Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire

by Melanie Rawn

  He stood before the locked iron door of the cell, conjured a flame to the torch set in the wall, and prepared to face the woman ultimately responsible for his brother’s death.

  He had been careful and silent in his approach. But before his fingers even touched the lock, her voice came muffled and mocking from within: “What? Not out watching sorcery at work?”

  He opened the door. She stood against the far wall, long white-streaked hair straggling about her shoulders, gray-green eyes glittering, wrists bloody testimony to her efforts at escaping her bonds.

  “I see you’ve made yourself comfortable,” he said, matching her jeering tone.

  “Oh, quite.”

  There were any number of things he might have said. Any number of ways he might have opened his conversation with her. But the words that came from him were blunt, direct with the force of his need.

  “Tell me what you know. I need your knowledge.”

  Mireva laughed at him.

  “Tell me.”

  “And why should I do that?”

  “Because it’s your last chance.” He paused. “Do you know what Rohan plans for you?” It had been mentioned this afternoon, before he had told Rohan he would not be going to Rivenrock. He wholeheartedly approved the idea; it had an elegant simplicity and promised days of excruciating torment. Rohan could be admirably ruthless when it suited him.

  She shrugged. “Does it matter? We both know I’m to die.”

  “There are ways and ways of dying. I’d kill you myself, right now—but I must admit that he has a more interesting way.” He stood in the open doorway, letting his shadow fall across her. The sight pleased him. “Are you feeling the lack of dranath yet?” he asked with malicious gentleness.

  A spasm went through her that tugged her wrists apart, renewing a sluggish flow of blood down her hands.

  Andry nodded. “I thought you might. Tell me what I want to know, and I may decide to end your life quickly.”

  Her eyes closed for a moment. Then she gave a resigned little shrug. “Very well. But release my bonds.”

  He very nearly laughed. “Not even for what I could learn from you.”

  “Fool! This cell may be four stone walls, but the ground beyond is laced with iron ore! Can’t you feel it, Sunrunner? Are your senses that weak? The door’s made of iron—I couldn’t get past it even without steel in my flesh! If I’m going to die, at least let it be with a shred of dignity! Don’t kill me when I’m trussed like a pig for slaughter!”

  Andry considered, then closed the door. “I’ll loosen them,” he said at last, conjuring a bit of Fire high on the wall to see by. “But the ‘earring’ stays.”

  “As you wish,” she answered sullenly.

  He untwisted the steel wire connecting her arms, making sure each swollen wrist was still encircled, careful that the bonds were not loose enough to slip over her hands. She was free, after a fashion; the blood-dark wires were only bracelets now. He was confident that before she could work them off or remove the steel from her earlobe, he could get out the door and slam its iron shut.

  “Too gracious.” She rubbed her wrists. “What do you want to know?”

  “Start at the beginning. It won’t make any sense otherwise.”

  Mireva settled onto the floor. Leaning her head back against the wall, her hands in plain view, she held his gaze with her own and began to speak.

  Years ago, before Andry had been born, Mireva had changed her youthful shape to that of an old hag and given Lady Palila the secret of dranath. Roelstra’s mistress had used the drug as Mireva had hoped. A Sunrunner named Crigo had been addicted and thereby enslaved. It was a satisfying thing to watch for a sorcerer who had spent her life in hiding. Yet as things developed, Mireva began to dare a larger hope: that when one of Roelstra’s daughters by Lallante married Rohan, Crigo could be used even more effectively against Andrade by being in Rohan’s inner councils.

  “Tell me more about dranath,” Andry interrupted.

  “Think it might be useful, do you?” she jeered. “You know that it augments power? Ever used it yourself, Sunrunner?”

  “And risk addiction?” he snorted. It was none of her business that he had experimented with the drug. “Leave myself vulnerable to what Rohan wants to do with you?”

  “It’s worth it.” She shrugged. “If you ever plan on slipping your beloved cousin a little, be aware that anyone with the gifts can resist direction if he becomes aware of it—and it’s not difficult to detect it, believe me. But unless he suspects, he’ll be open to any interesting little suggestions you wish to make.”

  “What about ungifteds?”

  “Nothing to work with. Their minds are empty so far as dranath is concerned. All it does is addict them. It takes the Blood to be vulnerable that way—which is why Ianthe was able to beguile Rohan into lying with her.”

  “Oh,” he said, bored, “the phantom son.”

  “No more than Ruval or Marron or Segev! He would have had Sunrunner sensitivities from his father and the full diarmadhi gift from his mother.” Her gray-green eyes unfocused. “What I could have taught him. . . .” Then she met Andry’s gaze again with another small shrug for lost opportunities. “But he died with her in the razing of Feruche.”

  “You can mourn him some other time,” Andry said impatiently. “Go on with the story.”

  She settled with her back against the wall, seeming to enjoy this chance to lecture the Lord of Goddess Keep. “Lallante was a kinswoman of mine. We married her to Roelstra hoping for a son who would be diarmadhi and High Prince both—just as Andrade mated her sister to Zehava and Sioned to Rohan, wanting the same thing for you faradh’im. But Lallante was terrified of her powers and wouldn’t use them. When she rejected her heritage, we gave up hope.”

  “We?”

  “My father, her father, and I. They died shortly after she did.” Mireva’s voice was bitter and brooding. “Died of the failure. It didn’t take a Sunrunner that time. Lallante was one of our own, and she betrayed us.” Mireva wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the stone floor. “There were others who worked with us. But ours was the purest line—a lineage more royal than yours, Sunrunner.” She grinned suddenly. “Descended from none other than your precious Lord Rosseyn, ally of Merisel the Cursed.”

  “He was no sorcerer!” Andry exclaimed.

  “No. But his woman was. And so were her children by him. You weakling Sunrunners—it takes two of you to produce gifted offspring. The talent recedes without careful mating. But the diarmadhi powers are present in the children even if only one parent is gifted.”

  He stared at her, fascinated. “Then all Lallante’s daughters—”

  “Are part of us. Only that whimpering fool Naydra survives. With her dies Lallante’s line. Except for Ruval.”

  “And so?”

  “Crigo’s death, Ianthe’s failure to win Rohan—Pandsala’s similar failure—but then there were Ianthe’s sons. Three fine, strong, powerful boys. One of Feruche’s guards was diarmadhi, my watch there. He brought them to me. I knew what it was to hope again. . . .”

  Mireva had taken the boys in, nurtured their gifts, taught them who they were and what they must do to reclaim their birthright. Segev, the youngest, had gone to Goddess Keep that spring of 719.

  “You never knew,” she purred as Andry stared in shock. “That he was a sorcerer, you guessed. That he was Ianthe’s son—” She laughed. “You and Hollis even let him help you translate the Star Scroll. Now that was irony! Even though he failed to bring me the original or even a copy, I saw enough of it on starlight to know it wasn’t the thing whispered of in legend.”

  “Ah, but it is.” He got some of his own back as her eyes widened.

  “Impossible! The spells are wrong, they’re—”

  “Written that way deliberately. They only work if you know the code Lady Merisel used.”

  Breath hissed between Mireva’s teeth. “So! That filthy bitch—she was arrogant enough after all to pre
serve what she stole from us!”

  “Tell me about her.”

  Mireva’s face darkened with fury. “This paragon of all farad-h’im —she was Gerik’s wife, but she slept with anything and anyone. She spread stories of her beauty, but she was hideously ugly—when she left her keeps she cast a shape-changing spell to foster belief in her loveliness. She ruled Gerik and Rosseyn and every Sunrunner alive with an iron whip—and killed those who didn’t obey her.”

  Andry almost smiled. The woman whose strength and beauty sang from the historical scrolls bore no resemblance to the one Mireva described.

  “She used treachery and deceit to destroy us—nothing was too low for her. The only time she was utterly disobeyed was when she ordered all children killed at our citadel of Castle Crag. Two of them were Rosseyn’s. No one knew about them. He reported that all had been murdered—when he had in truth taken them to safety.” Mireva sprang to her feet and began to pace the narrow cell. “As for the adults—the men she didn’t kill outright, she gelded. The women she rendered barren through drugs. The pregnant ones—she tore the babes from their mothers’ bodies and had them spitted on Merida knives. Did you ever learn the secret of Merida glass knives? They were hollow, filled with poison. When stabbed into flesh, they broke and the poison seeped out. Merisel used those knives against children!”

  Mireva was panting for breath as she leaned one shoulder to the wall, as if the force of her hate had exhausted her.

  “So all this is your way of getting even,” Andry prompted.

  “Nothing could ever repay us for what we suffered. This is only a flicker of revenge on her descendants.”

  Every muscle in his body drew taut. “Pol?”

  “And you!” she spat. “Proud of it, are you, Lord of Goddess Keep? To be the blood of that murderous abomination?”

  “How do you know this?” he breathed.

  “Don’t you think we’ve kept track of all of you through the years? And haven’t you made the connection yet between Lord Garic of Elktrap and Lord Gerik, Merisel’s husband? Ruala is one of us!”

  “But the names—”

  “A blind,” she sneered. “To make everyone think that their power comes from Merisel and Gerik, not Rosseyn. She’s as much a full-blooded diarmadhi as I am, as Ruval is! As Pol is!”

  This time he was physically staggered.

  “I don’t know how, so don’t ask.” Annoyed by her lack of knowledge, still she obviously enjoyed her triumph. “Sioned’s line is obscure in many places. He must get it from her. She wears no Sunrunner’s rings anymore, so there’s no indication that way of her blood. But if you placed such a ring on Pol’s hand, and our arts were practiced around him, his finger would burn like fire.”

  “Pol,” he breathed. He could scarcely believe it. Then, shocked anew: “Rings?”

  “Don’t you know anything?” she shouted. “In a Sunrunner with the Old Blood, the rings burn in the presence of one of our spells!”

  “Tell me the rest,” Andry said with no voice at all.

  She rubbed her wrists as she told him Chiana’s part in the plot—ripe for suggestion and sorcery, Chiana hated Sunrunners and Rohan about equally. Andry regretted her essential innocence. Then Mireva began to describe the scene of Sorin’s death with vicious glee.

  “Stop,” he whispered, in pain.

  “Stop? You’re the one who wanted to hear all of it—and so you shall! He had to die, just as Maarken and his children will have to die so there will be no one left to inherit the Desert. Oh, and Hollis, as well—for murdering Segev. You claimed Marron’s life for killing your brother. Ruval will claim hers for the same reason.”

  “You’ll have to kill me, too.”

  “Not for dynastic reasons. No, you and your little bastards will die because you’re Sunrunners, and Merisel’s get.”

  The father in him trembled for Andrev and Tobren and Chayly. But what he said was, “You’ve already acknowledged that you’re the one who’s going to die—one way or another. Who’s going to perform these executions?”

  “Ruval.”

  It was fairly easy to laugh. “He’ll be ashes by midnight!”

  “Perhaps. But if not him, then others. How many of us do you think there are?” she taunted. “Hundreds? Thousands? Remember that one diarmadhi parent guarantees that all the children will inherit power. You Sunrunners are few and weak compared to us! And how would you even find us? Merisel drove us into the Veresch—but we have moved into every other part of the continent by now. As Sioned’s heritage proves, the unsuspected power she gave to Pol. How will you find us, Lord of Goddess Keep? How will you eliminate us?”

  “I have a question for you,” he said with a tiny smile. “How will you stop me?”

  He already knew how he would do it. Those who had joined Chiana were still captive at Dragon’s Rest. It would be simplicity itself to be rid of them—but not until they had revealed the locations of the others. Additionally, anyone who possessed power probably used it; rumor alone would lead him to diarmadh’im from Firon to Kierst-Isel to Dorval. He would find them, and they would die.

  His only problem would be the highly placed ones. Sioned. Pol. Riyan. But they were all Sunrunners—of a sort. He would find some way of putting them under his watch, if not his control.

  His smile widened. “How will you stop me?” he repeated.

  Her steel-braceleted arms came up and fire gushed from her fingertips. She screamed with the agony of working with iron piercing her flesh. But flames shot from her hands and his cry echoed with hers as his clothing caught fire. He fell, writhing, and rolled across the stone floor to extinguish fire before it charred him to the bone.

  The next instant the flames were gone.

  So was Mireva.

  Her brain told her she must seal Andry inside the cell, but there was no time and she could not make her swollen fingers work. Half-blind, she stumbled toward the stairs, groped her way up them. Surely there had not been so many on the way down—

  She sobbed as she collided with a door. It had no lock, but in the dimness, with pain bleating along every nerve, locating the latch and shoving the door open was endless agony. She moaned with relief when she saw the hall stretch ahead of her, empty. No one had heard her shrieks or Andry’s cries. But this was the inhabited part of the keep, and she must be careful.

  Mireva breathed slowly and carefully, wishing for just the tiniest pinch of dranath to clear her head. But the memory of the sweet invincibility was almost enough. She grabbed a torch from its sconce and wedged it under the door. It wouldn’t slow Andry down for long, but it was better than nothing.

  Twisting her hair into a knot at her nape, she brushed off her clothing and walked down the hall as if she belonged there. She met no one until a footman came by, loaded down with Fironese crystal on a silver tray—for Pol’s victory banquet, Mireva thought acidly. She purposely stumbled into the man’s shoulder. He swore and almost lost his balance. Her hands were still clumsy, but she managed to grab one of the thin-stemmed goblets. The crystal broke very neatly against the wall and as the footman righted himself, catlike, without dropping his burden, Mireva slashed his throat.

  The ensuing crash would bring people running. She must hurry. Racing down the main corridor, she climbed the servants’ stairs as fast as she could, encountering only an incurious maid carrying an armful of sheets. As she ran, she tried to pick the wire from her ear, gave it up as being too tightly wound, and started on the steel circling her wrists. By the time she reached Ruala’s chamber, the first bloodied wire had fallen to the floor.

  There were no guards, not even a maid sitting in the shadowy bedroom. Ruala was asleep. As Mireva opened the curtains, the flinch brought by the rasp of steel rings on rods was forgotten in the blessed sight of new stars. She rummaged frantically through Ruala’s dressing table. Scissors at last to hand, she snipped the other bracelet from her wrist. Quickly, she must work quickly. She could draw on Ruala’s power once she was free of the steel
and could work. She tried to still her tremors and leaned down to get a better look in the mirror as she worked on the wire in her earlobe.

  “Put it down.”

  She spun, astonished to find Ruala standing beside the bed, ready to kill her with the elegant jeweled knife clutched in her fist. She held the blade by its handle, not its tip, ready to throw it; she probably didn’t even know how. Thus she would have to come closer—close enough for Mireva to disarm her, with luck. While the wire was still twisted in her earlobe, she could not use sorcery with ease—and she was two and a half times Ruala’s age.

  “Why isn’t your loving lord hovering over his precious darling?” Mireva asked sweetly.

  “Put the scissors down,” Ruala said, just as quietly as before.

  Long black hair swirled about perfect shoulders; the dark green eyes were reminiscent of Mireva’s own in some lights. The old woman saw herself as she had been over forty years ago: young, beautiful, with the promise of power in her eyes. “We’re the same, you and I,” she murmured.

  “We’re no more alike than Fire and Water. Now, put it down.”

  Mireva set the scissors on the dressing table behind her. “I know power when it’s near me. You’re diarmadhi, just like me.” She could almost feel Andry pounding on the door down below. Time, time—“Do you think Andry will let you live, knowing what you are? Or do you suppose your brave lord will protect you? How can he, when Andry will be after his blood, too?”

  Ruala smiled. “You know power, do you? We’ll see.” She started slowly for the door, never taking her eyes off Mireva. But when she reached her hand to the knob, Mireva made a supreme effort—and what Ruala touched was a thing slimy and foul, a writhing piece of corroded flesh that oozed acid. She screamed and jerked her fingers away.

  Mireva could hardly see. The pain was unendurable, spreading along her limbs from a brain that seemed to be on fire. But the torture was worth it. Ruala, stunned and terrified for that brief instant of sorcery, was vulnerable. Mireva threw herself blindly forward. They sprawled together on the floor, locked as tightly as lovers. Mireva dimly heard the knife clatter away.