Dragon Rose(68)

“Rather rough luck on us, I should say,” I interjected. “What did we have to do with it?”

“Only that Lirinsholme has always been under the protection of Black’s Keep, and so I suppose he thought you should share my doom.”

It still seemed grossly unfair, but I thought then that this unknown mage did not seem to be the most logical of men. I lifted my shoulders.

Theran appeared to take that as his signal to continue. “Having done his work, and taken from me my body, my person, he disappeared. I thought he had done his worst, and although it was dreadful beyond words, I thought I might someday come to live with it. Surely it could not be so difficult as it sounded to find a young woman who would learn to look past what the curse had wrought, to see the man I had once been. But then the first Bride came to Black’s Keep.”

His hesitation this time was so lengthy I began to wonder whether he intended to say any more. At last he said, “She feared me, of course, but she was treated well, and at first I thought we might be able to get along together well enough, even if she could not love me. Then she began to act oddly…stayed in bed for days at a time, would not speak to me, would not speak to anyone. And then one day, only three months or so after she had come to live in the castle, she flung herself from the tower.”

I shut my eyes, trying to will away the image of the young woman’s body hurtling from a window, gown fluttering in the air before she smashed into the pavement below. That could have been me.

It almost was.

Theran’s voice went on, “I began to see then. I vowed I would not take another Bride. That resolve lasted a good seven or eight years. Then a mysterious wasting illness struck the population of Lirinsholme. I thought it only a coincidence. But immediately afterward the River Theer flooded its banks and devastated half the town. Out of desperation, I called for another young woman to be sent to me. And the illness faded away, and the river receded to its proper course. Obviously, the mage had foreseen I might avoid taking a new wife, and so made sure the consequences of doing so would be far worse than the death of a single woman.”

His voice was calm, quiet, as if he were relating events that had happened to someone else. I opened my eyes and saw that his hands were knotted into fists, almost as though he still strained against his past impotence. Obviously his calm was but a surface thing.

“I thought I would be clever this time. This urge to suicide did not come suddenly, but crept in after weeks of malaise. And so when I saw the signs in my second wife, I made sure she was watched around the clock, and never left alone. When she attempted to drown herself while taking a bath, a servant was there to pull her out, and she was kept in her bed, restrained, so she might do herself no harm.”

The corners of his mouth lifted in the slightest of smiles, but there was no humor in the expression, only a weary amusement at his na?veté. “That seemed to work for a time…until one of the servant girls slipped on the steps in this very tower and broke her neck. The next day, one of the grooms was thrown from a horse and trampled to death. My steward suffered a palsy and collapsed in the courtyard. And so I understood that here, too, was no refuge. If I prevented my Bride from taking her life, just as poor Lianna had taken hers, then everyone in my household would be made to suffer. Again, I could not sacrifice many lives just to save one. And so I removed the restraints from Elliane myself. The next night she broke the pitcher of water by her bedside and slashed her wrists.”

I wanted to shut my eyes again, but I could not. I could not turn away from the agony naked on his face. “It seems a terrible sacrifice for simple heedlessness. You could not have known Lianna looked on your time with her as anything more than the casual amusement you thought it was.”

“Perhaps. I was young and foolish, and knew little of young women. I should have taken more care. But even with that, the punishment was…severe. I can only think Udell wanted me to suffer as he had, for me to see a young woman cast herself away and know I could do nothing to stop it.” He shook his head. “I cannot begin to understand his madness, and his vengeance. I only knew I was doomed to watch this horror repeat itself through the years, for in cursing me with a dragon’s form, he had cursed me with a dragon’s longevity as well. And so it went, for more years than I wished to count. Until…”

“Until?”

“Until you came here, Rhianne.” Some warmth returned to his features, and the thin lines of his mouth softened. “You seemed different to me, but I tried to tell myself that was only a vain wish. I did not want to become close to you—I only wanted to make sure you were comfortable here until the inevitable time came.”

No wonder he had done everything he could to keep some distance between us. He could not allow himself to care, not after so many years, so many deaths…. “I fear I did not take the hint.”

“No, you did not, and may the gods bless you for that. I felt the first stirrings in my heart, the first glimmer of hope. And then when you seemed to slip away, when all seemed lost again….” He shook his head. “I could not bear it, and yet I knew I could do nothing.”

“And yet you saved me.”

“Yes. The gods only know what it was that sent me roaming the corridors this night, for it is not something I often do. But I saw your door ajar and set out to find you. I knew you had gone to Sirella’s tower before—”