The Dragon Token

by Melanie Rawn

“Why?” she demanded ungraciously, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

  “I wish I could mend your world for you.”

  “That’s stupid. You can’t help what happens any more than I can.”

  “You’re right. It was a foolish thing to wish.” He paused, then shrugged and started up the path again.

  “Kazander?” She hurried to catch up.

  “Yes, my lady?” He looked back over his shoulder.

  She gulped, and bit her lip again, then burst out, “Thank you for wanting to.”

  He smiled.

  The encounter Tobin had recommended between Pol and Sionell never happened. He hadn’t even seen Sionell since the night she arrived at Feruche. She kept to her small tower room with her children. It was Tallain’s cousin Lyela who saw to the comfort of the Tiglathis, and the Tuathans as well, for Lady Rabisa only sat and stared and sometimes smiled mindlessly. Pol had visited her yesterday. The thought of Sionell looking like that terrified him.

  His own wife frightened him almost as much. Watching her that morning as she ordered her half-brothers executed—Goddess, what had he done to her? She ought to be far from all this horror, tucked away safe with the children at Dragon’s Rest—

  —where her father was and where Chiana and Rinhoel were likely to be.

  A man ought to be able to protect his family. A prince ought to be able to protect his land. But as High Prince, his was the responsibility to protect everyone’s families, everyone’s lands.

  Meiglan had done it all with three sword strokes. Her half-brothers could do no more harm to her or her children, fight no more battles against the Desert, give no more aid to the Vellant’im.

  He admired the tidiness of it, even as he was appalled.

  And what did he want from her, anyway? To exist in twilight as Rabisa did? Meiglan was High Princess and knew it. And now everyone else knew it, too.

  Including him.

  He spent the day on horseback, riding with a patrol that searched for Vellant’im. None had been spotted even at a distance in quite some time. Apprehension said they were hiding, but sense asserted that they had withdrawn to join the main army at Stronghold. This appeared to be a popular destination. Hollis had reported Andrev’s news that the remains of the force at Swalekeep marched toward the Desert. As the dragon-headed ships returned from Tiglath, soldiers disembarked and started immediately north. No one wanted to think what this might mean. Pol didn’t, but he had to.

  Back at Feruche, he went upstairs for a quick wash before dinner. When he started down the main stairs, he saw Chayla starting up them. Word that Sionell had asked to see her made him turn and accompany her to the tower. Not to do as Tobin advised, for he really didn’t feel equal to a fight just now, but to find out what was wrong.

  After a brief nod that barely acknowledged his existence, Sionell ignored him while Chayla examined the children. He had the wisdom to keep his mouth shut and watch as his young cousin peered into Antalya’s throat, thumped Jahnev gently on the chest, and tried to get the uncharacteristically listless Meig to follow the movements of a tiny fingerflame back and forth. At last Chayla settled onto the bed that held all three children, cradling Meig in one arm.

  “Runny noses, but no sore throat or cough. How long have they been rubbing their eyes?”

  “Since last evening,” Sionell answered. “There’s only a slight filminess, but I had to bathe tear-crusts off this morning.”

  “Well, no fever yet, but it’s pretty obvious what they’ve got,” Chayla said. “Silk-eye.”

  “That’s what I thought. Siona seemed to be coming down with it back at Tiglath, but she was better so quickly I couldn’t be sure.”

  “It affects some for only a day or two. Some don’t get it at all. But Siona’s given it to your three, and they’ve probably spread it by now.” She stroked Meig’s ruddy red-brown hair. “You know the standard remedies. Febrifuge, eyedrops—I’ll have to do some cooking tonight,” she sighed, sounding weary enough for someone thrice her age. “At least this is something I can cure.”

  “All you lack is a castleful of sick children,” Sionell said, and Pol gave a start when he realized she was speaking to him.

  With a little shrug, he replied, “Better here than out on the Long Sand. Would it do any good to isolate the other children?”

  “It might.” Chayla stood and stretched. “Worth a try, anyway. I’ll go get started on the drops. It’s a long recipe and I’m afraid we’re going to need a lot of it.”

  “Write it out and have someone else do it,” Pol said. “You’re asleep on your feet.”

  She glanced at him, and despite the differences in age and coloring he felt he was looking at Tobin. “Didn’t you hear me?” she snarled. “I can do something about this!” And with that she was gone from the room.

  “But not about the wounded,” Sionell murmured.

  “I understood that,” he said just as quietly.

  “Do any of us understand what a physician thinks and feels? I learned what my mother taught me, but I don’t have whatever it is that makes her a healer. It’s like being a Sunrunner. You either are or you aren’t.” She tucked her children into bed and when she glanced over her shoulder again seemed surprised to find him still there.

  “Yes, my lord?”

  Never had three words hurt so much. If there had been grief or anger or anything in her eyes but calm—but he could only shake his head. “Nothing, Ell. Nothing.”

  • • •

  Alasen was welcomed to Dragon’s Rest with genuine warmth and no little astonishment. Edrel rode out to greet her midway up the valley. Being a polite young man, he didn’t ask what she was doing there when she didn’t immediately volunteer her reasons. His own reason for staying waited in the main entry for them, smiles and charm all over his narrow, black-eyed face.

  “I can’t leave with him still here,” Edrel confessed quietly after Miyon took Draza aside to ask about the Battle of Swalekeep. “The problem is that I can’t think of anywhere to send him.”

  “Even if you could,” she agreed. “He’s still a prince. Perhaps I can be . . . um . . . persuasive.”

  “I’d be grateful, my lady. I could take what troops we have and start being useful. It’s maddening, stuck here while everyone else does the fighting.”

  “And too many of them, the dying.” Alasen put a hand on his arm as they climbed the stairs. “I’m so sorry about your brother.”

  Edrel gave a curt nod. “Yes. Thank you. Is there any word of Chiana?”

  “None. I don’t like it. As a matter of fact, I felt sure she’d be here.”

  “As if I’d let her set one foot on the trail through the Dragon’s Gullet! I was wondering what brought you here, my lady.”

  “A mistake, it seems.” She turned at the upper landing for the rooms she and Ostvel were always given at Dragon’s Rest. Edrel shook his head.

  “We’ve closed that side, my lady, and the two towers as well. Easier on the servants.”

  “Ah. Of course.” They went in the other direction, past a tapestry of Stronghold. Pausing to finger the heavy weave, she murmured, “I still can’t believe it’s gone.”

  “Nor I. Not until I’ve seen it for myself.”

  “I don’t want to. Ever.” Alasen looked away from the tapestry and tried to smile. “How does your new wife? And Lisiel and her little boy?”

  “All well. They’ll be glad to see you. Our evenings are a little strained, what with his grace of Cunaxa in attendance.” He grimaced.

  She laughed lightly. “I can rescue Norian and Lisiel tonight by claiming women’s chatter. But I’m afraid you and Draza are on your own.”

  “He was there, wasn’t he? When Kerluthan died.”

  “At the battle, though not to see him fall.”

  Edrel said bitterly, “Prince Velden didn’t want his daughter to marry a lowly second son—and now I’m Lord of River Ussh.”

  Alasen took his arm. “I’ll see that you and Draza have some tim
e alone this evening. He can tell you better than I what happened.”

  She managed it, but just barely, and only by keeping Miyon with her and the other ladies after dinner in Meiglan’s solar. She told the tale of the battle as it had been told to her, even though the whole of it had been communicated by Andrev to Hollis at Feruche, and thence to Hildreth here at Dragon’s Rest.

  Miyon asked only one question—Edrel’s question, though with entirely different intent, Alasen well knew. Where was Chiana?

  “No one has the faintest idea,” Alasen replied.

  “Perhaps she’s seeking out her old allies, the diarmadh’im,” Norian said slyly. “It sounds as if she needs all the help she can get.”

  “That might not be so far from the truth,” Miyon commented. “After all, they do have some connection with the Vellant’im.”

  Alasen nodded, saying nothing. He’d had time to recover from the undoubted shock of the lost battles in the Desert and Meadowlord; he knew he must now behave as if he’d supported Pol unswervingly all along. She anticipated an entertaining time of it before she left for Feruche, hearing him sing a tune that was for him so painfully off-key.

  Changing her mind about responding to his words, she said, very innocently, “And the Merida as well, my lord. But they won’t be a factor anymore.”

  “No, they won’t,” he replied evenly.

  “It must be a relief to you, Prince Miyon.” Norian spoke with perfect earnestness belied by a wicked glint in her blue eyes. Alasen nearly laughed as another verse was added to the song he must sing.

  “Profoundly,” he said, and rose. “If you ladies will excuse me, there are some letters I must write. You’ve reminded me that my princedom needs my guidance. I wish you a good night.”

  When he was gone, Lisiel made a face and waved her hand as if to clear away a stench. “Really, Norian,” she scolded, “I had a hard enough time when Alasen twitched him. Did you have to join in?”

  “You’re much too polite to him, Lisi.”

  “I have to be. His princedom is just over the Veresch from mine,” said Laric’s wife. Then she laughed. “You and Alasen ought to do wonderfully at Riall’im. I haven’t seen anything so funny since the last time Sioned and Tobin had at Chiana!”

  It had been just that past autumn, here at Dragon’s Rest. It reminded them of too much—Norian of the sweet joys of falling in love with Edrel; Lisiel of having her husband at her side while they waited for their baby; Alasen of solitary woodland hikes around Castle Crag looking for taze herbs, for she rarely went where Andry would be.

  She chose to focus on Lisiel’s mention of Chiana, and explained Naydra’s reasoning. “Evidently she was wrong, though I can’t understand why. Or where Chiana’s hiding.”

  “Hildreth can go looking when there’s sunlight enough,” Lisiel said as she poured herself another cupful of taze.

  “And it will give Evarin something to do besides antagonize the cook,” Norian added. “He’s been brewing Goddess only knows what and leaving a terrible mess in the kitchen.”

  “Not to mention making free with the best silk sheets to strain the stuff, and the winemaster’s new oak barrels for storing the results.” Lisiel sipped and shook her head. “This has gone stone cold. Norian, ask the page outside to send up more, please?”

  “There’s something else we need to talk about,” Alasen said, interrupting the catalog of domestic disturbances. “And none of it leaves this room—not even to tell Edrel,” she warned.

  She told them then some of what Branig had told Naydra, though not about Naydra herself. Lisiel refused to believe that all sorcerers were not exactly alike in their aims and evils. Alasen supposed this was natural to someone from Firon, assumed to be home to hundreds if not thousands of diarmadh’im. Norian, though not quick to credit Branig’s explanation, was more thoughtful.

  “There must be more of them than reveal themselves,” she said. “I always assumed it was fear of what the Sunrunners might do to them—let alone the princes and athr’im. But it just might be that the one group provides a check on the other. Keeping watch over people ripe for the using—”

  “They failed to stop Mireva nine years ago,” Lisiel countered.

  “Maybe it was too dangerous. It would have brought them into the open.” Alasen frowned. “Given the prevailing attitude. . . .”

  “You don’t need to tell me about that. I’m dark-haired, dark-eyed, and Fironese.”

  Norian blinked eyes as blue and clear as dawn. “You don’t mean people actually suspect you of being diarmadhi?”

  “Some do. I think my brother Yarin would like to be.” Lisiel gave a shrug. “But this notion of there being two different sorts of them—”

  “What if there are?” Norian insisted. “Mireva’s faction seems to be balanced by this other that Branig told Naydra about—”

  She broke off as the door opened and a servant came in carrying a tray. Alasen said into the too-abrupt silence, “So there I sat in an absolute jungle, expecting cats or wolves or something to come by and drink from the bathwater. I’ve never seen anything like it—”

  “—and you hope you never do again!” Lisiel finished for her. “Thank you, Thanys, just leave it on the table. We’ll serve ourselves.”

  “Yes, your grace. Princess Alasen’s chambers are aired and ready.” The woman bowed slightly and left them.

  “That was close,” Norian said. “I’m sorry. I should have been listening for her step.”

  “She should have knocked.” Lisiel poured fresh taze for all three of them. “She’s Meiglan’s personal maid and unfortunately used to a great deal of freedom in her comings and goings.”

  “No harm done.” Alasen accepted a cup. “What I’ve been leading up to is that if what Branig said is true, we might be able to use his faction to our advantage. I know, I know. There seems to be a connection between the Vellant’im and the sorcerers. But has anyone ever heard of them helping in a battle? Has there been a massing of diarmadh’im to march on any of our castles? The more I think about it, the more I think Branig was telling the truth and he didn’t have the least idea who these people are.”

  “Would he admit it if he did?” Lisiel asked.

  “He admitted he was a sorcerer,” Norian reminded her. “That was dangerous enough. I agree with Alasen. I think he was being honest.”

  “But how would these people be used?”

  Alasen smiled over the rim of her cup. “You do ask the most awkward questions, Lisiel. I’m hoping Pol has some ideas when I tell him about it at Feruche. And now I think I’ll go meet your new son, if I may, and then get some sleep.”

  At least the most awkward question had not been asked: how to find the diarmadh’im. On the ride to Dragon’s Rest, Alasen had stopped each night at a farmhouse or a village and, once or twice, an inn. It had been easy enough to gather everyone around her while she told the tale of the victory at Swalekeep. Then she named the dead, so that people might remember them with candles at the New Year. Always the same phrasing: “Prince Halian of Meadowlord; Lord Rialt, who governed Waes for the High Prince, and his lady Mevita; Lord Kerluthan of River Ussh; and Branig, friend and protector of the Princess Naydra.”

  Once or twice she thought she saw someone react—a small flinch or a soft gasp, nothing overt. But at the Princemarch border a girl came to her after dinner to say she knew a Branig who worked for a weaver in Swalekeep; had Alasen meant him? Not very subtle; Alasen was even less so in her reply. “No, this Branig was a tutor. But between you and me, I think he was also a sorcerer. Princess Naydra said he called her by a very strange title.”

  When Alasen spoke the word “Diarmadh’reia,” the girl’s face went absolutely blank. With her next breath she had been properly horrified by the mention of sorcery and properly glad that it was a Branig other than the one she knew. But the lie had been in her eyes, and Alasen had seen it with the beginnings of hope. Perhaps it would work, perhaps not, but the essentials had been communicated. It wa
s all she could do.

  She lingered longer than she intended admiring Lisiel’s baby—who proved himself an outrageous flirt even at barely one season old by cooing the instant Alasen picked him up. He had only just dozed off in her arms when Hildreth entered the chamber and drew Norian aside. The Sunrunner spoke in a murmur abruptly punctuated by Norian’s exclamation.

  “No! How could Father let him—”

  Alasen placed the child in the cradle. “What is it, Norian?”

  Hildreth answered. “Her brother is camped with a small army on the road south from Summer River.”

  “Elsen can’t even walk without pain.” Norian’s voice trembled. “Riding is torment to him. Why would he do such a thing?”

  “I have an idea about that, my lady,” Hildreth said.

  “Andry has left Goddess Keep. Without him—”

  “Gone? But why? Where?” Alasen exclaimed.

  “Only he knows—as ever.” Hildreth shrugged. “But without him, the ros’salath probably isn’t as effective. It’s my thought that they want more substantial protection than the walls.”

  “So they sent to Summer River and told my crippled brother to lead an army?” Norian’s voice rose, and the baby woke with a startled cry.

  As Lisiel soothed him, Alasen said, “Your brother is an honorable man. If a summons came from Goddess Keep, he’d respond as duty compels him to do.”

  “But why didn’t Father stop him? And why couldn’t the Sunrunners find someone else to do their fighting for them? Damn them! If anything happens to him—” She started for the door. “I’m going to tell Edrel. I don’t care about Miyon. The rest of you can watch him or send him away or kill him, it’s all the same to me. We’re leaving Dragon’s Rest as soon as we can.”

  The baby wept in earnest when she slammed the door behind her. Hildreth shook her head. “What can Torien be thinking, to ask a cripple to defend him?”

  “We must assume that the cruelty of it isn’t part of his thinking,” Alasen said bitterly. “But it’s also stupid. He exposes his own weakness by calling for help. He’s practically inviting them to attack. I’ll wager Andry knows nothing of this—and would forbid it if he did.”