The Dragon Token

by Melanie Rawn

  “Where are the rest?” Birioc demanded.

  “How should I know?”

  “How do you know the other, then?”

  “Because,” Ezanto said levelly, “there’s not a single pile of horseshit to be seen, smelled, or stepped in.”

  “Leading us,” Urstra muttered. “Teasing us onward. But where? Why?” He turned to his nephew. “I don’t like this.”

  “Oh, and the rest of us are just in love with it,” Duroth snarled. “What do you propose to do now, dear Brother?”

  Birioc squinted through the shadows to the dark hollow below. “We can wait for the rest of our levies, or we can march on them now.”

  “You’ll have to find them first!”

  “Be silent!” He chewed the tuft of beard beside his mouth. “What do they want us to do? Follow. What do they expect us to do? Grow impatient and attack, or stay here and wait for reinforcements.”

  “The question is, what can we do?” Urstra said.

  “There must be another alternative.”

  “We’re waiting,” Duroth jeered.

  Birioc’s right hand went for his sword. But the abrupt and blinding flash did not come from unsheathed steel. Light sliced through the sky from a chink atop the Pillar in dazzling blades made all the sharper, all the brighter for the shadows cast at sunrise.

  From those shadows and the gigantic rocks behind them thundered the alternative.

  • • •

  Rialt was back in his chamber at dawn, having spent most of the night prowling the docks. They knew him there, and the guards allowed him to pass with nothing more than a nod. Rumor had it that Princess Chiana disliked him, but that was a matter for highborns. After all, had she not trusted him to supervise the loading of cargo sent south down the Faolain? He was a familiar face at the riverside warehouses, even at night in a pouring rain.

  Mevita had stirred sleepily when he left. She was wide awake and shivering with cold when he returned.

  “Don’t ask,” he told her before she could so much as open her mouth. “It’s better that you don’t know.”

  Her face grew even paler amid the tangle of black hair. “Rialt,” she whispered, “what have you done?”

  “Sky looks like it’s clearing,” he said determinedly as he stripped off his sopping cloak.

  “Rialt!”

  “Later on I’ll go see how Thina’s feeling. She slept all day yesterday in her rooms. Her maid says she has a cold.”

  “Damn you! Tell me what you’ve done!”

  Flinging his shirt to the floor, he turned on her. “The less you know, the less you’ll have to hide.”

  At that, Mevita went white to the lips. Sudden dread filled him. He strode to the bed and cupped her square chin in his palm.

  “What is it you’re hiding from me?” he asked quietly.

  “It was the only way. Naydra and Cluthine and I all agreed—”

  “To what?”

  “We—”

  He swung around as the door crashed open and three armed guards came into the room. Panic flayed him; he hadn’t been careful enough, someone had seen—

  “Get dressed,” one of the men commanded, all three of them running appreciative eyes over Mevita in her bedgown.

  “Get out of my chamber!” Rialt shouted.

  “You’ve been given a new one,” was the smug reply. “Better dress warm for it.” He started for the bed.

  Rialt drew his knife. “Touch my wife at your peril.”

  “No, my lord, don’t!” Mevita gasped. “We’ll come with you,” she hurried on, pulling the sheet around her as she rose. “Give us a moment to find some clothes—”

  “Be quick about it. And I’ll have that knife, my lord,” the guard said, with snide emphasis on the title.

  Mevita’s pleading eyes and the sudden thought of their son made him surrender the blade. “I’m the one you want. Leave my wife alone.”

  “Orders are to take you both. Be grateful your whelp’s young enough to be innocent of treason.”

  “Treason?” he repeated blankly, weak with relief that Polev would be spared. But what would happen to him with his parents in prison? For surely that was the nature of their “new chamber.”

  “That’s enough talk. Take the rest of your clothes with you. Hurry up!”

  The corridors of Swalekeep were empty of all but a few servants as the pair were marched to a side staircase. Rialt steadied Mevita; she stumbled against him at the sight of the endless dark below. A torch was lit and they descended hundreds of steps—down past the wine cellars, past even the coldrooms where meat was stored. At last they came to a row of wooden doors with small barred windows. One was opened, and they were locked in a frozen, lightless room.

  “You’ll wait on Princess Chiana’s pleasure,” the guard said through the barred window. He racked the torch in a sconce and marched his men back up the stairs.

  Mevita sank onto the single cot and put her face in her hands. “Forgive me,” she breathed.

  Rialt knelt before her on the damp stones. “It’s not your fault.”

  She shook her head, her hair spilling over her hands.

  “They must have discovered what I did tonight at the warehouses.” Slashing every sack of grain and fouling every crate of foodstuffs would have cost too much time and effort. It had taken much thought to devise a way to deprive Swalekeep of its supplies.

  Mevita raked her hair back from her face. “Not fire. The alarm would’ve sounded by now.”

  “No. Water. The river’s high—not at spring flood, but enough. I weakened the sluices. They should break sometime today.”

  Her eyes brightened a little. “Like a castle cleaning out its moat.”

  He nodded. That had been the theory when the system was built. A century or so earlier, accumulated filth had caused an outbreak of disease directly traced to food stored in a particular warehouse. Some clever architect had pointed out the convenient slope of the area and suggested an easy method of cleansing all the storage spaces. Ditches were dug, lined with stone, and paved over; access and drainage were cut in each successive building. Every autumn since, just before the harvest influx of goods, river water was let in to scour vermin and debris away—for what had happened once might happen again. But with the river high and the outlets closed, the water could not drain off as intended.

  “The water will flow strongly enough to overset the sacks of grain,” Rialt said. “If I’m lucky, they’ll lodge against the drains and the whole place will be flooded hip-high before anyone can do anything. It has the advantage of looking accidental—”

  He tensed at a sudden noise outside the cell, but it was only the scrabbling of rats, soon followed by the irritated hiss of a cat frustrated in the hunt.

  “With her food stores ruined, Chiana might be forced to make her decision a little sooner. People won’t starve—but when they know their grain is no longer plentiful. . . .” He shrugged.

  “I never knew you so ruthless,” Mevita said quietly. “What happens after Swalekeep falls? Who will feed these people then?”

  “Depends on who gets it, doesn’t it? If it’s the Vellant’im, then the grain is denied them as well. That’s the main thing. If it’s Tilal and Ostvel, wagons can bring food from the warehouses back in Waes.”

  She nodded. “Which the enemy didn’t touch for fear of meeting the armies of Ossetia and Princemarch.”

  “Because Chiana warned them,” Rialt finished. Taking her hands, he warmed them between his own. “But it’s all for nothing. They must have discovered what I did.”

  “No. I don’t think it was you at all.” A tremor coursed through her—not from the cold.

  “Tell me.”

  She did, and he was too stunned for anger. He bent his head to their clasped hands, trying to think past the numbness of fear. Not that thought would avail him anything now.

  “When Thina didn’t come back yesterday. . . .” Mevita whispered. “She swore she’d be back by nightfall. Her maid is
loyal, Naydra and I told her to say she’d caught a chill on her ride so no one would wonder for at least a little while—oh, Goddess, if anything’s happened to her I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “Hush.” He rose on legs already stiff and aching with the chill. “She’s probably with Tilal right now.”

  “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

  “We have to believe it. If both our plans have come to nothing—”

  “—it will all have been for nothing.” She was silent for a few moments. “Rialt . . . can Naydra protect Polev? She’s a princess, and Chiana’s sister—she’ll be able to keep him safe, won’t she?”

  “Of course she will.” But he didn’t tell her not to worry.

  • • •

  “That, my friends, is how Prince Zagroy did it.”

  Pol, Tallain, and Riyan sat their weary warhorses watching what remained of the Cunaxans and Merida shuffle into ragged, sullen formation. The battle had been terrible, the victory total.

  “And it’s only noon,” Pol added. “Not a bad morning’s work.”

  Of the over one thousand caught in sunlight and shadow, no more than a third were still standing. Another third lay dead on blood-browned sand. The rest, the wounded, lay in tidy rows nearby. As they shifted restlessly in the bright sun, the ground seemed to crawl. Tallain’s mind, using his body’s memory of thrust and withdraw, attack and parry, could guess how many he had put there. But his instincts were certain that not one of them was Pol’s doing. Every man and woman Pol had faced died.

  Their own losses were scarce a hundred. The shock of attack from the shadows and the bedazzlement of sudden sunlight had worked as intended.

  “My father had the right idea,” Pol had said a little while ago, while they eased their thirst with the contents of his wineskin and waited for the captains to herd the stragglers. “Let the Desert do our killing for us. But we have to use the Desert. Kazander and I did that at the Harps. We’ve done it again today. The land must become one of our soldiers. That’s how we’ll approach battle with the Vellant’im. I want the very sand beneath their feet to fight them.”

  And so it had this morning, as they slipped and stumbled in their panic down the soft hill into the hollow, and were slaughtered.

  Lord Kazander galloped up, saluted extravagantly, and announced, “Noble and mighty High Prince, your most grateful servant begs to bring your grace the whoresons among them who claim to be highborn of Miyon. They seem to believe this will spare them,” he added, grinning beneath his black mustache.

  “What will you do with them?” Tallain asked.

  Pol smiled.

  “You!” Kazander shouted over his shoulder. “Come forward!”

  Four men, separated from the others by the korrus’ order, approached with heads defiantly tilted. One of them bore the familiar ritual scar, a whiteness against dark skin and stubble. But as he neared, Tallain knew that this man, though so obviously a Merida, was too old to be one of Miyon’s bastard sons.

  Pol regarded them almost pleasantly. “Which of you is Ezanto?”

  One inclined his head. Tallain guessed him to be about twenty-five, though the years were hard to judge. It wasn’t the sweat and dirt, nor even the blood smearing his face from a sword cut in his scalp; it was the bitter pride that aged him.

  “Zanyr?”

  A second man gave a start. Alone of them, his eyes showed not rage but fear. It made him look very young.

  “You are Duroth, then?” Pol said, and the third young man, tall and lanky and with the look of his father stamped on his features, acknowledged his name with a sardonically arched brow.

  Pol turned his attention to the fourth. “Which means I am meant to believe you are Birioc—you with your Merida scar.” He hooked a casual knee around the pommel of his saddle and leaned an elbow on his thigh. “Well, well,” he murmured. “Where is he, I wonder? Where is Birioc to complete my collection of Miyon’s bastard sons?”

  “Say rather where is the bastard daughter,” the older man snapped. “Your wife!”

  Kazander’s young kinsman, Visian, prodded him sharply in the back. “You will speak of her grace with respect or not at all!”

  Pol’s smile didn’t waver a fraction. “Oh, I know where my wife is. At Feruche, with my own daughters—one of whom is now Princess of Cunaxa. Depending on which of them wants it. But we can settle all that later, when they’re grown.” He turned his smile on Tallain. “Until that time, Cunaxa is yours, my Lord Regent.”

  “My prince,” Tallain murmured, bending his head in acceptance. But he had never wanted anything from these people except that they leave his lands alone. Fighting had been their idea, not his.

  “Miyon still lives,” the Merida pointed out. “He is Prince of Cunaxa—”

  “—and he is my father!” Ezanto blurted.

  “You have my sympathies,” Pol told him. He began removing his gloves, finger by finger. “I haven’t endured him at close quarters as long as you have, of course, but I think we can agree that knowing him has not enhanced our lives. Being his son-by-marriage is trial enough. I can imagine what it must be like being his son by blood. Never knowing what, if anything, will be your lot after his death. Never sure which of you is in favor to become prince after him. But, my lords—I’ll give you that much, as you are prince’s sons—my lords, I have solved your problems.”

  He held up his left hand so they could see the great topaz-and-emerald ring glistening in the noon sun. Beside it was the amethyst-and-topaz of Princemarch, dark and glowering.

  “It is the responsibility of the High Prince to make a final decision on matters of princely importance. My lords, you are looking at the High Prince.”

  All four flinched to varying degrees. The Merida sucked in a breath after the initial shock, and Tallain thought him close to a shout of sheer joy. If he released it, Tallain knew his sword would claim one more life today.

  “Rohan—dead?” the Merida whispered. His eyes kindled, but only briefly. Tallain’s fingers relaxed.

  Pol acted as if he had not heard. “Miyon is deposed. Cunaxa is now mine.” He smiled once more, a mere stretching of his lips. “This is the will of the High Prince.”

  Tallain set his face in flint. Pol had no right to take Cunaxa this way. They all knew it. No one spoke. A glance at Riyan showed him the same stony refusal to reveal his thoughts—but those thoughts were clearly carved in bone and muscle just the same.

  Pol was speaking again. “My Lord Kazander, be so good as to tie the three of them to horses. We’ll take them back to Feruche with us. And you may see to the others now.”

  “At once, my prince.” The korrus towed and sprang eagerly from his saddle.

  Pol sat straighter. “You. Merida.” Long fingers rubbed lightly at the single Sunrunner’s ring—gold, on the right middle finger, set with the moonstone that had been Andrade’s. “Stand over there.”

  Riyan didn’t speak; Tallain couldn’t. His family had fought the Merida for generations; everyone in the Northern Desert had. He had killed at least a score of them through his years of holding Tiglath. He had killed many more at Tuath, and here at Zagroy’s Pillar.

  But no Merida had ever died like this. A sudden circle of Sunrunner’s Fire sprang up around him, arched into a searing cage. He panicked and made the mistake of trying to escape it. His clothes and hair and flesh caught. There was one scream, and then silence.

  Tallain knew—in a remote, impersonal way—why Pol had done it. He was the High Prince. The Sunrunner High Prince. The oath he’d never sworn had not been violated. The Merida’s own fear had been his death. Had he not touched the Fire, he would still be alive.

  Pol let his right hand fall to his side. The flames were gone. “Tallain, how much rest will your Tiglathis need? What I mean is, can you ride this afternoon to chase down Birioc?”

  Tallain nodded mutely. From the corner of his eye he had seen Kazander and Visian walking methodically down the rows of wounded. They stopp
ed every two paces and stabbed—once to the right, once to the left, as precisely as surgeons—through the heart.

  Pol’s order. This was not the work of the man he’d known, nor the boy Sionell had once loved. Tallain wanted out. Away. Now.

  “Thank you. Once you have him, send him to me at Feruche.” Pol put on his gloves again. “Keep your levies at Tiglath for the time being. I won’t need you for some while yet, and there’s no room at Feruche to house them anyway. Oh, and you might start thinking about what portions of Cunaxa should be added to what young Jeren inherited from Jahnavi at Tuath. I’m afraid we’ll be a while in rebuilding his castle, but he’s got a long life ahead of him.” He blew out a long sigh, scanning the Desert around him. “Let’s see, what else needs doing? Miyon’s sons, the Merida, the wounded—oh, yes.”

  He dismounted. Three hundred and sixty Merida and Cunaxans stood in ranks before him. The women were taken aside at his command. The men were ordered to kneel. Kazander, finished by now with a task he had obviously relished, went to his side. Pol’s clear, ringing voice echoed off the majestic stones before him and carried to Merida and Cunaxan and Desert soldier alike.

  “This place is called Zagroy’s Pillar. It was here that my ancestor of that name defeated a Merida host. You remembered perhaps that it happened, but you did not remember how. Now you know.

  “I understand the duty owed to one’s prince. But the man you followed here is not a prince, whatever he chose to style himself. He took the name Prince of the Merida, and even of Cunaxa itself, and bade you follow him to victory. Instead, you are vanquished.

  “You knew what and who he was when you followed him here. You chose to fight in his cause. That cause is gone, as he is. And you will remember not to raise your hands against me and mine again.

  “Today I did what the grandfather of my grandfather did in years long past. Remember your defeat today with his name, not mine. Now I take a page from the book of my father the High Prince Rohan’s deeds. You will remember this, too—and him.”

  Kazander walked these rows, too. With his sword that surely had gorged on blood by now, he hacked off the right hand of all the two hundred and seventy men who knelt in the sand.