Stronghold

by Melanie Rawn

  Ulwis drank her wine slowly, sunlight glistening off topaz-gold hawks wheeling above the blue-and-purple mountains of Cunaxa where she had been born. Nialdan’s had birds, too: red-feathered sea geese nesting in emerald grass on the beaches of his father’s holding near Waes.

  Valeda drained her cup and set it down directly in the light; the complex design, mostly green with pinpoints of red flowers, depicted the circle of trees near Goddess Keep with its pond and rock cairn. It was a reference to her main duty here, that of making boys into men under the guise of the Goddess.

  Torien’s was in shades of red and amber and blue, sunset over the sea. Deniker’s goblet must have caused the crafter many false starts before he got that unusual jade green right. Into the opaque green sea a blue waterfall tumbled, foaming white at its base.

  But Andry’s was the most impressive, as was fitting. A ruby-bright dragon soared above his native Desert, amber beneath a sky streaked with amethyst clouds. The colors were augmented by bits of crushed jewels blown into the molten glass itself—a triumph of the crystaller’s art. Empty now as he turned it by its stem in the sun, it spat color onto the walls.

  “Feeling it yet?” Andry asked quietly.

  A few nods; those who had not yet finished their wine quickly did so. By the time Torien joined the others on the sunlit balcony above the gate, the dranath had heated his blood and sharpened his perceptions. The faces of the others showed the same heightened awareness. Incredible, what a pinch of harmless-looking herb could do.

  The configuration of strengths had been worked out years ago and tested many times—but never against a real attack. Yet Torien sensed no nervousness in the group, sure of themselves and especially of Andry. As core of the ros’salath, he was in the center. Flanking him were Nialdan and Rusina. Oclel stood at his wife’s side, Jolan next to him, and Valeda last of all to anchor that portion of the weaving. To Nialdan’s right were Ulwis and her husband Deniker. Torien took his place at the far end, and they were ready.

  Oclel needn’t have worried about distracting noise. The morning was quiet here, all the farmers and villagers inside the keep now, with thick stone walls between them and the devr’im. Neither was there any sign of the enemy. There was only the silent expanse of shorn fields bordered by red-or gold-leaved trees in thin autumn sunlight. But the quiet held warning: no birdsong, no grunting of plow-elk, not even the squeal of mice caught by hunting cats.

  “No sunlight,” Andry murmured. Torien shifted his plans to allow for this, agreeing with the judgment. Had it been a cloudless day or a clear night, they could have used sun, moons, or stars without fear. But the autumn sun was unreliable, and could catch any working Sunrunner in clouds. So they would conjure only: more difficult, but safer.

  Slowly, for they had time yet, and carefully, for this must be done right, the three anchoring minds gathered in the strengths of their subordinates. Torien had heard Valeda liken herself to a master weaver and a loom, with Jolan and Oclel the bright threads. Torien preferred to think of it in the terms of his Fironese homeland: he both crafter and window, Ulwis and Deniker the shapes of colored glass. But neither image was entirely analogous. Threads snapped or unraveled; glass splintered or broke. What was fashioned by the devr’im that morning would do none of those things—unless one of them was pierced by iron. Torien had no real fear of that for himself. He was part diarmadhi. It was his shame but it might mean his life. Those of that blood experienced terrible pain if hit by iron; Sunrunners died.

  He worked, and made of the gorgeous blues and greens and golds and reds and Ulwis’ strange glowing purple a pattern of surpassing beauty. As crafter he fashioned the window; as window he was part of the pattern. But what was beautiful to see and be on his side was, in the way of all things, the opposite on the other. He had been on that other side several times. He knew the horrors waiting for those who came close enough to touch.

  Jolan had made a poem of it, something about what was light becoming darkness, what was pleasure becoming pain. Fragments of her words skittered through his mind, distracting him. He chased them away with a promise to hear her sing the poem when victory was theirs.

  Sensing that Andry waited, he presented his splendid window for use as if it were a shield. Valeda’s image of strongly woven fabric cloaked Andry; the Lord of Goddess Keep’s own concept, that of a sword with Nialdan as the solid hilt and Rusina as the glowing moonstone blade, completed his armament. Andry, who had never ridden to war, was ready for battle.

  They left their dragon-headed ships for the beaches, scaled the cliffs, marched in good order across the fields. Torien felt but could not see them. His physical senses were useless, just as during a Sunrunning. He had no flesh, no blood, no body to feel the deep trembling excitement brought by dranath. He was the window now, pieces of brilliant glass melded together by power. He was his Lord’s shield, as others were his cloak and sword. Those who encountered him would collide with nightmares; those who touched the cloth would be shrouded in hideous visions; those who braved the sword would be pierced by terrors. Let them come.

  He knew when they approached the keep. He waited for Andry to use him. But Andry waited, too. If Torien had once known why, he had forgotten. He wanted to feel those minds crash into the seething darkness of him that for him was light. He was as eager for it as a hungry dragon for the kill, as a boy for the smile of his first love, as a man for the bed of an adored wife. This was what dranath gave him.

  If he had known anything but the most tenuous connection to his body, he would have parted his lips on a cry of joy and possession and triumph. A pitiful ungifted mind shattered on its own worst fears. Shattered on the shield he had given his Lord against their enemies.

  The first of many—but not enough. They drew back, and he quivered with rage. Come to me, come to me, part of him sang. Come to me and die. For this was the secret Andry had told none but him. The practice was for practice. This was lethal. Minds shattered or shrouded or pierced would remain so, to the death of the flesh as surely as if they were Sunrunners shadow-lost.

  Had he been wholly of his body, he would have bellowed challenge, jeered their cowardice. The eager hunger surged and he knew he must glow and vibrate in the air like a shimmer-vision on the Long Sand. Come to me!

  When they came, it was not with unguarded minds. It was with iron.

  His body screamed with the pain of it, colors rent asunder by the onslaught of fierce bright steel. But he held. Crippled. Not yielding. Repair the crumbling glass, rethread the shredding weave, reforge the sword. I can. No one else.

  He did it, and the Sunrunners did not die. He found unexpected strength in Ulwis, she of the dark Merida face who denied possessing that blood, and used her. What he presented to Andry was not the adamantine shield and enveloping cloak and shining sword of before, but it served. It served.

  • • •

  Tilal was silent as he strode through the gates of Goddess Keep. Chaltyn hobbled along beside him, favoring his left thigh. The prince was unhurt but for the usual bruises. But of his four hundred and sixty-three, eighty-one were dead, twice that many injured. The enemy had been driven back down the cliffs, back to their longboats and their dragon-headed ships. Goddess Keep was game bigger than they had teeth for. Tilal knew why they did not linger off the coast to try again, as at New Raetia, but instead set limping sail around the cape for Gilad or Syr or the Desert. Andry had defeated their minds. Neither Tilal nor his soldiers had been necessary at all.

  A blond boy with Andry’s blue eyes pushed through the crush of Sunrunners and castlefolk, villagers and farmers and Tilal’s own people. “Your grace? May I escort you to the Lord’s chambers?”

  Tilal nodded curtly, not trusting himself even to open his mouth to be civil. A path was cleared through the noise to the keep. As they mounted the inner stairs, Tilal decided it was both a good thing and a bad thing that he must slow his steps for Chaltyn to keep pace: good because it prevented him from pelting up to Andry’s rooms and wri
nging his neck, bad because he had even more time to seethe. He told himself to remember his love for Chay and Maarken and Pol and especially Rohan. They needed neither the personal anguish nor the political disaster Tilal’s fury was quite capable of causing right now. But stronger than feeling or practical wisdom, the memory of his dead and wounded threatened to ignite him like a bin of oil-soaked wood.

  The Lord of Goddess Keep was waiting for him in an audience chamber rich with color, hung with fine tapestries, furnished with fruitwood chairs and velvet cushions. Andry sat in what looked suspiciously like a throne, all carved and elaborate. Flanking him, standing, were persons Tilal recognized as the Chief Steward and the mother of one or another of his children—Tilal neither remembered nor cared which. Andry and the woman looked exhausted. The steward looked half-dead.

  “His grace of Ossetia,” the boy said, the form correct, the voice hushed.

  “Thank you, Andrev. Bring a chair for his grace, and then leave us.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  So he made his own children address him by his title? How charming. How like Andry. The irritation of years flared, and it was no surprise that this one small thing had brought him to despise Andry at last.

  Tilal nodded thanks to the boy but did not sit down. He looked an order at Chaltyn to get off his feet; the old man balked for a moment, then sat down in the presence of his prince—and the Lord of Goddess Keep. Andry’s brows did not stir, but the steward’s did.

  Tilal had tried to calm himself enough on the way here to come up with a really blistering first sentence. Now, seeing Andry composed and waiting to be addressed, as if he were the prince and Tilal nothing more than a moderately useful servant, he said the first thing that came to him.

  “Who in all Hells do you think you are?”

  “Not a question requiring an answer,” Andry observed. “But to be pedantic, I am Lord of Goddess Keep, and not answerable to you. I am, barely and regrettably, answerable in some things to the High Prince.”

  “Answerable to him? He’ll fry you! How dare you use your gifts this way?”

  “What way is that, your grace?” the woman asked.

  Tilal ignored her. “We saw the dying—so much for the faradhi vow not to kill! Goddess in glory, Andry—do you know what you did to them? Did you have any idea—”

  “You care no more for enemy deaths than I do,” Andry replied quietly. “You yourself killed enough of them today.”

  “Clean kills, my Lord!” Chaltyn burst out. “Not leaving a mindless, whimpering husk that flinches from wind whispering through a blade of grass!”

  Andry held Tilal’s gaze with his own—but on a man who in many years at Stronghold had been taught what tricks Sunrunners used on the ungifted, the tactic was useless. Tilal was no ignorant, awestruck youth; he was a prince, familiar with Sunrunners, and had no intention of being caught the way it was said dragons snared their prey with a glance.

  Andry recognized it, and his expression changed fractionally. “It’s not the deaths that bother you,” he reiterated.

  “You made sure I saw them, didn’t you? I and all my army. You killed close on a hundred of them—but no more. Why is that, Andry? Did it take too much out of you? Would it have been too tiring to confront the whole army? Was a hundred enough to create the right impression?”

  The woman sucked in an outraged breath. No one spoke to the Lord of Goddess Keep this way. Andry placed a hand on her arm.

  “You waited!” Tilal spat. “You wanted enough witnesses to spread a tale of invincibility. I saw it, Goddess damn you—my people were fighting and dying! Those bastards were almost at the gates and you waited until then to work your spells!”

  “Valeda,” Andry said to the woman, “you see before you a prince trained by my uncle Rohan, who sees clearly—and understands the meaning of what he sees. But he never learned to control his temper or his tongue.” He rose from his chair, and Tilal was not so far gone in rage that he missed the stiff weariness Andry tried to hide. “Yes, Tilal, you’re right. I waited. But you don’t yet understand why. It wasn’t to see your soldiers killed. Rohan’s own law allows me to employ the ros’salath in defense of Goddess Keep.”

  “So that’s what you’re after,” Tilal breathed. “Pol failed at Radzyn. You’re putting Rohan on notice that you won’t fail. That he needs you. That you should have free rein, you and your—”

  “Devr’im,” Andry supplied. “You’ll recognize the root words. It’s a term of my own devising.”

  He recognized them well enough: “lords of light.” A pretty word with horrible implications.

  “And once you’ve done all this,” Tilal said slowly, “once you’ve destroyed the enemy . . . will we then call you High Prince?”

  “You insult me with more ambition than I possess.” Andry took a few steps toward him. “Listen to me, Tilal—cousin,” he added with a sardonic smile, and the word used between princes grated on Tilal’s ears. “We are cousins, you know, if only by marriage,” Andry went on. “My only ambition is to cleanse all lands of these barbarians. The rest of you are failing—my blood-cousin Pol being a prime example. I and my devr’im can succeed, but only if we’re allowed to work freely. That’s the message I wish you to convey to Rohan. It’s very simple. Let us work, and we’ll drive these savages out. What other hope is there?”

  Tilal’s fingers twitched as he reconsidered his earlier notion about wringing Andry’s neck. No, there was a better way to do it, to fell him and leave him alive and in pain.

  “I knew and loved your brother Sorin,” he said through his teeth. “For the first time, I’m glad he’s dead.”

  He paused just long enough to watch the poisoned shaft strike home. With a sharp gesture to Chaltyn, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the chamber—before his hands really did find and break Andry’s neck.

  • • •

  Chaltyn dissuaded him from leaving Goddess Keep that very evening. “It was a hard battle, for all that we won it,” he said. “Our people need and deserve at least one night’s sleep before they march again.”

  His prince snarled at him. “I don’t care if it’s only half a measure, I want out of here now!”

  “That would be a great unwisdom,” the old man scolded. “Stay the night. Use up Andry’s substance instead of our own. We’ve a long enough walk ahead of us to the Faolain and your brother—and fighting enough along the way to get the taste of Andry out of your mouth.”

  By the time he was out in the courtyard again, he had cooled enough to recognize that Chaltyn was right. “Very well. But I’m not sleeping within these walls tonight.”

  “Yes you are.” Tilal stared; Chaltyn leaned closer. “Have you forgotten that the High Princess your aunt still has friends here? You need a Sunrunner, my lord.”

  He gave in with poor grace. “And a bath. I stink of Andry’s presence.”

  Emerging from a long soak that soothed his muscles if not his mind, he found an excellent meal waiting for him in his chamber. When he was finished, he rang the little bell beside the bed. The boy who came to take the tray was none other than Andry’s blond son.

  “More wine, your grace?”

  “No, but thank you. I’ll sleep well enough on what I’ve already had. Andrev, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, your grace.”

  “It’s ‘my lord,’ actually.” He recalled Andry’s mocking words—and how the boy had used a title to his own father—and added, “We’re cousins, of a sort. You can use my name if you like.”

  A quick smile reminded him suddenly of Sorin. Andry would never forgive him for what he’d said—but he would not have taken it back even if he could.

  “We’re kin by marriage, I know,” the boy said, and began unpacking fresh clothes from Tilal’s saddlebags for the morning. “My sisters and brothers didn’t believe me when I pointed you out to them during the battle. And now I see you have green eyes, like the High Princess.”

  “My father was her brother. So you watche
d today, did you?”

  “Oh, yes! I counted how many you unhorsed. That’s a real fire-breather you were riding. Don’t let my father hear me say it, but some of Lord Kolya’s horses are even better than my grandsir’s.”

  “Some of them,” Tilal grinned. “But don’t let your grandsir hear me say it!” He stretched and pulled a face as a sore muscle twinged in his back. “Thank you for your service to me tonight, Andrev.”

  “I saw that you don’t have a squire, my l—Cousin Tilal.”

  “Not at present. No, you needn’t polish my sword, though I appreciate the thought. It’s late.”

  “A fine blade,” the boy said wistfully, running a cautious finger over the gold-chased hilt.

  “Unsheathe it if you like—but be careful, it’s got an edge like a dragon’s claw. I gave it to my father many years ago, and he left it to me.”

  “Is it the same one my uncle Maarken used to kill the pretender?” Andrev breathed, eyes shining.

  “The very same.” Tilal hid a grin. So Andry had a would-be warrior for a son, did he? That must go over well.

  “Thank you for letting me see it,” Andrev said, sliding the blade carefully back into the scabbard. “Good night, Cousin Tilal.”

  “Good night.” He settled back in bed to rest, but not to sleep. Chaltyn had promised to find and send before midnight a Sunrunner loyal to Sioned and Rohan. But despite his determination to stay awake, he was drifting off when his door opened and light spilled into the room.

  “Who’s there?”

  Shadows returned as the door swung closed. “My name is the one piece of information you may not have, your grace,” a voice whispered, so low-pitched that he couldn’t tell if it was male or female. “I swore to the High Princess.”

  Tilal didn’t trust Andry out of sword reach and he felt very odd around the edges of his perceptions. Like something tugged at part of him—not to draw him forward into the light, but to throw a blanket of mist over him. Struggling through it, he asked casually, “You knew her, I suppose, when she came here at thirteen.”