Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire

by Melanie Rawn

  Chapter Eighteen

  Stronghold: 32 Spring

  Stifling a yawn, Rohan slid his arms into the shirt his squire held out for him. Sioned was seated at her dressing table mirror, sunlight bathing her in gold as she braided her hair. A morning like any other, except for her silence. He nodded permission for Arlis to retire, guessing that his wife desired privacy. He was right; she waited only until the door closed before speaking.

  “I suppose that girl is going along.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Last night Pol had proposed an expedition to Rivenrock Canyon to view the dragon caves. Rialt had gone ahead early with a dozen servants and the open-sided pavilion where the party would be served a simple meal before a leisurely ride back in time for dinner. The ride was a pleasant day’s diversion and, considering the discussions awaiting him, Rohan almost wished he had been asked to be diverted.

  “It’d be nice to go with them,” he went on. “But we do pretty much as we please the rest of the time, and pay for it on days like this.”

  “Who’s first today, Miyon or Lord Barig?”

  “Which one would you prefer to avoid?”

  “Have I a choice?” She gave him a sour smile.

  “Both breathlessly await our summons.” He fastened the cuffs of his shirt and bent over to peer at his hair in her mirror. “You know, I never see the gray except when Pol’s here.”

  “Speaking of whom. . . .” She gave him frown for frown in the mirror. “You’ve been putting me off for four days and—”

  “Sioned, I can’t fix my mind either on Miyon’s schemes or Barig’s arguments if I’m distracted by what’s going on with Pol.”

  “You wouldn’t have sent Arlis out if you weren’t ready to discuss it. And discuss it we will.” She spun around on the cushioned stool. “Miyon’s never been able to best us any other way, so now he’s resorted to low cunning. Dangling this girl in front of Pol—”

  “Don’t you think Pol knows that? I told you, Sionell made it clear to me that he’s perfectly aware of why Meiglan is here.”

  “Then why is he falling headlong into the trap? And in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s not a boy. He’s a man. You’d better hope he thinks with what’s between his ears instead of what’s between his legs!”

  Rohan told himself to be patient. “So why don’t you talk to him about it?”

  “I did,” she replied shortly and turned to the mirror again, picking through a jewel case with quick, angry fingers. “Yesterday.”

  “What did he say?”

  Her voice dripped sarcasm. “That it’s only good manners to be polite to someone so obviously shy and unused to company. That he wants to learn more about her music. That he admires her looks. That I can’t seriously be suggesting, Mother, that he should snub her because of who her father is.” Sioned snapped the case shut. “That I ought to mind my business, not his!”

  “Pol never said that.”

  “He implied it!”

  Rohan put his hands on her shoulders, rubbing the tense muscles. “My love, you’ve been jumpy ever since we learned who this Ruval really is. I think you’re being a little too sensitive.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” she warned. “Ruval is something else you won’t talk to me about, and don’t think I don’t know why.” She glared at him in the mirror. “Jumpy, am I? Sensitive? Pol’s behaving as if he’s about to Choose an enemy’s bastard daughter, Ianthe’s sons have suddenly appeared out of nowhere to challenge his right to Princemarch—with sorcery involved—and I can’t even express what I feel in decent privacy to my own husband?”

  “Sioned!” He had rarely seen her so upset. “There are threats here, I’ll admit, but Pol’s not a child. And he’s not fool enough to take Meiglan as his wife!”

  “Do you believe that?” she demanded. “Do you? If you answer yes, you’re a liar.”

  “You and I made a promise to tell each other the truth. Or at least never to lie, which doesn’t quite amount to the same thing, as you’ve demonstrated on several occasions. So—yes, the prospect of a Cunaxan as the mother of my grandchildren revolts me. But until Ruval comes out from whatever rock he’s hiding under and Pol comes to his own conclusions about Meiglan, there’s not a hell of a lot I can do, is there?”

  Sioned relented. Placing her hands on his where they rested on her shoulders, she said, “I’ve been frightened before, Goddess knows. Pol’s been in danger before, his rights in doubt. But—”

  “But you and I were always acting on his behalf. Protecting him, making the decisions for him. This time he’s on his own. We have to trust him, Sioned—and trust in the training we gave him.”

  “Yes,” she replied slowly. “He’s not a child. But there’s an innocence about him, Rohan. I can’t quite explain it. A quality of being . . . untouched somehow, even though he’s a grown man and a ruling prince—and no stranger to women.”

  “Unlike his extremely backward father,” Rohan murmured, smiling a little.

  “Oh? I heard about when you were eighteen and had been in your first battle and were quite full of yourself.”

  “Myrdal told on me, I suppose. Did she also mention I was so full of victory wine that I remember almost nothing of that whole night?”

  “Almost?” She arched a brow.

  “Well. . . . Enough to know what I wanted when I finally met you.”

  “Exactly. And Pol knows enough to know what he wants from this girl.”

  “She has a name, you know.”

  “Don’t divert me from the issue,” Sioned told him severely.

  “Very well.” He pulled a chair into the sun and sat down; since they were obviously in for a long discussion, he decided he might as well be comfortable. “Let’s talk about trusting Pol’s wits and judgment. Do you or don’t you?”

  “In everything else, yes! He’s proved himself as a prince and as a man—”

  “Has he? I wonder.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  Rohan propped his elbows on the arms of the chair, lacing his fingers together. The great Desert topaz surrounded by emeralds shone on his hand. “I worried sometimes that my son would come to resent me the way I resented my own father. Oh, I loved Zehava and admired him deeply, for all that we were nothing alike. But by the time I was twenty or so I was frantic to rule a princedom I thought I understood better than he did.” He smiled wryly. “A fine piece of adolescent conceit, you’ll agree.”

  “Pol doesn’t feel that way at all, Rohan.”

  “No. We’re lucky that way. He has his own princedom to govern, so he doesn’t have to covet mine in order to prove his talents. He’s not even sure he wants to be High Prince—he’s perfectly willing to let me wrestle with that for the next fifty years or so. So there’s no jealousy or rivalry between us.”

  “Of course not. But I don’t understand—”

  “Let me finish. When I put Princemarch in his name instead of mine it wasn’t only because he has blood-right to it, while my claim was only spoils of war. I wanted him to grow up thinking of Princemarch as his, to know that he would rule it long before he gets the Desert as well. By now he has every confidence in himself as a prince and a man.

  “But, you see, he never really had to work for it. He’s never been given things outright—he had to earn his way from squire to knighthood, and, Goddess know, Urival and Morwenna were strict enough with faradhi training. You and Ostvel and I put him through an equally tough school when it came to governing. But he’s never fought for and won anything, either. The way I had to fight Roelstra that summer to win my own respect as a prince—and to win you.”

  Sioned tapped her nails on the dressing table. “And Pol hasn’t done that yet. Rohan—do you think he needs to?”

  “I think everyone needs to take the risk in some form or another. How else to discover one’s possibilities?”

  She was silent for a time, mulling over his words. More than anything else about her, he loved this: that she listen
ed to him with all her gifts. She never meekly agreed with him simply because he was her husband and the High Prince. If she thought he was wrong she said so; if she accepted his reasoning she explained why, almost always confirming his own thoughts with things he hadn’t considered. Precious as she was to him as his wife, she was essential as his princess.

  At last she spoke. “It’s natural for the young to be impatient to test themselves. To take the risk, as you said.”

  “They have to announce their arrival as adults,” he said, smiling.

  “Yes, but that’s not what I meant. They can afford to risk everything because they don’t really know what life is about. They don’t know that the things worth daring all for aren’t grand or glorious, really.” She tucked one bare foot beneath her, frowning slightly. “You played Roelstra for a fool because you loved the game—and only afterward found out why you’d played it.”

  “For the right to wake up in my own bed each morning with you at my side. The right to live in peace, without my sword constantly to hand.” And to teach his son—not the formal things, not law or history or rule, but mending a bridle, or how to whistle. Not great issues, but the little everyday things no one thought anything about until circumstances destroyed them. “The risks we take make us appreciate a peaceful life without risks. Pol doesn’t understand that yet. He hasn’t tested himself. What he’ll face soon is the risk of everything—but he doesn’t even know what ‘everything’ is.”

  “And we can’t do it for him this time. Rohan, do people go on taking risks if they don’t win what they set out to win—or prove themselves to their own satisfaction?”

  “Perhaps the risk must be great enough to teach us our limits as well as our possibilities.” And perhaps, he thought, one had to know war—of whatever kind—before one could embrace the slow and patient sameness of days that make up peace.

  “Do you know what really frightens me?” Sioned asked abruptly. “What if what you do win isn’t enough?”

  “That’s something Pol has to decide.”

  Haunted green eyes met his. “Rohan—”

  “His decision, Sioned. His risk. Not ours.”

  Rebellion flickered, was extinguished with a weary acceptance he had never seen in her before. “You’re wiser than I, my love,” she murmured. “But then, you have less to lose. You won’t give these sorcerers their real identities, so I will. They’re not just Ianthe’s sons. They’re Pol’s half-brothers. I’ve dreaded this since the night I took him from Feruche. It’s time, Rohan, I can feel it. I risked my life and Tobin’s and Ostvel’s to claim him—and I’m about to risk losing him because of what I did.”

  “Sioned, I’ve said this time and again and you never seem to hear it. Ianthe had the bearing of him, but he’s your son, not hers.”

  She said nothing, merely stared down at her hands.

  “If you didn’t believe that, you never would have taken him from Feruche that night.”

  “Of course I believe it!” she cried. “But will he? That’s another decision he’ll have to make—which of us was his true mother!”

  “If you doubt what choice he’d make, you don’t know him.”

  “Don’t talk as if we won’t ever have to tell him the truth! When he finds out I’ve lied to him his whole life—”

  “You weren’t the one who begot him of rape. If we’re portioning out guilt, mine is the dragon’s share.”

  “But I was the one who created the lie. Rohan . . . I could stand it if he rejected me. I think I could, anyway. But it would kill me if he rejected himself. His life is based on two facts: he is a prince and a Sunrunner. How will he feel when he finds out that what he thinks are Sunrunner gifts are really signs of sorcerer’s blood?”

  Rohan leaned forward and grasped her unwilling hands in his own. “Listen to me. You have to trust him, Sioned. He’ll be angry and hurt at first. He won’t understand. But we’re his parents. He loves us.”

  She gave him a cynical little smile. “We’ve already judged ourselves, Rohan, and been found guilty. We’d better hope Pol decides differently, and is more forgiving.”

  At that moment Pol was deciding nothing more weighty than whether or not to take the stretch of dunes before him at a gallop. Though his stallion, Pashoc, had better manners than to test the bit, there was an impatient dance to his steps that could only be expected of a son of Rohan’s old war-horse. He wanted a run, and he wanted it now.

  Pol was tempted. He glanced back over his shoulder at the others—Maarken, Hollis, and their children were grouped with Andry and Nialdan; Feylin and Sionell rode with Riyan, Ruala, and Meiglan. Guard duty was shared among six of Miyon’s men and six of Stronghold’s, riding at a discreet distance though the Cunaxans looked as if they wanted to be closer. But no one rode ahead of Pol, and he could let Pashoc have his head at any time. That would shake them all up a bit, he thought with a hidden grin. His own people were nervous enough about this little expedition today without his bolting off into the distance unescorted.

  Still . . . he shared the horse’s impatience, mixed in with a dose of recklessness and a perverse desire to startle. Pashoc sensed his choice in the fractional shift of weight in the saddle and hands on the reins, and the instant Pol touched his heels to sleek flanks, the stallion was off like an arrow.

  “Pol!” yelled Maarken, the shout fading as wind rushed through his hair and hooves pounded on packed sand. The Desert blurred to pale golden light around him, edged by fierce blue sky. Pashoc reached for more distance with every stride, slowing only a little going up each dune, gaining speed on the descents. Pol laughed and imagined himself with dragon wings, skimming over the bright world far below.

  At last he signaled a slower pace. As the stallion pulled back from full gallop to canter to a walk that expressed his impatience for yet more speed, Pol surveyed the landscape, breathless not from the ride but from amazement.

  The Desert, usually golden-white accented by dusty green scrub along the Vere Hills, was alive with color. A fabric of flowers spread across the dunes like silk draped over the sweet curves of a woman’s body. The patchwork of brilliant orange and vivid scarlet and deepest turquoise changed to bronze and dark crimson and violet in the hollows, accented by traceries of water-rich green, all of it stitched to a background of white-gold sand. Around Stronghold the Desert had bloomed this spring, but here water and long-dormant seeds had burst into wealth worthy of Meadowlord or Syr.

  Pol nearly leaped off his horse to plunge his hands into that incredible treasure of color. But the sand-muted thud of hooves behind him recalled him to princely dignity just in time. He turned in the saddle, unsurprised to find it was Maarken and Andry who had caught up to him first. The horses they rode were Radzyn breed, as long-legged and swift as Pashoc.

  “Can you believe this?” he called out, gesturing to the hills. “It’s as if the Desert itself has a pattern everyone can see, not just a Sunrunner.”

  The brothers reined in nearby. Andry shook the hair from his eyes and gave Pol a wide smile. “Nialdan and Oclel teased me for being so stunned by the colors,” he confided. “Nobody not Desert-born can understand our reactions to this. And being faradhi makes us all the more sensitive to it.”

  Maarken nodded. “You should have seen the twins at New Year, when the south began to bloom. They came back from a ride covered in flower-dust and reeking of perfume—the little monsters actually rolled in a field of rock-roses!”

  “Stark naked,” Pol guessed, and his cousin laughed. “Sounds wonderful, but I think we’d shock the ladies if we tried it.”

  “Are you joking? Hollis and Sionell would join us!” Andry grinned. “Nialdan’s the one who’d have a fit—he has such exalted ideas of highborn behavior.”

  Maarken’s brows lifted. “Then you’ve never told him about the time we—”

  “I have a position to uphold,” Andry informed him haughtily, but his eyes were dancing the lie to his tone. “Anyway, he’d never believe I was ever a little boy
who followed my criminally inclined eldest brother into mischief.”

  “Criminally inclined?” Maarken took a playful swing at his shoulder. “And what d’you mean, followed me? You were the one who thought up the exploding goat bladder filled with pepper.”

  “Inspired,” Pol contributed. “I tried it at Graypearl once, but a fish bladder didn’t produce the same effect. Besides, I couldn’t wash the smell off my hands and got caught.”

  “We had the same problem,” Andry reminisced. “And tried to solve it with half a jar of Mother’s hand cream.”

  “Which gave us away as surely as goat-stink would have,” Maarken added. “We three little wretches smelled suspiciously sweet, and our fingers were so slippery that none of us could hold a spoon that night at dinner!”

  They shared more memories of childhood escapades while waiting for the others to catch up. Pol was almost sorry when they did. His relationship with Maarken had always been comfortable and affectionate, but it was a very long time since he’d shared such easy humor and companionship with Andry.

  He wondered how much effort the Lord of Goddess Keep had to put into pretending to like the Ruler of Princemarch—as much as the Ruler of Princemarch was giving to pretending he liked the Lord of Goddess Keep?

  Pol was a little ashamed of himself. They didn’t have to be their titles all the time. They were members of the same family, with the same blood and the same heritage and the same love of this Desert that belonged to them all.

  When the others approached, Maarken fixed a stern gaze on the younger men. “If either of you tell Chayla or Rohannon any of this—”

  “Us?” Andry sent an innocent glance toward Pol, who grinned.

  “Let ’em think up their own trouble to get into. From what I hear, they’re already quite creative.”