Chapter Eleven
She woke slowly, roused by raised voices, and disoriented. The room she woke in was not her own, and gave her a pause before she realized that she was in Dórainn's bedchamber, sprawled on his bed, in the room she'd been in only once. But the voices were getting louder, and she blinked, confused by it. One was Dórainn's voice, but he was shouting—he never shouted. And the other… There was no one in the tower but Dórainn, the dragon and the cat, and the dragon's voice was a deep, rough rumble—one she'd heard countless times as a child, listening curiously from the very top of the stairs. The other voice had no place here, not now…
Shaking her head, wincing at the headache weeping had put there, she climbed out of the bed. The room was so gloomy, and so very bare, she thought. Only the bed, a clothes chest, and a table, littered with a few tools, a shaving kit, and a book or two laying on its surface. And a brace of daggers, long and lethal inside their sheaths. She had never seen him wear them before.
There was a shout from downstairs, harsh and strangely exultant. She turned away from the room, and hurried down the stairs, emerging from the staircase in time to see Dórainn jerk away from Caoin, cold violence written on his narrow face. Then he flung out a long-fingered hand, and magic with it. She didn't see the blast of mage-craft from the gesture, but she felt it, saw it knock Caoin back toward the window. And then there was no thought, but action.
-8-8-8-
Pain ripped through his shoulder, burning like hellfire where the brat had placed his blade. Fool, to turn his back, no matter how harmless the boy looked. Dórainn jerked back from the Prince, felt the dagger rip out of him again before he instinctively hurled out the power that had boiled up.
Caoin staggered back, hit the ledge of the window, and then, to his horror, felt himself falling backward.
"Sh—" A blur of gold flashed past Dórainn as he attempted to regain his own balance, and reach for the boy at the same time. He felt his heart stop, felt his world constrict. "Rapun—"
She bolted for the window herself, grabbing for the prince. And everything seemed to slow for the sorcerer, rooted to the spot as he watched Caoin's weight tug her after him.
He may have shouted—certainly, he sent magic winging after them, pure, raw magic that would shape itself, and save her. Thorn, he begged silently, working the spell frantically, forced to resort to rhyming like the most uneducated of hedgewitches to put the power into effect as quickly as he needed, thistle, briar rose. Sheath thy blades—Aid me and pose, your reward to choose, but protect the girl I can't bear to lose.
Then he turned and rushed for the stairs, bolting down them so quickly he nearly sent himself to his own death half a dozen times, trying to descend as quickly as possible.
-8-8-8-
Cináed watched him, and got to his feet, out of the sorcerer's way. And when Dórainn flew out of the tower, heedless of the blood trailing behind him, the dragon followed quickly.
Cináed nearly tripped over the sorcerer in his haste to follow.
Dórainn had stopped a few steps beyond the door, and stood, silently watching the prince lead fair-haired, unharmed Rapunzel over to where a servant waited with a tall white palfrey.
He seemed to have yet to notice that blood still flowed down his arm from the wound in his shoulder, still dripped a steady staccato tempo into the earth at his feet. Beside them, wrapping around the tower like ardent lovers, hundreds of thick vines climbed and clung to the stone. Some still bore roses, the hearty briars that flourished here in the bitter North, red as blood. Others had thorns as long as the sorcerer's forearm. How much magic had the mage used, to pull those plants from the ground so quickly, with no preparation, in the dead of winter? Surely too much. He couldn't have retained more than the veriest scraps of his strength.
"You'll want to take your freedom now."
The dragon looked away from where the pretty blond girl was being helped onto the horse. The sorcerer's voice was emotionless and flat—nearly, Cináed noted, as hollow as those grey eyes of his.
The fool mage had lost his heart to the lass on the white horse, the dragon thought, and surprised himself with a feeling alarmingly close to pity.
"So it would seem," he responded. Strangely, ten years of anger—little enough time to him, as ten years was to him as a year, if even that, was to a human—had disappeared like smoke. In its place was irritation—stupid, idiot fool, offering him a fight when he wasn't full strength. It insulted them both—nothing more.
Dórainn turned. He moved carefully, as though every movement ground his bones together. His face was ashy, magic fatigue already showing on it. If the results were that visible, the mage had nothing left to throw at him—and little more than sheer will keeping him standing, either.
"Come, then."
"I could kill you with a blow," Cináed growled, and refused to take the step back he wanted. Damned if he would retreat, no matter how uncomfortable he was with the mage's sudden request for death.
The mage's mouth quirked, and he lifted his gaze to the dragon's. "You could, yes."
He wanted the end of it. Surely, it couldn't hurt more, not now. Here, he'd thought he'd prepared himself for the pain of Rapunzel's departure—instead, it had cut him off at the knees, and left him raw and bleeding and stunned with the pain a thousand times the worse than last night's. If there could be worse, he didn't want to feel it, didn't think he could stand to bear it.
There was pride to consider, too—his, the dragon's. Cináed, he hoped, would need a battle to the end to assuage his, and his own wouldn't let him sink to preparing himself poison, or let him beg outright. Better to die now, at the claws of an old friend now lost to him, than to let himself fade slowly into madness.
It would come, he knew, the madness. He could already feel the subtle tug of it, the awful loneliness of it, the insidious voices that would never let him alone if he gave in to them even once. And if madness didn't take him, Rìoghainn would have a mob after him soon, to finish the mess. He didn't fear passing, not really. He was a mage, a scholar, and what was death but one of the gateways to be passed through?
But he could also feel the strong, greedy life, pounding through his veins, dripping from his shoulder more slowly now, and knew he wasn't strong enough to end it himself. Only three, as far as he could figure, had a right to his life; Roarke would have only grown cold-eyed, should he say such a thing, and even with thirty-nine winters behind him, he dreaded disappointing the man; Rapunzel had already gone, and would have been horrified besides. So it would have to be Cináed.
"You insult us both, mageling," the dragon rumbled. There was fresh temper in his eyes—not the old, ten-year rage nurtured in the bottom of the tower, but new, bright and hot and aimed at him.
Dórainn added to it by smiling again.
"Yes. I bound you," he reminded, when Cináed turned away. Slowly, he turned back. "Bound you, and on guard duty, too. I, then a mage of a measly three decades, and you, Cináed, a hoar-dragon of nine centuries. That's nine centuries and ten years, now, thanks to me. Ten years without home, mate or child," Dórainn taunted softly, not bothering now to push away regret—he couldn't regret Rapunzel's safety, but the way he'd ensured it, at the expense of a friend's happiness, he could, with ease.
Nine and twenty, mageling, the voices chorused. Nine and twenty lives.
The dragon reacted with a speed that Dórainn, briefly distracted, nearly missed. He was on his back in an instant, landing heavily in the icy mud, and was pinned there immediately, one of Cináed's huge, talon-tipped paws settled heavily on his chest. Here was death, in several tons of angry dragon, swift and immediate. He opened himself to it, forced down the insistent part of himself that demanded he live. Forced, more viciously, down the part of him that saw, for an instant, a flaming serpent in his old friend's place.
Then…nothing.
"You've grown soft, Cináed," the sorcerer said quietly. Carefully, awkwardly, he pulled back together the veil of magic and will that hid his vulnerable life force, as suddenly as shamed as any rash lad whose impetuous proposal had ever been rejected carelessly.
"Did you think I would play your game?" the dragon growled in return, his large head inches from Dórainn, his daggerish teeth bared in a vicious snarl. "Did you think I would make it easy for you, and kill you?"
"I had hoped."
"You haven't even the strength to heal this, do you?" he asked, flicking one of those five-inch-long claws over the stab wound. It throbbed in response, a sharper pain in a world where every breath he took brought with it a dull, pounding ache that crested through his entire body.
"No."
"Fool," the dragon spat.
"Yes." He was, to believe the dragon would not have seen through the rather weak ruse. To believe he could escape, so easily, so painlessly, to where none of it mattered.
"You aren't worth the effort it would take." There was disappointment in the dragon's voice, hot and bitter, sowing more shame. "Bleed to death then, if you will it."
He didn't bother to answer, and Cináed lifted his paw with a look of disgust and stalked away, toward the mountains. He would not be coming back.
It would be the madness, then, the slow, gradual torture of it, or the blade of one of Rìoghainn's soldiers. But until then, he was alone, and not even strong enough to heal himself.
He picked himself up wearily, and walked to the tower. What had he expected, really? He wondered, a thin, humorless laugh managing to escape a throat that was tight with bitter agony. There were some destined for happiness, others, not. His happiness, after all, had just ridden away on a white horse, in the arms of another—younger, more eligible, more suitable—man.
The stairs were surely higher and longer than they'd ever been before. It was hell, to climb them for what seemed forever. There was nothing waiting for him to speed his way, no light, no welcome. Just a cat who preferred the one who'd gone, and ghosts with the voices of devils.
Kier met him at the door, with an irritated yowl at being left alone. He followed the sorcerer as Dórainn got out bandages and herbs, sat watching him as he mechanically placed a poultice on his wound and bound it up—the knife, it seemed, had struck one of the small, high-up ribs just under his clavicle, saving him from a messy, rather swift death—followed him when he went, stiffly, to change clothes. The wound hurt, the sorcerer supposed, or would when his heart stopped splintering in his chest and he could feel something beside this horrid medley of despair and pain.
The silence was profound, here in the tower without her. Was this how she'd felt every time he'd gone out? He hoped to the gods it hadn't been, hoped that he had not broken his vow that she would not be harmed by his choices by leaving her here.
Had she, though? Had he blindly endangered her, unknowingly put her in the same dangers he himself had been in, noticed only later, in his mage master's home? There were many things here, needed for mage-craft, that were dangerous—ceremonial knives kept sharp, herbs that could kill with the smallest of amounts, objects with power that could harm the mind in terrible ways. Had he, weighed with guilt, neglected her to the loneliness he now faced?
The possibility left him cold and ill in his gut, fighting to keep from doubling over with the regrets, and the loneliness. He'd once craved nothing but his privacy—every young man eventually needs to leave the home of his parent, even he, and even the home of his foster parent-mage master—but now it seemed he could no longer be content with his own company, now that he had loved and lost. It wasn't better, he'd found, to love, not always. Not now.
He rose from the chair before the dying fire, wandered the tower like one of the ghosts from his own memories. Here, on the door jam, the marks of how tall she had grown over the years. There, her books, the ones he had purchased in markets, stood beside his, abandoned in her haste. Her favorite mug, the white frock she'd never worn and never would. Her paintings and drawings upon the walls, making it all so much more cheerful than he ever could have.
He picked up the cloth, staring at it blindly, and wondered blearily why it would affect him so profoundly; create its own personal crack in the heart he wasn't sure she hadn't taken with her as she'd gone, when he was surrounded in things she'd left behind. He wanted to weep, wanted to simply bury his face in it and weep. He would have, but something beyond pride halted him, stopped the release of pain. The braid, perhaps, that lay there on his floor still, a silent, eloquent accusation. Or a lack in him, he supposed, some deficiency of emotional reaction. He put down the girdle again, and walked to the braid, bent to lift it from the floor and wrapped it loosely around his hand like a talisman. Holding it, he paced to the window, stared out, to the west, where she would be going.
She would marry well, in the Seòbhrach Rubha court. There must be someone there who would be kind enough, smart enough, to win her heart. Perhaps she would wed the prince himself. She would be in no danger there—Rìoghainn would take her as a ward until she married, if only to rub it in his face. Rapunzel would lack for nothing, would want for nothing.
It was best, really, that she be there instead of here. Best for her, anyway, as pain shot through him, pounding against his temples, battering him against the iron walls of control. She was welcome to dismiss the evil mage who'd stolen her from hearth and home. He had no such entity to blame, though, save himself.
And the length of her hair still smelled of the lavender water she'd washed it with.
The cat meowed, insistently, and reared back on his hind paws to dig sharp fore-claws warningly into Dórainn's leg. Breakfast, he demanded, and now. The cat cared nothing of the mage's pain and self-pity. Appreciating the cat's distraction even if he didn't enjoy the mild pricks of his claws, and disgusted by his own melancholy, the sorcerer fed him. He was thanked with a haughty swish of a grey tail, as Kier took the bit of beef and saucer of milk as his due.
There was nothing left here for him, the sorcerer knew, except insanity and death. So he would go, where he could mourn in solitude the loss of a dream he'd always known would never come to anything, where he could court the madness on his own terms, and defy the death Rìoghainn had once threatened him with.