King's Dragon

Page 18

“Your weak arrows avail you nothing,” said the voice of bells, whether a man or a woman she could not tell. “Where is she?” Liath felt that voice against her like the touch of something old and corrupt dragged over her skin.
“Nowhere you can find her,” said Da, panting, out of breath as if he’d been running.
Sweat started up on her forehead as. she strained to move. But it was only a dream, wasn’t it?
The fire flared suddenly until it flashed, brilliant, and sparks glinted in sudden bursts and then all was dark and quiet.
She slept.
And woke. It was the hour before dawn, the light more a suggestion of gray. She stirred, caught herself with the book pressed against her arm, fingers tingling, half asleep.
Something was not right.
Da had fallen asleep draped over the bench, arms thrown over the table, head lolling at an odd angle. His bow, strung, lay on the floor beside him. Cold all over, she scrambled down the ladder.
Da was not asleep.
The shutters were closed and barred. The door was barred. For eight years, wherever they stayed, there was always a fire in the hearth. Now the hearth lay stone cold.
And there, as if tracked out of the hearth itself, a slender footprint dusted with gray ash. Two of Da’s arrows stuck out from the log wall beside the hearth.
And on the table, next to Da’s right hand, lay a white feather of a kind she had never seen before, so pale it shone.
Wind whistled down through the smoke hole, stirring the feather, smoothing the ash footprint and scattering its lines until no trace remained. She reached for the feather. …
Leave it be!
She jerked her hand back as if Da had slapped it. If you touch anything their hands have touched—
“Where is she?” the voice had said. And Da refused to answer.
She stared at his body. He looked so old, as if his mortal frame would crumble into dust at the slightest touch of wind.
Trust no one.
The first thing she did was to hide the book.
2
THE slow drip of water nagged Liath out of her restless sleep. “Da?” she asked, thinking the trough behind the cottage had sprung a leak again. Then, opening her eyes into the gloom of the cell, she remembered. Da was dead. Murdered.
The thin slit of a window, set high into the earthen wall, admitted only a dim streak of light that the stone floor absorbed like a dry plant soaks in water. The drip still sounded. Liath curled up to sit. Dirt clung to her tunic, but she was too filthy and too tired to brush it off. Her face still hurt from Frater Hugh’s blows. She lifted fingers to her right cheek. Winced. Yes, it had bruised. Her left arm ached, but she did not think it was broken. She allowed herself the barest of smiles: small favors.
She sat forward onto her knees. The movement brought with it a lancing pain in her head, and for an instant she was back in the cottage. She was kneeling on the bench next to Da’s body. It seemed to stiffen as she watched. The door banged open and the draft pushed the white feather against her bare skin.
Pain, like a knife driven into her temple. A voice, so far distant that it was no more articulate than the surf on a rocky shore….
She pressed her palms to her head and shut her eyes, as if that could shut out the vision. Slowly the pain and the memory ebbed. She set a hand on the wall and got up on her feet. Stood a moment, testing her strength.
The drip came from the opposite corner, steady and remarkably even. A dirty pool of water covered the earth there. She didn’t really remember coming in here, but she was sure this must be the Common House root cellar. Even Hugh could not have persuaded Marshal Liudolf to confine her in the church crypt. Which meant, by the drip, that she must be below the pig troughs and therefore just five strides from the edge of the wood. If only the windows were not so narrow and the four iron rods barring it so very thick.
A hissed whisper sounded, sharp and anxious, next to the slit. “Liath? Are you there?”
“Hanna?” Her heart raced with sudden hope. “Did you find the book?”
A gusting sigh, of anxiety lifted, answered her. After a moment Hanna spoke again. “Yes. Under the floorboards, just where you said it would be. And buried it where you said to.”
“Thank the Lady,” Liath murmured.
Hanna went on, not hearing this brief prayer. “But we haven’t enough coin for the debt price. Or…” She hesitated. “Not even the bond price. It’ll be the auction tomorrow. I’m sorry.”
Liath went to the window and grasped an iron bar in each grimy hand. Peering up into the sunlight, she could not quite make out Hanna’s face. “But Da’s four books. Surely they brought a good price. Those four books alone are worth two horses.”