by Melanie Rawn
The younger man nodded. “He is greatly revered among us, even more than his father who drove the Merida from Stronghold.” Kazander hesitated. “But—and I would say this to no one but you, mighty athri—it surpasses my understanding and that of our wisest ones why Prince Pol should take to wife the daughter of the snake who has given shelter to the Merida these many years.”
“I would say this to no one but you, mighty korrus—but I’ve never understood it, myself. Princess Meiglan is beautiful and gentle and innocent of her father’s wickedness. And marriage to bring alliances and peace is not uncommon. Still . . . .”
“The vermin still raid in the north. My great-grandfather fought them and killed many. My grandfather fought them and killed many more. My father was young but remembers your victory at Tiglath, where you killed hundreds. And yet they still raid in the north.” Aware that his temper was seething, as always at the mere mention of the ancient enemy, he made an effort and said, “But perhaps it is as you say, and this alliance will bring peace one day.”
“Is it true, do you suppose, that Prince Miyon has no sons to follow him?”
“That is the rumor. It’s said there are bastards, but he keeps none of them at his court. If he dies without naming an heir, there will be war.”
“Not if Pol claims Cunaxa on his wife’s behalf,” Walvis said musingly. “Rohan once told me that her marriage to Pol was a stroke of genius. But he never said whose.”
“It is beyond my poor powers of understanding,” Kazander sighed.
Walvis changed the subject. “How long can you stay this time?”
“As long as it takes the Lady Chayla to forgive me.” He grinned.
“I thought we agreed that would take forever! I’m not contributing my substance to feed your ravenous hordes or your flea-bitten horses while you make large eyes at her! You have ten days, and then I’m packing you back to your long-suffering wives.”
“As you command, mighty athri.” Kazander gave him the eyes-lips-heart salute once again, with a low bow.
Walvis snorted. “I thought I told you to stop calling me that.”
Chapter Four
Precisely one step into his wife’s solar, Pol was accosted by a child who climbed him like a tree and demanded a lengthy list of indulgences at the top of her lungs. Making sure a thick carpet was under him, Pol collapsed onto it, howling for mercy.
“Jihan!” Meiglan clapped her hands sharply. “Stop that at once!”
“He did it on purpose,” Jihan asserted, immobilizing the paternal right arm through the simple expedient of sitting on it. “Please, Papa, please can we go to the lake? And ride our new ponies and will you be our dragon and I’ll even let Rislyn win this time, please?”
Pol eyed his offspring with the mixture of exasperation and affection that usually meant Jihan got whatever she wanted. “If you want to play dragons, then don’t break my wing!”
Instant cooperation. Pol levered himself up from the rug and secured Jihan under one arm. He grabbed Rislyn up in the other and growled. Shrieks became giggles as he tickled; they attacked; he eventually surrendered; Meiglan watched the entire performance with a resigned sigh.
At last order was restored. Pol gave his wife a belated good-morning kiss and shook his head at her offer of breakfast.
“Not today, I’m afraid. My steward awaits. By the way, Jihan, if you’re set on a swim, why don’t you take my squires with you? I won’t need them this morning, and they could do with some fun.”
“Do I have to? Kierun never says anything and Dannar makes me sick.”
“Jihan!” exclaimed Meiglan.
“Well, it’s true, Mama. Do I have to ask them?”
Pol kept a straight face. “It’s a princess’ duty to get along with her father’s squires.”
“Oh, all right. May I be excused now, Mama?”
“Fold your napkin,” Meiglan instructed, “and change out of your new dress before you ruin it—” But Jihan was already out the door. “Pol, I despair of that child! She simply must learn some manners. I won’t have her disgracing us by being so ungovernable.”
“Don’t worry,” he soothed. “She has Rislyn’s gentle example, doesn’t she, little one?” He smiled at his other daughter. Like Jihan, she was small for her age, but almost frail where her sister was quick and wiry. No one who knew the truth of Pol’s ancestry ever said it aloud, but it had not gone unnoticed that Rislyn’s eyes were as limpid a green as Roelstra’s, while Jihan’s were Rohan’s startling blue. It was convenient that Pol’s own eyes were a changeable combination of both. But the real distinction between the twins was signaled by the fact that Jihan swam like a fish and Rislyn paled at the sight of water. She had inherited Pol’s Sunrunner gifts; Jihan was pure diarmadhi.
“Shall we really ride our new ponies today, Papa?” Rislyn asked hesitantly.
“We shall,” he confirmed. “Give me a kiss, ladies, I’m off to my daily ordeal. Pity your poor prince, who has to work so hard on such a lovely day!”
The morning beckoned to him through the hallway windows as he strode resolutely to his office. Infinitely more pleasant to conduct business in the open air—but also unconducive to getting any real work done. Except for pruning the roses, redesigning a flowerbed, or coaxing a shy herb to grow. He ordered himself to attend to the affairs of his princedom—and stopped to look wistfully out at the gardens anyway.
Pride of ownership sang in him. Much as he loved Stronghold, it had belonged to his family for generations. Dragon’s Rest was his creation. Every stone of it, every tree and fountain and carpet and tapestry and tile. Here, the generations would be counted from him.
Footsteps down the corridor alerted him to the arrival of his steward. Suppressing a sigh, he greeted the man and invited him into his office. By noon he’d heard the reports submitted by his masters of horse, hawk, and guard; decided the inheritance of eleven disputed farms; discussed the number of wolves to be hunted that winter (enough to decrease the threat to herds but not enough to overpopulate mountain elk and deer); chosen an official gift for his father-by-marriage’s birthday; signed multiple copies of documents needed to authorize various shipments to various princedoms; and settled how many people would be needed from the surrounding countryside to help with the harvest. A tidy morning’s work—but he hadn’t taken a breath of air outside since waking.
Before his marriage, he’d done pretty much as he liked. He ate when he was hungry, slept when he was tired, and took care of his princedom in between building Dragon’s Rest. Rialt had done most of the work Pol loathed, the kind that involved sitting at a desk with piles of parchments. But for the past few years Rialt had been regent of Waes. Halian had forfeited the city and all its revenues—a mere slap on the wrist for Chiana’s raising an army, sorcerer-inspired or not. Charged with making Waes a model of profit and efficiency, Rialt had succeeded admirably; his administrative talents were perfectly suited to the task. Still, in losing him, Pol had lost his own comparative freedom and gained long days at this damned desk.
His stomach started growling halfway through a review of the upcoming law court. The steward politely pretended not to notice. Pol drank some water. The growl became a gurgle. He coughed to hide the sound. When a second cup of water sloshed inside him like wine in a half-empty barrel, he gave up and grinned.
“My brain is fascinated by the prospect of deciding who has the better claim to which plow-elk, but my stomach has other ideas. Shall we continue later?”
“As you wish, my lord,” the steward said. “If it’s convenient, the winemaster begs a few words sometime today.”
“Fine.” Pol hid his eagerness; consultation with Master Irul might include a long walk through the vineyards—precisely what he needed.
The steward shuffled parchments and ceremoniously bowed himself out. Pol sighed for the old days, when Rialt had run palace and princedom by consulting him and then writing appropriate orders. All Pol ever had to do then was read, sign, seal—and return to
his horses, his gardens, his crops, or his architects.
He would have been entirely happy with only those things to occupy him. Uninterrupted enjoyment of the gentle arts of peace was just what Rohan had wanted to accomplish. Rich crops and fat cattle were impossible in the Desert; Dragon’s Rest was as much Rohan’s dream as Pol’s. Long, tranquil seasons of growth and plenty, the simple life of a farmer—
Pol heard his breath exhale in an absurdly wistful sigh and burst out laughing. Some simple farmer it was who held conversations with a dragon.
Not that that art was anywhere near perfected. Yet. But Pol now communicated easily with Azhdeen, in a strange combination of emotion and Sunrunner conjurings. He thought of the dragon as his, just as Elisel was Sioned’s. But the dragons saw it the other way around.
Three years ago, Riyan had learned to “speak” with Sadalian, a young green-bronze sire—and not by choice. The dragon had simply landed in front of him one afternoon outside Skybowl and established contact in a swirl of brilliant colors. This summer Morwenna’s trepidation had succumbed to a dainty little blue-gray female she named Elidi. It was six years this spring since Hollis had approached her dragon, though she couldn’t explain what process had led to the selection. “I just knew,” Hollis had said. “Abisel isn’t the biggest sire or the most beautiful—but there’s something about him . . . .” The bemusement in her smile made Maarken and Ruala nod with perfect understanding; they had picked their dragons the same way. Friendships with seven dragons out of the hundreds that flew Desert skies was promising, but the exclusivity of such contact frustrated Pol. Dragons were intrigued by their humans, always treated them with care—and never deigned to speak with any others. When Maarken tried to discover the reason for this, Pavisel reacted with a snort, a toss of her black head, and a scornful conjure of other dragons tripping over their own wings.
“I think she’s saying the others are too stupid,” Maarken reported. “But you know something else? I think they’re jealous. We belong to them—one person, one dragon. They don’t object to talks between other humans and other dragons, but . . . .” And he gave that bewildered shrug that was fast becoming characteristic of someone who talked with a dragon.
It gnawed at Pol sometimes that the one person who should have been able to was incapable of it. Of them all, Rohan should know communion with a dragon.
“Ah, but I have my dragons, Pol,” he smiled when Pol complained about how unfair it was. “Hundreds of them—every dragon that ever flew across the Long Sand. I belong to all of them.”
Pol met his new winemaster in the lower garden. Sioned had coaxed and cajoled and finally pried Master Irul loose from the vineyards at Catha Freehold this summer. Dragon’s Rest had potential that she was determined to see—or perhaps “taste” was the more appropriate term—fulfilled. Having spent the summer inspecting every aspect of the winemaking from the trellises to the shape of the bottles, the master now gave Pol his succinct verdict:
“Pig swill.”
Pol blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Grapes left too long on the vine. First fermentation vats a disaster. Too much resin in the wood. Aging barrels all wrong. Porous, bad design, aftertaste like rotted wood.”
“That’s quite a condemnation,” Pol said, amused.
Irul shrugged. He was a short, burly, sun-weathered man who took two steps to Pol’s one as they walked the vineyards. “Drinkable, I suppose. To anyone lacking a tongue. Dump it. Serve it to unwanted guests.” Stopping beside a row of vines, he plucked a single fat grape. A slight pressure of thick fingers split the skin. Irul sniffed, then licked his fingers. “Juice, skin, no pulp, just enough sugar. We harvest tomorrow. There might be enough decent wine for the next Rialla.”
“So my mother hopes.”
“Best nose in the princedoms—except mine.” Irul rubbed a leaf between his fingers. “Good climate, this. Cool mornings, hot afternoons. I’ve cost you a fortune in new vats, but worth it.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Master Irul. And I expect something worth drinking by next summer. The lighter wines should be ready by then, yes?”
“Perhaps,” he conceded with a grunt.
Pol thanked him and continued up the hill. From the cool shade of the woods crowning the rise, he could see most of the valley, but not the shimmering lake to the north or the sheep kept penned there for the dragons’ refreshment. Pol lazed back on his elbows to observe his little world, smiling. Irul was dictating harvest orders to the farmers; down the valley, the master of horse supervised saddle-breaking. The tall, skinny figure of the cook proceeded in state to the vegetable garden, trailed by a small troop of kitchen servants whom he set to picking produce for dinner. The chief steward crossed the garden on his daily inspection, and stopped to argue with the head groundskeeper—also a daily occurrence. The chamberlain ran out of the Princes Hall, waving her arms madly at the men washing the windows; the guardmaster set up archery practice in a newly shorn wheatfield; and from the wooden village hall that also served as a schoolhouse, dozens of children were being shooed back inside after their games.
Pol laughed softly at all this industrious activity that enabled their prince to lounge in idle repose. Despite the time he put in on management and governance, he had no illusions about who really ruled Dragon’s Rest. He was surrounded by despots who did all the work for him—the secret to being a successful prince, according to his father.
“Find people who know what they’re doing, and let them do it. It leaves one free to think great thoughts—which is frequently best done with one’s eyes closed.”
Aware that his lids were indeed drooping, Pol pushed himself to his feet. He had a game of dragons to play—and a warning to give Jihan not to break the chamberlain’s heart by riding this pony across the flawless polished floor of the Princes Hall.
• • •
“I know Gemma and I have outstayed our welcome—” Tilal began, and Pol laughed.
“According to whom? Not me, and not Meggie.”
“According to my daughter!” Tilal grinned and kicked at the pebbled pathway of the water garden. “I know—she’s sixteen, not six. As she informs me at least once a day. But I still can’t help thinking of her—”
“As your little girl?” Pol suggested.
“Go on, laugh—but remember this when your own hatchlings try their wings!”
Pol couldn’t imagine Dragon’s Rest without Jihan and Rislyn, and said so. Tilal’s turn to laugh.
“Now you’ve got some idea of how I feel. First Rihani went off to become a squire, and now Sioneva’s going to be here with you—Sorin’s only nine, but in a few years he’ll be fostered, too. I tell you, Pol, it’s depressing.”
“Then let’s change the subject. How long will it take Kolya to rebuild his fishing boats? The storms on Lake Kadar this winter were pretty vicious, judging by the wood you skinned me out of this year.”
“Actually, I keep telling myself that’s the main reason I’m staying on. Laric’s helping with a new design so Kolya can get as many boats as possible from your timber. Goddess knows you were stingy enough with it!”
They continued trading affectionate accusations as they left the water garden for the front lawns. Tilal and Gemma could stay all winter if they liked; Pol enjoyed filling Dragon’s Rest with his friends and family. Sioneva, another in the ranks of Sioned’s namesakes, would be living here for the odd year or so under Meiglan’s care. The custom of fostering young highborn boys to other courts had expanded recently to include their sisters—Meggie’s idea, for she had grown up totally ignorant of anything outside her home manor of Gracine and her father’s Castle Pine. Her object was to give the girls wider experience—but Pol embraced the plan because the exchange of sons and daughters forged alliances. What she did through kind concern that others would not suffer her agonies of inadequacy, he approved for political reasons.
“Any quiver of dragons yet, azhri?” Tilal asked suddenly.
Pol arche
d a brow. “I note the distinction between azhri and azhrei!”
“Only one Dragon Prince. Back when I was his squire, I learned to recognize the signs in him, but I never did figure out how he did it.”
“One of life’s mysteries.”
“Like the ones Andry’s weaving around the Goddess?” Tilal made a face. “Tell me, Pol, wasn’t it nicer when she was simply here, and we could chat with her without all these ritual mumblings?”
This was a sore point, but Pol kept hold of his temper. “Doubtless Andry uses what words he sees fit. I’m no more qualified to advise him in such things than he is to make recommendations about Princemarch.”
“That will come.” The Kierstian green eyes were dark with warning. “I’ve noticed a few signs, myself. Like people wearing little medallions carved with that sunburst crest.”
“Charming,” he rasped.
“And there’s not a damned thing we can do, is there?”
“Except trust to people’s sense.”
“When Sunrunner physicians are more and more sought after? They aren’t any better trained and they use the same remedies—with the same rate of success. But a Sunrunner has a direct link to the Goddess,” Tilal finished angrily.
“I really don’t want to discuss this, Tilal.”
“No, nobody does. That’s the problem. We complain in private—and let Andry do as he likes. I knew him when he was little, Pol. What happened to him? Power? Is that the explanation?”
“Among other things.” He greeted the arrival of his daughters with relief. But taking them to the paddocks, lifting them to their new ponies, watching them put the animals through their paces—both girls were splendid riders even at seven years old—served as only a minor distraction. He kept remembering a conversation he’d had with his parents this summer.
• • •
“It’s my fault,” Rohan sighed when Sioned stormed into the Tapestry Room with news that Pirro of Fessenden had dismissed his court physician in favor of a Sunrunner. “If I hadn’t set up the school in Gilad to rival Goddess Keep . . . .”