Me and My Shadow (40 page)

“What the weyr does is none of my concern,” he said darkly. “I will have that sword. Where did you put the prisoner you took?”

“Thala? Drake has her in a storage room, I believe.”

“I will question her. Perhaps she can be of some use to us,” he said, turning on his heel and striding toward the back of the house.

I followed him a few steps, debating whether I wanted to go with him, let Drake ply me with whisky, or see how the apprentice was doing. A strong, overwhelming need to be with Gabriel won out, sending me to the long sitting room. I found Gabriel kneeling next to the apprentice Tully, who sat hunched over in an armchair in the corner of the room. Savian was flaked out on the couch, covered with a blanket.

I sat on my heels next to Gabriel as he asked Tully to continue.

“I'm . . . it's difficult,” she said slowly, her voice thick with some strong emotion. Pain? Loss? It was something she felt deeply. “There was something—something indescribable. It filled me with happiness and dread at the same time, as if I was being torn from paradise and flung into Abaddon. A light shone through me, a brilliant golden light, so pure it made me want to weep with joy, but then it was gone, and blackness filled its void.”

“She is describing the re-forming of the heart,” Gabriel said softly, his hands on her knees. “She felt the dragon heart re-form and be shattered.”

“I thought only dragons could feel that?” I asked.

He nodded. “All dragonkin felt the re-forming of the heart. It connects all of us. But this mage . . .” His gaze didn't waver off her for a second.

Tully, clearly uncomfortable with his regard, covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

“What is wrong with her?” Savian asked from where he lay on the couch.

I looked at Gabriel. “Dragons can't be mages.”

His gaze moved from Tully to me, his eyes troubled. “One has managed to do so.”

“But . . . surely there is no connection?”

“I have never done a better day's work, and I have guided well over a hundred new souls into this world.” Kaawa entered the room, stretched, and looked around her with pleasure. “I am glad to see you returned from your visit to the Akasha, wintiki. Your journey was successful?”

“Yes, it was. I'm officially free from Magoth.” I stood up to greet Kaawa, moving slightly away from Tully to do so. At the sound of another voice, Tully stopped sobbing into her hands, fumbling in her pocket for a tissue to wipe her eyes.

Kaawa started toward us, caught sight of the woman on the chair, and faltered, her face suddenly frozen with shock. She lifted a hand and pointed at Tully, her mouth moving, but no sound coming out.

“What's wrong?” I asked as Gabriel went forward to her side.

“Mother? Are you unwell?”

“She,” Kaawa said, still staring in absolute astonishment at Tully. Her finger wavered a little as she pointed. “It's her.”

“The mage apprentice?” I asked, glancing at Tully. She looked up in complete befuddlement at Gabriel's mother, clearly not understanding why the other woman was so stunned to see her.

“No.” Kaawa shook her head, then said the last thing in the world I expected her to say. “That is no apprentice. That is no mage.”

Gabriel and I exchanged confused glances before looking back at his mother.

She stared at Tully with an intensity that raised the hairs on the backs of my arms.

Savian propped himself up on the couch, watching with interest as Tully rose from the chair, one hand at her throat. “I'm sorry. I don't . . . do I know you?”

“That is a not a mage. That is a black dragon,” Kaawa announced, her voice ringing pure and clear in the silence of the room. “That is a wyvern's mate.”

Goose bumps crawled up my spine as I looked at Tully.

“That is
his
mate. That is Ysolde de Bouchier. She is alive. Baltic's mate is alive.”

I stood in the kitchen doorway and watched as a group of four men rode into the bailey, all armed for battle.

“Ysolde! What are you doing here? Why aren't you up in the solar tending to Lady Susan? Mother was looking for you!” Margaret, my older sister, emerged from the depths of the kitchen to scold me.

“Did they get her out of the privy, then?” I asked with all innocence. Or what I hoped passed for it.

“Aye.” Her eyes narrowed on me. “It was odd, the door being stuck shut that way. Almost as if someone had done something to it.”

I made my eyes as round as they would go, and threw in a few blinks for good measure. “Poor, poor Lady Susan. Trapped in the privy with her bowels running amok. Think you she's been cursed?”

“Aye, and I know by what. Or, rather, whom.” She was clearly about to shift into a lecture when movement in the bailey caught her eye. She glanced outside the doorway and pulled me backwards, into the dimness of the kitchen. “You know better than to stand about when Father has visitors.”

“Who are they?” I asked, looking around her as she peered out at them.

“An important mage,” she answered, holding a plucked goose to her chest as she watched the men. “That must be him, in the black.”

All of the men were armed, their swords and mail glinting brightly in the sun, but only one did not wear a helm. He dismounted, lifting his hand in greeting as my father hurried down the steps of the keep.

“He doesn't look like any mage I've ever seen,” I told her, taking in the man's easy movements under what must be at least fifty pounds of armor. “He looks more like a warlord. Look, he's got braids in his hair, just like that Scot who came to see Father a few years ago. What do you think he wants?”

“Who knows? Father is renowned for his powers; no doubt this mage wants to consult him on arcane matters.”

“Hrmph. Arcane matters,” I said, aware I sounded grumpy.

Her mouth quirked on one side. “I thought you weren't going to let it bother you anymore?”

“I'm not. It doesn't,” I said defensively, watching as my father and the warlord greeted each other. “I don't care in the least that I didn't inherit any of Father's abilities. You can have them all.”

“Whereas you, little changeling, would rather muck about in the garden than learn how to summon a ball of blue fire,” Margaret laughed, pulling a bit of grass from where it had been caught in the laces on my sleeve.

“I'm not a changeling. Mother says I was a gift from God, and that's why my hair is blond when you and she and Papa are redheads. Why would a mage ride with three men?”

Margaret pulled back from the door, nudging me aside. “Why shouldn't he have guards?”

“If he's as powerful a mage as Father, he shouldn't need anyone to protect him.” I watched as my mother curtsied to the stranger. “He just looks . . . wrong. For a mage.”

“It doesn't matter what he looks like—you are to stay out of the way. If you're not going to tend your duties, you can help me. I've got a million things to do, what with three of the cooks down with some sort of a pox, and Mother busy with the guest. Ysolde? Ysolde!”

I slipped out of the kitchen, wanting a better look at the warlord as he strode after my parents into the tower that held our living quarters. There was something about the way the man moved, a sense of coiled power, like a boar before it charges. He walked with grace despite the heavy mail, and although I couldn't see his face, long, ebony hair shone glossy and bright as a raven's wing.

The other men followed after him, and although they, too, moved with the ease that bespoke power, they didn't have the same air of leadership.

I trailed behind them, careful to stay well back, lest my father see me, curious to know what this strange warrior-mage wanted. I had just reached the bottom step as all but the last of the mage's party entered into the tower, when that guard suddenly spun around.

His nostrils flared, as if he'd smelled something, but it wasn't that which sent a ripple of goose bumps down my arms. His eyes were dark, and as I watched them, the pupils narrowed, like a cat's when brought from the dark stable out into the sun. I gasped and spun around, running in the other direction, the sound of the strange man's laughter following me, mocking me, echoing in my head until I thought I would scream.

“Ah, you're awake.”

My eyelids, leaden weights that they were, finally managed to hoist themselves open. I stared directly into the dark brown eyes of a woman located less than an inch from my own, and screamed in surprise. “Aaagh!”

She leaped backwards as I sat up, my heart beating madly, a faint, lingering pain leaving me with the sensation that my brain itself was bruised.

“Who are you? Are you part of the dream? You are, aren't you? You're just a dream,” I said, my voice a croak. I touched my lips. They were dry and cracked. “Except those people were in some sort of medieval clothing, and you're wearing a pair of jeans. Still, it's incredibly vivid, this dream. It's not as interesting as the last one, but still interesting and vivid. Very vivid. Enough that I'm lying here, babbling to myself.”

“I'm not a dream, actually,” the in-my-face dream woman said. “And you're not alone, so if you're babbling, it's to me.”

I knew better than to leap off the bed to escape the clearly deranged person, not with the sort of headache I had. Slowly, I slid my legs off the edge of the bed, and wondered if I stood up, if I'd stop dreaming and wake up to normal life.

As I tried to stand, the dream lady seized my arm, holding on to me as I wobbled on my unsteady feet. Her grip was anything but dreamlike.

“You're real.”

“Yes.”

“You're a real person, not part of the dream?”

“I think we've established that fact.”

I felt an irritated expression crawl across my face—crawl because my brain hadn't yet woken up with the rest of me. “If you're real, would you mind me asking why you were bent over me, nose to nose, in the worst Japanese horror movie sort of way, one that guaranteed I'd just about wet myself the minute I woke up?”

“I was checking your breathing. You were moaning and making noises like you were going to wake up.”

“I was dreaming,” I said, as if that explained everything.

“So you've said. Repeatedly.” The woman, her skin the color of oiled mahogany, nodded. “It's good. You are beginning to remember. I wondered if the dragon shard would not speak to you in such a manner.”

Dim little warning bells went off in my mind—the sort that are set off when you're trapped in a small room with someone who is obviously a few weenies short of a cookout. “Well, isn't this just lovely? I feel like something a cat crapped, and I'm trapped in a room with a crazy lady.” I clapped a hand over my mouth, appalled that I'd spoken the words rather than just thought them. “Did you hear that?” I asked around my fingers.

She nodded.

I let my hand fall. “Sorry. I meant no offense. It's just that . . . well . . . you know. Dragons? That's kind of out there.”

A slight frown settled between her brows. “You look a bit confused.”

“You get the understatement-of-the-year tiara.Would it be rude to ask who you are?” I gently rubbed my forehead, letting my gaze wander around the room.

“My name is Kaawa. My son is Gabriel Tauhou, the silver wyvern.”

“A silver what?”

She was silent, her eyes shrewd as they assessed me. “Do you really think that's necessary?”

“That I ask questions or rub my head? It doesn't matter—both are yes. I always ask questions because I'm a naturally curious person. Ask anyone. They'll tell you. And I rub my head when it feels like it's been stomped on, which it does.”

Another silence followed that statement. “You are not what I expected.”

My eyebrows were working well enough to rise at that statement. “You scared the crap out of me by staring at me from an inch away, and I'm not what
you
expected? I don't know what to say to that since I don't have the slightest idea who you are, other than that your name is Kaawa and that you sound like you're Australian, or where I am, or what I'm doing here beyond napping. How long have I been sleeping?”

She glanced at the clock. “Five weeks.”

I gave her a look that told her she should know better than to try to fool me. “Do I look like I just rolled off the gullible wagon? Wait—Gareth put you up to this, didn't he? He's trying to pull my leg.”

“I don't know a Gareth,” she said, moving toward the end of the bed.

“No . . . ” I frowned as my mind, still slowed by the af tereffects of a long sleep, slowly chugged to life. “You're right. Gareth wouldn't do that—he has absolutely no sense of humor.”

“You fell into a stupor five weeks and two days ago. You have been asleep ever since.”

A chill rolled down my spine as I read the truth in her eyes. “That can't be.”

“But it is.”

“No.” Carefully, very carefully, I shook my head. “It's not time for one. I shouldn't have one for another six months. Oh god, you're not a deranged madwoman from Australia who lies to innocent people, are you? You're telling me the truth! Brom! Where's Brom!”

“Who is Brom?”

Panic had me leaping to my feet when my body knew better. Immediately, I collapsed onto the floor with a loud thud. My legs felt like they were made of rubber, the muscles trembling with strain. I ignored the pain of the fall and clawed at the bed to get back to my feet. “A phone. Is there a phone? I must have a phone.”