Dragon Prince 01 - Dragon Prince

by Melanie Rawn

  At last there was another weighted stone door, and they emerged cautiously into a place Sioned recognized only too well. She had been held in a cell here, away from the light. A quiver chased down her backbone as the nightmare of colorlessness flickered through her memory, and she coaxed the fingerflame a little higher, a little brighter.

  “Who’s there?”

  Tobin caught back a gasp and exchanged a wild glance with Ostvel, who drew his sword with a sharp hiss of steel. Sioned seemed not to notice. She walked forward as the guard appeared from around a corner.

  He choked and blanched in the glow of Sunrunner’s Fire. “You!”

  “Yes,” she murmured. “I remember you, too.” She pointed one long, ringless finger at him, and a new Fire sprouted a handspan from his chest. He flattened himself against the wall, eyes huge and staring, mouth open in a soundless scream.

  “Sioned—” Ostvel put a hand on her arm. She shrugged him off, smiling; there was that in her eyes that made him swallow hard. But he stepped forward and sunk his blade into the man’s throat. The guard slid down the wall, still staring, dead.

  Sioned whirled on Ostvel, fury in her face. He wiped his blade and met her gaze without flinching. “No one can know we’ve been here—not if this is to work. Anyone who sees us must die—and I won’t let you do the killing, faradhi.”

  The look in her eyes frightened Tobin. She had seen it in Chay’s eyes this spring, that dark glitter that meant death. She gripped Sioned’s hand and would not let her pull free. “Ostvel is right. Sioned, we must hurry.”

  The fire-gold head nodded once. She said nothing as she drew her fingers from Tobin’s, let the Fire flicker out, and started for the stairs. Tobin traded another worried glance with Ostvel—who had not put up his sword.

  Feruche’s reputation as a castle that could not be taken had made its guards careless. The few not partaking of the wine-soaked celebrations were easy to avoid; Tobin created soft breaths of Air that distracted attention by ruffling a tapestry or rattling a window. Sioned paid no attention, confident that the guards Tobin did not distract, Ostvel would silence permanently. But the sword tasted no new blood on the way to Ianthe’s chambers.

  Sioned paused at a high window overlooking the courtyard, light from the central bonfire down below blazing across her face. Tobin grabbed Ostvel’s arm as Sioned’s hands lifted slightly.

  “Sioned—no!” Tobin exclaimed.

  An unnatural light appeared beyond the windows, the gold and crimson of Sunrunner’s Fire. Tobin stared in horror at the out-building directly below, its wooden roof alight. Sparks blew onto the next roof and the next, leaping with terrible hunger. Ordinary fire would not have caught so swiftly, but Sunrunner’s Fire flared and grew. The screams of alarm began, the panic. Sioned smiled slightly.

  “Damn you!” Ostvel cried. “The balconies will catch! Sioned, you fool!”

  “There has to be Fire,” she said softly, and turned from the conflagration and the screams of drunken panic in the courtyard, heading unerringly for Ianthe’s chambers.

  Roelstra’s daughter lay in her dragon-tapestried bed, weak from the birthing, sobbing for help. A cradle rocked silently in a corner, but the woman who tended the child was gone—and with reason, for the flames were clearly visible at the windows now, even so high in the tower. Stairs leading up the inner walls had caught, and a wooden balcony three floors below was now afire. As smoke filtered into the chamber, the baby began to cry.

  Ianthe’s pleas for help became screams of rage. Sioned ignored her. She went to the cradle where the infant lay, blond as sunlight. “Sweet Goddess,” she breathed, almost afraid to touch him. One finger, hesitant and shy, across his cheek. “Shh,” she whispered. “I’m here now, little one.”

  Ianthe pushed herself upright and shrieked, “Get away from my son!”

  “My son,” Sioned answered softly. She lifted the boy and held him to her heart, lips caressing the golden down covering his head. He stopped whimpering and snuggled close. “My son, now and forever.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” Ianthe struggled to rise, moaned, fell back onto her pillows. “Take your hands off him! You wouldn’t dare steal him from me!”

  “It was you who stole this child from my husband’s body.” Sioned faced the princess, holding the baby closer, tucking the blanket around him. “I’m returning to him what’s his—and mine.”

  “I’ll have you burned in your own Fire! Guards!” she screamed in a voice already hoarse from earlier cries. “Guards!”

  “Be quiet,” Sioned murmured absently, stroking the child’s plump cheek with one finger.

  Tobin came to her side, staring at the boy as if not quite able to comprehend his reality. “Oh, Sioned,” she whispered. “He’s beautiful. . . .”

  “And mine.” Sioned held him so Ostvel could see.

  “Give him to me,” Ostvel said.

  “You bitch!” Ianthe howled. “I’ll kill you myself, with my own hands—”

  Sioned backed away as Ostvel reached for the child. “No! He’s mine!”

  “Did you think I’d give him back to her?” he snapped, taking the baby. Firmly and quickly he stripped off the velvet blanket. It fell to the carpet in a splash of gold-shot violet. “No son of Rohan’s wears Roelstra’s colors.”

  The smoke was thicker now. Ianthe found strength in panic, rising naked from the bed. Her fingers dug into the curtains, features contorted into a mask of fury as she clung to a post for support. “You’ll die for this, all of you!”

  Sioned walked slowly to her, pried the clawing fingers from the hangings. “You have something else that belongs to me, Ianthe.” The princess tried to slap her, but Sioned was swifter and stronger. She caught a wrist and twisted it. Ianthe groaned and collapsed onto the bed, cursing as Sioned wrenched the emerald from her finger and returned it to its rightful place on her own hand.

  Ianthe surged up again, her eyes slits of rage. “You dare take my son? You whore! I’ll butcher him while you and Rohan watch!”

  “A mother’s love,” Ostvel said.

  Ianthe swayed to her feet. “Did Rohan tell you how it was?” she shouted at Sioned. “Did he tell you how he made love to me here in this bed? He’s mine now, and his son with him! The way it should have been from the first!”

  Sioned suddenly backhanded her, and the emerald tore a gash across the perfect cheek. Ianthe fell back onto the pillows, fear in her eyes now. Sioned spent a moment enjoying it, then turned. Tobin had taken the baby and wrapped him in her tunic. The child whimpered fretfully, smoke stinging his nose.

  “Hush, little one,” Tobin soothed, rocking him. “Little prince.”

  “Sioned, we’ve got to hurry,” Ostvel warned. “The Fire—”

  “Yes,” she said, looking at Ianthe again. “The Fire.”

  The princess spat defiantly, “You couldn’t kill me before, Sunrunner, and you won’t now! You’re—”

  “I am what I have to be. Did you stay to watch your father ignite his mistress’ bed, Ianthe?” Sioned slapped her again as she lurched up from the bed. “My Fire is of a different kind.”

  She held her hands out so Ianthe could watch them, the emerald a seething reflection of the flames outside the windows. Sioned smiled at the terror in Ianthe’s dark eyes. Hate was a wonderful, living thing in her guts, giving her power beyond anything she had ever felt. Sweet and hot and potent, the hate wove its magic through her with threads of blackened sunlight, stitching together her need to kill and her delight in Ianthe’s mortal fear.

  But all at once the princess drew herself straight and looked to the child Tobin held. Sioned saw triumph in her face, laughter in her eyes. Sioned longed to strike her again, but there were better ways of killing her and the emerald blazed in response as Sioned sought the Fire within it. She gathered herself to wrap flames around the smirking, victorious princess.

  A lean flash of fire-shrouded steel suddenly quenched itself in Ianthe’s breast. She grasped it with a cry that was mor
e surprise than pain. A flicker of comprehension lit her eyes before all light fled them forever, and she sank back, taking the sword with her, hands clasped feebly around its hilt.

  Ostvel slid his sword from the dead woman and wiped the blade on a fistful of bed hangings. He met Sioned’s rage without apology, his face set in stone.

  “It’s over, Sunrunner,” he said.

  She wanted to claw his face until the blood ran. “She was mine to kill, mine!”

  “No. Not to kill.” He sheathed the sword. “You have what you came here for, Sioned. Do you want to stay and watch the Fire take her? It’s over!”

  She made a harsh, animal sound and whirled, setting the bed ablaze with a single thought. Ianthe’s long hair caught, and the hangings, and the tapestry dragons writhed in obscene mating dances with Fire spewing from their teeth and talons. Sioned hauled at one of the bedposts and it split apart at its joining, the burning weave cascading down onto Ianthe’s corpse. Curtain rods fell and Sioned screamed as one of them cracked across her shoulder, spat flames across her face, seared her cheekbone a finger-width from her eye.

  Ostvel hauled her away and she shrieked at him, tears streaming down her face. “Sioned! Stop it! Do you hear me? Stop it!” His open palm cracked across her injured cheek, snapping her head around. Through the haze of smoke she saw the empty doorway and screamed.

  “My son! Where is he? Where?”

  “Tobin took him downstairs, and if we don’t follow we’re going to die here! Sioned, it’s over! Ianthe’s dead!”

  She gasped for breath, struggling against his grip. Sanity was returning and she dreaded the loss of the hate that had given her such power. “Let me go! Damn you for killing her, Ostvel—she was mine to kill!”

  “And how did you plan to tell him that when he grows up?” he asked bitterly, pulling her from the room where the stench of Ianthe’s burning flesh swirled up into the thickening smoke.

  They ran down the hallway, coughing and stumbling down the stairs. Fire had invaded the lower hall, taken hold; tapestries in flaming tatters flung sparks on the fireborne wind. They could not leave Feruche the way they had come in; the whole castle was on fire.

  Outside on the steps Sioned searched frantically for Tobin’s small, white-shirted figure, saw her running through the crowd toward the gates. The child was bundled close and safe against her breast. The courtyard was ablaze, outbuildings collapsing. Smoke billowed from the lower windows of the keep. By morning Feruche would be nothing but stark, blackened stone.

  Someone reeled into Sioned, his clothes on fire. Her Fire. She would have killed Ianthe with it, laughing, but this man was not her enemy. The inferno would take Feruche, and she could do nothing about those who might be trapped within, but this man she could save from death. Save herself from having killed him. She knocked him to the cobbles, flung herself atop him to stifle the flames. Boot heels crushed her leg, smashed the tip of one finger, and she sobbed her pain into the man’s nape, begging his forgiveness, smelling his burnt flesh and her own singed hair. But he stirred beneath her, moaned, tried feebly to push her off his back. Strong hands helped her up, steadied her.

  “Sioned! Hurry! He’ll be all right. I promise you he’ll be all right.”

  She couldn’t seem to stop crying. Even as she hauled the man to his feet and gave him a push in the direction of the gates, saw him stagger his way to and through them, the breath sobbed in her lungs and she kept repeating, “I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—”

  “I know,” came Ostvel’s deep, sorrowing voice. His arms were around her in a hard embrace for just an instant. Then he said, “Come on, or we’ll lose Tobin and the baby.”

  She clung to him as he shoved a path for them through this furnace of her making. The main gates were a hollow ring of Fire through which terrified people leaped for their lives. Sioned sucked in a shallow breath of smoke-heavy air and followed Ostvel, then looked over her shoulder. Flames fountained from the castle now, fierce and deadly. Feruche was dying because of her; perhaps people would die because of her.

  She dragged a sleeve across her sweaty forehead, her tearing eyes, and whimpered as the material scraped her burned cheek. But it wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought, panic tightening her chest. The mark of her own Fire set into her shoulder—that she had known would happen. But in the vision she had seen scars across her brow. Not one on her cheek.

  “Ostvel, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way! Not like this!”

  “What in the name of the Goddess did you think would happen?” he rasped, pulling her along with him away from the burning castle walls.

  “Not like this!” She flung away from him and stared wide-eyed at the flames, one hand to her cheek to feel the salt sting that brought fresh tears to her eyes. “There was supposed to be Fire—but not this way! Ostvel, how many did I kill?”

  He turned her around by the shoulders and then gripped her head between his hands. “Don’t start,” he ordered roughly. “I won’t let you take any of these deaths onto yourself. Do you hear me, Sioned?”

  “It was my Fire! Mine! Goddess, what have I done?”

  “Ask yourself that once we’re safe! Sioned, I’ll knock you out and carry you if I have to! Now move!”

  It was a long way to where they had tethered the horses. Someone had stolen them. Tobin waited for them there, walking back and forth in the shadows, trying to quiet the fretful baby. Sioned took her son into her arms, shaking with silent tears.

  It was Tobin who suggested the empty garrison below Feruche as shelter. Most of the other refugees continued along the main road, through the Veresch into Princemarch. The blazing castle lit up the night and the people around her, showing Sioned injuries more serious than her own. Ostvel asked a servant if anyone had been caught in the flames, and received a dull shrug in reply.

  “Not that I’m knowing. Most everybody was out in the court, drinking to the princess and her new little one.” The woman’s face suddenly crumpled. “And now she’s gone, and the baby, and the three other boys with her—”

  A man walking beside her said, “When the High Prince hears of this, I wouldn’t put the price of a day on the life of anyone who was there. I don’t recognize you, so you must be with the Cunaxan lord that rode in a few days ago. Give my advice to your master—disappear. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  Sioned, who had hung back slightly, listening, reached for Ostvel’s arm. “Leave it be,” she whispered. “I’ll never know for certain.” She trod along in silence for a moment, then added bitterly, “With Ianthe, at least I would’ve known I’d killed deliberately, and taken the consequences.” She held the child tighter. “I wouldn’t have the luxury of pretending it was an accident.”

  They separated from the crowd soon after that, melting into the rocks at the side of the road. When the last stragglers had gone past, they emerged again and headed down the stony trail to the garrison. It was nearly dawn before they reached it. Sheltering alone within, they stood at the empty windows and watched as Feruche burned high on the cliff. Sioned rocked the frightened baby close and would not give him up to Tobin or Ostvel, not even when the princess would have tended the wounds on her shoulder and cheek.

  “No. It doesn’t hurt. Let me alone.”

  Tobin was wise enough not to press her. Sioned sat cross-legged in the doorway, holding her son in her arms as he slept at last, and watched the castle burn. She could not think past the holding of her child. Let Tobin and Ostvel worry about getting back to Stronghold. She could not.

  She glanced down at the emerald, back where it belonged on her hand. The clifftop flames plunged into its depths, gave it a life and fire of its own. Andrade had told her long ago that she could work to make a vision real if she wanted it enough. Well, she had wanted, and had worked, and now the child was here in her arms and there was a welt across her shoulder that would leave a deep, wide scar.

  But there was another on her cheek that should not have been there, and it throbbed a st
inging reminder that the power to make visions real did not necessarily include the wisdom to make them just.

  Dawn was nearly as soft as spring over River Run, and as Urival wove its strands together he paused to let its gentleness caress his senses. There were tender colors to the morning, rose-gray and muted greenish gold, the blue of sky as fragile as Fironese crystal. He traveled across Syr and Meadowlord and the Vere Hills, the colors intensifying with the stronger light of day. Yet there was still a misted, almost tentative quality about them, beautiful and shy.

  But the colors rising from a Desert cliffside were harsh: stark spirals of gray-black smoke stained the sky. He saw the smoldering ruin that had been the castle and his delicate weave of winter dawn nearly snapped with the violence of his shock. Casting about for signs of life, he found none. Here and there small flames fingered a few remaining timbers, but all else was charred and dead. Ranging outside the keep, he saw groups of hollow-eyed people trudging into the western mountains. Ahead of them by some measures were others on horseback. Three of those horses caught his eye, for there was no mistaking the points of Lord Chaynal’s breed. How would Ianthe come upon such animals? he asked himself—and then saw the distinctive blue saddle blankets of the Desert. Shock again threatened his control and he calmed himself, only to give a silent exclamation as he looked closer and found that the three horses were ridden by large, muscular guards, each one holding a sleeping child across his saddle.

  Urival drew back, hovering in the morning stillness to quiet the turmoil of his mind. Then he returned to Feruche. He knew who those children must be, and was equally certain that their mother must be dead. Ianthe would never give over possession of her sons to anyone while she lived.

  Urival again surveyed the blackened husk of the keep, circling around it. A flicker of movement caught his attention. Pale figures against pale golden sand, the trio walked in the direction of the road to Skybowl. The man was tall, broad-shouldered, his dark head left bare to the morning sun. One of the women was coiling her heavy black hair at her nape. The other woman was taller, her hooded cloak drawn close, arms crooked to carry something against her chest. Urival did not need to see her hair to know who she was. And he was afraid he knew what she had done.