Dragon Prince 01 - Dragon Prince

by Melanie Rawn

  Just as Rohan had arranged to have happen at this juncture, a loud, powerful voice boomed into the Great Hall. “Cousin,” called out Prince Volog of Kierst, “I ask the indulgence of this assembly on a private matter.”

  “You have our attention, cousin,” Rohan agreed affably.

  Volog grinned, unable to contain his glee. But his voice turned to silk and Saumer’s head jerked around, his eyes slits of suspicion.

  “My esteemed cousin of Isel and I have more in common than our island. We each have several charming daughters—and we each have an unmarried heir.”

  “Yes? That’s intriguing,” Rohan commented blandly, and barely kept a straight face as Andrade gave a complex snort. “Go on, cousin.”

  Volog turned to Saumer. “Need I say more?” he asked sweetly.

  Saumer turned scarlet and tried not to choke. The audience tittered, appreciating that the price Saumer would pay for retaining his princedom after his support of Roelstra would be its eventual union with Kierst. His grace of Isel glared briefly at his grinning rival of Kierst, then swallowed and said, “How perceptive of you, my lord, and how elegant a suggestion it is.”

  Rohan smiled with benign good humor. “We are all certain that by the next Rialla, your island will be united in true affection and harmony.” His eyes told Saumer it had better be. It was an excellent bargain, after all; they had managed to work together during and after the Plague, and with a little effort, the union of at least one pair of children would submerge the age-old enmity between the princedoms in the interests of family harmony. He felt a little guilty about dictating the lives of the young people involved. After all, he had not much liked the idea of being married off to some girl chosen by his parents. Looking down at the wife chosen for him by Andrade, he gave a rueful inner laugh. Leave it be, he decided; there was a good chance that duty would coincide with real affection, both heirs being pleasant young men and most of the daughters being as charming as Volog had asserted. The faradhi power ran in Kierstian royalty, too; Sioned’s grandmother was Volog’s grandmother as well, and it was possible that even if none of his offspring was fully gifted, a little of the magic would be there. The possibility of another prince with Sunrunner skills like Pol’s troubled Rohan a little. But that, too, was for the future, when they would puzzle out just what kind of new prince Andrade’s scheming had created.

  Thought of his son brought Rohan back to the last and most serious shock of the evening. In pleasing himself through the elevations of Walvis, Ostvel, and Tilal, he had formed a future for Pol; in the maneuver with Saumer and Volog he had done the same while amusing his fellow princes mightily, if their dancing eyes were any indication. Now would come the final announcement. He glanced furtively at Andrade, who leaned back in her chair with every evidence of delight at the entertainment he had provided her. She read nothing in his eyes—but Sioned did, and rose to stand beside him, taking his hand in hers. The breach of etiquette—a princess standing when only princes were allowed to do so—silenced the Hall.

  “There is yet one land lacking a prince,” Rohan said softly, a deceptively casual observation that no one had dared make out loud in the last five days, at least not in his hearing. “No male heir of the late High Prince’s body lives. His daughters have renounced all claims for themselves and their children. We were the victor in the war waged by Roelstra in violation of the law, a victory gained with the invaluable assistance of their graces of Syr and Dorval.” He paused and swept his gaze around the room, as if noting all those who had failed to give active support. “And by the rights of this victory in war we lay claim to Princemarch, all its lands, holdings, titles, trade, and wealth. We make this claim not for ourselves, but for our beloved son, Prince Pol. Will your graces freely accept him?”

  They could not do otherwise, but Rohan was a little startled by the volume of their assent. They must fear him more than he’d realized, or perhaps they were beginning to believe what Chay and Tobin and Lleyn and Davvi had been telling them for five days: Rohan was their only hope.

  “We thank your graces,” he said. Sioned’s fingers tensed in his own, for she knew what was coming. His next move was her suggestion; Chay, Tobin, and Ostvel had been horrified at first, but had reluctantly come to see the wisdom of it. The cowed vassals of Princemarch could not be governed the way Rohan governed the Desert—yet. Pol was only a baby. And there was no one else who would guard his second princedom so well.

  “It will be many years before our son is old enough to assume the full responsibilities of his position. Thus we have decided to appoint a regent to govern Princemarch until he comes of age.”

  Some of them looked at Chay; others at Maarken, young as he was. Rohan marveled that they could be so blind—even Andrade, who was sitting forward now so he could see her bright hair from the corner of his eye. Not even she looked to his real choice, who sat unnoticed, hands folded, waiting in silence.

  “We name as Regent of Princemarch Her Royal Highness the Princess Pandsala, faradhi of three earned rings.”

  Pandemonium.

  She rose in the midst of it and walked gracefully to the high table. Her sisters were limp with shock—except for Kiele, who was white with fury, and Chiana, who jumped up and fled the Hall.

  The commotion died down. Pandsala stood before Rohan, calm and slender in a plain brown silk dress. Sioned gave her a ring set with a Desert topaz and an amethyst taken from Roelstra’s sword; the ring Pol would wear one day as prince of both lands. Rohan took her clasped palms between his own, and Sioned placed her fingers atop theirs.

  Pandsala looked up at them with a small, wry smile, murmuring, “I got Andrade out of Goddess Keep, spied on my father and warned you of his plans, misdirected his forces, and supported you on the starlight. I risked everything. And yet we all know you don’t really trust me.”

  “We understand you, Pandsala,” Sioned replied just as softly, and Rohan thought, We understand your hatred for your father and sister. And you will never know about Pol. Never. “I’ve touched your colors. You are faradhi.”

  “And that will do in place of trust?” Andrade hissed furiously.

  “It will have to, won’t it, my Lady?” Pandsala met her gaze levelly. Then, loud enough to be heard through the Hall, “By my mother Princess Lallante’s Sunrunner blood, by my faradhi rings, by my faith and with my life, I pledge to guard and sustain Princemarch in safety and plenty until such time as Prince Pol claims it for his own.”

  Andrade’s voice lashed out this time, cold and menacing as unsheathed steel. “By the rings I gave you, if you prove false to this trust I’ll see you shadow-lost by my own arts as Lady of Goddess Keep!”

  “She is our choice, Lady Andrade,” Rohan warned. For her ears alone he added, “Make your peace with that, if not with her.”

  “Remember,” was her only reply, delivered to Pandsala in a threatening growl.

  The princess went to the far end of the high table, next to the horrified Urival. A servant came with a chair and the last of the princely gold cups. Wine was poured again in dead silence.

  It was Lleyn who raised his cup and, in a tone that fairly ordered the appropriate accolade, called out, “The Princess-Regent Pandsala!”

  Voices rose in affirmation and wine was drunk. It was done.

  Rohan took the small goblet from Sioned, who had drained the last of it after he had sipped first, and set it on the table. He noted that his hand shook just slightly, and became aware of a sudden exhaustion. He wanted nothing more than to order everyone out of his castle so he could go to his chambers with his wife and son and not emerge for days if he felt like it. But there remained one last thing, and he resisted the impulse to compel Andrade with a sharp command.

  She finally rose and left the high table for the center of the Great Hall. Urival followed, then Rohan and Sioned, handfast. He sensed the strength of her Fire flow through him, lending endurance enough to make it through this ritual that would be performed by the woman who had put him h
ere, and who now stared at him with cold, unforgiving eyes for what he had done.

  Everyone was standing now, tense with expectation. The Lady raised her arms, sleeves falling back from rings and bracelets that sparked with silver and gold and gems. Urival was at her side, holding a plain golden bowl filled with water. Rohan and Sioned, facing her with their backs to the wall of windows, where the moonlight shone through pale and calm.

  “Will you have them as High Prince and High Princess?” Andrade asked.

  One by one, the princes and lords gave affirmation. Rohan heard reluctance in some voices and kept himself from a bitter shrug. Not even the sincere joy and even relief in most of the responses could soothe the ache as he met Andrade’s gaze. You wanted me here. They haven’t any choice, and perhaps it’s better so. There’s a son to come after me, prince and Sunrunner both, just as you planned. But though I understand, I will never forgive the pain. Never.

  His fingers clenched convulsively around his wife’s hand and he glanced at her proud, quiet profile, saw the crescent scar of Fire on her cheek. She refused to cover it with makeup and wore it instead as a brand of honor—and penance. The mark would always be there, just as he would always move his right shoulder stiffly and Tobin would always have a slight limp—and Andrade would have to live with the fact of Pandsala as regent in Princemarch.

  And Rohan would have to live with power.

  Andrade took the bowl made of dragon gold and held it high, braced only by her fingertips—talons holding a huge jewel. The bowl trembled and glowed. A breeze through the open windows snuffed out most of the three hundred lamps and rippled the dragon tapestry behind the high table.

  “By the Earth that cradles us and of which this bowl is made; by the Water herein that gives us life; by the Fire that lights our paths; by the Air that is our breath.” She held the bowl over the two bent heads. “In the name of all who live in these lands, I charge this man and this woman. Use your gifts for lightness. Abide by the law. Strive for wisdom. Search your souls for truth. Humble yourselves in the moments of greatest glory. Make no battles for personal gain. Protect the lands and all who live on them. Cherish them as you do each other. Will you do these things?”

  “We will,” they answered.

  She held out the bowl to Rohan, who drank and passed it to Sioned. She sipped, keeping it in her hands as Andrade spoke again.

  “High Prince and High Princess, by the Goddess and the Father of Storms I proclaim them.”

  The Lady held out her hands for the bowl, but violation of the ritual was something prince and princess had agreed on. Sioned placed the bowl on the blue and green tiles. There was yet a little Water in it, a breath of Air swirling, a touch of Sunrunner’s Fire dancing along its rim. Rohan saw Andrade’s fleeting scowl before he turned to watch his princess extend her hands over the bowl. Sioned’s emerald, the only ring she would ever again wear, spat green flames in the dimness; the cascade of her fire-gold hair shone.

  The bowl caught Fire.

  Rohan spoke into the stillness. “This is the first of the new laws. No one shall kill a dragon. Not for sport, for cruelty, for loss of property, not for any reason shall anyone kill a dragon. Whosoever breaks this law shall forfeit half his wealth in retribution for his attack against us, for we shall consider the killing of a dragon as a sword raised against ourselves.”

  He knew they were shocked and did not care. The wealth this law insured would be used on their behalf. If they never understood, so be it.

  As he spoke, the vessel of dragon gold seethed. Flames rose in a powerful conjure and the air shimmered with vision. From the writhing orange and yellow and silver there coalesced a dragon nearly as tall as the rafters. Wings tipped in flame, talons trailing fire, eyes burning blue and green and blue again, the dragon’s head lashed up toward the ceiling. The fiery apparition beat incandescent wings and leaped up, surged through the air and vanished into the tapestry. It melted into the stylized crowned dragon holding a faradhi ring set with an emerald.

  Rohan never knew who began the chant—one of his own people, perhaps. But the cavern-dark Great Hall shuddered to the sound of it.

  Azhei. Dragon Prince.

  Sioned eased herself back onto soft pillows, the laces of her bedgown undone, smiling as Rohan placed their son to her breast. He sat beside them and stroked the baby’s blond hair with one finger.

  “Andrade won’t soon recover from the way you upset her ceremony,” he observed mildly.

  “It was our ceremony, not hers. She didn’t win us a princedom or gain us a son.”

  He shared her lingering resentment. “I don’t see that she has anything to be unhappy about. We’re making her new manner of prince, after all.”

  “Rohan. . . .” She hesitated, and he encouraged her with a caress to her shoulder. “If I’d been the one to carry Pol and give birth to him, then in a way he would have been Andrade’s, too. But this way, he’s ours. Do you understand? The things we did—they were for us, not to make a faradhi prince for her.”

  He nodded, because for Sioned it was true. But it was also true that they had done it for the future Pol would make, the new manner of prince he would become.

  The things they had done. . . . Rohan had killed in battle, where every barbarian worthy of his sword was supposed to do his killing. Irony of ironies, he had even had the law on his side, law he had always wanted to use to create peace. As an excuse, it was convenient and tidy—but it did not justify the heated joy he’d taken in his bloodied sword, in burying his knife to the hilt in Roelstra’s throat.

  He had raped, too—but all good savages did that. Trapped into it, drugged, seduced? Perhaps the first time, but not the second. He wanted to believe that Ianthe had conceived Pol that first time, when he had thought she was Sioned. He wished he could believe that. But the fact that he did not was no excuse for allowing Sioned to claim the child for him. Circumstances had been against him—the war that dragged on, Ianthe’s early delivery—but there was no excusing himself for not killing her when he’d had the chance. He should have, but he had not. Every barbarian prince desired a son who would rule after him.

  He had used the power won by his sword to make himself High Prince and take what had been Roelstra’s, establish his own people in positions of power, impose his will—all of it legal, all of it agreed to by the other princes. Was his excuse that he was more fit to rule than Roelstra had been? What right had he to do what he’d done, what he’d allowed Sioned to do, what Chay and Tobin and Ostvel and Walvis and all the rest had done on his behalf?

  During his early youth he had struggled to learn all that was good in the world, all that he would use to make life better, more peaceful and civilized. He had wanted a life rich in dreams and the striving toward those dreams, not replete with death, deceit, and divisiveness. He had chosen to learn what he considered to be good, and had turned his face from the foul—not only in the world around him, but in his own soul. He had told himself that once he was prince, the things of the past that had made men war on each other would be swept away by his own dedication to honorable law.

  But this year of war and anguish had taught him that the past lived inside him—all the impulses toward killing rage and rape that had governed his world for so long. They were all within him, all the acts that marked him as a barbarian, all the things said and done that made his soul writhe with shame. He knew what he was, and admitted it.

  Rohan had looked into his own heart and seen Roelstra’s gleeful manipulation of one prince against another; he had seen Ianthe’s scheming need for power; he had seen his father Zehava’s warrior instincts victorious, the urges that had slain dragons even when he had known full well their importance to the Desert.

  But had Rohan truly seen the worst of himself? Probably not—for all those things were nothing compared to what power could make of him.

  Only Sioned knew how deeply he despised the princes and lords who had so cravenly handed such power to him, the ones who had bowed to
him the way they had bowed to Roelstra without ever seeing the truth of power itself. Only Lleyn, Davvi, Chay, those who knew Rohan as a man, understood a little of what being High Prince would mean to him. He would use it to create new laws that, please the Goddess, would feel like old laws by the time he died. Chay had told him that he was their only chance; Rohan knew that his was the only risk. It was his heart that power might twist, his dreams it might warp.

  Yet he would not have given up knowledge of what he was. He had seen himself, recognized all the things he had feared as the enemies of the life he wanted to make—and he was no longer afraid of them. The only thing he feared was power. Taking it into his hands, making sure all accepted his authority, still he knew that it could become an enemy even more deadly than the barbarian within him. Yet for his son he would dare it, knowing that as both prince and Sunrunner, Pol’s struggle with power would be even more fearsome.

  Rohan watched his wife and son for a long time in silence, wondering how the boy had so quickly won him. There had been bad times after his return to Stronghold, times when he had deliberately hurt Sioned, seeking to ease his own pain and guilt by causing deeper pain in her; times when she had lashed out at him for the same reason. But always there was the child, and in many ways it was through him that they had found their way back to each other. Pol had a way of fastening his wide blue-green eyes on his father that seemed to see into his soul. Rohan had not wanted to acknowledge this son who was not of Sioned’s blood or bearing, but Pol had been the one to claim him with those eyes. It was love for their child that linked Rohan and Sioned those first difficult days after his return—love that had reawakened the Fire between them.

  Rohan stroked his son’s downy head, smiling as the child wriggled contentedly to Sioned’s breast. She might believe that what they had done had been for themselves, but Rohan knew it had been for Pol. He had forgotten for a long time something he had always known, something Roelstra’s taunts in the circle of starfire had caused to rise up within him once more. He supposed Sioned’s barrenness had made him forget on purpose; he had not dared think too much about children when there was so little hope. But, driven to his knees beneath that dome of silvery light, he had known again that all he dreamed and planned and did was for his child. Pol, innocent of the past, would have the best future he and Sioned could give. A life meant little if the world it had had the power to fashion was no better than the one it had been born into.