The Royals

Chapter 35

'You'll abide it, but you won't like

'Now I didn't say that 'xactly.' it.'

'You didn't have to.' The witch rose off her stool. She was shorter than he'd expected.

She moved from her pile of refuse to a low table he hadn't noticed earlier. She kept her back to him as she clattered bottles and muttered under her breath. 'There's no rule that says you've got to like what the Sisters decide. You just have to bear it.' She turned around and thrust a large bottle at him. 'Give your wife one good swallow's worth as soon as the child quickens. Do it every morning until the vessel's empty.'

He took the bottle. "Thank you.'

She scowled and shook her head. 'Do not thank me. If the Sisters wish it, your child will live.'

Her voice stopped him at the door. 'One final warning. Follow my instructions exactly. Tell no one of this potion. Especially your wife.'

'But how do I get her to take it?"

'Not my concern. One more thing. Do not ever come back here.' Her expression made sure he would not want to.

Lyda did conceive again and Willam devised all man ner of ways to sneak the fluid into her each and every day. He hovered and worried and watched, but he said nothing. To her questions, he merely answered that he wanted her to be happy.

Her time drew nearer and nearer and he began to actually hope. The delivery was long and hard, but not unduly so for a first child. Laughing and crying, he began loud words of thanks to the Sisters ...

They died on his lips when he saw the midwife.

'I'm very sorry,' she said. "The child...' She shook her head.

He felt as if all the air had been forced from his chest. 'And Lyda?' he asked, afraid to hear.

'Your wife will recover.'

He managed to force out enough air to ask, 'What happened?' The midwife looked truly befuddled. The child was perfect. He simply would not breathe.' She shook her head. Sometimes it's just the Sisters' will.'

The midwife's words, so close to what the witch had said, hit him like a smith's hammer. The Sisters had measured him and found him wanting.

It nearly broke his heart to see Lyda. She was so lovely and so sad, so unbelieving, staring down at their stillborn son.

'I'm sorry, Lyda, so very, very sorry."

'As am I, Willam. As am I.' He held his wife and they cried together long and long.

Railing against the Sisters did no good, but he never asked for anything again. The world was a harsh and unforgiving place. He would simply have to accept it...

Lyda rebelled from the first- no matter that the warmth should have been welcome relief from the cold. She recognized it for the deception it was. She thrashed and tried to catch Ceeley to get them both to shore. No amount of swimming did any good. The river had its own purpose and wasn't interested in hers. When she fought it, it pulled her under to inhale the foul blood then spat her into the icy air. When she eased up, it allowed her to float atop and breathe effortlesly

She could hear Celia's screams and worried that her actions might cause the child anguish, though she knew by now the river would not do them physical damage. They would not drown- as much as she might prefer it.

Unable to bear Celia's screams, she gave in to the river and let it carry her where it would.

Later, she woke in a world of red. Her thoughts were of blood and death. She was aswamp in them just as she had been immersed when she visited the village of ashes.

Willam sang a nonsense song that sent chills down her spine. Ceeley stared glassy-eyed and did not cry out, not once. The silence was more horrible than her heart-wrenching sobs had been.

'Drown me, oh sweet Sisters, drown me,' she prayed. But the Sisters could not hear her underneath so much death. They abandoned her to her past.

... Lyda entered the old woman's cabin. Everything seemed too bright. Candles were lit everywhere, exposing her failure and her shame. The witch was young, vibrant, the very essence of fertility. It was all Lyda could do not to claw out the woman's eyes.

The place was decked out like a bordello, heavy with red, black, and white, and too much lace. 'I know what you seek,' she said in a husky voice, before Lyda could speak. 'And if I do this for you how do you intend to pay for my services?'

Normally a woman who understood the value of coin, Lyda stared dumbfounded at the woman. She had not expected this bluntness. Everyone told her she would need to haggle. She knew how to haggle, but this?

'I would give you whatever is in my power,' she said, even as she realized she'd already given up her bargaining position.

'There is a bracelet in your possession. You know the one."

Magic draws to magic, but still Lyda was surprised the witch knew of the bracelet given into Willam's care. 'I'm sorry, I don't know-'

'Do not lie to me,' she spat.

'_ that I will be able to give you that,' Lyda fin ished lamely. It would be my husband's death.' And hardly worth begetting a child only to raise it father less. '

Never mind. There is a man who waits for me. You will go in my stead and do as he says. If you please him, your child will be healthy."

'Won't he know me?'

'He'll see only me.'

Lyda had no illusions as to the nature of the meet ing. The alternative was worse. She bowed her head,

'How long?'

'A few hours at most.'

'What will I tell my husband?'

'Whatever you like.' The witch muttered some words and knocked on a door. She let Lyda into the adjoin ing room. Indeed he did not know her, but Lyda knew him. And indeed he seemed wholly satisfied.

Lyda hoped it might end there.

She never had to repeat her humiliation, but the man took to shopping frequently in their store, buying trinkets for his girls' as he called them. With each visit, her sin was born anew and she could not tell a soul.

She was almost not surprised when the baby was stillborn. Anger and betrayal were as as the wretched man's visits. commonplace now as the wretched man's visit.

There was no way to avenge herself on the witch or the elves who had forced the bracelet into their care. No way to do anything at all...

Goatboy ran in the frozen wilderness, nearly starving, nearly freezing but somehow not quite doing either. Elves called him, directing him across the Dunavs.

He collapsed in the high passes and lay shivering as the sweat of his labors dried. He could not remember why he needed to continue struggling.

He forgot the frozen trail beneath him, as the goatboy who was and was not Notti found himself transported back to the clearing behind the altar. This goatboy knew he wouldn't be able to abide the One much longer. She hoped to make him party to her loathsome acts, but he would not.

This goatboy had no choice but to step in and stop the t*****e. Step in and die..

A strange ethereal elf seemed to watch over this goatboy. In a glance, he understood the boy's predica ment. 'We all grieve,' the elf said, 'and we do what we can. Soon you will make your escape.' And then the elf was gone.

Goatboy blinked. Wasn't he high atop a mountain? Perhaps he had imagined the entire episode in a frozen delirium.

Goatboy blinked again and returned to the elfwitch's side. The ceremony proved to be more horrible than his worst imaginings. He saw for the first time what his clan had already seen of the dragon prince's excruciating transformation. It was horror itself . . . but ultimately Notti knew the conversion was meant to be. Human was the dragon's proper form.

Not this. This was indecent and vile.

First the elfwitch gathered a small group around her, leaving most of the camp to go about their daily tasks in subdued and fearful silence. When he realized he had been granted a privilege' that his own pious father and stepmother had not, he tried to trade his place for theirs. The elfqueen insisted he must see what happened to those who mistreated him and thereby opposed her.

Goatboy chewed at the skin around his thumb-nail, the nail itself having already been destroyed. The witch slapped his hand out of his mouth. 'Are you not preparing for your manhood celebration? Did I not agree to the lessons? Consider today a preliminary ceremony to that.' She leaned into his face. 'One cannot become a man without learning to embrace the harsh aspects of life. Do not stand there like a frightened boy. Attend!'

The witch was so near and her warning so vivid, yet he could hardly bring himself to watch. He did not want to know more than he must about an achievement so evil as this.

Through unfocused eyes he watched her prepare. Bottles unstoppered, foul-smelling liquids and strange, dried bits of stuff-animal or plant, he didn't know which flowed into her scrying bowl. The tent smelled of evil, of death, of carrion left too long in the summer sun.

Goatboy swallowed his bile.

'Good,' she whispered. 'Very good.'

He did not know if she spoke to him or her magicks. He kept his silence.

The elfwitch waved her hand and a dwarf was brought forward. He looked underfed. His clothes hung on him. His cheeks were sunken, his skin grey. His eyes said he knew his fate and accepted it perhaps as relief to his mistreatment, perhaps simply because he was too weak to fight.

To the elf's untutored eyes, the dwarf seemed no older than Goatboy himself, but he knew dwarves aged differently. He might be older. He might be younger. The elf's stomach twisted at the thought. To never reach a manhood ceremony; to meet such a fate. He turned away from the dwarf before he gave in to the impulse to rescue the poor lad. He's really older than he looks, he told himself.