by Melanie Rawn
“Thank the Goddess she’s fairly stupid, for all her scheming,” Hollis mused. “And she’s finally got her life’s ambition, now that Halian’s been fool enough to make her a real princess.”
“That about sums it up,” Meath agreed.
“It’s good news about Danladi.” She pushed herself higher on the pillows. “Being close to Gemma, the two of them should be able to smooth over any problems between the brothers.” She smiled wryly. “Politics!”
“And then some. Princess Gennadi has been named to take charge of Waes and of Lyell’s children. I don’t know much about her, but reputation has her a sly lady with an eye for a good-looking man.” He paused and grinned. “Maybe I should ask for a transfer!”
For the first time in what seemed like forever, Hollis laughed aloud. “You’re a miserable lusty wretch, and if you’re not careful I’ll tell Eolie on you!”
“Oh, she knows all about me,” he replied breezily.
“But do you know all about her?” Hollis teased.
Meath looked startled. “What?”
She giggled. “Got you!”
“Maarken’s got you,” he growled, “and welcome!”
Hollis hid a sudden wince by taking a long drink of her wine. After a moment she asked, “What about Kiele?”
“Dead.” He rose to get the bottle from the table, poured more wine for them both. “She burned with Masul’s corpse this morning. And Lyell with her.”
“But he—”
“I know. Andry didn’t want it done that way, either. But Lyell insisted. He loved her, you see. Besides, what kind of life would he have had, with Waes taken from him and nowhere to go? Gennadi will take good care of the children, and Clutha was adamant that they not be punished for what their mother did. But it really was the only thing Lyell could do, when you think about it.”
Hollis bent her head. “She died badly,” she murmured.
“She died before the Fire even touched her.” Meath shook his head. “Damnedest thing I ever saw. Andry had just called up the flames and we were about to add to them and make it quick, when a knife appeared out of nowhere at Lyell’s feet. He used it to kill her and then himself. They never felt a thing. I learned later it was Ostvel who’d thrown him the knife.”
“Gentle Goddess.” She met his gaze. “You know why he did it, don’t you? So Andry wouldn’t be a murderer, or any of the rest of the Sunrunners.” A murderer like Hollis herself. She hid another wince.
Meath shrugged. “Andry’s furious, of course.”
“I’ll explain it to him,” she said firmly.
He smiled. “Big sister.”
“Meath—please.”
“Look, Hollis—I know what happened to you. So does Maarken.”
She gave him a bleak smile. “And do you and he also know that I’m going to die? I have two choices, Meath. I can find a supply of dranath and be a slave to it the rest of my life, or I can free myself of it and die in the process.”
“That’s not true! You don’t understand—”
“I know all about the Sunrunner corrupted by Roelstra. He died of taking too much—but it would have been the same if he’d stopped taking it altogether. I’m not going to be chained by a need for that drug, Meath. I’m going to ask Andry if I can return to Goddess Keep for the time I have left.”
He looked at her in disgust. “You are depressing the hell out of me. Who ever taught you how to be so damned gloomy? I told you, you don’t understand!”
They both looked up as someone else entered the tent. Tall, slim, dressed in a plain green gown, the High Princess flung her long firegold braid back over her shoulder in a gesture oddly reminiscent of Lady Andrade and gazed meditatively at Hollis. She wore a thin circlet across her brow, but it seemed an afterthought, or as if she had forgotten to remove it after some ceremony. The golden band certainly had nothing to do with her aura of regal authority; Hollis had trouble remembering that before her marriage this woman had been, like her, only an obscure Sunrunner.
But one descended from princes of Kierst and Syr, and chosen by Andrade to be Rohan’s wife, mother of the first Sunrunner High Prince.
Still, for all her beauty and bearing and importance, her sudden smile was warm and empathetic. She might wear the circlet of royalty as if born to it, but she was still only a very human woman. Hollis felt her own lips curve shyly in an answering smile.
“Here you are at last,” Meath said in relief. “What kept you? Sioned, talk some sense into this stubborn girl. I can’t get her to listen to me.”
“Going about it all wrong, as usual,” Sioned answered lightly. “Get out of here, Meath. Go ride herd on my son, if you think you can keep up with him. We sent him to the paddocks to exercise Chay’s horses while the final sales are going on.”
Meath rose and gave her an elaborate bow. “At once, your exalted royal highness.”
“Fool,” she replied fondly.
She settled into the chair he had vacated, and when he was gone said, “I know precisely what you’re enduring right now. You may think that I don’t, but I do. Roelstra drugged me with dranath, you know, years ago. And I’m still here.”
“Forgive me, your grace, but I doubt very much you were addicted, as I am.”
“No,” Sioned admitted. “But I nearly became so then, and later, during the Plague, when dranath was the only cure. And yet I’m still here,” she repeated.
Hollis said nothing.
“You needn’t die, my dear,” Sioned told her gently. And reached into a pocket of her gown to produce a little velvet pouch. “We searched Sejast’s things this morning and found this.”
“No! I don’t want it!” Hollis shrank into the pillows as if to get as far away from the dranath as she could. “Don’t you understand? What if I agreed, and kept using it, and married Maarken—not only would I be living a life I’d hate, chained to the drug, but what if someone found out and attempted to control Maarken by threatening to keep the drug from me? I can’t do that, your grace, I won’t!”
“Did I say anything about continuing to use it? When Roelstra tricked me into taking dranath, I thought I was going to die, too. On the way back to Stronghold there were times—” She broke off and shook her head. “I’m not saying this will be easy for you, Hollis. But by taking less every day, as little as you can stand, eventually you can be free of it. It’s happened to me twice. It’s living hell while it lasts, I won’t lie to you. But Roelstra and the Plague nearly addicted me—and I’m still here.”
She wasn’t aware of the tears rolling down her cheeks until she tasted salt on her lips. “Your grace—”
“You can do this, or you can indeed go back to Goddess Keep and die there,” Sioned murmured. “Yes, I’ve been outside listening for quite some time. If you decide the latter, I don’t think anyone would blame you. They all know what I went through. But all of us will be with you, Hollis. We’ll take as long as you need to travel back to the Desert, and you won’t have to go to Radzyn or Whitecliff or even Stronghold, if you wish it, until you’re free.”
“Does Maarken know?” she whispered.
Sioned nodded. “I spoke with him earlier. He loves you very much, you know. And he has a great deal of love to give. Will you risk it, Hollis? Risk letting him love you enough?”
Hollis closed her eyes and leaned her head back.
“I hope you will,” Sioned went on. “You see, I have a wager going with him, and more than anything else, I hate to lose.”
Hollis knuckled her eyes free of tears and opened them—and saw Maarken standing beside Sioned’s chair. He was exhausted. Bruises darkened his cheekbones and jaw, and one temple was swollen. He held himself stiffly, bandages bulky around his ribs and showing white at the open neck of his shirt, one sleeve rolled up to accommodate the splint applied to his arm. Those hurts and the healing swordcuts on his face were nothing compared to the open wound in his eyes.
“She really does hate losing, you know,” he said in a thick unsteady voic
e.
“She won’t get any practice at it now,” Hollis told him.
Sioned smiled. “I think I just became superfluous. I’ll see to it you’re not disturbed, my dears.” She leaned up to kiss Maarken’s cheek. “Be happy.”
Hollis held out her arms to him. He sank onto the bed beside her, folding her wordlessly to his heart. It was a long time before she felt a slow, dull ache begin in her bones, a lethargy that brought a paradoxical restlessness. Fear sliced through her. So it starts, she thought, and her gaze went to the table where Sioned had placed the little pouch of dranath. She closed her eyes to it and held tighter to Maarken’s strength.
“Your grace, I would speak with your daughter.”
Volog’s brows shot up, and Andry wished he was ten winters older, with all that time as Lord of Goddess Keep behind him.
“She’s resting,” Volog said. “Perhaps later.”
I can’t wait for later! he wanted to shout. He kept his mouth closed. Any such display would only emphasize his youth. So he waited, a thing at which he had never excelled.
“My Lord,” Volog said at last. Andry heard vague unease with the new title. “The past days have been very difficult for her. As you must know. The revelation of her gifts—”
“Is precisely what I wish to speak to her about, your grace. Forgive me, but I really must insist.”
“The decision must be her own,” the prince warned. “If she wants to go to Goddess Keep, perhaps it’s the best way of finding peace with herself and her powers. But if she chooses otherwise. . . .”
“I will respect whatever choice she makes, your grace.” But surely she could make no choice but him.
“You understand it’s a father’s concern for his favorite child.”
“My concern for her equals your own,” Andry said incautiously.
The prince lifted one ironic brow that made Andry even more uncomfortable, but made no reply. He gestured to a squire and within a few moments Alasen came into the main section of the tent. Not a hair was out of place, not a crease marred her clothing. She was dressed for riding in a silk shirt of Kierstian scarlet, a black velvet vest, black trousers and boots. Obviously, she had not been resting.
“My lady,” Andry said formally, “will you do me the favor of walking with me for a time?”
“Down to the river, perhaps?” she responded, perfectly controlled although her cheeks were very pale. But that might have been the effect of the vivid scarlet and deep black velvet. “Yes, I think it’s time we talked, my Lord.” She turned gracefully to her father. “May I?”
“Of course.” Volog picked up an embroidered and fringed shawl, draped it over his daughter’s shoulders, and kissed her cheek. “It’ll be dark sooner than you think, and it’s already chilly. Don’t stay out too long.”
Once beyond Volog’s tents, Alasen spoke first. “I was at the paddocks earlier, watching the sales. Your father’s horses brought excellent prices.”
“They always do.”
“The other day I was admiring a very fine mare. I was hoping my father would buy her for me, but Lord Ostvel had already purchased her. For Riyan, no doubt.”
“No doubt.”
They walked in silence past the white tents of Goddess Keep and the blue tents of the Desert, and then it was Andry’s turn to make polite conversation.
“I’ve been in meetings all day with more people than I could count. But nobody I really wanted to see. I couldn’t get away to come talk to you. Everything’s been happening so fast. There wasn’t any time before this for me to receive the princes formally as the new Lord of Goddess Keep.”
“It’s a very great honor to have been chosen by Lady Andrade.”
“I know. It scares me some,” he confessed. But more than anything else he was angry. The hostility in some eyes had confirmed his suspicions: if certain people did not like the idea of a Sunrunner as High Prince, they liked a prince’s grandson as Lord of Goddess Keep even less. He would have to make them understand that he would not be ruled from Stronghold. Andrade had been too partisan. He could not be. His honor forbade it. His position as Lord of Goddess Keep came from his gift of faradhi powers, not his kinship with Pol.
“I know you’ll do well, Andry,” Alasen was saying.
With you beside me, I will, he thought hungrily. But he couldn’t say that aloud. Not yet. “I finally got the chance to talk to my brother today as well.” He smiled suddenly. “I thought he was going to hit me when I told him he had to ask my formal permission to marry Hollis. Until he realized I was joking, that is. You should have seen his face!”
She smiled sidelong at him, a hint of laughter in her green eyes. “Shame, my Lord! Your own brother! I’m surprised he didn’t break something for you.”
“But he would’ve been disappointed if I hadn’t teased him!” Andry chuckled. “Besides, he was being so serious. It was fun to watch him turn red, with his mouth moving and no words coming out!”
“I still say it wasn’t very nice. After all he’s been through—”
Andry saw her sudden distress and said hastily, “That’s why he needed to laugh. My father says it’s the sovereign remedy.” He rubbed his shoulder ruefully. “Maarken got in a good one anyway, once he figured it out and I let my guard down!”
Alasen chuckled. “If you expect sympathy from me, forget it.”
They fell silent as they descended the gentle slope to the river, the crunch of their boots in the gravelly bank rhythmic counterpoint to late-afternoon birdsong. They took the direction opposite from the place where Masul and Kiele and Lyell had burned that morning, heading downriver past the bridge. A breeze off the nearby sea brought the tang of salt and the threat of early autumn rain from the clouds hovering offshore.
At last Andry could wait no longer. “Alasen—”
“Please. Don’t.” She leaned her palms against a huge gray boulder. He stared at the scarlet and blue and white flowers woven across the black shawl, saw her shoulders shift nervously. “I have to tell you this my own way, Andry,” she said.
“All I want to hear is that you love me and you’ll come with me and—”
“You want me to become a Sunrunner, like you.”
“You are like me. I’ve held your colors in my hands, Alasen, felt how strong your gifts are, how powerful you could become with training. Come with me, and I’ll teach you everything.”
Alasen said nothing. Andry went forward, silent sand beneath his boots now, and his hand hovered for a moment near the hair coiled at her nape. But he did not touch her. Not yet.
“Only say you love me,” he murmured.
“You already know. We’ve seen into each other, Andry. Something like that couldn’t stay hidden.”
“I need to hear it.”
“You’re very young,” she said indulgently.
Pride stung, he took a step back. “Old enough to be Andrade’s choice for Lord of Goddess Keep!”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” She would not turn and look at him. “I meant that I must be very young, too—because I want to hear the same words.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, felt her slenderness and her strength. “I love you, Alasen.”
“Those words are so easy for you,” she whispered, her head bending. “What I have to say isn’t.”
Andry turned her to face him, bewildered until he saw her eyes. “You’re not going to come with me. You’re afraid of me.”
“Please try to understand! I always suspected what I was. I think I always knew. There were reasons I didn’t want it known, because of Pol, what he’ll be when he’s grown—I don’t want to be wanted just because my children have a chance of being faradh’im. I have a right to a happy marriage and a life with a man who loves me, don’t I?”
“That’s what I’m offering you. And Sunrunner children as well.”
“I know. And it’s impossible.”
He broke away from her. “But why? You love me—”
“Yes. I love you,�
�� she replied hopelessly. “Ah, Goddess, I don’t want to hurt you, Andry.”
“Then—”
“No. I can’t.” Her hands twisted together, slender and ringless. “I am afraid. What I’ve seen and felt of power terrifies me. I can’t live with it. I won’t.”
“But it’s not like that. What happened here—”
“No!” she repeated, pressing back against the stone like a hunted doe. “I won’t go with you.” She hesitated, then went on softly, “Andry, if you were only your father’s son, with an inheritance like Sorin’s or Riyan’s, it would be different. But you’re Lord of Goddess Keep. It’s what you were meant to be—anyone who doesn’t see that is a fool. Don’t offer to give that up for me. I can see it in your eyes. I’d never ask that of you. It wouldn’t be loving you to make you deny what you are. Just as I’d never be happy or at peace trying to be something that frightens me.” Alasen touched his cheek briefly, regretfully. “I’ve thought about nothing else today. I try to see myself wearing the rings, doing what you can do—and I can’t. You understand power. I’m afraid of it.”
“What are you afraid of?” he whispered, and her face went ashen in the twilight at the deadly quiet of his voice. “That I can do such things?” A tiny gout of Fire flickered on the stone beside them, wafted over the river. It flared as he reacted to the fear in her eyes.
“Andry, please—this is hard enough for me. Don’t make it ugly.”
“So we’re to be civilized about it, are we?” He nearly lost control of the hovering flame, furious emotion shaking in his chest and half-strangling him. She loved him. But she was not going to come with him.
“Stop it! Andry, why can’t you understand? I don’t want to be a Sunrunner! It frightens me!”
“This is what frightens you!”
Fire roared up from the river, Fire swirling in a whirlwind of Air and thick with brilliant diamonds of Water and dark clots of Earth caught in the influx of power. The column of flames leaped up to the dusky turquoise sky, glared into the depths of the Faolain. Narrow as a swordpoint at its base, it swelled river-wide and high as the trees.