by Melanie Rawn
“Which leaves Maarken free to marry where his heart is,” Andry told her firmly. “But I see what you mean. It works the same way for women, doesn’t it? They’re needed at their keeps or their trades—or to form marriage alliances. It’s too bad. All of them should come, no matter what.”
“Others have different duties and points of view. Besides, I think Andrade sits there being scary just so the timid ones who aren’t sure can be weeded out.”
“If they don’t want to be here, they shouldn’t be. But I still can’t imagine anybody who could be a Sunrunner not fighting for the chance.”
They were at the bottom of the stairs now, emerging into a long, wide corridor that led in one direction to the refectory and in the other to the archives, library, and schoolrooms. Andry and Hollis were among the last to walk down the high-ceilinged passage, and as they went by a window embrasure they saw four boys and two girls huddled together, listening wide-eyed as a Sunrunner instructed them in making their obeisances to Lady Andrade. The girls and one of the boys were no older than thirteen winters; the other three boys were older, fifteen or sixteen. The tallest of these was a handsome, self-possessed youth with glossy night-black hair and deep gray-green eyes. He met Andry’s smile with perfect calm, and did not return it. His gaze shifted to Hollis with the appraising, approving expression of a male who knows his own attractions and how to use them. But there was something more about him, a consciousness of rank and worth that surprised Andry. The slight flush on Hollis’ cheeks surprised him, too.
They separated inside the huge refectory, she to join the other ranking Sunrunners, he to sit with his fellow apprentices. The meal progressed through the usual three courses of soup, meat and salad, biscuits and fruit. Andrade set a plentiful though plain table, and Andry was looking forward to the elaborate meals served at the Rialla. He had a sweet-tooth that fresh berries and spice-dusted biscuits did little to satisfy. Steaming pitchers of taze were passed around last of all, and as he poured himself a full mug he inhaled deeply of the sharp scent, faintly tinged with citrus. He missed nothing about his life at Radzyn so much as expeditions with his family to collect various leaves, bark, and herbs to be ground up for his mother’s own special blend. Taze was her favorite domestic ritual. She would spend several evenings a year in the kitchen creating just the right mix, while her husband chased the servants out and donned an apron to bake fruit tarts that were his contribution to the family ceremony. Andry had wonderful memories of hours filled with laughter and companionship—and flour fights with his brothers—as his father placidly negated his warrior’s image by baking and his mother filled huge sacks with another season’s grinding of taze.
Memories slipped away as the six new arrivals were brought into the hall. He tried to see them as Andrade might, as a Lord of Goddess Keep might evaluate newcomers. His attention soon fixed on the black-haired youth. A glance at Hollis told him that she, too, looked only at the boy, who moved with an easy assurance worthy of a lord’s son. There was a look of highborn blood in his fine, handsome features, and his hands were well-tended, though his clothes were simple and rather worn. Andry was too far down the hall to catch his name, but he could easily read Andrade’s reaction. It took long familiarity with the nuances of her lips and brows and the muscles around her eyes, but Andry knew immediately that she was impressed. As the six returned down between the tables from making their bows, heading for the lowest seats, Andry saw the boy catch and hold Hollis’ gaze as long as he could, a smile in his eyes.
As soon as Andrade had dismissed them all and withdrawn to her own chambers for the night, Andry sought out his brother’s Chosen and asked, “Who was that, anyway? Did you hear his name?”
“Whose name?”
“You know very well who. The one with the black hair and the strange eyes.”
“Did you think they were strange? His name is Seldges or something like that. I didn’t hear clearly.”
“I wonder where he comes from,” Andry mused. “Did you see the way he never once looked down, but stared right into Andrade’s face?”
“Any boy who looks the way he does is used to being stared at, himself. I imagine staring right back is a defensive reaction. But one thing’s for certain—that one was made a man quite some time ago. The night of his first ring won’t be anything new to him at all!”
Andry smiled to hide the embarrassment that could still come to him years after the fact. He himself had been very much the virgin on that night. He had no idea which of the women here had come to him, and he trusted to the Goddess’ mercy that he never would know, for he suspected he had been nothing to marvel at. Maarken, who had still been resident here at the time, had guessed—not that he’d said anything directly, of course. But within a few days he had found the opportunity to make the casual observation that it was damned inconvenient sometimes, being unable to find attractions in any woman but his absent lady, and that it seemed to be a family failing. Andry had correctly interpreted this as a comforting reassurance that he would enjoy things much more with a woman he truly loved. That night was, after all, supposed to demonstrate the difference between physical desire and genuine love, and how infinitely preferable the latter was. Andry trusted that one day he would be as lucky as Maarken and their father and Rohan. Yet even the prettiest girls at Goddess Keep roused no more than passing admiration in him.
Recently he had come to the somewhat bemused realization while working on the scrolls that he had fallen a little in love with the remarkable Lady Merisel. Her anonymous scribe had not been immune to her either, though she must have been nearly ninety when she’d dictated the scrolls to him. Otherwise impersonal accounts of her were salted with such phrases as luminous eyes, gracious smile, and peerless beauty, as if the man could not help himself. Even without these hints of her personal charms, her wisdom and the scope of her powers and interests were evident in each line. She had much to say on almost every topic imaginable, and those of her opinions not etched in acid were often very funny—and sometimes were both. His favorite so far in his translation mentioned ancient superstitions about the symbology of numbers, then remarked:
There are four Elements: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. Each of these has three aspects, making twelve total. Twelve is the digits one and two together; add them and get three, which is the number of moons. Add the twelve to the Four and you get sixteen, which is one plus six, or seven, which is indivisible. I am told that if one added together all the stars, then added the result to the number of moons plus the sun, then added those digits, a similarly mystic number would result. Which only shows how silly the whole thing is.
Andry imagined her as combining the qualities of his own fiery, fascinating mother, the quietly fierce Sioned, and Lady Andrade in all her pride and power—with enough cunning and intellect to make all three women seem simpletons by comparison. He had always known, with a kind of rueful resignation, that the woman he himself Chose would have far to go to measure up to the major feminine influences in his life. His admiration for Lady Merisel wasn’t helping much.
He wanted his lady to appear before him simply and irrevocably, the way Sioned had arrived in Rohan’s life. He wanted to be as absolutely certain as his parents had been when they first set eyes on each other. He was as uninterested in the process of finding a wife as he was impatient with the steps that must be taken to earn his rings. He knew himself worthy of the woman and the honors; false modesty was absurd when one was personable in one’s own right, royally born, and as gifted in the Sunrunner arts as he.
Knowing he would have to wait for all of it didn’t help much, either.
The black-haired boy returned to his bed in the dormitory well-pleased with himself and the evening. The name he had given was not Seldges but Sejast, and his ears had been trained to respond to that name rather than his own. He had passed every test he had set himself: facing Lady Andrade, identifying Lord Andry of Radzyn without difficulty, even making tentative choice of the woman who would be hi
s on a man-making night Mireva had rendered totally unnecessary.
Segev smiled in the darkness as he remembered his brothers’ astonishment the morning after his night in her house. He turned over to stifle a chuckle in his pillow, but the shifting of sheets against his body reminded his flesh of that night.
Riding up to the house huddled against the hill, he’d told himself that Ruval and Marron had no right to treat him as if he were still a child. He was just as much High Prince Roelstra’s grandson as they, and Mireva had agreed that he should be the one to undertake this essential task at Goddess Keep. He entered the dwelling, anticipating lessons in how to fool Lady Andrade. But Mireva had not been waiting for him.
The girl was a few winters his senior, and at close to sixteen Segev was more than old enough to appreciate her beauty. Slender through the waist, richly curved above and below, she wore a silk shift three shades lighter than her pale blue eyes. Black hair cascaded in thick, loose waves from beneath a wispy golden veil weighted at its three corners with silver coins. Her face was round of brow, pointed of chin, with lips the color of summer roses and eyelashes that swept demurely down as she murmured, “You’re much handsomer than your brothers, my lord.”
The next thing he knew for certain was her voice again. They lay on the familiar carpet before the hearth, both of them bathed in the sweat of their labors, and she had said, “More of a man than your brothers, as well.” And then she had laughed.
Head spinning, Segev spasmed away from her. It was not the young girl who lay next to him but Mireva, a woman old enough to be his grandmother.
Yet she did not look like a grandmother. Though the guise had been shed, he recognized the knowing touch of her fingers and suddenly craved the taste of her mouth. By dawn they were in her bed, and Mireva was still laughing.
“Your brothers managed thrice each. But you’ve satisfied me four times!”
“Five,” he said, reaching for her again.
“Ah, you may be young and there’s new fire in your blood, but I don’t relish another scorching so soon. You must not be so eager when the night comes for you at Goddess Keep, nor let the woman find out how much you know.”
She had explained then that the faradhi ritual was a perversion of the old ways, when only the most powerful had initiated virgins—as was their right. Sunrunners were so feeble in their spells that they performed the act in total darkness and total silence, lest their weavings unravel around them.
“Any fool of six or more rings may bed the virgin—probably because those who think themselves the most powerful are too old.”
“Then it won’t be Andrade,” he replied with a relieved sigh.
Mireva had pretended insult. “She’s only ten winters my senior!”
“Say thirty, and I might believe you.”
The answer pleased her so much that it was a fifth time before they resumed their conversation.
Segev turned once more in his dormitory bed, cursing himself for remembering so vividly, and forced himself to think about the tasks ahead of him. The first was to maintain the illusion that he was simply another student of the faradhi arts. The prospect of classes and discipline bored him, but he would see them through to reach his next objective: the beautiful golden-haired Sunrunner he intended for his man-making night. He would have to make sure she won the right to go to his bed, when he would give her wine laced with dranath as Mireva had instructed. Thereafter he would find other chances to drug her, gently and slowly so that she would not realize her growing addiction. She would be tired sometimes, her bones would ache—and then Segev would be there, all tender solicitude, offering wine or taze as a restorative. If he was clever, she would come to think that it was he and not the drug that caused her unproved health and mood. When time and opportunity came to steal the scrolls, she would be his willing accomplice—not that he would ask anything unusual or impossible. Only a horse made ready at the gate, a few lies to cover the time needed for the theft—and, once he was gone, he would have a passionate defender who would sicken and slowly die for lack of dranath.
There had been another Sunrunner years ago who had died of it. Mireva had told him the details as he’d dressed that morning, and explained the complexities of the night Masul was born. Segev had been unable to share her regret that Ianthe had not won Prince Rohan for her own, pointing out that he could hardly be expected to mourn circumstances that had led to his own birth.
He remembered very little about his mother. Lustrous dark eyes, a rare and costly fragrance, a rustic of skirts, a soft lap—those were his only memories. His brothers had told him that in the last year of her life she had grown big with child, but he recalled nothing of it. The brother or sister had died with her on that fiery night that was Segev’s first clear memory.
Torn from a sound sleep to the smells of smoke and fear, the sounds of screaming death and fire, the sight of a hideous greedy glow outside his chamber. Carried roughly down the blazing staircase in bruisingly strong arms. Unable to breathe through the thickness of smoke and flames. Screaming for his mother, pounding on the guard’s chest, half-smothered in the folds of a smelly cloak. More pain as he was slung across a saddle. Looking back at the false eastern dawnlight created by the burning of Feruche.
Marron delighted in tormenting Segev with his fear of fire. But Segev had eventually learned that his brother was even more afraid of it than he, and one very satisfying midnight had shocked Marron into a shriek of terror with a candle held near his sleeping face. That had been the end of Marron’s teasing.
Segev sighed again, rolling himself tighter in his blanket. The cold here was different from that of the mountains: wet with the sea, leaking ice along his bones as crisp snowy chill did not. His gaze flickered to the hearth, far from him beyond the other beds, but though he could appreciate the fire’s warmth he could never regard it as a friend. Fire belonged to Sunrunners.
He lay very still, hearing the murmur of voices at the doorway as the new arrivals were checked for the night. The name he had given himself plucked at his ears, and he grinned into the pillow. He knew some of the old language, and Mireva had been vastly amused when told the word he’d decided to be known by: Sejast, meaning “dark son.”
The voices went away, and the door closed again, leaving the hearth as the only source of light. He would have to conjure Fire before receiving his first ring and spending the night with the blonde woman. He must remember not to call it too powerfully in case he aroused suspicion. He did not look forward to the test, but he knew he could do it—must do it, and soon.
And then, when the first ring glinted from his right middle finger and the lovely faradhi was his through dranath, he would show Lady Mireva that he and not Ruval should be the one to challenge Prince Pol.
Chapter Eight
Just before spring gave way to summer, the dragons returned to the Desert.
Within Stronghold, Rohan and Tobin both looked up at the same time from the desk where she had been explaining a map. Brother and sister rose as one to gaze north from the windows, tense with anticipation. Sioned shared a wry smile with Chay, and they began tidying the spread of parchments on the desk. There would be no more work done that day.
Pol was out walking with Myrdal in the sandy plain below Stronghold, detailing his experiences as Prince Lleyn’s squire. The old woman nodded approval of his training; in her day she had been in command of the castle guard and schooled more than one boy in the knightly arts—including Prince Chadric, which in a way made it seem as if Myrdal had trained Pol, too. He was smiling at the realization when she suddenly stopped walking and planted her cane made of a dragon’s bone in the sand. Her face lifted to the sky.
“Listen,” she murmured. “Can you hear them? Listen to the wings, Pol!”
It had been said of his grandfather Zehava that he could glance at the formation of clouds and predict to the day when the dragons would return. Myrdal was rumored to be Zehava’s cousin; she certainly seemed to have the same talent. Po
l closed his eyes and concentrated, hoping with all his heart that he had inherited the ability, too. Very faintly, on the edges of his mind, he sensed the wings, not hearing them so much as feeling them all along his nerves, a delicious tingling, a flash of excitement through his blood.
Maarken was in the courtyard with Sionell and Jahnavi, telling them a story while he whittled a flute for the little boy. He gave a sudden start and got to his feet, catching his breath. Jahnavi, named for Maarken’s long-dead twin brother, tugged at his sleeve in bewilderment, face creased with worry. Sionell started to speak, but then the cry came down from the Flametower: “Dragons!”
All of Stronghold abandoned tasks and duties, scurrying for vantage points at windows, atop the gatehouse, along the walls. By the time the dragons had become a faint smudge against the northern horizon, people were jostling for the best places to see them—all in a strange, awed silence. Rohan, Sioned, Tobin, and Chay met Feylin on the way up to the Flametower, their running footsteps the only sound. The lookout had already opened the stone door of a huge circular room at the tower’s pinnacle, where a fire burned year-round as a beacon light in the Desert and to symbolize Rohan’s rule. Not even the open windows all the way around the room could cool the heat given off by the fire blazing in the chamber’s center. Sweat immediately beaded foreheads and trickled between shoulder blades as the five clustered around the windows.
In the silence could be heard the rush of wings. The hazy blot grew larger, separated into individual dragons. Sunlight gleamed off dull hides: brown, russet, ash gray, green-bronze, dark gold, blue-black. And suddenly there came the music of dragon voices. A tremor ran through all who heard the arrogant bellows of ownership, of triumph, of warning. Wings stroked powerfully, fore- and hind-legs tucked in with shining talons barely visible. As they reached the hot thermals they soared higher, gliding easily with wings outspread, veering east to trumpet their mastery over the Long Sand before turning once more for the hills.