by Melanie Rawn
“Ossetia has always coveted Grib! Should I have made a gift of our army, our only means of protection—”
“Our best protection would be to help defeat the enemy! But instead you do as Cabar does, and hide behind Pirro of Fessenden’s pretty little point of treaty law!”
“That’s enough!”
“Selante is ashamed of her father. Norian is undoubtedly ashamed of you—her husband was Pol’s squire, and his sister and her family were killed at Gilad Seahold. Blood honor alone should compel you to—”
“You’ve turned the eloquence of your books to serve reality at last, I see,” Velden said in silken tones that should have warned his son. “So work your clever, educated mind around this. The Vellant’im chose to seize the waterways and nothing else in the south. Oh, they tried for Goddess Keep, and we all know what Andry did to them there. But five measures from the Pyrme, the Catha, and the Faolain, the land is untouched. They control our rivers because we can travel on them. And that is all they have done here.”
“Yes, but—”
“Yes, but why?” Velden leaned against the carved wooden column in the center of the oratory—an embellishment designed and installed by his father Vissarion shortly before he died of Plague in 701. Each of the thirty-six years since, Velden had ordered it freshly painted on the anniversary of the death. He wondered suddenly if Pol would undertake some similar remembrance from now on—if he lived to devise one.
“Why?” he repeated. “They wanted the Desert. They destroyed keeps here, but Radzyn and Remagev and Whitecliff still stand.”
“Stronghold and Tuath do not,” Elsen challenged.
“Sioned burned Stronghold herself. The Merida were responsible for Tuath. Don’t interrupt. Why should they want the Desert? What is it about sand and heat and the places where dragons mate that they feel they must possess?”
Elsen’s frown was scholarly now, anger having small power over him compared to an intellectual puzzle. Velden noted it with a grim inner smile.
“There are tales, of course—stories for children,” the young man said slowly. “Vellanur and I were reading one only a few nights ago.”
“He’s already reading? At not yet five winters?” Problems were momentarily forgotten in grandfatherly pride.
“Of course,” Elsen said impatiently. “Lady Feylin sent me copies of some of the old legends about dragons that she refutes in her book. As you say, Father, there’s nothing in the Desert but sand and heat and dragons. The first is worthless except for making glass. That they want to broil themselves to death in the Desert sun is ludicrous. So it has to be the dragons.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard most of the stories. Their blood has magical or poisonous properties, their gaze turns men to stone, they speak without words to their victims—preferably virgin princesses. Anyone who eats a dragon’s heart will understand the language of birds.” He smiled faintly. “Vellanur is of two minds about that. He’s not sure if the mess would be worth the result.”
“I quite agree,” Velden said, chuckling. “I doubt there’s any sauce that would make it palatable.”
“He is currently contemplating onion gravy,” Elsen reported with his slight smile, then sobered. “But no one is fool enough to believe such things in this day and age. Even if the Vellant’im did, why go seek out dragons that could paralyze with a glance? There’s only one thing that could tempt them. And that’s dragon gold.”
“A myth, like all the rest of it.”
“Of course—but let’s pretend that it’s true. Wouldn’t the Desert come under attack almost immediately? Prince Miyon springs to mind.”
“And me?” Velden asked acidly. “Don’t mistake me, my son. Grib is mine, and all its wealth—and that’s enough for me. I’m not disposed to risking it all on a foolish legend.”
“But the Vellant’im might be doing just that.”
“Perhaps. But there’s another factor,” Velden mused, running a thumb over the gold leaf lavished on a carved wheatfield. “Sunrunners. Why was Goddess Keep attacked? It’s not on any river. It has no tactical advantage.”
Elsen nodded. “These savages scream the old word for sorcerers—it translates as ‘Stone-burners.’ They use it as their battle cry, just as Lord Chaynal’s troops bellow out his name and that of Radzyn, and so on. But if they are sorcerers, as their attempt on Goddess Keep and their use of the term would indicate, why has no sorcery been used?”
“Perhaps they’re like Sunrunners, forbidden to use it to kill.” Velden shrugged. “And the most powerful Sunrunner now living—always excepting Andry, who holds the title and honors—is in the Desert.”
Elsen opened his mouth, shut it again, and finally managed, “Sioned? The enemy want Sioned? But why?”
“I’m not saying they do or don’t. I’m saying that they obviously know enough about the princedoms to know where and when and how to attack. It would be insanity to think they didn’t know about our politics and who rules what—and who is what.”
“Dragon gold and Sunrunners. . . .” Suddenly Elsen’s face clouded over. “This can’t be news to them in the Desert. Rohan would have thought of all this.”
“Yes, he would. And look where it got him. Do you understand now why I won’t risk involvement in this war?” Frustrated as anger visibly grasped his son’s fine-drawn features again, Velden exclaimed, “Goddess in glory, we don’t even know who we’re fighting! We don’t know where they came from, let alone what they want!”
Rising stiffly from his chair, Elsen leaned on his cane and asked, “And if you knew, Father, would you give it to them? Would you demand that Pol hand over dragons, or dragon gold—or Sioned?”
• • •
In Meadowlord, Ostvel had decided that his and Tilal’s combined forces would move slowly toward Swalekeep, giving Chiana every opportunity to invite them to establish a camp outside the walls. This was preferable to marching in like the attacking army they would have to become if she failed to respond as self-preservation must dictate. There was no Vellanti army near enough to defend Swalekeep, but he had every faith that soon there would be. And he didn’t want to waste his people’s blood on Swalekeep.
“Do you think Chiana would actually put up a fight?” Lord Kerluthan of River Ussh asked, not bothering to hide his eagerness for battle.
Ostvel shrugged. “I’d prefer to avoid the whole question. If we can get into Swalekeep peaceably, then we can draw Chiana’s claws. Rohan can deal with her betrayal later.” Seeing the honest regret in Kerluthan’s eyes, Ostvel snorted. “And no, you may not spare him the trouble by doing whatever it is you’re thinking about doing.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything.” But a sudden predatory grin lit the athri’s face. “It’d be lovely, though, wouldn’t it?”
“Behave yourself,” the older man chided. Still, he was unable to repress a rather wistful sigh. Lovely indeed to be rid of Chiana by one “accident” or another. . . . Then he shook himself. War was making him think like a barbarian. Rohan would be ashamed of him.
Besides, he would have need of his baser impulses for an enemy far more formidable than Chiana. If she did the smart thing and welcomed them, he could leave behind troops to secure Swalekeep and take the rest down the Pyrme. There he would meet up with the Syrene army now commanded by Rihani and Saumer. And at last they would start for the Desert, relieve the siege at Stronghold, and push the Vellant’im into the sea.
Tilal merely nodded and shrugged when asked his opinion of this plan. He had said nothing much since news of his brother Kostas’ death many days ago. Andrev saw to all his needs, a silent little blond shadow at his side every instant—except when the boy was Sunrunning. Ostvel, left with all the work on the journey to Swalekeep, could have used the squire’s help. But Andrev was sworn to Tilal, not to him. So he left them to themselves.
Camped for the night in a meadow halfway to Swalekeep, he was beginning to think Chiana a stupid woman after all. The
re had been no messenger, no scouts sighted at a distance, nothing. Every morning he received the same report from Kerluthan, and every morning he gave the same order: mount and ride for Swalekeep. But not too quickly. It was getting a trifle monotonous.
“What’s her problem?” he muttered when Kerluthan came with the same news yet again. “She must know that we at least suspect what she’s up to—though she can’t know we had proof at Catha Heights.”
“Maybe she thinks if she ignores us, we’ll just go away.” Kerluthan grinned all over his broad, craggy face.
“Hmph. Maybe she just thinks that we wouldn’t dare attack.”
“She’ll have to think again.”
“I like your spirit, Kerluthan, but if you must have action, ride afield today and bring down some deer for the cookpots. Regular camp rations are unsettling my stomach, and at my age, digestion is everything.” He broke off as Andrev darted on foot around four soldiers leading six horses and skidded to a stop in the dew-wet grass. “Here, what’s all this?” Ostvel began.
“My lords—Stronghold is ablaze and—”
“Impossible!” Kerluthan growled.
“Hush and let him finish.” Sick dread ached in his throat. “You’ve spoken with your sister?”
“Yes, my lord—oh, my lord, they’ve all left Stronghold and burned it behind them with Sunrunner’s Fire and—and—” Andrev looked up at Ostvel in anguish. “Tobren says that the High Prince is dead!”
Ostvel’s gaze wandered from the boy’s face to the meadow before him, trampled to brown mud beneath boots and hooves. He looked up at the sky, and the white clouds edged in silver-gilt that drifted high on the morning breeze. He looked at anything that did not look back with knowledge in its eyes that his prince and his friend was dead.
“My lord?” Kerluthan’s voice, worried and subdued.
Ostvel nodded. “Andrev. Take me to Prince Tilal. You can tell me on the way what else Tobren said. Lord Kerluthan, make ready to march on Swalekeep.”
The younger man knew the difference in the order: march on, not to. He nodded and strode away. Ostvel put a hand on Andrev’s thin shoulder.
“Tell me the rest,” he said quietly.
• • •
At Castle Crag, within the crystal oratory that clung to the cliff, Alasen sat alone. The ritual would be held tomorrow night, but with the fall of dusk today she had lit candles by the hundreds in rows at the back of the oratory. Tonight she kept her own vigil.
Her gaze sought the pane of glass broken by Rohan in 719, replaced by Ostvel with one etched with the dragon cipher. Fironese crafters had colored the dragon golden-yellow and given it blue eyes. A real emerald was set into the ring pinched between the beast’s talons. It was the only stained glass in the oratory. When the sun shone, the whole room was drenched in color and the emerald refracted blue-green sparks in all directions.
Now, past midnight and with no moons, the gold and blue and green stilt caught the light. But there was no sparkle to the oratory, only the reflections of rows of candle flames against black glass.
Alasen didn’t think much about Rohan. She thought about her eldest daughter and her only son, who were somewhere between Stronghold and Feruche this night. She thought about her husband, marching on Swalekeep. But mostly she thought about herself.
How safe it was, perched here above the Faolain River. How safely she had lived her life here. After those few terrible days of Andrade’s death and Andry’s love, Ostvel had given her peace. How her father Volog and her brother Latham were dead, and Rohan, and hundreds more whose names she did not know. Ostvel and Jeni and Dannar were in the middle of war. Yet here, there was still safety and peace.
She had spent all the years since the discovery and the denial of what she was clutching at the safety of this place. She had distanced herself from princes and Sunrunners. Perhaps now was the time to acknowledge that she was both. Perhaps now she could no longer isolate her mind and heart, keeping each to the uses of her life here at Castle Crag.
Volog and Latham and Rohan and hundreds of others had died. More deaths would follow—though not, please the Goddess, anyone else she held dear. She would rather lay her living body down on an already lit pyre than lose any of them.
She watched the reflected candle flames against black glass, tiny fires that could not reach into the night beyond crystal windows. But there was another Fire that could. She possessed that Fire. Perhaps it was time she learned how to use it.
Perhaps then she would know an honest peace, one she herself made.
• • •
During the long day after Stronghold was set ablaze, other people in other keeps learned what had happened. But in many places there were no Sunrunners to listen on light.
At Tiglath, a thin fog rolled in off the Sunrise Water and kept the Sunrunner there isolated. Sionell spent a heartbreaking morning trying without success to coax Rabisa, her brother’s widow, back to some semblance of life. Then she spent the afternoon preparing to receive her husband’s victorious army back from a battle not yet fought. That he would not be the victor never crossed her mind.
In the rugged hills of Dorval, where once the faradh’im had lived, there was no Sunrunner to receive and tell the news. Prince Ludhil and Princess Iliena inspected supplies seized from under Vellanti noses on the previous day’s raid, then planned the next one. They avoided talking of their children, safe with their grandparents in the Desert.
At Skybowl there was no Sunrunner and no need of one. Lady Ruala, Riyan’s wife, was a sorcerer to her last drop of blood. Untrained in most of the arts, still she knew how to speak on sunlight with her husband. When he told her about Rohan, she allowed herself to weep for a little while, then sought out Prince Chadric and Princess Audrite.
At Radzyn and Whitecliff, and in the port town below Graypearl, news of the High Warlord’s triumph came in more conventional ways.
At Gilad Seahold, Faolain Riverport, and Remagev, at Tuath Castle and Waes, there was no one at all.
At River Run there was a Sunrunner who didn’t know he was. Saumer of Kierst-Isel led his late lord’s tired army into the keep where Kostas and Tilal and Sioned had been born, and where Kostas would be burned that night. Every so often he glanced sideways at Rihani, whose wound taken at Catha Heights had begun to fester.
At Einar and Medawari; at Zaldivar and Athmyr; at High Kirat where Princess Danladi sat in the same gentle, frightening silence as Rabisa did at Tiglath; at Kadar Water and Grand Veresch and River Ussh and a score of smaller keeps throughout the princedoms, Sunrunners listened to Maarken, who spoke from Pol’s side, or Hollis, who spoke from Sioned’s. And not that night but the next, candles would burn in silence, and all who had died between Roelstra’s death and Rohan’s would be remembered.
At Faolain Lowland, the Sunrunner Johlarian brought the news to Lord Mirsath and Lady Karanaya, and then shut himself in his chamber so the once-beloved sunlight could bring him no more horrors.
At Balarat, the Sunrunner had been murdered. But that place had no need of her to receive word that Rohan was dead.
• • •
At Goddess Keep there were hundreds of Sunrunners—and one who stood alone on the battlements in the setting sun with tears streaking his face.
It had just gone dusk. Andry rested his hands lightly on the stone balustrade and gazed down at the assembled Sunrunners and common folk. His athri, Jayachin, stood with her young son at the head of the latter crowd, hiding resentment that she would not stand with him in honoring Rohan. As if she had the right, he thought bitterly, as if she had even seen him more than once or twice in the distance at a Rialla.
Very few here, either Sunrunner or commoner, had known Rohan. Many faradh’im remembered Sioned during her girlhood here, and wept for her loss. None but Andry had known Rohan. In this, as in other things, he was alone.
All the Sunrunners wore gray mourning. The refugees from Waes and elsewhere had little enough; that they had made an effort to conform t
o the ritual—a gray tunic here, a headscarf there, everyone wearing at least a token of the color—touched him. They had so little, and yet they each held an unlit candle, a precious thing in their poverty. Whatever else he had been, whatever he had done or not done, however he had succeeded or failed, Rohan had been their High Prince for more than thirty years.
Andry drew breath in the stillness, and began to speak.
• • •
Nearly the breadth of the continent away, those who had known Rohan best—some of them all his life—also assembled. Amid the stone spires and towers and strange shadows of the Court of the Storm God, they wore no gray and held no candles in the night. The moons had not risen, nor would they. Only cool starlight shone down on the warriors and servants, nobles and Isulk’im, and a tall, solitary figure whose blond hair faded to silver in the gloom.
He stood among them, not apart, though the wide place among the twisting rocks had been chosen partly for the flat stone just behind him, upon which he was meant to stand while he spoke. But he found himself unable to stand above them, even though the position he now held was at the pinnacle of his world.
They waited in patient silence for him to collect his thoughts. When at last he spoke, his words rang like a steel sword off stone.
“My father . . . was a man to whom life had given the truth of himself. A rare and precious gift, more important than the power he was heir to in the Desert, and the power he was given when he became High Prince.”
• • •
“. . . who understood power, both of his person and his position. My kinsman was a man in whose presence all of us felt more alive. His was the silent challenge to know and to learn, to do our work and excel at it—and then to surpass ourselves. But this he did with kindness, and understanding for our frailties and the difficulty of the task. He was called Azhrei not because he was fearsome, but because he was strong enough to shelter us beneath his wings. . . .”
Andry paused, sudden memory interrupting his train of thought. He could see before him as clearly as in a Fire-conjuring two little boys and a cloak-draped “dragon.” Wings fluttered and merry blue eyes peered out at the would-be heroes, daring them to attack the fearsome dragon with their wooden toy swords.