by Melanie Rawn
“Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen!” Sionell cried excitedly. “Can you make it skip that many times, Papa?”
“Easy as sliding down a sand dune,” he assured her. He sent a rock flying out across the lake, and his daughter counted off fifteen tiny splashes before it sank. “Best three out of four?” he challenged Sioned.
As they gathered up suitable stones, Pol and Sionell tried their hand at skipping rocks. The older pair exchanged smiles as Sionell made six on her first try and Pol only two.
“Like this,” Sionell said, giving instruction that Pol accepted with poor grace. “Watch me do it.” A moment later she called out, “Eight! I got eight!”
Sioned turned in time to see Pol’s second try. The stone he sailed struck the water three times, then vanished.
“Try again,” Sionell urged.
“No, thanks.”
The little girl gave him a disgusted look. “How’re you going to learn if you won’t even try? You can’t be good at everything the first time you do it, you know.”
Sioned caught Walvis’ eye and they waited while Pol engaged in an internal struggle that was plain on his face. Pride won—not unusual at that age. He shook his head and piled all his selected stones into his mother’s palms.
“I’ll practice some other time.”
Sioned and Walvis lined up for their competition. Her first stone skipped twelve times, as did his; her second made sixteen splashes. Walvis groaned as his own second try brought only ten.
“Best five out of seven?” he ventured hopefully.
“A deal’s a deal,” she retorted, and flicked her wrist. The stone skipped fourteen times and Sionell applauded.
Walvis glared down at his daughter in mock affront. “Whose side are you on?” he demanded, and she giggled. He let fly his third stone. “Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—”
All at once a shadow swooped down, wings stirring a ripple of breeze across the water. A blue-black dragon dipped his hind claws into the water, beat the air with powerful strokes, and craned his neck around as he rose into the sky. His snarl of frustration echoed around the crater.
“He thought it was a fish!” Pol exclaimed, laughing. “Look at them all!”
A flight of about forty three-year-old dragons settled in on the far shore for a drink. Wings folded gracefully, long necks bent to the water, they paused as the one who had mistaken a skipped stone for a fish arrived late. He was jostled from side to side and they sang out in derision as he snarled again.
“Walvis,” Sioned murmured, “I could swear they’re making fun of him.”
“I was thinking the same thing. Do dragons have a sense of humor?” He closed one hand on his daughter’s shoulder as she moved at his side. “No, you may not go closer to look,” he ordered.
“But they wouldn’t hurt me! They’re so beautiful!”
“And they’ve got teeth half as long as your arm. We’ll watch from here and hope they’re feeling friendly.” He cast a worried glance at Sioned, sharing her thought; they must stay still and not attract the dragons’ attention, for stories abounded of people who had been plucked from the ground by dragons when they attempted to run away.
Sionell squirmed. “They’ve already eaten, Papa. Look at their stomachs.”
She was correct; bellies usually lean before a meal were rounded, and a few of the dragons even paused in their drinking to belch. Sioned wondered how many sheep and goats had gone to feed this hoard, and reminded herself to ask Rohan again about cultivating herds for the dragons’ sole use.
Thirst quenched, some of the dragons bounded into the air. They flew to a tremendous height, then folded their wings and plunged straight down into the water. Diving, rolling, flinging water at each other with sweeping wings, calling out to the ones onshore, they resembled nothing so much as playful children.
“You see?” Sionell said. “They wouldn’t hurt anybody. Besides,” she added slyly, “I’m not a princess, and everybody knows dragons prefer princesses!”
“Hush,” Walvis said, tightening his grip on her shoulder.
Sioned looked at her son. Enchanted love was in his eyes—exactly the expression that shone on his father’s face when dragons were around. The gold mattered nothing to either of them; they loved the dragons as part of the Desert, part of their blood.
Eventually the creatures climbed out of the water to sun themselves. Sioned admired the varied hues of their water-glistening hides, each dragon a different color. She picked out a reddish one, smaller than the rest, who shook diamond-drops from her wings. Sioned watched for a moment, wondering if she dared. Dragons definitely had a sense of fun, and she knew they had thought-colors. She threaded a few strands of sunlight together, cautiously extending the silken gold weave toward the little dragon.
The female arched her neck, fanning out her wings with their dainty golden undersides, and shook her head to clear her eyes of the water still trickling down her face. Her head turned question ingly and she shifted her shoulders, tucking her wings back along her body. Sioned displayed her own colors—emerald, sapphire, onyx, amber—and their pattern, long engraved in her memory. The dragon tossed her head, droplets spraying out as she shook herself all over. Sioned sought a closer contact and the dragon whined through her long nose, shivering a little.
Suddenly the sunlight exploded into a rainbow of color. Sioned cried out at the same time the little dragon threw back her head with a howl of terror. All the other dragons sprang up into the sky, keening a chorus of fear and warning as they fled.
“Mother!”
Pol tried to hold her up as she crumpled, Walvis and Sionell right beside him to cushion her fall. Sioned gulped in several breaths, trembling all over with the shock, and managed a faint smile for her ashen-cheeked son.
“I’m fine,” she whispered.
“The dragons aren’t,” Walvis said grimly. “Listen to them.”
The wild music echoed down from the cluster of dark shapes in the sky. Sioned pushed herself upright and winced.
“I was too clumsy. I frightened her.”
“What are you talking about?” Walvis demanded. “My lady, what did you do?”
Pol, kneeling at her side, answered. “She used the sunlight to touch a dragon.”
“You did what?”
Rohan’s eyes blazed down at the woman who sat sipping iced taze as casually as if she’d just returned from an afternoon stroll around the lake.
“Please stop scolding. You can’t say anything I haven’t accused myself of.”
“When I asked if you could touch a dragon, I didn’t mean for you to risk your life at it!”
“I’ll be more careful next time.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time.” He crossed to the windows of their chamber and looked out at the quiet water. “We heard your scream all the way from Threadsilver.”
“Mine, or the dragon’s?”
“Weren’t they one and the same?” he countered.
That gave her pause. “You may be right,” she admitted.
Rohan swung around. “You faradh’im talk about being shadow-lost. What if you got lost inside a dragon’s colors and couldn’t remember your own? It would amount to the same thing, wouldn’t it?”
“But that didn’t happen.”
“This time!”
She set her goblet down and folded her hands in her lap. “You’re thinking about forbidding me to try again, aren’t you?”
“I’m thinking about having you swear a promise,” he corrected.
Sioned bit her lip. “I’ve never lied to you—”
“But you omit things when it serves your purposes. Oh, you’re far too honest to lie—and far too clever to put yourself in a position where you’d have to. After twenty-one years of living with you, my lady, I know you very well indeed.”
She said nothing.
“Sioned, there are too many ways I could lose you just in the normal course of things. I won’t add another to the list just be
cause of my stupid notion about dragons. It won’t do me any good to forbid you outright, and we both know it. I won’t make you promise, either. But that means I’ll have to trust to your good sense—and to the fact that you want to see your son grow up.”
She flinched. “That wasn’t fair, Rohan!”
“No,” he agreed. “But neither are your little omissions.”
She glared at him. “Very well, I’ll make you a promise. I won’t try it again unless Maarken is with me to back me up and set my colors again if I start to lose them.”
“The way you did for Tobin, the night she was caught in the Moonrunning?”
“Yes. I knew her colors and I could bring her back. I promise I won’t touch a dragon again without being in the same kind of contact with Maarken. Will that content you, my lord?”
“It’ll have to, I suppose.” He folded his arms. “You’re a dangerous woman, High Princess.”
“No more so than you’re a dangerous man, High Prince.” She smiled a little. “That makes us very well mated, doesn’t it?”
Rohan snorted.
Dragon shrieks woke everyone in the middle of the night. Rohan and Sioned threw on their clothes and hurried to the courtyard, where the entire population of Skybowl had assembled by torchlight, confused and more than a little frightened. Ostvel, sleep-rumpled and worried, shouldered through the crowd to Rohan.
“I’ve never heard them scream like that at this time of night! What do you think is going on?” He winced as another high-pitched howl split the air. “Goddess! Listen to that! What’s the matter with them?”
“I don’t know,” Rohan replied, glancing around. “Where’s Pol? Sioned, do you see him?”
“No—and if he’s run outside to watch dragons, so help me I’ll blister his backside for him! Walvis!” she called out, catching sight of Remagev’s lord. “Have you seen Pol?”
He mounted a few steps and scanned the crowd, then shook his head. “Nor Maarken, either.”
Chay and Tobin arrived in time to hear this, and the latter asked Sioned, “You don’t think they tried to touch a dragon, do you?”
Sioned paled. “They couldn’t be so foolish! Pol!” she called out. “Pol!”
“Up here, Mother!”
He and Maarken stood on the gatehouse balcony with several of the Skybowl guard. All eyes turned to them as Rohan shouted, “What are you doing up there? Come down at once!”
“But we’re watching the dragons, Father! They’re fighting on the shore!”
“I want to see, too!” Sionell squirmed out of Feylin’s arms and raced for the gatehouse steps.
Rohan turned to Ostvel. “Get everybody indoors. They can watch if they like, but nobody is to set foot outside the walls until those sires have had it out with each other. They’re likely to attack anything that moves.”
“At once, my lord. But I’ve never known them to do battle at this time of night before.”
The moons rode high in the sky, illuminating the lake in pale silver. From the thin windows of the gatehouse two dragons could be seen halfway around the lake, highlighted by gleaming teeth and talons. Wings were folded close to lithe shapes as the sires roared defiance, heads lashing out to rip at already bleeding hides. Adolescent dragons lined the crater’s lip, watching; in three years they, too, would fight to the death for possession of females.
Pol had helped Sionell up into a window embrasure, steadying her with an arm around her waist. Neither of them noticed the entrance of their elders until Feylin plucked her daughter from her precarious position and held her firmly away from the open casement.
“I wasn’t going to fall,” Sionell complained. “Pol was holding onto me.”
“For which he has my thanks,” Feylin replied, “but you’ll stay away from the window, my girl.”
Pol joined his parents, standing on a stone shelf where, in times of war, archers knelt to loose arrows through the narrow openings. “Which one do you think will win?”
Both dragons were injured now, one holding his left foreleg at an awkward angle, painful to see. They took their battle to the air then, startling the audience of three-year-olds who fluttered their wings in reaction. The fighting dragons circled each other, snapping with blood-darkened jaws and slashing with claws and tails. Grunts of effort and impact resounded across the crater as they pummeled each other. The darker dragon rose high above his rival and for a moment everyone thought he had given up the field. But then he plummeted directly down, all talons and teeth digging into his enemy’s back.
The wounded sire bellowed his pain and fury, losing command of the air and his own wings as his attacker’s tail slammed across the main bones of his left wing with a crack audible even in the gatehouse. Someone moaned in sympathy. The pair fell toward shore, where the defeated dragon would surely be crushed to death on the stony ground. Yet he retained wit and strength enough to angle his fall, and the two dragons landed with a mighty splash in the water.
The victor stroked upward, calling out his triumph as his vanquished foe rolled in the water, vainly trying to work his shattered wing. The adolescents flew off after the winner, leaving the mortally wounded sire to die.
Rohan was down the gatehouse stairs before anyone but Sioned and Pol noticed he was gone. He was panting for breath when he got to the lakeshore. Pale moonlight shone on water stained dark with blood. The dragon’s feeble swimming motions grew weaker. His efforts had nearly brought him to shore, but even if he reached dry ground, he was going to die. Rohan saw in the huge dark eyes that the dragon knew it. Yet he did not give up the struggle, did not cease trying. Rohan’s chest ached and he felt the sting of tears in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
He heard the others running to catch up with him, felt Sioned’s touch on his arm. “Can we help him?” she asked.
He shook his head. “His wing is gone, and he’s lost too much blood.”
“Father—please,” Pol said softly. “Look at his eyes.”
“Can’t we at least put him out of his pain?” Sioned held his arm tighter.
The dragon moaned. The sound was echoed by dragon voices, scores of them from beyond Skybowl’s rim, mourning him. The night sky was empty of wings, but dragon song swelled and shuddered as if borne on wind created by their beating.
Rohan said thickly, “Bring me a sword.”
“No,” Chay murmured. “You swore never again, my prince. Never another dragon dead by your hand.”
He winced as the dragon groaned again. Walvis took a step forward. “I’ll do it,” he said softly. “Feylin, tell me where it would be quickest.”
“It’s not necessary,” Sioned told him. “Maarken, you ought to learn this. Come with me.”
They went to the water’s edge. The dragon cried out, a whimper of pain as his failing body reached the sandy shallows, cool water lapping around him. Sioned crooned to him in a low voice, barely two arm-lengths from the lolling head. With Maarken as her loom, she wove threads of moonlight into a pallid silver weave across the dragon’s eyes. The huge body shivered; she and Maarken trembled, too. The dragon’s eyes closed. After a time the rigidity of pain left muscles and torn flesh. His face relaxed, the great lungs heaved in a long sigh, and he slept.
Sioned turned. “He’s at peace now, I think.”
“Mother—did you touch him?” Pol breathed.
“No. I only helped him to sleep.”
Tobin nodded slowly. “Andrade used to do the same thing, Rohan—do you remember? When we were little.”
Sioned nodded confirmation. “It’s something learned with the eighth ring.”
“But you—” Chay stopped, frowned, and shrugged. “I’m not going to ask. I’ve seen you do too many things you shouldn’t be able to.”
“And some of them things Andrade doesn’t know about,” Sioned finished. “Did you learn how, Maarken? And did you feel his colors?”
“I understood the weaving sequence,” he answered. “I saw
a whole rainbow of color. Fading. It can be done, Sioned. It’s only a question of when, and which dragon.”
Rohan went to the animal’s head, stroked the long neck where life beat slower and slower. He had never touched a live dragon before, never been so close to one. The hide was smooth and cool, dark green shading to brown in the moonlight. His fingertips traced the proud lines of brow and nose and angle of jaw. Very lightly he touched the eyelids, feeling how silky-soft they were. Beautiful, even in death.
He looked over his shoulder at his wife and murmured, “Thank you.”
Two days later, Pol leaned over a map spread out on the carpet, desultorily tracing the route his father, Chay, Ostvel, and Walvis were now following to Tiglath in the north. He made a glum face, still disappointed that he had not been allowed to go with them. The reason given had been Tiglath’s proximity to possible Merida haunts—but Pol suspected that they all thought him too young. He would be fifteen before winter’s end, but they still considered him a child. It was galling.
But he had been permitted to attend the planning sessions, as fascinated by the debate on tactics as he had been by the changes in people familiar to him since infancy. Father, aunt, uncle, cousin, and friends vanished. They became the High Prince, a warrior princess, and the athr’im of Radzyn, Whitecliff, Skybowl, and Remagev. Even his mother had shed her role of co-sovereign, becoming nothing more than Sunrunner to the High Prince. Enlightening as the military talk had been, Pol had found the assumption of formal roles even more educational. He would have to learn how to do that, he decided—how to submerge his own personality into the responsibilities of his position.
In some ways, Tobin’s had been the most startling transformation. Pol’s laughing, warm-voiced aunt had spoken with real relish about the possibilities of conquering Cunaxa should that princedom be so foolish as to invade Firon. Lines of advance, probable body-counts, razing the Cunaxan seat of Castle Pine, slaughtering every Merida in existence—Tobin was intimately familiar with all the ways of war. Her cheerful ruthlessness had amused him at first, then scared him when he realized she meant every last word of it. But it finally struck him as being her perfect role in the debate. She was dedicated to the advancement of the Desert’s interests—even though her ideas for that advancement were more than a trifle bloodthirsty. She represented her father’s point of view; Prince Zehava had liked nothing so much as a good, clean battle that won him added lands as well as added glory.