Read Online Chance by Nancy Springer - Free Book Online

dream of a dragon, and Roddarc lying bloody under its claws.”
    And which is the greatest tyrant, the dragon or Riol’s son or love itself, I scarcely know.
    â€œA woman taken as booty of war … there will be few enough choices for me, Chance.”
    â€œThen stand farther from me, Lady,” he said huskily, “for this closeness brings but pain to both of us.”
    She nodded, kissed her daughter and went away.
    Thereafter, when she came to see Iantha, there would be a doomed dignity about her, an acceptance, that made her seem older than her less-than-twenty years. She had grown, Halimeda. There was something in her as sturdy as oak, as tough as a Denizen’s skin. Not for her, any longer, a noose at Gallowstree Lea.
    Often Chance would leave Iantha with her and spend hours in Wirral, searching for the haunts of the rebels, or so he let her think. He lacked courage to tell her otherwise.… Summer had reached its height. The days were long, and Chance often stayed until after dark in the forest while Halimeda tended the child.
    Iantha was growing rapidly, more so than seemed natural. She had long since outgrown the applewood cradle, and slept by Chance’s cot in a great wicker pannier. Already she walked, and no longer needed diapering. Though tiny, she possessed nothing of baby plumpness; she was small and graceful, with the proportions of a slender four-year-old. She did not talk or even babble, and she never smiled, not even when her mother braided her red-gold hair and whispered into the flower petal of her ear. Iantha seldom cried, but she played listlessly with the toys that were provided for her, and often for hours on end she simply sat and rocked herself or stared.
    Roddarc came to see her in the evenings sometimes.
    â€œShe is so very beautiful,” he said to Chance with a touch of awe. “So delicate. Almost as if—what Halimeda said—have you ever seen such folk, Chance, in the forest?”
    â€œMany times,” he answered promptly, facing his lord across a cup of ale. What made him divulge such truth after all the years, he could not have said, except that Roddarc truly no longer cared. And in an odd way Chance felt closer to his foster brother than ever before. Before too long, he would be meeting him as an equal, to do him the final favor.
    For the time, he told him how he had first made speaking acquaintance with the Denizens. “But there is no dependable aid to be had from them. They are full of caprice, as happenstance as a puff of wind.”
    â€œA lucky chance, eh? Well, so were you, my friend, that ever you were born.”
    He said it so easily that Chance did not need to growl. The two of them sipped their ale, and in her basket the love-child slumbered.
    â€œHave you yet arranged a marriage for Halimeda?” Chance asked after a while, just as easily.
    â€œPowers know I have tried. I have sent missives as far as the Marches. But no noble scion has yet proved willing to take her.”
    â€œThe more fools, they,” said Chance with feeling, and Roddarc looked at him intently.
    â€œYou told me once, you would take her in a moment.…”
    â€œRod, all powers know I have loved her these many years.”
    There. At long last it was said. Pain flooded into Roddarc’s gaze.
    â€œBy my mother’s bones, how I wish I had never been born,” he whispered. “Better that ill-fated spear had taken me instead of your manhood. It was meant for me.” Roddarc sprang up, hands to his head. “Chance, every step I take, it seems I am a curse on you.”
    â€œHad you not heard?” Chance spoke lightly. “Old Riol cursed us both, on his deathbed.”
    The tyrant had died on a distant battlefield, and no one had heard his last words. But Roddarc stared intently at Chance, as if for a moment he believed him. “By blood, I would not put it beyond him,” he muttered, sitting down again, limply, leaning