Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire

by Melanie Rawn

  “But—this—” Riyan faltered.

  “You’re as curious as I am,” Pol said impatiently. “Stop equivocating and get over here.”

  Brows arching at his son’s vehemence, Rohan held the scroll open at its first page. “Urival insisted on reproducing this section exactly as it appears in the real thing. Two words and a border of stars.”

  “ ‘On Sorcery,’ ” Riyan whispered, standing at Pol’s shoulder.

  “Yes.” He wound the scroll down to its opening sections. “The cunning part about the original is the interior code. It seems Lady Merisel was scholar enough to want this knowledge preserved. But she was also wise enough to hide what it contains from casual perusal. This is a decoded version. Everything in it is accurate. Which is why it’s kept hidden.”

  “How much of this has Mother tried out?” Pol asked.

  “Not much. She, too, is wise.” He sat and began searching for the sections he wanted.

  “Is there anything about shape-changing in here?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Pity. It might have been useful.”

  “And dangerous,” Riyan murmured.

  Rohan chose to ignore the byplay. “Pol, you’ve remarked before that I wait for events to develop, that I don’t act until I must. I have my reasons—even though I know you don’t always agree with them.” The Star Scroll spread out page by page, telling of power he could never possess—and didn’t want to. “Nine years ago I let the pretender Masul live long enough to challenge your claim because rumor can become more real sometimes than truth. He had to be heard and defeated publicly or your right would always have been in doubt. What I didn’t count on was sorcery. And Maarken nearly died because of my mistake.”

  “But that wasn’t your fault—”

  “I’m High Prince. That made it my fault—and my responsibility to kill him before he could kill Maarken. My mistake, my fault, my responsibility. That’s what being High Prince is.” He gestured for Riyan to hold the top of the scroll while he secured the bottom. “I determined then not to repeat the error. When Urival brought this to Stronghold, Sioned wasn’t the only one who studied it. I know this scroll backwards, and the histories Meath found with it. They enabled me to invoke my rights in the matter of the Sunrunner in Gilad.”

  “You knew all along,” Riyan said admiringly. “The words were there for you to use, and you did.”

  Rohan leaned back in his chair and blew out a long sigh. “Words,” he repeated. “I told Andry the other day that all my life I’ve thrown words at problems. They’re the weapons of a civilized man, or so I keep telling myself. But we’re not civilized, none of us. We always have our knives within reach.” He ran his fingertips over the parchment. “What are these words but a different kind of knife?”

  “Power,” Pol said flatly. “More effective than any knife.”

  Rohan heard him with sadness. The innocence Sioned had spoken of, the quality of being untouched, was gone from Pol’s eyes and voice. He had not been sheltered in the ways Rohan had been, but it was clear he could no longer be protected.

  “I knew all along that neither Andry nor Cabar would give up a whit of their privileges. But I had to wait until they petitioned me for a decision. I was hoping they’d work it out between themselves and spare my having to use the power given me by the scrolls. But each of you has power—the hidden knife, if you will—that’s out of my reach. In this, I’m blind. But you’re a Sunrunner, Pol. Riyan, you’re gifted in both ways. Sorcery is without doubt the means Ruval will choose. So I give you this knife.”

  All the bright gold and bronze glints had left Riyan’s dark eyes. “I still say that’s a lot to trust us with.”

  To burden you with, he thought, hiding his melancholy behind a calm answer. “I wouldn’t give it if I didn’t trust you.”

  Pol bent over the scroll and read aloud, leaning one elbow on the desk. “ ‘The rabikor is bound only by rules agreed to before battle. Learn the traditions well, therefore, lest your opponent catch you in your ignorance and legally cast aside all honor, to your defeat.’ ” He glanced at Rohan. “Rabikor—that’s ‘crystal battle’ in the old language.”

  “A descriptive and accurate name. Rather too beautiful though, for a fight to the death.”

  “Just a moment,” Riyan protested. “Does that mean if the other man knows the rules but you don’t, he doesn’t have to adhere to them?”

  “Exactly. He’s bound only by what’s agreed to. Any unstipulated tactic is fair. I suggest you learn this section word for word,” he added with deceptive mildness. “Anyone who breaks the stated rules, even if he wins, forfeits all rights and claims to whatever he challenged for. Read on.”

  Pol continued, “ ‘The first of the rules is this: that battle shall be between two persons only. Interference by another person is forbidden. Second, all Elements may be called upon as skill and power allow. Third, the Unreal may be used at any time.’ ” He frowned. “A reference to conjuring up horrors, the way Andry did.”

  “The part about all Elements worries me,” Riyan confessed. “We can call Fire, of course, and Air—but spinning Water and Earth into it isn’t something we ordinarily do.”

  “Learn,” Rohan said succinctly, and Pol grimaced.

  “Fourth, perath shall be constructed by three persons for each combatant. Within this dome of interwoven light the rabikor is fought. If any of the six die during the battle, they shall not be replaced. ’ ” He looked up again. “Perath? ‘Needle wall’? No—‘talon’!”

  “A tribute to dragons, one supposes. It keeps anyone from getting in—or out. The victor destroys the perath at battle’s end.”

  Riyan hesitated. “Is it that dangerous, that its makers can die of it?”

  “Evidently.”

  Pol continued, “ ‘Fifth, physical touch and weapons of iron, bronze, gold, silver, or glass are forbidden.’ Damn. I can’t take care of Ruval cleanly, it seems. I have to beat him through sorcery.”

  “Only if you agree to that condition,” Riyan reminded him. “If it doesn’t come up, you can do as you like.”

  “Hmm.” Pol considered, looking troubled. “What’s to keep us honest in this, Father? Not the witnesses. None has the power to enforce a forfeit if the rules are broken. Besides, Miyon’s against us, Barig’s representing a prince who’s furious with us, and as for Andry—” He stopped and grimaced again. “He’s not fool enough to want a sorcerer in my place, no matter how much he hates me.”

  Rohan nodded. “I trust you appreciate the irony. You’re perceived as a Sunrunner even though you weren’t trained at Goddess Keep. Your defeat would shake confidence in all faradh’im—not a desirable outcome as far as Andry is concerned. Oh, yes, he’ll support you. He can’t do otherwise.”

  “I don’t know,” Pol said, openly doubtful. “He was angry enough to make a lot of threats. But I still don’t understand why either of us should keep to the rules.”

  Rohan shrugged. “Honor, on your part. The ancient ways on his, or so one hopes. Perhaps he’s confident that you don’t know the rules.”

  “Pol . . . take a look at the sixth one,” Riyan murmured.

  He read it to himself, then blanched and read aloud. “ ‘Sixth, the use of dranath is imperative. It shall be taken publicly in equal amounts by each combatant.’ Father—dranath addicts, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. It won’t make for a pleasant time as it fades. But neither will one dose chain you.” He deliberately forgot Sioned’s experiences with the drug, Hollis’ terrible climb out of addiction.

  “We have some available?” He shrugged irritably. “Stupid question.”

  “Forgivable,” Rohan answered. “It’s not every day one has to plan a battle against a sorcerer.” He rose. “I’ll leave you two with the scroll now. Read it through from here to the end. It’ll tell you how to function with dranath in your blood, and some specifics that may help you defeat Ruval.”

  Sioned was waiting in the hall and silently took his
arm as they walked to their suite. When they were alone in the bedchamber, she flung her arms around him and shook.

  “Hush,” he whispered. “Sioned, sweet love—it’ll be all right, I swear it.”

  Her voice was muffled against his shoulder as she said, “Rialt told me. Rohan, it’s worse than we ever suspected.”

  He held her away from him, frowning. “What is it? What’s frightened you?”

  “Ruala was the perfect choice as hostage. She’s diarmadhi.”

  “What?” Rohan’s head spun. “Are you sure?”

  “She sensed the sorcery before Riyan did with his rings.”

  “So he and Pol told me. But that doesn’t mean—”

  “Doesn’t it? They’ll call for the perath. They need three against three faradh’im. Marron was to be part of it, I’m sure of it. This woman Mireva is the second. And I know who they had in mind for their third.”

  He felt his fingers clench on her shoulders. “Riyan,” he whispered.

  She nodded. “With Marron dead, they were crippled. But they have Ruala, and she’s of the Old Blood. She can be drugged into it—all that’s really needed is her power, not her conscious cooperation.”

  “And Riyan won’t let her go through it alone. We’ve both seen the looks they give each other. What they demand of him, he’ll do.”

  “He’ll have no choice.”

  Rohan paced away form her, thinking furiously. “He’s in with Pol reading the Star Scroll now. That should help him.”

  “The perath can kill.”

  “So can I,” he said.

  “Rohan—no! It’s gone too far for that! And how would you do it? You saw Andry destroy Marron—what you didn’t sense was the effort it cost him, even though he knew more or less what to do!”

  “Sioned, I can’t let Riyan and Ruala fight that battle for me. I delayed too long in killing Masul nine years ago. I won’t let—”

  “There’s more,” she interrupted. “And worse.”

  He laughed harshly. “Of course there is. There always is.”

  Sioned hesitated, not looking at him. “I went in to see Meiglan. Edrel met me outside her rooms and asked if she was all right after last night. I thought he meant when Marron’s false shape vanished.” She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling. “I told him it seemed she’d been helped to sleep shortly after it happened and had been sleeping ever since. And he—he said that wasn’t possible because he found a lace veil belonging to her in Pol’s room this morning. But she couldn’t have been the one who left it there.”

  “Rohan’s throat closed as if a fist gripped it.

  “Can you possibly imagine that pitiful child sneaking into a man’s chamber, even on direct threat from her father? Besides, she was taken away in hysterics last night and I can’t see her making a quick recovery.”

  “You . . . have evidence,” he managed around the terrible constriction of fear.

  She nodded. “I know some medicine. Tobin knows more, and Feylin more than both of us combined. Her mother was a physician. I had them confirm what I suspected. The amount of drug in Meiglan’s wine produces identifiable levels of unconsciousness as it works. When I left her, she was in the last stages. The drug must have been given only a little while after her so-called maidservant got her out of the Great Hall. Pol didn’t leave us until much later than that.”

  “It won’t work, Sioned.” He heard the desperation in his voice and tried to control it. “You can’t be sure whether or not the amount of drug was changed, added to since—”

  “Both Tobin and Feylin confirmed it!”

  “All three of you could be wrong!”

  “But you know we’re not.” She wilted into a chair. “You know it as well as I do, Rohan.”

  “Gentle Goddess,” he whispered with no voice at all.

  “Ianthe couldn’t change her shape, so she changed your perceptions with dranath,” Sioned told him in lifeless tones. “This woman Mireva—what she must have done—would Pol have sensed sorcery? Even if he didn’t, once he finds out about Meiglan, he’ll put it together. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to protect him.”

  “We can’t. Not anymore.” He knew it now for certain, and there was a strange relief in the knowing. “He must be told who he is.”

  She sprang to her feet, terrified. “No! Please, Rohan—please!”

  “It’s time. It must be tonight.”

  “No!”

  “Would you see him die because he can’t use power he doesn’t know he has?” he lashed out.

  Green eyes blazed in a face the color of chalk. “We could tell him he gets the diarmadhi blood from one of us, we could—”

  “Lie to him? Again? When do the lies stop, Sioned? Who are you protecting now—Pol or yourself?”

  “And what happens when he finds out the man who wants his death is his own brother?”

  “He’ll just have to accept that, won’t he!” Rohan turned for the door, but her next words stopped him in mid-stride.

  “The way you accepted him when you returned to Stronghold that winter? You could barely look at either of us! I’d brought you a son you didn’t want, and Pol was living reminder that you weren’t perfect! Shall we tell him that, too?”

  He heard his voice become the chill, brittle one he used when forced to address someone he loathed. “He will be told who is he tonight. You may attend or not, as you choose. But he will be told.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Stronghold: 34 Spring

  By sunset Stronghold had been turned inside out. The guards and Sunrunners scoured the area around the keep while light lasted, reporting nothing out of the ordinary. Rohan expected as much. Ruval and Mireva would assume there’d be a search of this kind, so he had to provide it. He hoped the show would satisfy them so that his next gambit would come unanticipated.

  But before he began it, there was Pol.

  They met in the library again at Rohan’s request. Pol had just arrived when Sioned entered and sat down on her side of the double desk. Rohan would have bet half his princedom that she wouldn’t come, especially after their clash today—that she would flee this thing she had dreaded for so long. But she met his eyes squarely, unflinching.

  Pol had pulled up a chair near Sioned’s desk, curious at his parents’ tense silence. “What is it you wanted to talk about?”

  Rohan locked the door and leaned back against it. He had struggled with the words a thousand times, trying to imagine this moment, to find the right way to say it that would spare Pol and Sioned any pain. But the words escaped him, and there must be pain.

  Sioned folded her hands atop her desk, her shining head bent, the graceful lines of her throat and shoulders highlighted by candle-glow. Rohan had lit the candlebranch earlier, knowing that if she had done it by Sunrunner means, the flames would leap and flare with her emotions. Refracted light from the emerald ring on her left hand trembled slightly, the only sign of her terror.

  Aware that he was delaying the inevitable, he glanced around the room. Tapestry map, books, parchments piled on the desks, boxes containing the seals of their princedom—perhaps he should have chosen another place. This was, after all, a political room. But it was too late to move to a private chamber, one in which they could be people and not princes.

  Drawing in a deep breath, he began. “Pol . . . you are everything we ever wanted in a son.” The young man’s head tilted to one side in a gesture of puzzlement. “You know your own strengths. You’ve explored your abilities as a prince and learned how to use your faradhi gifts with confidence and wisdom. You are a Sunrunner.”

  “That’s made painfully obvious every time I cross water,” Pol said, smiling a little. “What are you trying to say, Father? That my Sunrunner skills can defeat Ruval’s sorceries? If so, keep talking—because I’m dreading it, even knowing what’s in the Star Scroll.”

  Sioned murmured, “You have no cause to fear, Pol. You are everything we ever dreamed you would become.” She hesitat
ed, glancing once more at Rohan. “And you are everything you always were, no matter what you might hear about—about who you are.”

  Blue-green eyes widened. “Mother! Don’t tell me you’re worried about that old rumor?”

  “What rumor?” Rohan asked, sharp-voiced.

  “I heard it first while I was at Graypearl. The gist of it is that I’m not really your son—that Mother couldn’t have a child with you. Some say my real father is someone here at Stronghold, and others say a Sunrunner was brought here in secret. It was merely insulting until they got to the part about Mother only marrying you because Lady Andrade told her to, and that she never loved you at all. That made it ludicrous! I always laughed it off—and so should you,” he added with gentle chiding to Sioned.

  “I never heard that one,” Rohan mused.

  “There are others. All of them just as ridiculous. Mother, don’t concern yourself with—”

  “Pol, please!” She shied to her feet like a nervous cat and paced to the other side of the desk. “Just listen. Don’t make this any harder.”

  Obviously bewildered now, Pol looked to his father for an explaination. Rohan said softly, “There’s no easy way to tell it. Pol, do you believe that possession of diarmadhi power is inherently evil?”

  “I’ve already been through this with Riyan. If I ever did believe that, which I don’t, he’s ample evidence otherwise.” He shifted impatiently, flinging a look at Sioned. “Will you please just tell me whatever it is you feel you have to tell me?”

  Her shoulders straightened as though she was bracing herself. She stood behind Rohan’s desk chair, gripping its carved wooden back. She drew a slow breath—but Rohan spoke first.

  “You are a Sunrunner, Pol,” he said. “But you are also diarmadhi. You are my son, but not hers. Your mother was Princess Ianthe, youngest daughter of High Prince Roelstra and his only wife, Lallante.”

  Shock froze the young face. His eyes went blank, his skin colorless. Rohan watched confusion, denial, suspicion, a hundred emotions play across his son’s features. At last Pol’s lips moved in a deathly whisper. “Why would you tell me such a lie?”