Mistress of Dragons Page 21

  Gasping in pain, she bit back a cry, nearly falling as she tried to stand. Her clothes were disheveled, her skirts up around her thighs. She shook her skirts down, but not before he had caught a glimpse of bare flesh, saw that the skin on her legs was rubbed raw from the constant jolting movement. He also saw that her legs were shapely, well-formed, with small, delicate ankles and feet.

  “You should walk around, if you can,” Edward said in some confusion. “Restore the circulation. I’ll see to the horses.”

  Melisande nodded and limped slowly toward the thick trees, her lips pressed tightly over the pain.

  “What about the warriors?” Edward asked Draconas, who was removing his saddle and bridle.

  “I think we’ve lost them,” said Draconas. “But only for the time being. That leader of theirs has the tenacity of a bull baiter. She’ll track us down unless we throw her off the trail permanently. The boats are sound. Though taking to the river will mean leaving behind the horses.”

  “That is nothing,” said Edward, his gaze following Melisande. “She cannot ride any farther. It’s a wonder she made it this long.” He paused, frowning. “Do you think we should let her go off alone?”

  “I don’t believe she’d appreciate our company,” said Draconas dryly.

  “Oh,” said Edward in embarrassed understanding.

  He turned his back on the amused Draconas and began to unsaddle his horse, talking to relieve his tension.

  “Probably those warriors will find the horses.”

  “Better the horses than us,” said Draconas. Walking down to the river, he cupped his hands, scooped up water to slake his thirst.

  Edward flung the saddle onto the ground. “How did you know that you’d find boats here? And the wagon? And how did you even know where ‘here’ was? I’ve been lost ever since we left the cave.”

  “Just doing my job,” Draconas replied. “What you’re paying me for. As for the wagon”—he raised his head, gazed down the river—”they had to have some way to transport the babies.”

  “Babies?” Edward was confused. “What—Oh! Lord bless and keep me. I’d completely forgotten! The babies from the cave.”

  He could not believe that it was only last night that they’d come across the baby smugglers. It seemed a year of nights to Edward.

  “Yes, I suppose that makes sense. But how did you know they would travel by river? How did you know you’d find boats?”

  “A lucky guess,” said Draconas offhandedly. Standing up, he cocked his head, listening.

  “Hear anything?” Edward asked.

  Draconas shook his head. “No, I think this time we’ve lost them. Their commander’s good, whoever she is.”

  “And yet, she is a woman,” said Edward. “I know that history speaks of female warriors in ancient times, but... it seems very strange to me. Against God’s wishes.”

  “Men take life and women give it, is that it?” Draconas asked.

  Before Edward could respond, Melisande came limping back out of the thicket, and he forgot everything in his concern for her. Leaving Draconas to finish with the horses, Edward went to speak to her.

  “You will be glad to hear we are not going to ride anymore. Draconas has found a boat. We will take to the river. How are you feeling? Any better?”

  She had regained some color in her pallid cheeks. She still limped, but her walk was stronger. She looked past Edward at the river, running high and fast due to last night’s rainstorms. The surface of the dark green water was littered with flotsam the river had caught up in its passing: tree snags, bundles of sticks from an old beaver dam, a log covered with green lichen. The current carried it all swiftly downstream, into the shadows of the willow trees overhanging the riverbanks.

  Edward saw the river in her eyes and he knew her thoughts, knew them as well as if she’d spoken them aloud.

  “So too are you caught up in the swift current,” he said. “Swept downstream to an unknown fate. You are not alone, Melisande,” he added earnestly. “Never think you are alone.” He glanced out at the river that ran so very fast and broad and deep and the end of it nowhere in sight. “Wherever the water takes us, it will take us together. So I do swear, upon my honor.”

  Her blue eyes held the river in them for long moments, then their gaze shifted and Edward saw himself reflected in them. He touched her hand and this time, she did not flinch. Fingers brushed his and they were frightfully cold. He curled his fingers over hers and felt her skin start to warm.

  A horn call pierced the air. High-pitched, thin and wailing as a wraith’s dismal cry, the call spooked the horses and raised the hair on Edward’s neck. Melisande’s hand clutched his spasmodically, and the two stood immobilized until long after the horrid sound had ceased.

  “What was that?” Edward gasped.

  “Bellona,” Melisande said in a low voice. “The call is meant for me. She is telling me that I cannot escape my fate.”

  “Nonsense—” Edward began.

  She pulled away from him.

  “You heard that horn call?” she asked Draconas.

  “The dead heard that horn call, Melisande,” he replied.

  “I am a danger to you,” she went on, not heeding him, talking rapidly. “To both you gentlemen. You should leave me here. Bellona will not come after you. She wants only me.”

  “Absolutely not!” Edward said angrily.

  “I thank you for what you have tried to do for me, Your Majesty,” Melisande said gently, “but it is of no use. I know Bellona. She will not rest until she has ...” Her voice faltered, but she rallied and continued on calmly, “until she has found me. You risk your life for me, Sire, a perfect stranger, and that is not right. You should live to return to your kingdom, your people.”

  “I wish I could claim that His Majesty was completely disinterested,” said Draconas coolly. “But he’s not. He has a stake in your welfare. As I told you this morning, His Majesty came to Seth for—”

  “That’s enough, Draconas,” Edward interrupted, the hot blood mounting to his face. He looked back on his “quest” as a silly, schoolboy adventure, a journey into a minstrel’s tale, not meant to be taken seriously. He realized now how wrong he had been in everything he had done and he was bitterly ashamed of himself. He could not let her die because he had been a thoughtless fool.

  “Believe me, Melisande, when I tell you that I never meant for matters to happen the way they did. I intended to come before your Mistress, dressed in my finest, with gifts precious and valuable, as befit a queen. I meant to bend my knee before her and ask her, humbly, to do me the favor—the very great favor—of traveling to my kingdom to rid it of the dragon who has brought upon us so much misery and destruction. Nothing has turned out as I planned and it is my fault. I knew I was doing wrong to sneak into* the monastery like that. I was playing at being a hero.”

  Draconas stood at his elbow, plucking at his sleeve. “Your Majesty, that horn call was very near. We don’t have time for this.”

  “Yes, we do,” said Edward sharply. He drew in a deep breath, never taking his eyes from Melisande. “I have need of you. I’ll not deny it. I am responsible for the lives of my people. I am pledged to God to give my life to save them, to place myself between them and danger. And I am helpless before this dragon. You have been raised to fight dragons with your magic. Come to my kingdom. Use your magic to save my people. I can never in my life repay you, but I will try, all the rest of my days.”

  “But what of my people?” Melisande asked. “I cannot abandon them, now that I know the truth.”

  “You will come back to Seth,” Edward promised. “And I will come with you. We will come back with an army and you shall ride at its head.”

  Melisande was obviously much impressed with him, but still she hesitated. Perhaps she still did not trust him. The horn blast sounded again, much nearer. She cast a despairing glance in the direction of the sound.

  “And if I do not choose to go with you?”

  “The
n I will stay with you until the warriors find us. I will stay here and tell them the truth about the dragon—”

  Melisande shook her head. “They won’t believe you.”

  “Then I will tell them to take my life,” Edward said proudly, “for I am the one at fault. And I will beg them to spare yours, for you are innocent.”

  She gazed intently at him, trying to see into his heart and beyond, to his soul.

  He faced her confidently, steadfast in the knowledge that, if she chose, he would do what he promised.

  *

  “I believe you would do that,” she said at last in a kind of wonder. “Why? I am a stranger.”

  “Because I brought you to this,” Edward answered simply. “The responsibility is my own and I accept it.”

  A faint blush mantled her cheeks. Her breast rose with a quick, indrawn breath. Her clasped hands trembled. Edward saw admiration in her eyes and something warmer, softer, and his blood tingled through his body, prickled in his fingertips and rushed from his brain to swell his heart, so that he was giddy and light-headed.

  “Will you come with me, Melisande?” he asked. “Or will we stay to face death together?”

  Melisande turned her head, gazed upstream, to where the eerie echoes of the horn call seemed to linger in the air. She bowed her head, gave herself to swift-flowing fate.

  “I will come with you.”

  “You’re very persuasive,” Draconas remarked, as he and the king hastened down the bank toward the boats. “No wonder your people love you.”

  “I meant what I said,” Edward returned coldly. “And keep your voice down.”

  He glanced at Melisande, walking slowly behind, her arms folded across her breast, her head bowed in thought.

  “How close do you think those soldiers are?” Edward asked, abruptly changing the subject. He was still angry at Draconas, but this was no time to start a fight.

  Draconas flicked him a sidelong glance and came as near to smiling as he ever did. “Close enough so that we should not dawdle. Help me haul out the boats.”

  “We don’t need both of them,” Edward protested, eyeing the boats. “They’ll seat eight people, at least. One will do for us and our supplies with room to spare.”

  “True,” said Draconas, “but I don’t want to provide that commander with the means of coming after us.”

  He and Edward dragged off the tarp that covered the boats, carried them one by one out from under their makeshift shelter of tree limbs.

  “There were at least six boats here,” said Draconas, indicating indentions in the wet ground. “The baby-smugglers took three of them, left three behind.”

  They hauled one boat to the water, loaded it with their supplies—food, blankets, water skins. Edward helped Melisande into the boat. She eyed it warily, entered it with trepidation. She had never before been on the water. Using his staff, Draconas staved in the bottom of the other two.

  The boat came equipped with a pair of oars set in oarlocks. Draconas volunteered to handle the oars. Melisande sat in the prow, wrapped in a horse blanket for warmth. She stared nervously at the water rolling past the gunwale. Blanching at the rocking motion of the boat in the current, she clutched the benchlike seat with both hands.

  Climbing over Draconas to reach the stern, Edward bent down to say in passing, “Which way do you think those baby-snatchers went?”

  “Downstream,” said Draconas.

  “The same route we’re taking.”

  Draconas nodded absently, absorbed in testing the movement of the oars in the oarlocks.

  “Is that wise? Suppose we run into them?”

  “We won’t,” said Draconas.

  “How do you know?”

  Draconas shrugged. He tested the oars, first one, then the other.

  Edward bent close, his breath hot on Draconas’s cheek. “I wish just once you’d tell me what you know and how you know it!”

  Draconas looked up at him. “No, you don’t, Your Majesty. And now, we’d best be getting under way.”

  Edward opened his mouth, snapped it shut again. He made his way to the stern, cast off the lines. The river carried the boat rapidly away from shore. A few strong pulls by Draconas on the oars steered them away from the bank and dangerous tree roots and snags.

  Edward was wondering what Draconas had meant by that enigmatic statement and trying to decide if he should have it out with the man, when he heard hoofbeats on the shore. He turned around, stared back into the trees, expecting at every moment to hear the deadly hum of arrows. He saw, receding in the distance, the horses grazing calmly on the grass near the riverbank. No sight of the female warriors.

  Women warriors. He’d never seen women like that, women with hard-muscled bodies and scars roping their arms and legs. Women racing toward an enemy with the fire of death in their eyes. Feminine hands wielding spears and bow and arrows instead of tapestry needles. Half-naked, all of them. He pictured them riding toward him, bodies gleaming in the sunlight. Half-naked and not ashamed, their thoughts focused on their duty. He saw again the curve of a breast as one drew back the bowstring, saw the play of muscle in the arm, and the tightening of the taut, bare abdomen.

  They were beautiful in a disturbing, unsettling way. He didn’t like thinking about them, yet he couldn’t help himself.

  Melisande. His thoughts did not return to her, for they had never truly left her. The images of the warrior •women were so much flotsam, floating on the surface. Melisande was the murmur of the river, ever with him.

  “Go ahead and sleep,” Edward told her. “You’re safe, for the moment.”

  Melisande was too exhausted to argue. Wrapping herself in the blanket, she curled up on the bench, and, despite her awkward and uncomfortable position, the rocking of the boat lulled her into slumber.

  The boat drifted in and out of the shadows of the trees.

  The sun’s rays touched her hair, caused it to shimmer with a golden radiance. Her face, in the shadows, was pale and sad. Her sorrow and her beauty touched something deep within him.

  Edward watched her, and he felt empowered, the guardian of her sleep. Her champion.

  “I am responsible for her,” he reminded himself. “She trusts me. She has given herself into my care. I must cherish her.”

  Cherish.

  The word brought to him, unbidden and most unwelcome, the memory of his wedding vows. Those brought to him the memory of his wife.

  Ermintrude’s face with its cheerful smile and flashing dimples opened up the door of his conscience and peeped in at him.

  He slammed the door shut with haste and stood with his back against it, guilty and ashamed.

  20

  FROM THE TIME THEY WERE CHILDREN, BELLONA HAD loved Melisande. She had been a beautiful child—golden-haired, fair-skinned, her blue eyes possessing a wisdom not usually seen in children, as if she had been born knowing humanity’s secrets. It was not her beauty that had attracted Bellona, though the older girl had loved to watch the little child with hair like sunshine play about the courtyard. The same qualities in Melisande that had brought her to the notice of the Mistress, brought her to the notice of Bellona. At six years old, Melisande had led the games of the other girls. Her quick intelligence had impressed her teachers. She was strongly gifted with the blood bane magic—a skill that Bellona lacked and one that she secretly mourned.

  Slated to be a warrior, Bellona had been marked by her superiors as one who would advance in rank and power. Dark-eyed, dark-haired, her spirit reposed in darkness. She said little, opened her heart to no one, watched, observed, taking part only in those activities that tested her body, enhanced her physical strength.

  As the two girls grew older, Melisande, sensitive to the slightest touch, felt those dark eyes often upon her and she found in the quiet, strong Bellona a place of rest, a place of ease.

  The dragon encouraged love between the women warriors and her priestesses. Thus she kept them both bound to the monastery, bound to each other, bound
to her. Neither knew this, of course, and it would not have made much difference if they had.

  Bellona remembered the first time she had made her love known to Melisande. The memory came to her as a torment, as she was riding her horse along the cliff’s edge, seeking out Melisande, with orders to slay her. Bellona used the memory to spur herself on, jabbed it repeatedly into her flesh until the blood ran. The pain was searing, but it was easier to bear than the pain of loss that left her empty and aching.

  Melisande was sixteen, Bellona eighteen. Bellona was off-duty that night, a Coupling Night. She and Melisande sat in the darkness beneath the trees, eavesdropping on the warriors’ talk, exchanging jokes about the “cows” and the “bulls.”

  Had Bellona been with her warriors, she would have been the first to laugh. Sitting with Melisande, Bellona wondered uneasily how much she understood. She suddenly found the jokes crude and embarrassing, and she wished the warriors would shut up. A young virgin priestess should not hear such things.

  Bellona was just about to suggest that they find someplace quieter, when Melisande gave a little gasp of pain.

  “A bee stung me,” she said in shocked and aggrieved tones. “Look at that.” She held her arm to the light of the fires burning on the walls.

  Bellona could see the reddening bump on the smooth, white skin. “I think the stinger’s still inside.”

  “It might become infected,” said Melisande calmly. “You must suck it out. I would, but I can’t reach it.”

  Something in her voice made Bellona look up with a quickening of her heartbeat.

  “You should go to the healer, Priestess—” Bellona said, feeling her blood pulse in her veins.

  “There’s no time,” said Melisande. “The infection might be spreading. Quick, Bellona. Save me.”

  She held out her arm, so white and soft and fragrant with night’s perfume.

  Bellona put her lips on the warm flesh, felt Melisande trembling. Bellona drew back.

  “I’m sorry!” she gasped, drawing away.