever Lilli walked around, glancing behind the furniture, opening the carved chests, which held nothing but her mother’s clothes. Brour clasped his book in his arms and watched her.
‘You don’t see my head in there again, do you?’ he said at last.
‘I don’t, and may the Goddess be thanked. That was truly horrible.’
‘I didn’t find the omen amusing, either.’ His voice turned flat.
Lilli shut the last chest, then leaned in the curve of the wall to watch him watch her. His short thick fingers dug into the leather bindings of his book.
‘It must have scared you,’ she said.
‘A fair bit, truly. What do you think the meaning was?’
‘I’ve no idea. My mother never tells me how to interpret the things I see.’
‘No doubt.’ Brour made a little grunt of disgust. ‘She treats you like an infant, doesn’t she? You should be learning how to use your gifts.’
Lilli laid one hand at her throat.
‘Does that frighten you?’ Brour went on. ‘A pity, if so.’
‘I never asked for any of this. I hate doing it, I just hate it.’
Brour considered her for a moment, then laid his book on the table.
‘You hate it because you don’t understand it. If you understood it, you wouldn’t hate it.’ All at once he smiled at her. ‘I’ll make you a promise about that.’
Lilli hesitated, then glanced at the door. She could leave, she should just leave, and find some of the court women to keep her company.
‘By all means, go if you want,’ Brour said. ‘But don’t you even want to know what it is you’re doing, when you scry at your mother’s whim?’
‘I’m seeing omens,’ Lilli snapped. ‘I know that much.’
‘Ah, but where are you seeing them?’
The question caught her. She’d so often wondered just that.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Do you?’
‘I do indeed.’ Brour smiled again, and he seemed much kinder than she’d ever thought him to be. ‘Come now, won’t you sit down? Explaining where portents come from is no short matter.’
Lilli took a step toward the table, then stopped.
‘If my mother finds out about this, she’ll beat me.’
‘Then we’d best make sure she knows nothing.’ Brour pointed at the chair across from his. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered why Merodda doesn’t want you to learn dweomer?’
‘I have, truly.’
‘She