by Melanie Rawn
The stallion lived up to his name as Maarken guided him along the road leading south from the castle. At length the young man drew rein and smiled as the horse tossed his head, still eager to be racing the spring breeze.
“Just hold that thought, my friend. We’ll be racing in earnest at Waes, and for more than the fun of it. I have need of a few sapphires to grace a certain blue-eyed lady’s neck.”
Continuing at an easy walk, Maarken was not too surprised to find he’d instinctively chosen the way to Whitecliff. Some measures down the coast from Radzyn, it was where the lord’s heir lived after he took a bride. Chay had never inhabited it, for he had been Radzyn’s lord by the time he married Tobin, and for years Whitecliff had been run by stewards. But if Maarken had his way, it would be in use by autumn, and for the purpose for which it had been built.
He knew he should have said something to his parents long ere this. But somehow he did not feel equal to telling them that picking through the various maidens at Waes this year was not his intention, for he had already found the woman he wished to wed. Or perhaps she had found him. He was not entirely sure which, and did not much care. He was only glad it had happened. Just thinking about Hollis brought a smile to his lips—and that this attitude was slightly adolescent bothered him not at all. He had had plenty of examples of foolish lovers all around him since childhood, his parents being the prime culprits in unwittingly nurturing his ideas of romance in marriage. His father had passed his fifty-first winter and his mother was only a few years younger, yet the looks they exchanged when they thought no one was looking were unmistakable. Rohan and Sioned were just the same, as were the Lord and Lady of Remagev, Walvis and Feylin. Even serious Prince Chadric and Princess Audrite had provided an example. Maarken had always wanted the same things for himself: the smiles, the secret glances, even the flashfire of temper. He wanted a woman he could work beside as well as sleep beside, someone he trusted with his thoughts as well as his heart. Without that kind of partnership, wedded life would be little more than waking up each morning to a stranger.
His cheeks flushed as he recalled the many times he’d done just that—and the first morning he’d awakened to Hollis. He should not have, and Andrade had been livid when she found out. But he cared nothing for his great-aunt’s displeasure.
He had been nineteen, and by no means inexperienced. Indeed, his father had once shown him a letter from Prince Lleyn in which the old man wryly complained about Maarken’s propensity for attracting women of all ages at Graypearl. Practically everything in my palace that wears a skirt has chased him quite devotedly since he turned fourteen, and of late I do not believe he has been running as fast as he might. In fact, I believe he enjoys being caught. Chay had waited to show him that letter until Maarken had been knighted and was on his way to Goddess Keep for faradhi training. They had laughed over it, Maarken with crimson cheeks, Chay with smug pride.
But those encounters had been experiments only, quick desire and curiosity easily satisfied. Hollis had ignited in him a fire that had burned steadily for six winters now.
He had been at Goddess Keep only a little while when Andrade had decided that his unorthodox first ring was indeed valid. Rohan had given him the circle of silver set with a garnet during the campaign against Roelstra, when Maarken had called down Fire. He had proved to Andrade that he deserved the ring, and she had given him a plain silver band to wear with the garnet on his right middle finger. Looking into her pale blue eyes, he had heard her tell him that the next day he would go alone into the forest and consult the Goddess regarding his future as a man—but that before then, at midnight, a faradhi woman would come to him and make him a man.
In theory, one never knew who that first sexual encounter was with. It was considered very bad form to try to find out, and it never really mattered anyway. The Goddess herself shrouded the Sunrunner in mystery, concealing identity from the girl or boy who by morning would no longer be virgin. It was only faradhi men and women of seven or more rings who possessed this skill, only they who had the responsibility of making girls into women and boys into men.
Hollis had worn but four rings that winter night. He wondered sometimes if he would have guessed anyway. Even in total darkness, her hair had felt golden in his fingers. Maarken drew in a long breath as if to scent again the tender fragrance of her body.
It was forbidden to speak. They both knew that. Lips were only for kisses and caresses, voices for calling out in delight. Yet when it was over and he rested by her side, his heart still thudding in his chest, he whispered her name.
She gasped and went rigid. Maarken tightened his arms around her, holding fast when she would have escaped him. “No,” she whispered, “don’t, please—”
“You want to be here as much as I want you here.” But then, because he was only nineteen, he added hesitantly, “Don’t you?”
She trembled for a moment, then nodded against his chest. “Andrade’s going to murder me.”
Maarken felt slightly delirious. “She’ll have to get past me to do it,” he answered lightly, “and she won’t risk a hair on my head. Kinsman, future Sunrunner Lord of Radzyn—I’m much too important! She may rant and rave a little, but we’ve both heard her do that before!”
The tension went out of her. “There’s still a problem, though. This was supposed to be your man-making night. I have only four rings, so I can’t have instructed you properly. I’m afraid I haven’t done my duty by you, my lord.”
Maarken gasped in astonishment before he recognized the teasing note in her voice. In his silkiest tones he said, “You’ll have to lesson me again, my lady. I’m a very slow learner. In fact, it’s quite possible you’ll have to go on teaching me all night.”
They forgot that at midnight another woman would come to Maarken’s chamber. They forgot everything but the sweet joy of each other’s flesh. Her hair was a river of gold that seemed to glow with a light of its own in the darkness; almost blind, he brushed the delicate strands from her face, tracing the contours of nose and cheeks and brow with his fingers, learning her face with touch as he had long since learned it with his eyes. His hands learned everything about her, all the colors of her body as clear as the colors of her mind. He lost himself in the sapphire and pearl and garnet of her, deep shining colors that were flung around him like velvet, a perfect pattern of a luminous and beautiful soul.
They were lying together, trading idle kisses, when the door squeaked softly open, Maarken sat straight up in bed and Hollis gave a little cry of fright. A voice Maarken did not recognize came from a woman wrapped in silk shadows.
“Well, well, well.” Suddenly the woman laughed indulgently. “You might as well finish your night so well-begun. Peace, children.”
The door closed, and she was gone.
Maarken gulped. “Who—who do you think it was?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. But whatever she said just now, we’re in trouble, Maarken.”
“I love you, Hollis. This was right.”
“For you and me, yes—but not so far as Andrade is concerned.”
“The hell with Andrade,” he said impatiently. “I told you, she won’t punish us. You heard what whoever that was just told us. The rest of the night is ours. I’m not going to give it up. And I’m certainly not going to waste it!”
“But—”
“Hush.” He silenced her with a kiss. Desire glided through his veins, turning his blood to slow molten sunlight. She resisted for a moment, then sighed and clasped him in her arms.
The next morning he went alone to the tree-circle where farad-h’im sought their futures. Kneeling naked before the motionless pool below a rock cairn, he faced not the Child-tree nor the Youth-tree but the Man-tree. One day he would turn toward the huge pines symbolizing his fatherhood and old age, but not yet. Today, in Sunrunner ritual, he was a man. He conjured Fire across the still Water, plucked a hair from his head to represent the Earth from which he was made, and blew the Air of his own
breath to fan the flames. In them he saw a face: his own, matured and proud, with his father’s strong bones and his mother’s long-lidded eyes. The Fire flared then, and another face appeared beside his own. It was an older version of Hollis that he saw, her tawny hair sleekly braided around her head and bound with a thin silver circlet set with a single ruby, marking her as Lady of Radzyn Keep.
On his return, after more or less recovering from stunned happiness, he found a summons from Lady Andrade waiting. He was impervious to her wrath as she raged at him for disregarding the traditions of Goddess Keep. When she finally snapped out an angry question about his penitence, he smiled at her with perfect serenity.
“I saw Hollis in the Fire and Water.”
Andrade sucked in a breath and gave a terrible frown. But nothing more was said and neither Maarken nor Hollis had been punished. Still, he was heir to an important holding, a grandson of Prince Zehava, and cousin to the next High Prince. He could neither marry nor make a formal Choice without the consent of his parents and his prince. But he was only nineteen, Hollis was two years older, and there was time.
On receipt of her fifth ring that next summer, Hollis had been sent to Kadar Water in Ossetia. The holding was close enough to allow occasional visits and easy communication on sunlight between a trained faradhi and a mere apprentice, and the facilitation of such contact motivated Maarken to excel at his studies. The days were endurable, with the touch of her colors available to him on the sunlight; the nights were very long.
Hollis herself had been the one to plead patience. She was adamant that he not approach his parents or the High Prince until they each had a sixth ring, signifying they were capable of using moonlight as well as sunlight. “They have to know I can be of use to you and to them,” she told him quite frankly. “And you have to prove you’ve gained all the skills your gifts demand. I’m learning what I need to know about courts and manners, and how to run a holding—things I can only learn here at Kadar Water. I have to be able to function as your lady as well as a Sunrunner. Besides, if I’m to be at Radzyn one day, I’ll have to learn about horses—and where better to do that than at Kadar Water, the competition?” And though they had both laughed at this, she had quickly become serious again. “It’s important to me, Maarken—as important as your knighthood was to you.”
He had reluctantly agreed. Now, looking down at the six rings glinting on his fingers as he held Isulkian’s reins, he wondered why he still hesitated. He could tell his parents, or wait for the Rialla until they met her and saw her worth for themselves. Andrade had recalled Hollis to the keep with the understanding that the young woman would be part of her suite at Waes. Maarken was grateful but suspicious; he knew his aunt, and she never did anything without a specific goal in mind. If she wished him to marry Hollis, it was not for reasons of their love, although she would have no objections to their being happy. No, Andrade must have something else in mind, and it worried him.
He could not count on his parents as allies yet, no matter how often they said they wanted his happiness above all else. He was, after all, their eldest son and heir, a powerful position even without his blood bond with Pol. He would rule the only safe port on the Desert coast, through which all important trade passed: horses, gold, salt, and glass ingots going out; foodstuffs, manufactured goods, and especially precious silk coming in. Radzyn bred horses of a quality that brought higher prices every Rialla, but its real wealth was in the trade it administered. Maarken’s grandsire had been rich, his father was richer still, and he did not yet adequately appreciate just how rich he was going to be. By all the rules, he ought to marry a woman of birth if not fortune to match his own.
Hollis was an uncommon woman, but she was common-born of two faradh’im at Goddess Keep, who had themselves been of no recognized family connections. Her children with Maarken would certainly inherit the gifts, reinforced through both parents. Maarken had already had experience with the suspicion and envy attached to being both Sunrunner and son of a powerful family.
He walked his horse along the road to Whitecliff, stopping at the stand of trees his mother had ordered planted before his birth. The cool shade spread out around him, and he ignored Isulkian’s impatient prancing. He could see the manor through the trees, the solid stone walls gentled by flowering vines. Stables, pasture, gardens, a sandy beach below the cliffs, a comfortable and cozy home—all of it would be his, and he would bring Hollis here before the stormy season began. They would spend winter listening to the rain and wind, snug beside their hearth. He had always envisioned it so, ever since childhood when he and his twin brother Jahni had ridden here to play young lords of their own manor. They had been much too young to include anything so alien as the idea of wives in their games, but sometimes in the years since his brother’s death Maarken had wondered how it might have been, the pair of them and their wives sharing this fine old house, children overflowing its many rooms and playing at dragons in the courtyard. A small, sad smile crossed his face, and he rode nearer.
Whatever Andrade wanted, she would get her way. She always did. She had married off her sister to Prince Zehava in the hope of a male heir with faradhi gifts. Instead, Maarken’s mother had been the one with potential. Andrade had then put forth Sioned as Rohan’s bride, and this time the union had borne fruit in a son who would be both faradhi and High Prince. She had bred them all to each other like prize studs and mares. Maarken wondered whether she already had a girl in mind for Pol, despite his youth. She would not object to his own mating with a Sunrunner, guaranteeing the next generation’s gifts. But he also knew that his great-aunt’s fine, elegant fingers would close around his life if he was not careful. There were intimations that this was the source of the coolness between her and Sioned. Andrade had used her and Rohan to get her Sunrunner prince, and they resented it. Moreover, since Pol’s birth Sioned had worn only her husband’s emerald ring, not the seven others she had earned as a faradhi—visible reminder that she was no longer ruled by Andrade and Goddess Keep. And that was precisely what made other princes nervous.
Not that they would have been comforted by the idea that Andrade ruled through Rohan and Sioned. It was the notion of the two kinds of power merging in any combination that bothered them. And there were others besides Pol: Maarken himself, his younger brother Andry, Riyan of Skybowl. The other highborns feared the power of a lord who could summon Fire on command, watch any court on a weave of light, use eyes and ears not his own to observe wherever he chose. There were ethics involved in being a Sunrunner: the strict prohibition against using the gifts to kill, the equally strict injunction that the good of one land should not be sought at the expense of another. Yet what had Andrade expected when she created rulers who possessed both kinds of power?
It was a thin and difficult line to walk. Maarken had not yet been faced with a crisis of choice, but he knew that one day he would be. From the sometimes haunted look in Sioned’s eyes, she had already done so—and whatever the outcome, it had scarred her. He could not talk to his parents about this kind of thing; despite her three rings, his mother would not understand. Though influential in her own right and as Lady of Radzyn, Tobin did not think the way Sunrunners did. She had never been formally trained at Goddess Keep. But there was Sioned, and Maarken relaxed a little at the prospect of talking all this out with her. She had been the first to wield both kinds of power. She would have the same fears for her son as Maarken felt stirring for himself and his unborn children.
He turned his stallion before he reached the gates of Whitecliff, not yet ready to enter it as its future master. A word to his father about the possibility of refurbishing its interior in anticipation of his marriage would clue his parents that he was at last thinking seriously about taking a wife. But he would wait, talk with Sioned, and at Waes allow everyone to see Hollis’ merits for themselves before he said anything.
He would ride through the gates of Whitecliff with her at his side, or with no one.
Chapter Four
The High Prince lazed late abed, finishing off a breakfast of fresh fruit and flaky rolls washed down by watered wine. A pile of parchments was at his elbow, the top one sporting a smear of apple butter. Usually Rohan even worked through his meals, but this morning he ignored duty in favor of the fun of watching his wife give in to nerves.
Her turquoise silk bedgown billowed around her as she paced. Three times she had braided and unbraided her long firegold hair, dissatisfied by every effort. With each sharp movement of her fingers, her emerald flashed in the sunlight. A selection of gowns was heaped on her lounge chair, but she had not even begun trying them on, occupied for the moment with doing something about her hair. Her muttered curses and the occasional hiss of sheer annoyance amused her husband greatly.
At last he said, “You never took so much trouble dressing for me.”
Sioned scowled at him. “Sons are more observant than husbands—especially when the son has been gone for three years!”
“May a mere husband make a suggestion? Why don’t you just look the way you always look? Pol will be expecting to see his mother, not the High Princess in all her silks and jewels.”
“Do you think so?” she asked forlornly, and blushed when he laughed at her. “Oh, stop it! I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help thinking how much he must have changed.”
“Taller, with better manners and an increased sense of his own position,” Rohan enumerated. “I was the same way as a squire. But he’ll be the same in all the ways that count—and he’ll find you every bit as lovely as he remembers.” He grinned and brushed off his hands. “Trust me.”
“You’ve gotten crumbs all over the bed again.”
“I’m persuaded that Stronghold boasts a sufficiency of sheets, and servants to change them. Now, come over here and let me fix your hair, you madwoman.”
She sat on the bed with her back to him, and he deftly wove her hair into a single braid. “You’ve hardly got any gray at all,” he said as he worked.