Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire

by Melanie Rawn

  “What do you think he wants?” Andry asked in response to Sioned’s last remark.

  “You’re Desert-bred, you know exactly what he wants.”

  “Preferably Radzyn Port,” Andry acknowledged with a little smile. “Will he settle for anything less while he lives?”

  “He’ll have to. But you’re right, of course. It’s damned irksome to have him always sneaking around up north.”

  “At least he’ll be here for a while where you can watch him.”

  “Mmm. Sometimes I think his merchants are even worse than he is.”

  “They’re only trying to survive, Sioned.”

  “I have no objection to that. Where I begin to get irritated is when they equate their survival with our destruction.” She gave a comical grimace. “Not an entirely new experience.”

  Andry sipped his wine, then said, “I’ve been wondering when you’d get around to mentioning the dragon-killer.”

  “I’ve been wondering if I dared.” She met his gaze forthrightly. “I admire your self-command.”

  It was recognition of his unexpectedly placid manner thus far, and suspicion of it. His easy manner and his quiet entrance into Stronghold had not gone unnoticed—he hadn’t thought it would. He nodded noncommittally.

  “You were always honest with me as a little boy,” she murmured.

  “You may have noticed that I’ve grown up.”

  “Don’t spar with me, Andry.”

  “Why not? Do you fear you’d lose?”

  Looking for a frown, he received a smile—and remembered that Sioned had had far more years of training under Andrade than he. “You speak as if there were some matter of contention between us, nephew.”

  “Isn’t there?”

  “Are you determined to make it so?”

  He desperately wanted to abandon his pose and was within a breath of doing so when she spoke again.

  “Have you ever counted up the times I’ve lost?”

  Though his body remained motionless, his spine went rigid.

  “Come, Andry. We’re on the same side, you know,” she told him in quiet tones.

  Her green eyes captured his in a trick Andrade had taught all her senior Sunrunners. Andry had learned it on his own—and how to escape it. He did not look away, but instead concentrated everything he was in his eyes. All his knowledge, all his gifts, all his will bored into her. In the space of a few heartbeats she ought to have wavered. But her gaze stayed level and calm.

  “You have indeed grown up,” she said at last.

  He was the one who broke contact then, understanding at least a part of her strength. This fiercely passionate woman had learned in the course of her life that passion unleashed was passion that destroyed its user. The things that drove her might be much the same as those driving him—but she knew patience, and careful power. There was in her a centered place where passion and restless intellect alike were stilled and calm. It was the same quality often sensed in Rohan, and he wondered suddenly who had taught it to whom.

  And just as quickly it occurred to him that Pol did not possess this quiet center. He had not yet been tested as his parents had been. He had not yet been hurt.

  Relenting a little, he said with a slight smile, “It always takes a long time for one’s family to stop seeing one as a little boy playing at dragons.”

  “So your father said with much bewilderment this afternoon. I think you startled him, Andry. He also made a very disgruntled remark about getting old.”

  “Him? Never.”

  Her expression softened again. “That’s the first honest reaction I’ve had from you all night. My dear, I confess that sometimes I haven’t dared feel things for fear they would overcome me. But we’re your family. Sorin’s family. We grieve for him just as you do.” Sensitive fingers rested on his arm. “We need your comfort and you need ours.”

  Tempting. But betraying in the end. If he gave in to what he felt it would overcome him, as she had said. If he rendered himself vulnerable in one area, he would be defenseless in others. It should not have been such a shock to realize he didn’t trust his own family not to take advantage of any weakness. After all, they didn’t trust him, either.

  In her eyes was so accurate an analysis of his private thoughts that he cursed silently; he was not as unreadable as he’d thought himself schooled to be by now. Sorrow flickered in her expression. She removed her hand from his arm and gestured a squire over.

  “Arlis, more wine for Lord Andry.”

  “At once, your grace.”

  More than anything else, the titles underscored a moment lost, perhaps forever. They were not family anymore, but Lord of Goddess Keep and High Princess. Andry took refuge in asking the young man if he would be knighted at the Rialla this summer, and a brief conversation about Arlis’ grandfathers Saumer and Volog ensued. But he could not shake the feeling of desolation, of being isolated within the home of his ancestors.

  “So you see we have to do something to increase the number of available caves, and this year if possible,” Feylin concluded, and sat back in her chair. “Otherwise. . . .”

  “I understand.” Rohan gave an irritated hiss of a sigh. “I haven’t time for all this,” he muttered.

  “Sunrunners, sorcerers, and dragons,” she summed up. “Plus that Merida-loving bastard of Cunaxa. Almost makes you wish somebody else wore that circlet, doesn’t it?”

  He rubbed automatically at the silver crossing his forehead and she smiled wry sympathy. “Better me than you, is that it?” he suggested.

  “Infinitely better. I only worry about dragons. And Remagev. And my son and daughter and grandchild—” She grinned at him. “But I’m curious. Which problem are you going to address first, and what are you going to do about it?”

  “Andry. I’m going to invite him for a private chat.”

  Gray eyes narrowed as she glanced to the center of the high table. “Sioned already tried that. It doesn’t look as if she got anywhere.”

  “I didn’t really expect her to,” he admitted. “Have you any suggestions?”

  Feylin only shrugged.

  “Out with it,” he ordered with a half-smile.

  “I was just remembering the siege of Tiglath.”

  “Yes?” Feylin was the type who would eventually speak her mind without prompting. She just enjoyed being prompted.

  “The Merida surrounded us, you’ll recall. And then my solid gold fool of a husband led the charge that annihilated them.”

  “After they’d breached Tiglath’s walls, wasn’t it?”

  “Exactly.” She nodded her satisfaction.

  “Feylin, would you care to expl—” He stopped. “Oh. I see.”

  “Nobody ever accused you of being stupid.” She lifted her wine cup to him approvingly.

  He slanted a thoughtful glance at Andry. It made sense. He could use the rest of the family to surround Andry from all sides, then allow him to think there was a weakness in Rohan’s own position—and thereby trap him. Using military metaphors to describe an underhanded action against his own blood-kin left a very sour taste in his mouth.

  But no one had ever accused Feylin of being stupid, either.

  Tobin and Chay had unwittingly begun the maneuver this morning. They had met their son alone, but the only thing they had shared was a formal expression of grief over Sorin’s death. Andry’s coolness had puzzled and hurt them—an emotional strain on him, surely. He loved his parents deeply. Sioned had come at him from another direction. Rohan would have to wait for a detailed report of their conversation, but that Andry was looking uncomfortable was a good sign. Maarken could be next; Andry adored him and Maarken was now the only brother he had left. If he still held out, Pol could—no, Pol must be perceived as Rohan’s weakness that would lure Andry in.

  And what in the name of the Goddess and all her works was he thinking?

  Disgusted and feeling unclean, he got to his feet. Feylin’s hand on his arm stopped him.

  “He’s no longe
r a child, Rohan,” she murmured. “He rules Goddess Keep and does it very, very well.”

  Rohan stared down at her. “I can’t lay a trap for my own kin.”

  “You’re an honorable man. Will he behave the same?”

  “If he doesn’t, he’s not Chay’s son. Or my sister’s.”

  Her eyes turned the pale gray of new steel. “Because he is their son, he will believe as powerfully and completely in his own truths as you do in yours. Belief is much more dangerous than deception.” Then her gaze softened and she gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “I know you, Rohan. You only lie to people who deserve nothing better. Walvis was already cast in your mold when he came to you as a squire, but you had the final forming and polishing. Gold I called him, and so he is. So are you. But lying to people who matter tarnishes you both. And no, I wouldn’t have either of you any other way.” She gave a rueful shake of her head. “But it would be so much easier if you were.”

  Rohan smiled down at her. “And you’d love to be ruthless, wouldn’t you?”

  “It’d be a help.”

  “Don’t try. It doesn’t suit you. I can be ruthless enough for all of us.”

  “But not with Andry?”

  He pulled in a deep breath. “No. You’re right—I would feel tarnished. And, Goddess knows, I’ve enough muck sticking to me after thirty years of rule.”

  “None where it shows.” Feylin slid her hand into his and pressed it.

  He remembered her words later on when, according to his original plan, he invited Andry upstairs. Perhaps the dirt wouldn’t show if no one but he and his nephew witnessed it.

  Sioned, obedient to Rohan’s glance but not liking the exclusion, left them alone in the outer chamber, saying she was too sleepy to sit up late over wine. Arlis served them, then bowed his way out to wait in the hall if Rohan should require him.

  “He’ll make an excellent prince,” Andry said to begin the conversation.

  “I hope his grandfather agrees with you. Volog’s been helping rule Isel since Saumer’s death two winters ago, complaining constantly that he’s too old for so much work.” He paused to take a sip of wine. “But you know, I think he was devastated when Saumer died—though he’d never admit it. Sometimes losing a lifelong enemy is worse than losing a lifelong friend.”

  “They worked together fairly well those last years.”

  “Yes. But Volog will be as glad to hand over Isel to Arlis as I was when Pol was ready to take on Princemarch by himself.”

  “Latham can’t rule Isel in his son’s place?”

  “As regent, he’s fine. But the Iseli think of Arlis as the heir, not his father.”

  “Also reminiscent of the way you handled Princemarch.”

  Rohan shrugged. “It was the only wise solution.”

  “Wisdom seems to be in short supply in Gilad these days.”

  “You always did have an interesting way of putting things.” Rohan smiled.

  A bit unwillingly, Andry’s mouth lifted at the corners. But few people were able to resist the High Prince’s smile, no matter their grievances against him. Rohan hated having to use it on Andry.

  “Let’s be wise and state things plainly, shall we?” he went on. “This Sunrunner of yours has put us all in an awkward position.”

  “I wanted to thank you for getting Gevlia out of the dark. That was an incredibly cruel thing to do to her, and for that alone I’m going to fight Cabar on this.”

  “I can’t side with you and I can’t side with him,” Rohan warned. “I can’t stay neutral, either. It’ll come down to my deciding the disposition of the case and we all know it.”

  “Surely you understand my position,” Andry said smoothly. “Gevlia is faradhi. No one has the right to judge her but me.”

  “Cabar insists she was not acting as a Sunrunner, but as a physician.”

  “Nonetheless, she is a Sunrunner.”

  “Andry—”

  The young man made an impatient gesture. “What do you think Aunt Andrade would have said?”

  “Exactly what you’re saying now. And my reply would have been the same.” He shook his head. “So many times I’ve listened to myself throwing words at a problem—endless words, as if the sheer numbers of them would crush the difficulty into the dust. Words are the weapons of the civilized man, I tell myself. There’s nothing that can’t be solved if people only talk to each other instead of reaching for their swords.”

  “If Cabar reaches for his, he’ll be in for a shock.”

  Rohan’s eyes narrowed. “So. It’s true, then.” He saw the shift of candlelight on Andry’s shirt as shoulder muscles tensed.

  “Is what true?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Andry. I know about your—what are you calling them? Ah, yes. Devr’im.”

  “You’ve been a ruling prince the length of my life and have ten times my experience at these little skirmishes.” Andry shrugged. “Especially with rulers of Goddess Keep. But though I may not be Andrade, I have my own—”

  “Games and secrets? Do you suppose such things make you her worthy successor?” Rohan knew he should not grow angry, or at least should not give in to it. But he was tired of this and sick with the knowledge that Feylin had been right. He was used to this kind of conversation with other princes who tried to outwit him. But to encounter it within his own family—irritation got the better of him and he snapped, “Do you think it a secret from me that during one of your little practice ‘wars,’ the mother of your son died?”

  Andry turned white to the lips. But his voice was low and controlled as he said, “Othanel believed in what I’m doing.”

  “Can’t you see the danger?”

  “More danger than you know.” The bleak reply startled Rohan. Andry got to his feet and put down his untasted wine. “You’re still trying to talk your way to a solution. Do you seriously think these sorcerers will sit still long enough to listen? Have a care, High Prince. You’re going to need me and my devr’im, perhaps sooner than you know.”

  Rohan waited until he was at the door, fingers on the crystal knob. “The Sunrunner will not be handed over to you on your order.”

  Andry froze. “I will be the one to judge her. Not Cabar, and not you. It is my right.”

  “By whose reckoning?”

  “The same that put you where you are. Power itself. Would you give up any of yours? Of course not. Don’t expect me to.”

  Rohan shook his head sadly. “You hang on hardest to the very thing you least understand. Have you considered what your brother would have said to all this?”

  Andry’s whole body stiffened as if a sword had gone into his heart. “Sorin is dead, his soul scattered to the Desert winds.”

  And then Rohan understood the mistake he had made tonight. “Andry—you’re not alone. We’re here, your family, those who know you and love you best. Don’t turn away from us.”

  The young man whirled around furiously. “You did that to me long ago!”

  “The choice to become a Sunrunner was yours.”

  “There was none other I could make! Why should I have stayed here to run some insignificant little holding when I could be what I am now? Ambition runs in the family—why do you condemn mine? Andrade wanted me to rule Goddess Keep and all faradh’im. If the power that gives me doesn’t suit you, then too damned bad! And while we’re on the subject of ambition, look to your son!”

  Rohan spoke quietly. “It would be futile to point out that, like you, Pol is in exactly the position Andrade intended. But I will tell you one thing. You turned your face from everyone but Sorin. Now that he’s gone, there’s nothing to hold you to us but our love for you. I see now that you have none left for us.”

  Blue eyes went wide with sudden unexpected pain. Rohan stood, speaking gently.

  “Andry, you haven’t lost us. But we’re afraid of losing you.”

  “Afraid of losing me, or afraid of me?” came the bitter reply. And in the next instant he was gone.

  Arlis, pushed
summarily aside in the hall, hovered in the doorway for a moment. He was still young enough to be offended by Andry’s brusque treatment but old enough—and prince enough—to show it only with a brow arched at Rohan.

  “I don’t think he even saw you,” Rohan said tiredly. “Never mind. Go to bed now, Arlis. I’ll do for myself, thank you.”

  “As you wish, my lord.”

  The weariness was profound as he went through to the bedchamber. His wife sat at her dressing table, brushing her hair.

  “Sioned, I am a fool.”

  “Granted,” she replied serenely. “What have you done this time?”

  “I said all the wrong things it was possible to say.” He flung himself into a chair. “I questioned his judgment, threatened his power, insulted him, hurt him, and came damned close to taking him over my knee.”

  “That about covers the mistakes you could have made with him,” she agreed.

  “Am I getting old and stupid? I’m supposed to be clever. I’m supposed to know how to handle people.”

  She faced him, compassion soft in her eyes. “People, my love. Not family. The problem is that you care too much about him.”

  Rohan nodded. “Feylin said much the same thing this evening.”

  “What are we going to do now?”

  “I haven’t the slightest notion.”

  “I think you do,” she murmured.

  He shifted uncomfortably, then admitted, “Pol asked me why it is that I never act until I’m forced to. It seems I’m forced to now. Who was that cousin of Cabar’s who approached Pol? Barig? He should still be at Swalekeep. I want him summoned here. Do it yourself, Sioned, as a direct order from the High Prince.”

  “Every bed at Stronghold will be full, then. I just spoke with Riyan on moonlight and gave Tallain permission to bring Miyon here.”

  “Damn!” But after a moment’s thought he added, “No, that will be all right. I’d rather have him watch my little demonstration of power with his own eyes.”