The Dragon Token

by Melanie Rawn

  • • •

  At about the same time Tilal was feeling the cold of a sword at his throat, his wife was wishing she had one to hand, and Andry there to use it on.

  Her children, Sioneva and Sorin, were accustomed to their mother’s temper, and waited silently for it to run its usual course. So did the court Sunrunner, Fesariv, whose words had been the source of her rage. Lord Allun of Lower Pyrme had less experience of Gemma’s character. He and his family had been at Athmyr since autumn, after fleeing their castle in Gilad half a day ahead of the invading Vellant’im. When compelled to bestir himself, Allun was a clever man. Rather than abandoning Lower Pyrme to the enemy’s use or its destruction, he had laced it with deadfalls to trap the enemy—an idea copied to excellent effect at Remagev. But what he did now was not clever. In fact, it was the worst thing possible. He tried to soothe her.

  She turned on him, snarling. He spoke soft, reasonable words. She reached new heights of invective in cursing Andry in particular and Sunrunners in general. That was when Sorin spoke up with all the artful innocence of a nine-year-old.

  “But, Mama, Sioneva is a Sunrunner, too.”

  The court faradhi smirked a bit.

  Gemma stopped in her tracks in the middle of a gorgeous dark green rug featuring the golden wheat sheaf of Ossetia. At one corner, just as Goddess Keep perched at the tip of the princedom, was a circle of ten tiny, linked silver and gold rings. Gemma had dug her heel into it on purpose a few moments earlier. Now she stared at it, and then at her son and daughter.

  Sorin was blond and gray-eyed, a plump, sunny-tempered child Named for Andry’s murdered twin brother, whom Tilal had loved as much as he now reviled the Lord of Goddess Keep. Sioneva at nearly seventeen was growing prettier by the day, with blue eyes of remarkable serenity beneath a broad, smooth brow. She was a Sunrunner, and to become what the Goddess had meant her to be, she would have to be trained at Goddess Keep.

  By Andry.

  Gemma’s temper flared all over again. She’d send her daughter to Maarken and Hollis, or Sioned, or Pol. Anyone but Andry, who had let so many Ossetians be slaughtered just so those left would be witnesses to the power of his Star Scroll spell. To his own power, damn him.

  Lord Allun cleared his throat. “You must send someone, Princess Gemma,” he said, still sweetly reasonable. “After all, if they land at Goddess Keep, it is Ossetian soil they march upon.”

  “It is Goddess Keep’s soil,” she snapped. “There’s even an athri now to govern it!” She whirled on the Sunrunner. “If Torien or even Andry himself crawled all ten measures of the Athmyr Road and begged me from sunrise to sunset, I wouldn’t send so much as a kitchenboy with a rusted carving knife to their defense!”

  Fesariv, not appreciating the prospect of sending this reply back to Goddess Keep, rubbed at the ring on his thumb and said, “Your grace, I am instructed to say that in the event of your refusal, I am to leave Athmyr.”

  “Fine,” she retorted. “I’ll lend you a horse.”

  “I am to leave Athmyr,” he repeated stubbornly, “with as many of your guard and the general populace as respect their duty to Lord Andry and Goddess Keep.”

  Incredibly, Gemma smiled. “Try it, and I’ll cut the rings from your fingers myself. Get out.”

  The Sunrunner—his hands fisted protectively close to his sides—obeyed with unsurprising alacrity.

  Sorin turned to his sister. “Looks like you’re it, Evvie. When you go Sunrunning, can I watch?”

  “She doesn’t know how,” Gemma said. “And there’d be nothing to see if she did. I’ll have Kolya send his Sunrunner down from Kadar Water. We need information more than he does.”

  “But won’t Torien have asked Lord Kolya to help, too?” Sioneva ventured. “Will you forbid him to go?”

  Gemma shook her head. “I won’t have to. He’s got no force to speak of. Almost all his people went with your father.” She glanced at Allun. “Well, my lord? What’s the dark look for?”

  “My lady, I hesitate to say it, but Lord Andry is a proud and powerful man. He may consider other means of . . . umm . . . reprisal.”

  This time she laughed. “Not while his eldest son is my husband’s squire!”

  • • •

  “I can’t go any farther! I’ve been riding since morning and it’s nearly sundown and I just can’t ride anymore!”

  Chiana was close to hysterics. Rinhoel lifted a hand as if to slap her, not caring if his troops saw him bullying his own mother. He was the ruling Prince of Meadowlord. He could do as he liked. But the threat no longer worked; though she cringed back from him, she kept on sobbing. So he did hit her, a sharp crack across the face.

  A mistake. She lost all control and screamed again and again until a second slap nearly knocked her off her horse.

  “There’s a lesson for you!” he shouted. “Don’t make me repeat it!”

  Ten nights ago they had escaped Swalekeep. In that time they had traveled a little more than one hundred measures—thirty of them in that first desperate gallop for freedom. Dragon’s Rest was still many days away. And it was all Chiana’s fault.

  Her back hurt. Her feet were frozen. She was hungry. Her arms ached from handling a horse too strong for her. She was soaked to the skin and must get dry and warm or die of a chill. She needed rest or she could not go on.

  For the first eight days, Rinhoel had endured her complaints. He had found an abandoned farmhouse or an empty barn or evicted a crofter and his family from their dwelling each night so his mother could sleep in comfort. But he was tired and hungry, too. He was the ruling Prince of Meadowlord and he was reduced to skulking around his own lands while others lolled in his castle. They had attacked without provocation, driven him out of his rightful place, and forced him to run in fear for his life after telling lies about him. He had earned the right to do some complaining of his own—and he would do it to Pol, through the Sunrunner at Dragon’s Rest. He was a prince; they couldn’t refuse him shelter. And nothing that had been done couldn’t be explained away.

  Pol would believe anything of Chiana.

  “Your grace! Someone’s coming!”

  Rinhoel left his mother—mercifully silent but for a few annoying whimpers—and rode back to the rear of his household guard. Ten of them had surrounded a single man on a fine Radzyn stallion. Rinhoel had no need to ask whether the new arrival was for him or against him. The dark face with its dozens of golden beads woven into the beard told him all he needed to know.

  “Come to apologize?” he spat. “Or did you lose your bearings while you were running away from the battle?”

  The man blinked. “With better slowness, great lord—I am having little of your words.”

  Rinhoel ground his teeth. A thousand and more Vellant’im in Meadowlord, and he had to end up with an idiot. “Did Lord Varek send you to me?”

  “I am speaking Rinhoel-son-of-Roelstra?”

  “Grandson of Roelstra, you fool! Of course, I am! Anyone else would have killed you by now! Do you dare ask me for proof? You stupid barbarians with your stupid dragon tokens—”

  “Dragons, yes!” The warrior nodded vigorously, the gold beads glinting in the sunshine as if he polished them every day. “Great lord, not to go Place of Sleeping Dragons!”

  “What? Where? Oh—Dragon’s Rest? Why shouldn’t I go there?”

  “To be Rezeld is better, great lord.”

  “Why?”

  “Lord Varek says, time of years past is knowing to him. Rezeld good waiting place then, better now. Vellant’im go here—there?” He broke off, frowning, then shook his head and started over. “Lord Varek says, Vellant’im to be Rezeld. Great lord waiting ten, twenty days, we come.”

  Rinhoel chewed his tongue for a moment. “We’re to wait at Rezeld for him to come with another army? And then we’ll march on Dragon’s Rest? The way my mother did nine years ago?”

  “Yes! Yes! Great lord is wise! Rezeld is better!”

  He thought it over. Rezeld was only
two days away. Pol had never named an athri to replace Lord Morlen after his death in the attack on Dragon’s Rest. There was but a steward at the manor now, and all the able-bodied who worked the fields and herds would be with Ostvel.

  He narrowed his eyes at the Vellanti. “And what about the others? Your friends here? Will they come this time as they did last time?”

  The man looked utterly blank.

  “The diarmadh’im!” Rinhoel exclaimed, totally out of patience with this lackwit. “Will we have the aid of the sorcerers against Dragon’s Rest?”

  “Yes! Diarmadh’im, yes!”

  “Very well. We’ll turn for Rezeld Manor, then. Go back to Lord Varek—wherever he’s hiding after losing Swalekeep for me!—and tell him I’ll be waiting. Twenty days, no longer. Is that understood?”

  “Twenty days, great lord.” The warrior bowed from his saddle, then lifted a tentative dark gaze to Rinhoel’s face. “Great lord? It is empty, there.” He touched his stomach.

  “You could have eaten your fill at Swalekeep if you’d won the battle. You’re wasting time. The sooner you start back to Lord Varek, the sooner he’ll know my orders.”

  With a stifled sigh, the man bowed again. “Yes, great lord,” he said, and rode back the way he’d come.

  • • •

  Five measures down the road, Andry resumed his own face and laughed himself completely out of breath.

  I’m glad to find you so pleased with the world, my Lord, a sardonic voice said to him on sunlight. Care to share the joke?

  Valeda? He glanced about like a one-ring Sunrunner for the person to match the voice. What are you doing?

  What you taught me how to do so well. But quickly, because there’s not much sun here, and it comes and goes. What was so funny?

  He told her, and they both laughed. He made it so easy! Hells, I could have told him to go back to Swalekeep, all is forgiven, and he would’ve believed me!

  You’ve bought twenty days. What will you do when they’re up, and no Vellanti army arrives at Rezeld?

  Damned if I know, he replied cheerfully. But it’s not my problem.

  Well, something here is. Or perhaps I should say someone. Jayachin is being even more obnoxious than usual.

  By the time she finished explaining, he had lost all urge to laughter. You tell her for me that Torien gives the orders both inside and outside the walls. And what ails him, anyway?

  I think he’s feeling your absence. I told you it was a bad idea.

  And I told all of you that Goddess Keep’s safety can’t depend on one man. Not even if it’s me, Valeda.

  We’ll do our best. How’s your leg?

  Nearly mended, he lied. How are the children?

  Merisel is still Nialdan’s shadow. Chayly is learning the harp. And Joscev wants to know why he can’t go be a squire to a great prince like his brother Andrev.

  Succinct, if tactless. But that was Valeda. Kiss the girls for me and tell Joscev he’s only seven and that’s too young. And don’t you ask why I’m not following Tilal to take Andrev back, either.

  I don’t have to ask. I already know. She’s about fifty measures out of Dragon’s Rest.

  Valeda—

  But she was gone down the strands of sunshine, and he was left alone at the edge of a field.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chayla sat back on her heels beside the cot, staring at the dead face. Of Kazander’s original fifty Isulk’im, the loss of this man made only thirty left. There was nothing she could do about the immediate deaths in battle, but—

  “Sometimes we lose them,” Feylin had cautioned more than once. “Sometimes we know it will happen, and sometimes it happens for no good reason we can figure out. All we can do is our best. If that’s not enough . . . well, nothing is perfect in this world, least of all us.”

  Chayla knew that. One would think that after Remagev, Stronghold, the Harps, and Zagroy’s Pillar, she’d be used to losing. She wasn’t.

  After a moment she laid gentle fingertips on cold eyelids, then sighed and pushed herself to her feet. A gentle hand at her elbow helped her up. She knew without even looking that it was Kazander at her side.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You did what you could, my lady.”

  He guided her toward the infirmary door, past other beds where other wounded lay. Most would recover; some would be maimed for life; some would die like the man whose eyes she had just closed. And there was so little she could do about it.

  “I should have been able to save him.”

  Kazander made no reply until they were outside. The evening breeze swirled around the barracks tucked into the hillside, played with the sand out on the dunes. Above them, Feruche hoarded the last of the sun on its tallest tower, like a signal fire. She was reminded of the Flametower at Stronghold—one more anger to add to the rest.

  “Did you use all that you know?” Kazander asked.

  “That sort of wound to the lung can be difficult, but we caught it in time. He shouldn’t have died.”

  “Are you the Goddess, to say when and when not?” His fingers tightened a little on her arm and he repeated, “You did what you could.”

  She walked with him in silence for a time, then said, “But I have to know what I did wrong.”

  “For the next man wounded the same way? Or for yourself?”

  She looked up. “I don’t understand.”

  “I cannot tell which offends you more deeply—that he died, or that you could not save him.”

  Chayla pulled out of his grasp. “Death offends me!”

  “I know. You are angry, but there is no sorrow.”

  “I didn’t even know him.”

  “Yet your face was the last he saw, your touch the last he knew. You were wife, mother, sister, daughter in that last moment. You say you did not know him, but he knew you. How can you not grieve for him, after being so many things to him?”

  She recoiled. “I was a total stranger who never asked to be anything but his physician.”

  “We do not ask for life, yet it is there.”

  “You make no sense, Lord Kazander,” she said coldly.

  He smiled. “As usual. That is what you mean, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  This time he laughed. Chayla turned on her heel and started back for the garrison. Kazander touched her shoulder, saying, “Ah, no. There is only so much light left, my lady, and you must use it to return to the keep.”

  “Don’t give me orders,” she snapped. “I’m not a child or a servant!”

  “Your parents’ order, not mine. And the Lady of Tiglath has asked if you will see her children.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Am I a physician, to know such things?”

  “No, you’re a nuisance and a bore,” she replied. “But all right, I’ll come back up with you.”

  He bowed extravagantly, grinning again. “Your compliments are flowers to embellish my sleepless pillows.”

  Chayla scowled at him and started walking.

  The trail was wide enough for four people abreast, lined with mortared stones, and smooth as a polished banister. But it was also very steep, and by the time they were halfway up, Chayla was breathing hard. Kazander, damn him, was singing—to reassure his men back at the garrison, she supposed, remembering Remagev. She closed her ears to a song whose words were in a language she didn’t understand anyway, and nursed her anger.

  None of this was supposed to happen to her. She was meant to be a Sunrunner and a brilliant physician. Those were precious gifts from the Goddess, to be nurtured, used, and shared. She should not be feeling this terrible fury of helplessness. She should not be forced to spend so much of herself on people she didn’t even know. Her family and friends had claims on her love, but all these strangers with their pain-weary eyes and bleeding wounds—she didn’t want to feel this. It hurt too much.

  Wife, mother, sister, daughter. She knew how to be two of those things, and did them very well. She w
as a loving daughter who had made her parents proud. Squabble as she might with Rohannon, she adored her brother and missed him as only twinned siblings can. Her father had told her once that he and Jahni had been each other’s mirror, and that it had been the same for Andry and Sorin. From what she had observed of Jihan and Rislyn, it was like that for them as well. Chayla was a good daughter, a good sister. One day she would Choose a fine, strong, proud man to be her husband and the father of her children.

  How dare these other men, these strangers, claim parts of her already taken, and make of her things she didn’t yet know how to be?

  She had thought back at Remagev, back at Stronghold, that she had discovered what it was to be a physician. And it was this: to give. Of her skill and her knowledge of the craft, yes, but of her compassion as well, for sometimes the gift most needed was nothing more than her smile.

  She had been wrong. Being a physician was dirt and blood and filth and frantic haste, and knowing that whatever she did or didn’t do, people were going to die. It was a craft that depended on suffering, a skill that found its use in tragedies.

  Chayla was furious with them for hurting and dying and showing her the brutal reality of elegant textbook descriptions. But mainly she hated herself for not being able to heal them. All of them. Every single one.

  Kazander had stopped singing. He stood a little way up the slope, looking at her in the dimness.

  “My lady,” he said, his voice as soft as the twilight, “why do you weep?”

  She bit both lips between her teeth but it wasn’t any use. Staring at him through tear-blinded eyes, she said thickly, “Because I’m ashamed.”

  His arms surrounded her. She clung to him, sobbing uncontrollably now, despising herself for the weakness and him for seeing it. Causing it. Damn him.

  But he was tender with her humiliation, his fingers moving like whispers through her tangled hair. She hated him for that, too.

  When she could breathe again, she pulled away. He held her fast for an instant before his arms fell to his sides.

  “Forgive me,” he murmured.