Dragon Rose(12)

Perhaps I had gone mad. No doubt my parents would see it that way, but I must confess I didn’t feel particularly mad. Apprehensive, yes. My thoughts were clear enough, although perhaps they were comprehensible only to me.

Why such a sacrifice, for someone who was none of my kin? As to that, Lilianth and I had been friends since we could barely walk, and, for good or ill, I felt closer to her than I did any of my own sisters, for all that I had a surfeit of them. My parents would mourn, and grieve, and wonder why on earth I had been possessed to do such a thing. Perhaps my mother, with a core of cool practicality that my father had never possessed, might begin to understand one day, after the hurt had begun to ebb just the smallest bit.

What waited for me in Black’s Keep, I didn’t know. No one had seen the Dragon, not in at least twice a hundred years, and even those were tales of greybeards spinning yarns by the fire, talking of a beast that had rained fire and wrath upon Lirinsholme for its brief moment of defiance.

I have to say that the man who expertly guided his horse up the steep mountain road did not seem particularly fearsome. If I had passed him on the streets of Lirinsholme I might not have given him a second glance, save to think he looked more like a fighting man than the craftsmen and merchants who made up the majority of the town’s population. We were a peaceful folk. Possibly some of that peace had been granted by the presence of the Dragon in the mountains above our town. After all, even the boldest of barons would think twice about attacking a town that had its own draconian protector.

The rider was not the talkative sort, and that gladdened me. I could just barely retain a sort of fragile calm while silent; trying to do so while engaged in any sort of conversation would have probably ended in disaster. As it was, I tried to focus on the sparse but delicate wildflowers in shades of blue and white to either side of the path, and the welcome coolness of the wind on my cheek, and the sound of a hawk diving somewhere off to our right.

But all the while the dark bulk of Black’s Keep grew closer, until finally the rider guided his horse up the last of the switchbacks—the animal blowing hard by the time we were done—and we rode onto a plateau bare of any vegetation, where the gates of the castle loomed before us. Here we stopped, and the rider helped me down off the horse before dismounting much more elegantly himself. From seemingly nowhere emerged a young man—barely more than a boy, somewhere around my sister Therella’s age—to take the reins and guide the winded animal off to what I presumed were the stables, although I could see nothing at that moment but the forbidding fa?ade of the Dragon’s home.

“This way,” the rider said, and led me, not through the enormous iron-barred front doors, but off to the side, to a smaller entrance that appeared infinitely more approachable.

The interior was stone, true, but rich hangings covered the grey walls, and a clerestory window high above the door let in a wash of bright afternoon light. I followed the man down the corridor and up a short flight of steps, until he paused in front of a door and knocked.

It opened, and a sturdy-looking woman some years older than my mother looked out. When her gaze fell upon me, I thought I saw the slightest softening of a pair of very firm lips, but she said only, “Goodness, what a windblown mess she is!”

“The breeze was rather brisk,” the man agreed, something in his tone telling me he had had this sort of exchange with her before.

“That may well be. Off, then, for I have much to do.”

He gave her the slightest sketch of a bow, allowed me a ghost of a smile, and turned and went back the way we had come. It was silly of me to feel a pang at his departure, for I did not even know his name, but he had seemed kindly enough…and a kind face is a thing to look for, when one is a stranger in the Dragon’s keep.

But I had little time for wistful gazes, because the woman said, “I am Sar. I have the managing of the household, such as it is. I shall show you to your rooms, and we must get you ready.”

“Ready?” I repeated stupidly.

She did not roll her eyes, but I got the impression that she rather wanted to. “For your wedding, girl. You will be wed to the Dragon tonight. What do they call you?”

“I am Rhianne Menyon.” That was about all I could manage, for her words had chilled me all over. True, I had come here to be the Dragon’s Bride, but somehow I hadn’t thought that dubious event would take place quite so soon.

“Well enough. Now, Rhianne, follow me.”

And she led me up another flight of stairs, and yet another, and then another, until I began to wonder whether I would spend whatever remained of my life climbing one interminable staircase after another. The place had always looked enormous to me, perched on its mountain peak as it was, but only as I followed Sar through its labyrinthine corridors did I begin to understand how massive the castle was, and how it could have swallowed my family’s handsome town house many times over. I saw tapestries, and paintings in an archaic style that made me itch to go closer so I could inspect the artists’ techniques and try to discern what types of pigments they had used. But of course Sar would allow no such dawdling, but guided me through a set of double doors and into a large chamber complete with a hearth, a sitting area with a divan and a low table, and a tall window that let in a magnificent view of the valley below.

I wanted to rush to that window, to drink in the light—it offered an ideal prospect for painting—but Sar moved straight through that room and on into the next one, which was obviously the bedchamber. The bed itself could have probably accommodated my entire family with ease, and I looked up at its enormous burgundy-hung expanse and wondered whether it was that large so it could accommodate the Dragon’s bulk.