by Melanie Rawn
Sunrunner’s Fire sprang up, a thick wall of roaring flames. They rode directly into it, too late to stop their horses’ momentum. Sioned could not hear the screams or the thuds as they fell. But she could see her Fire licking at their clothes as they rolled about in the dirt, trying to douse the flames.
The woman wearing Radzyn’s colors leaped down from her saddle, lugging Meath’s long, brawny frame up as best she could. Her companion was soon helping her, casting fearful glances over his shoulder at the Fire. Meath was thrown over his saddle and within moments the trio were heading for the sheltering trees. When they were out of sight, Sioned let the Fire die away. It left a scar across the field, blackened dirt like a line drawn daring the enemy to cross.
They did not. Dust rose nearly as high as Meath’s whirlwind as they scrambled for what horses they could catch and rode away at speed, leaving their wounded behind to fend for themselves.
Sioned waited until they were gone, then turned her energies to untangling the taut weave of colors. Elsewhere at Stronghold, Tobin shuddered in the sunlight coming through her bedchamber window and Chay shook her by the shoulders, calling her name frantically until sense returned to her eyes. In the sunlit outer courtyard near the guardhouse, old Myrdal hung onto Pol’s slight form, feeling the boy tremble in a storm of power. She had seen the High Princess conjure Fire and the like, but now something else was happening to Pol. At length he gave a convulsive tremor, awareness back in his face, and even smiled at her a little before fainting in her arms.
Maarken, the strong central thread of her weaving, was the last to be released from it. Sioned separated herself from him and together they moved back along the strands of light to Stronghold. She spared no glimpse for the rich Syrene meadows below them, nor the proud rise of the Vere, intent on seeking the safety of the garden.
But all at once there were other colors—a blinding, amazing whirl of rainbow hues as startled by them as they were by it. Sioned shied away and the other did the same. Opening her eyes, she found herself staring at Maarken—and could not rid herself of an impression of wings.
The young man was drenched in sweat, shaking. He hung onto Sioned’s hands so hard that the emerald ring bit into her flesh. His own knuckles were white. She could not recall when they had linked fingers as well as gifts.
“Sioned,” Maarken whispered, his voice not quite steady. “Wh what was that?”
She met his gaze and said carefully, “I think . . . I think we bumped into a dragon.”
Chapter Five
The woman had been beautiful in her youth. Yet even with the marks of sixty winters on her face and her black hair gone iron-gray, there was about her an eagerness that the years normally stole when youth was irretrievably gone. Ambition shone in her gray-green eyes, and malicious amusement for its certain culmination. This absolute faith in her eventual success gave her the look of a woman half her age. Her body was still lean-fleshed and supple, though the quick grace of her youth had been replaced by a deliberate elegance. She was stately now, impressive with consciousness of her worth, the kind of woman who should have been ruling a princedom rather than a tiny settlement in a remote mountain valley. But in her eyes was sureness that she would not be here forever—and would indeed rule one day, and not just a single princedom but all of them.
Dusk in the Veresch brought a chill. The woman waited, facing the cairn that marked the eastern arch of a circle of stones. The rocks were tipped by the last fiery rays of the setting sun, and soon the first stars would appear directly above them. It had pleased her to assemble everyone while there was still sunlight; the swift descent of darkness and the sudden appearance of the stars was powerful, primal drama, especially here. Let the faradh’im have their sunshine, their trees, their three pale moons. She and her kind had known for uncounted generations the potency of stones and stars, and a different kind of fire.
A full circle of ninety and nine ringed the glen outside the flat granite markers, hands clasped and breathing nearly stilled in the silence. In times past it had been difficult to gather so many, but rumors this spring were as plentiful as newborn lambs, and had brought people to her. Waiting for the last sunlight to vanish, she mused on the magic of this multiple of three, a special number since the beginning of the world. Three moons in the sky, three winters between dragon matings, three great divisions of land in Mountain, Desert, and River Meadow. The princes met once every three years. The ancients had honored three deities: The Goddess, the Father of Storms, and the Nameless One who dwelled in the fastness of these mountains. The faradh’im had long ago denied the power she would call on tonight—the more fools they. For there were three kinds of light as well: sun, moons, and stars. With ninety-and-nine here, she became the one hundredth, representative of the Nameless One who ruled all.
Three was also the number Princess Ianthe’s sons, each poised a third of the way around the circle at the hip-high standing stones. She could sense their raw, half-trained powers, inherited from a grandmother who had been among the last purebred diarmadh’im. Lallante, a simpering coward who had rejected her true heritage, had nevertheless used it to ensnare High Prince Roelstra. The marriage had produced Ianthe, who had in turn produced three boys both ambitious and malleable. They were the cornerstones of the power she would call on tonight, and they were the reason she was certain of eventual triumph.
Fourteen winters past, victory was a word for other people. There had been only survival for her, as there had been for all her people through hundreds of winters, ever since the return of Sunrunners to the continent from their island exile on Dorval had destroyed the diarmadh’im, their power and their language and their way of life. Driven to the remote mountains, they had been hunted down and slaughtered by ruthless Sunrunners led by three—that number again, she thought bitterly—whose names were even now forbidden lest their wind-borne spirits find these last hiding places.
But now she had three of her own, she told herself, sensing Ianthe’s strong sons all around her. They would do her work and her will, and she would triumph. Youth had begun anew for her the day they were brought to her in the shelter of the mountains.
The sunlight was gone and darkness brought the first star. The woman spread her hands wide so that the single pinprick of light was centered between her splayed fingers. The starshine stretched between her uplifted arms and she clenched her fists, half-closing her eyes as she wove the cool fire, centering the weave before she wrapped the fabric of light around and through the stones.
Her anchors, Ianthe’s sons, began to tremble. Their shivering raced through the ring of hands and bodies around them, and the woman’s strength increased as she drew in the energy of ninety-nine lives joined by starfire. This power she directed into the circle of stones. And an instant later the source of her kind’s name was revealed: diarmadh’im, Stoneburners.
She became as the unmoving rock of the cairn, watching a scene form in the cool glow of tiny white flames. Long, fine fingers were what she saw first, held out to a hearth. Ten rings studded with gems circled the fingers; thin chains of gold or silver led from each ring to bracelets on bony wrists. Sight of a sharp-featured, proud face came next. The hair had once been blonde. The eyes were still fiercely blue, narrowing slightly as fire found fresh wood and burned more brightly. But the thin hands moved closer still to the blaze, rubbing together for warmth. Lady Andrade of Goddess Keep was feeling the cold.
A man only a little younger than she placed a heavy fur-lined cloak around her shoulders. The man was Lord Urival, Master of Sunrunners and Lady Andrade’s steward. Beautiful eyes of a curious golden-brown were set into a craggy face of no beauty at all. He pulled a table over between their chairs and sat down, chafing his nine rings before pulling the folds of his brown woolen robes around him.
They exchanged a few words, inaudible from the stone circle, and then their heads turned as one. Into the vision came the tall, wide-shouldered, dark-haired Sunrunner who had narrowly escaped death only two days ag
o on the road to Goddess Keep. His face was pinched with exhaustion and pain. He held one arm awkwardly to his side, instinctively protecting the bandages that bulked at his shoulder. He bowed, spoke, and placed his saddlebags on the low table.
The watching woman hissed in frustration. Her minions had failed to stop this man; by the Nameless One, it was hard to see the precious scrolls bulge within the leather bags. She fixed her gaze on them hungrily. When she turned her attention to the larger scene, the wounded Sunrunner was gone.
Lord Urival opened the saddlebags and extracted four long, round cases. A moment later he had the first of the scrolls spread out on the table before him, turned so Lady Andrade could see. The woman in the stone circle caught her breath as she saw the exquisite script. Much of the old language had been lost, and she was one of the few who knew more than a smattering of its words. But given enough time, the scrolls would be translated, and that must not happen.
Lady Andrade peered at the writing, shaking her head. She said something to Urival and he bowed, leaving the frame of vision. Soon he returned with a youth of no more than twenty winters who wore four rings, each set with a tiny ruby. He directed his attention to the scrolls, bending over them with a look of dawning fascination on his face. After a moment he straightened and rubbed his eyes with a comical grimace that brought a small answering smile from Andrade.
But all at once Lord Urival whirled, his fingers rubbing spasmodically at his rings, and stared into the flames—straight at the woman in the starlit circle, it seemed. The youth turned as well, blue eyes wide with astonishment beneath a shock of light brown hair.
She broke off the conjure with desperate haste, unthreading the weave of stars between her hands. The fire along the circle fled back to the cairn, which flared bright and fierce for an instant. Then it darkened, an uneven stack of granite rocks in the night, nothing more.
Some of those in the circle swayed and moaned at the abrupt termination of the vision. The woman scowled, reminding herself that next time she would have to test them all for strength and not just the willingness brought by fear.
“Bring to me the young man named Masul, who lives at Dasan Manor in Princemarch. Bring him however you must, but make sure he is alive, well, and in possession of his wits. I don’t want him damaged.”
All but three of the ninety-nine bowed to her and melted away into the woods, many of them leaning on their fellows for support. The woman flexed her hands, rubbing her palms where they felt slightly burned. This had been a potent working; she would need time to recover.
“Why do you need him?” the eldest of Ianthe’s sons asked resentfully. “You have me.”
“Us,” his next youngest brother corrected smoothly.
“It is not your time yet,” she said firmly.
The youngest of them smiled slightly. “Yes, my Lady Mireva. Of course.”
She looked them over, remembering the three dirty, barbaric little boys she had turned into young princes. Ruval, at nineteen the eldest, had reached his full height but had yet to acquire the muscle and firm flesh of manhood. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, he favored the late High Prince his grandfather in features, but the shape of his eyes was Ianthe’s. Marron, a year younger, was still awkward and bony with late adolescence. Of the three, he looked the least like his mother, having inherited his father’s heavy-lidded eyes and fiery red hair. The youngest, Segev, was barely sixteen and still a child in most ways. His eyes were gray-green like Mireva’s own and shaped like Ianthe’s, but his hair was as black as Roelstra’s had been. He was the most intelligent—and, paradoxically, the most biddable. Mireva understood that, and valued it; he trusted her wisdom and would do exactly as she bade him, for there was a hunger in him that her promises and power fed most adequately.
“Why him?” she asked suddenly, echoing Ruval’s earlier question. “Because none of you is old enough yet. You have much to learn about the powers your grandmother gave you. For now, this Masul is an amusing feint who will cause interesting trouble for Rohan.”
“Especially once you get your hands on him,” Marron remarked with a smile.
Mireva chose to ignore the mockery beneath the admiration. “More important right now are the scrolls. You saw them, of course, though no one else did. When our people ruled here, the faradh’im stayed on their island and did nothing. Then, without warning, they were here, opposing us. They spent years watching us in secret, learning our ways for their own ends, using them against us. They drove us from power and chased us into these mountains. And then they erased all memory of us from the minds of the people, causing us to be forgotten along with our ways. But what they knew of us was written down. And now someone has found the scrolls and put them into Lady Andrade’s hands.”
“It didn’t seem as if she understood a word of them,” Ruval commented.
“But she will. She’s clever—and ruthless. She will want the faradh’im to know the power we once had.”
“So the scrolls must be destroyed,” Marron surmised. “That’s easy enough to do, even at this distance. A little starfire, nicely directed—”
“No! I must know what’s in them! I must know how much has been lost!”
“They they must be stolen,” Segev said. “As the knowledge was stolen from us. What if . . . ?”
Mireva narrowed her gaze at him in the starlight. “What if?” she prompted.
“Someone with the gifts could go to Goddess Keep to be trained, gain their confidence, and steal the scrolls.”
“Who did you have in mind?” Marron asked silkily.
“Not you,” his youngest brother shot back. “You have all the subtlety of a rutting dragon.”
“And you think you could do it?” Ruval scoffed.
“I can. And I will.” A smile stole across his sharp features. “And maybe I can even things up with dear Aunt Pandsala as well for betraying Grandfather during the war with Prince Rohan.”
“Your primary concern must be the scrolls,” Mireva said. “Leave the Princess-Regent to me—and to Masul, who may or may not be her brother.” She laughed softly with excitement. “Excellent, Segev! A scheme worthy of a prince and a son of diarmadh’im. But there are things I must teach you before you leave. Come tomorrow night to my dwelling.”
They understood this as dismissal, and left her. She heard the clink of bridles as they mounted the horses left deeper in the forest, and Marron’s voice as he taunted his brother about becoming a weakling faradhi. When their arguing had faded, she began the long walk back to her house, relishing the touch of cool starlight through the trees.
She lived in a low stone dwelling much larger than it looked, seemingly built out from the side of the hill but in reality dug deeply into it by generations of her forebears. There were two outer rooms that appeared to be the whole of the place, but the wooden planks that formed the back wall hid a door leading into the important part of the house. Mireva paused to build up the fire against the night chill, then went to the rough paneling and pressed a catch concealed in a seam. Grunting a little with effort, she pushed on the door and it swung open with a protesting creak. The hallway beyond was black as the night outside. Mireva struck iron to flint—she could call Fire if she wished but never used Sunrunner ways if she could avoid it—and a flame burned obediently atop a slim column of wax. She plucked the candle from its niche and walked down the packed earthen floor, not even glancing at the low-ceilinged corridors that branched off from the main one. At last she reached the door she wanted, and set the candle into a holder within.
There was the glint of golden things and silver, and gems that stained the room with rainbow colors. A massive mirror stood in a corner, shrouded in midnight-blue velvet sewn with silver thread in a pattern of stars. Most of the space was taken up by huge chests and boxes resting on tables. Mireva took a small coffer and opened it, removing a piece of parchment folded around something minced and brittle. There were only five similar packets left, she noted; she would have to go harvesting soon, high
in the mountains where the herb grew strong and potent.
She returned to the outer rooms then, sliding the heavy door back into place. There was no indication that it even existed. Gathering a bottle and winecup, she settled into a soft chair before the fire and stirred the contents of the packet into the bottle. She waited for the herb to mix, then poured a measure of the wine and drained it in three long swallows. Earlier today she had consumed a similar cup, but the effects had worn off and she needed more. A smile touched her face as the drug began its work in her blood. How stupid the faradh’im were to be so afraid of this. But perhaps their powers of sun and moons were too fragile for dranath. The ancients had found it a source of sure and sustained strength, addiction to it an assurance of potency.
Mireva drew in a deep breath to prolong the lightheaded glow and closed her eyes. No, the Sunrunners were weaklings who could not tolerate use of dranath. The one enslaved to it by Roelstra had burned out after only a few years. She remembered very well the day she had presented the herb and knowledge of its addictive properties to Lady Palila, Roelstra’s last mistress. Mireva had been young then, and only playing the part of old wisewoman from the hills. Her bedchamber mirror told her that far less effort would be required to sustain the image these days, and the opposite deception would be needed tomorrow night. She sighed, then shrugged.
She had the ability. And she would win. The Sunrunner corrupted and used by Roelstra had been an amusement. But now she would play the game in earnest. The gambit with Masul would test her opponents, Segev would gain her the scrolls, and in only a few years Ruval would bring her final victory.
The rush of dranath peaked, centered in her belly. She shifted slightly, enjoying the tingle of sensual pleasure. Andrade might have her ten rings and her position as ruler of all faradh’im, but Mireva knew she had never know the sheer glut of power brought by dranath. To ensure that she never would, Mireva took out pen and parchment, closing her eyes the better to remember the words of the scroll. After a few moments her hand began to move, copying what she saw in her mind.