by Melanie Rawn
Finding it at last, he sat back on his heels and sighed his relief—and toppled over in startlement as he heard Alasen laughing softly behind him.
“I was beginning to wonder,” she said, smiling, “if you were expecting me to divorce you. After all, that ring is the only one I ever really wanted.”
Chapter Three
722: Skybowl
“So you’ll be off to Feruche in the morning?” Riyan asked as he and Sorin mounted the steps to the central hall.
“Why don’t you come with me for a few days? I could use your advice. My little army of architects have battled each other until I’ve forgotten what I originally wanted to do with the place!” Sorin winced. “It took a whole year to clean out the ruins and make sure what was left wouldn’t collapse. Then we had to sort out the usable stone and set it aside for when we needed it. And then another year before the new foundation was set.”
“But you have started to build?”
“At last—and if you can call it that. Miyon hasn’t been exactly eager to pay up his bet to Aunt Sioned.”
Riyan sighed involuntarily with relief as they entered the cool dimness of the foyer. A mere fifteen measures away in the Veresch Mountains, autumn had already brought crisp days and chilly nights. But here in the Desert it was still stiflingly hot, even at nearly sunset.
Sorin continued his good-natured complaints. “He stalled on delivering the iron last winter and again in spring. And all this time we’ve been living in excruciatingly close quarters in the old barracks below the castle. I’ve lost track of how many fights I’ve broken up over what tower goes where, which windows should face what direction, and how many rooms there should be. Do you know we’re still arguing over whether it’s to be a defensive keep or not?”
“Considering the proximity of Cunaxa, the thicker the walls, the better.”
“Granted. But building a warrior’s castle isn’t my idea of fun, and it would be a direct challenge to Miyon and his Merida allies to come and try to tear it down.”
“What does Rohan say about it?”
“He grins and tells me to let the Cunaxans watch and fume while my new keep is built with their iron. But they’re more likely to be laughing. Goddess! You don’t know the half of it. Bracing up the old dungeons was a nightmare.”
Riyan chuckled at his friend’s tribulations. “I heard that out of the kindness of his heart, Miyon sent down his best smiths to work the iron.”
“And I packed them all back to Cunaxa,” Sorin replied vigorously. “It seems their mission was to build me a castle whose underpinnings would make it tilt like a drunken merchant. Before it fell down altogether, that is!”
The two young men washed their hands and faces in a large stone bowl set into a wall embrasure and accepted towels from a waiting servant. Then they checked their relative tidiness in a mirror on a nearby wall. Sorin paused to run careful fingers over the delicate frame, carved with intertwined leaves and apples.
“It’s beautiful. As if dark liquid gold was washed over it.”
“It was my mother’s,” Riyan said. “She never lived at Skybowl, but lots of her things are here. Father brought them from Stronghold when Rohan gave him this castle.”
“I remember her a little, I think.”
“I wish I remembered her more.” Then, more easily, he continued, “Well, we’re as clean as we’ll get without baths. Can’t do anything about the horse-stink, but I trust we won’t offend the ladies.”
“Alasen won’t mind and Feylin never notices—and Sionell’s probably as dirty as we are.”
“Now, now! She’s growing up!” Riyan grinned as he gestured to a guard to open the doors to the main hall.
“Mmm. Pol’s doing the same at Graypearl, I’m told. Your father had a long talk with Chadric at the Rialla, and Sionell’s not been shy about demanding every detail!”
Riyan spotted Sionell immediately. She sat by Alasen at the high table, playing with his half-sister, Camigwen. Small Jeni was two years old, with Ostvel’s dark hair and gray eyes, but in feature was exactly like her mother. That Alasen had Named her first child after Riyan’s mother was an indication of the serenity of her marriage; Riyan didn’t know many women who would pay gentle tribute to a beloved first wife.
During the winter of 719, when they had lived at Skybowl while Castle Crag was being readied for them, Riyan had had ample opportunity to talk with his father’s new wife. Alasen had never insulted him by sitting him down to an oh-so-sincere little chat; neither had she made the mistake of trying too hard to take on the role of stepmother. That would have been ludicrous, as she was only three winters older than he. Instead, she had merely been herself: witty, intelligent, kind, and very much in love with his father.
Any awkwardness had been Ostvel’s. Riyan smiled as he took his chair at the high table, remembering his father’s bemused happiness—and the inevitable embarrassment that came to a man who, after eighteen years, took a second wife fully half his age. Alasen’s one comment to Riyan about it had been, “I do wish he’d stop being so silly. It’s as if he expects to descend into doddering decrepitude any moment.” Impending fatherhood, casually mentioned by Alasen early that winter, had reduced Ostvel to stunned speechlessness and a foolish grin that had not left his face for days.
“The horses you bought from Chay must be coming along well,” Alasen observed as Riyan sat beside her. “You’re looking very happy.”
“They are, and I am. But I was thinking about the night you told us you were carrying Jeni.”
She took the baby from Sionell and laughed.
“Why?” Sionell asked. “What happened?”
Riyan glanced down the table. His father, Walvis, and Feylin were deep in discussion with Sorin about Feruche; they would not overhear. “Well, he—”
“Riyan!” Alasen scolded, and held her daughter high in the air to make her giggle. “Consider your father’s dignity.”
“He didn’t have any mind for it that night!” Riyan reached over and tickled Jeni’s chin. “Someday I’ll tell you the story, little one. When you can appreciate it.”
“But what happened?” Sionell insisted.
“He was pouring wine for Alasen when she just up and announced it, and he kept on pouring, and pouring, and—”
“All over my best dress!” Alasen finished. “Not to mention Skybowl’s best table silk, and the best Giladan rug, and—”
“And himself, I’ll bet,” Sionell supplied, grinning. “How did he react when he found out about you, Riyan?”
Alasen winked at her. “I’m reliably informed that his knees collapsed and he fell into one of Princess Milar’s little chairs so hard he splintered the poor thing. Sioned’s been trying to get him to pay for it for years.”
“So that’s why she teases him about it!” Riyan hadn’t known that story.
“I wonder what happened when Prince Rohan learned about Pol,” Sionell mused.
Alasen winked again, this time at Riyan so Sionell couldn’t see. “You’ll have to ask Sioned. Is Jahnavi going to serve us our dinner, or is he still primping in his new Skybowl tunic?”
Sionell jumped to her feet. “I’ll go see what’s keeping him.”
“Take Jeni with you. Her nurse will be waiting for her.”
When Sionell had hoisted the child into her arms and left them, Riyan shook his head. “She’s not subtle, is she?”
“About Pol? No. But then, she’s only fourteen. Wait a few more years and she’ll have acquired all the arts. She’s going to be pretty enough to get plenty of chances to use them, too!”
“I hope she doesn’t. There’s something very charming about her directness. I’d hate to see her become one of those simpering, idiots who plague the Rialla.”
She nodded, green eyes dancing. “A plague I notice you avoided quite nicely this year by not attending.”
He groaned softly. “Alasen, please don’t try to marry me off!”
“Not at all. Your father and I are much too young to be grand
parents.”
Jahnavi appeared then from the side door to the kitchens, trying not to stagger under the weight of a huge white tureen made of Kierstian ceramic. The boy presented the dish for approval, bowed when Riyan nodded permission to serve, and hefted it onto the table. Silver ladle and blue ceramic bowls were waiting; Riyan watched critically as Jahnavi portioned out the soup without spilling a drop. Sionell had returned to her seat next to Alasen, holding her breath as her little brother performed his first duties as Riyan’s new squire. She sighed her relief when he finished without incident, bowed, and returned to the kitchen for bread.
“Very nice,” Riyan commented so Sionell could hear. “A little lacking in polish, but done very smoothly just the same.”
“Thank you, my lord,” the girl replied formally. But then her irrepressible spirits made her grin. “He was so nervous! You were a squire at Swalekeep, and everybody knows what a stickler old Prince Clutha is for decorum!”
“A stick across my backside once when I spilled a tray of pastries,” Riyan reminisced. “But I doubt any such remedies will be necessary with Jahnavi. I was such a clumsy little mess!”
He did not mention that at eleven years old, Jahnavi had not yet entered into the tortures of puberty, with all its insecurities of abruptly long limbs, distressingly large feet, and humiliatingly uncertain voice. It was foolish to punish an adolescent for what he could not help. Riyan was determined to be more understanding than Clutha, who had been of the old school when it came to training his squires. Jahnavi was Riyan’s first foray into such training. Walvis and Feylin had entrusted him with their only son, and he resolved to justify their faith in him. He knew there would not be many young highborn boys given into his care; Skybowl was a small, remote keep, and he was only a minor athri. Both he and his holding were insignificant as far as the rest of the princedoms were concerned. But others’ perceptions troubled him not at all, for Skybowl was vital to the Desert in a way no one had ever guessed.
There was nothing here that would indicate Skybowl’s importance. The hall was a third the size of the one at Stronghold, and much less grandly decorated. The people were well-dressed and well-fed, but sat at trestle tables on benches instead of in individual chairs. Early evening sun shone through windows paned in clear glass, not the colored Fironese crystal of more fashionable keeps. High on the walls were torch sconces rather than the branches of white candles Rohan had made popular at Stronghold, and the sconces were made of plain bronze not silver or gold. Those at Skybowl lived in comfort but not luxury, and nowhere was there any indication of the wealth of dragon gold taken from nearby caves and cached in the lowest levels of the keep.
Jahnavi made swift, efficient work of the bread, then poured out wine and stood at the end of the high table, alert to the needs of those seated there. His parents treated him as they would any other squire; no one teased him or attempted to engage him in conversation. Everyone knew how important this first duty at table was to him. But not even his solemn dedication to his new status could survive when Alasen made her announcement.
It came about when Sionell leaned slightly forward and asked, “Lord Ostvel, we’ve been talking about how men react when their wives tell them they’re going to be fathers. How did Prince Rohan take the news about Pol?”
To Riyan’s astonishment, his father’s face went stone still. The smile that appeared soon thereafter was a trifle strained around the edges for a moment, as if it was a bad fit.
“I don’t really know, Sionell. I was at Stronghold, and they were all down in Syr with the army, fighting High Prince Roelstra.”
The girl looked disappointed. Alasen set down her goblet and smiled. “My dear, listen and watch carefully. You’re about to witness a man making a fool of himself.” To her husband she said, “My lord, I have the honor to inform you that you will become a father once more before the New Year Holiday.”
Ostvel performed according to expectation: his soup spoon clattered from his fingers into his bowl, overbalanced, and flipped onto the table, sending a splash onto his tunic. Jahnavi forgot himself and gave a whoop, quickly silenced by Walvis’ attempt at a stern glare. But the Lord of Remagev was soon grinning along with the rest of them as Ostvel struggled valiantly to recover his dignity, forfeit to a soup stain on his clothes.
“Alasen!” he finally bellowed, and silence erupted into laughing congratulations.
Riyan signaled to Jahnavi to refill all the wine cups. The castle folk down the hall, seeing the merriment at the high table, were attentively quiet as Riyan got to his feet and raised his goblet.
“The Princess Alasen!” he announced. “And my father the Lord Regent, who’s to be a father again!”
The echo rang out from more than seventy throats and cups were emptied down those throats an instant later. Skybowl’s people had been, until three years ago, Ostvel’s people; Riyan knew that in many ways they still were. He saluted his father with his goblet and grinned.
Wearing a You’ll pay for this, boy look, Ostvel cleared his throat, blotted ineffectually at his tunic with his napkin, and rose to make the required response to his son’s toast.
But he had barely drawn breath when a rush of wings filled the hall and the sky trembled with a hundred trumpeting calls. A stunned instant later, everyone scurried for the windows or to get outdoors. The dragons had come to Skybowl.
Sionell and Jahnavi’s mother, Feylin, was the first of those at the high table to escape the hall. Riyan saw her dark red head in the crowded foyer, but she did not join the rush out into the courtyard. She nudged her way clear of the surging throng and turned for the stairs, bounding up them three at a time.
Sionell grabbed Riyan’s hand. Her round cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes brilliant with excitement. “Hurry!” she cried, and pulled him forward.
They found Feylin where Riyan had suspected, in the uppermost chamber of the main tower. She was leaning precariously out an open window. Sionell let go of Riyan’s fingers and joined her mother. He shook his head, smiling, and put an arm around each to keep them from falling.
“Mother, just look at them all!”
“Hush! I’m counting!” Feylin responded almost frantically.
The dragons were swooping in over the lake for a drink. Some plunged directly into the water for playful baths, while others landed almost daintily on shore. Still more flew lazy circles over the bowl of liquid sky from which the keep had taken its name. A few dragonsires drank their fill, then perched on the rocky heights of the ancient crater to guard their flight of hatchlings, females, and dozens of three-year-old immature dragons.
Riyan watched, enchanted. He told himself that even if not for the honor of holding Skybowl and mining dragon gold for his prince, with all the trust this implied, he would gladly have taken the keep for the sheer delight of watching dragons. As bathers left the water, green-bronze and gold and black and russet hides glistening in the sunlight, wings were spread to flick showers of droplets and reveal contrasting underwings. No, Skybowl could have been as barren and rough as those who had never seen it believed it to be, and Riyan would still have counted it a privilege to live here.
The dragons seemed inclined to linger, and Feylin gradually relaxed as she was given time to do a second count and a third. Sionell and Riyan faithfully repeated the numbers she gave them.
“Three memories are better than one,” she said, “especially when one of them is a Sunrunner memory trained by Lady Andrade.” Stepping back from the window, she sighed. “Just the population I expected from prior statistics. But unless they find more caves, the extra females will die at the next mating the way they did this year, and three years ago, and—damn it, we need more caves!”
“There’s Rivenrock,” Sionell said.
“Which they won’t go near, after so many of them died of Plague there. Oh, they fly over it, it’s on their path through the Desert. But if they’d only use the caves, their numbers would increase to a safe level. I won’t feel confident until w
e see upwards of eight hundred after hatching.” She paused, then pointed and exclaimed, “See that one over there, the russet one with gold underwings? That’s Sioned’s dragon, Elisel!”
“The one she can speak to?” Sionell almost lost her balance and Riyan held on more tightly to her waist.
“Careful!” he said. “She doesn’t really talk to her—more like shares feelings and pictures with her. Although Sioned says Elisel knows her name.”
“You don’t believe she does?” The girl turned her head, brows raised. “You’re a Sunrunner, too—have you ever tried it?”
“Never.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“Of course!” Riyan answered. “But Sioned isn’t really sure how she does it, and she’s cautioned the rest of us not to attempt it until she understands what really happens between her and the dragon.”
“A wise precaution,” Feylin added, eyeing her daughter. “It’s a good thing you’re not a Sunrunner, my pest, or you’d be wild to find a dragon of your own!”
“It’d be wonderful,” Sionell murmured, gazing wistfully at the dragons. “It doesn’t seem fair—I know I can’t ever touch one, but the faradh’im can, and Sioned won’t even let them try! Think of all the things we could learn from them, and what we could tell them!”
Riyan blinked and nearly lost his hold on Sionell. There was one thing that dragons needed desperately to know if their population was to increase to a level Feylin considered safe. Could Sioned communicate it to her dragon?
He asked; Feylin shrugged. “She tried. She conjures a picture of hatchlings coming out of the caves—and Elisel whines and trembles, and shows her dragon corpses. Even though she’s not old enough to have seen it for herself. Which indicates,” she added with a pleased glint in her eyes, “that they communicate information to each other from one generation to the next rather neatly.”
The sires keeping watch on the crater’s lip bellowed suddenly, and the hatchlings reacted with a flurry of splashing water and flapping wings. Soon the evening sky was thick with dragons, circling over the lake until all were airborne. The sires trumpeted once more and the group set off for the south, where they would winter in the hidden canyons and valleys of the Catha Hills. Several of the females lingered behind, including Sioned’s russet dragon, to chase the slower hatchlings along. Riyan wondered if Sioned would be waiting at Stronghold for Elisel to fly past, waiting to greet her dragon on the last of the autumn sunlight.