by Melanie Rawn
A huge sire, gold-speckled brown with black undersides to his wings, snapped at a smaller male of silvery hide and aggressive tendencies who flew too close. They roared out their rivalry loudly enough to shake the stones of Stronghold and swept insolently close to the keep, thundering their contempt of the puny beings below who watched them in wondering silence.
“Father of Storms!” Feylin blurted. “I’m forgetting to count them! Quick, somebody—pen and parchment!”
“In your hands,” Chay told her. She looked down with a start of surprise, then thrust the implements at him along with a bottle of ink from her tunic pocket.
“Take notes for me!” She leaned precariously out a window and Rohan grabbed her by the waist to steady her as she recited, “Group of eight youngsters, all brown—five females, varying gray—fourteen, no sixteen more females, bronze and black—” She paused for breath, counting frantically. “Thirty-six immatures, brown sire, black sire, two grays, three golds—Goddess, look at that flight of reds! Forty of them!”
“Forty-two,” Tobin corrected from the next window as the dragons flew past.
Chay could hardly write fast enough. He sprawled on the floor and scribbled with all his might as the two women called out numbers and colors. Rohan hung onto Feylin as she climbed up on the sill.
“And bringing up the rear—twenty-eight immature dragons, gray and greenish and bronze!” Her balance chose that moment to desert her. Rohan yanked her back into the room and they toppled onto the floor near Chay, spilling the ink in a black splash.
Sioned stood over them, laughing. “Feylin, my dear, you know how deeply I value your friendship, but if you don’t unhand my husband this instant—!”
Rohan helped Feylin up and winked at her. “She wouldn’t mind so much if I didn’t have a preference for redheads. I thought you were going to take off out the window and go flying with them!”
“I came near to it,” she admitted, rubbing one hip. “Did you get it all down, my lord?” she asked Chay.
He looked up from the floor. “If any of you can make sense of the scrawl, we’re all right, But I wrote it and I can’t even read it!”
“I was listening,” Sioned informed him.
“You and your faradhi memory tricks—why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“You mean you didn’t see her over there, still as a stone?” Tobin asked. “Although I’m sure the blank stare is something Andrade teaches along with the tricks themselves, just for show. Feylin, you and Sioned go downstairs with Chay and make a clean copy while she still remembers everything.”
When they were gone, she helped Rohan mop up the spilled ink. “Look at this. It’s soaked right into the stone!”
“Next time let’s do the count from the battlements.” He wiped sweat from his forehead, leaving a streak of black behind.
Tobin scrubbed it away. “I agree. It’s a furnace in here. That was probably the most chaos I’ve seen since my sons grew up. But the dragons are beautiful, aren’t they?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve finally come round to my way of thinking about them!”
“I don’t appreciate losing our stock to them, no. But they’re wonderful creatures. Besides, you always pay for what they gobble down.”
“I pay inflated prices,” he accused, following her out of the room. The heavy door swung shut behind them with a hollow thud that echoed down the empty stairwell.
“That wounds me deeply, little brother.”
“I don’t hear you denying it.”
“Well, if you’re foolish enough to pay for what the dragons steal. . . .” She grinned at him. “Besides, thanks to the dragons themselves, you can afford it. How much gold did you get out of their caves last year?”
They turned a corner and nearly bumped into Pol. His face seemed unable to decide whether excitement, shock, or bewilderment was the expression it wished to convey; his eyes said one thing, his brows another, and his slack jaw a third.
Rohan threw his sister a disgusted glance, and she had the grace to blush as he told Pol, “I hope you won’t follow her example by chattering that piece of information all over the keep.”
Pol shook his head, wide-eyed.
“And remember to make more noise when climbing stairs,” Rohan advised. “Unless you enjoy embarrassing people who get caught saying things they shouldn’t. Now, what have you run up here to tell me?”
“What? Oh—Myrdal and Maeta want to know if we’ll set out for Skybowl tonight or wait for tomorrow.”
“Hmm. Let’s go tonight. The moons will be up, and I fancy a ride while it’s cool. When we get to Skybowl, I’ll answer all the questions you’re having such trouble swallowing.”
“Yes, Father. I’m sorry, Aunt Tobin.”
“It was my fault, Pol.” As he ran back down the stairs a good deal more noisily than he’d come up them, she turned to Rohan. “I didn’t mean to—”
“I know you didn’t. But I’d hoped to wait before telling him.”
“I really am sorry, Rohan. It was careless of me.”
“The day we have to watch everything we say at Stronghold is the day I trade this pile of rock for a tent with the Isulk’im and let somebody else play High Prince for a while.” He put an arm around her waist. “Come. They’ll have finished the tally by now. I only hope Feylin is pleased with the total—she has this way of looking at me as if it’s my fault there are fewer dragons than she’d planned on!”
Sionell waylaid Pol on his errand, trying to capture his attention by running beside him and calling his name. He ignored her. Frustrated, she grabbed at his sleeve. “Slow down! Where are you going so fast?”
“I’m on my father’s business. Let go.” He tugged his arm from her grasp.
“Can I come with you?”
“No.”
She followed anyway, listening from the doorway as Pol informed Myrdal and her daughter Maeta that they would depart for Skybowl tonight.
“Good,” Maeta said. “It’s a long ride—but with Ostvel’s kitchen and wine cellar at the end of it!”
“If there was a horse in the stables that wouldn’t shake my old bones loose, I’d come with you,” Myrdal sighed. “Chaynal, bless the boy, never bred a slow animal in his life.”
“You could ride my pony,” Sionell offered shyly. “We could use lots of saddle blankets.”
“Thank you, child, but a horse made of feathers wouldn’t do for me at my age.” Myrdal smiled.
“I’ll give the necessary orders, my lord,” Maeta said to Pol. “If you’d be so kind as to tell your father—”
“Of course.” He started back across the courtyard, annoyed when Sionell skipped along beside him.
“I’m going, too,” she announced. “On my new pony.”
“That’s nice,” he muttered.
“Is Myrdal really your kinswoman? I heard somebody say she’s your grandfather’s cousin. Is she?”
“You shouldn’t listen to other people’s conversations. It’s rude.” He conveniently forgot that he had done the same thing himself that day, though unintentionally.
“I can’t help it if people talk and maybe say things they shouldn’t. Mama says the Goddess gave us eyes to see with and ears to hear with—”
“And a mouth to repeat everything you hear?”
“You’re the one who’s rude!” Sionell darted ahead of him and made an absurd attempt to block his way, small feet planted on the cobbles. “Apologize.”
“What for?”
“Your manners! Say you’re sorry!”
“No!” He knew he was being childish, but something about this little brat irked him beyond all patience. The thought of her tagging along after him all over Skybowl was intolerable.
“Say it!”
“Don’t use that tone of voice to me,” he warned.
“Why not? Because you’re a prince? Well, I’m not just anybody—I’m Lady Sionell of Remagev, and you’re nothing but a rude boy!”
He drew himself up, goad
ed beyond control. “You’re ruder than I am, if I was rude, which I wasn’t! And I happen to be the heir of the High Prince!”
Another voice spoke behind him, sharp with disapproval. “You are an insolent child who ought to be spanked for that statement. Apologize at once,” Sioned snapped.
Pol’s mouth set in mutinous lines and he shook his head.
His mother’s green eyes narrowed for a moment, and then she looked at Sionell. “What’s this all about?”
“Nothing, your grace,” the girl whispered. “I’m sorry, my lord prince.”
Pol blinked, more astounded by this sudden reversal than by her use of his title. But if she could be generous enough not to tell his mother how badly he’d behaved, and apologize into the bargain, he could do no less.
“I’m sorry, too—my lady,” he managed in a low voice.
Sionell’s blue eyes rounded with wonder as he gave her the honorific—the first time someone of highborn rank had seriously addressed her by her title.
Sioned eyed them both. “I suppose I’m not going to be told exactly why we’re in need of all the apologies. Sionell, would you do me a favor, please? Tell Maeta that if Selca’s hoof is healed, I’d like to ride her tonight.”
“Yes, my lady.” She ran off.
Pol looked up at his mother and tensed for a scold. When it came, it was both less than he deserved and worse than he expected.
“A prince who reminds people of his rank isn’t much of a prince,” she said. And that was all.
He gulped, nodded, and followed her silently back into the keep.
By late afternoon of the next day they were at Skybowl. The keep itself was invisible from the dunes below, and the only signs of habitation were the small terraced fields of waxy-leaved plants that grew best when exposed to the incredible heat. Scrub and tufts of goat-tail cactus dotted the slopes of the ancient crater, but the greater part of the mountainside was bare and gray.
As the trail crested before winding down into the cone, however, visitors discovered the reason for Skybowl’s name. A perfectly round, intensely blue lake nestled in the hollow of the volcano. No one knew how deep it was. On the far shore was the keep, which could have fit into Stronghold’s courtyard. Built of stone taken from nearby cliffs, chips of shining black glass caught sparks off the sun where they were embedded in pale gray rock. A pennant bearing a brown stripe on a blue field stirred lazily atop the castle’s single tower, and those who looked closely enough saw the gleam of gold atop the standard, a golden dragon in flight.
The party from Stronghold rode over the lip of the crater and a horn sounded from within the keep. A few moments later the pennant came down, to rise again with the blue-and-gold Desert banner preceding it, signifying that the prince was now in residence. Rohan slowed pace to give Ostvel time to come out and greet them, using the moments to breathe deeply of the fresh, cool air. The lake beckoned invitingly; he gestured to it and asked his wife, “Join me?”
“Not a chance! Ostvel always claims Sunrunners are frightened of drowning in a bathtub.”
“Do you think it’ll take a royal command to get him to Waes this year?”
Sioned waved as their old friend and former steward emerged on horseback from the gates. “I’ll work on persuading him,” she promised. “Riyan would be heartbroken if his father’s not there to see him knighted. Besides, Ostvel hasn’t left the Desert in years. When we made him Lord of Skybowl, it wasn’t to see him immure himself in the keep.”
Rohan lifted one hand in salute as Ostvel cantered toward them. “He still grieves, Sioned. After so many years, he still misses her.”
“As if he’d lost her only yesterday,” Camigwen, Ostvel’s wife, mother of his only child, had been a Sunrunner and Sioned’s dearest friend. Her death of Plague was still an open wound; Ostvel never made any show of his grief, and lived quite contentedly here at Skybowl, but he left his lonely keep only with reluctance. Sioned glanced up as she felt Rohan’s fingers brush her arm.
“Smile for me, love,” he murmured. She did so, seeing her sorrow reflected in his eyes—and her terror that someday one of them might have to bear the same kind of loss.
Ostvel reined in his horse and bowed deeply from his saddle. “Goddess blessing to you, my prince, my dearest lady,” he greeted them. “And welcome to Skybowl. But I’m afraid I don’t recognize several of your escort.”
Sioned chuckled as his gaze went first to Pol, then to Sionell. “Surely you know Lady Feylin and Lord Maarken,” she said, aiding and abetting.
“Of course,” he responded with a bow in their direction. “But I see two strangers here. Oh, certain things about them are familiar, perhaps, but—”
“Oh, Lord Ostvel!” Sionell scolded. “You know it’s me!”
The athri of Skybowl clapped a hand to his forehead, playing the scene for all it was worth. “The eyes, the voice, the hair—” He guided his horse around to make a full inspection and gave her an elegant bow. “My eyes do not deceive me! It is indeed the fair Lady Sionell!”
The little girl laughed merrily. Ostvel then straightened up, squinting at Pol. “Can it be—? Do I behold—’ ”
Sioned moved her mount over so she could bat playfully at his head. “Oh, do stop being so silly.”
“Gently spoken as ever,” he observed, “and just as accurate in her aim.” He rubbed ruefully at his ear. “It’s nice to know some things never change!” He bowed to Pol. “My prince, welcome to Skybowl.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Pol said with proper dignity.
“Food and drink is ready for you—and baths for the faradh’im. I assume you’ll perform your usual ablutions in the lake, Rohan?”
The High Prince returned from his swim to find his wife still soaking in a cool tub. He had never considered it strength of character to resist such temptation as the sight of Sioned wearing only water and her own long, unbound hair. So he climbed in with her, giving the innocent excuse that he would help her wash. The tub was not conducive to dalliance without some interesting gymnastics and a great deal of laughter, but they managed.
Afterward he lazed back in her arms, fingers idly chasing floating strands of red-gold hair. She chuckled softly and he asked, “Mmm?”
“I was just thinking that it is possible to drown in a tub, even if you’re not a Sunrunner.”
“Don’t be absurd. We splashed most of the water onto the floor.”
“Ostvel knows us too well. We got the suite with the best bathroom drain.” She pointed to the little grill set into the floor tiles.
They found further evidence of their host’s thoughtfulness in the main chamber which connected to the bathroom through a dressing area. Silk robes had been laid out on the bed, and two comfortable chairs faced each other across a table laden with dinner.
“Ostvel keeps the best cook in either of my princedoms, damn him,” Rohan said after finishing off a miraculous concoction of hot pastry wrapped around chilled fruit. He stretched, rubbed his silk-clad shoulders, and sighed. “You don’t suppose I could connive him into a trade, do you?”
Sioned poured out the last of the wine and shook her head. “We might send our cooks up here for a while though, to learn a few things.”
“I doubt it. His resident magician trained in Waes, and they don’t give up their secrets. Not even to High Princes. And speaking of secrets, Tobin let it slip yesterday about the dragon gold where Pol heard her.”
“He had to know sometime,” she said philosophically. “I assume you’re going to make the revelation properly dramatic?”
“Sneak him into a darkened cave and suddenly light a torch, you mean?” He laughed. “It’s an idea. Sort of like the way we found out, remember? I’ll never forget the shine of the sand and digging through it with your Fire over my shoulder.”
“Actually, you might ask Pol to conjure the Fire for you. I’ve tested him, Rohan. He’s an instinctive talent. It’s uncanny.”
“If Andrade thinks she had her hands full with Andry,
she’s going to get a shock when it comes Pol’s turn at Goddess Keep. I’ve been thinking about that, by the way. If he’s knighted at eighteen, it will be a Rialla year and we can give him a send-off to Andrade from Waes itself—making it very obvious that he’s going to be a fully trained faradhi as well as a prince.”
“Not exactly subtle,” she remarked.
“And if we tried to do it less than publicly, the other princes would grow even more suspicious than they are right now.”
“It was always comes back to that, doesn’t it?” she mused, propping her elbows on the table. “Pol makes them very nervous, with the potential for all that power. But he’ll have Maarken to show him how it’s done, and there couldn’t be a better example—not for him or for the other princes.”
“Tobin and Chay are so proud of him they’re ready to burst,” Rohan agreed. “What a family my sister produced! Two faradh’im and another son who bids fair to becoming an even finer knight than his father. Volog’s last letter almost glowed. He’s going to knight Sorin this year, did I tell you? Goddess, they’re all growing up so fast.”
“I wish we didn’t have to send Pol back to Dorval. Laugh at me if you like, but I hate missing any part of his life.”
“I’m not laughing, Sioned. But it’s best for him to be at Graypearl. He’s learning so much from Lleyn and Chadric. And it’s safer there.”
“The Merida—”
“—threatened once in the years he’s been there. And it happened outside the palace. We can’t keep him wrapped in silk, and he’d never stand for it if we tried. You wouldn’t want a son who did.”
She sighed. “I know, I know. But I can’t help worrying.”
Rohan got to his feet and stretched again. “We should be up early tomorrow,” he reminded her. “We’ll go out and have a look at the dragons, then I’ll take Pol on a tour of the caves.”
“Do you want me to try and touch a dragon tomorrow?” She joined him in bed after draping her robe over a chair.