“I didn’t know there was a queen,” Teb told her. “I thought her long dead. I am curious. Is there any harm in that?”
She looked him over, not speaking, holding the lamp high so her own face fell into angled shadows.
“Isn’t she lonely? Wouldn’t she like a visitor?”
“She has me. I am all she needs. The king would be furious if he knew you were here.”
“Do you mean to tell him?”
At that moment the door flew open and the old woman stood leaning against the sill. “What is it, Roderica? Who are you talking to? Bring him in here.”
She was dressed in a pale pink dressing gown with quantities of ruffles, an old gray sweater pulled over it. Her feet were shod in heavy sheepskin slippers. Her white hair flew wildly around her thin, wrinkled face. She leaned heavily on the doorframe as Roderica reached for her, then nearly fell as the young woman steadied and turned her toward the bed. Teb followed them into the room.
When she was ensconced at last under the tumbled blankets, she fixed her faded blue eyes on Teb. “Well? Who is he, Roderica? Why did you bring him here?”
“I didn’t. He followed me. He is a prince of Thedria, selling horses.”
The old woman’s laugh ended with coughing. “I do not buy horses, young man. I am past that.”
“I came here out of curiosity. Why do they lock you up?”
“The king locks me up. He has no longer any use for me. He finds my weakness and infirmities unpleasant. I am content here with my own company. As you can see, it is a comfortable chamber. I do not have to make any decisions here, or be civil to visitors.”
It was an opulent chamber, but windowless, one of the rooms dug from the side of the mountain. He didn’t know how anyone could stand to be so trapped. He studied her pale blue eyes, faded to white around the edges, and wondered if she was mad.
“I suffer from a variety of ugly infirmities, young man. They linger from the plague that beset Dacia. I nearly died of it. I am comfortable here and not stared at. Roderica takes care of my needs and brings me the palace gossip.”
Teb stayed with her for some time, telling her lies about Thedria. Whatever she knew of it would likely be from her youth. Countries change. Roderica sat removed from them in a far corner, knitting, looking sour and resentful.
The queen told him Roderica had been with her since the girl was six, and was her only friend. She did not speak of the king again. There was something about the old woman that interested him, something that piqued his curiosity. Maybe she would tell him more if he asked no questions. She seemed uncaring about the affairs of the palace. When he mentioned war, as he described his horses, she seemed to cease to listen, staring down at her wrinkled hands and running one finger along her swollen knuckles. He left her at mid-morning, walking back through the dark, windowless halls with Roderica.
“She is lucky to have you for a friend,” he said. “She must resent being shut away from palace life.”
“She does not resent,” Roderica said sullenly. “The queen is of a very even nature.” She cast him a hard look, devoid of all the coquettish giggling he had seen at other times. “As for the queen’s interest in palace life, I bring her all the news she requires.”
“And she is never angry at being a prisoner?”
“The queen does not get angry.”
“Never?”
“Only if her meals do not suit her. I do the best I can about them. As to the . . . larger issues, the queen’s feelings remain removed from them. She does not believe in being . . . emotional.”
“I see. And you?”
“What is there to be emotional about? People will do as they please. Nothing will change them.”
His temper flared. He caught himself before he turned on her, biting back his words.
He studied the sharp shadows cast up her face by the lamp she carried. She puzzled him. She seemed a person who followed whatever cause suited her at the moment without any inner commitment—to good or to evil. As if she was little more than a shell.
Maybe the old queen would prove to be much the same, but for some reason he liked her better.
When Roderica left him, turning down her own corridor, he went directly to the stables to see to the tedious training of clumsy soldiers. As he saddled Seastrider he shared with her, in silence, his thoughts about the queen and Roderica. The queen was the more interesting of the two. She was abrupt, had made rude comments about some of the customs of Thedria, and seemed to soften only when he spoke of the talking animals of that land. She caught herself at once, though, and was surly again. Maybe she felt rudeness was a luxury of illness and old age.
He suffered a day of training, taking his three mounted soldiers down the hills toward the city, where they passed loaded wagons of grain bags and stores hidden in linen wrappings. Many wagons unloaded at a long building behind the stadium, and others made their way up the mountain to the palace, to be emptied somewhere behind the inner wall. Food, he supposed. But maybe weapons, too. Interesting that the country had deteriorated so much that it must import food rather than grow what it needed. All the land to the north was open. The farms there lay fallow, fields of crusted brown soil and weeds that could be seen clearly from the palace.
Teb used the sleep song again that night, and the dragons took to the sky like startled birds, not pausing until they were miles out over the sea, away from the palace and all connected with it. Below them lay the small land of Liedref, awash with the aura of dark.
On Liedref they found a young woman gone sour and evil under enchantment of the dark. She had once served the King of Edain as teacher and mistress of his children. He had helped her escape Edain with the children, believing she would keep them safe while he remained behind to battle the invaders. But she was weak, driven by small, greedy envy. The dark found her an easy mark. Soon she was its pawn, caring for nothing but its blood-lust. She murdered three of the king’s children and took the other two into slavery.
Even dragon song could not drive the dark from her. Teb fought for her, surrounding her with visions of warmth and caring from her past. But the dark was a mindless force within her. It roared a challenge that pounded in Teb’s mind, so his own voice faltered.
The dark won. The host it held was too weak and had embraced its evil too long. In one last, losing effort to free herself, the woman lunged at a dark disciple and stabbed him with his own knife, stood watching his fallen body seep out colorless blood. “I didn’t know they could die,” she whispered. “I didn’t know . . .”
Then she plunged the knife into her own heart, too weak to leave the dark, too filled with its ways to live without it. “I didn’t know they could die. . . .”
“They can die,” said Teb bitterly, as he held the dying woman. He was able to free the children. The two small girls came sleepily to Seastrider and put their arms around her nose.
All the rest of that night, with the lopsided moon hiding, then showing itself between clouds, Teb and the dragons sang. They freed the minds of the thirty-seven children and two dozen adults, saw consciousness come back to them and the knowledge of who they were. Teb felt their understanding as they were linked once more to their pasts. He felt the excitement of the children as, newly freed, they thought for the first time of real futures chosen without restraint. He felt Seastrider’s joy for the children returned from slavery to life. He gave her a hug and mounted. The dragons swept into the wind, racing dawn back to the palace. They dropped down onto the hills as the first gray light touched the sky. They changed quickly, to gallop back toward the stable.
But near to the stables the four horses paused, snorting and staring.
What? Teb said.
Someone hiding in the dark, said Seastrider.
A whole army?