Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire

by Melanie Rawn

  She wrestled herself atop Ruala, gasping as fingers dug so deep into her lacerated wrists that she was sure the bones would shatter. Ruala was no fool; recovery from shock had been swift, and she knew exactly where to hurt Mireva the most. Mireva flung them over and hoped her pain-hazed sight could be trusted. The thud of the girl’s head against the stout wooden bedframe proved her correct. Ruala wilted.

  Gulping for air, Mireva pushed herself to her feet and went for the scissors again. Her hands shook so hard that she drew blood from the side of her neck—but the wire dropped to the dressing table. She was free.

  The stars beckoned. She wove their light swiftly, craving dranath, and hurled herself down the silvery skeins toward Rivenrock.

  It was as she had feared. Pol and Ruval were already battling, Air and Fire whirling around them, hideous visions conjured and countered in a maelstrom of power. The ungifted onlookers were masked in horror at what they saw. Those who were sensitive to the arts—Sioned and Morwenna, Tobin, Maarken, and Hollis—were on their knees in the sand, faces contorted with agony. No perath had been woven to shield them. This suited Mireva perfectly. She could enter the battle without hindrance and the Sunrunners would feel the deathblow as if it had been directed at them.

  Pol backed away from Ruval’s gambit—a blazing whirlwind that sprouted claws from which lightning spewed. The princeling looked frightened. Mireva laughed her satisfaction. It seemed Ruval was doing just fine without her. Still, she watched in wariness for Pol’s reply, for all she knew about him warned of cleverness.

  His right hand groped in a pocket of his trousers, emerged fisted around some small thing. He flung it into the air as one might release a hunting hawk—and from a tiny bright glitter it indeed grew wings. Swirling with Sunrunner’s Fire, the thing became an immense golden dragon as tall as the canyon walls, wings aflame, eyes glowing white as if suffused with stars.

  Mireva gasped out a curse and hastened her own work. For the trick to this illusion was that some of it was not illusion. Fire concealed the working until it was ready in all its awful details—so that the portions that were real could not he guessed from watching its construction. Any part of the conjured dragon might be made from that small glinting thing Pol had thrown into the air. She had taught Ruval the technique, shown him how stone gathered from the sands could form talons and teeth, or real fire could gush from mighty jaws. If Ruval could not discern fact from illusion, it would cost him his life.

  It was almost as painful to work without dranath as it had been with iron poisoning her blood. She needed the drug, could feel its lack screaming shrilly inside her as she readied her weapon. But she did it: Pol’s dragon turned to glass. It cracked and splintered to the sand, and as it did the real portion of it—the lashing tail concealing the little golden carving—crumbled.

  Pol fell back stunned as his masterwork vanished. Real fear flashed into his eyes. Mireva sobbed for breath, silently screaming at Ruval to be quick in his answering illusion. She could not sustain this for long, not without the drug in her veins.

  She whirled then to stare at Ruala. The young woman was still unconscious, but her power was accessible. Without dranath it would be difficult, but if she did not try, Ruval might be dead before the next star appeared. She broke the threads of light and grunted with effort as she hauled Ruala over to the windows. The spell was arduous under the best circumstances; Mireva felt her head was ready to explode with the strain. But she probed and pushed, groping for the hidden core—and found it.

  Swiftly she rewove the starlight. It was easier now, sustained by Ruala’s young strength that had never been taught how to resist this. She saw the sand and walls of Rivenrock much more dearly now, and the two combatants.

  Now it was Ruval who fumbled with something in his hand. A new inferno appeared, a monster forming within it. When the thing leaped from its concealing blaze. Pol fell back involuntarily. Fully the size of the dragon, it was the entirety of what Mireva had used to terrify Ruala. Had she had strength, she would have laughed in delight; she had taught Ruval this beast herself, they had formed it together.

  She was momentarily distracted by a quiver from Ruala’s mind. She was beginning to wake up, as if sensing the use to which her powers were being put, outrage and sheer terror rousing her from unconsciousness. Mireva groaned with the pain of keeping her under control, and returned her attention to the monster Ruval had conjured.

  It was horned and crested and covered in livid scales of every conceivable color, like a stained glass window gone berserk. The gaping eyes oozed yellowish matter down to an open maw filled with endless sharp teeth. These dripped blood onto forelegs as big around as a horse that ended in thick, slime-coated claws like steel spikes. It reared back on its hind legs and plummeted down, ready to clamp its jaws around Pol.

  Mireva knew the teeth were not real, nor the claws. It was the pus leaking from the eyes that was dangerous. Formed of sand mixed with a paste Ruval had learned to make as one of his first lessons, hidden in a pocket until he needed it, when it touched Pol’s skin it would sear him to the bone.

  She saw him leap away from the hundreds of teeth. Now, it must be now. She could feel her strength waning, her control over the awakening Ruala fading, her heart beating with savage throbs, her brain on fire. A last effort, a gust of Air conjured at an impossible distance—and a spurt of poisonous yellow muck spattered toward Pol.

  She did not see it hit him. She was wrenched back to Stronghold by an agony so horrible that the scream died before it left her throat. The cool starlight turned to needles of ice and fire stabbing into her eyes, matching the stabbing pain in her heart. Her fingers groped for the knife, felt the jewels on its hilt. Staggering around from the window, she expected to see Ruala’s white face as she fell.

  “That’s for Sorin,” Riyan told her before she died.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Rivenrock Canyon: 35 Spring

  Instinct screamed at Pol to wince away, but instinct was hampered by his mind’s cold calculations over what was real and what was not. Part of him was well and truly horrified by this hideous apparition. Curses and screams behind him told him he wasn’t alone. But another part of him writhed in a frenzy of analysis. What of this was real, and what not? The yellowish ooze might be only a feint, something to distract him while the true attack was mounted. Instinct and intellect interlocked in near-paralysis—but then he saw Ruval’s eyes flicker with sudden astonishment.

  Ruval had not expected the gust of Air that flung the ooze onto Pol; therefore someone else had initiated it.

  No one present would dare such a thing; therefore Mireva was free to work.

  She had expended a vast amount of power in calling Air from a great distance—therefore this foul matter was real and to be avoided at all costs.

  The reasoning took a split instant. Pol flung himself to one side, but not quickly enough. The filth splattered onto his tunic; a drop hit his face. He was about to wipe it away when his cheek tingled with sudden heat. Within moments the pain was excruciating. If he touched it with his fingers, the agony would spread. And if the pus had hit his eye—

  Frantically, trying to avoid gaping jaws that might or might not be real, he pulled a knife from his boot to scrape off the sticky slime. He wished he could throw the contaminated blade into Ruval’s heart—but rules were rules, and if he broke them his honor would be forfeit. Stupid and possibly suicidal to have such scruples—but he could do nothing else.

  He used the knife like a razor against his cheek, nicking the skin, groaning at fresh fire as a hint of the poison mixed into his blood. It felt as if skin and flesh had blistered black and peeled away to the bone. The pain half-blinded him, found outlet in a cry of sheer rage against Mireva’s treachery. The knife nestled with deadly familiarity in his fist. But he couldn’t use it. Rohan and Sioned—and Lleyn and Chadric and Audrite and everyone who had had a hand in raising him—they had all done their work too well. Roelstra’s grandson would have l
oosed the knife; the son of Rohan and Sioned could not.

  But nothing prevented him from using the matter that clung to the blade. The gruesome monster loomed over him, slavering for his blood. Pol took a deep breath and decided on the basis of no evidence at all that the only thing real was the poisonous filth—and strode right through the illusory body toward Ruval. As quickly as he could, careful not to touch the ooze, he flicked it back at its maker.

  Ruval dodged it, terror in his eyes, so desperate to avoid the yellow muck that he lost his balance and tumbled to the sand. Pol flung the knife away and used the moments of Ruval’s panic to catch his breath. His cheek still burned, but it was a goad now, not a crippling wound.

  “Give it up,” he panted. “Your best has failed.”

  “Best? That was nothing!”

  Sheer bravado. “Give it up!” Pol shouted furiously. “I don’t want to kill you, damn it! Yield! Princemarch is mine! The Desert belongs to me by treaty made before we were born!”

  “ ‘As long as the sands spawn fire,’ ” Ruval quoted mockingly. “I see no fire here, princeling, nor is anyone ever likely to!”

  “No?” Pol asked softly. And smiled—because suddenly he knew what had to be done. The shift of facial muscles brought back pain in sickening waves. But he refused to feel it. He was tiring—it was harder to concentrate, harder to summon strength enough. He raised both arms slowly, his gaze never relinquished his half-brother’s. Starlight caught the topaz-and-amethyst ring, glowed from the moonstone that had been Andrade’s. Arms straight, fingers spread, he stood very still. His hands clenched slowly into fists. He called, and the Fire came.

  It sprang to life in grass and flowers baked dry by the hot spring sun. It filled the mouth of Rivenrock Canyon, fountained up the sandstone watchspire, spread across the dunes. The sea of sand became a sea of Sunrunner’s Fire until it seemed the sand itself caught and burned.

  Ruval conjured Air to bend the flames back toward Pol. It only fanned them higher. So great was Pol’s control, so sure was his power, that he appeared to glow in the perilous brightness.

  “Illusion!” Ruval bellowed. “Unreal!”

  Pol laughed. “Walk into the flames and see!”

  “You’ll die by your own Fire, Sunrunner!” Ruval leaped for Pol. The physical attack was so unexpected that Pol went down in a tangle of limbs, feeling his knee wrenched nearly apart with the awkwardness of his fall. A long tongue of flame reached out nearby, licking across a growth of gray-green cacti, close enough to singe the two men as they wrestled on the sand. Pol felt beringed fingers lock around his throat, cutting off precious gulps of searing air. His vision began to go black around a raging wildfire. He tore at Ruval’s hands, then took a terrible chance and rolled them both toward the blaze.

  Ruval scrambled away with a howl of pain. He dug his right arm into the sand to quench the flames that had caught on his shirt. Pol tried to gain his feet but his knee collapsed, sent him sprawling once more. They were encircled, caught in a tiny space of sand and rock as the inferno raged all around them.

  Pol ripped off his shirt and wrapped it tightly around his knee, hoping the support would be enough. He swayed up on his good knee, glaring at Ruval. “Illusion?” he mocked, bruised neck muscles making his voice a rasp. Gathering himself to take advantage of the shock he was about to give, he forced a tiny smile to his lips. “Would you kill your own brother?”

  The flames etched Ruval’s suddenly white face in red and gold.

  “My brothers are dead!”

  “What, no loving welcome? I distinctly heard you swear revenge on the High Princess for ordering your youngest brother’s death. I’m hurt, Ruval. Deeply wounded.” He summoned the words of the Star Scroll to mind. So simple, really, when one didn’t consider their implications or intellectualize over right, wrong, and justice. Power was there to be used; why else possess it? His father’s policy of acting only when action was necessary was a waste of resources. But then, Rohan had never experienced this kind of power. “I am Ianthe’s lastborn, Ruval. Sunrunner and diarmadh’im. How else would I be able to do this?”

  The fire he called this time came from the stars, sweeping cold and white down Rivenrock Canyon. It mantled his own body in brilliant silver—and struck Ruval down in a flash of lightning.

  What he had kindled exhilarated and terrified him. The way power should, he thought remotely. He watched with breathless fascination, caught between exultation and fear, between the thundering heat of Sunrunner’s Fire and the chill silver silence of a blaze called down from the stars. Having ignited flames across the Desert, he did not have to work to sustain it as with his dragon illusion. But neither did the sorcery require thought. Each came naturally to him, destruction from two opposing forces that met and merged within him. He throbbed with power and the terror of power, not knowing which kind and source of power he feared most.

  Ruval lay writhing on the rocky ground. His screams split Pol’s skull like spikes. “Would you kill your own brother?” Pol could do it; he had only to twist starfire a little more tightly around Ruval, and the man would die. He would not even be breaking the Sunrunner’s oath he had never taken—never to kill using his gifts. For it was not a faradhi skill he used.

  “Would you kill your own brother?”

  The grandson of Roelstra would have done it. The son of Rohan and Sioned could not.

  Pol let the Star Scroll spell fade. He felt no exalted sense of his own goodness or righteousness or nobility. All he felt was empty, and grindingly tired. And something of a fool for not silencing his scruples and killing Ruval outright. He rubbed his torn knee, waiting while Ruval caught his breath. When there was sense in the man’s eyes again, Pol said simply, “Yield.”

  Fright competed with fury in Ruval’s eyes. Then his head bent. “Help me,” he whispered.

  Pol snorted. “Life you may have. But trust? Stand on your own or stay there, I don’t give a damn which.”

  “Don’t you know what that spell does to diarmadh’im? I can’t feel my legs, damn you! Look at the Fire—if we don’t move, we’ll burn to death! Help me up!”

  “Do it yourself or not at all,” Pol replied stubbornly.

  The attempt was made, and Ruval toppled over on the sand, facedown. Pol swore and approached cautiously. His knee stabbed with every slow, suspicious step, repeating the fever pulse of his cheek wound. Ruval was barely breathing. His distress looked genuine enough—but Pol did not get within reach.

  “Get up!” he ordered sharply, and coughed with the harshness of fiery air in his throat. He tossed his head to clear the sweat-thick hair from his eyes.

  Ruval tried once more, pushing himself up onto hands and knees, head hanging as he fought for breath. Pol took a wary half-step back. His knee went out from under him and he fell with a gasp of pain.

  Ruval was on him. And the face grinning ferally down at Pol was blond, pale-eyed—his own.

  “Say ‘please,’ little brother.” Ruval tugged Pol’s injured leg to an excruciatingly painful angle. There was no need for any other restraint; the grip at his knee immobilized Pol completely. He moaned with the agony as bones ground together and tendons stretched to their limits.

  “I’ll keep this shape just long enough to kill your father,” Ruval informed him, laughing softly. “Or maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow, let them believe you won, and tonight celebrate victory between Meiglan’s thighs.”

  He was a fool for allowing Ruval to live. Too late to flay himself over it now. Pol ordered every muscle in his body to go limp. “Quick death—don’t torment me—” He interrupted this craven speech with a hacking cough.

  His own face laughed with Ruval’s voice, his own eyes shone with Ruval’s triumph. “I told you to say ‘please!’ ”

  “Just tell me—why this way—you’re my brother—would have given you—”

  “By the Nameless One, are you really that stupid?” Ruval stared at him, and Pol felt the grasp on his leg ease a little. “You have many thi
ngs that belong to me,” Ruval explained as if to a particularly slow-witted child. “Titles, honors, Princemarch—”

  “Don’t kill my father! Spare him—and Meiglan—” Time, he needed time. . . .

  “It’s a thought,” Ruval admitted. “Worse than death to him, seeing me as High Prince. But she’d be happy to exchange a puling princeling for a real man. Yes, I might just let them live for a little while. If you beg nicely enough.”

  Steeling himself, Pol whispered, “Please.”

  Ruval grinned. “Again.”

  “Please!” It tasted of acid, but he said the word a second time.

  “The sweetest thing an enemy can say!” Ruval reached up to brush the sweat from his brow, chuckling.

  Pol twisted his body as fast as he could, slamming his good knee into Ruval’s chest. The breath whooshed out of him and he pitched backward. Pol groaned and tried to stand, ungainly as a newborn foal. He couldn’t. He crawled away from Ruval, staring at the flames encircling their narrow battleground. Hauling in a deep breath and telling himself that his knee must support him or he would indeed die in his own Fire, he lurched through the blaze and went sprawling.

  He never knew how long he simply lay there, stunned. He wondered vaguely why no one had come to help him. Didn’t they understand that it was all over? Where were his father, his mother, Meggie, Sionell? Why didn’t they help him?

  His hearing returned before his vision. Someone was screaming. He frowned, knowing something was wrong but unable to figure out what. Struggling to his good knee, he turned and beheld himself. The mirror was still ablaze, but the image was perfect. Two of him were outside the flames. Scant wonder no one had come to his aid. Which was really him?

  It was a question that pierced him in unexpected ways. But he had no time for it now. Ruval was still alive. He glanced back to the half-circle of pain-ravaged Sunrunners and horrified nobles, finding his father’s face with surprising difficulty. But Rohan was not looking at him. He stared up at the firelit sky. Pol turned, searching, at last feeling the subtle flicker that should have alerted him long before this.