“You are brave,” she murmured. “You disobeyed me and came into this horrid cell, with no idea of what you might be facing.”
Cormac could think of nothing to say. Unaccustomed words came; good words. He spoke them.
“I had seen you,” he muttered, with gruff galantry. He would tell her later of the urgency on him for her freedom. At present she was overdue for the kindness of flattery.
“He… it hurt you, I saw it. You fought on. You destroyed it.” She arched her back to look up into his face. “Your brows… your black hair… so fascinating! Am I-are we so, to you, Cormac of the Gaels?”
“Aye.” He gazed down into her wan, angular face and saw that she was both pretty and interested in him as more than saviour and curiosity among her pale people. It came on him that there was no more colour in Riora’s eyes than in an inch of water held in two cupped palms.
“L-Lady Queen…”
It was Dithorba’s voice; neither of them glanced his way.
“Dithorba has a robe for you, Queen of Moytura,” Cormac said.
“I have been… naked so long. It seems forever… Elatha… that foul spider has daily thrown me down on this floor and… used me.” She glanced down. “Aye, I am naked, and queen, and you are clad in iron that is cold and hard-and it grates.” She sighed. “And there are things to be done.” Again she looked up into his scarred face. Her hands pressed his arms, disregarding the chain that indented her skin. “The Queen of Moytura is indebted to you, Cormac mac Art na Gaedhel. Moytura is indebted to you. And… my name is indebted to you, Cormac mac Art na Gaedhel. Moytura is indebted to you. And… my name is Riora. I, Riora, am indebted to you, Cormac, and I thank you.”
While Cormac floundered for words, she released his arms and looked at the other man.
“Thank you, Dithorba,” she said, putting out an arm. “The robe, to make me more a queen and less a woman. Ah-and it’s mine, too!” She smiled, astonishing Cormac who would not have thought her capable, so soon after being released from a stern imprisonment that had been fraught with torture. “Ah, Dithorba, into the queen’s chamber to bring herself her very own robe! How can one trust a man with such abilities? Why-you could be in my very bedchamber at any time.”
Dithorba’s face was stricken. Had Cormac any doubts about the old man’s love for his young queen, they were dissipated now. Riora saw it too, and immediately her smile vanished. Taking the robe to hold against her, she reached forth with her other hand to squeeze her adviser’s bony shoulder.
“Only a jest, my friend. If not before, after this day Dithorba is first among all Moyturans!” Then she turned her head to look at Cormac over her shoulder and from under eyelashes that were more pale than any he’d ever seen. “First, of course… with Cormac mac Art of the Gaels, friend of Danu and Moytura-and Riora!”
While she turned away to don the robe, Cormac and Dithorba kept their eyes fixed as if by honourable pact on each other.
“Hump!” the queen’s voice came brightly. “Neither of you watching? Queen Riora is slipping!”
Both men looked at her with wan smiles.
The robe was a pale blue, that of the sky she had never seen, sewn with a complicatedly twisting design in silver thread, at bosom and down to the girdle, which Cormac now saw was of gold thread and jewelled as well. The silver pattern was repeated at the end of each three-quarter length sleeve and at the gown’s hem, which fell just past her ankles. Strangely, the Gael saw that clothed and with her body outlined and hinted at here and there, she was more fetching than had she been in her shameful nakedness. Now her stance was different, her shoulders back, and her eyes too had changed; the girlish woman had become a queen.
“You said that Elatha was being beaten, Cormac-and you told… the Guardian that he was no more. Which is the case?”
“Unless they’ve beaten him to death, Elatha lives, bound to his own toothy table.”
An expression of pleasure appeared on her face-and then her features stiffened. Suddenly her face was bereft of all warmth and much of its beauty. She moved forward, toward the doorway behind Cormac; he stepped aside. As the Queen of Moytura passed him, she deftly plucked his dagger from its sheath without interrupting her stride.
Aye, five feet one and not a spare ounce of flesh on her save that of womanhood, Riora Feachtnachis was regal.
Cormac looked at the wheel, glanced around at the walls, at the thing on the floor. He looked at Dithorba.
“It’s all of us ye must be taking from here, Dithorba, one by one. And we’d best start now, for who knows what guards may come, or someone bearing food?”
As Dithorba nodded, both of them heard outside the dungeon’s main chamber the sound of respectful greetings to the queen. And Cormac, to whom her eyes and words had shown more than gratitude but greetings to the queen. And Cormac, to whom her eyes and words had shown more than gratitude but indeed the promise of more, the desire for more, thought that which would not have made happy the woman in her:
A crowned woman! A crowned woman!
Then he and Dithorba left that chamber of torture and preternatural horror. Just without the doorway and in the main dungeon again, they paused. Both men stared in silence; they watched while Queen Riora, with viciousness and obvious gusto, killed the bound Elatha. She used Cormac’s dagger, and she did not hurry her ugly work.
With Cormac’s Saxon knife dripping in her hand, she turned to see his frown. Around her stood her people, in silence that may have been shock or approval.
“You look disapproving, my champion,” Riora Feachtnachis said. “Would you have dealt differently with a monster who has tortured me and forced his body on me twice daily for a week?”
Cormac paced toward her, aware of the silent stares of her advisers, her handmaids, her Guard commander and the captain; the queen’s closest aids to brain and body.
“He deserved worse, lady Queen. But when it is necessary that I do death, it’s swiftly I deal it.”
For just a moment she stared, her face working. Then with one hand lifting her skirts, the queen ran to him in manner hardly regal. Clothed now and with her hands wiped, she was heedless of his armour; Riora hugged him.
“You are good, Cormac, trenfher,” she breathed, calling him “champion” once more. “Good, a good man. Moytura needs such, Cormac mac Art; Moytura needs you-Moytura’s queen needs you!”
Over her head Cormac noted the cold glare of Commander Balan. Uncomfortably he said, “We must depart this place, lady Queen. All are released; now Dithorba must transfer us to his quarters, where await your loyal Erris and my friend, Wulfhere.” He pondered; could she end Thulsa Doom’s existence now, though her fair head bore no crown?
“You will come at once, my trenfher?” She did not let go the man who stood so tall over her.
“An he agrees, Balan and I will wait until all others are gone-lest our arms be needed here.”
Riora met his eyes, nodded, and released him. She turned to Dithorba. Cormac saw that she knew the old man’s abilities; she stretched forth her hand to him. Seconds later, queen and mage vanished.
“One wishes you had not bent Elatha’s sword, Cormac mac Art,” Balan said.
He was a large man, far from unhandsome, strongly built and with uncommonly short hair. He was in perhaps the third decade of his life. Both bruises and the marks of hot irons darkened areas of his ribs and chest, and his beard was singed. The man seemed unconcerned by his nudity; his body was good.
Cormac recognized his statement as a challenge, nor had he any desire on him for conflict with the commander of the royal bodyguard. “It’s truth ye speak, Balan. I should not have done. Will ye be straightening the blade, or shall I?”